It's so nice to know that people are already reading this, and I sure hope at least one of them actually continues the story. If you're reading this, it means you've continued it. Thank you.
CHAPTER 1
Forever Alone
Amber was stalking down the road, eyes darting from one side to the other, searching for food. Her mouth watered as she looked into the blatant shop windows of Manhattan. She watched a young child hug his mom for getting him ice cream and she felt as if she might throw up. She instead chose to trip him and steal his ice cream. She continued down the sidewalk, listening to the sobs of the child as he got up from his face plant into the pavement. She laughed out loud, licking her treat and grinning like a maniac. She hated children, or more specifically, hated any sort of family affection involving children and parents.
Lucky for her, she'd never had to bother with that type of sappy, I wuv u mummy. I wuv u daddy. Life is good and I have a home and free food whenever I want it blah blah blah, like the rest of those idiot children. No, she was lucky enough to have been abandoned on the street, left to die! How fun does that sound! I mean, who wants to grow up with people who love and provide for you when you can have devious drug dealers and homicidal hijackers! The streets were all she knew, all she had known from the word go.
When people saw her, dirty blonde hair, tied back in a ponytail, dark black, skin tight shirt and shredded blue jeans, even her belt, which was a black thing that she'd stolen from a place, she always saw pity in their eyes - though they generally stayed away from her, since her bright orange hoody gave her the look of a criminal - before, that is, they saw her face. Her skin was so pail it was almost see through. Her mouth was small, like her nose, but her eyes were large and round. They were constantly shifting from color to color according to her mood, from white to black to blue. Even red when she was especially angry. She never got enough to eat, so she was frighteningly thin, her cheekbone was sharp and her ribs could be seen through her clothing.
Her life was a strict "my food is mine and so is yours" thing. She stole, fought and occasionally killed when she had to. But she was still a kid, and providing for yourself for twelve years can be tough. Never in her life had she had a family, and she didn't need one. She didn't want one.
She had taken only a week to master the art of walking, a month to master the art of thieving, and a year to master the art tricks and mischief, which was her first choice of killing technique. Set a trap, then sit back, relax, and watch the victim kill themselves. Much cleaner than upfront knife killing. And more entertaining.
That day had been pretty uneventful, but night was when things really started happening. But for her, it was quiet and calm, dark, despite the bright lights of the city. She was traveling, not very far, outside the city, at least. She felt herself relax at the prospect of leaving. A magnetic feeling in her diaphragm that made her feel as though if she were to jump of a building, she would be pulled directly where she wanted to go. Which was pretty much exactly what she was going to do.
She stood at the top of the Empire State Building, feeling the wind blow across her face. God she had missed this, the thrill, the magnificence. In her excitement, she almost forgot to make herself invisible to the eye. She waved her hand across the Manhattan skyline, whispering the ten glorious words that had been the key to her survival for twelve long years. "You cannot sense me in any way. I don't exist."
Then she backed up, tensing her muscles and grinning hysterically. She bent down and then pelted, head long to the brink of the building, diving off of it in a frenzied mess of screams and laughs. She plunged downward for about two hundred fifty feet before closing her eyes and summoning her limited magic. She was propelled upward by the force of her spell, hovering a few hundred feet above everything. She flipped and dived through the air, releasing some of her confined vitality. Dashing through the wisps of cloud and smoke. She yelled some rather rude words, just for fun, and then set off after the source of her curiosity.
She would not be missed. Her stuff would not be stolen, because she had none. She would simply disappear, like many of the other homeless, and be disregarded until her return. If I return she thought to herself, excitedly. The last time she'd gone - she had been eight then - she had messed with the wrong people and ended up in a glass prison. It had been quite boring, but not terrible. She had enjoyed annoying the guards and her sentence hadn't been that long, since she was a little girl and she'd never actually alerted certain groups to their location. And the information she had stolen hadn't been super serious. Honestly, she thought she should've just been given a firm talking to and set out into the wild.
This thought lasted her a few hours as she recounted all the hilarities of the adventure, and soon she began to slow down. She had apparently reached her destination at last. She dropped down as a helicopter zoomed above her and said the words again. She didn't want to be caught. Not just yet.
You know those games where you have the option of using cheats or not. Well, this was like using cheats. It was boring. She simply landed on the ground and walked – or rather bounded – into a large building across from her entrance. She still had the feeling of being dragged, and she intended to find out what it was that was "pulling" her, as she thought that was the case.
