February 17th

Maria

It had been just over a week since they first shifted and since then, Maria has noticed an increase in her sense in her human form, when she was previously told that the serum had minimal to none impact on human sense. At first, when she started receiving the serum, she notice an increase in her senses and strength. It had been overwhelm in loud situations, especially when moving through the base during the morning hours.

Maria couldn't figure out if they simply had been lying to her about the effects or if this was a side effect of her having too much. She could ask but she was currently trying to drown out the noise of people arguing a few rooms down from her office. How was she suppose to finish this paper work, deal with mission layout and plan extractions when they were arguing about the stupidest of things. Maria was half tempted to go down there and tell them to move, or scream at them, or rip their vocal chords from their throat so they could never speak about these petty things again.

'I can feel the anger radiating off of you, what's up?' Natasha said, her voice floating into her head.

'Leave me alone.' Maria snapped back, sick of not having her head to herself.

'Grumpy.' Natasha grumbled, but seemingly left Maria to her own devices.

Maria knew she had been a bit on the grumpy side recently, especially when it came to Natasha. It was just that she was so used to being on her own nowadays. Phil and May were away most of the time, doing whatever high level classified missions Fury could come up with. It wasn't that she had trouble making friends inside S.H.I.E.L.D, it was that she just focused on the job. First dealing with leaving the marines, joining S.H.I.E.L.D whilst recovering, learning the tricks and the trade of working in a spy industry and the moving up at a comfortably fast pace.

Sure, she made some acquaintances that she would join for a drink after work and talk to in the passing, as well as having passable information on their personal lives, but nothing like 'come over to my house we're drinking wine and watching horror films' kind of friends. Even if her acquaintances become her friends, they were just as motivated and dedicated to their jobs as she were and working their way up the ladder and making a name for themselves within the work place.

Maria sighed, it was just a big adjustment for herself. She found her thoughts wandering to Natasha, wondering about her well-being, was she happy with the mission? Was she getting enough sleep and eating enough? It was very irritating when she noticed a stab of hunger or a random feeling, generally boredom which was usually followed with mischief as she did something with Barton. On the upside, Maria now knew when Natasha and Clint were next going to strike and could finally catch them in the act and discipline them the way she has been dreaming about for years; toilet cleaning duty. Well, technically she could not do that as it would involve more hygiene training and a shift in their contracts, she'll just bind them to a desk or teaching the newbies. The two of them hated both options, so a win-win for herself.

The three agents that were bickering down the hall had still not stopped and had moved on to trivial topics/arguments about handlers that were starting to get inappropriate for work. She might to conveniently walk about and hear about it and get them to stop or at least move somewhere else where she couldn't hear about what her fellow agents have been up to during their downtime but still technically on the clock. The amount of rules that were broken and what other agents got away with because they were simply skilled agents was ridiculous, but it was easier to maintain ignorance for their skills and kept the more mild of their agents in line with vague threats that they occasionally carried out.

Which brought her back to her original thought, how was she hearing them? The walls were thick enough without the extra padding of the soundproof. If it had none of that, Maria could understand why she was hearing them and expected to hundred of other voices of the floors below her. Both Natasha and Peggy assured her during the initial interviews about the sense that there wasn't much improvement on them but they were above average. When it came to S.H.I.E.L.D buildings they said that they weren't able to hear much more than normal, due to the way it was build to prevent being over heard. She would really have to speak to them about this, because if they were lying about this, what else could they be lying about?

Maria sighed again and put down the file she was working, there was no point of trying to continue now that she has went off in a tangent. She had been working for the past ten hours with barely any breaks, a quick 5 minute break to grab coffee and a fifteen minute lunch. Natasha would probably go off at her for not eating more than a lunch. It was another thing that she was getting used to , the increase in her metabolism and having to eat more than usual. She felt the hunger, but generally did what she has always done, ignored it until she finished what she was doing. Except that her work load never seemed to end, every hour something happened, new missions, too classified for anyone else but her or Fury to organise the extraction.

