15 February 2008
Lucius did not lose the smile after Maria Hill left the room.
He wanted them tired and irritated. More than that, he wanted them dead. After a considerable amount of suffering, of course.
He wanted every minute he stayed in the Triskelion to feel like a bureaucratic ulcer.
The collar around his neck hummed faintly. The metal table was bolted to the floor. The chair was heavy enough to discourage theatre and ugly enough to make a point. He studied all of it while keeping his breathing even.
Then he reached out again, cautiously this time.
No brute force.
No frying guards because he got curious.
He brushed at the nearest minds the way a man might test river water with his fingertips.
Surface thoughts only.
A guard outside was thinking about coffee gone cold.
Another was trying not to scratch under his vest.
Two floors away, a technician was wondering whether SHIELD would reimburse the broken glass of his car.
Lucius nearly laughed.
He eased back from the contact and waited.
Time worked for him now.
The anger returned the moment the quiet settled.
Not the theatrical kind he had shown Coulson before. That one had been deliberate, sharpened and displayed like a knife.
This one was colder.
They had taken his blood.
The thought returned again and again like a splinter under the skin. A needle pushed into his arm while he was unconscious. Tubes filled. Samples labelled. Databases updated.
Which meant his blood was now inside SHIELD's system.
And anything inside SHIELD's system eventually found its way somewhere else.
HYDRA.
His blood was now a specimen somewhere.
That alone was enough to make the quiet rage grow teeth.
He could leave right now. His powers were his and his alone. Not linked to an X-Gene. He could literally walk out of the building while they congratulated themselves on containing him. Leaving would be easy.
Which was precisely why he stayed. They needed to understand something first. Antagonising him had been a mistake.
They had taken him without consent. They had put a collar on his neck. They had drawn his blood like he was livestock. No offer they made after that would ever be an offer. It would be extortion with stationery.
The door opened.
Maria Hill stepped back inside with the same composed face and the same file. This time, she did not sit immediately. Coulson followed her a moment later, closed the door, and remained standing near the wall. He looked like the sort of man who preferred order and kept finding himself employed by chaos.
Lucius turned his head slowly.
"No lawyer yet," he said. "Off to a promising start."
Hill pulled out the chair and sat. Coulson stayed where he was.
"Mr Noctis," Hill began, "we are prepared to have a more direct conversation."
Lucius's smile sharpened.
"Oh, lovely. We are dropping the legal cosplay."
Hill ignored the line.
"SHIELD is prepared to offer you a cooperative arrangement. Protection from federal exposure, controlled commercial access, research facilities, funding and operational security. In exchange, you provide a stable supply of your products and assist in related biomedical research."
Lucius blinked at her once. Then he laughed.
A short, ugly sound of pure disbelief.
"Protection," he repeated. "From the people who smashed my window, gassed me in bed, put a collar on my neck, stole my blood, and dragged me across the country without a warrant worth wiping my arse with."
Hill kept her tone flat.
"You are in no position to romanticise your options."
Lucius leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
"I am in an excellent position to recognise terrorism when it climbs through my bedroom window," he replied. "You do not get to stage a home invasion, medically assault me, run unauthorised experiments on my blood, and then call the next phase cooperation."
Coulson spoke for the first time.
"No one is trying to romanticise this."
Lucius turned his head toward him.
"Good," he said. "Then let us be plain. You took blood from me without consent. That is experimentation. You can polish it all you want, Agent Coulson, but SHIELD still stuck a needle into a restrained man and started testing like a lab rat. If that is your standard procedure, then it seems you took over the mantle where HYDRA dropped it. At least add their brand to your logo."
Coulson's face changed like he had been slapped. Hill did not react. She had dealt with worse detainees than this.
"That comparison is inaccurate."
"It is generous," Lucius replied.
Hill opened the file.
"You are refusing the offer."
"I am rejecting the premise," Lucius said. "I would not cooperate with SHIELD if you offered me a palace, a private island, and a parade. From this point onward, I will not sell you LHP, LSP, or my own piss in a vial for ten billion dollars. You are done as customers."
Hill wrote something down.
"Noted."
Lucius's tone grew colder.
"Do note it carefully. Write it in block capitals if that helps. SHIELD kidnapped me, violated my body, searched my property, and then attempted to blackmail me into service. You will not get away with that. Not with me."
Hill's pen stopped.
"What exactly do you imagine happens next, Mr Noctis?"
Lucius answered immediately.
"I imagine I leave the United States the moment I am transferred to a legal institution instead of this floating vanity project. Then I imagine I spend the rest of my life making sure the terrorist organisation known as SHIELD gets every possible form of trouble it has earned."
Coulson shifted slightly.
"SHIELD is not a terrorist organisation."
Lucius looked at him with open contempt. "You broke into my house, stuck a needle in my arm, and now you want cooperation. That is adorable."
Hill sat back.
"You keep returning to the blood draw."
"Because it matters," Lucius snapped. "You stole my blood. What's next, harvesting my organs?"
No one spoke for a moment.
The camera in the corner blinked red.
Lucius lowered his voice again, not softer, just more poisonous.
"You want my expertise," he said. "You want my potions. You do not want a partnership. You want ownership. I am telling you now, clearly and on camera, it will not happen, never."
Hill closed the file.
"If you continue refusing, formal federal processing begins."
"Excellent," Lucius replied at once. "Please transfer me to an actual legal facility under the jurisdiction of the United States. Real charges. Real paperwork. Real counsel. I do not consent to detention here. I do not consent to SHIELD's authority over my person. I do not consent to any further medical procedures."
