My appreciation to all the readers who keep pushing up those magical readership numbers. I'd especially like to thank the readers who've put this story on their favorites and alerts list, and also the readers who posted reviews, including IveHeardItBothWays1088, garnet86, KaseyJ, Undapper Thoughts, NyteMayreOfJotunheim, Shiori92, Adamantium Rose, Penny Tortoiseshell, GhibliGirl91, blown-transistor, Arrows the Wolf, imasuperhero2, Mystewitch, Guest, nahrebbs, and sssweetie.
Bonus prize for nahrebbs, who can claim the distinction of being my 200th reviewer.
Special acknowledgement to Adamantium Rose (and also Guest) who have thrown down the gauntlet and challenged me to put my non-superhero OC into the action plotline and not just sit on the sidelines as a love interest. Hmmmm… Non-superhero. Can't be a Mary Sue. Artist. Want her to –stay- a non-superhero. Have to think about that one…
Enough mush! It's time to get back into the action…
Thanks for reading!
X
Chapter 28
"You're wasting your time," Clint said. "The thing is too stupid to even speak."
Steve flashed Hawkeye a grin. Just to annoy him. It was most uncharacteristic behavior for him to deliberately annoy another as though he were pretending to be Tony Stark, but he wanted to get back at them for posting video footage of him dancing on an internet video site. His gym clients had ribbed him endlessly about being the only guy on the dance floor doing something they called a 'hoe down.' Tony Stark was probably the culprit, but Tony hadn't been the one holding the camera, so Steve was treating all of them as suspects.
Clint scowled at his uncustomary cheerfulness. Ever since Natasha had dumped his sorry rear-end, he'd been an outright curmudgeon. Not that Clint had licked his wounds for long before picking up one, no, two new females. If not for the hurt way Clint looked at Natasha whenever he thought nobody was looking, the sharpshooting archer's illusions about not caring might have just found their mark. Whatever had broken them apart, Clint wasn't talking. Neither was Natasha. In fact, these days Natasha wasn't talking to anybody. Tony Stark was in her doghouse, but then, Tony Stark was always in everybody'sdoghouse. Which was why S.H.I.E.L.D. had him officially classified as a 'consultant' and not a full-fledged Avenger.
"The path of reconciliation is the first path thou should tread before thou declarest an adversary an enemy," Thor said. "It is a lesson I must confess I learned only after it had cost me the heart of my brother."
Tony gave a snort of disgust.
"I say just buy them off," Tony said. "Rounds for everyone and a good Cuban cigar. If you ask me, that's what your new alien friend needs. A night out on the town and a hooker. You'll have him going native in no time."
"Thou would knowest, Merchant of Death," Thor grumbled. "Thou buyest influence from Midgard's petty tyrants like thee were buying children's candy."
"You didn't mind that influence when you needed to get S.H.I.E.L.D. off of Jane's back," Tony shot back.
It was an old argument. In fact, they were all old arguments. Petty squabbles that usually drove Steve nuts. But not today. Today … he was in an excellent mood. And with that mood came a desire to, just once, not be the sourest puss in the room. The briefing had gone well … gloom and doom for everyone. So had the latest weapons demonstration for retro-engineered Chitauri technology. It had blown up in their faces. And then there were the awesome new bruises Steve was nursing from his sparring session with Thor, the Asgardian god taking advantage of his cheerful distraction to hand him his rear end on a platter.
"What's up with Captain Happy Pants?" Tony asked Thor.
"Commander Rogers has a date with his fair Bernice," Thor said, shooting Steve a grin. "It is a … what do you call this ritual in Midgard? The night a maiden presents a seeker for her affections to her fellow maidens for their approval."
"You mean he's going to meet his girlfriends' girlfriends?" Tony asked, one Puckish eyebrow shooting up. "Ooo … scary. If the pack decides they don't like you, Miss Bernice is going to give you the heave-ho."
"Um … we're just going to an opening of an art exhibit," Steve said, a hint of self-doubt creeping into his happy mood. "I'm supposed to meet her there in two hours."
"It's their third date," Clint said, giving Steve a pointed look. "You know what that means."
"What does that mean?" Thor asked.
Clint and Tony burst out laughing.
"What?" Steve asked, his feeling of self-confidence beginning to wane.
Clint and Tony laughed at him even more.
