"Never trust anyone, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows." – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

I.I. 4 April 2014

S.H.I.E.L.D. was a vast agency with secret bases, sleeper cells, and black book R&D projects that not even all the agents and employees knew about, let alone the governments of the world. They did not solely rely on Stark Tech, not like back in the S.S.R. days, for all their cool toys, but their level 5 and above engineers and techs were employed for the purpose of creating cutting edge gadgets, weapons, and other tech. These engineers were responsible for the advances and improvements of all technology used by S.H.I.E.L.D.

But for all the structure and compartmentalization of S.H.I.E.L.D., when HYDRA activated their own protocol to take direct control of the agency, the warning came too late. The attack took their base by surprise, their call for help went unanswered in all the ensuing chaos and other S.O.S. calls from every other base. None let go of their loyalties, nearly all had been executed. Every single person at their base was level 6 and above, they were trained field agents despite being lab rats as well, but they weren't enough to fight off such infiltration. Especially not since many of them had been fellow engineers and agents, friends…

Many brilliant engineers died rather than submit, many died destroying their creations. Others died or submitted trying to protect others, to buy them more time.

Others were like Engineer Higurashi, who watched from the escape duct hidden in the northwest corner of his office as his second kneeled before HYDRA agents, swearing his loyalty was not for sale or change. He flinched and bit down on his hand to keep quiet when the gunshot rang out and his closest friend died on the floor in front of his escape route. Engineer Higurashi had never been brave or courageous; his mother always said that all of that went to his sister, while he gained all the empathy.

It was empathy that paralyzed him now, realizing the extent of his cowardice and his coworkers' courage. It was only when he heard the sounds of the betrayers turning his office upside down, looking for whatever, that he backcrawled his way down his escape route.

Only a coward may live, but only a coward is chased.

5 April 2014

"And this…Engineer Higurashi?" Tony Stark asked more than said, but didn't wait for a reply. "You sure he's alive?"

Former Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., but now just another employee in the on-going Stark privatization of global security, Maria Hill nodded. "Positive. From the intel that I've been receiving from a…confidential source, what's left of HYDRA is still trying to find him as well."

Stark sighed, tossing the file onto his desk. "I don't even see what's so special about him. Or why anyone would bother targeting one engineer when they likely have hundreds now."

"Do you remember the Photostatic Veil? While your father did develop the prototype, it was Engineer Higurashi who turned it into what it is today. It should also go without saying that he was working on many other projects and breakthroughs in V.R., A.I., and holographic technology. He's one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s brightest engineers."

Hill paused as she remembered who she was dealing with now, who her boss was now. She was lucky as she had a head up and escaped before all this went down. The one and only good thing to come out of the downfall of Project Insight. She needed a different approach. "So consider the potential he could bring to Stark Industries with his skills. Then think of what he could do under HYDRA's influence."

Tony drummed his fingers against his desk as he thought over her words, or so it seemed. After EXTREMIS and the Battle of New York, Hill knew just how…passionate he had become about security and peace. His file even stated how much it had affected him, and she had memorized his file (along with the rest of the Avengers). Because of that, she knew he had already snagged every single declassified file dumped by Rogers and Romanov.

"Fine. I'll send out some feelers and see if I can't locate him. If he's alive."

Hill nodded and stood to leave. She had accomplished what she needed to with this little meeting, even if she "forgot" to mention one little detail about Engineer Higurashi to Stark. After all, if they did find him alive and not in HYDRA hands, then his sister would likely never become a problem for them.

Updated 6 September 2014

I know many of you may be yelling at me to update my other stories, but... I lost my flash drive that held all my stories (among other things) on it, so I have to rewrite everything from scratch. And I'm just not that into doing that at the moment. So I'm trying to regain my spark for writing, by doing this new little series. Every chapter will be about this long, I don't have this finished, but probably expect frequent updates because of those two reasons.

This takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all that entails, with a little filling in from the comics for future films that haven't been released yet.