Thank-you for the follows! Still no reviews... :( .Oh well. I hope you enjoy it thus far, and some feedback and comments would be much appreciated. My free time is beginning to diminish with the introduction of schoolwork (I hate being a senior!), however, I will try to post chapters as often as I can.
I woke up in a small stainless steel room. It appeared to be made out of just one sheet of metal as I jumped to my feet and began evaluating the room. I stumbled a little at first, but began pulling myself around the room, gradually getting a sense of my bearings. I spotted the security camera in the corner. This was just like one of those escape games that Kian always made me help him with. He posted the cheats onto the internet and had a massive following.
I aimed my energy at the base of the camera box, which appeared to be encased in some kind of impenetrable glass. I weakened the base, and using my strength, ripped it out from the casing. The wires looked interesting enough, and there was a small nuclear battery in it. I pried the cover of the control panel off and I pulled apart the wiring and attached it- along with the several wires and switch- to the control pad above the door. I slid the switch to the "on" position, and the keypad was short-circuited. It opened straight away for me.
Stealthily entering the minds of the various people around me, I found that I was in the underground section of the facility. If I was going to get out, I would have to get upstairs somehow.
A squad of guards went past me, chatting loudly as they ran. I went in the opposite direction to them, and found myself in a weapons room. Armour was sitting on the shelves. I looked for one that might have fitted me and pulled it on. I strapped on three holsters- ankle, shoulder and waist- and pulled my hair up into a ponytail, sliding it through the hole at the back of one of the baseball caps I found stowed away at the back of the room. Holding my gun securely between both hands, I successfully hid two knives in my clunky borrowed boots and in my belt before going back out to the facility.
I was practically ignored by everybody I passed until I got to the corridor I had been imprisoned in. Tony Stark and Banner stood there, examining the wiring.
'Send off the emergency signal. Everybody in the room gets inspected before they leave,' Tony ordered the troop surrounding him. They nodded and moved off, a red emergency klaxon going off throughout the area. I quickened my pace as I passed, trying to escape the attention of the guards.
I swiped a female ID from the rack of photo cards and smiled at the two guards beside the elevator, before pressing the ground floor button.
Tony Stark held open the door and squeezed in before it moved up.
I shifted uncomfortably as he glanced momentarily over to me.
'Nice day, isn't it?' he commented cheerfully, whistling happily. His mind began sparking off all kinds of options as I didn't reply. I made my voice perky and happy.
'I wouldn't know- I just got off duty.' If it was a trick question, I had just shut him down.
'Oh? Which team?' he asked, pleased I replied. His brain ran through a list of leaders while I tried to pick an appropriate one. It took me less than a second to find one.
'Phi,' I told him, blushing and looking through the glass walls of the elevator. He allowed himself a grin, thinking I was paying attention to him in a way other than brisk business. He briefly wondered if I was single or if because I was one of the only women in Phi, I had a S.H.I.E.L.D boyfriend.
The doors pinged to announce that we had arrived at the ground floor.
'Have a great day,' Tony said, smiling at me right before the doors closed. I returned the smile before hurrying along the corridor at something a little more than the average walking speed.
When I got out, I noticed guards combing the street for something. Curious bystanders gawked at the increased authority presence.
A teenage girl with the same hair colour as me shrieked indignantly as one of the troops grabbed her, dragging her away from her parents, and threw her into a containment unit. Several other girls peered out, silent tears running down their faces. They all looked vaguely like me, but it seemed the guards were taking no chances until somebody could verify.
'Where are you taking her?' the girls' mother sobbed, running to the van.
The team leader in front of the distressed woman put a hand out to stop her.
'We are a taskforce handed the job of apprehending a violent criminal. She happens to look like your daughter, so we are taking anybody who looks like her off the streets.'
'Yes, but when will she be coming back?'
The guard gave her a nasty grin. From his thoughts, he wanted to torment that poor woman as much as he could.
