Is a "sword" a euphuism? (BL)

It did not fit.

A single battered plastic action figure sat among scattered papers, keyboards, folders with documents—many marked Top Secret—and impeccably professional office supplies.

But Samuel Owens still kept it on his desk. Even if the childish toy was really not appropriate for a man of his position.

It was a gift, and, more importantly, it was a symbol.

It wasn't a gift from his grandson—his wife and he had not been blessed with children, so there would be no grandchildren either. His legacy would be his service to his country, and that was enough.

No, the action figure of Nick Fury had been a gift from an orphan boy.

Part of managing America's first—and currently only—superhero team was ensuring good publicity.

Not that they didn't do good work. They acted as an overpowered SWAT team when needed—crushing drug lords, taking down hostage takers, and, in one case, dismantling a survivalist cult that had decided to secede from the United States. They handled such missions with precision, avoiding the casualties that usually accompanied such actions.

But their work wasn't only about violence. They put their powers to use in disasters—fires, floods, even one particularly nasty highway pile-up. Miss Evans had proven her worth there, with her healing abilities, alongside Mister Morgan.

There was also more delicate work, requiring specialized equipment like psy-amplifiers, which enhanced specific gifts. The eyeless helmet, for instance, had allowed Mister Thompson to locate missing children—and even track a serial killer.

And then, of course, there were the PR duties: interviews, visits to children's hospitals and group homes, dinners with important people.

Owens didn't mind. It was part of the package. If psychics were to be accepted—and he believed, for the good of America, that they needed to be—then the proper image was crucial.

That was how he'd gotten the toy.

Usually, children swarmed the heroes—dressed in bright, colorful costumes—but one boy had approached him instead.

"What do you do, Mister?" the boy had asked.

"I manage the team," Owens had replied, simplifying his role so the child could understand.

"So you're like Nick Fury? He's my favorite," the boy had said, before holding out the action figure. His prized possession.

Owens had hesitated but took the toy with care.

"Thank you," he had said, his voice quieter than usual.

It was a gift he treasured more than any other.

Owens had received a handful of gifts since stepping into the public eye—small tokens from politicians, carefully worded gestures from allies, even a few items meant to curry favor. Most of them were boxed away or forgotten—too polished, too calculated.

But the Nick Fury action figure stayed on his desk.

Even now, as he leaned back in his chair after a long day, his eyes rested on the toy. The paint was chipped, and one arm stuck out awkwardly, as though in a permanent salute.

A brief pause, and he was ready to get back to work.

As was his habit, at the end of his workday, Owens reviewed what he had accomplished, what still needed to be done, and what could be left undone.

Most of his work revolved directly around the team—like liaising with various law enforcement agencies. The team was not, and never would be, independent of them. It was up to Owens to decide which requests for assistance could be accepted, in what order, and with what priority. Some situations could wait. Others could not.

After all, there was only one team covering the entirety of the United States.

Then there were the public relations ventures—necessary to make the whole operation viable in the long term. And, just as critically, Owens had to ensure the team had enough downtime to prevent burnout.

Not just because he liked his team—though he did—but because they would be hard to replace. Psychics were rare, and those suited for high-profile work were even rarer. A nationwide search through places like West Point and Quantico had yielded only four candidates with middling abilities. The fifth, Miss Evans, had come from Aperture Science. She had been a tester for psychic amplification devices. While she lacked military or law enforcement training, she had more experience with actual psychic powers than the rest of the team combined.

Most of them were young. Although all were old enough to vote, only Miss Evans and Mister Thompson, the team leader, were old enough to legally drink.

No—wait. Three. Morgan had turned twenty-one last month. Owens had nearly forgotten.

Aperture Science had a neat explanation for why psychics were often so young. According to their research, modern adult lifestyles were not kind to psychic abilities. Children and teenagers were more "wired" to handle the behavioral quirks associated with psychic powers because such quirks were excused or overlooked in youth. Adults, on the other hand, often suppressed their gifts to appear normal, developed antisocial tendencies—and corresponding criminal records—or ended up in institutions. None of these outcomes made for a promising background in a high-profile, high-pressure team.

Other papers on his desk were reports only tangentially related to the team.

One stood out, concerning one of the few reliable psychic experts in the country. It highlighted just how scarce they were. Aperture University had recently established a class to train psychic specialists, but it would take years for the first graduates to emerge—let alone those who might pursue master's or doctoral degrees. And accrediting a field as new and controversial as psychic studies would be a matter of debate for years to come.

