The convoy withdrew before dawn, leaving behind only wet streets and a few scattered shell casings that would vanish with the morning sun.
James had never been abroad, so it might not be a bad idea to do a little sight seeing while he's here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The journey was uneventful. James and the others were taken to the surveillance site, which was on the edge of the city, the dark corner of the city.
As a fugitive on the run, Dr. Bruce Banner could only live here as a black-market doctor. Having had no proof of medical qualifications or license to show, and even if he did, he could not use them, and this place gave him a sense of security.
There was hidden chaos in this city. Every day, someone would be injured because of a firefight, which gives him an opportunity for an unstable income. But maybe someone would hold a gun on him to perform surgery, and then he would not be paid a single cent. Maybe a simple suture would throw a stack of money at him. Who knows?
They dropped into the district after nightfall. Rio de Janeiro smelled like hot metal and street food under the humidity — frying oil, diesel, and the sour tang of wet concrete. The S.H.I.E.L.D. vans were painted a polite gray that made them look like they belonged to airport maintenance. Inside the command van, four teams unpacked with the economy of people trained to make anything operational: folding antennas, hard drives, battery banks, portable UPS units, and the two microwave relay dishes that would keep Athena linked to them even under electronic stress.
James watches as they do their thing and he does his. The first tech team set up the surveillance array — directional mics, low-light PTZ cameras, and a pair of thermal scopes tuned to human gamma signatures. The two armed squads ran through a load of lists, and test-fired stunners into soft earth behind the market to check non-lethal settings. The other tech squad ran quick diagnostics on civilian CCTV feeds that they'd tapped into on the municipal grid. Everything had to be redundant; everything had to have a backup path.
"The first technical team will install the equipment," James said as the layout unfurled on his tablet. "Armed teams do the night rotations. The second tech team will map the civilian supply chain — pharmacies, groceries, and clinics. We need a logistical net. If Banner needs anything, someone will know where it came from."
Carl Jones, the local lead, moved beside the van and squinted toward the row of corrugated houses. "He keeps his clinic in a one-room storefront. With green paint flaking and half the sign's missing. He's being careful — never out by daylight. Night is when he moves." He tapped his temple once. "We can only leave him be. That's the only way to keep him here."
James nodded for the info as he leaned over the fixed binoculars on the window, the leather strap damp under his fingers. Through the glass, the world narrowed to shuttered doors and neon reflections. Banner's building sat where Carl said: a low box with a sagging awning and two lamps that buzzed when the power came back. A man moved inside, bent over a table. A silhouette among silhouettes.
He hated static surveillance. It made the world feel like a photograph; everything noticed and slow, and therefore vulnerable. But static had its uses: a fixed camera can tell you the rhythm of a life. Banner's rhythm was a calm beat. He patched wounds the way a man who loved things would — not to be seen, not to be thanked.
James held his tablet allowing access to Cortana.
[Municipal feeds appended. Patch relay through Athena. You've got full-band access, James.]
"Good," James muttered. "Keep an eye on the power fluctuations. If the grid dips and someone walks in with a grenade, we want to see it coming."
[Already watching. Local transient signatures spiking on the east approach. Likely predatory. Also, food dietary levels are non-optimal; requesting more protein in your food. You can't keep using me if you don't give me sufficient energy. This is my version of coffee.]
James made a half-smile. Cortana's humor was always unexpected. "I'll get the food later. Right now, look for shadows."
They took shifts. The urban night turned lazy and then hungry; the market where Banner made small purchases thinned toward two in the morning. The CCTV overlays are shown on the van's main screen: heat maps that show sleeping people, isolated figures, and the occasional dogs and animals. On one feed, a man in a baseball cap moved toward the market entrance. On another, an old woman hauled a plastic bag, swaying under the weight.
"Keep the perimeter silent," James said. "We're watchers, not cavalry. Patrol Team unit two will run a sweep two blocks out — go slow, no lights. Ensure no one disturbs Banner unless we risk getting him angry."
Carl nodded. "Understood. Commencing ghost sweep"
The city did not like ghosts. In the early hours, about three in the morning, Jasper Sitwell and Alexander Pierce — faceless to James at that distance but very much in motion in Washington — threaded a conversation in an understated restaurant across a polished marble hallway in the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. The two men were small gears in a larger clock; their conversation was the kind that set things loose.
"Gibson's in Brazil," Sitwell said, voice oily with someone used to leaning. "Banner's location is public knowledge to a small circle. This is our opening."
Pierce's eyes were colder than the food. "Send a peripheral. A local irritant — push him just enough to make noise. Let the environment do our work. We keep our hands clean. If Gibson goes down, it will look like an operational miscalculation in the field."
Sitwell nodded. "Send somebody under the table. Bribe a gang, have Banner move, then let forces converge. Or… simply create a situation that draws him out."
