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Kai explained everything about the two kids to Coulson. When Coulson calmed down, he looked at everyone and said, "Alright, since we're all here now, I'll go over what happened again."
Nearby, Nick Fury was talking with Natasha, but when Coulson suddenly turned toward Kai instead, Fury's expression darkened.
After all, Coulson had once been one of Fury's most trusted subordinates. Who would've thought that in such a short period of working with Kai, Coulson would switch sides?
Yes—at least in Fury's eyes, that's exactly what happened.
Coulson's actions today made it clear: he'd thrown in with Kai.
Thankfully, Natasha hadn't done the same. She didn't immediately walk over to Kai like Coulson did—otherwise, Fury might've lost it entirely.
Still, he was furious. First, SHIELD had been infiltrated by Hydra. Now, Coulson—someone Fury had handpicked—was, in his view, "defecting." It was not a good day.
So when Natasha gave her report, Fury just sat there with a grim face, radiating boss energy while staying mostly silent.
Natasha, sharp as ever, picked up on what was going on. It was obvious: Fury kept glaring at Kai and Coulson like they'd personally betrayed him.
Smart as she was, Natasha understood what he was feeling—but she wasn't about to get involved in that drama. She finished her report and quietly stepped aside to wait and see what would happen next.
Soon, Kai began his pre-mission briefing. He explained how he and Steve discovered that Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD and laid out their plan: bring everyone together and wipe Hydra out in one move. Steve was determined—he didn't want a single Hydra agent slipping away.
After walking everyone through the entire backstory, Kai glanced at his phone.
It was a message from Gear.
The message said Hydra's recruitment had been completed—everyone with insider knowledge had been summoned back to SHIELD under Nick Fury's name. Right now, every last one of them was inside SHIELD headquarters.
As Kai read Gear's message, he knew: this was the moment.
He looked around the living room and said, "Everyone, the Hydras have all been called back to SHIELD. They're all in one place. It's the perfect time to act."
"Let's move according to the plan."
He didn't waste another second. The moment he made the announcement, everyone's mood shifted—no more casual chatter. Everyone snapped into mission mode.
Kai could tell from their expressions that this time, Hydra wasn't getting away.
Steve, especially, had been itching to go. Over the past two days while waiting for Coulson and Natasha to return, he'd been checking SHIELD's internal logs every few hours, tracking Hydra personnel.
Each time he confirmed they were still headed to SHIELD, he felt a little relief—but he kept checking, just in case.
After a heads-up from Nick Fury, Steve had also been keeping a particularly close eye on Alexander Pierce.
At first, Pierce didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He showed up to work, left on time—everything looked normal.
But as more Hydra operatives returned to SHIELD, Pierce finally started to sense that something wasn't right.
With Fury still missing after the attack, no one knew where he was. That left Pierce in a powerful position.
And sure enough, just as Pierce was considering what to do, he took over as acting head of SHIELD. It seemed like a reasonable move—he *had* been a former director, after all.
No one questioned it.
But in the following days, while handling SHIELD's operations, Pierce began noticing something strange.
Agents who'd been on extended leave or posted elsewhere were suddenly showing up at HQ—dozens of them. The place was getting crowded.
Pierce dug into the internal orders and discovered they'd come from Nick Fury's own clearance level. The message instructed all operatives with sensitive knowledge to return to base immediately.
That's when Pierce got suspicious.
The message had been issued after Fury's disappearance—did that mean Fury was still alive, watching him from the shadows?
Knowing Fury's style, Pierce figured it was likely.
He started piecing it together: Why call *those* agents back? Why now?
With help from his trusted subordinate, Crossbones, Pierce uncovered the truth—every operative called back under Fury's name was someone Hydra had quietly recruited over the years.
Hydra operated in strict top-down fashion. Even someone like Pierce didn't know every operative.
That discovery chilled him.
Suddenly, he could picture Fury's one-eyed stare—cold, unblinking, as if he were mocking him from the shadows.
Pierce realized something was off. Fury was setting a trap.
He returned to his office, trying to decide: should he flee?
If Fury was truly behind this, he wouldn't leave any loose ends.
Escape might be the only chance.
But then Pierce thought of all the effort he'd poured into Hydra's operations within SHIELD—the network, the control, the influence. Walking away from that was unthinkable.
He hesitated.
And that hesitation might be what doomed him.
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