章節 107: Aftermath
"So you met up with Maria Hill and ended up working with her to uncover a conspiracy regarding a spy in Oscorp. You assumed there was a spy because of how smooth the attack went. You knew the security, the people, and figured something was off. Am I getting that right?"
The Chameleon was arrested. That left Felix to answer lingering questions. Kate and Maria were also sent away for their own questioning. Everything that had unraveled an hour ago had been reported properly, down to the last word.
Nick Fury, however, decided to personally question Felix.
Did he feel something was off or was it simply his desire as leader? Who knows. Felix answered with a nod.
"You're an interesting man, Felix Faeth." The Deputy Director signalled the agent guarding the door. "Get us some water."
Ten seconds later, water bottles were handed out. Felix calmly drank.
"So you did purposely slip away," Fury said. "Was the EMP your doing?"
"Oh, no. That was Maria."
This was something Maria decided to take the fall for. Felix told her about Black Cat's earrings and their function. He didn't have to lie about anything, she said she understood and that she would take the fall for it.
"We were in a bit of a hurry after I learned about Alistair's will."
"You didn't know about it?"
"I didn't. Me and Alistair were…kinda close but I didn't think we were that close."
"You didn't expect the will, hm." From his left pocket, Fury brought out a lollipop. He asked if he wanted one. Felix declined and watched the man unwrap the candy. "I got a pretty good picture of Alistair from all the testimony we received. He's an impossible man to work with. High expectations, blunt, father was super rich, and too intelligent for his peers to keep up with. In all probability, you were probably his one and only friend."
Felix did not know how to react to that. Somehow, it sounded true yet wasn't.
"So when it came to planning this whole thing, would you say Maria Hill did most of it?"
"I'd like to think I did some stuff. Staring down someone like you isn't easy."
"I hope not." Fury plopped the lollipop into his mouth and casually spoke. "What about that party at the penthouse?"
"Just partying like normal. At the time, I wanted to clear my head. First Reed, the explosion, then Eleanor and Alistair. I…was in shock."
Fury's expression remained unreadable. "We did some research. That penthouse is owned by the Kingpin."
"Kingpin? The fat man?" The great risk of going to Aaron Davis' place was always in Felix's mind. Aaron was gifted that penthouse, he didn't actually own it. SHIELD would only need a couple hours to dig up that information and throw further suspicion on him. "I didn't know."
"I hope so. Otherwise, you're going to have dozens of suspicious eyes from this side of the table." Nick Fury stared him down. Felix tried to seem guilty. "Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to pursue this coincidence, I can't. My focus is going to be on gathering evidence for the Chameleon and everything they've done in the past sixty years. I'm too busy for a small fry like you."
"Oh. Thank you, sir—"
"That being said," Fury cut off, "you're not completely off the hook. I'll have my agents check up on you from time to time. We won't be doing twenty-four-seven surveillance like before."
"Twenty-four-seven? Wait, what?" Felix pretended to be shocked. "You were spying on me twenty-four-seven and not just those few times?"
"Not all the time all the time. Most of the time." A total lie, he was spying on him all the time. "We had to, this case had too many holes. You saw the Chameleon."
"Right, that shape-shifter…" She could infiltrate and cause pure chaos with the proper tools and information. Felix had experienced it for himself. With the Chameleon, risks had to be taken.
"Plus, after that threat at the very end, I prefer to try and prove her wrong," the Deputy Director said.
"Allow me to make a prophecy," the Chameleon said. "Half of you here will be DEAD by next week. I guarantee it."
"She guaranteed it," Felix muttered. "Are you sure we didn't miss anything?"
"Just a couple minutes ago, my people went to her place to check for bombs or signals. Nothing so far."
Felix sighed and knitted his brows, playing the part of a concerned civilian like an Oscar actor.
"Don't concern yourself with what she said. SHIELD will handle. Civilians should just go back to their ordinary lives and eat nachos."
Felix chuckled. "I'll try."
Fury was quiet for a second. "I've been to ask…her shape-shifting abilities. How did you learn of it?"
"Huh?" Felix blinked, genuinely caught off guard by the question. But then he realized what he was insinuating.
Well, fuck. He'd have to play along.
"It's, well, classified Oscorp intel," Felix said, "but, erm…let's just say mutations in humans can be natural or inserted into people."
"Oh? Elaborate."
"We at Oscorp recently discovered that...actually, technically, it was Gwen Stacy and her existence that really kick started it all; the concept known as human mutations and human superpowers. But as we did real research on it, we learned even Gwen had limits. Same with Captain America, who I suppose was the first real superpowered human but who we had little information on." Naturally, the original Project Rebirth was classified under the government. "Anyway, I proposed that while the Chameleon could change themselves, it was only temporary. Eight or ten hours, followed by a cooldown. I believe strenuous activities would also lower the form. Otherwise, I believe the attack on Oscorp would have gone much more differently."