"I fail to see the significance of this third date," Thor said, his forehead wrinkled in thought. "Is it a ritual unique to Midgard?"
Clint doubled over, his sour mood gone at whatever joke he was making. Tony snorted and slapped his hands on his thighs.
"I'm going to go talk to my new alien friend." Steve scowled. He was glad Clint was laughing, but not at his expense. Especially when he couldn't see what the joke was."Has anyone seen Natasha?"
"Agent Romanov sought to speak to Doctor Banner the last time I encountered her," Thor said. "I believe thou will findest them both in the observation room."
Steve nodded and grabbed the duffle bag of art supplies he'd scrounged up to keep the alien amused. Crayons. Magic markers. Colored pencils. And lots of paper. The creature's artwork was little more than that of a two-year-old, but through cartoon-like pictography, Steve had finally gotten it to understand they wished to know what planet it was from. The solar system it had pointed to wasn't even within the Milky Way, but it had pointed to that system no matter how many different star charts they used for reference, even when Thor slipped in a chart taken from Asgard. Definitely not the mark of a creature who lacked intelligence.
He resisted the urge to slam the door behind him as Tony burst into a falsetto voice, singing a tune about some virgin being touched for the very first time. Laughter burned his ears as he encountered Bruce Banner in the hall, getting a status update on the alien in passing. They'd been running tests on the creature to see if it had any sign of the wires or other biomechanical tampering they'd found in the Melanesian Island children, but so far had found none. No wires. No implants. No signs of any technology at all. Only scarring. With no healthy alien test subject to run brain scans as a baseline, for all they knew the suspicious-looking cluster of scar tissue in the same proximate area where The Other had drilled a hole into Natasha's head might be natural.
"Have you seen Natasha?" Steve asked. "Fury is looking for her."
"I left her in the observation room with the creature," Banner said. "She was trying to communicate with it."
An uneasy feeling gnawed at Steve's gut. Natasha … and the alien. Every time she walked into the room, the creature became highly agitated. Its ability to communicate, even through art, was limited, but every time Natasha left the room, it drew a crude oblong shape with numerous stick-arms coming out of it.
"Thanks," Steve said to Banner. "You know where I'll be."
Banner hurried down the hall, off to whatever experiment he had cooking in his lab. Steve did the same, headed in the opposite direction. The last thing he wanted was the creature whose trust he was beginning to earn to become too agitated to communicate via their strange little conversation of stick figure drawings. Natasha taunted the creature every chance she got. He'd seen her use such a strategy when the psychological profile of a suspect she was interrogating indicated an over-inflated ego might cause them to blurt out valuable intelligence, but doing so with a creature whose vocal cords had been partially severed didn't make any sense to him.
He found Natasha sitting cross-legged on the floor, the small portal they used to slip its food trays and art supplies into the bullet-proof, sound-proof, and just about everything-proof observation chamber open. She stared into the cage, her concentration so intense it appeared she hadn't even heard Steve come into the room. He glanced at the pad of paper and pencil Natasha had slipped into the cell. A peace offering? The alien cowered in the opposite end of the cell, hands over its head, convulsing as though it were in pain.
"Natasha?" Steve asked.
Natasha was so focused on the strange behavior of the alien that she didn't hear him come up behind her.
"Natasha?" Steve asked again. "What's wrong with him?"
He hesitated to put his hand on her shoulder, past experience teaching all of them that such an action would lead to being flipped onto your back with a knife at your throat when the Black Widow's survival instincts kicked in. A moan slipped out of the tiny portal, far lower than any sound a human could make. The alien fell off the bench and begin convulsing on the floor.
"Natasha?" Steve shouted. "What the hell did you do to him?"
He grabbed her shoulder and stepped back, ready to defend against the back-elbow he knew would come milliseconds before one of her weapons was pulled. Her reaction came far slower than he expected, almost dreamlike as she merely stood and turned to stare. Her eyes were devoid of expression.
"Why do you care about such worthless creatures, man out of time?" Natasha asked. "They are nothing but slaves."
A chill ran down Steve's spine. Natasha did nothing to help the poor creature who lay thrashing upon the floor, its lizard-like jaws opening and shutting like a dying fish. He could see nothing that had been done to harm it, but she was enjoying watching the creature writhe in pain.
