Fury stood before the transparent window outside the operating room.

Steve lay on the hospital bed wearing a ventilator, bags of plasma dripping into his body through IV lines. Seven or eight doctors and nurses were lined up on either side, conducting the resuscitation in an orderly fashion. After standing for half an hour, his legs felt a bit sore, and Fury sat down on a bench against the wall.

An officer approached to report the situation. “Director, over a thousand military and police personnel involved in the encirclement are confirmed dead. Additionally, over a hundred and seventy civilians were lost, and nine buildings sustained varying degrees of damage…”

Fury’s face darkened even further. He had been counting on using Captain America to stage a comeback. Instead, not only had the mission failed, but the Captain’s life hung in the balance. SHIELD had suffered a devastating blow tonight.

After a long silence, Fury asked in a low voice, “Any word from above?”

The agent lowered his head. “It’s not optimistic. The World Security Council is extremely dissatisfied with you and wants to hold you accountable. Fortunately, the President spoke up on your behalf.”

“Hmph,” Fury grunted dismissively. “One plays the good cop, the other plays the bad cop. Ross is dead. Currently, no one besides me can handle the Joker organization. If they sack me, their situation will only become more precarious.”

The logic was sound, and the agent nodded in agreement. SHIELD was the final Great Wall standing before the U.S. government. With a great enemy at the gates, no politician, however foolish, would destroy their own defenses.

Fury’s position was secure, but he couldn’t bring himself to be happy. He let out a heavy sigh. “And Agent Coulson’s remains?”

“Sent back to Washington. The funeral is in three days.”

First Clint, then Hill, and now even Coulson was gone. The subordinates he could trust were becoming fewer and fewer. Dismissing the agent, Fury sat alone on the bench, staring blankly into space.

Time. What he needed most now was time. It would take a year and a half to achieve large-scale deployment of the Iron Suits; Dr. Banner’s serum had no clear timeline for success; and then there was SHIELD’s Project Insight.

Once these three bombs in his hand were ready, he could take on the Joker organization head-to-head. He just didn’t know if Jason would give him that time.

“Fury!”

As he sat with his eyes closed, he suddenly heard someone call his name. Standing before him was a blonde woman in black tactical gear—Steve’s neighbor, Sharon Carter.

Fury stood up, looking at her with approval. “You’re here, Agent Carter.”

The previous talk about using his influence to find Sharon an apartment had been a ruse to deceive Steve. Sharon had joined SHIELD long ago; however, her status was unique. She was Agent 13, reporting directly to Fury, holding a very high rank. Her original mission was to go undercover at the hospital to care for and protect SHIELD founder Peggy Carter. It wasn’t until Steve woke that Fury reassigned her.

As for the motive? Fury told her it was to protect and monitor Steve, but he actually had another goal: he wanted to use Sharon to firmly control him. Sharon’s appearance and personality were somewhat similar to Peggy’s; Fury was convinced the Captain wouldn’t be able to escape the charms of her.

“I’m heading back to Washington shortly. You’re in charge here.”

Sharon looked at Steve in the operating room and nodded in agreement.

“Also, don’t tell your aunt about this yet. She’s too old to handle news like this.”

“Don’t worry, I understand.”

*

After a night of emergency surgery, Steve was finally out of critical danger. This man was truly a superhuman who had been injected with the Super Soldier serum; less than 24 hours after being moved to the ICU, he woke up.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Sharon, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, changing his bandages. His injuries were so severe he had been stripped and wrapped in gauze from head to toe. With Sharon handling the changes personally, physical contact was inevitable.

Steve, a century-old virgin, immediately had a physical reaction, and his pale face gained a bit of color. Sharon focused on the bandages, unaware that the man on the bed had opened his eyes and was watching her without blinking.

“Oh my God!”

Turning around and making eye contact, Sharon jumped in surprise. “Captain, when did you wake up?”

“Just now,” Steve lied without blushing.

Sharon offered a pretty smile and pressed the call button. Half a minute later, New York medical experts flooded into the ward, checking Steve according to protocol. Fortunately, his body was recovering well, and his brain had sustained no damage.

Once the doctors left, the ward was down to just the two of them again. Sharon was smart; a bit of thought told her Steve must have been awake for a while. She didn’t call him out on it, but she felt a bit embarrassed. Steve was handsome and had a great physique; Sharon was naturally a bit smitten. But he was essentially a hundred-year-old man, and her aunt’s old flame. This tangled web of relationships left the secret SHIELD agent’s mind in a mess, unsure how to face him.

After a moment of silence in the ward, Steve asked, “What happened after I passed out?”

Sharon dropped the act and looked at him with worried eyes. “Captain, don’t blame yourself. You did your best.”

Steve remained expressionless. “It’s fine. Just tell me.”

Sharon looked down at her toes, hesitating. “All of the thousand-plus military and police personnel assigned to capture Alex were killed. Hundreds of civilians were also caught in the crossfire and lost their lives.”

Steve frowned, his thick arms tightening. “Jason… and what about Alex?”

Sharon shook her head. The result spoke for itself.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling utterly exhausted. After seventy years in the ice, he truly was out of touch with the world. He never imagined that a WWII hero who had once conquered the Red Skull and defeated the Nazis and Hydra would one day be brushed aside in an instant. It was too ironic, too cruel.

*

Steve recuperated in the hospital for two days, with Sharon continuing to care for him. Two days and nights of intimate contact created a lot of tension between them. Where they once spoke freely, now even eye contact felt shy.

Steve recovered well and was discharged two days later. Before leaving, he went to talk to Peggy for a while. The contents of their conversation remained unknown. Afterward, he declined Sharon’s offer to drive him home and traveled alone to Washington to attend Agent Coulson’s funeral.

When Steve appeared at the funeral in a black suit, it acted as a shot of adrenaline for the grieving SHIELD agents. Captain America wasn’t dead; they weren’t at the point of despair yet.

The funeral proceeded normally without incident. The chaplain read from the Bible, the agents sang the national anthem, and finally, they bowed and offered flowers one by one.

As the sun set, the crowd began to depart, but Steve remained standing before the tombstone, looking at the black-and-white memorial photo.

Fury walked over, pulling a stack of blood-stained Captain America trading cards from his pocket and flipping through them. “He idolized you… these cards were his prize possessions.”

“They were originally kept in a safe… Coulson specifically took them out to bring with him before the mission in New York… he wanted to ask you to sign them once the mission was over.”

Steve glanced at the cards, his handsome face betraying no emotion. Fury finished looking at them one by one, then stacked them and placed them neatly in front of Coulson’s headstone.

“Fury!”

After a long silence between the two, Steve suddenly spoke: “I want to join SHIELD.”

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep