All but one of the Hydra Heads were gathered in one room in Russia. We'd come by various means, plane, train, and Quantum Tunnel in many cases. Today, we had a grievous duty - We were voting on whether to burn one of our own. In most matters, my discretion was absolute - But in this case, I was merely the first among equals. Only I had the power to call the meeting, but after that I had to argue my case and actually win the vote.

The room more closely resembled a casino, with card and craps tables, no windows, and music blaring outside its doors, than it resembled a board room. But it was understandably understated and it would be good to have a counter-scandal if our meeting was discovered. High stakes gambling, a charmingly quaint conspiracy by comparison. If the briefcase next to my feet had only contained stacks of hundreds or gold coins, it would have been so much more innocent.

Pierce, Konstantin, and Haidar Jalal, the Sheikh, were all with me. Two of them owed me their position and one of them needed this to go off without a hitch. The Baroness would certainly side with Strucker - Their powers were too tightly intertwined. Stern was probably leaning my way, Malick was a wild card, and Whitehall was favorable to me generally but might be concerned at the loss of one of our leading minds. The Bankers were likely opposed on principle, always too busy counting coins to contribute to the cause through sacrifice, they weren't about to ask it of anyone else. Strucker's vote was in his own defense in absentia.

Four to me, four against, three in the air. I wanted to spend more time pounding out the votes, but we were on a schedule, so risks had to be taken. I could always try a more elaborate plan if this one failed.

"Brothers, Sister," I said, standing in the dealer's position at a card table. "Baron Von Strucker was once a vital contributor to this organization. His work has, of late, been shoddy. Belarus has acquired an uncontrolled long-tail inventor in Ivan Vanko. Sokovia is now a fiercely independent democracy. Had he accepted my counsel, he could've salvaged at least one such occasion. He has also deployed weapons which he was forewarned could be traced back towards me to no effect, as he was warned was a possibility. Now they are being traced back towards me, by no less than the global head of SHIELD and one of his best agents. Someone must be fed to the problem."

"Why are you targeting Strucker?" The Baroness asked, her dark blue dress and pearls and upper class wife look undermining the fact that she would be a problem for me. "Sokovia is as much your fault as Strucker's, if not more. It was your weapon which failed, your soldiers who went rogue."

"Understand, it brings me no pleasure to sacrifice Strucker. His vote assured me my position, and we collaborated closely for months in Sokovia," I was actually kind of happy to kill the guy. He'd made me kill the twins and I didn't like that at all. But it was good to sound appropriately somber in moments like this. "But if it had been me using the mind control gas, I would have baited the twins back into town by threatening to kill the mind controlled victims, by claiming they were holding the protest in an unsafe space and refusing to leave. Then I would've caved in the church upon the protestors to leave no evidence."

That got a wince or two even from this table, but the Baronness put her hand down. Displaying brutality was an easy way to cow and shore up support among this group. Her vote wasn't changing, but I also wasn't about to not be the Head of Hydra either. If Malick, Stern, and Whitehall all voted against me - which they weren't all going to do - they still had my back for Hydra Head. It was stupid to give too much back talk.

"Why should we dispose of Strucker at all? Why not let them chase their tails or… We know they are looking for you, a few bullets in the night would suffice."

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Octavian Bloom, the American Banker, had more receding hairline than hair but he made an admirable figure. "Octavian," I said, calmly, "Bodies provoke investigations. Bodies provoked this investigation. If we pile up more and more bodies, well, there will be more and more investigations."

"How much is this going to cost us," the Swiss banker asked, his bald head and acerbic attitude radiating. "You could just admit to the American government that you handed your research on mind control to Sokovia. They will not arrest you, you are too valuable. You will face a demotion, some political opprobrium, but all Hydra will know that you are a leader who makes sacrifices."

"Your designs on my office are as transparent as they are pathetic," I said bluntly. Sometimes harshness was necessary. "You seek to weaken my position. That's a mistake. It was my wealth and influence and technology that put Hydra where it is today, on the verge of seizing total control of global security."

"But Fury is still in the way," observed Malick, his hair was short and gray and his professional clothes were business like.

"I intend to kill many birds with just one stone," I said mildly and I extracted from a set of files and put them in front of my esteemed colleagues.

"They're looking for me," Whitehall said as he read, his rounded glasses and gray hair rounding out his professorial clothing. The files showed what Banner, Widow, and Skye had been working on since Skye had re-emerged with her apparently vibration based power. She was a hacker and damn fine one, but if you put a machine mind to it, you could put a machine mind against it, and so I'd tracked and followed everything she learned. "That's what you think?"

"Jiaying may be dead," I said, though of course I knew she wasn't. "But they are quite suspicious and knocking around the inside of SHIELD, looking for who ordered the dissection."

"Do you have a solution to this problem?"

"You've never been an official employee of SHIELD. So we're just going to kill you again," I said confidently. "The surgeon from Jiaying's surgery will be shown to be a dead asset of one Nicholas J. Fury."

"And so will Strucker," Stern said, his voice faintly impressed. He was such an slimy looking guy, with this just-rounded enough face and thinning hair, it was a little bewildering that he had managed to be elected to the Senate in our image conscious age.

"That is the plan," I said pointedly.

"How are you going to make them believe all that?" Stern asked, "Romanoff, Banner, even this Skye girl - None of them are stupid."

I had this ace up my sleeve for five years, but the time to play it had finally come. I had to make this work and I had to make it work just this once.

"We've seeded plenty of paper work in various files that might be tempting to break into and we've duplicated the dummy accounts Fury used to fund their own mission. That will set them on the track. Strucker's death will be a mysterious kill while Fury is on an away mission. They'll follow the evidence back to 'Strucker's' blackbox, which will include the orders from Fury, my notes with strong recommendations not to use it - Written to Fury, of course. And, with my newly perfected Thoth Engine, a video taped conversation with Fury, where he discusses how he's sent them on a goose chase. When that happens, we'll kill him."

"We only have to murder the most competent spy since Peggy Carter," Malick said.

"I have a plan for that."

When I had finished explaining, the vote was seven to four to sacrifice Strucker.