Another report focused on the ongoing search for Kali. Owens had burned through a lot of favors in the CIA for information on her, but he believed it was critical. The Red Widow might have fallen, but Kali had not appeared in that final battle. Officially, she was presumed dead—another skull added to the blood-soaked altar that served as a crude, horrifying version of psychic amplification devices. No one fully understood how those altars even worked. But Owens had his doubts.

He wasn't searching for her simply because she was a rogue psychic or possibly more powerful than anyone on his team—though that was certainly true. Her abilities had effortlessly devastated several SWAT teams. Nor was it simply because she had led one of the most dangerous assassin gangs in the world. Her group, the Thugs—an obvious nod to the goddess Kali and the Thuggee cult—had left a bloody trail of rival deaths. Even notorious figures like Pablo Escobar had reportedly met their ends at her hands, strangled by her followers in mysterious circumstances.

No, what mattered more was that she was the only living link to the Silent Monks and the Paths of the Dead—a system of smuggling routes the Red Widow had used to move drugs into the United States.

The drug trade was already a problem. But the Paths of the Dead could be used for far worse if they fell into the wrong hands. Owens couldn't shake the thought of Russian or Chinese intelligence using those routes to smuggle spies, weapons, or even squads of special operatives into the heart of America without anyone noticing. Worse still, biological or nuclear weapons could move undetected across the same routes.

That couldn't be allowed to happen.

Not that the Russians were much of a priority these days. The Cold War had de-escalated—not as a triumph of diplomacy, but more by default. No treaties had been signed.

After Reagan lost his reelection—thanks in part to hacker intervention—President Mondale had shifted the nation's focus to other priorities. That alone had sent shockwaves through Washington. Perhaps Owens' years with the CIA had made him cynical, but he couldn't help noticing that, while politicians could find ways to profit from a hacker nearly starting a global nuclear war, none could profit from losing an election.

Still, Owens was relieved that hackers didn't fall under his team's remit, despite Morgan's objections. Especially after the chaos of The Mentor's trial—a circus that ended with the verdict declaring hacking could be protected under the same laws that safeguarded journalists and whistleblowers.

And then there were incidents like the ones in Missing Mile and Hawkins. Owens had investigated Missing Mile personally, long after the fact. But Hawkins? That one was seared into his memory—because he'd been there. Ground zero. A hostage to Brenner's mad cult as they opened a gateway and unleashed that giant spider-like thing made of shadows.

While other corporations bemoaned higher taxes—and the military-industrial complex grumbled about a reduced military budget—Aperture Science wasn't complaining. The money they lost from defense contracts was more than offset by their new government deals, like the contract to develop Transdimensional Monitoring Stations. In a move typical of their clever new director, Aperture didn't try to hide their work. Instead, they proudly went public, showcasing how they were keeping America safe from threats beyond the veil.

And they didn't stop there. At their own expense, Aperture added community centers, shelters, and free clinics to their monitoring facilities, openly aligning themselves with President Mondale's agenda.

There had been fears—loudly fanned by Republican senators and others opposed to the new direction—that Russia would take advantage of the "softer" approach. Critics warned it would embolden them.

Then the Ozerov Rebellion happened.

It shouldn't have worked. Any analysis said so. Colonel Ozerov's manifesto was pure lunacy: he claimed he was purging alien infiltrators from the Communist Party. The idea was absurd. And yet, somehow, it worked. People listened to the mad Russian. They believed him. They died for him.

Owens still spoke occasionally with former colleagues from his CIA days, and the consensus was clear: Ozerov had ties to a KGB division dealing with psychic phenomena. His unlikely success, they believed, was a direct result of that.

That revelation raised troubling questions. How had the Russians made such progress? And why had America's own psychic programs—like Project Stargate—been so plagued by frauds and failures that they'd been quietly shuttered? The result was deeply unsettling: the United States now depended on Aperture Science, a private company, for capabilities critical to national security.

Some suggested sabotage—that America's psychic research programs had been intentionally undermined. But if there were any investigations, they were highly classified. And Owens? He was officially no longer part of that branch of the government.

As the rebellion progressed, Gorbachev seemed to lose control—not just of the situation, but of himself. The atrocities became more and more blatant. At first, they were barely concealed, but later, they were proudly presented to the public. Ozerov matched this escalation with brutal displays of his own, turning the entire conflict into a morbid competition.

And then there was the horse.

Gorbachev had given a horse, of all things, membership in the Communist Party, declaring in a speech that the animal could do no worse than the current members. It was likely just a propaganda stunt, but who did he think he was—Caligula?