She passed numerous men and women in black, tight fit clothes, with gun holsters at their sides. She would've assumed she was in an army facility if she hadn't been to somewhere similar. "Good," she said, grinning when nobody heard her. They couldn't sense her in any way. It was as if she did not exist, which in her case was good. She held out a hand and snatched a gun from a passing agent and held it, examining it. It seemed good, and as long as she kept it in her belt, it wouldn't be seen. She practically jumped for joy when she saw a military rifle. She loved explody things.
Side stepping a man in a suit, because, unfortunately, the things she was surrounded by could still feel her, she followed him to a landing platform, where the helicopter from before was touching down.
"Instructor Fury!" he called, and Amber made note of the edge in his voice. It sounded as if something wasn't going as planned.
"How bad is it?" A man with dark, chocolate brown skin and a black eyepatch stepped out. His long leather trench coat and black turtleneck made him seem as though he held a very high position in this facility. As he strode into the light, Amber saw three scratches curve along his face and disappear under his eyepatch. He also had a small mustache and beard, and his leather boots made clicking noises on the ground as he walked. He strutted about as if he owned the place, which he probably did, being the director and all.
"That's the problem, sir. We don't know," Coulson said as he walked away swiftly.
"Doctor Selvig read an energy surge from the Tesseract four hours ago," Said a new woman.
"NASA didn't authorize Selvig to pull the test phase," Fury said as they entered.
"He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement."
"It just turned itself on? What are the energy levels now?"
"Climbing. When Selvig couldn't shut it down, we ordered the evac."
"How long to get everyone out?"
"Campus should be clear in the next half hour."
"Do better," snapped Fury.
"Sir, evacuation may be futile."
"We should tell them to go back to sleep?"
"If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, there may not be a safe distance."
"I need you to make sure that phase-
"Sir, is that really a priority right now?"
"Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on," Fury explained, "Clear out the tech below. Every piece of phase two on the truck and gone."
"Yes sir," the woman said, "Come with me," she said, gesturing at a few other Agents, and walking away.
Amber was beaming from ear to ear. Explosions, oh how she loved them. She seemed to overlook the part about her getting caught in it as well, as she descended a stair case, following Fury. As he reached the bottom, he set off quickly and determinedly, soon joined by a man. This new guy wore a plaid shirt and kakis, who had to be Selvig. He held a clip board and Amber could hear their conversation from the stairs. If she had been paying attention.
Instead, she was gazing around at the incredible room, full of interesting gadgets. It had a high ceiling and a sort of brace at the top. Many men and women in white uniforms jostled around, taking note and examining computers. But the thing that caught her eye was a strange contraption in the center of the area. It was a mechanism that seemed to be very important, and also very dangerous. She dashed to it, before glancing at the two men. She strolled over to them and listened to their conversation.
"Low levels of gamma radiation," the other man was saying, bending over a computer to examine the data shown on the screen.
"That can be harmful," replied Fury.
Harmful? Awesome!
"Where's Agent Barton?" Asked Fury, looking around.
"The hawk? In his nest, as usual," said Selvig, gesturing to a walkway above them.
The man named Barton stood up as Fury strode over below his hiding place. He had a high tech bow and a quiver of arrows slung over his back, which didn't make any sense to Amber, since guns were much more convenient. He slid down a rope and landed on the ground.
"Agent Barton, report to me."
"Director Fury."
"I gave you this detail so you could keep a close eye on things."
"I can see better from a distance."
"Are you seeing anything that might set this thing off?"
"Doctor, it's spiking again," a lady in a white uniform informed the doctor.
"No one come or gone. It's oven's clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't on the end."
"At this end? A cube of space, one end of the door." Asked Fury, perplexed.
"Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right? Doors open from both sides."
Just then, a boom came from the blue cube. All the lights flickered off, and all that was left was the iridescent blue glow.
A flash and a spurt of light. A crack and a boom. And then, all went quite. Amber stood there, surveying the room. The cube had done something to the platform a few feet from it. Something was moving on it. Amber's eyes widened as the fog cleared and she saw what it was. A man was crouched on the pad. He wore strange looking armor and held what looked like a killer glow stick. And he was smiling.
I know that I must have gotten some lines wrong, so please just pretend they never existed for the time being. Next chapter things get a little more interesting. Thank you.
