"Risk? Ha!"
Rumlow let out a short, mocking snort and straightened up, his eyes gleaming with the light of someone who had uncovered a secret. "You actually believed that nonsense? To verify whether the safety margin of this 'core' was really as flimsy as paper, I specifically pulled the monthly logistics energy consumption report for the 'Barrier'—within my clearance, fully compliant and legal."
He stepped closer and lowered his voice, yet every word shot into Steve's ears like an icy bullet. "Do you know how much that piss you just took was worth? Not a cent more, not a cent less—counting the accompanying Molecular Water Cycle Purification, a full three hundred thousand dollars! An amount a middle-class family might not save in an entire lifetime, flushed away with one splash into Stark's 'Safety Redundancy'!"
Three hundred thousand dollars?!
That astronomical figure was like a shock grenade detonating beside Steve's ear.
He jerked his head up. His azure pupils contracted sharply from sheer shock, and all the color drained from his face in an instant, leaving behind only disbelieving pallor. He could feel the edge of the Tactical Clipboard digging deeply into his palm.
The image of his mother carefully budgeting in their rundown Brooklyn apartment, the sight of soldiers on the battlefield sharing their last compressed ration, and the nauseatingly extravagant burning of resources represented by that number collided violently in his mind, creating a soundless roar.
It was as though he was truly seeing the absurd essence of this deep-sea cage for the first time. His voice was dry as sandpaper scraping together. "You... what did you say? Three hundred thousand? For one time?!"
"That's right. Once. And S.H.I.E.L.D. has already approved the project proposal and budget for this Super Sanitation System that supposedly 'guarantees the safety of all