Her shift ended two hours ago, when doing office work she was only really asked to work a standard 8/9 hour shift but tended to put more work into, for tonight though, she was giving up. If Fury needed her help on something, he knew where to get her. She stood from her desk, closing everything down securely and loking files away before leaving. She purposely passed the the gossiping agents and glared into the room, causing them to jump in surprise at the sight of her passing.

"Holy crap, I thought Hill had left." One said, seemingly still trying to catch his breath.

"Dunno, I guess not. What's got her so angry at this time anyways? No one else was around to piss her off." Another agent questioned

"You don't think she heard us?" The third said, putting their two cent into the conversation.

"Nah, no way she could have heard her, besides, haven't you guys heard her nicknames? Ice Queen, Hard ass hill? The Bitch?" The first agent said, laughing as the others joined in.

Maria scowled as she entered the lift, making her way down to the basement floors to meet the pack. Stupid agents would certainly pay for their comments. Maybe not within the next days, but somewhere down the line. Although, she shouldn't really be punishing them for something that she supposedly wouldn't be able to hear, according to human standards. Maria just grumbled about the unfairness of the situation to herself and fired a text to Fury, letting him know that she was signing off and that she was just a couple of floors away if it was an emergency. She really couldn't be bother making the journey all the way back home when no doubt something would happen during the night, bringing her back here. They had some very tense missions going on currently.

It wasn't until she was stalking the halls of the base that she realised she was walking through them without anyone with her. At the sudden revelation, everything seemed to just get darker. It seemed like it was waiting for her to fully realise that she was alone. The darkness crept along her vision, taunting her, trying to pull her further into the darkness to the empty void of silence that shouldn't really be silent. She knew that the others where down here, as all of them came here as soon as their shift finished – yet, her heart was beating a thousand times faster in her chest and she swore she could hear whispers as shapes formed in the distance, too distant to make anything out but close enough that she could see the outline, looking more and more like the wolves.

Her breath caught in her throat as she took a few fumbling steps backs, she tried to splutter out words to catch the other attention, but nothing was coming out. Then the worst that could happen, happened. The outline started moving towards her, faster and faster and Maria did nothing but stand there and stare in horror. The whispers grew louder and louder into shrieks in front of her and the shape took over her vision, getting darker and darker until it revealed a bright red colour.

What?

"Maria, Maria! Snap out of it." Natasha yelled in her face.

Maria blinked, bringing herself back to the present.

Natasha and Peggy were standing in front of her, looking concerned. The whispers and shriek would have appeared to have been them. Was the shape them as well? What most threw her off, was the fact it was not pitch black like she thought, the hallway was brightly lit, she should have known that. They don't leave the lights off until they know Maria was with them. She could have sworn it was pitch black.

Maria stared at them in confusion, her fingers crept up and gripped Natasha shirt as she continued to just stare blankly at her, processing what just happened. What the hell was that?

"Maria, I think you just had a panic induced hallucination. A common side effect of PTSD. It's okay, lets get out of here." Natasha said, a lot more quietly this time as she gently pulled Maria to main room.

"I'm fine." She mumbled, pulling her arm back from Natasha, shaking her head gently as though that would get rid of the bad thoughts.

"Maria-" Natasha started

"I'm fine, Natasha." She snapped, scowling as she moved ahead in front of them. Eager to get away from them and their concerned questioning. Realistically, she knew that they had done nothing wrong and that she was just being irrationally angry.

"Maria, stop ignoring me." Natasha said, a hard edge to her tone as Maria opened the doors to see the others lounging on the chairs, trying too hard to look as though they were just not eavesdropping.

"I'm not." Maria supplied automatically, feeling as though the statement was more of a command.

"You are. You've ignored me all day today. You've been in a foul mood, what's wrong?" Natasha asked, moving to stand by her, concern in her eyes.

"Nothing Natasha, just tired. Nothing new." Maria insisted, actively trying to push the anger down to stop Natasha's attempt at mother-henning her.

"Maria, something's up. You got half way through the hall then you just stopped and panicked. I just want to make sure you're okay after that. You can be grumpy all you want, but are you okay?" Natasha pushed again.

Maria could feel that the women really did just want to know if she was okay. Maria figured she should just let the women do her alpha thing, her anger was starting to simmer now, but she had no idea if that was her own doing or of someone else's choice.. Honestly, she was okay if it was someone else, it felt like the anger had just been clouding her mind, making seemingly innocent things have bad intentions.

