Author's notes will be at the end of the chapter in this story. Just for future reference.
This computer was really starting to make her mad.
Okay, she'd admit, she wasn't a technological genius, but there were some things that she understood. Such as, 'press the round button with the power symbol on it to turn on the computer,' and 'the mouse plugs into the side of the computer' and 'if the monitor starts to smoke, you've probably done something wrong.' But she had been trying to get the damn thing to open the files she wanted for the past hour, or just, you know, turn on, and still no luck. The screen stared back at her, black and forlorn, as she growled and kicked the extremelyoutdated tower for what seemed to be the hundredth time.
Once more, not even the tiniest flicker of hope sustaining the action, she simply pressed the power button. No dice. Because that would just be too easy.
Sighing, she flipped the tower onto its side and removed the side panel. A sequence of motherboards, hardware components, and wires met her gaze. She wiggled the fingers of her right hand into one of her gloves. She really, really didn't want to overload the circuitry, not when getting the damn computer had been way more trouble than it was worth. It had taken her hours to find an electronics shop that was just large enough to have what she needed, but just small enough to warrant only a simple security system. And it wasn't like she had taken a touch-screen PC, either. No, she had been nice and had taken the oldest, chunkiest, most run-down mess of circuitry and plastic in the shop. And left behind a note saying it would be back by the weekend. And that she was sorry.
Because she was nice.
She sighed again and carefully applied the fingertips of her right hand to the closest knot of wires. Delicately, ever so delicately, she closes her eyes and felt her way along the pulses of power flowing through the wires. She could almost seethem, the fine trails of electricity as they wound their way through the computer. There. She felt the flow snag on a wire, where the collection of filaments was just barely separated from a motherboard. Really, she could have accidentally jostled it and it might have slipped back into place. On one hand she was relieved it was such a simple fix and she wouldn't have to go sneaking back into an electronics store any time soon, but on the other she was annoyed. Using her aptitude (she deliberately avoided the word 'powers') could be fairly exhausting, especially when she was focusing so hard and on such delicate work. She scrunched up her eyebrows and easily tapped the wires back into place. Replacing the panel and righting the tower, she pressed the power button and nearly whooped when it wheezed to life. She sat back as she waited for the ancient thing to boot up, which she doubted would be a speedy process.
Raising a hand in front of her, she idly flicked her fingers against her thumb, pointer to pinky and back. Small zap noises were emitted as tiny arcs of energy jumped over her fingers, disappearing almost as quickly as they came. They only reached her first knuckle, though, before they were stopped by the gloves that she had designed for just such a purpose.
She had had these...okay, there was really no way around the word 'powers,' but whatever they were, she had had them all her life. She remembered being maybe five when she touched someone and made their hair stand up on end. Shocking herself in the bathtub. Sticking her fingers in light sockets and not only did nothing happen, but she felt better, if anything. Hell, if she remembered correctly, she had been hit by lightning at one point, and there were no harmful effects. Of course, she remembered very clearly everything that happened from her ninth birthday onwards, and that was where she learned to control the power, but...
No. No. She did not, not, not want to go there tonight. She abruptly leaned forward over the dusty keyboard, focusing entirely on the screen in front of her.
Leaning over, she picked the flash drive out of where her coat was lying on the bed. The motel room she had rented was...not five-star, but it served her purposes, and the fact that she had a stolen computer plugged in to the wall was probably the least illegal thing going on in the building. While normally that fact worried her, it carried the added bonus that no one, absolutely no one in the motel wanted government agents showing up at the door, so that worked as her security. Flicking a glance out the cloudy window, she inserted the flash drive into the tower.
Two hours later, she had finally managed to break through the encryption on the files. She may have been good with hardware, but she couldn't exactly crack software open and look at the wires inside. She suspected that if these files had been held at a more secure facility, and had been dubbed just a few levels more classified, she wouldn't have been able to break through at all. Irritated and frustrated, she gave a cry of triumph when the files finally unlocked in front of her.
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and clicked.
A veritable treasure trove of information appeared in front of her. She smirked, and got down to reading. Reading through her own past.
"Sir, we've got a match."
Director Fury looked down from where he had been staring out the windows. He signaled the agent who had spoken, and a second later, the information appeared on his personal screens. He got an impression of dark brown, shiny hair, pale skin, and odd eyes before someone else was shouting at him. Scowling, he turned around to be met with the flushed face of Agent Greene.
"What, Agent?" he said snapped a quick salute and took a deep breath. "Sir, we got a hit on the data tags. They match the ones on the files stolen last week."
