Chapter 106: The Rise and Fall
Felix Faeth was a planner. A scientist that studied and graduated from a top university. Whenever lowly scientists like himself were introduced into a new environment, they were used as cattle. Always writing and doing the smallest details to make their superiors look better.
Perhaps he should have suspected earlier.
Bobbi Morse gave a cool smile. Her expression was impossible to read. Not for long.
"Can I just go out and give my personal theory?" Felix asked. All the Chameleon could give was a slow, methodical nod. She needed to think. She needed to buy time. Felix decided to strike the heart of the matter. "You were hired by someone to infiltrate SHIELD and you did so successfully. Isn't that right?"
A small tilt from Felix. A lone breath from Bobbi.
"The real Bobbi Morse died a long time ago, didn't she? I did a lot of digging on everyone when Reed died. Bobbi was doing work for Harry Osborn. Specifically, aiding in the construction of a new factory. It was typical high-level grunt work, nothing suspicious. Up till six months ago, alongside Alistair, Bobbi was working on the expensive new factory. I can already imagine it. It's night. Everything is dark and incomplete. There's openings everywhere. Alistair left a couple hours ago. He is a disciplined man among scientists. But Bobbi? She was a SHIELD agent and a scientist. Pregnant too. She probably thought she was weighing everyone down with her baby, so she worked harder to compensate. That would be her mistake. She was killed, her face ripped to make a new one. The current you."
Bobbi placed a clenched fist on the table. Nick Fury and everyone in the observation room were side-eyeing her. Careful and cautious.
"Oh, but maybe someone came back. Or maybe you thought you could use the corpse for something else. It doesn't matter, that day, Bobbi's body could not be moved, so the Chameleon had to bury her there. Bobbi was pregnant at the time too and the criminal desecrated the body to get the baby. The baby crying, dying, wanting to live and touch its mother but failing to. The Chameleon went to Bobbi's home. Bobbi's husband, Clint Barton, immediately knew she was an imposter. He was a man with sharp eyes and a love for his wife, so he attacked the Chameleon. We all know how this ended: the Chameleon won, the baby died, and then the fake wife choked Clint till he could no longer speak. Once unconscious, she pulled some strings—strings she had set-up from decades of spy work. The Chameleon made Clint take the fall for assaulting his wife and murdering his unborn daughter. And did so while no one knew none the wiser."
"You sure talk with a lot of confidence now, Felix." Bobbi smiled. "You've changed."
His Spider-Sense tingled ever so slightly. She was threatening him.
"SHIELD must have been easy," Nick Fury suddenly said. "Torture. Seduction. We had a couple cold cases on MIA SHIELD agents. Hypothetically, of course."
Hypothetically, because as much Nick Fury wanted to say it, hard proof was in order. This was not a confrontation of fists but of words; of influence and wit. The individual that understood that the most was the Chameleon herself. Everything Felix had said could be circumstantial. Perhaps if Nick Fury was not Deputy Director but the complete Director of SHIELD, he could have overruled protocol and been arrested. He couldn't because he was not quite at that level yet. For his subordinates, for his eventual promotion, he had to stay legal and loyal.
Felix understood that long ago. Nick Fury was no enemy of his. Not even an ally. He just was. SHIELD and men like him would always exist as long as the black parts of the world did.
Knock, knock, knock!
Three knocks echoed through the sterile walls of the interrogation room, cutting through the tense silence like a blade. The door opened and in came an agent. Deputy Director Fury turned toward the agent who had appeared at his side and whispered in his ear. Felix could hear every word of it. What was happening, who it was, and why. The Chameleon could not.
Someone wanted to join the interrogation.
Fury's one good eye narrowed in suspicion, and after a moment, he gave a small nod. "Send them in."
The agent nodded and disappeared. Felix stayed still in his chair, his eyes locked on the Chameleon, watching for even the slightest crack in their façade.
A minute later, the door to the interrogation room opened again. The footsteps were measured, deliberate. Felix's smirk widened slightly as the figure stepped into the room: Maria Hill.
