"Wait, Hydra even has men among senate?" Barton blurted.
"Hydra has members serving at the World Council too. Gideon Mallick." Liam replied. This made everyone shiver. While Rogers was getting angry on every turn. He hadn't brought his shield or else he would have laid waste to this place.
Natasha and Tony were rather looking at the obscure videos where both of them had some kind of encounters with Winter Soldier. One was in Baghdad, where Natasha was shot once. While the other video showed the parents of Tony where they were being assassinated.
He was beyond furious. He didn't think Hydra would be related to him too. He started typing in commands on the keyboard furiously. He wanted to know more about Winter Soldier but sadly there were not many documents on them. Only that they were being brainwashed by Hydra since a long time and were now held in Russia. Hydra believed in compartmentalization so not all secrets would be in a single place. But Zola did have one important thing.
Names of all Hydra affiliated members. Starting from the lowest to the highest. All around the globe. It was done so for the Hellicarrier cleansing mission. This was also the reason why Liam had asked Tony to bring his toy which could copy all the data from Zola, because with it they could target Hydra and they wouldn't even know what hit them.
Liam wanted the names and he took specific measures for this.
"Told you, shouldn't have brought Rogers." Liam commented. Fury clenched his fists. He was shaking in anger. He had never expected that even his own mentor Alexander Pierce was from Hydra as he had seen his name too. He felt his life work was in shambles and all the work he did was for nothing.
"I want SHIELD to be destroyed." Tony declared.
A heavy silence fell over the room. Tony's declaration wasn't just a statement—it was a demand, one that resonated with almost everyone present. Rogers nodded sharply, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it might crack. Barton exhaled through his nose, arms crossed, already running through scenarios in his mind. Even Natasha, who had spent her career playing every side to survive, looked as though she was considering it.
"You're angry. You have every right to be. But tearing SHIELD down entirely? That's not just cutting out the rot—it's burning down the whole damn house, with innocent people still inside." Fury retorted.
"There is no SHIELD," Rogers shot back. "It's Hydra, wearing SHIELD's face."
"There are still good agents," Fury countered. "People who believe in what SHIELD was supposed to be. People who have no idea who they're really working for. You bring the whole thing down, and you don't just destroy Hydra. You leave the world defenseless."
"Oh yeah? Because SHIELD has done such a bang-up job keeping the world safe." Tony said.
"Listen to me," Fury snapped. "Hydra has spent decades embedding itself in SHIELD, in the government, in the world's power structures. If you go in guns blazing, you tip them off, and they scatter. You won't wipe them out—you'll just drive them further underground. They'll rebuild. They always do."
"So what? We just let them keep their seats at the table?" Barton said.
"No," Fury said, his voice low. "We take them out. One by one. Quietly. We cut the head off the snake in the dark, before it even knows it's bleeding."
The room fell into a tense silence.
"So what, we just trust you to handle it?"
"I don't expect you to trust me," Fury admitted. "But I expect you to understand that this fight isn't won by throwing a punch. It's won by making sure the other guy never gets back up."
Everyone was still unconvinced but Fury's words were right. If they went out with all guns blazing it would be just be innocents in the crossfire. Liam didn't bother to engage himself in this. He wasn't interested, he just wanted to retaliate back once he was called to the hearing and he did so in the most brutal way possible. Hydra was just a small ant trying to move a tree. A tree so big that the ant didn't have any idea about.
Fury spoke about how the Avengers, yes Fury had decided to call them that could help in this regard and just kill Hydra little by little. By not alerting. It was here where Liam spoke about his ability to dominate. This made everyone gulp down their throat.
"I can't dominate everyone. Only the ones who are weak minded. Like it would be incredibly difficult to control Rogers here as his will is very strong and I think it goes for Tony and Fury too. Natasha too I hope. So I will only control low level people and let them work for us instead. If we just start plucking Hydra agents they will be alerted. Why not let them take each other out." Liam said.
"Remind me not to be ever on your bad side." Barton replied, while Liam just shrugged his shoulders. Fury gave them a rough idea. And their first experiment with the Senate member who would be on the hearing.
Fury gave them a rough plan of what needed to be done and slowly kill Hydra. Everyone chipped their own ideas and while they did so they saw Zola dying. Tony had killed him by destroying all the codes after copying everything. Though the original Zola was finally dead, Tony would emulate a fake Zola to keep up the facade. It wouldn't take him much time to emulate a fake one since he already had the data to start with.
He just needed to tweak.
"Winter Soldier is mine." Tony declared by the end and everyone agreed. Except Liam. He didn't react at all.
"Yawn.. Can we go back." Liam said as it was night and he was a bit sleepy.
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Read 30 chapters ahead on my p@treon.com/thelightedghost