Then came the meteor.

Less than a week ago, a meteor struck the Baltic Sea with the force of a nuclear bomb. The resulting tidal wave devastated large parts of the Soviet Union's Baltic coastline, plunging the region into chaos and emboldening the rebellion to new heights. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—still part of the USSR—were particularly hard-hit, with entire coastal towns flooded and infrastructure destroyed.

There had even been some talk of sending the team to assist nearby allies—to help with the crisis and to "show the flag." But others argued it would be needlessly provocative, given the Soviets' fragile state. In any case, the decision wasn't Owens' to make. It was well above his pay grade.

There was a knock on his door. No one was scheduled for a meeting, which probably meant trouble.

"Enter," Owens said.

The door opened, revealing Terry Evans. She was dressed in civilian clothes rather than her superhero outfit, as was her habit. Her attire—though a bit outdated—was practical and suitable for office work: a skirt and jacket in greens and blues, with her bright red hair serving as a sharp contrast.

Her hair was an oddity. It was far too bright to be natural, yet Owens had never spotted roots or any other signs of dye. Her papers claimed it was natural, and while those papers were impeccable, they were almost too clean. To Owens—an ex-CIA operative—it reeked of a cover-up.

But he never dug deeper. Adjusted adult psychics often had skeletons in their closets, and delving too far could jeopardize her position on the team. She was the best healer they had. Owens had decided it was safer to accept her as she was. If a scandal ever came to light, he had deniability. He'd seen her papers, and Aperture Science had guaranteed their authenticity. Any blame would fall on them—not him.

"Good evening, Terry," he greeted her warmly.

In his reports and even in his thoughts, he referred to her as Miss Evans to maintain a professional distance. But when speaking directly to her, he used her first name to foster a sense of closeness. He did the same with the rest of the team. Owens was very good at compartmentalizing.

"You're back already?"

Less than a month ago, Miss Evans had taken a leave of absence for personal reasons. Her daughter had been hurt.

"Evening, Dr. Owens," she replied.

He had tried to get her to call him Sam, but she had resisted. It wasn't that she was overly formal; she simply preferred to keep her distance, driven by quiet suspicion. She always watched him warily, as though expecting the kind mask he wore to slip and reveal a monster beneath.

Perhaps her gifts made his duplicity obvious, though Owens doubted that. It seemed more likely that she—or someone she cared about—had run afoul of one of the government's more ethically dubious psychic programs. Owens despised such projects.

Brenner's success aside—and that success had brought its own set of problems—those exploitative experiments rarely uncovered genuine psychics. It was understandable. Any truly gifted psychic would sense the manipulative intent behind such programs and avoid them altogether, leaving the projects with frauds or individuals without any psychic abilities at all.

"It's time to get back to work," she added, her tone calm but resolute.

But there was more to it. Simply returning could probably have waited until morning. There was no real need for her to come this late. This meeting had been calculated—timed for when he was unlikely to have anyone else interrupt.

Owens regularly checked his office for surveillance, but there could always be an observer. Better to play along for now.

"The team will be glad to have you back," he said, standing near his desk. "But you didn't have to rush back so soon. Jane needs you."

As he spoke, he moved toward the liquor cabinet, its polished wood and crystal decanters gleaming faintly under the light. Opening it, he added casually, "Anything to drink?"

"Just mineral water, please," Evans replied. She had seated herself on the loveseat near the small table. It was strategically placed, tucked into a dead angle from both the door and the window.

"Jane is fine. She doesn't let her new blindness get her down. She is, after all, much stronger than me."

The strength she referred to wasn't character but psychic ability. The existence of a mother and daughter, both gifted psychically, would have alarmed those who feared the rise of a new race supplanting the old or a psychic aristocracy dominating humanity. Aperture Science had officially claimed that such a pairing—two gifted individuals in the same family, and not twins—was so astronomically rare it was comparable to winning the lottery twice in the same day.

Owens picked out two crystal glasses and a bottle of high-quality mineral water, the kind that probably cost more than a bottle of wine. A government job did have its perks.

"And how is young Will?" Owens asked as he moved toward her, setting two glasses and the bottle on the table before filling them both.

Will was Jane's friend—Owens had met both him and Jane during the Hawkins incident. Brenner had been using the psychic boy to open the gate. He was also the one who had blinded Jane, though it had been neither an accident nor an act of malice.

Evans offered a tired smile as Owens sat down next to her—a bit closer than propriety might dictate, though it could be excused.