The Chameleon's eyes flicked to her, the barest flicker of surprise crossing their face before it vanished behind their practiced neutrality. But Felix caught it. He always caught it.
Maria Hill, private detective and ex-SHIELD operative, was dressed in sharp attire—a tailored blazer, dark jeans, and a look of quiet authority. But it wasn't just Maria who entered. She was guiding someone else.
"Hey, Kate."
The young archer's face was pale, her eyes hollow with exhaustion and something deeper—grief. She moved with the stiffness of someone who had been through hell and was still carrying the weight of it on her shoulders. Kate smiled weakly at Felix. "Hi."
The Chameleon's fingers tightened imperceptibly.
"No longer a SHIELD agent and still doing work?" Fury half-joked. It was hard to tell with him.
"Deputy Director," Maria greeted Fury. "Sorry for the intrusion, but I thought you might want to hear this firsthand."
"I will then."
Maria guided Kate to a chair beside Felix. She sat down slowly, her hands trembling slightly as she rested them on the table. The silence stretched for a beat too long, thick with anticipation.
"Kate," Fury said, uncaring for her condition. "Are you okay to talk?"
Kate hesitated, her eyes fixed on the surface of the table as if searching for answers in the gloss. "I'm... I'm okay," Kate said, though the tremor in her voice betrayed her.
Maria pulled out a small folder and placed it on the table. "Before we begin, I had Kate checked by medical professionals. She was drugged. Repeatedly. Needles, anesthesia, sedatives... you name it. She was held against her will."
The Chameleon's jaw tightened ever so slightly. A small movement, barely noticeable.
"Kate was kidnapped," Maria continued, "and do you know where I found her?" She leaned forward slightly, letting the tension build. "In the basement of Bobbi Morse's house."
The room shifted. The weight of the accusation hung in the air like a dense fog.
The Chameleon's eyes sharpened. Felix already knew. He had planned for every possible thought and reaction she could have.
Fury's gaze hardened. "Is that true?" he asked, turning to Kate.
Kate took a shaky breath, finally lifting her eyes to meet his. There was pain in her gaze, layered with sorrow and confusion. "I... I don't remember everything," she said, her voice trembling. "I was in a basement. It was dark. For so long, all I could hear was a woman's voice." Her voice cracked slightly, and she clenched her hands into fists to steady herself. "I thought... I thought it was my mother coming to get me. I don't know why. I thought maybe my criminal mother had some good in her."
Felix frowned slightly. The raw emotion in Kate's voice was hard to ignore.
"But no. She's dead. Someone killed her."
Bobbi Morse could not speak, but Felix could feel the tension rolling off them in waves.
"Kate was being set up," Maria went on to say. "I have footage too of Kate being in the basement. Everything points to someone trying to destroy her credibility."
"Credibility? For what?" Fury asked. Oh no, he knew. How could he not? But for the agents, for the law, he had to ask.
"Clint Barton was her mentor," Maria replied. "Her hero who taught her how to shoot a bow. How to live a good life. Her hero was accused of being a wife beater and a murderer and she did not believe it. Kate Bishop, the daughter of the wealthy, influential Eleanor Bishop, making a ruckus would be an issue. And so, a plan went into motion to make sure she could never investigate the Clint Barton case again."
Felix glanced at the Chameleon. He could see the calculation behind their eyes. The wheels turning. The anger simmering beneath the surface.
Because all of it was true—yet the method to getting there was not. The kidnapping had nothing to do with the Chameleon. Indeed, the Chameleon never guessed Kate would go to the Sanctum Sanctorum and get kidnapped. She assumed it would be a simple arrest once the camera footage was found.
That did not happen because Kate was gone.
The kidnapping had somehow become a blessing in disguise.
It was a plan meticulously executed, but the Chameleon hadn't accounted for luck—bad luck. And that was where Felix had stepped in. To widen the hole of bad luck.
Before Felix and Yelena turned themselves in, Felix had given Maria Hill very specific instructions:
"Alter Bobbi Morse's house. Create evidence that points to someone being held captive there. Make it look like the perfect hiding spot."