That was the crux of it, honestly. The attack should have been different if the Chameleon could transform willy-nilly. Felix deduced that the Chameleon required a face to shape-shift. They had to cut it out and then, well, consume it somehow. How that worked exactly, Felix did not know. But that had to be the case judging from what he recalled of Bobbi Morse's corpse. She took her face and he wasn't speaking figuratively.
Fury nodded along. "Ah, I see."
'Look at him acting. He has two mutants on his squad. He's trying to make me slip up. Leak information.'
"You're talking about Luke Cage, aren't you?" Fury said, aiming for the heart of the matter. "Don't worry, the NYPD is working with Oscorp on this matter—and as SHIELD, we're also privy to that information. Out of curiosity, how far along are you?"
God, he was really trying to get some information, wasn't he? Fine.
"We…found something. An X-gene of sorts; not one strand of DNA but millions strung together. It's a combination so complex that we probably won't be able to figure it out for generations. But when it comes to understanding it, we have some answers. This X-gene is the origin of all the changes in Luke's body. His cells are pretty much compatible with everything. If he donated enough of his blood, he could cure another person's cancer. It's that pure and dense and volatile."
Fury leaned forward, lollipop moving in his mouth. This was what he wanted to know.
"If he had been bitten by the same spider as Gwen Stacy," Felix continued, "he probably would have been much stronger because of how pure and strong his blood is. Oh, but Gwen Stacy herself isn't a mutant. See, we call her a 'mutate' or mutated human. Outside factors shaped her, not an X-gene. An X-gene is something you're born with. Something you unlock."
"Huh. What about this new Spider-Man then? Is he a mutant?"
"I…I don't know. Maybe? Luke is our only mutant so far—"
"Wrong." From inside his trench coat, Fury brought a folder. "You're young. I'm certain you think you've stumbled upon something new but no. That's not true. Read it." The lollipop in his mouth clicked against his teeth as he gestured toward the folder. "Go on."
Felix hesitated for a moment, then reached forward, picking up the folder. The cover bore no markings, no indication of what secrets lay inside. He flipped it open, revealing the first document—a faded report dated decades ago, its header stamped with a now-defunct government agency.
"Project Rebirth," Felix read aloud, eyebrows furrowing. "Samantha Wilson, the first successful Super Soldier." He glanced up at Fury.
"You know it, right? All the nitty-gritty fairy tails and conspiracies?"
"Everyone knows the story, yeah. Captain America. World War II. The serum was destroyed, the project scrapped. Well, I mean a couple more times, but they failed. Some room for conspiracy, I get it but I don't personally believe in it. Seems pretty simple to me as a scientist."
"Pretty simple," Fury said. "Pretty incomplete too. You ever read King Arthur? At the end of his story, after so much success, there was failure. Failure, failure, and more failure. And our pesky government won't destroy something that works. They replicate it, or at least they die try."
Felix returned his gaze to the folder, flipping to the next page. The report detailed a series of experiments conducted after Samantha Wilson's success. Unlike Wilson, many of these experiments failed—horribly.
"Test Subject 002," Felix murmured, reading a brief summary. "Deceased. Cause of death: organ failure due to cellular instability." He flipped the page. "Test Subject 003. Deceased. Cause of death: neurological collapse."
Page after page, the results were the same. Names replaced by numbers, lives reduced to statistics. Men and women who volunteered—or were coerced—into government experiments, each one trying to replicate the perfect soldier.
Fury's voice cut through the silence. "So no, mutates aren't some new invention you've described. We've known them. We've created them. I bet the Chameleon knows of it too. In fact, I bet she suggested it, didn't she?"
Bobbi did in fact give the terms. At the time, Felix didn't find it suspicious how she used the term mutant regarding Luke. Why would he? Even though he was aware of it because of Reed and Herbie, the term itself was obvious enough. Some people in the media called Gwen Stacy a mutant. The phenomena of coincidence did exist, contrary to certain conspiracies. Like what happened with Kate's kidnapping and the Chameleon trying to frame her while she was kidnapped; that was all a stroke of ill-timed coincidence.
Felix turned to the next section of the folder, labeled Weapon X Program. The tone of the report shifted, becoming colder, more clinical. A...success?
"Weapon X," Felix read. "Led by William Stryker."
Fury nodded. "Stryker was obsessed with creating the perfect weapon. He didn't care about success rates or ethical lines. He just wanted results."
'He didn't care about unlocking the X-gene, he wanted to implant it.' The next page featured a profile. Felix's eyes scanned the image—a black-and-white photo of a man with sharp features, dark eyes, and a haunted expression. The name beneath it read Logan.
