Steve watched as the medical team accompanied the figure on the floating bed to the medical bay. He followed close behind but stayed outside the glass room, with Nakia and Okoye next to him. The bed came to a standstill under a large lightbox. Several images and scans began to appear, like 3D holograms, around the figures head. Different members of the team flicked different holograms onto portable, clear glass screens and the glass walls of the medical bay. The room was soon alight with the various scans and renderings.

Some showed the vascular system, others the skeleton, others the brain and spinal cord. Lastly, there appeared a precise rendering of the figure's head, from the crown down.

Everyone's attention snapped to it, as the seemingly dead heart beat one lonely beat.

The figure's face began to appear on the rendering. It was hard to make out at first, but it was a woman. She was emaciated. It looked like her skin had been pulled taut over the contours of her skull. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken. She reminded Steve of the people he had liberated from the prison camps during the war.

Shuri was furiously typing away at a screen; it was showing a loader at 80%. Steve had a deep furrow in his brow, and his whole body was tense. He watched as after more than a minute her heart beat again for the first time.

The loader reached 100% and the word 'clear' appeared on the screen. Shuri exclaimed, "No pathogens found. Let's get her out of that shroud."

The team set to work at cutting away the layers of fabric.

Steve hadn't noticed that T'Challa had joined him, Nakia and Okoye outside the medical bay. Ayo was nowhere to be seen.

"Remarkable." Muttered the king.

Steve wasn't sure if that's the word he'd use but said nothing. He wondered if his rescue had played out like this. He didn't know what happened to him before he woke up in the staged room in New York. Perhaps it looked a lot like what he was witnessing now.

The woman's heart rate didn't change as the layers came off. The inside of the innermost layer of her shroud showed many faded runes. The team worked to remove this layer carefully. The woman lay on the table, wearing what looked like a short linen dress. Her hair was grey-white and wrapped around her body, her hands on top of the ends resting on her chest.

Okoye and Nakia shared a few words in Wakandan.

A man in a white coat straightened the woman's arm and inserted a drip needle on top of her wrist. The rest of the medical personnel were examining the various scans burning around the room.

"Wait, whats that?" Exclaimed Shuri, pointing at the throat area on a 3D rendition of the neck. With a motion of her hand, she peeled away the layers of skin and muscle on the 3D model.

Everyone in the room gathered around the image, Steve, Okoye, Nakia and T'Challa squinted to see what they were looking at.

"There's something lodged in her throat," said Shuri as she turned to a tray covered with a blue cloth. She lifted it and removed long forceps. She made her way over to the woman, gently tilting her head back and opening her mouth.

"Light." She ordered, and a person appeared at her side shining a light down the woman's throat.

She carefully inserted the forceps and Steve watched as they sank deeper and deeper into the woman's throat. They were still for a moment as Shuri caught the object in a secure grip.

With her elbow sticking up in the air, Shuri began to extract the object slowly. Steve could hear a pin drop as everyone stood, rapt in what Shuri was doing. The second the object was out of the woman's body, her heart rate started to climb rapidly, and an audible breath entered her lungs as her chest expanded, arching her back off the table.

Everyone in the room sprang into action. Okoye breathed a word of distrust before she turned to leave.

The medical bay on the fighter was not yet as advanced as the one in Shuri's lab, so they fitted an oxygen mask, brought a crash cart to the bedside, checked and rechecked vitals. Shuri dropped the object she'd just extracted in a kidney-shaped, stainless steel bowl with a clink.

"Looks like some kind of rune stone, she frowned up at T'Challa through the glass."

Steve, Nakia and T'Challa frowned back at her, confounded expressions playing out between the three of them.

Thirty tense minutes passed before the woman's heart rate levelled out at fifty beats per minute, and her oxygen saturation levels were up to eighty percent. A healthier colour had begun to replace the paleness in her skin. She remained in this more stable state for the remainder of the flight.

It was late morning when the Royal Talon Fighter descended back into its hangar.

Steve and T'Challa walked behind the party of medical personnel flanked by Shuri, Okoye, Nakia and Ayo as they accompanied their strange patient to Shuri's Lab.

"What are we gonna do when she wakes up?" Steve looked at T'Challa with concern.

"I was hoping that you could help us with that. You are the only person alive who has been through anything like this." T'Challa was searching Steve's face for how he felt about this, but Steve gave nothing away.

Steve remembered how he woke up in the staged room in New York. "It's unlikely that we are the only ones who know that there was a person in that box. We need to be careful; we may be being watched."

"I doubt that anyone will find this place, let alone be able to breach our defences..." T'Challa trailed off at the look on Steve's face.

Over the next three days, the woman's condition didn't change. Her heart beat, her lungs breathed, but she didn't wake up. The team made use of the time to do multiple tissue biopsies and an array of other tests. Steve wondered if the same had been done to him while he was unconscious and felt a little violated.

On the evening of the third day, Steve returned to the lab after dinner. Shuri presented him with a tablet containing another array of test results. He felt that it was somehow not right for them to know so much about the woman without her ever having given her consent. He didn't take the tablet from Shuri.

"Just give me what was out of the ordinary." He said.

"Well, tissue density has increased markedly," Shuri replied.

Steve walked over to the opening in the large, boldly decorated pillar in the centre of the lab through which he could see the woman on the floating table in the centre of the space. There were many lights, images and 3D models rotating around her head, showing various vital systems. He could see that she'd filled out very little since the night they'd found her.

"Her tissue seems to be four times normal density, and she's gained a couple of pounds, though we can hardly see it, she's still very emaciated. She is entirely unresponsive to Vibranium treatment"

Steve folded his arms across his chest as he listened and his mind wandered to his fellow Avenger, Thor.

"Has your team been able to make out anything about the shroud and the rune?" Asked Steve.

"So far all we know is that the runes most closely resemble the ancient Greek alphabet."

"Nothing remotely Asgardian?" Questioned Steve.

"That was the first thing we checked, and it doesn't match anything from Asgard." Shuri seemed uncharacteristically frustrated.

"Keep me posted?" Steve watched as Shuri nodded 'yes' and he turned to leave for the night.

It was a short flight from the Shuri's lab to the building where he had been staying. He would have much preferred to get around by himself, but T'Challa insisted on having him 'chauffeured' around.

Once he was in his apartment, he watched some news, doodled in his notebook and then decided to call it a night. It was around 23:30 when a still awake Steve watched as his mobile lit up, vibrating on the bedside table.

He picked it up without a word.

Shuri's voice rushed urgently into his ear. "Captain Rogers, the subject is showing a marked spike in brain activity. The chances of her regaining consciousness at any moment are very great."

"I'm on my way." Came Steve's response.

He dropped the phone on the bed as he got up to brush his teeth. He pulled on a white T-shirt and slacks. He tied his shoes, threw on his leather jacket and stuffed his phone into his jacket pocket. The pilot was waiting for him at the elevator with the doors open. They were downstairs in no time.

They sped across the distance to the lab, and Steve arrived precisely fifteen minutes after Shuri had called. He and T'Challa exchanged a greeting at the top of the spiral walkway wrapped around the pillar that rose up from the centre of Shuri's lab. "Ayo and Okoye are on their way." Said T'Challa.

As they descended into the large room, people were fussing all around. Steve's eyes travelled to the slight figure on the bed.