Chapter 852

Somewhere in a mountain range so remote that it barely appeared on any map, a sheer cliff face rose into the night.

Calling it a cliff was almost generous. It was little more than a narrow outcropping jutting from an almost vertical wall of stone, inaccessible to anything that couldn’t climb sheer rock.

It was midnight. The stars were bright, the moon hung high, and the cliff happened to sit on the shadowed side of the mountain.

No one should have noticed it.

Then an engine roared across the sky.

The sound resembled an aircraft, and it was close—very close. Yet even someone with exceptional eyesight would have struggled to make out more than a faint silhouette.

The aircraft was equipped with an advanced optical cloaking system.

It circled the mountain several times, searching for somewhere to land.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anywhere.

The remains of an artificial structure could barely be distinguished among the rocks. At some point, a secret facility had been carved directly into the mountain.

Now it had collapsed.

Tens of thousands of tons of rock had buried the entire installation.

There had once been a platform outside the facility, presumably large enough for aircraft to land and take off. Now it was buried beneath rubble as well. Only a tiny section remained exposed—far too small for the incoming aircraft.

So instead, the craft descended.

When it reached the same elevation as the cliff, it simply stopped.

It hovered there, perfectly still.

The side hatch opened.

A narrow boarding ramp extended outward, hanging between the aircraft and the cliff like the drawbridge of an ancient castle.

Two squads of soldiers immediately emerged.

They moved in disciplined formation, crouched low as they advanced in a fan-shaped spread. All of them wore black coats, steel helmets, and masks equipped with multiple visual systems.

Once they’d confirmed that the area was clear, they quickly repositioned and established a defensive perimeter.

Only then did a slender figure appear in the aircraft’s doorway.

Moira stepped forward.

Behind her came the usually reclusive scientist, Gnosis.

At this point, the identity of the people aboard was obvious.

They were Black Crest.

Or, more accurately, Umbrella personnel.

The aircraft itself was Umbrella’s only dedicated transport vessel.

Normally, fuel costs alone made operating it prohibitively expensive.

But this mission was too unusual for anyone to worry about the price.

Moira remained at the doorway instead of immediately stepping onto the cliff.

"Ground operation is about to begin. What’s our air situation?"

A voice answered over the communications channel.

"Pharaoh’s Hawk is on patrol. Airspace is secure. Good luck. Over."

Only then did Moira step onto the cliff with Gnosis following behind her.

Farrell had accompanied them for this operation as well.

However, shortly before the aircraft reached its destination, she had separated her Pharaoh’s Hawk exoskeleton from the main craft and taken to the skies herself.

Now she was circling the area as an escort.

Moira looked across the ruined mountain.

"This is it."

"Tahiti."

Evenson’s voice suddenly came through the communications system.

He was nowhere to be seen.

Unlike the soldiers who had been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and sent into freezing mountain winds, Evenson was sitting comfortably inside Gospel Corporation’s command center.

He even had a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

But the meaning behind his words was unmistakable.

This ruined facility was the place where Coulson’s body had once been restored to life.

Tahiti.

"The treasure is buried down there."

Evenson’s voice became slightly more animated.

"Dig it up."

"Understood."

Moira’s lips curved upward.

There was something exciting about this mission.

A dead alien from an extraterrestrial civilization known as the Kree was buried beneath their feet.

That wasn’t just a treasure.

That was a jackpot.

Gnosis pushed a strange machine out of the aircraft.

At first glance, it looked like some kind of oversized laser cannon.

Its barrel was surrounded by rows of transparent vertical tubes, each filled with what appeared to be silvery liquid.

Gnosis switched it on.

The machine began to hum.

Then the rubble moved.

The enormous rocks covering the ruined facility suddenly lifted from the ground as though gravity itself had forgotten what they were supposed to weigh.

One after another, the boulders floated upward before drifting over the edge of the cliff and disappearing into the darkness below.

Calling the device a laser cannon was actually misleading.

A gravity cannon would have been more accurate.

Its purpose was to project an energy field capable of reversing or otherwise altering gravity within a designated area.

And its key component was Gravitonium.

Evenson had managed to salvage a considerable quantity of the material during his previous operation.

