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*****
After listening to Fini's brief overview of Pietro and Wanda, Nick Fury asked directly, "Where are they now?"
"In my laboratory. They still haven't fully mastered their abilities yet. Once some time passes and I help them get a solid grip on their powers, I'll arrange a meeting for you."
Hearing Fini's response, Fury couldn't help but knit his brows. He didn't want to wait another minute. In fact, if it weren't for the lack of absolute certainty, he would have launched his counter-strike long ago.
Moreover, compared to a pair of unknown siblings whose capabilities were still a mystery, Fury heavily preferred the reliable and proven strength of Fini. Locking his single eye firmly onto the teenager, he asked with absolute seriousness:
"What will it take to get you to help me?"
"Do you want the polite lie, or the raw truth?" Fini asked, straightening his posture to mirror Fury's intense demeanor.
"I want both," Fury replied. Choosing was for children; as the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he wanted everything on the table.
"..."
Fini shot him a thoroughly speechless look before speaking candidly. "The polite lie is that I have a mountain of personal business to attend to next, and I simply don't have the time to get bogged down in your little bureaucratic civil war."
Fury's expression didn't flicker. Since Fini explicitly labeled it a lie, it meant the boy technically did have the time to help. He remained silent, waiting patiently for the raw truth.
"As for the truth..."
Fini paused. Moving his hands in a practiced, fluid motion, he channeled the secret arts of Kamar-Taj. The Mirror Dimension instantly expanded outward. Given the yawning chasm in their respective power levels, Fury was pulled into the fractured space without a shred of resistance.
"The truth is, I am already on the verge of transcending the biological limitations of ordinary mortals. Even if your little factions escalate this war until nuclear warheads are actively glassing the surface of the Earth, it wouldn't affect me in the slightest."
"So, I genuinely can't be bothered to exert the effort to bully them. Do you understand now?"
Under Fini's absolute telekinetic command, the architecture of the Mirror Dimension folded, inverted, and shifted violently across the horizon. While the display didn't inflict a single scratch on Fury, the visual spectacle was profoundly staggering.
"What is this place...?" Fury murmured, looking at the shifting, kaleidoscope geometry around him, his single eye wide with uncharacteristic shock.
"The Mirror Dimension. You can think of it as an identical flip-side to reality. We are technically still on Earth, but absolutely any structural damage you inflict here cannot echo into the physical world. Conversely, no weapon or threat from reality can ever breach this space to touch you."
Listening to Fini's clinical explanation, the look in Fury's eye turned incredibly complex.
Based on his decades of micro-expression analysis and behavioral profiling, he could tell Fini wasn't exaggerating. Yet, in his heart of hearts, he desperately wished the boy were lying.
Because this reality meant that he, who already possessed zero leverage to control or restrict Fini, was now entirely devoid of any theoretical deterrent. Fury's fundamental doctrine was that he never trusted an individual to remain righteous forever; he preferred to believe that there was a countermeasure for every single threat in existence.
Every problem was supposed to have a solution code. Yet the teenager sitting across from him had officially transformed into an entirely unsolvable equation.
Fini caught the heavy, calculated gaze Fury was throwing his way, but he didn't care about the spy's internal crisis.
Truthfully, he had briefly contemplated activating the Evil King True Eye to treat the Director to a grand illusion of the seven-day Genesis of creation. However, considering Fury's localized worldview, the man probably wouldn't grasp the cosmic magnitude of such a feat, so Fini settled for the practical utility of the Mirror Dimension.
Even so, the experience delivered a massive psychological shock to Fury's perception of reality.
"Completely isolated from reality?" Fury asked, scanning the geometric folds of the horizon once more. Compared to accepting Fini as a permanent, unchecked anomaly, he preferred to hold onto the stubborn belief that he simply hadn't dug up the right counter-strategy yet.
"At least while you're on Earth," Fini clarified. He couldn't speak for whatever specialized cosmic horrors lurked in the deep tracks of the universe, but here on Earth, protected by the ancient sorcery of the Three Sanctums, the Mirror Dimension was an absolute construct. Short of tearing down the Sanctums themselves, it was unbreakable.
Fury fell into a prolonged silence. He stepped off the couch to personally touch and examine the fractured architecture of the space, testing the physics of the environment before finally walking back and sinking into the cushions of the sofa.
After a long pause, Fury spoke quietly: "Are you even still human?"
"Of course I am," Fini nodded without hesitation. While he was rapidly approaching a point of evolutionary transcendence, he hadn't crossed the rubicon permanently. When the Evil King True Eye was active, he operated on the scale of a Dimensional Dreadlord; but once the seal was placed back over it, he was still fundamentally a human being.