That got Fury's attention. He nodded sharply and started rattling off instructions. "Get a team of thirty agents together, ones that aren't panicky or easily surprised. I want all of them armed with rubber gloves and the darkest shades we have-I don't need agents going blind, because I can almost guarantee this is going to get ugly. Bring enough defibrillators for the job, however many you think you'll need. Put a medical team on standby for burns before you go, I don't care how good you think you are, this girl isn't anything you've ever fought before." He turned and gestured at the screen. "Pass around a few copies of her picture, they don't need the full profile just yet."
Greene nodded. "Who do you want leading the operation, sir?"
Fury rasied an eyebrow. "You, of course, Agent Greene."
Even though her eyes widened a bit in surprise, she nodded again and turned on her heel.
"Agent!"
Greene turned around at the call and quirked an eyebrow. "Sir?"
"Do try to talk to her first-I'd like to meet her myself." Translation: bring her in for interrogation, alive. Greene's lips acquired the barest hint of a smirk and she turned away again. Fury resumed his study of the profile. They still hadn't found the name yet, not quite, but now that they had a clear picture of the girl, that particular program would go much faster.
His phone rang in his pocket.
Sparing it a quick glance, he noticed that the caller was Agent Coulson. Fury had sent the agent to New Mexico to join Dr. Selvig, with specific instructions not to call in unless there was something that required Fury's direct attention. Coulson was not a superficial man, either-he knew exactly what needed what levels of attention.
He closed the profile and turned to leave the bridge. Stalking through one of the doors, he put the phone to his ear.
"Director Fury."
-Coulson speaking. Sir, Dr. Selvig is calling for an evacuation of the facilities and instructed me to inform you.-
Fury's eyebrows shot up. "May I ask why?"
-Selvig says the cube is...misbehaving.-
Fury had time for Dr. Selvig when he was talking about the Tesseract-the man was more of an expert than anyone else on earth. If the scientist thought it was doing something dangerous enough to warrant a full-scale evacuation, then yes, Fury definitely needed to be there. Truth be told, he should have paid a visit to the New Mexico facility days ago, but things had come up and he had decided to send Coulson instead.
"Roger that. I'll be arriving as soon as possible, I'll get you an ETA as soon as I get one myself. Fury out." With that he hung up and rounded a corner. Leaning over to the nearest comm unit installed on the wall, he pressed his thumb to the scanner and punched in a code. The unit beeped, indicating that it had found the indicated agent and he was live. Sometimes he regretted the fact that most of his tech came from Stark Industries-useful little buggers, but he hated having that over his head.
"Agent Hill."
-Director Fury?- came the surprised but collected female voice. Maria Hill was probably not expecting a call from the man himself near midnight.
"I need you to get down to Hangar 2 ASAP, we're paying a call to New Mexico," he snapped over the comm. He could almost see her crisp nod.
-Roger that, sir. En route now.-
Of course. Hill was always ready-that was one reason she was among his inner circle of agents. He removed his thumb from the comm unit and continued down the hallway. He tried to focus on the task at hand-over the past few days, Agent Greene had proved herself more than competent, and she could certainly handle the collection. He had bigger problems to deal with.
The instant she closed the files, shaking slightly, she knew something was wrong.
It wasn't just that she finally had answers to questions she had been asking for three years, but that was certainly part of it. It was more the fact that her skin was crawling, seemingly without cause. It wasn't the fairly pleasant sensation of energy crackling over her skin-more like there was something inside her flesh. She stood up suddenly, sending the chair to the floor with a crash and unceremoniously yanking the power cord from the wall, the computer shutting down immediately and the cord sparking for good measure. Without even thinking about it, she clamped her hand over the electrical socket, sighing as she felt the familiar jolt rush through her. This always helped, and it brought back her energy much faster and much more completely than sleeping ever would. And sometimes, she just didn't have time to sleep.
Like right now.
She didn't know what first alerted her-maybe she glanced at the door, and saw the shadows moving around the bottom crack. Maybe she heard the slight creak of the runner on the third step from the top on the staircase down the hall. Maybe she heard a footstep just outside her window, or the swish of air as a hand was waved through the air. She didn't know what it was, but all of a sudden, every sense was hyper alert as adrenaline rushed through her veins. She was on her feet in a flash, focusing on calming her breathing and moving at a seemingly normal pace, so as not to alert whoever it was outside her door.