He’d even brought back a surprisingly large mass of it.

Some had been used on Stephanie, but there was still plenty remaining.

Gnosis had put the material to work.

And the result was this machine.

It turned what should have been an impossible excavation into something almost effortless.

Evenson had given it a much less impressive nickname.

The Demolition Helper.

"You need to work quickly," Evenson warned. "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t think anyone could possibly excavate this place, but that doesn’t mean they won’t send someone to investigate eventually."

"Don’t worry."

Gnosis walked over to Moira.

"With this machine and the geological scans I’ve already completed, we should be finished within three hours."

He had every reason to sound confident.

The machine had been running for less than a minute, and the entire landing platform and former entrance to the facility had already been cleared.

Better yet, because the device manipulated the gravitational field itself, it also stabilized the excavation site as it worked.

There was virtually no danger of a secondary collapse.

"Then I’m satisfied."

Moira glanced at the progress of the Demolition Helper.

"But to be safe, we’re leaving after three hours whether we’ve found anything or not."

"Understood."

"Good."

Moira paused.

"And... Evenson?"

"Hm?"

"Could you stop hovering over me like that?"

Moira tilted her head.

She looked down at the tablet she was holding with both hands.

Evenson’s face occupied the screen.

He had been watching the entire operation remotely.

"I don’t know."

His voice sounded mildly embarrassed.

"It just feels like a bad omen."

The ruined facility had not always looked like this.

As for how one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secret bases had ended up buried beneath a mountain, that story began with one man.

John Garrett.

Garrett had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. alongside Phil Coulson.

The two had even trained under Nick Fury around the same time.

But unlike Coulson, who eventually became one of Fury’s most trusted agents, Garrett gradually found himself pushed to the margins.

Fury had decided that Garrett wasn’t trustworthy.

As it turned out, Fury’s instincts had been right.

Garrett eventually joined Hydra.

But he wasn’t a true believer.

He hadn’t been seduced by some grand ideological vision.

He simply looked at S.H.I.E.L.D. and realized Hydra had already become deeply entrenched within it.

Joining them seemed profitable.

And profitable it had been.

Garrett’s career had progressed almost in lockstep with Coulson’s.

He was now a Level Eight agent himself.

But while he’d been climbing the ladder, another problem had been waiting for him.

In S.H.I.E.L.D.’s early years, the agency had secretly developed the Death Warrior Project.

Garrett had been one of its principal overseers.

He had even participated personally in some of the early experiments.

Then the project had supposedly been shut down.

Garrett had never known whether the reason was technological limitations or whether Fury had simply lost confidence in him because he was in charge of the project.

But as the years passed, he became increasingly convinced it had been the latter.

Because thanks to his security clearance—and a few private channels of information—Garrett knew something with absolute certainty.

Phil Coulson had died.

Yet several months later, Coulson had walked back into his life alive and well.

That could only mean one thing.

The Death Warrior Project had never truly stopped.

Years of secret research had produced results.

Coulson was one of those results.

Garrett was furious.

He’d been involved from the beginning.

He’d overseen the research.

He’d participated in the early experiments.

So why was Coulson the one who got to benefit?

The more Garrett thought about it, the more determined he became to uncover the project’s secrets.

Fortunately, his superiors wanted the same thing.

So when Coulson’s secret team was formed, Garrett sent Ward Grant into it.

Ward was an agent Garrett had personally recruited and cultivated.

At first, everything went exactly according to plan.

Ward successfully integrated himself into the team and gradually earned Coulson’s trust.

Then things began to go wrong.

Garrett’s instincts, sharpened by years in intelligence work, told him that Pierce had started to distrust him.

The realization left him deeply uneasy.

For a double agent, losing a superior’s trust was dangerous.

For an ordinary agent, it could be fatal.

The worst part was that Garrett had no idea what he’d done wrong.

He couldn’t exactly march into Pierce’s office and demand an explanation.

Eventually, the answer came down from above.

Pierce suspected that Coulson’s special team had already been secretly infiltrated and controlled by Umbrella.

And there was now a confirmed Umbrella operative among them.

Skye.

The hacker.