"Logan," Felix said. "American-Japanese."
Fury took the lollipop out of his mouth and pointed at the file. "Pulled out of a prison camp in Japan after the war. Rumoured to have survived a shooting."
"A mutant?"
"Probably. During that period of time, we couldn't tell if an X-gene was active or not. All Stryker saw was potential in him. Implanted Adamantium into his skeleton. Gave him claws and activated his X-gene for certain. But he didn't stop there."
Felix flipped to the next page, revealing another profile. A young girl with a dead expression. Her name was Katherine Pryde.
"Kitty Pryde," Felix murmured. "A Southern woman off the streets?"
Fury nodded. "Stryker didn't care where they came from. He gave her claws, too. Shorter, less refined, but just as deadly. The difference? He accidentally erased Logan's memory. Turned him into a blank slate. The X-genes might have conflicted, I don't know. But Kitty... Kitty remembered everything. And she liked it."
Felix swallowed hard and flipped through the gruesome details of their enhancements, the psychological torture, the physical pain. He had to pretend that he didn't know what happened to them. "What happened to them?"
"Logan escaped," Fury said simply. "Went underground. SHIELD's been watching him for years. Kitty, on the other hand... she's still working, last we heard. And she enjoys the work."
'He's lying through his teeth to scare me. I know Kitty and Logan work for you. These images might be old but I can tell it's them.'
Felix's hands paused over the next section of the file. The header read Final Experiment: Subject X. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the pages.
"Twenty years ago," Felix read aloud, "the government conducted one final experiment. A group of children."
Fury's expression darkened. "Children with mutations. Different from Stryker. Born with abilities, not made."
Felix's heart sank as he continued reading. The report described how each child was subjected to brutal tests—pain tolerance, cognitive manipulation, physical endurance. And then…the reports stopped.
"One of the mutants," Fury said slowly, "went out of control."
Felix's eyes moved across the final page. An investigation. "It says here the scientists killed each other."
Fury leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "That's right. One mutant—just one—drove an entire facility into madness. No alarms. No external force."
Felix scanned the report. It was incomplete—or rather, very confused. "There's no name. No file on the last mutant."
"Because she wasn't found," Fury said grimly. "All the others were accounted for, their bodies identified. But not her."
"Her?"
"There's a sticky note that we received from a couple scientists that worked at the facility but retired early."
Felix flipped to the back, his breath hitching. A couple sticky notes were indeed there. Girl. Blonde. Codename: Diamond.
"A bunch of old men trying to recall a little girl that they experimented on...." Fury shook his head. "Not exactly the best or most accurate way to gather information. It took the investigators days to help them remember; to have them comb through every death, specify whom it could or couldn't be via process of elimination, and then give us an answer."
Felix closed the folder. "Why are you showing me this?"
Fury's lone eye darkened. "Because history has a way of repeating itself, kid. And if Oscorp is on the verge of unlocking something dangerous, we can't afford to make the same mistakes. You're sitting on a powder keg, and if it blows, it won't just take Oscorp down. It'll take the whole damn world with it."
Felix sat back, the folder still in his hands. "What do you want me to do?"
"Be smart," Fury said, standing. "Be careful. And if you think Luke Cage could turn into another 'Diamond', call me. I'll listen."
Fury pulled the final object from his trench coat: an old school phone, the same type Maria handed him for discretion. Felix nodded and took it.
'Diamond.'
Felix had done enough detective work to deduce that the mutant girl in question was Emma Frost. He recalled that she was the daughter of a well-renowned family. He recalled her aversion to harming children and to creating a better world.
'With telepathy of her level, she could have forged her existence. Forcibly inserted herself into that family without them or anyone else knowing.'
Motives matched. Appearance matched. Mutant powers matched.
Diamond was Emma Frost.
***
Felix pushed open the glass doors of 1 Police Plaza and entered the brisk New York midnight. The chill of the air met him immediately, a reminder of how long he'd been inside. His mind still buzzed with thoughts from the conversation with Nick Fury. The files, the experiments, the mutants… Diamond. It all swirled in his head like a storm he couldn't escape from.
He glanced around the street, half-expecting to see Yelena, Kate, or Maria waiting for him, but he knew better. They were being held for additional questioning—a "routine" debrief according to Fury, though Felix knew nothing was ever routine when SHIELD was involved.
'Guess I'm on my own tonight,' he thought, tugging his coat tighter around him. It was super dark. Felix figured it must have been two or three o'clock. His gaze shifted to the curb where a sleek, black limo waited. The polished exterior gleamed under the streetlights. Standing beside it was a tall, composed figure: Yuri Watanabe.