"I wish he'd stop apologizing," she said. "I know, rationally, that he saved Jane's life, but it's hard to accept emotionally. And he's not someone you can lie to."

There were things that only psychics could see, and some of them they really shouldn't. Owens had learned that much from working with them. It was easier to pretend those truths didn't exist, to believe that Lovecraft had been writing pure fiction and not glimpsing something far worse.

But in the end, Owens preferred bleak knowledge to blissful ignorance. Otherwise, he never would have joined the CIA in his younger days.

Evans placed a simple metallic cube with a single red button on top onto the table. Owens' eyes widened. It was an Aperture Information Space Isolation Cube.

The shock wasn't just because of its cost—though it was exorbitant—but because of what its use implied. The device was incredibly rare, a single-use tool that burned out upon activation. Aperture Science manufactured only a handful, carefully rationed out to military and intelligence agencies, and sold them sparingly.

For Evans to bring one here—and to use it—meant the situation was serious.

Like the psychic amplifiers, the cubes were the creation of a singular genius: the Director of Aperture Science, Dr. Alexander Johnson.

If Owens could be compared to a real-life Nick Fury, then Dr. Johnson might as well be a real-life Tony Stark. If, that is, Stark had also carried on with Captain America.

The thought came from fanfiction, something Owens only knew about because Morgan had overshared. He wondered, not for the first time, if that sharing had been a careful way of testing the waters—probing to see if it was safe to come out of the closet.

In another administration, such a revelation could have meant the death of Morgan's career. But under Mondale, it could be an opportunity.

Owens let it proceed at its own pace. It was better that way.

With the press of the button, the field sprang to life. It was barely visible, just a subtle distortion in the air, fitting snugly around the two of them.

The field was intentionally limited in range. Its purpose was to isolate the conversation between those within it—no more, no less. A larger field would risk including unwanted observers within its perimeter, undermining its effectiveness.

Within the field, all forms of communication were securely blocked. No sounds could escape, lips couldn't be read, and body language was indecipherable from the outside. It was equally effective against telepathy, remote viewing, and similar abilities.

However, the field did have its vulnerabilities. Recording devices or other technological tools placed within its boundaries could still capture the exchange. There was also the matter of psychometry, should an object inside the field be examined later.

Despite its limitations, the field created an ideal environment for secure, focused conversations, free from external interference.

"Now we can talk," Evans said.

As someone seconded from Aperture Science, she served as an unofficial liaison between Owens' department and the company. Officially, Aperture Science had dedicated liaisons who, per the terms of their contract, gathered data on the use of psychic amplification devices in the field—still very much prototypes.

But the more clandestine matters? Those went through Evans.

"Is the Director dying?" Owens asked bluntly, startling Evans.

"Why would you think that?" she replied, her expression quickly guarded.

"After unveiling his newest and most ambitious venture, S.W.O.R.D., Alexander Johnson abruptly disappeared from public life," Owens said. "Officially, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia, and now he's supposedly recovering on a Caribbean cruise. As far as covers go, it's not bad.

"But Aperture Science has the most advanced hospital facilities imaginable. And all the healing psychic devices you use? They were developed by Aperture. Even without another operator, you'd be back in the Enrichment Center for a month at most. Something as minor as a cold—or pneumonia—should be easy to fix."

"No, Ace isn't dying. He'll recover in time," Evans replied.

"But he was hurt. And certainly not easily healed, by something… exotic," Owens pressed.

"Yes," Evans admitted. "It was part of the same incident in which Jane was hurt. During the presentation of S.W.O.R.D., Aperture's Moon Station was attacked."

"Since when does Aperture have a Moon Station?" Owens asked, his tone carefully indirect.

"Since '86, I think," Evans replied with a casual shrug. "Not really my department."

Owens' tone turned sharp. "And Aperture didn't inform the government about its new facility?"

"There's no legal requirement to list assets located outside the country," Evans deflected. "They aren't taxed." Then, with a more serious tone, she added, "The more important question is who attacked."

"Aliens? Are we dealing with aliens?" Owens asked, his voice skeptical but tinged with urgency.

"No. You'll wish we were," Evans said grimly. "That would be less politically explosive."

She pulled a folder from her bag and began placing photographs on the table. There were images of small ships that looked like flying saucers and larger ones shaped like metallic daggers. But what stood out—what made Owens' stomach tighten—was the unmistakable insignia emblazoned on the hulls.

"Nazis?" Owens said, disbelief thick in his voice. "There are Nazis on the Moon?"