Evenson didn’t bother with pleasantries.
He shut the office door behind him, strode over to the couch, dropped into it like he owned the place, crossed one leg over the other, and looked straight at Nick Fury.
"Tell me something," he said. "Didn’t that nuclear missile strike you as... incredibly suspicious?"
Fury rose without answering. He walked to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle filled with amber liquid.
"Have a drink."
He held it up with the faintest hint of pride.
"Haig whisky. Not easy to come by."
Then his expression dimmed.
"Coulson had a bottle just like this. He always said he’d open it after the most unbelievable mission of his career."
Fury let out a weary sigh.
"Never got the chance."
He poured two glasses himself.
"Phil was a hero," Evenson said, lifting his glass. "He died doing what he believed in."
He emptied it in a single swallow.
Fury drank with him, though the alcohol wasn’t the point.
This was damage control.
Imagine risking your life on the front lines only to have the people behind you decide the solution was dropping a nuclear weapon on your head. Fury knew exactly how that felt from Evenson’s perspective. If their positions had been reversed, he doubted he’d have reacted any better.
The last thing he wanted was a powerful ally deciding the world deserved payback.
Mentioning Coulson hadn’t been accidental, either. It was a reminder that SHIELD and Evenson had stood together before.
Fury refilled both glasses.
"Coulson’s death was a personal loss," he said quietly. "To me."
He paused deliberately.
"But to the World Security Council? He was just another line on a casualty report."
"They’re bureaucrats. People become numbers. That’s why some of their decisions come across as cold... detached... even inhuman."
In other words: blame the Council, not SHIELD.
Evenson chuckled.
"I think you’ve misunderstood why I’m here."
He set his glass down.
"I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m saying the missile itself is a much bigger problem than bad judgment. Something about it doesn’t add up."
Fury’s lone eye narrowed.
"What are you thinking?"
"The Battle of New York lasted almost two hours from the moment the portal opened until it closed."
Evenson rubbed his chin.
"By the end, the National Guard finally showed up to help clean up what was left. Before that? Nothing."
He spread a hand.
"I don’t know where the nearest military base is, so maybe ground forces couldn’t arrive in time."
He shrugged.
"But where was the Air Force?"
"The United States loves reminding everyone it has the strongest air force on Earth. Two hours of fighting, and I didn’t see a single F-22."
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"Doesn’t that strike you as strange?"
An alien invasion had unfolded over Manhattan for nearly two hours.
No Army.
No Air Force.
If the President had been watching in real time, he probably would have wanted to fire half the Defense Department before the battle was over.
"Maybe..."
Fury frowned.
"Military deployment inside a major American city involves layers of authorization. Procedures can cause delays."
Even he didn’t sound convinced.
"Or maybe someone made sure those delays happened."
Evenson’s voice carried a trace of dry sarcasm.
"Funny how conventional forces couldn’t get approval for two hours, yet authorizing a nuclear strike happened remarkably fast."
Fury slowly nodded.
"The launch order came directly from the Council."
"The aircraft carrying the missile took off from my Helicarrier."
"I doubt they even consulted the U.S. government."
He hadn’t had time to think through every implication while managing the aftermath of New York.
Now that Evenson laid it out piece by piece, the entire situation began to look increasingly disturbing.
The Council had authorized a nuclear strike on one of America’s largest cities, willingly risking millions of civilians.
How exactly did they expect Washington to accept that afterward?
"So the only people actually fighting the invasion," Evenson continued, "were the Avengers, the NYPD, and eventually the National Guard."
He leaned back.
"It isn’t unreasonable to say Earth’s real military response never actually began."
Fury remained silent for a long while.
Eventually, he nodded.
The Avengers were exceptional.
But they were a rapid-response team, not an army.
In a real war, conventional military forces formed the backbone of any defense.
If even two fighter wings had joined the battle, New York’s skies would have looked very different.
"But here’s what bothers me."
Evenson’s brow furrowed.
"The real resistance never happened. Conventional weapons barely entered the fight."
"And before any of that could happen..."
"They jumped straight to the nuclear option."
He looked directly at Fury.
"Can that really be dismissed as poor judgment?"
Fury said nothing.
Evenson continued.
"The Tesseract was still pouring energy into the portal."
"If a nuclear explosion had destabilized it..."
He gave a humorless laugh.
"...who knows what would’ve happened."
No one knew how an Infinity Stone would react under those conditions.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe the explosion would have been insignificant.
Or maybe it would have triggered something catastrophic.
No sane person should have been willing to gamble on that.
"And by then," Evenson added, "I’d already turned the battle around."
"The portal could be closed."
"The Avengers were capable of finishing the remaining Chitauri."
"We weren’t even close to a last-ditch situation."
"So why was the Council still determined to launch the missile?"
That was the question that refused to leave his mind.
Once he’d unleashed his magic, the tide had shifted decisively.
The solution had already been found.
Even without reinforcements, victory was within reach.
Yet the Council had pushed ahead anyway.
To Evenson, that meant the missile had never been about winning the battle.
Fury lowered his head.
"The Council members may be bureaucrats..."
"...but they’re not idiots."
At least, they shouldn’t have been.
People didn’t reach that level of authority by being irrational.
Which only made their actions harder to explain.
What possible benefit could they have gained by vaporizing New York?
After several minutes of fruitless thought, Fury finally let out a tired laugh.
"What?"
"You think they all panicked?"
"Lost their minds?"
"If panic were the only explanation," Evenson said, "I wouldn’t be nearly this worried."
Fury blinked.
The possibility that the world’s highest security authority had nearly nuked a city in blind terror already sounded horrifying.
Apparently, Evenson thought there was something even worse.
"Then what exactly are you worried about?"
Fury asked, thoroughly frustrated by Evenson’s habit of revealing conclusions one piece at a time.
Evenson’s eyes narrowed.
His voice became unusually solemn.
"What worries me..."
"...is people who understand almost nothing."
"But are convinced they’ve already thought of everything."
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