Inside Man

"Of course he did it on purpose, Tony." Natasha's voice was cool. "It's called narrative control. If he'd acted from the start, it would've just been 'Homelander and Iron Man join forces to foil a conspiracy.' But now..."

She pointed at the screen.

"...now the story is this: Iron Man was utterly defeated, the Avengers were absent. And Homelander descended from the sky when every other hero had failed, saving the president and saving the country all by himself."

"Fuck..." Tony slammed a fist onto the bar. "He's just some attention-whoring asshole!"

"Calm down, Tony." Steve's voice was low and steady as he rose to his feet and walked over to Tony.

"No matter what, he saved your life."

Steve looked at the figure on the screen standing beside the president, basking in camera flashes, his expression complicated.

Tony Stark suddenly fell silent.

He stared at the screen, and the fury in his eyes gradually cooled.

"...JARVIS."

"At your service, sir."

"Buy me a ticket."

"What ticket?" Steve turned back in confusion.

"Homelander: Origins." A resentful smile appeared on Tony's face. "The premiere. I fucking... want to see just how incredible this bastard's 'origin' really is."

Helicarrier, command center.

Nick Fury stood before the enormous observation window with his hands behind his back, looking down at the land below.

He had stood there without moving for an hour.

Maria Hill walked in, her footsteps exceptionally clear across the empty bridge.

"Sir."

"Report." Fury did not turn around.

"Starr Group's market value surged by forty-five percent overnight." Hill's voice was devoid of emotion, merely stating the facts.

"Capitol Hill is drafting a bill to reallocate part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s... budget for domestic superhuman threats to Vought International as payment for outsourced government services."

"Ha." Fury let out a contemptuous snort. "Outsourcing? That's what they call it... outsourcing?"

"Sir, this makes no sense." Hill suppressed her anger. "We're a global agency authorized by the Security Council! How could President Ellis dare..."

"Why wouldn't he?" Fury finally turned around, his single eye glinting coldly in the shadows.

"Hill, tell me. When Air Force One was hijacked last night, what was our intelligence department doing?"

"I... we were analyzing the Mandarin's movements..."

Fury cut her off, his voice icy. "You were chasing some fucking third-rate actor living in Pakistan!"

He suddenly drove a fist into the glass.

"The president's plane was hijacked, Hill! Air Force One! It carried the nuclear launch codes! And we didn't have so much as a goddamn shadow in Florida!"

He turned around, the fury in his one eye nearly bursting forth.

"We spent hundreds of billions building this flying aircraft carrier. We have Project Insight. We have the Avengers. And what happened? The President of the United States needed some self-employed guy in a stars-and-stripes cape to save him?"

"Sir, there really was a problem with our intelligence flow..."

"A problem?" Fury sneered. "No, Hill, this isn't a problem. This isn't delayed intelligence, and it isn't poor communication."

He walked to the observation window and watched the clouds rolling below.

"This is... betrayal."

Hill's heart tightened. "Sir? You mean the vice president..."

"I'm not talking about that idiot who's about to be hauled before a court-martial." Fury's voice was terrifyingly low. "I'm talking about... my house."

"Sir?"

"There are rats in my house, Hill. Big rats, fat rats, rats that are fucking good at hiding."

Countless thoughts flashed through Fury's mind.

Why had the operation to track the "Mandarin" gone so "smoothly"?

Why had Killian's actions failed to trigger even a single red alert in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems?

Why... whenever he tried to mobilize the rapid response teams, had the system always "delayed"?

"We've been played." Fury said, "Someone on the inside has been guiding our attention, making monkeys out of us."

"You suspect there's... a mole within our ranks?"

"Suspect? No, I'm certain now." Fury turned around. "Ever since the Battle of New York, everything has been too coincidental. Stark was attacked, and we were one step too late. The president was kidnapped, and we were fucking blind."

"And Homelander..." Fury narrowed his lone eye. "How did he know? Starr Group's private intelligence network? Give me a break. He wasn't faster than us... he never took our route in the first place."

Fury took a deep breath.

"That blond bastard is now the president's savior. He got federal law enforcement authorization. He turned superheroes into a goddamn business, and now he wants to legalize it."

"He... he went around us." Hill finally understood the severity of the situation.

"He didn't go around us. He stepped on our faces and jumped over us." Fury's voice was filled with frustration. "And we can't even fucking trip him, because our own legs... were broken from the inside."

"Hill, activate the Ghost Protocol. From now on, other than you, I trust no one."

"Sir... you mean..."

"Yes." Fury's single eye flashed coldly. "I want to know exactly how many people on this ship are silently chanting 'Hail Hydra' in their hearts while saluting me."

"...Hail Hydra."

Alexander Pierce switched off the recording on the tiny bug on his desk, an indifferent smile on his face.

"Nick... Nick... you've always been so sharp." He murmured to himself. "Unfortunately, it's too late."

The office door slid open soundlessly.

Brock Rumlow, captain of the Strike Team, walked in with a grim expression. Behind him followed a trembling Jasper Sitwell.

"Sir." Rumlow was concise as ever.

"Brock, Jasper, relax." Pierce pointed at the sofa across from him. "Coffee? Or... shall we talk about our little 'blond sweetheart'?"

Sitwell nervously wiped away sweat. "Sir... Fury... he seems to have started suspecting something. He activated the highest level of internal review."

"Let him investigate." Pierce smiled dismissively and poured himself a glass of Scotch. "Nick is chasing ghosts. He thinks he's catching rats. But what he doesn't know is that he himself... is inside the rat cage."

He looked at Rumlow. "What concerns me more is that uninvited guest."

Rumlow's expression instantly turned savage. "Homelander. Fuck, I saw the Florida footage... that wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter. Those two Heat Vision beams of his... even our Winter Soldier wouldn't be able to take them."