Logs:Gift Horse

Gift Horse
Dramatis Personae Fury, Rasheed	2023-07-17 "This is an unexpected pleasure."
Location <NYC> S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ - Director's Office - Times Square
This corner office is big, bright and airy, which is not cheap to come by in midtown Manhattan. On one side, a huge glass desk sits in front of the floor-to-ceiling window looking out over Times Square. The far corner has a leather couch, a coffee table, a liquor cabinet and a sideboard, but the rest of the floor space was left open between bookshelves. "This is an unexpected pleasure," Nick Fury is telling his visitor. "I'm no scientist, but I understand you're something of a rock star in certain circles. Can I interest you in coffee, or something else to drink?" He's ambling over to the overengineered coffee machine on the sideboard regardless of the answer. "Some of my agents down in sci-tech would love to pick your brain, or divulge confidential research for your validation, or possibly just get you to autograph their lab coats. So..." He turns and studies Rasheed, his single eye keen with interest. "How can I help you today, Dr. Toure?" Rasheed's hands are folded in front of him, both curled around the handle of his briefcase, and he is drifting on autopilot towards the bookshelves. He checks himself at the offer, turns, lifts one hand in a quiet demurral. "Thank you, Director, no, I'm fine." He shakes his head, hand once more clasping atop the other. "Well, you all keep your actual work fairly hush-hush but in the community word has gotten out that you have quite the talent, I'm sure they're the kind of people I --" Something pauses him, here, with a press of lips and a soft huff of breath. "The organization I oversee has been going through a number of difficulties, recently. My supervisors don't want to hear it yet, but the writing's been on the wall in neon for a long time now. Unfortunately there are many -- many other groups who are well aware of the upheaval that's about to happen and --" His brows pinch, head dipping just a fraction. "We deal with a lot of research, a lot of technical advances that -- there's a lot of people out there who could put some of our work to some very dangerous uses. Your organization here is tasked with monitoring and balking global threats, right?" Fury fetches a mug, presses a button, then listens to Rasheed attentively while the coffee machine works. "That is our lofty-ass mandate from the UN, which the Security Council regularly expects me to carry out blindfolded with both my hands tied behind my back. Now, you say 'the organization you oversee,'" he echoes thoughtfully. "Might be I missed a memo somewhere, but I take it you ain't talking about Common Ground Clinic." It's not a question. When the machine chimes, he takes the mug and returns to his desk. "What kind of difficulties are we talking about here?" "Oh," comes out a little startled, Rasheed's eyes darting toward Fury. He drifts over to the desk, setting his hand on the back of the chair opposite Fury's but not taking it. "If only my problems were still in the realm of convincing the city council to let us put up harm-reduction vending machines." His fingers squeeze down at the chair, brief. "Instead I've got a slew of wrongfully detained children and everyone from HAMMER to AIM clanging at the gates for the tech we're sitting on before the whole thing goes up in flames." His voice is a little tighter, here, his eyes a little more pinched, though his gaze now settles on Fury steadily. "Prometheus has revolutionized the scientific landscape, but when it folds it is not only groundbreaking new medicine or better guns that will be looking for a new home. For a few of our projects -- well. Getting them into some careful hands might stand between this and open civil war." Fury settles into his high-backed chair and lifts his mug -- then freezes and stares past it at Rasheed. His expression doesn't change when he puts the coffee down unsipped, nor when he swipe-taps something on the surface of his desk, not even when he produces an unnecessarily large pistol and sets it down so carefully it hardly clicks against the glass. "Well, shit," he says conversationally, "you have got balls of steel, I'll grant you that. Ain't you friends with --" The rest of that sentence escapes him in a scoff. "I know Uncle Sam won't hand you over to stand trial for crimes against humanity, but your ass is on International soil now, and you best sit it down before someone puts a boot in it." He leans forward, braces his elbows on the desk, and laces his fingers together. "First, let them kids go, then we can talk." Rasheed's eyes drop to the gun, pupils gone slightly wider, and for a beat -- just a beat -- he is very still. Then his breath comes out (dry, almost a laugh), and he settles himself in an slump of ungainly limbs down into the seat. His hands fold atop his briefcase, his head inclining. "It's always that easy, isn't it? I expect you'll be releasing your Holland, then, right after I release mine?" Fury's eyebrows lift, just uneven enough to make him flatly unimpressed. "Really? I ain't making excuses for my shitshow, but it don't hardly compare with disappearing thousands of people and torturing them for life. How 'bout we walk on over and ask Holland the Elder his opinion?" He sits up straighter -- like he's actually contemplating this threat -- his face twisting with disgust. "I don't give a flying fuck if it's easy. You going down one way or another when the shit hits the fan, but do this my way and you might at least live to see a day in court." Rasheed has propped his elbow on his armrest, two fingers rubbing slowly at his temples as Fury speaks; the motion pulls one eye slightly slanted as he watches the other man. "Mmm, yeah, I