Chapter 6: The Harker File

The briefing room on sub-level four smelled of recycled air and old decisions.

Carol had been in rooms like this before — the kind with no windows and too many chairs and a table whose laminate surface had been wiped so many times it had achieved a particular institutional smoothness, the smoothness of things that had absorbed information and given nothing back. She had been in rooms like this for the Kree debrief after the Hala incident. For the Yon-Rogg classification hearing. For six separate after-action reviews that had all arrived at the same conclusion, written in the passive voice: assets were deployed; outcomes were achieved; accountability was distributed.

She had not, until now, been in one of these rooms with Maria Hill sitting directly across from her, a sealed manila folder between them on the table like a thing someone had set down carefully and was not yet prepared to pick up.