Grab bag. Hold the strap tightly. Put on jacket, pull on gloves. Stuff flash drive in back jeans pocket. Rejoice you left your boots on. Remove pistol from bag, make sure it has ammo. Turn on shower, make lots of noise. Walk to the right side of the door, moving silently. Hold breath. Wait.
It was an agonizing thirty seconds where she started to wondering if there were, in fact, hostiles outside her door. Then there was a whirr, a grinding noise, and a click, and every muscle in her body went tense.
The door cracked open, just a hair, and she slowly raised her pistol in front of her. She would wait, however, to click the safety off-that would give her away, if these people were who she thought they were.
The tip of a silencer poked through the door, slowly extending into the room. Her eyes went tense, but she continued to hold her breath, not moving a muscle. Just a little more...
The entirety of the pistol came into the room, and a thick-fingered hand was wrapped around the gun-too tightly, though, a brittle grasp, and her plan coalesced into action.
Her booted foot went shooting up, hitting the barrel square and sending the gun jerking and aiming straight towards the ceiling. There was a strangled noise, but her hand had already shot out, fingers digging into the tendons of the wrist she grabbed. With a heave, she dragged whoever it was into the room, surprising them with the direction of attack. Growling, she swung her victim off balance and into the wall face first, giving him a crack to the back of her head with the butt of her pistol for good measure. He fell to the floor, groaning, hands attempting to staunch the flow of blood, and she snatched the pistol out of his hands. She maneuvered her gun into her left hand, placing the far superior stolen weapon in her right.
She spun back around to find a pistol butt coming out of nowhere, probably to hit her across the temple and knock her out cold. One, this was a very stupid move because that was not a guaranteed knockout, and two, it told her something very important: they wanted her alive.
She blocked the swing with her right arm, punching out with a powerful fist with her right. Her fist connected with something, not a nose, but still painful enough, and she spun in a circle to complete the move, the edge of her flattened hand hitting the side of a head. She added an extra little burst of energy, nothing visible, and the second agent went headfirst into the desk and dropped like a stone.
"Freeze!" shouted the agent in the doorway now, his weapon pointed straight at her. It appeared to be the exact same as the one she had just acquired, but she wasn't willing to test that on her unarmored body. She didn't dare to try the same move, instead she grabbed the door by its handle and slammed it into his face with all of her considerable strength. The door cracked on impact, sending the agent stumbling off balance and crashing into those behind him. She wrenched the door open again, kicking straight out and causing a further domino effect. However, as she leaned out in the attack, she saw the hall was absolutely full of black-suited, body-armored, gun-toting agents. She knew what this was.
This was SHIELD.
Snarling, she fired a shot about an inch to the left of an agent's foot, making him jump backwards and toppling more agents. She definitely wasn't getting out that way. She slammed the door shut again, knowing that would only delay them for half a second. Sprinting across the room, she kicked the agent she had downed again for good measure. Reaching the opposite wall, she considered shooting through the window, but decided she didn't want to do too much damage. She simply wrenched it open, the glass trembling as it slammed into its casing.
There were more agents on the ground, guns pointed at her window as she threw a leg through it, yelling at her about 'standing down' and 'dropping the weapon' and a lot of things she had no intention of doing. But damn, there were a lot of them. She noticed with amusement that the body armor worn externally appeared to have a rubber covering over it, and the majority of the agents wore rubber gloves. Then her amusement disappeared like a stone down a well. That means they knew-and that might explain why they wanted her alive.
All of a sudden, she was really, really angry. They were not going to interrogate her, lock her away in a room somewhere until she was of use to them-not if her life depended on it.
In a lightning move-forgive the pun-her hand was pointing at the ground directly below her, and with a loud crack, fingers flinching, a bolt of yellow lightning flew from her hand to the ground. The dirt exploded outwards, leaving a tiny crater, and as expected, the agents nearest leaped back, focus abruptly drawn to the ground.
She took her chances and dove.
She hit the ground headfirst, but she rolled safely along the wall of the motel. The agents in the back had momentarily shocked, and were already running after her. She ran flat-out along the first alley she came to. She kept to the ground rather than escaping to the rooftops, knowing that they would have eyes in the air that would swoop down on her faster than she could say 'oops.' So she stayed on the street, cursing the fact that she didn't know this part of the city like the back of her hand, out of breath and out of patience.
Several times as she heard the footfalls behind her come uncomfortably close, she was forced to use her ability again-turning around, still running, her hand out behind her, a bolt of lightning felling an agent with a strike to the chest, where one or two agents would stop as well to make sure they weren't having a heart attack. While she was getting rid of them, it wasn't nearly fast enough for her liking.
