Chapter 34
No sooner had Fury ended the call with Coulson than Jasper's phone rang.
"Jasper?" Felix said as soon as he picked up and put it on speaker. He hesitated, really not wanting to ask this. Victoria had been fine, Coulson had said she was doing fine, and it sounded like she was well on the way to recovery the day before, but when he had seen the paper this morning…. Pneumonia, maybe? She would be at high risk for that after how high her fever had went. Had pneumonia set in and caused her to slip away during the night? But why hadn't anyone called to tell him? She was his friend too! "Victoria, the article in the paper this morning, is she…." The president said he was attending her funeral, though. Wouldn't the president have to have had her death confirmed before he made plans like that? "What happened? She was getting better!"
"She still is. Temperature's down to 100 and she was able to talk to John on the phone." Jasper said.
"What?" Felix's jaw dropped at the news. At first he had wanted to believe it was another mistake, but the president said he was attending Victoria's funeral, and there was an eulogy from Fury in the paper. "Director, you put her eulogy in the paper, and she isn't…."
"I apparently attached the eulogy to a message updating the WSC on the fact that the sick agents are recovering, and we caught the person responsible for the defective shots. Only the WSC being the geniuses they are, skipped reading my message entirely and decided to forward the eulogy to the Washington Post instead." Fury still couldn't believe they had done that. He knew that the people on the WSC weren't the brightest, they had tried to bomb Manhattan after all, but he had clearly labeled that message a positive update! How could they not figure that there was a fast difference between a message title with positive clearly spelled out and an attached eulogy for one of his level 8 senior agents? Anyone with any common sense would have thought to call and double-check instead of forwarding the thing to the newspapers.
"She's… What are you going to do about getting this mess straightened out then?" Felix asked. "Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow! How did they plan her funeral without a body? And with all of Shield in lock-down?"
"I wish I knew what the funeral home was thinking." Fury muttered. "We're working on getting things straightened out, if a few people would take my calls." He looked at his clock. Ten now, They had less than twenty-four hours to get this fixed and get that funeral cancelled.
"The funeral might not be the biggest problem we have." Maria said as she put her phone down and looked at him with worry plain in her eyes. "I pulled up the information on Victoria's family and tried them myself. I'm not getting an answer, and when I checked I spotted a message about the police and an ambulance being dispatched."
"We killed her family?" Jasper moaned. Victoria was going to be furious when she found out they had given her up for dead and had been planning her funeral, but if they had killed her family… How could they ever tell her? Victoria was…. Well, she was Victoria, but waking up and finding out that your entire family was killed by incorrect bad news while you were sleeping off the flu, first she would kill them and then she would probably end up in a mental institution for the rest of her life from the trauma. "What have we done?"
"It might not be that bad. There are reporters trying to get an interview with her family. I saw them swarming like vultures on GNN." Felix said from the phone. "Possibly one or more of them managed to have an accident that called for an ambulance, and hopefully for a long stay in jail afterwards."
Let it be the reporters. Let it be an injured reporter or a dead reporter. Fury had no clue how he would ever break it to Victoria if her family was dead thanks to an insane mix-up.
"We need to get someone out there to let them know she's okay. Can't we drop the lock-down? We know what happened with the shots." Jasper asked.
"We know what happened, but we're still not sure which agents are vulnerable and which agents are safe." Fury picked up his phone and dialed a number. "Ms. Potts, this is Director Nick Fury."
A moment later he held the phone away from his ear. Apparently Stark had already called and updated her on the Phil situation. "Ms. Potts? Yes, I understand that you're upset about the situation with Agent Coulson. I will be happy to explain the entire situation later but…."
"Oh, I'm just dying to hear the explanation for faking Coulson's death and lying about it." a voice from the door said, and Fury looked up to find Natasha standing there, with a look on her face that would have dropped most men dead in their tracks.
Dead, he was definitely dead. And after the mess he had made, he was fairly sure he deserved it. "Could you at least let me arrange for someone to check and make sure Victoria's family know she's okay before you do whatever you're going to do?" And if something had happened to them due to the false reports of her demise, maybe Natasha killing him would be quicker than what Victoria would do once she found out that she had been rendered an orphan.