A spicy mix of rubber and metal was the first thing that greeted Alex on her way back to consciousness. There was a solid floor humming against her left cheek: tubes, and air rushing over metal skin. It wasn't the jouncy squeal of train tracks or the constant grind of tires on asphalt. No water sloshing sounds. No gas smell, but a sweet hint of kerosene. A plane? Was she on a plane?
The first bit of good news was that she was alive. There was pressure around her ankle and left forearm. Soft, but squeezing. Something soft and tight rubbed against her chest. The skin on her cheek felt stretched in an awkward way. Her right arm was heavy and tight like a block of wood. But everything was still there.
She was warm. She wasn't tied down. There was no loop of cable latched to her collar. No—wait. Wait a minute. Her collar. She couldn't feel her collar.
Her eyes fluttered open to a bright blurry world and immediately snapped shut again. Ow. Okay, add headache to her list of problems.
"Good morning," came a voice a few feet in front of her head. It was deep–male–and jarringly familiar.
The man.
Memories of the past twenty-four hours cracked open her brain and poured themselves in. The man in the shack. Rayner and Magnum. There was the cave and the drop off. Her own dead eyes stared up from a red puddle on the cement floor.
Alex shot up, eyes flying open to a throbbing swirl of gray. She cried out at the sudden jolt of pain in her arm and flinched back against something solid.
"Woah, woah. Take it easy."
She squinted up at him, left arm hooked protectively over the plastic brace on her right. Hold on. Plastic… brace? Oh. Her right arm was wrapped in a thick layer of compression tape. Peeking out of the edges was a white taco of plastic with a gauze core. Her left arm was patched up with some more gauze, bits of red seeping through the white. She lifted her fingers to her cheek and found a suture there.
Instead of the bloody sweatshirt, she was dressed in a navy blue t-shirt a few sizes too big. There was a blanket over her lap, but she could still see the sweatpants pulled up around her hips. The switch still hung off her neck.
What?
He cleared his throat. "How are you feeling?"
Alex pulled her eyes up from the floor. He was crouched in front of her, one knee on the rubber walkway. Bright light behind him made it hard to focus on his face, but he didn't seem mad. Confused, a little concerned. Actually, this was the exact expression she'd seen Rayner use on a little boy once. They'd 'saved' the kid from a so-called enhanced criminal. The second Rayner found out that enhanced was the child's father, he shot him too.
She swallowed. Her mouth opened before she realized she didn't actually know how to answer that. Seriously, what in heaven's name was happening right now?
A quick look around just gave her more questions than answers. The two of them were near the front of some kind of plane-helicopter hybrid. He'd set her up between two rows of bolted down chairs. Every inch of the walls along the aisle was lined with computer panels and rough gray compartments. Heavy duty hooks lay flush with the rubber floor. Things narrowed at the front, two halves of an incomplete wall sectioning off the cockpit.
"Where am I?"
He nodded, like that was the most obvious question in the world. "You're in a S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet. You're safe."
Debatable, but she didn't argue. He didn't seem to want her dead just yet.
Her eyes flicked to his left arm and her chest tightened. There was no gauze there, no stab wound. Not a scratch. She looked down at her own left arm. Of course. He had to touch her to fix her up, right? Oh God, she was gonna die. Or end up locked in some cell. Or–
"I mean it," he cut in. "You are safe."
Alex gave him a hard look. "Why are you helping me?"
He shrugged, shifting until he was sitting cross legged on the floor.
"Because I can."
A dry humorless laugh burst up from her chest. Because he could? Did he really expect her to believe that? But he didn't seem put off by her little outburst. He just shook his head, a tiny grin on his face.
"I'm Clint," he said.
She recognized the offer, but she wasn't sure what answer he expected. She knew her name and she knew the name Rayner called her. They didn't exactly seem like friends, but he'd told her to hold. If Rayner had ever heard her call herself Alex he'd have beaten her to a pulp. First, because she was speaking. Dogs didn't talk. And secondly, because she was Ember. His precious pet project. Alex was a name and a life that'd been long since ripped out of her.
It was a name she no longer deserved to be called.
"Ember," she said to the floor.
She sensed him shift in front of her, smelled the uncomfortable edge that picked up in his sweat.
"Nice to meet you."
When she looked back up, he was smiling. It was real. It reached his eyes, but there was an awkwardness to it.
"So…" her fingers flexed in the blanket. "Where are we going?"