Nick Fury's Concerns

The receptionist's gaze lingered on the stack of bills. At a glance, it was at least ten thousand dollars, possibly more.

Her professional smile visibly widened, and her voice grew warmer.

"We do have a Presidential Suite, sir. It's $3,600 a night. Will you and the two ladies..."

"Thirty-six hundred dollars?!" Felicity blurted out, much louder than she had intended.

The most expensive room she had ever stayed in was a motel room from a childhood trip to Los Angeles with her parents. It had cost forty-nine dollars a night, breakfast included.

Thirty-six hundred dollars. She counted on her fingers. That would cover more than two months at that motel.

She turned to Russell, her eyes asking both Are you crazy? and Where did you get all this money?

There was also a hint of awed admiration she hadn't noticed herself.

The receptionist noticed Felicity's reaction, but her expression didn't change.

She folded her hands on the counter, kept her flawless smile in place, and explained patiently.

"Ma'am, there's a reason the Presidential Suite costs what it does.

It's on the top floor, with 2,600 square feet of space, including a separate bedroom, sitting room, study, kitchen, and bathroom with a view. Its floor-to-ceiling windows offer a 360-degree view of Downtown Manhattan.

At this price, it's actually excellent value."

"But..." Felicity started, but Russell had heard enough.

"The Presidential Suite. Two nights to start." He slapped the stack of bills onto the counter, settling the matter.

The receptionist swiftly counted out $7,200 for two nights, stacked the remaining bills neatly, and slid them back to Russell with the keycard.

"One Presidential Suite for two nights, sir. That's $7,200. Here's your change and keycard."

Russell waved them away. "Put the rest toward the following nights. Round it off, and keep whatever's left as a tip."

He said it as casually as if he'd remarked on the weather, without even lifting an eyelid.

Felicity sucked in a breath. There had to be several thousand dollars left. All of that as a tip?

She instinctively felt the few crumpled bills in her pocket. Apparently, she needed to rethink what "rich" meant.

"We're tired. We want to rest," Russell added with a yawn.

He wasn't putting it on. The fire had kept him up for most of the night, and the morning had brought another hard fight. Now that he could relax, exhaustion washed over him.

"Of course, sir. This way." The receptionist's smile had gone beyond enthusiastic. It was almost reverent.

She quickly asked a colleague to cover the desk, came around the counter herself, and hurried to press the elevator button.

"The Presidential Suite has a private elevator. I'll show you the way."

As the elevator doors closed, a middle-aged man in a bespoke suit sat up on a leather sofa in the lobby's VIP lounge. A half-smoked Havana cigar rested between his fingers. Through the glass wall, he watched the floor numbers climb and gave a contemptuous snort.

"Tch. Some nouveau riche nobody." He put the cigar back in his mouth, drew deeply, and blew out a murky smoke ring. "Thinks a little money makes him special? Let's see how long he can afford to stay."

The servant beside him immediately bowed, cupped both hands, and caught the ash he flicked off, moving with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.

Russell didn't hear him.

If he had, he probably would have turned around and told the man quite seriously that yes, having money was pretty special. Especially in America.

The Presidential Suite's private elevator was as quiet as a sealed capsule rising through the building. There was no noise, only floor numbers silently changing on the panel.

When the doors opened again, the Manhattan skyline greeted them through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Sunlight filled the space beyond the glass, while morning mist softened the distant Statue of Liberty into a hazy golden silhouette.

"It's huge..." Felicity peered out from behind Russell and murmured.

This wasn't a room.

It was an entire floor turned into a home in the sky.

An absurdly wide L-shaped sofa occupied the sitting room, its dark gray upholstery gleaming softly under the spotlights. The open kitchen had a solid black-granite countertop and a chrome faucet. The refrigerator was bigger than the wardrobe in the place they'd rented before.

A Monet hung on the study wall, though whether it was an original or a convincing copy was anyone's guess. Its water lilies seemed to glow faintly in the morning light.

The bedroom was the most outrageous part. Six people could have lain side by side on that bed, and the creases in the sheets looked sharp enough to have been measured with a ruler.

Laura stood before the window, looking out at a city utterly unfamiliar to her.

Her reflection overlapped with the distant skyscrapers, like a collage with all the proportions wrong. She said nothing, but her shoulders were noticeably more relaxed than when she'd entered.

The receptionist stood at the door with her hands folded in front of her and dipped her head. "I'll leave you two... three to settle in. If you need anything, call the front desk. Someone is on duty twenty-four hours a day."

She stepped out, and the door closed silently.

Felicity stood there for a long time, her gaze moving from the crystal chandelier to the Persian rug, from the windows to the enormous bed, and finally to Russell.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, like a fish washed ashore.

"Lord Russell," she said at last, much more quietly than usual, "I don't know where you got all this money, but a Presidential Suite... isn't this too extravagant?"