'Maybe never.'
That was it. I stormed over to where he was and swung the end of my gun at him. It connected with his head with a sickening crack, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
'You people sicken me,' I spat, kicking him so that he rolled over, his face to the sky.
I retrieved the pass key from his belt and slid it through the automated lock on the unit.
The woman who had been crying looked up at me.
'You're that superhero,' she said slowly, looking at the gun in my hand cautiously. To comfort her, I dropped it and wrenched the door open, ushering the sixteen-year-old girls out from the back.
'Get in your cars and go,' I told them, and the adults clamouring around me. 'Please do it, before somebody gets hurt.'
There was a thud from behind me, and the eyes of everybody around me went very wide.
'Miss Alexis. Isn't this a pleasant surprise?'
I stiffened. It couldn't be him. There was no chance- he had died in the fire.
Coordinator Greeves stood before me, his arms crossed as he tapped a foot impatiently. Behind him stood Agent Romanoff, Archer Dude, Thor Wannabe, Tony Stark and Banner, in a classic "we're a team and we're here to win the game" pose. They had no idea how vulnerable that pose made them. They were blind from behind, so anything could go on behind their back, and they just looked stupid. It was making their egos vulnerable.
Archer Dude had a very swollen nose and eye, and Thor Wannabe appeared to be limping.
'Go to hell, Greeves!' I yelled, pulling a knife quickly out of my belt, spinning it around in my hand and sending it toward him in a way that would be considered a warning shot.
'The next one goes between your eyes, Greeves. And I mean it.'
'Come now, Alexis. Let us be mature about this. What harm have I done to you?'
'Let me think: you strapped a bomb to my leg to see what happened when it exploded when I was nine, you broke eight of my ribs when you drove a car going at one hundred and ten kilometres an hour into me when I was eleven, you starved me for three weeks straight when I was twelve, you made me kill innocent people when I was thirteen in the war and… do you really want me to continue?'
Tony Stark glared at Greeves. 'You did that to a kid?'
'She was a superhero. The world's first naturally made one. We think it was because her mother worked in the nuclear site we used to house the super soldier serum in it- when it exploded, the baby was fine, although the mother suffered third-degree burns to her body. We had to do tests to determine her strengths and weaknesses.'
Using this discussion as a distraction, I grabbed my gun and fired two warning shots.
'Do you really need me, or is this just part of some elaborate scheme to kidnap me? Let me tell you, I've had enough of that, thanks.'
'We need you, Alexis. We need you to wake him up. And if you feel like sticking around, we would like you to join the team also.'
I stared at Archer Dude, who winced as he rubbed his face.
'I can fix that,' I said, stretching my hand out to touch his nose gently. Green energy was absorbed by his skin, and his skin returned to its natural tone, all of the black and blue disappearing.
Romanoff checked Archer Dudes face. 'Clint, this is amazing. It almost like you never got beaten by a teenage girl.'
Clint scowled and pushed her away. 'You pack a good punch,' he said to me, lowering his bow.
I smiled. 'Thanks. I did have ten years practice for the number I did on your face.'
'Ten years? How long did it take you to learn that? That's a manoeuvre that took me five extra years to perfect.'
That comment wiped the smile off my face. 'I guess, when you've been taught to be a killing machine, emotions don't get in the way of your fighting,' I whispered softly.
Greeves looked over at me with an air of superiority. That is what made me snap.
'You sicken me, Greeves,' I growled, whipping my gun out from where it was hidden in my shoulder holster. 'Anyway, you died in the fire.'
'No, I didn't. S.H.I.E.L.D came and rescued me- it seems that because you shot me, you garnered me a little sympathy.'
'You massacred two hundred of America's finest soldiers! I think that warranted you getting shot!' I yelled.
'You did what, Greeves?' Stark's face was a clear indicator on just how angry he was.
'Yes, that's right. You think I'm your enemy, when you have, in fact, brought one of the most dangerous men in the world into your ranks.'