"I'll be okay" Maria said, changing her stance, softening slightly, "just a restless nights sleep, yeah?"

A very restless night, it felt like she had no sleep at all, if it wasn't for the weird dreams, she would have thought she did not get any sleep. Weird dreams of blue men and scripture on walls. It was all strange and filled for later analysis when she had some free time.

"You sure it's just that?" Natasha asked cautiously, her eyes flickering to Peggy, as though the two of them had been talking about her previously.

They probably had.

"Yeah. Just, lack of sleep, everything is just so loud. I didn't realise how loud things would be." Maria said, tacking on the hearing issue at the end there, to see if they would slip up or be honest with her.

Of course that was never going to work because she was talking to two of the best spies in the world. One of whom literally started revolutionising the spy industry within America.

Natasha and the other alphas all glanced at each other, a sure sign of communication. They looked resigned, making Maria think they had been lying to her. But why?

"When you did the initial interviews about the changes we were experiencing in our current forms, we may have under-estimated the increase in senses. It's different for everyone, it's like it is based on our previous hearing skills. We couldn't narrow it down. We figured it Fury knew, he'd go for more physically fit agents rather than the agents who had the skills, or at least have their physical aspects taken more into consideration. He's desperate to push this operation through to become a success. We knew his heart is in the right place, but we figured this was for the best." Peggy explained, taking over for Natasha.

Maria nodded along, it made sense in all honesty. Even Maria couldn't be one hundred percent sure that Fury wouldn't start putting the wrong people forward for the project. S.H.I.E.L.D had mindless grunts, who were in peak physical condition and good at following orders but not much more. If Fury started getting them involved with the programme, the would find themselves out of place, they wouldn't fit with the pack properly and might try and mess with the dynamics.

"Make sense." Maria started calmly, "but why didn't you tell me the truth?" She asked, staring at them.

As soon as she asked them that, she knew the answer. They weren't sure if she would be more loyal to Fury or to them. Honesty, if Maria hadn't been turned, it was a ninety-nine percent chance that she would have told Fury the truth. Now? There was no chance, she could feel it in her bones that whilst she trusted Fury's judgement (most of the time) and was loyal to him as her leader, she wouldn't divulge pack information to him, especially something that could mix up their dynamics.

"We're sorry, but we had to be certain." Peggy said, looking apologetic at her.

Maria sighed, but nodded her understanding again. It sucked, plain and simple. Knowing that she was automatically excluded due to her position as well as knowing that without a doubt it was going to affect her in the future as well. Their team was led by Peggy Carter, notorious for going against orders or creating her own missions to suit her agenda. Maria supposed she was like one of the S.H.I.E.L.D grunts, throwing a spanner in the works. They never planned on someone being this close to Fury within the group.

"no, definitely not." Natasha said, with such conviction in her voice. Maria looked up in surprise.

"You're nothing like them, sure unexpected, but you definitely make this a lot easier, at least for me." Natasha moving closer to her. "I could never imagine what my pack would be like if you weren't in it. It's not even a full blown but it's the right place for you to be. Trust me. Think of all the people who are lined up to join us. You fit right in with them and if you hadn't been chosen to lead this operation, you would have been the first people on the list anyway."

"Damn right I would have, I'm a fucking delight." Maria joked, attempting to ease the sudden onslaught of love from Natasha.

"Yeah you are, sexy beast" Natasha said, understanding where Maria was taking this conversation. She also throw in an over exaggerated wink, just to seal the deal.

Maria grinned in appreciation at Natasha, finding her hand and squeezing it in thanks, mainly at the fact the subject was clearly going to be dropped.

'For now. We'll talk about your panic attack at a later date, when you feel up to it.' Natasha reminded her quietly.

Well, at least it would be on her own terms, she thought to herself.

"If you lot are done being all mushy and feelings, Jayden thinks we have a potential led on the leaked information." Victoria drawled from where she was standing, next to the other alphas, huddled around a tablet displaying the information.

The three of them walked over to examine the information and Maria automatically groaned "Malta? I fucking hate Malta."