"Are you sure? Kate just woke up," Maria had said on the phone.
"Send her to the hospital. You're a former SHIELD agent, right? Pretend to be a real one. Get reports from the doctors that confirm she was kidnapped. When you're at Bobbi's house, text me pictures. I'll tell you exactly how to rearrange it."
"...you're playing a dangerous game, Felix."
"I know. I'm sorry, but we have to."
"Don't be. I agree with you. It's just…I never wanted you to get this deep in my investigation. I should be apologizing."
"That makes two of us."
"I'll get back to you then. When I drop Kate off, I will start the lie."
A carefully constructed lie to trap a master liar.
'To catch a liar,' Felix thought, his gaze locking onto the Chameleon, 'you must become one.'
If Felix himself had said all this, it would have garnered suspicion. But Maria Hill, a former SHIELD agent that left with good-will? Everyone believed it.
"Well, well, well. Look what we have here." Nick Fury took the medical report from the table and whistled as he skimmed through it. "Photo evidence of needle marks. Dilated pupils, symptoms of drugs. Oh, and wow. The doctors she was likely incapable of athletic feats in her current and likely past conditions. To be able to drug your own mother, take her to someone else's house, kill a man in a wheelchair, and then stab your mother to finally put her out of her misery. Sounds like a stretch to me, Mrs. Bobbi Morse—or should I call you...the Chameleon?"
The Deputy Director slammed the report and his fist onto the table. "How does it feel, hm? To be exposed by a couple of civilians? A private detective and a scientist? Just a man and a woman hell bent on revenge."
"...what?" The Chameleon looked up at Maria. Nick Fury chuckled. Ah, so he knew. Of course he did.
"You don't even know who I am, do you?" Maria asked.
Bobbi tilted her head. "Should I?"
"There was an old man among the guards that watched over the elevator cameras in Oscorp Tower. It was an important job to make sure the right people came in and out and he had been trusted to do it for a long, long time, since the building's construction. And after the attack on Oscorp Tower, he was solely blamed for it. Only the old man, Ed Vernon. Not the five young security guards with him. The traitor must have personally killed him."
Recognition flashed through Bobbi's fake blue eyes.
"Now you remember him, hm? Do you remember where he died?" Maria stopped and waited. Bobbi did not answer. "The bathroom. You killed him in the bathroom. Gassed him in the toilet. Because of that embarrassing death, pointing fingers at him was easy. 'A dumb old man leaving his post. How lazy! If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have been attacked.' I bet you thought the same too. Thinking you could use him like that. Thinking you could shift all the attention as you wanted it to. You never took into account the people that you affected. The small, normal people who were just collateral damage to you—like Felix. He and I have been working since day one to catch you."
All of a sudden, to the agents and Nick Fury, it all made sense. Maria Hill planned all this. Maria Hill, the former SHIELD agent, worked with a great Oscorp scientist to catch the greatest criminal of the previous generation. That was why he knew so much about SHIELD.
"And now, you're here," Felix said. "So? What are you going to do next, Chameleon?"
Bobbi pursed her lips, then smiled. His Spider-Sense spiked. Felix cocked his head. Bobbi Morse, a pretty blonde with blue eyes, a black long-sleeved shirt, and black slacks. A woman that did outwardly not appear suspicious, who was stripped of all weapons and carried only a suitcase.
From the cuffs of her sleeve, she popped out a black button. It was the only black button.
"You didn't think I got this far without being prepared?"
Bobbi Morse clicked it.
Silence.
She blinked and clicked it again.
Felix chuckled. "What are you doing? You're beat. You should relax."
"This…is supposed to work."
"What?" Felix chuckled some more. "You were trying to kill us with this? Maybe…" He made smiling eye contact. "Blow us up?"
The Chameleon slowed to a stop and the button in her hand was seized by Nick Fury. "What do we have here…fingerprint scanner. Once scanned, it sends out a signal. Huh. This bitch was really trying to blow us up?" The Deputy Director gestured and handed the button over to an agent that rushed in. "Agent, find out where this signal is going. If there are bombs, I want them taken as evidence. We gotta convict this bitch."
