Fury's judgment was correct. This was indeed where the Skrulls imprisoned captives and extracted their memories. It looked like a gloomy warehouse, filled with glowing fish tanks.
Besides Coulson, quite a few others were soaking in tall transparent cylinders, wearing breathing masks and blowing bubbles like goldfish.
Because his hair was so sparse, Fury spotted Coulson at a glance among the varying densities of aquatic plants and hurried over.
But when he reached the control panel beside the tank, he saw Coulson's head covered in densely packed electronic pads, then looked at the panel without a single written label. For a moment, Fury had no idea which button to press.
"May, which button?"
Fury ruled out the smaller buttons. By convention, the larger ones should be either release or deactivate. Now he just had to choose one of the two.
May naturally saw the problem as well. Wasn't this like defusing a bomb, where you had to pick either the red wire or the green wire?
Pick right, and Coulson was saved. Pick wrong, and goodbye to the good guy. Simple as that.
"Sir, what's your lucky color?" she asked, licking her lips uncertainly.
Fury shot her a glance. "Black."
Cavalry looked down. Well, there were no black buttons on the console, and aside from Fury himself, there was nothing black in the entire room. The Skrulls liked dark purple and deep green; even under the dim lighting, those colors were still distinguishable from black.
There was no way to choose now, and she could not shove the responsibility back onto him. Melinda gritted her teeth. "I choose red, sir. For us Chinese, red is a festive color."
"I thought so too." As he spoke, Fury's black hand passed over the red button and pressed the green one beside it.