Fury's Trump Card, Captain Marvel's Pager

Deep in the Alps, Top Secret nuclear bunker.

The air froze completely in that second.

Nick Fury held the red, secure landline receiver, his rough thumb hovering less than half a centimeter above the send button on the old-fashioned pager.

The light laughter coming through the receiver, seemingly nonchalant, was like a poisoned dagger, precisely piercing through Fury's proud layers of psychological Defense Line.

"Sir, it's so late, why are you still fiddling with that old pager?"

Lynn's voice was steady; you could even hear the crisp sound of ice cubes hitting a glass on his end. This kind of everyday white noise, however, sounded more chilling to Fury than the gunfire of Hydra.

Fury's remaining eye was fixed intently on the pager on the table.

He was an old-school secret agent, a king of espionage who had crawled out of piles of corpses. He would never give up his ultimate trump card, which he had kept hidden for more than a decade, just because of a single word from the enemy.

"Bluff."

Fury gritted his teeth, letting out a hoarse, cold snort. Without the slightest hesitation, his hovering thumb pressed down hard on the start button on the side of the pager with resolute force.

Click.

The crisp, satisfying click of a mechanical button being pressed all the way down echoed from inside the bunker.

Fury's tense shoulders relaxed slightly. As soon as the signal was sent, the woman who was sweeping through star Fleet across the universe would receive Earth's distress coordinates. Carol Vers possessed the absolute power to destroy a single planet and was absolutely rational, unaffected by the group of crazy women around Lynn.

This is his only hope of turning things around.

However, the hope in Fury's eyes instantly froze into bone-chilling ice in the next second.

The pager's retro LCD screen did light up, but it didn't display the red and blue eight-pointed Starbrand representing Captain Marvel.

A strange, eerie blue scramble, like a living venomous snake, instantly devoured the entire screen. This code didn't belong to any known computer language on Earth; it flickered and twisted wildly in a way that defied the laws of physics.

"Sizzle--"

The pager's internal Motherboard emitted a piercing buzzing sound of an electrical short circuit. Immediately afterward, a pungent, acrid smell of burning wafted out from the gaps in the device and into Fury's nostrils.

The screen went completely black.

Along with Fury's last hope, it all turned into a pile of worthless scrap metal.

"Stop pressing it, sir. No matter how hard you press, that thing can't even be used to order takeout right now."

Lynn's voice came through the receiver again, languid and condescending, "The Kree's hyperspace communication technology is indeed impressive, but in the face of Dimension quantum folding, its Underlying Logic is like a toy made of clay."

Fury's hand trembled violently.

He slammed the pager onto the table, denting the heavy metal casing. He gripped the receiver tightly, his knuckles turning deathly pale from the force.

"What on earth did you do?!" Fury's voice completely lost its usual composure, carrying a crack he himself didn't even realize. "You not only hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D..'s internal network, you also tampered with the underlying database of ' Blind Spot Program '!"

"To correct you, it wasn't hacked."

In the Main Control Room of the Eden underground base on the Outskirts of New York, Lynn leaned back in a large executive chair, his legs crossed and propped up on the console, a glass of Bourbon Whiskey with ice in his hand.

He watched as the dots representing the Remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D.. on the Holographic Screens went out one by one, a cold smile curving his lips, "I walked in openly and honestly, and then took over everything. The firewall left by that idiot Pierce was as flimsy as paper to me."

"You think you've won?" Fury gasped on the other end of the phone, trying to regain some control. "Lynn, you have no idea what you've messed with. You blocked that frequency, which is equivalent to cutting off Earth's most powerful external support in the universe! If an alien threat descends, who will stop it? Rely on those crazy women around you who could go berserk and destroy half of New York at any moment?!"

"Foreign aid?"

Lynn chuckled softly, as if he had heard the funniest joke.

He took a sip of whiskey, the cold liquid sliding down his throat, keeping his mind perfectly clear.

"Carol Vers. Left Earth in 1995 to become her high-ranking sheriff in space." Lynn uttered each word slowly and deliberately, each syllable like a heavy hammer blow to Fury's chest.

Fury's breathing suddenly stopped.

The single eye widened to its limit in an instant, and the pupil contracted violently.

How could he have known?!

Captain Marvel's name, and the Kree invasion of 1995, don't exist in any electronic database! All related paper records were personally incinerated by Fury. There are definitely no more than three people on the entire planet who know that name!

