Hollow Gillan Appears!
Coulson relayed everything he’d learned from Jack to Nick Fury in full detail.
“A Soul Reaper.
Hollows.” Fury folded his hands, fixing Coulson with his single good eye.
“What’s your read on this?
How credible is it?”
Coulson pulled out a tablet and swiped across the screen, projecting a blue holographic display.
“Given the scale of destruction at yesterday’s scene, along with a string of unexplained incidents across New York over the past year, I’d rate the credibility as extremely high.”
Fury glanced at the projection, his stomach sinking slightly.
Just as Coulson had said — the display showed red markers scattered across every district of New York, representing roughly a thousand similar incidents over the past year.
The vast majority remained unsolved.
Coulson pulled up a second file.
“This is the result of cross-referencing these crime scenes with twenty-four independent labs.
Take a look, Director.”
Fury took the report and scanned through it, his expression darkening with every page.
“So you’re telling me you actually believe these things — Hollows, Soul Reapers — are real?”
“Believe me, I wish I didn’t.” Coulson exhaled slowly.
“But based on everything we’ve gathered, there’s clearly something in this world we can’t see with the naked eye.
Souls.
Something real.”
Tap…
tap…
tap…
Fury went quiet, fingers drumming against his desk.
A Soul Reaper.
A Hollow.
What did the sudden emergence of two concepts that defied everything humanity understood actually mean?
As someone who’d sat atop S.H.I.E.L.D.
for years and knew most of the world’s secrets, Fury felt a rare and unwelcome sense of unease — the feeling of something slipping outside his control.
After a long pause, his tapping stopped, his expression hardening.
“Effective immediately, everything related to the ‘Soul Reaper’ gets sealed.
Open a file, mark it Top Secret, and I’m bumping your clearance to Level 8.
You’re now solely responsible for this investigation.”
Level 8?
Coulson couldn’t hide his surprise.
Fewer than ten agents in all of S.H.I.E.L.D.
held that clearance.
Reaching Level 8 required over a decade of unblemished service and absolute loyalty — every one of them was a seasoned veteran.
It also came with access to some of the agency’s deepest secrets.
“Understood,” Coulson said, keeping his composure.
“One more thing,” Fury added.
“This stays buried.
No leaks, under any circumstances. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Report directly to me, and only me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Coulson nodded and left the office.
Once alone, Fury leaned back in his chair and picked up another file waiting on his desk, sighing.
“Italy?
Of course.
Just what I needed.”
REPORT — TOP SECRET
Clearance: Level 9 and above
Location: Rome, Italy — beneath the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, site of the famous Mouth of Truth sculpture.
An underground chamber roughly the size of a football field has been discovered.
Findings: At the center of the chamber stands a stone structure, radiocarbon-dated to approximately 100,000 years old.
Description: The structure is columnar — roughly five meters wide and ten meters tall — covered in ancient carvings depicting three unidentified humanoid figures.
It appears to possess some form of blood-absorption capability.
Cause unknown.
As it turned out, not a single word out of the FBI’s mouth had been true.
Jack hadn’t been released — far from it.
Coulson had threatened him with execution and a laundry list of additional charges to force his cooperation in the investigation.
In exchange, Coulson promised that once the mission wrapped up, his criminal record would vanish entirely, and he’d walk away with a real job and a generous payout.
Carrot and stick.
Simple, maybe, but it never stopped working.
Nobody turned down clean cash — same way nobody turned down a hot tub with jets.
Naturally, Jack agreed.
Out of everyone connected to the recent “Soul Reaper” incidents, Jack was the only known witness capable of actually seeing Hollows and the reaper himself.
Since ordinary people couldn’t perceive these entities, Coulson theorized that Jack carried some kind of unusual physiological trait letting him see into that hidden world.
If S.H.I.E.L.D.
wanted to find the Soul Reaper — or the Hollows — Jack’s unique ability made him essential.
“Hey, officer.” Jack sat slouched in the back of a sleek black Audi, voice thick with impatience.
“We’ve been driving in circles around Hell’s Kitchen all day.
Where the hell are we even going?”
“Looking for someone,” Coulson replied flatly, eyes on the window.
“Your job is just to watch.
The second you spot anything like what you saw that night, you tell me immediately.”
“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Jack bit back his frustration, thinking of the money.
“But I’m telling you right now — if we actually find one of those things, I’m bolting.”
“Be my guest,” Coulson said with a faint smile, not bothering to argue.
For three straight days, Coulson and Jack combed through the streets and alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, day and night, chasing any trace of the Soul Reaper or the Hollows.
They found nothing.
No reaper.
No Hollows.
Not even the faintest sign of a wandering soul — though they did stumble across a few low-level thugs along the way, much to Coulson’s irritation.
If they couldn’t find anything, what then?
At this rate, Coulson was starting to wonder if he’d been played by a small-time criminal with nothing to lose.
Hmm.
The Audi pulled to the curb.
Three days of relentless searching had worn him down, even as a seasoned field agent — caffeine was the only thing keeping him upright at this point.
Jack, meanwhile, had already passed out in the back seat.
Coulson rubbed his bloodshot eyes and muttered under his breath, “Where the hell are you…”
What neither of them realized was that the Soul Reaper they’d spent three days hunting was perched directly above them — balanced on a high-voltage power line, watching in silence.
Lorde stood on the wire, looking down at Coulson below, murmuring to himself.
“Three days…
should be just about time.”
While keeping tabs on Coulson and Jack over the past few days, Lorde had also been busy with something far more important — preparing an elaborate debut gift, one designed to convince S.H.I.E.L.D.
that an entire Soul Society existed behind him.
“Hm?” His eyes lifted slightly, gaze drifting toward the horizon.
A slow smile spread across his face.
“There it is.
Right on schedule.”
BOOM!
Coulson, coffee cup still halfway to his lips, felt the ground shudder violently beneath him.
The coffee sloshed out of the cup and onto his hand.
“What was that?!” He froze for a split second.
“Holy shit!” Jack, jolted awake by the tremor, shoved his head out the window, cursing.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The tremors grew stronger, more violent, until it felt like the street itself might cave in.
Two or three hundred meters ahead, the asphalt began caving inward — and massive footprints started forming, one after another.
“It’s— it’s a monster!
AAAHHH!” Jack’s pupils shrank to pinpricks as he let out a full-throated scream.
A monster?
Coulson’s pulse spiked as he turned to follow Jack’s line of sight — but saw absolutely nothing there.
Then it clicked.
He grabbed Jack by the collar and shouted, “Is that it?
Is that the thing from that night?!”
“It— it— it is!” Jack had completely lost it, stammering through the panic.
“It’s here!
It’s massive — bigger than a building!”
Coulson’s stomach dropped.
A chill shot from the soles of his feet straight to his scalp.
Whatever was approaching was a Hollow — and it was taller than a skyscraper.
From Jack’s vantage point, the creature stood well over a hundred meters tall: a slender, jet-black body, a long white mask shaped like a beak, and two blood-red eyes burning with feral hunger.
A Gillian-class Hollow.
An elite Hollow, born only through the fusion and consumption of hundreds of lesser Hollows.
And this particular Gillian?
It was no accident.
Lorde had handpicked and personally cultivated it — the perfect centerpiece for his grand introduction.