Madam Gao was dead.
A single sniper round had taken her, clean through the head, leaving nothing that panacea could work with. The vial that David had ensured every senior Imperial Heavy Industries personnel carried had not been enough. Could not have been enough. There are wounds that close on their own, and there are wounds that simply end things, and this had been the latter.
The management structure of Imperial Heavy Industries had always been quietly unusual. After the previous chief executive had been removed by David on grounds of insufficient loyalty, the search for a replacement had produced a young woman: highly educated, professionally capable, and completely without the kind of organizational weight that would have made her dangerous. She sat in the visible chair. She signed what she was directed to sign. She attended functions and presented well and understood, at some level, that her role was to be the face of something that had a different face in private.
That private face had been Madam Gao. Loyal, experienced, discreet, and genuinely effective. Under David's remote coordination, she had been the actual operating authority of Imperial Heavy Industries for months. The company had run smoothly because of her.
Now she was gone, and the shot had been precise enough that it felt like a message.
Nolan had been at the metal round table when David informed him. He was still in the vibranium power armor, and he stood slowly, the servos in the suit moving with a low hum, and looked at David with eyes that were not showing much of what was happening behind them.
"Madam Gao is dead," he said. Not a question. Processing.
Then: "Inform the Lamenters Company. I want an assault team and a Stormtrooper team ready to move. Notify Natasha. She is to accompany us."
"As you command, my lord."
David's eyes flickered with blue light as it began coordinating the deployment. If there was something in its bearing that went beyond duty into something closer to anger, it did not say so. But the efficiency with which it moved was sharper than usual, the kind of precision that a man of iron applied when it had something to prove to itself about its own competence.
Half an hour later, two Thunderhawk transports lifted off the platform in a deep rumble that shook the air above Second Son Island, nosed upward through the low cloud layer, and accelerated northeast toward the Americas.
Inside the cabin, the light was dim and the vibration of the displacement engines was constant. The Lamenters in Terminator plate occupied most of the available floor space; in the low cabin lighting, with their bulk and their silence, they resembled a row of metal monoliths bolted to the deck.
Natasha had tied her red hair back without ceremony and taken a seat across the aisle. She had been given the summary of the situation in a few sentences. She sat with it for a moment, then looked across at Nolan.
"Lord Primarch. Do you have a theory?"
Nolan kept his eyes forward, half-closed. He took a slow breath before answering.
"The last senior Hydra leader on the continent was found dead in his home not long ago. Heart attack. Tony attended the proceedings personally, as required by the tribunal, and notified me as agreed. Hydra's operational capacity has been stripped nearly to nothing by Tony and Thor. They do not have the remaining manpower to mount something like this."
A pause.
"David's recent reports on S.H.I.E.L.D. indicate internal instability. Rogers and Fury are contesting legitimate authority within the organization. At the moment, Rogers holds the advantage due to the weight of the Captain America identity. Based on that situation, my working suspicion is that someone is attempting to draw us into a direct conflict with official forces. An escalation they can point to."
He turned his head slightly.
"But that conclusion only holds if the other party already knows that Imperial Heavy Industries is connected to us. Which means they have done intelligence work on us. And they have concluded that the assassination of Madam Gao would produce a visible operational response from our side. Possibly a response that puts us at odds with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the authorities."
Natasha was quiet for a moment, her thumb pressed against her lower lip. Then she shook her head once.
"I know Fury's methods well enough. He likes indirect approaches and unconventional angles, but not this. Assassination of organizational leadership to provoke a reaction is not how he operates. It is not how he thinks." She paused. "I cannot explain exactly why I am confident in that. Put it down to the kind of instinct an agent develops after years in the field. Something else is at work here."
"These are still guesses," Nolan said. "We look at the scene first. Then we investigate."
He closed his eyes again. Natasha pressed her fingers to her forehead and thought.
Imperial Heavy Industries' headquarters occupied a substantial portion of rebuilt Staten Island. The island had been transformed in the years since the reconstruction: the commercial district surrounding the headquarters was prosperous in the specific way that followed when a single well-resourced entity decided to invest seriously in a place and then stayed. Property rights in the surrounding area were largely held by Imperial Heavy Industries, the arrangement that had emerged from rebuilding homes that the local population had not been able to rebuild themselves. The local police station was funded through the headquarters' security division. The island functioned, to a meaningful degree, as Nolan's private territory wearing the face of a corporation.
The Thunderhawks set down on the approach to the headquarters building with the kind of ground-shaking heaviness that twenty-five meter transports produced regardless of how carefully they landed. The cabin doors opened.
The Lamenters stepped out.
The reception staff on duty absorbed this with the slightly stunned resilience of people who worked near a building that occasionally had unusual things arrive at it. Tony Stark had been doing what Tony Stark did for long enough that New Yorkers had recalibrated their baseline for strange. The uniformed reception team recovered within a few seconds, straightened up, and moved forward to greet the delegation with professionally maintained smiles.
Nolan and Natasha came out behind the Lamenters.
A woman in a mink coat was already waiting at the edge of the reception group. Silver hair, precise posture, the way of standing that said she was trained for situations where the wrong movement produced consequences. She had been watching the transports come in.
"My lord," David said, stepping forward. "This is Silver Sablinova, the director of Imperial Heavy Industries' security department. Designation: Silver Sable."
Silver Sable's eyes moved across David's metal frame with professional care, then settled on Nolan. She extended a hand and offered a smile that was correct in every technical detail.
"Mr. David. Mr. Nolan. Welcome to Imperial Heavy Industries."
Nolan's gaze had already drifted to the nearest cluster of employees with their phones raised, trying for an angle on the Lamenters.
"Appreciated." He turned his chin toward David without looking at Silver Sable. "Clear the area. All non-essential personnel. Full radius."
Every mobile device within a kilometer went dark in the same instant. The employees blinked at dead screens, then at each other. Silver Sable had already read the room. She lifted a hand toward her security team, and the well-trained men moved immediately, efficiently redirecting every civilian employee away from the reception area without making it look like the force it technically was.
"My apologies," Silver Sable said. "Our employees are civilians. The security team can only ask so much of them in a moment like this." A brief pause. "And I deeply regret what happened to Madam Gao."
She turned and gestured toward the building entrance.
"Please follow me. The scene has been secured since the incident. Nothing has been disturbed."
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