"Trying to blow up another institution. Second time isn't the charm, huh?" Felix remarked, perhaps playing a bit too hard. But he couldn't help it—he knew this would happen and he knew to make a contingency against it. It was nice to be rewarded for being right, when in the previous months, he hadn't been able to catch a whiff of this ghost.
"Take the suitcase too," said Maria Hill. Immediately, before the Chameleon could react, the agent took it from her. There was nothing she could do about it either. If she tried fighting, she would be going up against Wolverine and Shadowcat, two Adamantium clawed killers, directly outside the door. Taking Felix has a hostage wouldn't work, not against Shadowcat.
The Chameleon didn't know how to react. All her plans were falling apart. Her miraculous escape. Her suitcase with the last remaining radioactive spider.
All of it—gone.
'A shape-shifter that can go anywhere they desire. A sixty-year career. I bet you prepared for this. Went in as an officer or a janitor and rigged this place with explosives at its base. A back-up so you could escape anytime, whether you were in jail or trapped like this. Or maybe get rid of evidence like you did at the factory. Extreme activities like that can't be luck—it's planned. Luckily, thieves think alike and I just so happen to have my own.'
Felicia Hardy was, at the end of the day, an innocent party that worked under Alistair Smythe. No, innocent was the incorrect term, she was anything but innocent. She was merely a tool he used to enact his plans. He needed information on the spiders to be deleted so he sent Felicia to fetch it. He needed Little Thief, so he had her fetch that too. So with that principal, Felix had her infiltrate this place before all this took place and deactivate all the bombs. Felicia was more than happy to let bygones be bygones when offered a million dollars to do it.
From prison, great influence could be exerted. That was what Felix learned from Jefferson Davis.
The Chameleon could only stare at the table, shoulders slowly sagging, her will weakening. This was not a fight of fists but of wit and will.
Felix had won. As the victor, he thought himself entitled to answers.
"Tell me," Felix said, "who hired you. You infiltrated SHIELD and Oscorp in one go. That's a huge risk. Why do it?"
"More specifically," Maria said, "who ordered you to do it?"
Spies did not work on their own. They took orders. They camouflaged and lived amongst enemies.
"You know, Felix, I always thought you were the smartest of us all," Bobbi suddenly said. "It's why I always had you do my work. You were a genius, through and through. I actually thought about stealing your identity after this."
"So in your mind, we weren't even friends?"
His heart squeezed. That hurt. It honestly did. Bobbi was the leader of Team Rebirth. Half a year of working and laughing and talking. She didn't care for him even a little? After over half a year of friendship, she would kill him just like that? Bobbi stared at him.
"You're too sentimental. I suppose most people are, anyway, especially that Yelena. Stooping so low as to work with a detective and a scientist…that's the definition of pathetic."
Whatever positive feelings he had left him. He remembered the death. He remembered what she had done. No sympathy should be given to a monster like her.
"Fine. I'll tell you. I've never been caught before so this is a first."
"And your last," Fury said.
Bobbi smiled, closing her eyes, then opening them. "The SHIELD Correctional Facility isn't as secure as you think."
"Excuse me?" Fury asked. Maria raised a hand. Let her talk, she mouthed.
"I was given an array of orders, including this one." The Chameleon raised a finger and tapped at the table. "I doubt any of you noticed but inside that suitcase...is the radioactive spider that Alistair Smythe created. The last of its kind that survived during the battle between Crossbones and SHIELD. I was assured the suitcase was personally handcrafted to prevent radiation from leaking."
Fury narrowed his eyes and pressed a finger to his earbud. He was ordering them to check. Felix didn't need to. He had already deduced that was the whole point of making this such a mystery. To drive away SHIELD's resources on the suspects. It was a phenomenal multi-step plan that the Chameleon had planned for nearly half a year.
A plan that Felix figured out.
"That's quite the statement," Fury said. He received confirmation that the spider was indeed there. "Care to elaborate on who your employer was? I'm almost as curious as these two."
