Adirondack Mountains, S.H.I.E.L.D. base. A monitoring room with hundreds of screens, a dozen sentinels on duty around the clock.
Dressed in a hip-hugging skirt and white blouse, looking every bit the high-powered executive, Black Widow—Natasha—used her body to shield the data receiver/transmitter she'd plugged into one of the computers.
She kept the sentinel she was manipulating at ease with casual, offhand conversation while silently counting seconds in her head.
One minute. That was all it would take for Black Widow to package and send the full Tesseract data to Crossbones waiting outside.
The Tesseract files were stored on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal LAN; Natasha's operation wouldn't trip a single alarm.
It certainly wouldn't be noticed by the firewall Nick Fury had commissioned from playboy Tony Stark a while back.
But as the receiver/transmitter ticked into its final countdown, Black Widow spotted a problem.
On an auxiliary screen monitoring internal LAN server performance, the indicator for network latency in the cooling-system zone showed a fluctuation—minuscule, almost negligible.
It was within normal parameters, but Black Widow had received the harshest training. On missions she possessed animal instincts, or rather, counter-surveillance instincts.
The last time those instincts had saved her in the Cube prison: she'd detected Hawkeye tailing her and immediately turned the tables, framing him as a "Hydra spy."
This time, Black Widow instantly realized something was wrong with the cooling-system network.
"Natasha, give me two months! Two months and this shift rotation ends—I'll get half a month off," the sentinel named Meyer was still hovering at her side. "How about a trip to Miami together?"
Black Widow Natasha frowned inwardly. Meyer was standing too close, and the others were watching them for entertainment.
She was trying to figure out how to get rid of him so she could unplug the receiver/transmitter hidden behind her.
The cooling-system fluctuation gave her the perfect distraction. She pointed at the auxiliary screen:
"Guys, we've got a problem over there."
Any anomaly in a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility could mean losses in the tens or hundreds of millions. The instant Black Widow spoke, every head swiveled toward the screen.
"Just a normal fluctuation—but since the ever-charming Black Widow flagged it, let's run a full sweep of the cooling-system zone."
The sentinels in the monitoring room spoke up, then dove into their tasks.
"Network status normal—no signs of firewall breach."
"Running low-level hardware diagnostics on the cooling-system network."
"Contacting patrol—send a team to the cooling zone for a physical check."
"....."
A rapid-fire string of orders went out from the monitoring room. Black Widow Natasha watched the sentinels and silently counted:
"Nine, eight, seven…"
When the countdown hit zero, her theft of the Tesseract data would be complete.
S.H.I.E.L.D. internal LAN server cooling-system zone.
The exact moment Black Widow plugged her receiver/transmitter into the monitoring-room port and began pulling data, Batman detected an ultra-stealthy, encrypted, non-standard protocol data stream.
Under normal circumstances, such a stream could be an internal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent accessing the LAN.
But Batman always planned for the worst-case scenario, such as:
"Besides me, someone else is inside the base right now—or there's a technician far beyond my skill who's already spotted me."
Batman didn't panic. He'd prepared for this contingency before infiltration.
He didn't intercept the stream—that might flag it as internal traffic. Instead, he used the Batcomputer to reverse-trace the flow, instantly pulling source IP, destination IP, packet size, transmission frequency—everything.
"Origin: monitoring room inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. base. Transmission from a read device in the internal LAN server room. Receiver… a data receiver/transmitter?"
Batman's brow furrowed. Almost on reflex, he slipped a tracking virus into the stream.
At that same moment, the deeper hardware diagnostics Black Widow had triggered came knocking.
This time Batman left the probe untouched. The man-in-the-middle device he'd planted in the cooling system was self-powered; no network scan would ever detect it.
Tap-tap-tap…
The only remaining risk was a physical team arriving for an on-site sweep. Batman needed to be gone before they showed up and stow away on the vegetable truck.
Footsteps approached from the distance. Batman showed no alarm. He followed the pre-planned extraction route, moving swiftly toward the base's food-storage sector.
The vegetable truck sat quietly in the peripheral staging area. Batman fired a line of black silk, slipping soundlessly beneath the chassis. He gripped the corners of his cape with both hands, then locked onto the undercarriage.
Vmm—
The instant Batman was in position, the truck eased forward, rolling toward the outer gate.
At the exact same second, Batman activated the man-in-the-middle hardware in the cooling system, precisely modulating coolant flow to induce a microscopic, near-impossible-to-replicate processor error.
The moment that error occurred, the S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite Batman had pre-hacked received its command.
Oracle AI was already primed. The moment the satellite acknowledged, Oracle launched a sweeping query across Stark Industries weapon handlers, departments—everything.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
"Bruce, all Stark weapon handler data compiled."
The instant Oracle finished speaking, the vegetable truck cleared the outer perimeter and accelerated toward New York.
"Meyer, find anything?"
Back in the monitoring room, Black Widow Natasha quietly unplugged the receiver/transmitter and tucked it against her thigh inside the hip-hugging skirt.
Mission accomplished. The Tesseract files were already in the hands of Crossbones—Brock Rumlow—waiting outside. They would soon be secured and transported to a Hydra base.
Natasha exhaled, tone light as she addressed the sentinel who'd been forced to scramble over the cooling fluctuation.
