As the two sat down in front of his desk, Pierce walked to a shelf and grabbed a photo, showing it to Steve. It was a picture of him and Fury, apparently very young.
"This picture was taken five years after Nick and I met," Pierce told them. "When I was at State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, "No, we'll negotiate." Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter."
"So you gave him a promotion," Steve guessed.
"I've never had any cause to regret it. Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?" He asked. "And what were you doing there?" He asked Nina directly.
"We were just back from a museum," Nina told him. Steve noticed the gone of her voice: she clearly hated explaining herself. Even more so when she had done nothing wrong. "The new Captain America thing that opened last week," she told him.
"Hm. Right," Pierce said, quite destabilized. He obviously hadn't interrogated people before. "And what was Nick going there?"
"I don't know," Nina said. Pierce looked at Steve, requesting another answer, but he only shook his head; the only answer he had was the same as Nina.
"You know it was bugged?" He asked Steve.
"I did, because he told us."
"Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?" Steve paused. He stopped to take in all the information. He didn't reply, obviously shocked. Nina internally sighed. Steve was believing what Pierce was telling them. He then turned his computer screen towards the two of them, a footage of Bartroc being interrogated.
"Who hired you, Bartroc?" A man said.
"Is that live?" Steve asked.
"Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers."
"Are you saying he's a suspect?" Nina challenged him. "Assassination isn't Batroc's line."
"No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech."
"Am I supposed to know who that Is?" Steve asked, before Pierce threw him a file.
"Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 14-37."
"So you're saying that Nick's dead mother is a suspect," Nina guessed, making fun of him. Pierce was about to answer that remark of hers but Steve interrupted.
" Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?"
"The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death." Nina scoffed. How dumb did he think they were?
"If you really knew Nick you'd know that's not true," Steve said.
"Why do you think we're talking? See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry."
Liar.
"Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?" Steve hesitated, before giving in the most unimportant half of the truth.
"He told me not to trust anyone," Steve admitted.
"I wonder if that included him," Pierce had to add.
"Sorry," Steve said, pretty done with all his bullshit. "But those were his last words. Steve picked up his shield and placed it on his back, following Nina to the exit.
"Captain." Steve stoped and turned around. "Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone."
Steve nodded and the two left the room.
YOU ARE READING
Unexpected
General Fiction(DOCTORWHO/MCU) Nina Jones. That was the name she took once she fell upon the Earth in 1869. To say the man who watched her fall to the earth were surprised is an understatement. "Your people were the peak of civilization, these vermin don't even k...
