To Be An Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D (Marvel)(MCU)

Carlos raised an eyebrow, but James gave him a wink.

"Use the free time to reward your employee," he said casually, then slipped out. Seeming to be completely misreading the situation, or is he?

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James came and went quickly, heading straight home. Getting to the top of the building was its own problem, and he needed to prepare.

He laid out his equipment. Two industrial suction cups, a black flight suit, a low-altitude parachute, a compact backpack for tools, his long and short dagger, his Beretta 92F and M1911 with silencers—no room for large weapons.

His decoding gear was more complete this time. The only uncertainty was how the safe at the financial firm would be secured.

If it was electronically locked, he could have Cortana unlock it, but if it was mechanical, it would complicate things immensely.

After packing up, James started the Chevy Suburban and drove around the target building a few times, careful not to take the same route and be suspicious of scouting around. He parked two blocks away and waited for nightfall.

At midnight, he moved.

There was no surveillance in the alley he chose. He changed into the flight suit, strapped on the parachute, and secured his backpack to his front. Then he began to climb.

The building was thirty-two floors tall, over a hundred meters high. He secured the first suction cup, pressed the air-release and intake buttons, and locked it firmly to the glass. Then he repeated the motion with the second cup, moving upward step by step like the suction cup man but slower.

"Phew," he muttered under his breath. One word—tired. Two words—very tired.

It took twenty minutes to reach the rooftop. No safety rope, no harness, only strength and sheer F* will. He was exhausted. Agents in movies were totally not human.

After resting for a moment, he removed the rooftop ventilation cover and climbed into the shaft. Once inside, he resealed the vent and began to inch downward, feet and hands pushed on the vent wall to control his descent as his back slid down to a horizontal duct.

[Crawling route is marked,] Cortana said.

James lay flat, took off his backpack, and pushed it ahead of him as he moved through the duct. He reached the financial firm's section on the sixteenth floor and stopped.

Below, surveillance was everywhere. He waited, scouting. Eventually, he dropped into an executive office that had no visible cameras.

'It looked like the investment director's office.' James swept the room but found nothing important. He tried accessing the computer, but Cortana couldn't crack the firewall.

"Too advanced?" he asked.

[More than I can handle on-site with my available energy. You'll have to leave it.]

James shut the machine down. He approached the door and peeked through the frosted glass.

"There are blind spots. That'll work."

He moved quietly, keeping to corners and edges where the cameras couldn't reach. Finally, he crouched under camera and pulled out a SHIELD-issued signal interceptor. Connecting the device's two signals leads to the data lines behind the camera, he activated the cracking tool.

This particular system was built by SHIELD. Cortana hadn't touched it before, and James kept her out of it to stay safe. Her existence had to remain a secret.

He accessed the camera network.

SHIELD gear never failed.

Once the link was active, he pressed his finger to the control pad and let Cortana take over, altering the recorded footage and looping neutral scenes.

[You have thirty minutes. After that, I'll need to revert the feed,] she warned.

James moved quickly.

There were no overnight guards inside. Only the building's general patrol units outside. Surveillance was the only threat, and now it was blinded.

He made his way to the general manager's office.

There it was—a safe behind a cabinet.

"Fingerprint and passcode," he noted.

He pulled out a compact decoding device and pressed it to the keypad. A green light scanned the surface. Fingerprints lit up on the screen. Cortana analyzed pressure depth and angle to determine the most likely key order.

James nodded. He'd seen this trick before—in a SHIELD file on Natasha Romanoff from his old life made for the fans. Simple, and reliable.

He duplicated the fingerprint using silicone, then entered the code. The safe opened with a quick click.

Inside were financial records, transfer documents, investment strategies, and a black ledger.

James recorded everything. The entries in the ledger didn't match the other files, and they looked coded. Still, he copied it all and returned everything to its original position.

'Time to go.'

He backtracked, stopped by the surveillance node, and reconnected the camera to restore the original feed. Then he climbed back into the ventilation system.

After reaching the roof again and sealing the vent, he sat down, breathing heavily.

"I'm exhausted. Being an agent is a whole different beast compared to being an assassin."

[You're tired, but your brain activity suggests you're enjoying this.]

James grinned. "Yeah, it's kind of exciting."

He packed up, stood at the edge of the roof, and jumped when no one would be looking his way.

His heart pounded, and his perception slowed. He felt every gust of wind, every angle of descent. At just the right moment, he opened the chute. He drifted toward his parked Suburban, touched down smoothly, bundled the chute, and tossed it in the back seat.

Back at home, he uploaded all the records to his computer.

Then he called Phil.

"I found something. It's encrypted or coded. I don't know how to read it, so I'm sending it to you."

"Got it. Send it over. You did well. Your Level 3 Special Agent status has been approved. You're under my command now. I believe you'll climb fast."

"I hope so. But this mission almost brought danger to Carlos. I'd like to avoid that going forward."

"You will. You'll be flying incognito more often from now on."

James ended the call and put his gear away in the armory.

He walked to the kitchen and Carlos stepped out. "You're back?"

"Yeah. Didn't the soundproofing work?"

"I wasn't sleeping. I was on the phone with Alice. Things are going really well." He smiled. "Let me warm up the soup for you. It tastes terrible, cold."

James chuckled and began pulling ingredients from the fridge.