Coulson studied him.
"You understand that prison is not preferable to what we are offering."
Lucius turned to him fully.
"No," he said. "You misunderstand. I am not negotiating for comfort. I am refusing to legitimise you."
Hill tapped the folder once.
"You are being impractical."
Lucius smiled again.
"And you are wearing a human face over a criminal enterprise. We all cope differently."
The venom in the room rose another degree.
Hill stood first.
"Interview suspended."
Lucius laughed again.
Coulson spoke quietly.
"You should not assume we are your only problem."
Lucius's eyes flicked to him.
"You are the immediate one," he replied. "Do not worry. I can multitask."
Hill knocked on the door. Guards entered. The same one, Robert, stayed half a step too close, baton ready, expression sour.
Lucius looked at him and sighed.
"Hey, Robert."
Robert shoved the chair back harder than necessary.
"Move."
Lucius stood.
As they escorted him through the corridor, he did not attempt to lower his voice.
"You can keep the collar. You can keep the orange pyjamas. You can keep the room. None of that changes what you did. You people do realise that drawing blood from restrained mutants without consent is the kind of thing that ends up in documentaries with sad music."
One guard winced.
Robert's hand tightened on the baton.
"Shut up."
Lucius ignored him.
"And when I am transferred, I will make sure every federal office that matters receives a beautifully written complaint about SHIELD's charming bedside manner. I may even title it: Why You Should Not Let Secret Police Run Medical Ethics."
Robert shoved him into the cell.
Lucius caught himself on the bed frame and straightened.
The door slammed shut.
He turned back at once.
"Oh, and Robert," he called through the bars. "When this comes apart, I will still remember your name."
Robert stepped forward so fast that the other guard caught his arm.
"Leave it."
The two men walked away.
Lucius sat down on the narrow bed and let out a slow breath.
Good, every possible opportunity. That was the rule now. Every time they offered a hand, he would spit on their face. Every time they mentioned cooperation, he would call them thieves who stole his blood. Every time they said security, he would say terrorism.
He closed his eyes and brushed again at the nearest minds, more careful now.
-
In his office, Fury broke the silence first.
"He's not bluffing."
Hill crossed her arms.
"No."
"He's also not panicking. Which means pressure alone won't move him where we want." Coulson added.
Fury's jaw tightened.
"He compared us to HYDRA twice."
"He compared us to HYDRA because we black bagged him and drew blood without consent," Hill replied. "From his point of view, it is a clean line."
Fury turned to look at her.
"And from yours."
Hill did not flinch.
"Operationally necessary and politically inconvenient."
Coulson almost smiled.
"That may be the most accurate summary of the week."
Fury looked back at Lucius on the screen.
"So what now?"
Coulson answered first.
"Now he repeats the accusation every time we open the door. He's going to make the blood draw the centre of every conversation because he understands it's the one point we cannot moralise away."
Hill nodded.
"He's also demanding transfer to a lawful institution. Repeatedly. If he keeps doing that on record, he builds a narrative. If any of this ever surfaces, we become the people who ran an unsanctioned mutant detention site."
Fury's voice hardened.
"This never surfaces."
"No," Coulson replied, still watching the screen. "It never should. That's not the same thing."
Fury went quiet.
Hill opened the file again.
"He has drawn a hard line. No sales, cooperation, or research. No SHIELD relationship of any kind."
Fury exhaled once.
"Fine. If cooperation is dead, we move to containment."
Coulson finally turned from the feed.
"With respect, sir, that is the one thing he is counting on."
Fury's eye narrowed.
"What is he not counting on?"
Coulson considered that.
"Time," he said. "Or boredom. Men like him expect open hostility. They prepare for force. He may be harder to move if we keep hitting him. He may be easier to move if we make him sit with his own certainty until he starts looking for exits."
Hill closed the file.
"And if he does not."
Coulson glanced back at the cell feed.
Lucius sat on the bed.
--
Several floors above the detention level, another office watched the same situation from a different perspective.
Alexander Pierce listened to a brief report from a junior security officer who had been present near the holding block.
The guard finished awkwardly. "The detainee is… causing complications, sir."
Pierce rested his hands on the desk and gave the man a polite, reassuring smile.
"Complications are often educational," he replied.
The guard nodded once and left.
Pierce waited until the door closed before turning to the computer terminal on his desk.
A few keystrokes later the he was aware of who this fine gentleman was, what he could do and his slightly unfriendly stance against SHIELD.
Internal monitoring network opened. He navigated through the detention feeds until the correct camera appeared.
Lucius sat on the narrow bed in his holding cell.
Pierce leaned back in his chair and watched the playback from the earlier interrogations on another monitor.
He listened carefully to the accusations. To Noctis' complete refusal, and of course to the comparison to HYDRA.
Pierce's lips curved upward slightly.
"Interesting," he murmured.
A man who already hated SHIELD was not a problem. A man like that was an opportunity. He replayed the moment where Lucius spoke about the blood draw and watched the expression frame by frame. That anger was real, not performance.
Pierce closed the recording and picked up the phone.
"Send someone from internal security," he said when the line connected.
"Yes, sir."
"Begin preparing a legal extraction plan for Mr Noctis." There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.
"From detention, sir?"
Pierce allowed himself a thin smile.
"Yes."
He ended the call. Hydra had recovered many valuable assets before. There was no reason Mr Noctis could not become the next one. Pierce looked again, Lucius sitting calmly in the cell.