Felix recognized her immediately. Alistair Smythe's former butler. 'I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see her here.'
Yuri was dressed immaculately in a tailored black suit, her posture straight and dignified. Her long black hair was tied neatly into a low ponytail, and her expression, as always, was calm and unreadable.
As Felix approached, Yuri gave him a polite nod. "Mr. Faeth," she greeted smoothly.
"Yuri," Felix responded, a bit unsure. "You're out, huh?"
"Indeed. As soon as they learned of the real killer, it didn't take long for them to let me out."
"That's nice." He smiled. "What's the limo for?"
Yuri stepped aside and opened the door to the limo with a practiced grace. "I was informed that Alistair Smythe left you everything in his will," she explained. "That includes my services."
Felix blinked. "Your services?"
"Yes," she replied simply. "I was Alistair's butler. Now, I work for you."
Felix stood there, caught off guard. He hadn't even fully processed inheriting Alistair's estate, let alone gaining a personal butler. "Yuri, I don't think I need—"
"Even if you don't want a butler," Yuri interrupted, suddenly lighting up, "I would recommend trying it. At least for tonight." She gestured toward the open door. "Please."
Felix hesitated, glancing from her to the open limo door. The idea of having a butler—of someone waiting on him—felt strange. He was used to handling things on his own. But… maybe taking advantage of it just this once wouldn't hurt.
Pursing his lips, Felix grabbed the door and went inside.
The interior of the limo was luxurious but understated, reflecting Alistair's taste for elegance without excess. Soft leather seats wrapped around the cabin, their deep black color blending seamlessly with the dark wood paneling that framed the windows. A small bar with crystal decanters of various liquors was built into the side, though none of the bottles appeared touched. Subtle LED lights illuminated the space with a warm, ambient glow, and a discreet screen was embedded in the partition between the passenger area and the driver's seat.
Felix settled into the seat, sinking into the comfort of the leather. He ran his hand over the smooth surface of the seat, still trying to wrap his head around everything. He was expecting a quiet ride home, but a soft chime through the speakers interrupted his thoughts.
"Is everything to your liking, Mr. Faeth?" Yuri's voice came through the intercom, calm and professional.
Felix leaned forward slightly, pressing the button to respond. "Uh, yeah… It's nice. I guess I'm still wrapping my head around all this."
Yuri's voice returned with delighted warmth. "I understand. It's a lot to process. I know you were close to Mr. Smythe, and his sudden passing must have been difficult."
Felix frowned slightly. He and Alistair had been coworkers, friends to some degree, but not close. The will still baffled him. "Yeah," Felix said vaguely, not wanting to delve into that thought. "It's… surreal."
"I've also heard," Yuri continued, "that you were instrumental in finding his true killer."
"...where did you hear that?"
"I'm a former cop. I have some friends," Yuri replied and after a beat added, "So it's true."
"It is."
"I wish to thank you. Alistair was a good man. A brilliant man. And if his killer has been brought to justice and you helped, then I'm honored to serve you."
Felix leaned back into the seat, hands in his pockets. He wasn't sure how to respond. "I appreciate that, Yuri. But I don't think I'm really the 'butler' type."
There was a soft chuckle through the intercom, a rare display of amusement from Yuri. "Few people think they are. But consider it for now. I'm here to make your life easier. Allow me to do that."
Felix glanced out the window as the limo cruised through the streets of Manhattan, the city lights blurring past. He thought about all the recent chaos—Kate's kidnapping, Alistair's murder, SHIELD breathing down his neck. Having someone to handle the small things might actually help.
Maybe.
'I do have Herbie. Sort-of.'
Without his glasses, Herbie was a non-factor. Whereas a person like Yuri…
"Well," Felix said slowly, "if you're offering, I could use a ride home."
"Of course," Yuri responded smoothly. "Your apartment?"
"Yeah. My place, not Alistair's mansion. It's down in Harlem."
"As you wish."
The limo glided through the city streets, the hum of the engine barely audible. Felix took a deep breath, letting himself relax for the first time in what felt like days. That was until he received a message on his phone.
Well, not his phone, Mr. E's phone.
< Black Cat: Heyyyy
< Black Cat: ur finally out, aren't you? Congrats!
< Black Cat: Let me know when the second half of my pay gets deposited xoxo
Felix had only paid for the first half of her bomb-deactivating services. He smiled. Once he got Alistair's accounts in order, he'd send the second half.
Yuri's voice came through the intercom one last time. "If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask, Mr. Faeth. Tonight, you can let someone else handle the details."
Felix leaned back, his eyes half-closed as the city lights washed over him. "Thanks, Yuri. I think I'll take you up on that."
For the first time in days, Felix Faeth slept without worry.
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