Garrett nearly wanted to punch himself.

He had spent decades working in intelligence.

How had he made such an obvious mistake?

He had ordered Ward to get close to Skye precisely so that Ward could infiltrate the team more deeply.

And now the two were extremely close.

From Pierce’s perspective, there was only one possible interpretation.

Skye had turned Ward.

Garrett’s entire intelligence pipeline had become a highway for Umbrella to infiltrate Hydra.

And that was a terrifying prospect.

Garrett had joined Hydra for personal advantage rather than ideological loyalty. His credibility was already weaker than that of a true believer.

Now this?

He could practically see the execution order being prepared.

So after wiping away a cold sweat, Garrett immediately ordered Ward to abandon the original plan.

No more trying to win Skye over.

Instead, Ward was to monitor her.

At the same time, Garrett decided to change targets.

Maybe Melinda May would be easier.

The irony was almost impressive.

Covert wars had a strange way of turning perfectly rational decisions into disasters.

Garrett’s safest option would have been to order Ward to maintain his distance from everyone.

Better yet, he could have withdrawn Ward from Coulson’s team entirely.

But Garrett couldn’t let go of the Death Warrior Project.

He also desperately wanted to complete his assignment, earn a major achievement, and restore Pierce’s trust.

So Ward continued operating close to the team.

He was monitoring Skye.

He was trying to get closer to May.

And from a distance, no one could tell the difference between surveillance and seduction.

Garrett also had no idea that Pierce had already classified May as an Umbrella operative.

The result was a perfect example of a bad situation getting worse every time someone tried to fix it.

And Garrett seemed determined to prove just how far that could go.

When Pierce’s attitude toward him still failed to improve, Garrett finally decided to go all in.

He would complete his mission.

He would earn his way back into Pierce’s good graces.

And he would offer a blood-soaked demonstration of loyalty.

If Pierce believed Skye was an Umbrella operative...

Fine.

Garrett would be the one to put her on the operating table.

He would leave her barely alive.

And Garrett knew Coulson.

Coulson wouldn’t abandon one of his people.

He would do anything necessary to save her.

Including seeking out the mysterious treatment that had once brought him back from the dead.

It was perfect.

He could prove his loyalty and complete his mission at the same time.

Two birds with one stone.

So Garrett put the plan into motion.

First, he ordered Ian Quinn to cause trouble at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, drawing Coulson’s team’s attention.

Then Quinn deliberately exposed himself in Spain.

Just as Garrett expected, Coulson’s team went after him.

With Quinn and corrupt Spanish police working together, they successfully split the team apart and isolated its members.

There were some complications.

The personnel assigned to draw May away were all killed.

Their bodies were burned so badly that it looked as though they’d been caught in a flamethrower attack.

But that didn’t matter.

The overall plan had worked.

Eventually, Skye arrived at Quinn’s estate alone.

Garrett had specifically warned Quinn not to underestimate her.

After all, she was supposedly an Umbrella operative.

So when Skye infiltrated the estate, she was greeted with flashbangs and sonic grenades.

Then five or six men carrying riot shields slammed into her and drove her to the floor.

They bound her tightly with restraints designed specifically for captured female operatives.

According to the subsequent report, Skye had shown almost no ability to resist.

She had no obvious special abilities.

She had apparently remained unconscious for nearly two hours before finally waking.

To Garrett, that only confirmed what he’d already suspected.

Definitely an Umbrella sleeper agent.

She was just a very attractive one.

Finally, on Garrett’s orders, Quinn shot Skye three times in the abdomen.

Then he left her alive for Coulson’s team to find.

Garrett knew Coulson was an unusually disciplined agent.

He was afraid that, faced with a critically injured subordinate, Coulson might decide to follow regulations rather than abandon his mission and seek out the mysterious treatment.

So Garrett personally went to Coulson’s aircraft.

He intended to steer him toward Tahiti.

If necessary, he’d force the issue.

Everything had gone according to plan.

Until, without Garrett’s knowledge, the aircraft began its journey to Tahiti.

Melinda May was in the cockpit.

She picked up the phone.

"Evenson. Emergency. Get to the Bus. Now."