At TPC's Pacific Ocean base, Nick Fury stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor, looking down at the plaza below.
Several newly commissioned "Modified Quinjet" transport aircraft were parked in the plaza, sunlight refracting off their silver-gray titanium alloy armor in blinding flashes.
There were no agents' footsteps moving through dim corridors, no top-secret files gathering dust in locked safes.
This was TPC, a global defense organization spearheaded by the two great powers of East and West, which had completely replaced S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization that had existed in name only after the Battle of New York, as well as the United Nations.
Everything was under the sun.
Everything was open and transparent.
Fury picked up the mug on his desk printed with the words "World Peace" and took a sip of cold boiled water.
He hated this feeling.
A man accustomed to fighting rats for territory in the sewers had suddenly been dragged into the spotlight, and every hair on his body was protesting.
Steve Rogers, on the other hand, had adapted to this place quite well.
Captain America had recently hit it off with a special forces instructor sent by the Eastern great power.
They often sparred on the training field—
Afterward, the two would sit on a bench, drinking orange-flavored sports drinks as they discussed what it meant to be soldiers.
Soldiers were not killing machines from an assembly line. They had to have minds of their own. They had to know what they were fighting for.
Those were Steve and the instructor's exact words—
Fury had merely curled his lip at the time.
Minds of their own? By the time you figured things out, the enemy's bullet would have already blown the top off your skull.
In this fucked-up world, the truth was often deadlier