下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
A t the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new headquarters, Steve strode into Nick Fury’s office. He was still angry about what Natasha had done, and he was also angry at Nick Fury for misleading the team about the nature of the mission on the Lemurian Star .
“You just can’t stop yourself from lying, can you?” he said as he came in.
“I didn’t lie,” Fury said. He was sitting at his desk looking out the window, away from Steve. “Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours.”
“Which you didn’t feel obliged to share.”
“I’m not obliged to do anything,” Fury said.
This was true and Steve knew it, but he didn’t have to like it. “Those hostages could have died, Nick.”
“I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure that didn’t happen,” Fury said, turning to face Steve as Steve reached the desk.
Steve wasn’t in the mood to be flattered. “Soldiers trust each other. That’s what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns.”
“Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.” Fury stood and leaned over his desk. He wasn’t backing down. “Look, I didn’t want you doing anything you weren’t comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything.”
Steve didn’t back down, either. “I can’t lead a mission when the people I’m leading have missions of their own,” he said.
“It’s called compartmentalization,” Fury said. “Nobody spills the secrets, because nobody knows them all.”
“Except you.”
Fury appeared to change his mind about something. “You’re wrong about me,” he said. “I do share. I’m nice like that.”
He walked toward the elevator and Steve followed him.
“Insight bay,” Fury said as they got in.
The elevator’s facial recognition software identified Steve immediately. “Captain Rogers does not have clearance for Project Insight,” a computer voice said.
“Director override. Fury, Nicholas J.”
“Confirmed.”
“You know, they used to play music,” Steve said as they went down. The elevator was glass and built on the outside of the Triskelion tower, and offered a great view of Washington, DC.
“Yeah. My grandfather operated one of these things for forty years. Granddad worked in a nice building. Got good tips. He’d walk home every night, a roll of ones stuffed in his lunch bag. He’d say hi. People would say hi back. Time went on, the neighborhood got rougher. He’d say hi. They’d say, ‘Keep on steppin’.’ Granddad got to gripping that lunch bag a little tighter.”
Steve knew plenty of neighborhoods like that. “Did he ever get mugged?”
“Every week some punk would say, ‘What’s in the bag?’”
Everything got dark except for the elevator’s operating lights as they descended below ground level. “What would he do?” Steve asked.
“He’d show them. Bunch of crumpled ones and a loaded twenty-two Magnum. Yeah, Granddad loved people. But he didn’t trust them very much.”
I guess not , Steve thought. Neither does his grandson.
Fury walked to the other side of the elevator as the light changed. There was a glow coming from outside. Steve turned to see a vast hangar, at least a mile across, built out under the river. It was so big that it had its own roads, with trucks and cargo carts driving materials and supplies in every direction. Thousands of people were working there, on and around one of the most amazing things Steve had ever seen.