There was no accusation in her voice, only unease: the bewilderment of a poor kid suddenly dropped into a luxury store.

Russell had already thrown himself onto the sofa. It was much softer than he'd expected; as he sank into it, he felt as though a warm cloud had caught him.

Eyes closed, he spoke into the cushions, his voice muffled. "Relax. Money isn't a problem for us now."

"But—"

"After all that running around, what's wrong with enjoying ourselves?" He opened one eye and looked at Felicity, still standing by the door, unsure whether to take off her shoes.

"Come in. Close the door. You won't break the floor."

Felicity hesitated for two seconds before stepping inside carefully. She sat on a corner of the sofa, occupying only a third of the cushion, her back ramrod straight.

Laura was more straightforward. She walked to the window and sat cross-legged on the rug, her back against the glass. Her eyes still swept the view outside warily, but at least her claws stayed hidden.

Silence held for a while.

Felicity twisted the hem of her clothes between her fingers. At last, she asked the question she'd been holding in the whole way.

"What do we do next? They won't let us go. That officer died, and so did all those soldiers. They'll investigate. They'll come after us. They might search the whole city..."

Her voice dwindled until she was almost talking to herself.

It wasn't that she had never been on the run. But before, she'd only had herself to hide. If they caught her, the worst they could do was kill her.

Now she had Laura beside her. And... Russell.

Russell rolled over on the sofa without opening his eyes. His words came out like sleep-talk. "I think... a good night's sleep would do us more good than anything else."

Felicity froze.

"Everything else," Russell murmured, his voice fading as his breathing grew slow and even, "can wait until we wake up."

The room quickly fell quiet.

The distant clamor of the morning rush hour barely reached them. Twenty-six floors up, it had been reduced to a faint wash of white noise that only made the Presidential Suite seem quieter.

Sunlight poured through the windows, spreading a broad patch of warm gold across the rug.

The three who had walked out of the slum's ruins settled into the luxurious suite, undisturbed by the turmoil outside.

Washington.

A meeting room in the deepest basement of the Triskelion.

Nick Fury stood before a wall-sized screen, arms crossed, watching satellite footage play back frame by frame.

Onscreen, the slum looked as though an invisible force had worked it over again and again. First came fire, then a flood, and finally the earth split apart and closed again, swallowing every trace.

"This mutant." Fury's voice echoed through the empty meeting room. He didn't turn around. "I need to know everything about him."

Behind him, Maria Hill brought up the file on her tablet.

"Name: Russell. Age: eighteen. Formerly experimental subject Number 47 at the Agravall Experimental Base. His genes contain a mixed sequence derived from Magneto, Professor X, and Wolverine.

He escaped the base just over a dozen hours ago. During his escape, he destroyed its central control system and freed every prisoner, resulting in—"

She paused. "Heavy casualties. The base commander, Colonel Connolly, has been confirmed dead."

"Another lab." Fury's voice was calm, but Hill heard what lay beneath it.

"Early yesterday morning, he appeared in a slum in East New York. At three a.m., someone deliberately set fire to the building where he was staying. Russell rescued at least twelve trapped residents and subdued the arsonists.

At around seven a.m., military forces arrived. The two sides exchanged fire. The military deployed approximately 120 troops with heavy weapons and five Mark I Sentinels. The fight was over in nine minutes."

"Casualties?" Nick Fury had already heard from Agent Natasha at the scene, but he wanted to confirm it.

"All military personnel were killed, and all five Sentinels were destroyed," Hill said evenly. "Russell was unharmed. So were the two underage mutants with him."

Fury was silent for a long time.

The satellite footage kept looping. The fissure opened and closed, as if the earth were breathing.

"In nine minutes, this man took out 120 fully armed soldiers and five war machines," he said at last.

"And according to what our agents found, he then took two little girls to a Presidential Suite in Manhattan."

Hill's finger stopped on the tablet. "...Yes, sir."

"He isn't afraid of being found." Fury turned. His one good eye gleamed unnervingly in the dim light.

"He isn't afraid because he knows there's nowhere in this city we can't find. Or he knows that even if we find him, we can't do anything to him."

Hill said nothing.

She knew it wasn't a question that needed answering.

"Send someone to make contact," Fury said with a frown. "Not to arrest him. I need to know what he wants, what he's looking for, and what he's waiting for.

A mutant with Magneto's and Professor X's genes, plus Wolverine's—" He paused, his voice dropping as though he were speaking to himself.

"Someone like that won't stay hidden forever."

On the screen, the satellite image froze on the enormous pit.

The water had seeped away, leaving a perfectly round depression, as though someone had taken a bite out of the earth.

"And," Fury added, his gaze settling on the fissure, "if all he really wants is to protect those two kids, that makes him even more dangerous."

Hill looked up at him.

"People with principles are harder to deal with than people without them." With that, Fury turned and left the meeting room.