Shadowed Past
Chapter 4: Alex, Interrupted
Hey! Thanks for all of the new follows, I really hope you guys like this story and will be interested in reading the sequels after I finish rewriting this. It means so much to have new readers!
A few weeks later, Alex found herself getting ready for her and Steve's date. Her ankle was healed and she'd never felt better.
"Alex! What time is Steve getting here?" Piper yelled from the den, tidying up as much as she could.
"5!" Alex called back, walking out of the bedroom. "I was just gonna go down to the lobby and wait for him, Pipes, you don't have to do all of this cleaning."
"Does it ever remotely dawn on you that we live like hermits?"
"Sometimes, but I try and shoo the thought away before it becomes an issue. Why?"
"I honestly didn't realize how disgusting we were until we walked into Stark Tower. Like, this is just gross." Piper frowned, holding up a lone sock that hadn't seen the light of day for at least a month.
"Hey, I was looking for that." Alex commented as she put her first earring in.
"I think it was looking for you too." Piper tossed the sock into a pile of dirty clothes that she was making in the corner.
"I didn't even take you as the cleaning type, Piper."
"Neither did I, Als."
Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and both girls froze. "Steve!" They gasped.
"I'm not ready!" Alex panicked.
"I'll stall him!" Piper whispered back. "Go!"
Alex scurried back into the bedroom and darted to the conjoined bathroom, while Piper grabbed a few remaining things lying around the den and threw them out of sight. Steve knocked on the door again.
"Just a second!" Piper called, quickly fixing her hair before walking to answer the door.
"Hey Piper," Steve grinned.
"Hi Steve. Please, come in." Piper closed the door behind him. "Alex'll be out in a few minutes. She's still getting ready."
"That's alright." He paused, looking around at the apartment. "Nice place."
"Thanks, it's not much. It's all we can afford." Piper could tell he was trying to polite. This place looked like a rat's nest compared to Stark Tower.
Just then, Alex came out of the bedroom. "Hey," She smiled.
"Hi, you look nice." Steve replied.
Piper simply smiled. She remembered to keep her mouth shut this time.
"Thank you." Alex responded. "I guess we should get going?"
"Sure." Steve let Alex go first. "What are you going to be doing tonight, Piper?"
"Oh, you know, the usual-"
"Netflix." Alex whispered.
"Ah, I haven't gotten into that yet." Steve added.
"If you're gonna start hanging out with us, you'll be an expert before you know it." Piper chuckled, following Alex and Steve to the door. "You kids have fun."
After they had stepped out of the door, Piper closed it behind them. She was going to call out after them, but decided it was best not to. She didn't want to embarrass them again.
"So, how's your ankle?" Steve was the first to start talking once they were seated. He had taken her to a cute little Italian restaurant on the corner not far from the apartment.
"It's better, thanks. It never really hurt that bad to begin with."
"I don't know if I ever got the chance to tell you this, but you did a great job out there. For not having your head in the game very often, those were some pretty good reflexes."
"Thank you." Alex blushed. "It's just instinct, I suppose."
After the waiter took brought back drinks and took their order, they continued to talk. Steve then remembered something he had wanted to mention for a while now.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Go for it."
"Your mother's name was Lucy, correct?"
Alex became stiff. "Yes, it was. Why do you ask?"
"I just feel like I've seen it somewhere before. Her name was mentioned around the time you started here, and I just wanted to see if there was any connection."
"Well, there you go." Alex smiled. She remembered what that guy had said to her before she wiped him out, too. "Hey, did I ever tell you about what those dudes said to me, before I, y'know..."
"At the loading dock?"
Alex nodded.
"No, at least I don't remember you mentioning anything. What did they say?"
"One of them told me that he warned them about me. But I don't know who he is. And they knew my name. It was really weird."
"Did they say anything else to you?"
"No, I didn't give them the chance."
Steve smiled. "Well, they must've been talking about whoever's making them. He must know about you and he must've warned them."
"Yeah, but I wanna find this guy. Give him a piece of my mind."
"Hold on, that's what they're working on at the tower. They'll figure it out."
"How do you trust them so much?"
"Who, SHIELD? I don't, honestly." Steve sighed. "But, when I woke up, I didn't have anywhere else to go. I had to trust them."
Alex nodded. "I mean, I know they're the good guys, but I don't trust them. I feel like Fury's keeping secrets from me about this whole thing. That's why I don't want to wait around for them to find whoever's making these genetic freaks."
Before Steve could answer, there was a loud crash outside of the restaurant. They both turned to see that the street was crawling with more of the gene-people, and they were headed straight for the restaurant.
"Duty calls." Steve said, leaving some cash on the table as they both got up and made a run for the doors.
Once they were outside, they were stopped by two of the freaks getting closer.
"Well well, look what we have here." The once cooed. "How cute."
"What brings you here? I thought I scared you guys off."
They began laughing at Alex's remark. "Oh Alex, that's adorable. He told us you'd be something else."
"Who told you?" Steve jumped on the mention.
"Our master. He knows all."
"I highly doubt that."
"He knows everything about you. He made you, Alex."
"That's a lie." Alex retorted.
"He made you mother, and she made you, did she not?"
"What's your point?" Steve butted in again.
"Alex belongs to him. And we've come to take her home."
Just then, they lunged at Alex, and she knocked them out with a force field. She didn't have time to stop after that. They all started coming at her, and she had to keep on going. Civilians nearby had whipped out their phones, and and were getting everything on camera. It only took a few minutes for the rest of the team to arrive, and they began helping Alex by keeping the majority of the enemies busy.
