Author's Note: This story takes place before the events of The Angels Take Manhattan
Peter was feeling particularly proud of himself today. Even the endless, boring concrete walls of UNIT couldn't spoil his peppy mood. Granted, he has been expecting something a bit more like the government agencies he read about in his comic books. The types with super advanced technology oozing out of every nook and cranny staffed with top agents who were always dressed to kill, or the type with big tanks containing bizarre alien creatures that always seemed to be place in the hallways for people to walk and talk right by as they went to their next important mission.
No, compared to all that, UNIT seemed a bit…dull.
This didn't matter to Peter. He had studied and worked until he felt he might die of mental or physical exhaustion to get to get where he was today: his first day at UNIT. He wanted to be the perfect soldier, and this was the first step. He'd be out fighting extraterrestrial monstrosities within his first week!
It was at this moment that Peter began to realize he was hopelessly lost. The concrete had the marker "S-41" spray painted on to it in stark, black paint. New recruit orientation was supposed to take place on R-32…or was it R-31? Peter looked back down the way he came and looked at the crumbled piece of paper in his hand. He wrote down every important code he needed to memorize for that day. He was sure he could recite them as easily as he could recite the names of his eight siblings, but he had always been a cautious sort of fellow. As he began to retrace his steps, he heard a faint cry from somewhere down the hall.
As it often did, Peter's curiosity overwhelmed him, and he turned around for a second time. It wasn't long before he found himself in front of a massive steel door. The muffled cry slipped through the near impenetrable entrance. Peter pressed the entry code for prisoner cells on the slick white keypad that was built into the door.
The key pad flashed green and slid open with a soft hiss.
"Now, that's the kind of future stuff I was looking for," Peter thought to himself, with a grin covering his whole face.
The room he entered was completely dark, except for a square spotlight that shined a large patch of light from the ceiling to the floor. Inside of the light was a makeshift medical examining room with a flat metal table draped in a white cloth and a horseshoe of computer monitors that sat waiting for a patient to examine. A young man, wearing the same type of UNIT uniform as Peter, stood next to the table with his hand against the edge of the light, which immediately reminded Peter of a mime.
"Thank God, I've been shouting for an hour," the young man said. Peter couldn't help but notice how blue his eyes appeared.
"Is it your first day too?" Peter asked.
"I wish," the young man said, "if only to save me the embarrassment of explaining why I got stuck in here. I've been in charge of inspecting this wing of the compound for almost a year now. And today, of all days, the light barrier decides to go on the fritz. Could you get me out?"
The young man pointed to a key pad that stood on a thin stand off to Peter's right.
"Oh sure," Peter said, "I won't mention this to anyone, either, just to protect your reputation."
"I'd appreciate it," the young man said with a laugh, "here's the code."
Peter pressed each of the six digits after they were spoken by the accidental prisoner. The light tumbled down like a stage curtain that was suddenly severed from its ropes.
"Thanks, mate, I owe you," the young man's hand came down on Peter's shoulder. Peter felt the sensation of hundreds hot pins stabbing into his body. The pain vanished as suddenly as it came and Peter's whole body became dead weight. Without realizing it, he was on the floor, totally numb. His vision began to distort and duplicate everything around him. Underneath the white sheet that dangled down from the examining table, he thought he saw a pair of gentle blue eyes staring back at him, wide open in terror.
With the last of his quickly draining strength, Peter rocked himself onto his side to take one last look at the young man…
One thought went through his head. It wasn't a desperate, heroic thought about warning his compatriots, nor was it an observation about how strange it was that the young man's outline, which was becoming increasingly blurry as he slipped out of consciousness, suddenly changed into a shape like a starfish, then back to a normal human. No, all Samuel could think in that moment was "what a rubbish first day this turned out to be."
