Stark, that's not a good idea!
Oh go find someone else to deal with your codes of conduct, Captain.
She's a mind reader, Stark, it's not the best idea to-
Oh, can it Stars and Stripes!
The door to the bedroom was thrown open and Stark waltzed into the room with a flourish. The girl was lying on the bed, sprawled across the sheets, hair laying in straggling lines over her face. She was dressed in simple black pants and a white tank top. Her feet were bare and on her wrists were slim circlets of silver metal.
"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!" Stark sang and jostled the girl's shoulder.
Immediately she was up, hands clawing around his throat.
She'd moved faster than either Rogers or Stark could have thought was possible. She was on the bed one second, flying through the air the next. Her momentum carried them off the bed and onto the floor, her hands clamped tightly around Tony's throat. Rogers took a moment to respond. The he was grabbing onto the back of her shirt and hauling her backwards. It took much more strength than he expected to pull her off of Stark.
Rogers finally succeeded in pinning her arms behind her head in a firm hold as Stark sat up warily regarding the girl while massaging his red neck. "Get your hands off of me!" she growled at Steve, pulling hard against his arms. Unfortunately his muscles were oversized due to his being a super-soldier and she only succeeded in making him tighten his grasp.
"See, Stark, I told you this wasn't a good idea!" Rogers yelled. He let a small "ow" as she viciously stabbed her heel down into his foot. Given that she was barefoot, it didn't really help her situation much.
"Well I didn't expect her to go all Xena Warrior Princess on me, now did I?!" Stark said indignantly in response. The girl stopped pulling against Rogers momentarily and let out a small laugh, barely more than a quick snort of breath but she had a small grin on her face. Tony gave a laugh as well and she tried to hold back a giggle. Suddenly Tony and the girl were both laughing with a bewildered Steve holding onto the girl.
"Care to explain that one?" Steve asked quizzically. Seeing the look of puzzlement on his face, Tony gave a brief explanation. "Ah, I see," Steve said with a puzzled look. Clearly the Captain still didn't understand it. These modern references are so confusing,
came his thought.
"No worries, most of us don't get them either," the girl said. Shocked that she had answered his thought, Steve momentarily relaxed his grip on her arms. She pulled away with a quick twist and ducked as Steve tried to grab her again. She sprinted past Tony, who was still trying to get up and leaped through the door.
Out in the hallway, she quickly looked right then left and decided on the left and blew down the corridor. She could hear Steve running after her. No time to look back and see if he was gaining; that would cost her precious seconds. She passed a living room with a blond-haired man sitting on the couch. He gave her a puzzled look as she flew by. "Don't just sit there, Thor, help me!" she heard Rogers yell.
She skidded around the corner and heard another set of heavier footsteps join Roger's. Great, just her luck. She mounted a staircase, taking them two at a time. She emerged on the roof and ran towards the edge, to discover that, oh great, this wasn't some house or apartment. No, this was a tower. So much for that escape route. She heard Steve pound out onto the roof behind her and spun to see him coming at her, followed by the blond-haired man.
She opted for the one strategy he probably wasn't expecting. Attack.
As he raced towards her, she ran at him full tilt. Baffled by her response, he slowed momentarily and it was enough for her to leap over him with the aid of the tower railing. She landed hard on her sore shoulder and rolled, shooting herself between the blond-haired man's legs as he made a grab for her. Who is this one? She heard briefly before she straightened and dove for the stairs only to run full tilt into Tony.
Rookie mistake, she berated herself as she fell backwards unceremoniously to land on her back. She jumped into a crouch but Steve was on her, pinning her to the ground with a flying tackle. Then suddenly, a high pitched whining filled her ears and she grunted in pain as an ultrasonic pulse ripped through her skull. On the edge of her consciousness she could feel the silver circlets on her wrists vibrating slightly; dang, Stark was good.
Steve slowly pulled his weight off from on top of her and she stayed on the ground, fingers pressed to her head. "Tony, that's enough," he said to Stark quietly. Stark nodded and released his finger from the button on the small handheld device he held, a replica of the one Fury had used on her.
"Sorry, honey, didn't think you'd react so violently and you seem like one for action first, and questions second," Stark said, holding a hand out to her. Ignoring it, she pried herself to her feet. Her lip was bleeding slightly and she touched two fingers to the bottom of her left eye, assessing the increased swelling present.