And she was slowing down. They were, at last count, almost twenty agents still hot on her heels, and she was just one person-one person running out of tricks.
She rounded a corner at top speeds, stopping to catch her breath for half a second-they were far enough behind her. She hoped. Turning her head to the side, she saw what was pretty much a vision of salvation right now-a bank of trash cans, arranged unobtrusively against a dirty brick wall, with no windows peeking into the alleyway.
"Oh thank Jesus," she panted before she could stop herself, then she clapped a hand to her mouth and mentally berated herself. Throwing one open, she jumped in without checking what was in it or anything-truth be told, it could be moldy artichokes covered in a nice garnish of old eggs, and she honestly would not care. She closed the lid silently over her, sending silent and profuse thank-yous to whatever deity was listening when her boots came in contact with nothing solid, just a general sliminess that she was perfectly happy with. She held her breath, both to avoid the stink and detection, her eyes wide open. Her bag clutched to her chest, pistol pointed at the lid, she waited.
Heavy footfalls rushed past, and there were orders shouted by a female voice.
"Find her! Fucking hell, this is not what I expected-Jesus Christ, just find her-"
Hidden in the solitude of her neighborhood trash can, she smirked. Yeah, she tended to be a lot more than most people expected.
Half an hour later, there had been no noise save for the yowling of an alley cat for a good long while. Cautiously, always cautiously, she raised the lid of the trash can and peered out. Looked to be clear. She climbed out, scraping the slime on her boots as best she could on the asphalt. Her bag looked to be as clean as it was when it went in, and the rest of her could be attended to later. SHIELD was smart and thorough-knowing them, they would check over every inch of the route the team had followed chasing her down, and her trash can fell right into that category. Patting the can affectionately, she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and headed off down the alley towards an intersection, sparks snapping between her fingers as she flicked them.
She contemplated her next move. She didn't know how, exactly, SHIELD had found her-she had thought she was pretty well removed-but she had a suspicion it had to do with the files she had opened, seeing as they were the only SHIELD-related item on her person. She would have to get out of the city, obviously. They could probably hack into any security camera they wanted, and even if she didn't perform any illegal activities-which she totally would-they could find her if she just walked past the wrong store. She would need somewhere to go over the files more in-depth-she had spent barely an hour looking over them, and then only the highlights, and she was sure there was even more information in the details-but somewhere that SHIELD wouldn't think to watch for activity. Somewhere out of the state, definitely-probably out of the country, if she could manage it. Random, unrelated to anything she had done in the past. Somewhere not suspiciously remote nor conspicuously upscale...
Morning found her in the airport, cleaned up and looking publicly presentable, thanks to an unoccupied house with a still-working shower and no security system, and almost a thousand dollars richer, thanks to an unsuspecting ATM. She was staring at the list of departures and arrivals, trying to decide where to go, and very aware that she was on plenty of screens right now-hackable screens-and that she couldn't put a hood up without looking even more conspicuous.
"Do you need help, ma'am?"She turned suddenly, senses on full alert again, to see a petite woman in the airport uniform smiling at her. She smiled back charmingly.
"Yes, actually, I do. I need help deciding where to go."The clerk looked confused for a moment before smiling knowingly. "A spontaneous trip, then?"
"Yeah. Just decided I needed a week somewhere else," she said, shrugging dejectedly. The clerk's smile changed to one of sympathy.
"Do you have any idea of where you'd like to go?"
She made a snap decision. "Germany," she said. Well that was out of nowhere. But she supposed it would do-she certainly didn't have any ties to it.
Not that she could remember, anyway.
The smile on the woman's face became even brighter. "Wonderful! The flights to Berlin are a bit pricey right now, but there's a plane to Stuttgart that's leaving in a few hours that should still have some seats open."
She raised an eyebrow. "Stuttgart?"
"Yes! Sixth-largest city in Germany, very charming...the flight is only three hundred dollars, but I'm afraid you'll have to buy now, ma'am," the clerk apologized.
She felt herself smiling back, and nodded.
Stuttgart. In Germany. That was bound to be out of the way enough.
Oh how wrong she is, hehehehehe...
Anyway, it looks like I'm going to be continuing this story :D Don't worry, there will be plot-and Avengery goodness-very soon. Something happens in Stuttgart, remember? And I promise, we'll learn her name-well, I'll start writing it. We already kind of know it, right? And by the way, whenever I upload a doc, FF decides my syntax and spacing isn't good enough and messes everything up, so if there's any small errors in spaces or such, that's probably why.
Remember to review if you like the story!
