Chương 85

Laura got up to answer the buzzer and when she saw an unknown man, her frown was visible on her face. Over the last few days she had had some reporters trying to get to her and give them exclusive interviews, but she had been avoiding them like she avoided cockroaches. Now one of them had even reached her home? Who had given their address to these reporters? She needed to have a long talk with the Scholastic Corporation, her exclusive publisher in America.

"Hello." The man who had arrived wearing a long black trench coat with a turtleneck spoke through the comms.

"Hey... Didn't I say I won't be giving any interviews? Who gave you my address for you to show up at my home?" Laura was beyond pissed as she hollered. The man was stunned but then he said.

"I can assure you, ma'am, I'm not a reporter. I'm here representing the FBI. Now, are you gonna buzz me in or not?"

"FBI? What does the FBI have to do with me or Allied Universal? Daniel isn't here and nor do you have any warrant. So it is better for you to leave before I sue your department for trespassing." Laura was speechless for a minute but she remembered she was American now and thus she said what Daniel had told her to say if some cops showed up when he was absent. From the corner of her eye, she saw Rei who was also looking at the video with a slight amusement written over his face.

"If you want a warrant, I can get one. Hell, I can wait for your husband to get home, too. I'm not here to arrest anybody. I'm here to talk." The man said.

"Don't trust you. Come back when you can get a warrant." Laura said.

"Ma'am, neither of us wants me to start throwing federal authority around just to get through that door. So how about you buzz me in and we have a conversation?" The man threatened this time. Laura was going to say that she would let him try, but it was Rei who placed his hand on her shoulder and said.

"Let him in."

"What?" Laura didn't expect that Rei would even entertain allowing an FBI agent to enter, though the FBI wasn't exactly a cop, but in her eyes both the police and FBI were the same.

"Don't worry, he isn't here for you. He is here for me." Rei replied. Laura stiffened when she heard that. She had always known that Rei's world was vastly different from theirs. She had learnt so many things about Rei over the last years that she had let go of worrying about her future and just embraced whatever Rei would throw at them. But even then, she was amazed at how different and dangerous their world was, thanks to the twins.

And there was always a concern that the government authorities might one day know about Rei and his friends and would try to clamp them down. Had her most dreaded day arrived? But there was nothing she could do to stop it as Rei had already given the command. She went forward and allowed the man to walk in through the main gate and towards their main door. Laura allowed him in. The man looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, though there was a hardness about him that made his age difficult to place.

His dark skin was weathered by years of experience rather than age. The first thing anyone noticed was the black eye patch covering his left eye. His head was completely bald, the smooth scalp catching the light whenever he moved. He was neither exceptionally tall nor physically imposing, yet he somehow seemed larger than everyone around him. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Afternoon, ma'am. Sorry for dropping in unannounced."

"Who are you? And why are you here?" Laura asked as she held a brief hope that this man was only here for the audit or even for IRS problems, but once the man looked at Rei in response to her question, she knew that the last bit of hope had just vanished. Rei looked at the man for a bit more and then showed him the couch to sit on. Laura could only allow him to do so and then went to sit beside Rei. She might be useless but she was still an adult. She had already alerted Daniel with an SOS.

They would do everything in their power and influence to not let the government have any sort of say in their lives. The man looked at the dynamics between the two and smirked.

"I am Nick Fury. Head of Strategic Homeland Intervention,..."

".... Enforcement and Logistics Division. Yes, I am informed of who you are." Rei completed the sentence for Fury which earned him a raised eyebrow from Samuel, sorry, Fury.

"Well, looks like you keep yourself informed." Fury replied.

"And it looks like you have dug a bit too deep to even come here." Rei said.

"You can't blame us for looking into it. We dug into Allied Universal and came up empty. We tried to find out how Stark got out of that cave, and that trail went cold too. Then New Mexico happens, and somehow your company's fingerprints are all over it. At a certain point, you start connecting the dots. Every road we followed seemed to lead back to one name—Allied. Tell me, am I wrong?" Fury asked.

"Hey, let me remind you that this child is a minor. I know how the laws are here, so don't try to intimidate us with your vague assumptions." She didn't know what happened in New Mexico, but she wasn't going to let this man, who came from a shady government agency, walk all over the place.

"It's okay, Laura." Rei let Laura calm down. He could vaguely guess what she was thinking as she was terrified that her world would come crashing down, but he knew better than anyone what this person wanted. Rei might be a bit paranoid, but this guy was levels above him. It only took one incident to turn him into a full psycho, and the funny part was that even after all of that he was backstabbed. Multiple times, in fact. Not literally, of course, but metaphorically.

"Then how did you guess that it was me?" Rei asked.

"From everything we've dug up, your parents don't seem capable of pulling something like this off. The variable in the equation is you. Things only started changing when you entered the picture." Fury replied. Laura meanwhile was devastated to know that a government agency was that good and had even dug so deep. Rei nodded and asked.

"But nobody saw me in New Mexico, so why did you end up here?" Rei replied.

"Your colleague made a copy of himself out of water, and he told us that was basic stuff. Since he showed up after the Afghanistan incident, we figured you were capable of pulling the same trick." Fury wasn't exactly sure of this part and he had just thrown a dart in the wild when he came here and spoke with confidence. But from the looks of how Rei was calm and didn't seem bothered that he had shown up in the first place, he was now almost sure. Laura was now really curious about what happened in New Mexico.

There was a brief silence that followed after Nick's comment and at the end, Rei just sighed and asked.

"What do you want to know?" Rei asked. His shoulders had pulled back a bit as there was no reason to hide anymore. All this time he had been the advocate of laying low but once his physique became Asgardian and he also achieved full control of Mind's Eye Kagura, not many things that normal humans did could even threaten him. Here he was beyond powerful and could take on Hydra without any problem. And about propaganda? Wasn't Allied acquired for that?

They had been investing in various ventures and thus had quite the hold in the market. Including the budding social media that had slowly started to bloom. This brought a smirk to Fury's face as after such a long time of searching he finally got a head start on Haku and this new guy who had shown up in New Mexico. Haku was his point of interest before but now it looked like this boy was the ringleader.

"Who are you? What are you? And what do you want?" Fury asked.

"My real name is Rei Amagi. In normal terms, you can think of me as a ninja, but in a broader sense you can think of me as someone who is born with special abilities that get exponentially stronger over time as I grow up. And about what I want? I want peace and to live my life without any government agency keeping tabs on me." Rei replied.