"Code Blue! Code Blue!" Steve shouted, hitting the button on the intercom. "Banner! We have a code blue in the detention center!"
He paced in front of the door, S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol demanding two staff members be present, one with a gun pointed at the prisoner, before an observation cell was opened. His gut screamed at him that the backup person should not be Natasha. She'd take any excuse, even a death throe, to stick a knife into the creature's ribs. Banner was the first to arrive, ordering Steve to stand back and aim his sidearm at the creature in case the seizure was a ruse for an escape attempt. Natasha was in the cell right behind him, the creatures' seizures becoming worse the closer she got to it.
"Out!" Steve ordered Natasha. "You're making things worse!"
"But I need her…" Banner protested.
"Natasha!" Steve ordered. "I'm ordering you to get the hell out of this cell now!"
Natasha turned to him, her expression cold.
"You're not in charge," Natasha said.
A low thrum went through the room, some sort of sound coming from the creature's throat. An attempt at speech? The jaws that gnashed foam through serpentine fangs were something straight out of a nightmare, but the terror in its grey eyes as blood began to pour out of its ear-holes and eyes gave the creature an air of humanity. It reached for Steve, giving him the middle finger Steve understood was a gesture of camaraderie. The throes became deeper as the creature grabbed its head as though it were about to explode.
"I said OUT!" Steve shouted.
He had no idea what instinct caused him to value the life of a creature of nightmare whose species had murdered thousands of innocent humans over his own teammate, but he grabbed her, the delay in her reaction time caused by surprise he would react in such an irrational fashion buying him just enough time to overpower the lithe assassin. He shoved her out the door, slamming it shut so she couldn't get back in to do whatever she was doing to upset the creature so badly it was having seizures. Natasha shrieked, aiming a boot at his head as she swung around in a tornado kick, knives flying out of her belt as she rushed at not Steve, but the now-closed door of the cell, Banner locked inside with the creature.
"We must kill it!" Natasha screamed as Steve overpowered her, pinning her arms to her sides in a basket hold. Her head jerked back, giving him a bloody nose, but he managed not to let go of her, not even when she stomped on his foot and then kicked him in the crotch.
"What the hell's going on here?" Nick Fury shouted, coming into the room. The other Avengers came in behind him, wasting several precious seconds to assess the situation and realize the problem wasn't that the creature had somehow trapped Banner in the cell with it. Clint and Thor each grabbed a leg, hauling Natasha bodily out of the room while Steve dropped to the floor, clutching his gonads as he whimpered in pain.
"Ouch!" Tony Stark said, giving Steve a look of sympathy.
It took twenty minutes for Banner to stabilize the creature and announce it had not, as they feared for a few minutes when it stopped breathing, expired. Steve lumbered to his feet, resisting the urge to hold his private parts in his hand as he walked. Unlike when he went into battle, he hadn't been wearing armor. Natasha had landed a move any one-day women's self-defense class taught. A move he should have anticipated if he'd been concerned for his own safety instead of the Chitauri's.
Steve shot Fury a 'don't you dare' look and grabbed a chair, punching the button of the observation cell and bringing it inside to sit next to the creature laying on the bench, a pathetic thrumming sound coming from it that he realized must be a means of communication. It was a sound that was more felt than heard, so low on the scales did the creature speak.
"Sorry about that, buddy," Steve said, seeking to convey via the sound of his voice and not words the creature could not understand that Natasha's behavior was unacceptable. "I don't know what the hell got into her. I guess she just really hates your guts."
The creature raised a shaky six-fingered hand and gave Steve a middle finger. Steve gave him a middle finger right back. What the hell? Who the hell decided the middle finger was wrong, anyways? For all he knew, humans were the ones flipping the bird at the universe.
After the creature drifted off to sleep, the others circled around the video footage to see what the hell Natasha had done to nearly kill it.
"I don't get it," Clint said, staring at the footage from three separate security cameras. "She did nothing."
Steve stared at the video, and then stared at it again. Natasha had pulled up a chair and sat speaking to the creature. While her tone had not been friendly, she'd merely asked it if it knew what a rotten thing its buddies had done to the Melanesian Island children and asked it if it could tell her where the other missing islanders had gone. Natasha then walked over to the stack of pencils and paper, slipped some fresh sheets into the small food portal, and sat down on the floor in front of the portal the way Steve often did, asking it to do the right thing and tell her where the missing humans were. She had continued sitting there, repeating the same request over and over again, even after the creature had moved to the opposite side of the cell and begun to clutch its head.