Hearing the confirmation, Fury let out a slow, heavy sigh. He couldn't help but wonder—if that answer ever changed in the future, what would become of the Earth?
---
Seeing the Director lost in grim contemplation, Fini waved his hand, shattering the illusion and snapping them back into the normal living room. "Don't sweat it. The twins are adapting at a terrifying pace. Give me a month at most, and I estimate they'll have a flawless handle on their skill sets."
At this point, Fury's analytical focus had drifted away from Wanda and Pietro. Having witnessed the true scale of Fini's terrifying evolution, his desire to recruit the boy had only grown exponentially more desperate.
However, he was a master of the long game and knew that pushing the issue now would only breed resentment. He inclined his head, accepting the compromise for now. "I look forward to meeting them."
With the immediate parameters of their arrangement settled, Fury stood up to take his leave, his mind already churning with tactical equations on how to eventually leverage Fini onto the battlefield. Though he hadn't secured a direct commitment on this run, mapping the true boundaries of Fini's current capabilities was an astronomical intelligence haul in its own right.
Seeing his guest move toward the exit, Fini didn't try to keep him. However, just as he escorted the Director to the threshold of the front door, a sudden realization struck him. Reaching into the subspace pocket of his Storage Magic, he pulled out an exquisitely crafted, ornate vial and extended it forward.
"Almost forgot. Brought you back a little souvenir."
"A souvenir?" Fury eyed the object skeptically, entirely caught off guard by the concept of Fini bearing gifts.
"An Asgardian magical elixr. Highly premium stuff. Given the standard baseline of human biology, as long as your heart is still faintly beating, a single drop of this will basically pull you back from the brink of the grave. You can hoard it for a rainy day or hand it over to your laboratory techs to analyze, up to you. But keep in mind, this is the only bottle you're getting."
Fini gently swirled the vial, causing the luminescent green fluid inside to cast a faint, otherworldly glow. To his eyes, the item looked exactly like a standard health potion from a video game, and functionally, the medical efficacy was identical.
"Thank you," Fury said simply. He wasn't the type of man to let politeness get in the way of securing an asset. He immediately swiped the elegant vial, inspected the fluid under the light for a split second, and tucked it securely into the inner pocket of his trench coat.
Whether it was secretly a lethal toxin or carried a catastrophic biological drawback was something he could have his trusted clearance-level medical personnel decipher under a microscope later. For now, securing the asset was the logical priority.
Fini's decision to hand over the potion wasn't just based on their personal history; his mind had briefly flashed to the original timeline where Fury had nearly bled out on an operating table after a street ambush. The gesture was a subconscious insurance policy.
---
Shortly after Fini saw Nick Fury out, on the opposite side of Washington D.C., Jasper Sitwell was closing a secure briefing with the lethal asset selected for the assignment.
"This operation is of paramount strategic importance. It carries the highest possible classification protocol. Under no circumstances are you to disclose a single detail to anyone outside this room."
Watching the woman wrapped entirely in a specialized, high-tech tactical suit offer a silent nod, Sitwell tapped his tablet, bringing up a high-resolution file of Nick Fury.
"The target individual is Nick Fury. However, intelligence indicates that the man currently operating in public is a deep-cover imposter. The true Director was clandestinely extracted a while ago. To prevent a catastrophic intelligence leak and contain the narrative, your mandate is to permanently terminate him. Execute the strike under absolute cover; no one can know S.H.I.E.L.D. assets were involved."
The operative stared at the digital profile for a long beat, before offering another robotic nod of understanding. She didn't ask a single question.
Sitwell evaluated her with a look of immense satisfaction. While she wasn't a fanatical ideologue of the Hydra cause, her personal circumstances made her the perfect instrument for this specific wetwork.
She had initially aligned herself with S.H.I.E.L.D. solely as a transactional arrangement to cure her destabilizing cellular condition, undergoing their elite black-ops training program in the process. Consequently, while she was technically embedded within the S.H.I.E.L.D. hierarchy, she possessed absolutely zero sentimental loyalty to the flag or its personnel.
Her singular, driving directive was the resolution of her agonizing physical instability. She collected the parameters of a contract and executed the target, never wasting breath on the ethics of the assignment. This clinical detachment was precisely why Alexander Pierce had hand-selected her to take Nick Fury off the board.
She didn't care about the political weight of the skull she was cracking—even if that skull belonged to the supreme Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.
(End of Chapter)