PREFACE

She should've felt at ease, sitting on that metal chair in the middle of the room, but after the last few weeks —Hell, the last few days—, she felt different. On a different day, she would be hiding in her room, crying and screaming, shivering under the covers like a scared animal. She wouldn't have even considered the offer they made her. She was never that bold. She never was.

Instead, she felt numb. She noticed her scraped knuckles still had leftover dried blood in them that hadn't rubbed off in the shower. Some was hers, some was most likely not. Her whole body was beaten to a pulp. Under her clean shirt, jean and jacket, she hid colorful bruises and scratches like one of those abstract paintings that look just like splattered paint, there were even a few tender spots on her torso and back where deep that were healing, stab wounds that would've put someone else three feet underground.

Lucky —or unlucky, for her, she wasn't someone else.

Through the thick concrete walls of the small room, she felt pulses. It was still new to her, but after the mess she'd been through, it became more of a hum on the back of her mind. They reminded her of the soft, steady beat of music. Each followed a different compass, each heart beat at their own tempo.

She fixated her glance to the wall in front of her, watching her reflection through the two-way mirror, looking at the girl that seemed so small, compared to the empty, colorless interrogation room around her.

Her dark hair was wavy and her face was expressionless, empty, but the leftover scratches and cuts told a different story. She had two particularly large ones over her forehead and cheek. She vaguely remembered the piercing pain when she got them, or how the blood poured out, dripping to her eyebrow and pooling around her blackened eye.

It had been gruesome, but they were know thin red lines that scarred with the passing of the hours. Most importantly, she looked as tired as she felt. She couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled, or could hope for a time she would smile again. Right now she just felt one thing…

The door opened, and she carefully watched the man in the suit every step of the way until he dragged the chair before her and sat down, dumping a large folder on the table. "Miss Fowler," he said. "Let me just start by saying how grateful we are for your incredible performance at the events of the past few days…"

"I did what had to be done." She muttered, vague memories flashed before her eyes like a recording on a loop. Blasts of light, clouds of dust. She eyed to the mirror on the wall. "Is it necessary that they watch, too?"

The man looked behind his back at his reflection, trying to see behind it, but all he faced was his own confused face, and how good his suit looked, then looked back at the girl before him, whose eyes seemed to move following something he couldn't see. "We still have so much to learn about you, but that can wait. Right now we need to get some formalities done."

"Formalities?" She sat back on her chair, arms crossing over her chest.

The man opened the folder and grabbed a clean piece of paper. "We have a preliminary report on the, uh, events of this week," he grabbed the elegant fountain pen from his front pocket and began scribbling down with smooth movements. "but we need an official statement on how you acquired your, um, abilities, to put them that way… Explain how you became, uh…" He trailed off when the lights flickered.

The man tried to keep his cool, but he gulped hard, his tie feeling suddenly too tight. He watched her squint her eyes slightly as the room turned light and dark, he could've sworn her eyes gleamed like headlights for a moment, a ring of gold that twirled around her irises. "Miss Fowler?" He asked, keeping his voice as steady and authoritarian as he could.

The lights turned back on. The man let out a breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding. Rapidly, he scribbled the word 'Unstable' on a corner of his paper and underlined it. "Miss Fowler," he cleared his throat, "may we continue?"

The corner of her mouth was softly pulled upwards. "I wasn't aware we'd started."

"Right," He took another paper, a computer printed file with a photograph stapled on top. He briefly made note of the kid in the picture. About sixteen years old, with uncanny resemblance of the girl before him, if you just took out the bruises and the clear trauma she'd experienced. The girl before him seemed to have aged at least a decade since the picture was taken, instead of two years. "The agency would like to know if you recall ever being experimented on…"

"My files are very public record." She interrupted, tilting her hair to the side and closing her eyes like she was tired. "You don't need me to guide you through that."

"Well," he persisted. "Social Services didn't provide very thorough information regarding any extracurricular activities, nothing much on the School reports, or medical records, not as much as the flu, so we're obligated to ask if you took part in any private clinical trial or…"

"There's nothing there because there's nothing to say." She deadpanned. "I wasn't a lab rat, or played with radiation. I've been like this since I can remember… Well, kind of…"

He flipped through pages and reports as she talked, almost ignoring her. "Here, we see multiple requests for relocation from previous foster families, but then how do you explain there wasn't a single complain regarding… Strange activity, at least not since…"

She huffed. "I'm not talking about that."

"It's imperative that you do. Since your assigned social worker, Ms. Simon, failed to include notes regarding your possible erratic conduct before her…"

"If—" She slammed her palms on the table. "You're making assumptions based on government reports, then you're not that much of an intelligence agency. Did you bring me here to go over public records?"

He loosened his tie a little. "We just want the truth."

There was a long silence, electricity cracked through the air. The girl breathed out slowly. "You won't believe me. I couldn't believe it at first, either. I still don't. This whole thing still feels like a nightmare."

"Miss Fowler," he said. "We've all seen things that we wouldn't even dream of. It's a new Era. The Era of miracles, Gods, aliens, magic. You'll find most of us are inclined to believe the unbelievable, specially after the most recent events."

Recent events. Blasts of light, clouds of dust…

Growling, blood dripping, screaming, a hole in the sky…

"Miss Fowler?" She focused her eyes back on the man before her, and caught how the lights turned back on the moment she did so. He seemed positively alarmed, but smiled tightly at her, trying his best to look confident and reassuring. "Alright, Juliet? Can I call you that? Let's start easy then. Why don't you tell me about the day you first came in contact with S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

She looked down and focused on the edge of the table. She heard the faint breeze of the air conditioning coming from the ducts, the heavy breathing of the people behind the glass. The soreness of her limbs as a constant reminder of what happened.

And in the interrogation room she came to realize that, as incredibly uneventful her life had been, her personal freakiness included, she could trace the moment her life spiraled straight to madness down to the date.