Bruce jogged alongside the stretcher transporting Monica Rambeau to the on-site infirmary. He'd heard she'd appeared conscious for a minute after being flung out of the Westview energy barrier. She hadn't been responsive by the time he'd gotten there. She could have a concussion, broken bones, or internal bleeding.
Director Tyler Hayward followed behind the medical team with his cellphone to his ear, giving Fury a running update.
"Heartrate is 150 bpm," Bruce said, counting her pulse for ten seconds and extrapolating.
"You know what this means, right?" Darcy said excitedly from behind him. "This proves people are still alive in there."
"Those aren't the clothes she was wearing when she went in," Agent Woo said.
"What was she wearing when she went in?" Tony asked
Director Hayward paused his conversation on the phone to answer, "Suit with bullet proof vest." Putting the phone back to his ear, he said, "Heartrate is 150. She's wearing clothing she must have gotten inside."
"Anyone who's not a medical professional needs to wait outside," said the head physician, Dr. Nekara, as they wheeled the patient into the infirmary.
"You heard him," Bruce said, physically stopping Hayward, Woo, and Darcy from following them through the doors. Tony hung back thinking to himself.
"When she wakes up can you ask her about Jane?" Darcy requested.
They hooked Monica up to a life support monitor.
"There's something sewn into her pants," one of the attendants said as they cut away her clothes to assess her injuries.
"Let me see that," Bruce said.
There was a small satchel containing microfilm. They also found a envelope stuffed with papers sewn to the inside of her shirt. The envelope was addressed to "Director Hayward current head of SWORD."
"She knew she might not make it," Bruce noted.
"Vitals are stabilizing."
The x-rays were the first indication that something had gone horribly weird.
"What the..."
At the x-ray technician's befuddled exclamation, Bruce stepped over to take a look. "What is it? Ohhh."
Dr. Nekara glanced at the x-rays and did a double take.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Bruce asked.
She shook her head. "No."
The x-ray images showed Monica Rambeau's body as a solid mass of light, edged with a wispy corona.
"The Geiger counter is showing unusual levels of radioactivity," the technician reported. "What could be causing this?"
Bruce looked at the patient and saw her glitch. for a second, her body flickered, seemingly losing cohesion and becoming a blur of brightness before settling back to normal. It happened again, flashing bright enough to light up the room.
"What's happening?"
"I think everyone who isn't immune to radiation should probably leave the room until we get to the bottom of this," Bruce suggested.
Dr. Nekara checked Monica's vitals before nodding. "Agreed."
Bruce handed off the microfilm and envelope to Dr. Nekara. "Give these to Mr. Stark."
When everyone else had cleared out of the room, Bruce commenced trying to figure out what was happening to Agent Rambeau. He tried to take an x-ray of her arm, but the film began developing even before her turned the machine on. He shone an ultraviolet light over her clothes to check for foreign particulates, and after turning it off noticed his lab coat fluorescing when he walked up to her. He took a photo of a fresh tattoo on her hip that seemed to be of an astrophysics function describing something similar to the event horizon of a black hole, and seconds later her skin lit up with the same brightness as the camera's flash. Traveling through the wall of extradimensional energy between the pocket dimension and their own should have killed her, but instead it had changed her.
Bruce stared at her, wondering what she could do if she survived, woke up, and learned to harness that power. He wanted to talk to her, a kindred spirit.
He shut off all lights in the room but the indicators on the life-support monitor and a spectrometer, and watched the energy being emitted from her body gradually fade and her vitals return to normal. He confirmed that she was no longer unusually radioactive.
He stepped out of the room to find Dr. Nekara and the rest of the medical team.
"She's stable for now, but I want to transport her to my lab for some tests."
"What do you think her chances of recovery are?" Dr. Nekara asked.
"I don't know. She went right through an extradimensional energy field with no protection, which...there's no way to predict what kind of effects that would have. But I don't think she's injured so much as...altered."
Monica woke up in some kind of lab. She sat up slowly and looked around, quickly spotting the only other person in the room. He was hard to miss.
He noticed her movement and came to her.
"Agent Rambeau. I'm guessing you know who I am."
"Unless someone else has turned themself into a green mass of muscles in a labcoat while I've been gone, you're Bruce Banner," she answered. "You were part of the Avengers."
He cleared his throat. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine. I'm a little sore," she admitted. "Who are you working for? Is Fury still alive?"
"I'm working for the Avengers at present, and yes. Fury's on his way. But when I ask how you feel...Look, I know you're tough. You don't need to prove that. But you went through an extradimensional energy field. There are... It looks like there might be some side-effects. How do you feel?"
She began to really evaluate her internal state. She stared at her hands, trying to figure out what she was feeling. Something was different. Her insides felt...she couldn't quite pin it down. Unstable, like chills, not exactly unpleasant but definitely not normal. "Like something's flowing through me."
" Yea"
"I knew—"
She was interrupted by a chime.
"Hold on a sec." Bruce stood to open the door.
Hayward, Tony , Natasha and Khamala and Darcy walked in.
"Hayward!" Bruce exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Fury has been captured by A.I.M., we have no idea where he is now." Hayward straightened his suit "Good to have you back, Rambeau."
She frowned, confused. "You don't look like you've aged a day."
Bruce raised a finger. "I...have a hypothesis that time inside the bubble universe isn't lining up with regular time. Agent Rambeau, you disappeared into the energy field ten months ago. How long did it seem to you inside?"
Ten months? It had only been ten months?
"About twenty years," she answered.
"Twenty years?" Natasha repeated. "You've aged well."
"No one ages in there. No one except... Let me back up. Hayward, have you read my letter?"
"I haven't had the chance yet."
Tony spoke up. "Me and Darcy tried to look at your microfilms, but they got overexposed traveling through the energy field. I can tell there's mathematical equations in them, but I couldn't make out what they are."
"Agent Rambeau, this is Dr. Darcy Lewis. I've been helping her try to figure out the Westview Phenomenon," Bruce introduced her.
"Darcy? Professor Foster talks about you sometimes."
Her eyes widened. "You know Jane?"
"Yeah. Really well." Monica sat down and took a breath. She looked up at the group "The first thing to know about the Westview Phenomenon is that Wanda Maximoff is controlling it."
"Yeah, we've pieced together that much," Tony said.
"But we haven't been able to figure out if she is doing this consciously or not" Bruce added.
"Other than the barrier around the town, she's created entire buildings. Westview didn't have a college before, but it does now. Even though it's been cut off from the outside world for years, it never runs out of food or water or any other commodity. She's even created the Vision. That's how I figured out it was her, and how I got out. I asked her to meet me as close to the barrier as I could get, and I told her what I know. I figured I could either talk some sense into her or she would kill me and dump my body outside the barrier. That's why I had the letter and the microfilm. Instead I got her mad enough that she just blasted me out of her universe." She didn't mention that when it became clear she wasn't going to talk Wanda into stopping the phenomenon, she'd threatened her children to try to get her worked up enough to throw her through the barrier.
Bruce started pacing agitatedly, rubbing his forehead. Monica had thought about the power Wanda wielded, and that had terrified her. Even one was too much power for any one person to have...
"Well, damn," Hayward said.
Khamala was staring at the floor, chewing her lip in deep thought.
