Chapter Eight: 15 Years

It would be a lie for Phil Coulson to say he had a restful night. The young boy sat in a quarantine room had his thoughts occupied. A sleeve burnt off but no fire, travelling across universes and whatever that little box was. None of it made sense. There wasn't a lot he could do for now. He'd just have to wait for instructions and who'd know what those would be. He didn't really want to head out to New Mexico again if he could avoid it.
As soon as he had got to the base Maria Hill told him that Director Fury wanted to see them both. Shame I wanted to get some coffee first…

Once they had entered the Director's office, he could see that something was troubling him.

"Good morning, Director."

"Mornin'." The Director didn't look up at them. He just turned a page in the folder he was looking at. From where he was standing Phil could just about see that it was more lab results. Two different types by the looks of things. Director Fury finally stood up with a sigh and ran a hand down his face.

"Is everything alright sir?" Agent Hill frowned in concern. The Director looked tired, very tired. It didn't look like he had left the base all night.

"Like Dr. Selvig said, the box is almost like the tesseract but there's still something very different." Director Fury started, looking between the two agents to check their reactions. "So, the question is, are the two linked?"
Agent Hill and Coulson looked towards each other for a moment, a flash of confusion on their faces.

"Do you think that the boy came here because of the Tesseract?" Director Fury nodded to Agent Hill.
I suppose that would make sense… but…

"Coulson, you don't look convinced?" He looked up to meet the Director's stare.

"I had a conversation with Draco after the two of you left. Not a long one." He started to explain. "He said that 'Death' had a job for him? Not that he seems to know what that means." The other two frowned at what he had said. Clearly, they thought him mad to hear out the kid's story.

"What's the point of listening to him if he's just going to lie to you?"

"We can't say he's lying though, can we? I mean he's come from another universe entirely. There's bound to be differences between our universes, maybe 'Death' is a real being where he's from?" It didn't look like the Director liked it but he took Coulson's words into consideration.

"Think you can get the kid to talk?"

"I'm not going to trick him, Director. He's a child."

"You don't have to. It's up to you how you tackle it. My question was do you think you can do it?" The Director never took his stare off Coulson. He thought about it for a while. Could he? He wasn't sure. The kid only seemed to talk yesterday because he knew they wouldn't believe him. However… someone had to try and talk to him. Otherwise, he would never be allowed to leave, well he wasn't sure of the Director would ever let him leave anyway. At least if he got him to talk the kid would have a better chance of being allowed to leave, even if it ended up just being the quarantine room. He finally gave a nod to the Director.

"Okay. I'll leave it with you. Hill, you and I are going to look over Phase 2." With that they were dismissed.

Dr. Selvig was testing something with the Tesseract when Phil found him. The cube was glowing slowly on and off, seemingly reacting to whatever Dr. Selvig was doing.

"Good morning Dr. Selvig" Phil smiled gently at the scientist, who didn't look much better than Director Fury this morning.

"Agent Coulson! What can I do for you?" The older man smiled.

"Just a quick question for you, if you have the time?"

"Of course! Ask away!" Clearly Dr. Selvig was in a good mood today.

"Based on the conversation from yesterday, would any bacteria, substances or similar be dangerous to something from another universe?" He tried to keep it vague seeing as the Director hadn't said if it was common knowledge that Draco was at the base.

"Hmm… I would say it depends on how different the universes are. There's no test or anything that we could use to test it, it's not exactly a common occurrence."

"I see… it would be better to play it safe then?"

"The only way to find out would be to expose whatever came here to our world slowly. In a controlled environment would be best so that if something were to have an adverse effect it could be acted upon quickly."

"Thank you." Phil said with a nod then he turned on his heels and left.

Draco had no idea what the time was when he woke up or how much he had slept. His whole body felt stiff, his eyes were still heavy with sleep. He stayed laying down while he slowly woke up. No stinging in his right arm anymore, except when he moved it, he couldn't taste blood either. Although he was sure that if he were to eat something then it would quickly return. Gently stretching out his arms and legs, Draco sat up when he heard the door opening.

Agent Phil Coulson was entering the room with a chair and some food. The older man set the chair down about two meters away from the table-bed. He walked up to Draco to hand him the food.

"Good morning, are you hungry?" On the plate there was some toast and something that looked like jam but slightly… wrong? As well as a banana and some orange juice. "I wasn't sure what you'd want to eat… or what you eat I guess." Agent Coulson sat in the chair he brought with him.

"Thank you… can I ask something?" He got a nod in response. "What's up with the jam? It doesn't look like jam…" A quiet laugh came from across the room making Draco frown.

"It's not jam, it's jelly. Jelly is made from the juice of the fruit, not the pulp or pieces like you're probably used to." When he could see that Draco was still a bit unsure, he added: "It's practically the same, it might just be a bit sweeter."

