Heroes Assemble!

Taking Aim: Two Birds, One Stone

The once-was conference room within Avengers Tower had once again undergone a redesign. The Command Centre that it'd been turned into, with large monitor and smaller pads inbuilt into the large conference desk for every seat, had been expanded. Now, on the south wall, twin lines of four medium sized monitors held pride of place, each easily controlled either by the pads in the desk or from smaller, hand-held ones.

Currently, every single monitor in the room was being utilized.

The big monitor held a map of the world with different coloured lines denoting flight plans, both filed and ignored and those that were real, not to mention ones that were guessed at, extrapolated from using known data.

Each of the eight monitors on the southern wall was dedicated to one of the members of HYDRA's Project Sinister. Every scrap of data that was known about each individual was being compiled there – from the limited S.H.I.E.L.D. files that they had, to public web searches to US government files and even high school and university records (if appropriate) were being included. Of course, a photo of said individual was included in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

The smaller pads inset into the desk were being used as a middle-man, a place to search out and tease the information that they needed from such diverse sources before it was analysed, debated and then included on the appropriate larger monitor.

"I still don't get what Octavius brings to the party," Tony stated. "Yeah, the guy's smart – a Ph.D. in Nuclear physics from M.I.T. and a doctorate in biochemistry proves that – but with the brains that Sterns brings, he seems kinda redundant."

"Maybe he was chosen for a different reason," Bruce suggested.

"What reason, though?" Tony retorted. "Unless it's got something to do with the tech files that we can't access."

"Tech and biochemistry aren't necessarily exclusive," Peter stated.

"Peter's right," Bruce said. "Nanotech, for example."

"If HYDRA's been fooling around with nanotech, there's no telling what we're going to encounter when we find them," Tony stated grimly.

"How are we going with that? With finding them?" Steve asked.

"Osborn's jet has been hard to track," Hill replied, gesturing to the big monitor and map that she was standing in front of. "He's filed a lot of flight plans without following them; sometimes even multiple flight plans from the same starting point and time."

"It makes sense to assume that they're making for one particular base." Bucky stated. "HYDRA would have sent all of that tech to one central place for their team to use."

"The problem is that with so many S.H.I.E.L.D. bases that HYDRA took when everything imploded, it's impossible to tell exactly where that is," Hill stated.

"And not out of the question that it's not even an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. base," Bucky added. "I know that HYDRA have their own off-the-books hideouts."

"We're just going to have to keep checking each and every one of them," Steve stated grimly. "They'll turn up eventually. Them and Loki's Staff. Those two have to be our top priority right now."

"Just as long as we find them at home," Tony said. "With unknown tech in play, I'd hate to see what sort of damage they could do out in the wider world full of civilians."

That statement was enough to have everyone redoubling their efforts in sifting through the data, searching for that one elusive piece that would give them a place to begin the search in earnest.