"Isn't it a bit naive to pin your hopes of saving the world on a woman who hasn't been home for over twenty years?"

Lynn's tone suddenly turned cold, carrying a suffocating sense of pressure across the ocean. "Your so-called trump card is as transparent as a blank sheet of paper in my eyes. You think you're playing chess, but you haven't even seen where the chessboard is."

"You... what kind of monster are you..." Fury slumped into his chair. At this moment, the king of agents who had controlled the dark side of Earth for decades finally experienced the profound powerlessness in the face of the unknown Dimension.

He was not facing a traitorous low-level agent, but an omniscient and omnipotent Deity who controlled all intelligence nodes.

"I'm just an ordinary person who wants to work quietly and survive." Lynn twirled the glass in his hand, ice cubes clinking against the side. "Unfortunately, Hydra too greedy, and you are too suspicious."

"So what do you want now?" Fury forced himself to calm down, his mind racing. "Pierce is dead, Project Insight is ruined. You've taken over Hydra's assets, you've even turned Tony Stark and Natasha into your knives. What else do you want? To kill me?"

"Kill you? No, that's too boring."

Lynn's fingers tapped lightly twice on the keyboard.

The Holographic Projection in the Eden Main Control Room instantly magnified and locked onto a specific coordinate in the Alps.

"The living are always more valuable than the dead. Especially an old fox like you, whose mind is full of Top Secret Safe House coordinates and backup resources." Lynn's voice was domineering and unquestionable.

"You won't get anything from me," Fury gritted his teeth. "Even if you disable your pager, I'm still the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I have countless moles you can't find. If I give the order, agents worldwide will hunt you down to the death!"

"Yeah?"

Lynn chuckled softly.

He put down his glass, leaned forward slightly, and stared at the red dot on the screen that represented Fury's nuclear bunker.

"Sir, your biggest flaw is that you always think you're hiding it very well."

Lynn cleared his throat and slowly read out a string of numbers in an extremely flat tone.

"46°12′N, 7°58′E. 150 meters underground in the Alps. Three layers of radiation-shielding lead plates, independent internal circulation oxygen supply system."

At that moment, every hair on Fury's body stood on end.

Those are the absolute coordinates and architectural details of his current bunker!

"Oh, by the way," Lynn's sarcasm continued, "The safe on your right that's used to store the pager has the combination 39-72-14-68-05-99. Do you need me to tell you how many compressed biscuits you ate last night?"

"Bang!"

Fury abruptly stood up, knocking the chair he was sitting on to the ground with a thud. He stared intently at the thick metal walls around him, as if Lynn's mocking eyes were hidden behind those cold steel plates.

He went completely naked.

He had no secrets from this man.

"Lynn..." Fury's voice finally trembled slightly, a tremor he could no longer conceal.

"Listen up, Nick Fury." Lynn's languid demeanor vanished, his tone turning as cold as polar ice. "Ten minutes. I'm only giving you ten minutes."

"Hand over supreme command of S.H.I.E.L.D.., and upload all the coordinates of those so-called 'blind spots,' 'spies,' and 'backup bases' in your head to the server I specify."

"Otherwise, I wouldn't mind letting Wanda go to the Alps to clear her head. You know she's been in a bad mood lately; dismantling a nuclear bunker with her bare hands wouldn't even be a warm-up for her."

There was a deathly silence on the other end of the phone.

Fury gripped the receiver, cold sweat trickling down his forehead and landing on the broken pager on the table.

Just as Fury's brain was racing, trying to find even the slightest possibility of breaking the deadlock, the computer screen on the desk in the bunker suddenly lit up without warning.

The interface that was displaying S.H.I.E.L.D..'s internal network was instantly cut off.

A red progress bar popped up in the center of the screen, with a line of large text prominently displayed:

[The Blind Spot Program has been initiated. Taking over the Director's private backup network...]

Fury stared wide-eyed in disbelief. He yanked the power cord off the computer, but the screen still glowed a blinding red light!

"I forgot to tell you," Lynn's voice came from the computer speakers, carrying a deadly intent, "I not only disabled your pager, but I also tracked down your signal frequency and locked onto the final broadcast node you used to contact the remaining agents around the world."

"Now, you don't even have the right to give orders."