Update at Shield
While Tony and Peter spent the summer working on the suit, Maria was busy at Shield.
“He has a what in his chest?!?” Maria asked Sharon incredulously.
Sharon had returned the night before from her mission and the sweeping of Tony’s house for bugs. The cousins were currently in Maria’s office discussing Tony and eating lunch.
“He has an arc reactor in his chest that’s keeping shrapnel out of his heart. You really had no idea?” Sharon was still weirded out by it.
Maria shook her head. “No I did not, He neglected to tell me that when we talked the other night.”
“Well that makes sense.” Sharon said, taking a bite of her sandwich.
“How does that make sense? Maria asked, confused.
“He’s scared of you. Both of us are. Pretty sure the only one who isn’t scared of you is Peter.” Sharon answered as if it was common knowledge.
“Why are you scared of me?”
“You like to yell at us a lot. We figured you knew and enjoyed it.” Sharon said with a shrug.
Maria looked angrily at her cousin. “I do not enjoy being feared and I do not enjoy yelling!” Sharon simply raised an eyebrow in response. “Okay this does not count but its not my fault you and Tony tend to do stupid shit on a daily basis.”
Sharon snorted and muttered, “Such a mom.”
Before Maria could respond, her phone rang. “Hill.” She answered. “I’ll be right there.” She hung up and looked at Sharon who was watching her. “Meeting on Tony. You did leave that detector with him right?”
Sharon nodded her head. “He said he was going to figure out a way to integrate it with Jarvis so knowing him he’s probably already done that plus improved its design.”
“One can hope.” Maria muttered, leaving Sharron in her office alone.
Maria walked into the briefing room and sat down. The agent that Fury had placed in charge began going over Tony’s background from his childhood up. They detailed his parents death, something Maria had never really looked into, and how Tony had suddenly upped and moved into a more secluded property not long after. The briefing covered most of his activities in the 90’s and the seemingly out of the blue move to California in 2000. They showed a brief history of Mary Parker and how they suspected Tony was engaged to marry her.
When they got to a history on Peter, it took every bit of self-restraint that she had to not go up the front of the room and strangle him. They had all of his information from his birth as well as his daycare and his brief elementary school records. The only good thing was that they only had a handful of known photos of him. The most recent was the one from the other day when father and son were reunited.
She was brought out of her staring at the picture by the agent's voice. “All attempts to infiltrate the property in Malibu have been unsuccessful. The combination of the ex-military guards outside the house as of the past few months plus the A.I that Stark developed makes any attempt at getting inside undetected virtually impossible. The risk just far outweighs the reward right now. We need a timeline of what happened in Afghanistan from the moment he landed to the moment he took off three months later. Go over every debrief he did and look for any irregularities. The 10 Rings are not in the habit of just letting their prisoners go and the fact that Stark can’t tell us where he escaped from is a major red flag. Get to work, people.”
With that the room cleared out. As soon as Maria exited the room, she was met by the sight of Director Fury.
“Agent Hill. A word please?”
“Yes sir.” She responded.
“What were your thoughts on the briefing?” He asked as they walked down the hallway.
“Like it’s a waste of time sir.” She responded, hoping she could somehow convince him to drop the investigation while not blowing her cover. “Stark has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose if he turned traitor.”
“I agree but you have to admit, something odd happened over there. You more than anyone should know what the 10 Rings do to their prisoners.” Fury said, looking at her.
While on Maria’s first deployment, she was stationed at an outpost when they came under attack by the 10 Rings, although they didn’t know it at the time. Maria and two of her squad mates held off the attackers using the machine gun on a broken down humvee and their M4’s for nearly 3 hours before help could arrive. By the time reinforcements arrived, out of nearly 75 Marines 10 were dead, 40 were to wounded to continue to fight, and five were taken. Maria and those that were still able to fight, went on a search and rescue mission for them. It took nearly a week of searching but by the time they found and killed the 10 Rings group that had attacked them, they had already tortured and beheaded the captured Marines.
“No sir. You do not.” She agreed quietly.
“Look.” He stopped and looked at her. “You are in there because no one else has as much experience with the Rings as you do. If you can piece together what happened before they can, do it. But until we know what actually happened, we have to chase down every angle.
“Understood sir.” She said dejectedly.