"Agent Romanov performed no misdeed," Thor said, giving Steve an accusatory stare.
The video showed Steve come in, accuse her of having done something to harm the creature, call the code blue, and then attack her without provocation, dragging her out of the cell. Steve cringed. The video made him look bad. Even saying the creature was nothing but a slave was nothing the other Avengers hadn't said at one time or another. From the way things looked on the video, it appeared the only reason Natasha had fought back was because he had attacked her.
"That's what you get for sneaking up on her," Clint said. "Everyone knows if you creep up on a black widow spider, you get bitten."
"I want her detained until she calms down enough not to slit Steve's throat," Fury snapped. "And then I want her released. Steve … you've got some explaining to do!"
The others left, leaving Steve alone in the observation room with the creature and Tony Stark. Steve waited for some snarky remark from the man he constantly butted heads with.
"Replay the video," Tony said. "Camera two. Right around 20:32."
"Huh?" Steve said.
"Replay the video," Tony repeated. "Fast forward it to 20:32."
Steve did as asked, pausing the frame at 20:32.
"Shoot," Steve said. "How did you even see that?"
The freeze frame showed Natasha glancing straight into the camera, the faintest hint of a smirk on her face as she gave the surveillance camera a knowing look and adjusted her position so it would have a flawless view of her empty hands. It was a look they both knew well. The look Black Widow always had right before she moved in for the kill…
"You're not the only one with a family of mice gnawing at your gut," Tony said. His cheek twitched, a nervous tic Steve had noticed right before the billionaire-playboy-philanthropist-genius erupted into a fit of vigilantism.
The two men stared at the video, playing and replaying it, trying to find the slightest hint Natasha had slipped something into the cell or done something to garner the reaction in the creature she had caused. They found none. No weapon. No poison. No signs of nerve agents or poison gas being released. The creature had never even approached close enough to pick up the paper Natasha had offered, going immediately to the furthest side of the cell the moment Banner had exited the room.
Steve looked at his watch. It was past 11:30 at night.
"Oh … damn!" Steve said. "Shoot! I've got to … no … SHOOT!" His heart dropped to the floor. Bernice. No matter how fast he hurried, it was too late.
Tony stared, his dark eyes intense, until it dawned on him what the problem was.
"Maybe it's time you told Bernice the truth," Tony said. "I made sure she got security clearance high enough to know the minute I realized you got it bad for the girl."
"I can't," Steve said. "Peggy's dying wish was that I don't let the government turn her granddaughter into a weapon. You know Fury will have that girl jacked up on the Infinity Serum the minute they find out she's got 100% eidetic memory."
"Then why did you ask me to give her a job?" Tony asked.
"I asked Pepper," Steve said. "Just some artwork. I had no idea you'd stick her in a lab drawing weapons for aliens."
Tony laughed. He pulled out his portable JARVIS, the tiny access computer designed to look like an ordinary smart phone. He wirelessly hacked in past the S.H.I.E.L.D. firewalls and uploaded an image to the screens around them, flipping through the images until he got to the one he wanted.
"That is why I stuck her in the weapons lab," Tony said.
Steve stared at Bernice's artwork. A picture of a soldier wearing camouflaged armor that looked like a hybrid between his Captain America armor and Tony Stark's Iron Man suit.
"You hired her because she drew a picture that looked like me?"
"No," Tony said. He shook his head. "Typical jarhead. Always missing the obvious." Tony hit a few buttons and expanded the image to focus on the armpit joint.
"I don't get it," Steve said. "What's the point?"
"The point is that Bernice drew from memory a suit no media image except the television images taken the day of the invasion had ever seen," Tony said. He pointed to the suit. "That suit was a prototype. Never used before or after that day. I had too many problems with it."
"Those images were plastered all over the media," Steve said. "Half the kids in New York got images of us downloaded as screensavers on their computers."
Tony pointed to the armpit joint a second time.
"That's not the armpit joint from my suit," Tony said. "That's the armpit joint from your suit. The suit designed by my father."
"He changed the design because I had trouble with it," Steve said, remembering the prototypes he'd worked with Howard Stark to design until he'd come up with a suit he could use. "The old design limited mobility too much for the kind of lightweight armor I needed to get in and out of stealthy situations."
