"What do you mean he's gone?" Banner groaned, running a hand down his face, "You're telling me that not only is Tony still gone, but Fury disappeared too?"
"It would seem that way." Striker mumbled. "The only thing we've found at Fury's last known location is some sort of pager. We fear the battery might run out soon though."
"Send it here." Steve said, "We will find a way to keep it running. If that's all Fury cared about when he started dusting, that means it must be extremely important. Is the pager flashing any words or coordinates?"
"We'll send it to the Avengers Compound now." Striker confirmed, handing the object off to someone outside of the projection's range. "You should receive it within an hour. And as far as any clues on the pager, the only thing the screen is showing is a strange symbol with a star of sorts at the center. At first we thought it was an older design of your suit, Cap, but after some research we found that to be inaccurate."
"So you have no idea who this device is calling?" I asked, "Or if whoever at the other end is even around after all that happened?"
"Listen here," Striker snapped, "We don't exactly have much to go on at this point, and if it was important to Fury, it's worth a shot at keeping around. You are on some THIN ice, and if it wasn't for Roger's steadfast defence of you and your apparently "changed" character, you'd be on your way to the Raft right now."
"That's enough." Steve said, stepping between myself and the projection of Striker, "Thank you, sir. We'll get that thing hooked up to a generator of sorts ASAP and let you know if we hear anything back."
Steve shut off the projection, taking a heavy sigh as the blue light fizzled out.
"Thank you." I said, surprised that he would have defended me in any capacity. "You didn't have to do that."
"I know." he replied, a smile briefly flashing on his face, "But you really have changed. I think that deserves a second chance alone, notwithstanding that I don't like it when people bully others. I'm also not Striker's biggest fan, so it made the whole ordeal easier for me to begin with."
Steve leaned closer to me, lowering his voice to a hushed tone, "And Thor needs you here, not locked away somewhere leaving him all alone."
Thor sat in an adjacent room, his brooding features the only external indication of the trauma that had occurred days prior. A bowl of rolls sat in front of him, untouched but waiting should he change his mind.
"I want to make sure he doesn't start self-destructing with guilt after the way things happened." Steve said, "If there's anything you think will help, we could really use your insight."
I paused, taken aback with Steve's sudden complete trust, and his reaching out for my help. While the experiences of the past few days had been nothing short of devastating, I had a hard time comprehending that someone who once viewed me (and perhaps rightly so) as an enemy was treating me with such empathy and compassion... almost as a friend.
"If there's anything we can do to monitor where half of our remaining people might be, that would be a good place to start." I said, gesturing to some of the readouts that were projected along the walls. "One of us was able to get a group of our people away from Thanos' ship and should be heading this way. If they send out a distress signal, we will need to be able to assist them in their journey here."
"On it." Natasha said, "Would you guys send out a distress signal in whatever language it is that you guys normally speak, or is it english?"
"It would be in Allspeak, so you'll be able to understand it." I clarified, "I don't know where they ran to though, so it would be best to scan in a general radius outwards from earth to ensure we pick up any signal they send."
As Natasha and I set up the monitoring frequencies that we would need, Banner went about producing a generator for the pager that would soon arrive.
"I hope that whatever Fury had in mind with this pager, it works." Steve said, sitting in one of the nearby office chairs.
"For everyone's sake, I agree." Bruce mumbled.
We all sat around the conference room days later, watching the global missing persons count steadily ascend as the pager beeped away in its container down the hall.
"This is a nightmare." Steve signed, his eyes trained on the growing number projected in front of us.
"I've had better nightmares." Natasha replied, sighing.
Rhodey walked in moments later, breaking our attention away from the screens.
"Hey." he said, leaning against the door frame. "So that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing."
We all followed Rhodes into the other room, where Bruce stood by the pager, its screen dead and blank behind the glass.
"What have we got?" Natasha asked.
"Whatever signal it was sending finally crapped out." Bruce responded.
"I thought we bypassed the battery?" Steve countered.
"Oh, we did, it's still plugged in." Rhodes answered, "It just stopped."
"Is there no way to turn it on again?" I asked, "Surely there's a power switch."
"Reboot it, send the signal again." Steve agreed.
"We don't even know what this is!" Banner said, irritation lacing his voice.
"Fury did." Natasha said quietly. "Just do it please. You tell me the second you get a signal, I want to know who's on the other end of that thing."
The second Natasha had finished her statement, my blood ran cold. Something powerful was closeby, and we were nearly defenseless…
Natasha and I turned at the same time, but I was the only one holding a knife up in response.
A woman stood before us, her appearance seemingly completely human, but an energy radiated from her the likes of which I had only seen once before. There was something extremely familiar about the power, but it was also different in a way that I could not yet discern. Whatever it might be, she was most definitely a force to be reckoned with.
"Where's Fury?" She said, staring all of us down.
"You're the one he called for?" Steve questioned, and pointed to the symbol on her suit. "That's the symbol that was on the pager."
I lowered my knife slowly, "Fury has met the same unfortunate demise as half of this universe." I said, "Not before sending the message that has undoubtedly brought you here."
"Do you know what happened?" she asked, her stance relaxing slightly. "And my name is Carol Danvers. I've known Fury for a very long time."
Bruce interjected, "You ever heard of a guy named Thanos?"
"Can't say that I have, the universe is a big place." She quipped, irritated with how long it was taking to get the information she desired.
"Well he's the reason everything's happened." Bruce responded, "He took all the infinity stones, the power stone, the mind stone, the tesseract-"
"The tesseract?" she interrupted. "I thought Fury had that safely tucked away."
"A lot has changed since you were with Fury." Steve said, sighing. "I know all too well how fast things move when you're not around to see them. We're trying to formulate a plan to find him and bring him to justice, whatever justice we can manage. To find out where he is, we need to find out if Tony Stark is still alive, and if he is, we need to bring him home."
"Where was he headed last?" She said, "I'll find him."
"He was last seen following a giant donut spaceship out of the atmosphere." Rhodey said, "He followed because some squid looking thing had taken Doctor Strange and the time stone, but we don't really have a heading."
"If that's the case, he'll be on Titan." I said, sighing. "Maw was doubtless trying to bring that stone back to Thanos so he could pursue the other that remained on earth."
"Titan it is." Danver said, marching outside quickly before shooting into the atmosphere and out of sight.
"Who the hell is she?" Rhodes snarked.
"Whoever she is, she has nearly the full force of the Tesseract's power within her." I said, turning to face the rest of the Avengers. "Yet it's in a different form than the kind that resided in (Y/N)."
My heart sank and was pulled at by another wave of anger and heartache merely mentioning her name again. Before I could control it, my face flickered with the emotions that I did not want to deal with in front of anyone. I had dealt with grief many times before, of course, but this time I couldn't simply run away and be alone. I saw the appeal of Thor's choice to seclude himself even in the Avengers compound.
"Let's just be glad she's on our side, then." Steve said, gripping my shoulder in support. "Maybe there's a chance she can help us find him and make him bring everyone back."