Draco nodded and took a small bite. It was a lot sweeter than he expected but it had a nice consistency. Plus, once he got over the sweetness he quite liked it, it really wasn't that different to the jam he was used to. Agent Coulson didn't say anything as Draco ate instead, he was doing something on a little black box. Occasionally Draco would glance up and see him tapping at it or swiping his finger along it. It didn't seem to be doing anything other than a little bit if light coming from it.
Draco was about to start drinking the orange juice when his curiosity got the better of him.

"What is that?" Agent Coulson looked up in confusion, to which Draco answered by nodding his head towards the little black box.

"Uh… it's my phone?" Draco's hand stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth.

"How is that a phone?" It was far to small and flat to be a phone.

"What do you mean?"

"It's too small. Do you even have any buttons on it?" Agent Coulson sat in silence just staring at Draco for a while.

"Can I ask you something before I answer?" Draco nodded albeit a bit confused. "What year is it?"

"What?" But Agent Coulson didn't elaborate. "It's 1997…" Draco's voice trailed off meanwhile Agent Coulson's eyes widen. Is… is it not 1997?

"2012."

"Huh?"

"That's the year. It's 2012…" The two of them stayed quiet. 15 years… in the future…

Agent Coulson stood up and sat next to Draco with his little box held out towards him. Taking it in his right hand he turned it over a couple of times. It was much lighter than he was expecting and there were a couple of buttons on the side of it but no where else. The muggle phones that he had seen were a lot chunkier than this. The bottom half of it usually had a lot of buttons.

"H-how does it work?" He was having a hard time coming to terms with the different years but there wasn't anything he could do about it now. Agent Coulson took the phone back and pressed on of the buttons. The screen lit up and asked for a passcode. He quickly turned the phone away from Draco and unlocked it. He spent about half an hour showing Draco how the phone worked and how far technology had come since 1997.
"I didn't think muggles would progress that quickly…" It was only mumbled but Agent Coulson still heard it.

"What's that?"

"What?"

"You just said muggle? What is it?" Draco felt his cheeks redden a little on the realisation that he had been heard.

"Uh… just people like you…" He didn't really want to go into it, not when he wasn't sure what this world's magic was like. If there was any. He didn't need to be getting on the wrong side of whatever magical agency or governments here.
Agent Coulson didn't ask any further questions, but it was obvious that he wasn't satisfied with Draco's answer. They spent another twenty minutes discussing the change in technology before the phone's screen lit up with a notification.

"Duty calls. It was nice talking to you Draco. See you later."

"Yeah… see you later…" With that Agent Coulson took the plate and glass and left the room.

Nick Fury had summoned Phil down to the Phase 2 labs. There had been some further developments on stabilising the energy source. When he got there, he could see one of the prototypes on the lab desk and a scorch mark on the wall.

"Having fun Director?"

"Hardly." The Director was frowning looking down at the prototype. Once Phil had gotten closer, he could see the damage on the prototype. The muzzle had been blown apart completely. It now resembled a flower more than a muzzle. The frame was also damaged with small cracks creeping along it.

"Fix one problem and a different one crops up." Agent Hill sighed.

"Is it the material or the stabilising process that's caused this?"

"Could be a bit of both. We could reinforce the muzzle and frame, but it depends on what we can use for it." The Director looked to Phil. "Got any ideas?"

"Not right now, sir. It could unbalance the whole thing reinforcing just the damaged parts but doing the whole thing could make it heavy and difficult to use." Another sigh.

"Hill, see what you and Selvig can figure out. We don't want to keep delaying this."

"On it." She turned on her heel and headed towards the lower labs. The Director frowned at the gun again and ran a hand down the side of his face.

"I'd suggest changing the stabilisation process, sir. That would most likely be the quickest and easier solution."

"Quick and easy doesn't always mean it's the best way. You know that." Phil nodded. If this job had taught him anything it was that being patience and determined went a long way.
"How'd it go with the kid?"

"That situation might be a bit more interesting than we thought." The Director raised an eyebrow and gave Phil his full attention.
"The universe that Draco has come from is in 1997, not 2012."

"That is interesting. Looks like we'll be keeping Selvig busy for some time yet."

"I've also tried to introduce some common bacteria and viruses from our world to him. I went into the quarantine room with him and allowed him to handle my phone."

"Right, we'll monitor him and see if anything happens." The Director started walking off. Phil followed him, taking papers from people as they passed by. They were making their way to the lab with the little box. What could even fit in it… maybe Draco will tell me if I ask him later.
There was no one working in the lab when they entered. The box was still in the containment unit, which continued to measure the energy levels coming from it.

"Any new advancements from this?" Phil placed the papers he was handed on one of the desks and turned to look at the box.

"It's not dangerous. It doesn't seem to contain anything. It's just a box."

"That emits an unknown energy?" The Director nodded. "Does that mean the energy has been cleared as non-dangerous now?"

"Yeah."

"What do you want to do with it?"

"What I want you to do is give it back to the kid when you go see him later." Phil thought about it for a moment.

"You want to see if he'll do anything with it…"

"That's right. He's keeping his cards close to his chest for now. Let's see if we can get anything out of him this way."