'Now look, I think everyone's emotions are running just a little high-' Greeves began, holding up his hands and backing away slowly.
I cocked my gun, flicked the safety off, and shot him. 'Take that, you sick bastard,' I growled.
Agent Romanoff let out a small strangled cry as I put the gun away, back into the holster sitting on my hip. She ran to Greeves, but I knew that there was no way she would be able to revive him. A bullet in the brain is hard to recover from.
'How could you do something like that? So cold and so cruelly?' Natasha exclaimed, straightening up from where she had been bent over Greeves.
I smiled coolly. 'Easy. That man turned me into what I am. Karma is a bitch.'
Stark looked at me curiously. 'Do I need to…?'
'Restrain me? Sedate me? No, I don't think so. I am perfectly in control of myself, thank-you. I don't kill people unless they deserve it. Greeves deserved all he had coming and more. I simply ended it before it could get worse. Anyway, he was lucky that you were here, or else it would have been a much longer, painful, drawn out death.'
Thor Wannabe stared at me. 'Why? What would you do?'
I raised an eyebrow cockily, and he audibly gulped. 'Do you really want me to go into details?'
There was an explosion behind me, and we whirled around to look at the direction of the noise. Two men in business suits stood there with a small rocket launcher.
'What are you doing here?' Stark yelled. 'This is a Level Eight case!'
The two men looked at each other, grinned and aimed the rocket launcher back in our direction.
'Get down!' I shouted, pushing Stark to the ground as the rocket flew over our heads and blew up.
'What do you want?' I asked, calmly putting my hands up to prove I wasn't going to shoot them. I motioned for the idiots beside me to do it too. With grumbling, they grudgingly agreed.
'We want you, Alexis. We want you with us.'
'Who's "we"?' I challenged. It was imperative that I find out who the nutcase was who sent the two goons who didn't know how to use a rocket launcher.
'Hydra.' Beside me, I heard a sharp intake of breath from Stark. These people weren't good news, apparently. 'We want you to not only join our side, but to wake Captain America up and kill him for good.'
'And what's in it for me?' I asked brazenly.
'Alexis, no!' Stark shouted. I turned to him.
'Shut it, old man! I am trying to have a conversation. Go and play hero with someone else.'
The Hydra men sniggered, and I scowled. 'I said, what's in it for me?'
'You will become our Golden Girl. You will have everything you ever wanted.'
'Yeah, unfortunately for you guys, the only thing I've ever wanted was my freedom, which I'm pretty sure Hydra doesn't really dole out. So, I think it's going to have to be a "no" from me.'
The men shrugged. 'Have it your way,' one said, aiming the rocket launcher again. 'We have all day.'
'Funnily enough, so do I,' I muttered. I spread my hands out and felt my green energy envelop me, making a sphere around my body. The man with the rocket launcher raised it again, and I saw the red laser dot on my chest before directing my hands toward them. The energy poured off of me, speeding toward the men. I listened to the crackle as it hit them, and allowed myself a rare grin. The men dropped to the ground, rocket launcher landing on the road with a clang.
I picked it up and aimed it at a nearby car. I'd picked up the mind of a third operative, who as soon as they saw me, bailed from the car. Even though the car was empty, I still fired at it. The car exploded, the missile impact making a sonic boom that knocked the people behind me off their feet.
'Nice work,' Romanoff told me, dusting herself off. 'I suppose you aren't going to work for Hydra?'
'I did. They just don't remember it,' I answered quietly. I turned to face them all. 'I did a lot of things I am most definitely not proud of. If you are willing to take a chance with me, I would appreciate it.'
Stark considered it for a moment, watching each member of his team. Each nodded in their own silent confirmation.
'Pixie was your field name, right?' I nodded, and he grinned, mulling it over. 'Okay, Pixie. We'll show you to where the cryogenic chambers are.'
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