Corrupted - The Tigris Series Book 1

Chapter Seventeen

July 23, 2012

I stormed through the halls of the helicarrier, determined to locate Fury to question him as to what exactly he plans on doing with Hydra's weapons, and the weapons he was creating with their inspiration. As much as I would love to pretend that none of it exists, take my files and leave, I could not ignore the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. is potentially becoming a new Hydra. I can't let that happen, no matter what.

I turned a sharp corner and spotted him walking towards the direction of the lab where I had left Stark and Banner. He kept his back to me as he sped walked down the halls with a certain kind of urgency. Maybe he found out that Stark was uploading all of his data? I didn't care. I caught up to him with ease, and roughly tapped his shoulder.

"Hey. We need to talk." I snapped, glaring daggers at him as he quickly turned to look at me in slight shock.

When he realized that I was not here to attack him, he let out a short, irritated sigh. "Look, unless you found the tesseract, whatever it is can wait." 

He turned to walk away, but I stepped in front of him, pulling my hood off of my head. "No, it can't."

He rolled his eyes. "Okay. How about you follow me back to the lab, and we can all have a discussion there."

I didn't particularly want to have the discussion with or in front of the others, but I could tell that Fury was much too stubborn to make any other kind of compromise. So without a word, I turned on my heel and made my way back to the lab with Fury following close behind me.

As we neared the lab, I could hear that Stark's chatter had finally subsided. The room was mostly silent, though something told me that as soon as we walk into the room, that would change. If Stark really is uncovering every bit of data that S.H.I.E.L.D. has on data, he most likely has access to their plans with the tesseract and Hydra's weapons. Assuming that Fury won't tell us everything that he has planned, I'll have to ask Stark to look at those files.

I walked through the doorway to the lab, and instantly locked eyes with Banner. He seemed a bit nervous, as usual. Though, I could tell that he was a bit on edge about something. Had Stark told him something during the short amount of time of my absence? 

I wouldn't doubt it.

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" Fury questioned as he entered the room after me.

He and I walked directly towards them as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the long white table that the scepter had been sitting. Stark had a confrontational look on his face, indicating exactly what I had predicted would happen.

"Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you." Stark replied.

"You're supposed to be locating the tesseract." Fury stated, furrowing his brows.

"We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile." Banner replied, then pointed towards a monitor behind us.

Fury and I both turned around to look at it. There was a digital picture of the globe with a red bar next to it that said "GAMMA SIGNATURE LOCATION - SEARCHING. 46%." Underneath that, was a reading of a gamma signature. I quickly glanced over all of the data, then turned my attention back to the two men with an unimpressed look on my face. I then let a smirk fall on my lips as I heard Steve's boots stomping towards us from down the hall. I couldn't wait to see what kind of hell will break loose when he gets here.

"Yeah, then you get your cube back. No muss, no fuss." Stark finished, just as his monitor made a beeping noise and pulled up a red box with the words "Phase 2" on it. "What is "Phase 2?""