Chapter 77: No more masks! Part 2

"Sir... are you all right?" the question was asked with genuine concern, surprisingly, I didn't hear even a hint of suspicion in the sergeant's voice, though I was the only one who was unharmed out of all the combatants, "Sorry, sir, we were completely useless..."

She bowed her head and bit her lip in frustration.

"It's not your fault," I patted the girl on the good shoulder, stopping beside the wounded woman, "these aren't ordinary soldiers you can fight with fists and sleeping pills. Get well."

And I don't even know her name. But she seems to know the real Phil Colson pretty well. We've got to get this masquerade over with, because any moment now I could blow it on something small, something the real Phil would never do. Take that moment when I told her to follow me. I addressed her as a total stranger, and it could have been Phil's real friend.

"Is the director in?" I asked a guy with European features and a week's stubble who was hanging around the corridor, who seemed to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. scholar and was clearly seriously into something. At the moment of my appearance, he was scribbling something on a clipboard, pacing the corridor with an extremely concentrated look.

"Agent Colson?" There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. "Yes, yes, I just came from the director's office, and she's there, and, uh, she's particularly scary today."

Damn, another one of Phil's acquaintances whose name I don't know.

"Well, I'll have to take the hit," I smiled martyrishly as I entered the office.

"Director," I greeted Fury, who this time, as any self-respecting boss should, was sitting behind her director's chair.

"Colson," Furey took me in the cold stare of her only eye, "you're late, your team has already handed in the report!"

Her voice really wasn't happy. Nicole poked her finger at some papers on her desk, probably that report. What monsters, making the girls write reports, right there in the hospital bed.

"You engaged the fugitives," the woman didn't ask, but summed it up, "what happened next? Who helped them? They could not leave the base unnoticed without someone else's help."

"That's correct," I walked over to Fury's desk, "you're right. They really couldn't have got out of the base on their own... unnoticed, at least they had help from inside."

"Do you know who it was?"

"Of course." I agree easily, "It was me."

There was a pause. If Fury was surprised, she didn't show it. Her only sighted eye stared at me with the same expectant, dispassionate expression. Even her heart continued to beat the same measured and steady rhythm. There was no sign of concern.

"You're..." Fury said slowly, standing up, leaning her hands on the table, "not Phil Colson."

"That's right. May I sit down? It's been a long, hard day, and there' s this running incident. And I feel we're going to have to talk for a long time." Nicole didn't answer, but she didn't stop me from taking a seat in the surprisingly comfortable visitor's chair.

"What's with the real Phil? Who are you?" Fury's intonation wasn't threatening, but there was something about it that... I can't describe in words. But the very fact that she asked about Phil's fate first, and only then about my identity, spoke volumes.

"I have no idea, I never met him. This mask, like the pass, like the entire file on Agent Colson, I found today, along with many others. As for my identity... you've probably heard of me, maybe even looked for me," I slowly raised my hand to my chin and pulled the mask off, "My name is Peter Parker, and I'm a student at Midtown High. I'm the one the Spiderwoman and Venom were looking for when they were tricked into following a false trail... Please have a seat, I'll tell you all about it."

"Why should I believe you? Why shouldn't I just call security and throw you in a cell?" Now Fury started making threats. She felt the ground beneath her feet, realizing she wasn't facing a super spy or a hired assassin, but just a boy who'd been kidnapped not so long ago. What kind of prejudice is that?

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"Let me get this straight. You may not believe me, but you will believe the evidence I give you to prove it. As for guards and other threats... don't make it any harder than it has to be. It won't do any of us any good. Besides, I have faith in your integrity, because in this situation, I'm the one that S.H.I.E.L.D. has pledged to protect. Aren't you the shield that protects people?" Fury was still hesitant "Besides, you have no idea how important information I've brought you."

The woman squinted her eyes incredulously. What so important a schoolboy could bring, her single eye said.

"Actually," I leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "I would ask you to use that powerful jamming device you keep with you most of the time so that no one can overhear us, because this information... not only compromises the Shield as a whole, and you as its head, so much so that if it were in the hands of politicians, you would be destroyed immediately, but it also poses a direct threat to the whole world. You see, the people who kidnapped me weren't just some bandits, the military, fanatics, or extremists. They deserve your attention as well, but I'm sure it's the story of their emergence that will cause much more excitement. The fact is that their fellowship broke away thirty years ago from another secret organization, which was once the root cause of the Shield. You know what I mean? It still existed thirty years ago, and it still exists today... they are among us."

***

Looking at the boy sitting in front of her, who was basically just a boy, Fury could only marvel that she hadn't noticed the switch right away. Yes, Parker and Colson were practically the same height and build, and she'd only exchanged a few words with False Pillippe, but was that an excuse? Even for a rookie, barely cleared for field work, such a blunder was unforgivable, and Fury didn't consider herself a rookie.

"Am I getting old?" the woman wondered to herself, noting Parker's still, though difficult to see, adolescent angularity and his hands, too thin for a grown man. The signs of a switch, however unobvious, were enough.

Or maybe it was just too much at once: the pogrom at the Stark Expo, the idiotic demands of the World Security Council, the mass shooting and hostage-taking at the school, and, as the cherry on the cake, the invasion of the self-proclaimed defenders of New York at the secret base...

She let her guard down and believed in the reliability of a wall built over many years of painstaking work. A wall, what an accurate definition.

She had always associated the shield with a wall. A majestic, unshakable bastion, guarding against all outside threats. A wall so powerful that it would be impossible to imagine an enemy capable of breaking through it. A shield behind which people could live in safety and tranquility.

She devoted her whole life to building this wall, every day of her long life since... now it's hard to remember if there was anything "before" in her life. But no matter how unshakable the wall that protects from the enemy outside, it is useless if the enemy is inside. On the contrary, such a case is the worst, it can be called critical.

And so, having passed all the barriers and obstacles, right in her office - one of the most inaccessible places of the base - this boy shows up and declares that the enemy inside has not only appeared, but more: existed behind the wall from the very beginning. From the time the first stone at the base was laid. The enemy has been around, pretending to be friend and comrade-in-arms, brother and sister. He had grown strong and, like poison ivy, put down roots, undermining the base of the wall, so that at the decisive moment, without effort or hesitation, he could bring everything down.

Fury didn't want to believe the boy's words. She searched for a thousand ways to refute his accusations, except... she knew full well that he was right. After all, what Parker was talking about had been troubling her mind for a long time. Keeping her awake at night and giving her headaches during the day.

"If there are still people you can trust unconditionally," he said, "let them verify my words.

People she has confidence in as herself? Surprisingly enough, there are such people. Contrary to the popular belief that the Shield director's paranoia is so acute that she suspects even her own reflection in the mirror of betrayal, Nicole had a couple of people in mind whose loyalty was unconditional.

Fury was about to summon one of them when the office doors rattled open and Phil Colson and Romanoff, accompanied by two other specialists, flew in ready for an immediate confrontation with the enemy. Behind the agents loomed the recently released after a long and difficult conversation academy graduate and researcher Leopold Fitz.

"He's here! Let's get him!" Romanoff commanded.

"Stand down!" Fury was ahead of her zealous subordinates, who had already drawn their weapons on her guest.

"Director..." Colson was a little confused, "Agent Fitz spotted the infiltrator, we couldn't reach you and open the doors..."

"Because I blocked them myself! Get out of my office now!" Fury demanded in an irreconcilable tone, "Colson will be a task for you, Romanoff, stay too."

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