Maria and Felix, their eyes were blazing with curiosity. They were waiting.
Bobbi looked up, smiled, and fake-zipped her lips with her fingers. She wasn't going to say any more. She didn't need to. With that last piece of information, Felix knew who it was that hired her.
'Eleanor's death and the reason for it makes sense. Bobbi, the Chameleon, planned it months into advance so that Kate Bishop would stop hunting her and prying into the Clint Barton case. However, why Alistair? Why him of all people? They have nothing to do with each other, unless the Chameleon was hoping to knock two birds with one stone. Two goals, one that was personal and one that was for money; for being the spy.'
That connective thread, the death of Alistair Smythe, was the original point that led Felix here. To unravelling everything, including the last piece of the puzzle.
"That suitcase was custom-built to hold the spider," Felix stated. "Similar to what Crossbones was given, I bet."
The blonde Chameleon only kept smiling. Felix would bet his life that there was a cylindrical glass inside a suitcase. The same model as the one Crossbones carried. And if it was personally handcrafted to contain them...
'Cindy Moon. The original creator of the spiders was responsible for all this.'
Between Kingpin, Matthew Murdock, and Cindy Moon, only the creator of the spiders fit the profile. She had the science and the resources. The details of her motive were a bit blurry but with a bit more prodding and investigation, Felix was going to figure it out.
Nick Fury wouldn't be far behind too. After today, he would come to the same conclusion as Felix and found out it was Cindy Moon. Whether he would find evidence of her guilt was another matter.
"Hm, I suppose I can kiss and tell one more thing," Bobbi said. "I didn't know Reed was going to die."
Felix blinked. "What?"
"Your father, that I planned. He was too much of an old-school gentleman. Too smart," Bobbi said while not bothering to even glance at Maria. The private detective's scowl had never been so deep. "But Reed? Reed was different. Crossbones and I didn't know we were going to kill him. If I had, I would have gone about it a different way. You've seen what I can do. If it was up to me..."
'You would have made his death impossible to solve.'
"It was an order given to us at the high point of the attack." Bobbi pointed a finger at a hypothetical breast pocket. "See, Crossbones and I had a special radio so that we could talk to our employer. A secret shared channel to communicate and advise one another. The order to kill Reed was spontaneous. Our employer thought about it, considered maybe not doing it, toyed about its execution and method, then told us to find him and just do it. Pull the trigger. Whoever found him would get a bonus. And, well, Crossbones got it."
That day, Cindy Moon had three goals: steal the spiders, steal Project Symbiosis, and kill Reed Richards. She succeeded in only one and only did so on a fucking whim.
Pull the trigger.
Shoot his brains out.
Do it without thinking of the consequences.
"Are you kidding me?" Felix's jaw clenched, anger calm and controlled. "Who was it? Why? Where?"
He didn't want to be wrong. He wanted to be absolutely certain it was Cindy. He wanted to hear it straight from the Chameleon's lips. As he expected, the Chameleon fake-zipped her lips again. She wouldn't say a word.
Fury gave a signal. "Arrest her."
Agent Wolverine and Shadowcat suddenly burst from the door and cuffed her. Flanking her sides, the Adamantium pair lifted her up. Felix's rage did not cool. He inhaled and exhaled, muscling flexing and ready to smash her skull. If only he wasn't Felix. If only doing so would end his life as Felix Faeth permanently.
He clenched his fist.
'Fuck. I won but...this still annoys me.'
There was no other way, however. Either Felix or Kate would get framed for the crime of Eleanor and Alistair or it was this. The justice system doing the bare-minimum.
The door opened for the fake Bobbi Morse to be guided out. Suddenly, the Chameleon looked over her shoulder and laughed. The laughter earned a raised brow from the agents who promptly stopped at the door.
"Like any of this matters." The Chameleon laughed some more, hair falling over in strands. "Your fates were sealed quite a while ago."
Fury scoffed. "Excuse me?"
"Allow me to make a prophecy," the Chameleon said. "Half of you here will be dead by next week. I guarantee it."
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