"Ditto," Tony said. "The only reason that suit was on my body that day was because it was the only one I could get to when Loki showed up in my penthouse. The girl recognized my movement wasn't natural and instinctively put in a component from a different piece of armor that wouldn't interfere."
"How do you know?" Steve asked.
"I asked her about it," Tony said. "Why do you think I've been working with her so much to pick her brains?"
"To tick me off," Steve said.
"Yeah," Tony said, giving him an impish grin. "That too. But I don't hire talent and give it a security access unless it earns it."
"What am I supposed to tell her?" Steve asked. "I mean … about tonight? That I blew off our date because of a sick alien?"
"Tell her whatever you want," Tony said, waving his hand. "It doesn't matter to me so long as you don't screw up that sharp artist's eye of hers. What the hell! I was going to do it eventually to piss you off, but it might as well be tonight."
"What's tonight?" Steve said.
"The kid isn't going to sleep anyways," Tony said with a shrug. "Why the hell not? Go hang out with your big grey lizard friend and make sure he doesn't kibby and die on us. You're the only one he trusts."
Steve stared at the creature in the cage, alone. A creature out of its element in the same way that he was out of his. They were beginning to suspect the creature had been unexpectedly freed from some sort of robotic mind control, its behavior remarkably similar to the six Melanesian Island children who'd had the wires pulled out of their brains, even though they could find no sign of this technology within its physiology. It was the only explanation which made sense.
"I should go to her," Steve said, torn between his duties.
"Bernice isn't going to die tonight," Tony said. "Your little grey friend might. Especially if that meathead Fury doesn't wake up and smell the cobra in our midst."
"Why don't you trust Natasha?" Steve asked. "She's saved your life numerous times."
"So had Obediah Stane," Tony said, his expression dark and intense. "That man was the father my own father never was. And then he turned around and tried to have me killed. If it wasn't for Pepper…"
Tony looked away, but not before Steve saw his eyes glisten. He sniffed, and then wiped his nose as if some irritation was causing the symptoms.
"Don't worry about Bernice," Tony said. "She'll listen to me. I've got your back."
Tony Stark left, his stride having that intense air about it that it often had when he was suiting up for a mission. Steve pulled up a chair outside the alien's cage and put his head down upon his hands. How the hell had he managed to screw up his first real date?
X
Note: people think of the human body as being a magical creation, but in many ways, it is nothing but a machine. The more our technology advances, the more we are learning to replace or repair broken parts with artificial ones. Valves for damaged hearts or stents to shore up weak arteries can now be artificially grown by spraying stem cells on an artificial form which dissolves and leaves only living tissue. Machines such as dialysis can assume –some- bodily functions. Heart, kidney, and liver transplants are common, but now even entire severed limbs or faces are being transplanted.
Even the brain, the area scientists once believed was the root of the human soul, is malleable. Electrodes drilled into a mouse's skull can be stimulated to cause deliberate motor movement. Blind patients can have electrodes inserted into their brains and hook it up to a camera to stimulate a crude dot-matrix picture of vision … or deaf patients to hear. Drugs can be given to alter the way we biochemically store memory. Even Iraq war veterans with spinal injuries are walking again or regaining use of damaged areas of their brain through a science known as 'brain plasticity.'
Iron Man, the man whose heart has been augmented by a machine, is a cyborg. Part human, part machine, it is his humanity which separates him from his very intelligent AI, JARVIS. It is not the –external- mechanical prosthesis of the Iron Man suit which fascinates Iron Man fans, but the –internal- change symbolized by his broken heart which makes fans want to reach out and give the former Merchant of Death who grew a conscience a hug, despite his continuing imperfections.
But what would happen if aliens viewed our bodies for what they really were? Biological machines? What if they viewed those machines as tools which could have their hard drives wiped, reformatted and uploaded with all new information the way we upgrade our computers today? What if they could drill electrodes into our brains, the same way scientists can drill holes into a mouse's skull today and make it crawl through a maze?
Mary Shelly dreamed of using the newly discovered science of electricity to reanimate dead flesh as far back as 1816, but what if a modern-day Frankenstein sought to reanimate your flesh while you were still –alive?-
And with that disturbing thought, I will leave you to wait until the next chapter…