Such conversations were why James kept Athena and Cortana within arm's reach. Power moved not just in the streets but across polished boardrooms and quiet offices, and the people who wanted power preferred to move with plausible deniability.
At dawn, his team rested. Few in the van slept more than dozed. The market woke again with the same music: people selling fruit and tamales, old radios in shop windows, the steam lifting off cardboard boxes. Banner's routine was almost quaint. He slipped out of his doorway with a hat pulled low, walked with a slow, careful gait, paid cash for nasal spray and bandages, then vanished into a crowd.
James watched his every move, reading every motion for suspicion. He opened a comm channel to the armed teams and voice-pinged their leaders.
"Tactical Alpha, Beta — hold. No engagement without my call. Technical teams, map and catalog every pharmacy and clinic within a ten-block radius. If Banner disappears, we need to know where he could be hiding himself."
It was work in the quiet register of danger: logistics and patience, not heroics. The kind of work that, if done well, never made the front page.
As the day folded into dusk again, James let Cortana run a deeper sweep. He connected his laptop and asked for the city's surveillance lattice to be parsable — to be made legible for his team's specific queries. Cortana moved through the city's municipal shell like a fish through reeds, touching traffic cams, private feeds, and the banks of low-cost cameras used by shop owners to watch inventory. She stabilized feeds, re-routed channels through Athena's secured relay when needed, and cached hours of imagery on portable drives.
[Cortana: I've pre-fetched twenty-four hours of video loops for all nodes in Sector Three. I also appended local meter readings. If someone cuts power at node eleven, we'll know within eight seconds. I have flagged three unknown requester IDs pinging neighborhood nodes. They keep timing out. Probability of 62% that it's hostile recon.]
"Good work," James said. "Encrypt the cache and burn the access traces except to me and Carl."
[Cortana: Done. Minor encouragement to the team would boost operational success. It helps in human morale. Also, if you want, I can order the extra meat now for the meals.]
He laughed but gaved a nod to the advice — small sounds of joy is being shared in the van, helping loosened shoulders around him. Humor had power, too.
Night came on heavy and full. A local gang that had been paid off months earlier to ignore Banner's clinic suddenly moved with aggression.
Through his visor feed, James caught glints of suppressors — five men in a tight wedge formation — long before they reached the outer path. Their heat signatures didn't match local gangs. Too clean, too steady, and too dry for men who walks in the rain. They carried nets and compact emitters that pulsed faintly against the electromagnetic field — tech meant to blind thermal cameras. Someone had planned this.
'Cortana, do a search on those people.' James thought.
[Already on it. Matching ballistic profiles. Not local. Weapons limited to non-military procurement. Origin: out of state. Heat paths from the north industrial district. Third-party broker chain — shell firm registered as Scarface Proxy.]
'Corporate hunters,' James thought. 'Not Hydra?'
[Hydra sometimes contracts through similar shells, but no matching signatures yet. Tracking financial bleed. I'll keep looking.]
He adjusted his gloves and gave a silent hand signal to his teams. "Tactical Alpha—silent approach. We intercept outside the clinic. No detonations unless necessary."
The rain started without warning — hard and fast, hammering the van roof until the screens flickered.
The men in black moved through the streets like a current of oil. James's focus narrowed, every detail settling into ordered motion: clipped bolts, hushed breaths, and synchronized steps.
They caught one man as he planted a damp device under a dumpster. Another tried to run and ended up held in a choke that almost killed him.
The last captive had a wallet — one card, one number, with no insignia. A clean record.
"Bag them," James said quietly. "Burn the gear. Wipe the van after. I'll handle the report."
[Cortana: For the record, you smell like rain and carbon steel. Also, your field pheromones are distressing to domesticated animals. Avoid shelters for twelve hours.]
He half smiled. 'You saying I stink? Not like I need you to remind me.'
[Cortana: Morale maintenance routine. You're welcome.]
By three in the morning, the clinic was untouched. Banner never knew.
Across the market, Banner sat under an awning, eating from a street skewer, reading a battered paperback. Hat low, and posture unassuming. He looked ordinary — like a man who doesn't have a monster sleeping inside of him.
James watched from the shadows until the man went back inside. He can't help but think about men like Pierce and Sitwell, who believed control was cleaner than compassion.
He made his notes, encrypted his caches, and let Cortana finish her sweep.
[Cortana: Teams clear. I've seeded false sensor data for local authorities. One detail — Banner hums off-key when he thinks he's alone. It's oddly soothing.]
James exhaled. 'Copy that.'
They withdrew before sunrise. The city woke to another day, unaware how close it had come to chaos.
James felt that familiar ache — knowledge heavy enough to be a weapon — and the stillness that always followed restraint.
The comm was silent. His tablet blinked once with a new directive from S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ.
He read it through the fading rain, expression unreadable, and prepared to move.