Serephina hadn't even reached the bridge when the little comlink crackled in her ear. She, Maria and Nick always had them in their ears, so they could communicate over long distances on the Helicarrier. "Serephina, Lab 4 on Level 6, there's something you need to see," with that the comlink cracked again and Nick's voice trailed off again. It had that undertone that it only had when it was very serious. Immediately the girl turned left on the next corridor and made her way down the dozen levels. Her steps were faster than before and she was sure she would not see her experiment again today.
The lab was somewhat closed off, yet not far from the bridge, it was Serephina's first lab. It had a large glass front and quite a bit of technology built in, which was currently being used by self-proclaimed philanthropist Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, to search around in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. He was sitting on one of the tables in the lab, typing away on one of the screens, while Fury re-entered the room after disconnecting the commlink. Bruce Banner, a.k.a. Hulk, looked at the sceptre carefully, tapping it again and again with a pen.
The girl had heard footsteps in the corridor ahead of her as she stepped into the corridor where the lab was located. Immediately she sped up to follow the figure. She also recognised the man in front of her without seeing him head-on. Steve Rogers, alias Captain America, had entered the lab before her, holding something in his hand that he was never supposed to see.
"What's Phase Two?" were the first words the girl could hear from the lab. The question came from Stark, on whose screen a series of information appeared. With that, she entered the lab and stopped behind Steve Rogers, who dropped the unfinished prototype of a weapon on the table. Immediately the three other men looked up and examined the weapon. "In phase two, S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to make weapons. Sorry, the computer took me too long," the man added, giving Tony Stark a brief apologetic look. "Rogers, we have everything-", Fury began, but Serephina did not let the man finish, she was part of the research, at least for the effect on humans.
"We have gathered Everything there is to know about the Tessaract. These weapons are still not-" with that the four men had their eyes on the girl, but this time Stark interrupted the girl. "Excuse me, but why is a ten-year-old teaching us?" he asked snidely, pointing at the girl with his screwdriver. Serephina looked at the man, a little confused and bewildered. "How does a child know about that?", Bruce Banner interjected into the discussion.
Natasha Romanoff, a nice woman Serephina thought, and a blond, tall man also entered the office, neither paying the girl any more attention than necessary. "Would you perhaps prefer to withdraw from this environment, Doctor?" she asked the latter immediately. She knew something and it had to do with him, the girl understood that immediately. The man laughed listlessly and stepped a little closer to the red-haired woman "I had withdrawn quite a bit in Calcutta." he replied with a slurred undertone at that. "Loki is manipulating you.", Natasha explained further and also stepped closer to the doctor.
"And what do you call what you are doing?" with that the doctor moved away again, deliberately keeping his distance from the others. "You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes," Natasha added wanly, tilting her head in amusement. "And I'm not leaving because you have weak nerves either," with that he turned his gaze back to Serephina, who had by now stepped between Steve and Nick. "I'd rather have known why S.H.I.E.L.D. was using the Tesseract to create weapons of mass destruction," the doctor turned the weapons concept screen to the girl.
Briefly she raised her eyes to Nick, but finally answered herself. "For beings from other worlds. We had an alien on our planet last year that turned a small town to dust on the side. Not only are we alone, we're laughably outnumbered," the girl explained in response to his question.