CHAPTER 1
She hadn't expected the explosion.
One moment she and her team had been working on a mysterious source of power that S.H.I.E.L.D had discovered and then there was fire, destruction, and death. The remote lab that S.H.I.E.L.D had set up purposefully had a skeleton crew so that any information from the mysterious energy source could be kept secret for as long as possible. They had few assistants and slightly more security, but it was still a skeleton crew. Though Ember realized that nothing could have stopped the destruction this thing had caused.
The air was heavy with dust, and the entire place was filled with fire, a fire so strong she realized that what she thought was dust hadn't been that. It had been ash, ash from the building, the equipment, the people. The fire had been that strong that everything was reduced to ash… everything but her.
The raven-haired woman stood up, the flames wrapping around her body, she watched fascinated and helpless as she began to fuse with the flame, the mysterious energy source merging itself with her body until no flame remained, except for what was now essentially her.
Ember stared at her arms and the rest of her body. Her clothes had burned away, but she wasn't naked. Her skin was orange and flames rose and swayed in a rhythmic dance. She was the flame now. Panic had begun to set in, and the flames around her body rose.
The sound of helicopters reached her, and she saw the familiar face of her boss, Nick Fury. Waving her flaming hands around in shock, a fireball split off from her body, launching at the man with the eyepatch. "No!" She shouted the only warning she could give. Thankfully the fireball had missed her employer by a wide margin.
"Sir! Stay back! I don't know what happened! The energy source seemed to have merged with me! I can't control it!" Nick listened to her, for once. Ember was thankful, knowing how stubborn the older man could be. There was a pained expression on his face, and she knew why. Nick was her guardian after all. Her father had trusted Nick to look after Ember when he died, and the man had fulfilled that promise until the day she had become an adult, even after that. Nick had become like another father to her.
Ember gave him a lopsided smile. She didn't know what her face looked like if she still had human features even, but she needed to give her surrogate father some semblance of relief before he started down the rabbit hole that was guilt.
The S.H.I.E.L.D team that Nick arrived with quickly erected a barricade around her, with enough distance between them that she couldn't harm them. Soon she was being sprayed with jets of powerful water, though it had taken more than a few hours until she was once again looking at her tanned flesh instead of the burning color of the flames. Nick had just reached her when she collapsed, her father caught her in his arms.
She couldn't muster words, simply lacking the strength to do so. So, she fell asleep, certain that her father would detain her and her fellow scientist would begin to poke and probe her to figure out what had happened to Ember Fury.
When she woke up, Ember was hooked up to multiple different monitors and machines. She had almost panicked, not knowing where she was or why she was here. Until she saw her father on the other side of the glass. The memory of the fire slammed into her, and her rising panic stopped short.
The sound of her father's voice filtered through the speaker as she sat up, her attention turned to the monitors, trying to make sense of the readings on them. "How are you feeling?" Nick asked, gaining his daughter's attention. Ember leaned on her hands to ensure she didn't fall over. "How long was I out?" She asked, her throat hoarse enough for her to know that it had been more than a few days. "Four months." She could hear the concealed concern in his voice, despite his cold and professional exterior. Ember understood her father's position, he was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D and she was now another superhuman who needed to be tagged and trained to ensure the safety of humanity. Ember was born into S.H.I.E.L.D she knew better than anyone.
"What did they find out?" Her question made Nick open the door to her room or cell. She wasn't keen to acknowledge which of the two was truer. Her amber eyes followed his movements as he came to a stop in front of her.
"They've determined that the energy source was cosmic radiation." Ember's skin pulled tight as she frowned. "But it had a form, and when I did tests there was no indication of cosmic radiation." Ember wanted to scoff; she was an experienced enough scientist that she was sure she would have been able to identify simple cosmic radiation. Nick sighed, his heart aching for the child he had come to love as his own, his daughter. "It is cosmic radiation but not of our solar system. We have no idea where it comes from, or how it landed here on earth, or how it maintained a physical form."
Nick's words sparked something in Ember's memories. She snapped her fingers, wide eyes looking up to her father as she spoke. "It had a mind of its own. At least that's what it seemed like." The expression on Nick's face was enough for her to know that she was to elaborate. "Everything was perfect, fine, normal. We were just trying to figure out what it was. And then it began moving, the container we had placed it in… it slipped right through… and then it hit me. Then there was flame, and then there was ash. Dad…" She trailed off; fist clenched at her side. "It's like that thing chose me to be its host. Or its base function was to seek out a suitable one and merge."
Nick recognized the numerous problems Ember had just brought to light. "Could it still be sentient?" He asked, that was most important now. She shrugged; the multiple wires attached to her shaking as well. "It's possible, but it's equally possible that once it finds a host it stops function on its own." Nick didn't voice his thoughts on the matter. She knew them anyway.
The most ideal situation would be for her to be in complete control of this new power. But if whatever had given her abilities in the first place was aware enough, and intelligent enough to take control of her…
Everything would get a whole lot more complicated.