Meyer shook his head. He looked pale, even though the cooling-system screen wasn't his station.
"The fluctuation you flagged at the start happened again just now."
"Looks like overtime for the foreseeable future."
Black Widow ignored Meyer, moved to the cooling-zone monitor for a closer look, then hurried off.
"Natasha, where are you going?" Meyer called softly behind her.
"Cooling zone. Checking it myself." Her reply drifted back from down the hall.
The LAN server room wasn't large. By the time Natasha arrived, the inspection team had already left—finding nothing.
But a hunch gnawed at her. She flipped on every light and searched inch by inch, leaving no corner unchecked.
Nearly an hour later, she found Batman's man-in-the-middle device on the coolant delivery pipe.
"Real slick, S.H.I.E.L.D. got breached by a ghost."
Black Widow wasn't stupid. She quickly grasped that the device manipulated coolant flow. After a moment's thought, she gave a cold laugh and muttered under her breath.
She plucked the hardware free, about to destroy it along with her own receiver/transmitter hidden beneath her skirt—then froze.
If this intruder could physically breach S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal LAN, could they also have detected her Tesseract transmission in the monitoring room?
Black Widow couldn't take the chance. She raced back to her quarters. She was about to message Crossbones—Brock Rumlow—when another realization hit.
She and Rumlow had never met or communicated during this op; everything was orchestrated by Hydra.
If the intruder had spotted her move and slipped a tracker into the data Rumlow received…
The Tesseract files wouldn't just be compromised or leaked—the moment Rumlow reached the Hydra base, the entire facility would be exposed.
Black Widow's face turned ugly.
Four hours later, Batman—still clinging motionless beneath the vegetable truck—finally let go.
He'd ridden all the way into New York City, then used his grapple to swing back to the City Hall subway station.
Thud!
Footsteps echoed in the tunnel. Venom lifted its head from the terrarium, eyeing the mud-caked Batman with curiosity.
Batman ignored Venom. He didn't even remove the suit. He ordered Oracle to collate the data immediately.
He'd planted a virus in the other data stream inside S.H.I.E.L.D., but the receiver terminal hadn't activated yet.
First priority: Stark weapon intel.
The files showed the batch that had left S.H.I.E.L.D., been transported by Aegis Security, and ended up with the Kingpin had followed every regulation. The handler was a senior Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Garrett.
Garrett's action reports were flawless—yet the weapons had still hit the streets.
This wasn't simple corruption. It was a tightly structured, deeply buried internal organization.
They operated with caution, using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own legal pipelines as cover, conducting everything offline, leaving no direct digital trail.
Hydra.
"Stark's weapons are leaking because of Hydra?" Batman clenched his fist at the compiled evidence.
He now held an airtight chain proving Stark weapons reached the black market. He could hand it to Tony—maybe wake him up.
But Batman didn't. The memory was fresh: earlier that day, trying to warn Tony Stark, the man had reflexively shrugged off responsibility and handed it to the legal team.
Even if Batman dropped the Peter Parker identity, showed up in the Arkham suit, and shoved the proof in Tony's face, Tony would still "handle it internally."
That would only spook the snake, let Hydra burrow deeper.
Batman needed a killing blow to dismantle the entire pipeline—not just a wake-up call for Tony.
He needed a commercial strike to halt Tony Stark's arms production, at the very least cut off supply to the military and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Batman didn't believe Garrett was Hydra's only mole inside S.H.I.E.L.D., nor that S.H.I.E.L.D. was the only conduit for Stark weapons.
That afternoon in Stark Tower, the bullet on TV from the Queens precinct had been a completely different Stark model from the ones Batman had traced.
That was proof enough: Hydra had tendrils in S.H.I.E.L.D., the military, possibly even inside Stark Industries itself. Batman would need extreme measures.
As the operation launched from the City Hall station, scenes of meeting Tony Stark flashed through his mind.
Every time, Tony raised a glass, invited Batman for a drink, cracked jokes. Even when Batman lowballed the price on that half-finished AI model, Tony hadn't batted an eye.
He'd promoted Happy Hogan to bodyguard/driver, handed Batman the S.H.I.E.L.D. firewall contract.
When he developed a new missile—thought it would make money—he invited Batman to join the project, though Batman refused.
Batman could feel it: beneath the sharp tongue and the drinking, the playboy genuinely saw him as "someone I can actually talk to."
A thin thread of real friendship.
Batman knew that once he pulled the trigger—crashed Stark's arms business, tanked the stock, canceled orders—the fallout wouldn't just hit Tony.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Stark Industries workers—assembly-line techs, secretaries, R&D staff—would lose their jobs, their families thrown into chaos.
Batman would set up an anonymous relief fund for every displaced Stark employee.
But whether Tony ever learned "Batman is Peter Parker" or not, the odds were high their contact would end forever.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Bruce? This could destroy him."
As Batman fired off anonymous tips to the SEC and DoD, using AI to spin an army of bot accounts to whip up public outrage, Oracle spoke.
After a long silence, Batman's voice dropped lower:
"I might lose the one person I can talk to about anything… forever. But if I don't, his weapons will destroy far more lives."
"This is the necessary evil I have to shoulder."
"I'd rather he live and hate me than die and have me pretend at his funeral that we were ever friends."
"Execute the plan, Barbara."
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