can see how him putting a laser right through me on your watch would make this whole situation much better for everyone. You, him, the inmates in my facilities who'd probably end up under -- Captain Rogers is very eager." He drops his hand to his briefcase, and -- eying the gun for just a moment -- sets it in very (very) clear view on the desk before unzipping a compartment. Taking out a small handheld device -- it doesn't look like a weapon, it looks like someone made it up for the set of Star Trek, a little scanner that at the moment is, under the splay of his long fingers, scanning absolutely nothing. "You know, a lot of people have speculated on what rapid mutant detection would do if it were possible. Unfortunately, we cracked that long ago -- it's a disaster, nobody, least of all the goddamn American government, actually wants rapid X-Gene testing. Can you imagine the panic, the witch hunts, once we turned this on to discover that the Vice President, or the Defense Secretary, or Iron Man or your grandma actually carried the X-Gene. Of course, once I'm hung, the next person in charge -- and can you imagine the type of person champing at the bit to fill that position? -- will be excited to make bank off of that nightmare -- or this one." His fingers drum lightly against the silent device. "Which is what they actually want -- a test for mutant powers, not mutant genes." "Captain --" Fury's eye narrows. "Ah, Malthus. That motherfucker been disgraced, but I don't think it'll take you getting lasered -- or shot, or disappeared, or dragged before International court -- for him to get a piece of the action." He starts to reach for his coffee again, but reroutes when Rasheed goes to open his case and picks up the Desert Eagle instead. He does not take aim at his guest, does not put his finger on the trigger, just keeps it pointed at the ceiling with his thumb on the safety through the show-and-tell. This time, his poker face does not hold. He sits up straighter, stashes the gun back whence he'd conjured it, and stares at the device the way he might a bomb. Then again, perhaps he would just scowl at a bomb. "Goddamn," he says at last, and the absence of bluster makes it sound much more dire and intense than his habitual profanity. "You got a whole lot of labs and a whole lot more labcoats." Not an accusation this time, just a statement. "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, you think you can smuggle shit like this out and destroy whatever your successor would need to recreate it?" "I have a whole lotta labs in a whole lotta turmoil," Rasheed replies with an upturned splay of hands that soon drop back to rest atop his briefcase and the potent not-a-bomb atop it. "If some critical pieces of information are lost in the chaos --" His forefinger taps light against the side of the scanner. "Well. Prometheus became a lot of things I never intended it. I'd rather not add the beginning of a genocide to that list." Fury runs his hand over his smooth pate. "Aight. This shit stays off the record. You deal with me and me alone." He produces a clamshell phone in a frosted plastic zip bag -- presumably from the same Secret Spy Stash where he keeps the giant handgun -- and slides it across the desk to Rasheed. "There's one number on there. Don't use it for nothing else. This conversation? Never happened. You're here as a consultant." He does not give this very much consideration before elaborating, "On the impact of suppression drugs on Kevin Ford's health. Medical care for a minor under UN supervision is strictly confidential, I don't even need to classify it." He levels a hard stare at Rasheed. "Ain't no point warning you not to fuck with me, is there?" Rasheed exhales heavily through his nose, and when he pushes himself out of the seat its with the same ungainly unfolding he got into it, limbs looking somehow as ill-fitting as the drape of his suit on his slouched shoulders. His stepping out from behind the table, meeting Fury's stare with an equanimity that's growing haggard around its edges. "Sure. I'll call, then. Get you the schematics, instructions, and -- a few other volatile pieces." He takes the phone, disappears it into the flap of his briefcase as he nudges the handheld scanner towards Fury. "I can, of course, only guarantee they stay buried to a point. My will already makes provisions for where this data should go, just in case anyone gets ideas." His head inclines just slightly; there's no gun to look at anymore but his eyes have drifted, brief, in its direction. Then he's straightening, resettling his shoulders loose and his head a little higher. "I can consult with your medical team before I go. Good day, Director Fury." Fury's eyebrows shoot up again. "Well, I reckon you don't get to be a brain surgeon without at least a few brain cells to rub together yourself." His tone is cavalier and almost admiring. Almost. "But a dead man's switch won't save you from them as don't know about it. Like say, some of your friends, once they realize you're the one been torturing and weaponizing them." He studies the scanner, but does not touch it, and very near immediately looks back up at Rasheed, though his expression betrays no further surprise. "You play nice with me, I might have better arrangements for your safety than burning the world down in the event of your unfortunate demise." He does not rise to see his guest out. "Watch yourself, Doctor Toure." He does not move for a good long while after the door closes behind Rasheed, and when he does it's only to pull out a pair of (black) nitrile gloves and gingerly nudge the scanner on his desk into a heavy gauge plastic bag. He tips his head back glares at the ceiling -- or something or someone beyond it, to whom all he has to say at the moment is, "Motherfucker."