It took a lot, but eventually Alex had wiped out all of them. Crowds of civilians cheered, and she couldn't help but smile.
Back at SHIELD, Fury called a meeting for all of the Avengers.
"Good emergency work today, I'm very impressed with all of you. Especially, you, Miss Cooper." He paused. "I called this meeting to tell you all about the plan of action we're taking against this threat. We have all of our agents, interns included, working round the clock to try and find the source of these people. So as for you all, we need you to be on your feet and ready in case they strike again."
"Can we just have like a group chat for these meetings or something? I really don't see the point in calling us all in here to tell us two sentences and then make us leave." Clint blurted out.
"Agent Barton, quiet."
Everyone snickered again, including Alex this time.
"Does anybody have any questions?" Fury asked.
Clint raised his hand.
"Let me rephrase that, does anybody except for Mr. Barton have any questions?" He waited. "No? Good. That will be all, thank you."
After everyone scattered again, Steve snuck off down the hall. The conversation that he had with Alex on their "date" kept burning its way back into his head. He agreed with her when she said about Fury keeping secrets, and he wanted to get to the bottom of this one.
Steve snuck his way into the old file room, which was strictly off limits for everyone except for Fury and Agent Hill. He found the cabinet labeled "C-D", and started digging around. Eventually, he found the two he needed back to back. He slipped them into his jacket and went to go find Alex.
Alex had gone back home, and she was telling Piper all about her eventful afternoon.
"So you didn't even get to finish your date?"
"Nope. We barely even got started. What did you do today?"
"Finished cleaning, and I was watching Netflix until you got back."
"Typical." Alex chuckled.
"Hey, you'd do the same thing if you weren't all popular now. Speaking of, you were on the news earlier. I recorded it."
"Seriously?" Alex gaped. She walked over to the couch as Piper flipped on the news from earlier. Sure enough, it was a live feed from where the attack had happened.
The reporter was narrating everything to the best of her ability, the loud crashes and flying debris. "This girl appears to be working for the Avengers, and these people only seem to react to her abilities. Who is this girl, and what are her incredible abilities? Where did she come from?"
"This is a good feeling but also a bad one." Alex remarked.
"Why do you say that?"
"It's good because it's pretty awesome knowing that all of the people that know me are gonna see me doing this and be blown away, but it's also bad because I don't want to be famous for this stuff. I just want to do my job and move on, ya know?"
A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Steve was back.
"Come in!" The girls called.
"Long time no see." Steve teased.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Alex asked.
"Well, after the meeting I did a little digging and wanted to show these to you." Steve said, unzipping his jacket and putting the files down on the table as he took a seat next to Alex on the couch. She leaned forward and studied the files closely.
One had her name stamped on it, and the second one had her mother's.
"Where did you get these?" Alex breathed.
"Top secret."
"Fury never showed me these..." Alex trailed off as she opened her mother's file.
Lucy Anne Cooper
1965-1995
Date of Birth: Thursday, July 9th. Manhattan, NY
Date of Death: Tuesday, December 10th. Location unknown.
Cause of Death: Murder
Alex's eyes froze on her mother's cause of death. "She was murdered?"
"What?" Piper spoke up, looking over Alex's shoulder.
"That's impossible. My mother died in a car accident." Alex looked up at Steve. "Are you sure that these are legit?"
"Yes, I took them from the file room at the tower."
"Why would your parents lie to us?" Alex looked at Piper now.
"I think they were the ones that were lied to. You know my parents didn't keep any secrets from you, Alex."
"You're right, I'm sorry. I just can't believe..." Alex eyes wandered down the page a little further to the place of burial. "Hey, this is wrong, too."
"You mean she's not buried there?"
"No, I visit her grave all the time it's at the little church off of 5th avenue."
"Maybe one of them's fake?" Piper questioned.
"What do you mean one of them's fake?"
"I'm saying that what if they set up a fake grave because the real one has something important in it or something." Piper continued. Steve and Alex stared at her questioningly. "Hey, y'all can believe what you want I'm just trying to think of possibilities here."
"You watch too much television." Alex remarked.
"Geesh, you're welcome then."
"I'm sorry, Piper. I'm just under a lot of pressure right now." Alex sighed, flipping through more of her mother's file.
Lucy Cooper created her unique abilities to turn invisible and control electromagnetic forces with the palm of her bare hand all inside a science lab. Her experiments were passed down to Lucy's daughter, Alexis Dawn, genetically. Cooper also worked for SHIELD for a short period of time, removing herself from the agency not long after she found out she was pregnant. Family-friends Ben and Margaret Williamson legally adopted Alexis after Lucy's death.
"But seriously though, I think Piper might be on to something. Especially after what those guys said to you earlier." Steve added. "It's worth checking out the place they've got listed on file. Maybe there's something there we could use."
"Use for what, Steve?" Alex questioned as she continued to read the papers.
"There's clearly something going on, how could you have not known about your mother being murdered your entire life? It sounds like someone's trying to cover something up."
"Do we have a mystery on our hands?" Piper gasped. "How exciting!"
"Who's this Dexter Lewis guy?"
"Who?" Steve asked. Alex pointed at the little information blurb on the paper. "No idea." He thought about it for a minute. "Maybe he's the guy that helped give your mom her powers."
"So, is it mystery solving time?" Piper asked again.
"I guess it is, and this church is our first stop."