"Sorry about your throat," she rasped, giving him a wary look out of her good eye. "I just don't particularly like waking up from being knocked unconscious in a place I don't know. Don't have great history with that."
"If I may interject," said the blond-haired man, "But what is going on?"
"Great, introductions!" Stark said brightly. "Thor, this is our guest for the next three days, a certain…." He let the last sentence hang with a meaningful glance at the girl. She bit her lip, debating whether or not to tell them anything else about her. Surely Fury had told them all about her, right?
"Strong," she said with a glance at Thor. He was big as well, on par with Rogers for sure. She didn't care for the change of the odds out of her favor. Another person in the facility to get past. Cooperation would probably be her best option right now.
"Yes, you're strong," Thor said with a confused look. "But I believe that Tony was asking for your name."
Stark snorted. "Her last name is Strong," he clarified.
"Well then what is her given name?" Thor asked.
The girl sighed, chewing on her lip still. "I can just get the information from Fury you know," Stark said with a smirk and a cock of his eyebrow. Rogers looked at her expectantly.
"Alright," she sighed, "Jay. My name is Jay."
"Jay Strong," Tony mused, "Kinda a strange name for a girl," he remarked.
"It's short for Jaycee," she said quietly, looking at the ground. She suddenly seemed shy and unsure of herself and Steve couldn't discern whether it was an act or if she was giving up or she was actually just shy.
"Well, Miss Jaycee Strong," Tony said, "Unfortunately, you have to stay with us for the next three days. Honestly, I'm fine with just letting you go so I can get back to my house in Malibu," Here Steve shot him a scathing glare, "But I think fury would give me more grief for that and as much as I'd love to let you go, dealing with Fury is much worse. Shall we go downstairs?"
He headed down the stairs without waiting to see if she was following him. Hesitantly, she looked at Rogers and Thor and decided that her chances of getting past them were pretty slim. Her thigh and shoulder were still sore from the neurotoxin and her eye was swollen closed, eliminating her depth perception entirely. Thor nodded towards the door and reluctantly she followed Tony back inside the tower.
"This, my dear Miss Strong, is Stark Tower," Tony said with a flourish. He'd decided she needed a tour. After countless hours, they were finally done. They'd passed kitchens, living rooms, offices, bedrooms. Clearly the upper levels of the tower had been modified for living. Along the way, Rogers had whispered to Tony how if probably wasn't wise to show a prisoner of SHIELD all the exits but Tony had simply waved the ultrasonic device in front of his face and said "Chill."
They stopped back in front of the room she had woken up in this morning. Thor left them there, sure they could handle her themselves. Stark pushed her in. "Ah, my cell," she said a bit sarcastically. Steve had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. Tony on the other hand… not so much.
"At least it's comfortable. Should be, since I designed it," he bragged. "Now, what's in that vial you stole?"
His sudden change of subject didn't shock her as much as he'd hoped but she had been subtly reading his mind. Steve looked more disturbed than she did. When she gave no reply, Tony looked at her, 'Really, nothing, no response, not even denial?" he asked perplexed. Then a slow realization dawned on his face. "You were reading my mind, weren't you?"
She merely gave him a look and walked over to the small sink set in the corner, to assess the damage to her eye. Man, I look like Quasimodo, she thought. Stark watched her quietly. "You know," Rogers said gently," If you tell us about the vial, we can let you go."
"You and I both know that's not how this works," she said quietly without turning around. "Remember, I don't need to read your mind to know that."
There was a strained silence as she gently probed her eye and Rogers and Stark debated what to do. "You might as well start now,' she said huskily. She turned to look at their startled and confused faces.
"Start what?" Steve asked.
"Whatever methods you'll use," she said, looking them in the eyes in turn. "Pick your poison, electricity, knives, sensory deprivation. It seems you're awfully fond of the ultrasonic pulse emitter, maybe that'd be a good place to start."
Realizing she thought they were going to torture her, Steve was at a total loss of words. Clearly she'd been through this before. Otherwise she wouldn't be standing there placidly, waiting for them to do their worst. She looked exhausted, drained, beat up and worn down, standing in front of them without revisiting, but with a determined look in her eye. He'd been right when he'd spoken to Fury yesterday. She was holding onto something tight and she wasn't about to be cowed by two men.
'We're through here for today, " Stark said.