Max awoke in a room that was such a stark white that she had to shield her eyes in order to acclimate herself to the environment. She stood on a pair of shaky legs, still in the ACDC t-shirt from Tony and the pair of yoga pants Pepper had deigned to lend her. It was cold, an unseen wind whistling through the room in which she stood.

There were no windows and there were no doors, just a long expanse of white stretching from wall to wall. The floor was made of some sort of tile that chilled her bare feet. Max thought about hovering so they wouldn't go numb, but for some reason her wings wouldn't extend.

Then, she saw them.

They stood on the opposite side of the room, arranged in a loose V that reminded her even more that they were all alone in their own right. They were like ghosts to her, shivering against the brightness of her imagination. Her family. Her babies. Her flock.

Max didn't dare reach out and touch them. She didn't want to confirm what she already knew.

It was Nudge that stepped forward first. She did nothing except stare at Max with large, glassy eyes. They looked so empty of everything that it pushed the air out of Max's lungs and she doubled over, a choked sob escaping her lips.

The others flickered once more and faded as Nudge took another step forward.

Save us.

Max's head jerked upwards in time to see Nudge morph into Iggy, in all of his paleness. His mouth moved, but the words were delayed.

Save us.

Max began backing up, stumbling over her own feet in an effort to get away from the monster that advanced upon her, but there was nothing save for a smooth, white wall to greet her.

Iggy's face melted and shifted into Gazzy's, then into Fang's. The hair on Fang's head was lit aflame and began singeing his flesh. He reached up with a wicked grin to peel back his skin, revealing the skeleton underneath, until his entire body was on the floor like the wrapping paper from a present. The voices began overlapping each other until they became a deafening roar in Max's ears.

Save us. Save us. Save us.

Max sank to the floor with her eyes covered, the experience becoming too much for her to handle.

Just make it stop, she screamed in her mind.

Save us.

The voices died down and Max slowly took her hands off of her face. There, in a dress so spotless she was sure she hadn't bought it, was Angel. Her perfect, perfect Angel. She leaned down to Max's ear and whispered.

You can't.

Max awoke gasping, tearing at her clothes as if that would allow her to take in more air. Her hair was stuck to her face in clumps and she quickly pushed it back from her forehead, moist with sweat.

Clammy, she thought as she opened and closed her hands, touching her shaking palms.

God, she hated that word. The double 'm,' the way it sounds on her tongue, the flushed feeling of embarrassment when someone touches her and knows. They just know she was terrified. No one should ever get to see into her mind like that.

Except one.

Max threw the bed covers off of her legs and stood. It had been a long, boring week and the room she'd been given in the tower was larger than she was used to, but smaller than she thought Tony's opulent wealth could afford. Considering that most of the building was practically his playground, she thought guest quarters would be more than a double bed with a chest of drawers and a small ensuite bathroom. Max didn't doubt that there were fifteen rooms that looked exactly the same, from the mirror affixed behind the door to the small bottles of shampoo in the bathroom.

If Tony Stark was doing anything, he was running a superhero hotel.

The lights in the bathroom flickered on and Max flicked on the cold water faucet. She ran her wrists under the stream in an attempt to calm herself down and it worked, even if just for a little bit. She splashed water on her face and looked at the mirror, but a stranger stared back.

Max's hair was shorter than before, hanging just past her shoulder blades with uneven tufts sticking out. They had to cut much of it off at the hospital after the fire had melted it to her back. She tugged uncertainly on the ends, unused to the length. Her face looked gaunt, even after having regained her weight that she'd lost after the accident, and there were bags under her eyes that were a deep purple. No longer were her eyes brown and lively, but empty. They held no colour to her. They held no emotion.

We're all mad here, she thought, looking at the new person in the mirror.

Max switched the light off in the bathroom and her stomach rumbled with hunger. Her brain was too awake after the nightmare and she couldn't bear to close her eyes again, lest the visions come back to haunt her.

Save us.

She wondered what was happening, what would stop their ghosts from haunting her, but pushed the notion away. A small piece of her was even happy that they'd decided to linger in her brain. Maybe she could hold onto their memory for just a little bit longer.

The hallway lights were out, but Max could see a faint light coming from the direction of what she thought was the kitchen. Illuminated by the light above the oven was Pepper Pots clad in a tank top and cut-off sweatpants, her immaculately brushed strawberry blonde hair slightly ruffled. Max was struck by how polarizing this view of Pepper was compared to the perfectly made-up woman she'd briefly met earlier in the lab.

"Oh," Max said, coming up short upon seeing Pepper.

Pepper looked up from a bowl of cereal. She wiped milk from the corner of her mouth. Wordlessly, she patted the seat next to her. An invitation.

Max slowly moved towards the seat and sat down, her eyes warily trained on Pepper's form as she hunched in her seat, absentmindedly chewing on her bowl of Lucky Charms.

"Want some?" Pepper asked, pointing to her cereal. "Tony thinks I don't know he has this box stashed back behind the pipes."

Max shook her head, but she nearly smiled at the notion of Tony having to hide his bad habits from Pepper. From what she could gather, Pepper was either Tony's wife, boss, or assistant. Maybe it was a combination of all three.

The spoon scraping the bottom of Pepper's cereal bowl was the only sound in the kitchen, which carried a strange echo at night. The lack of lights doused the edges of the room in pitch-black shadows and added an eerie quality that wasn't normally present during the day.

"Sorry about this week," Pepper said. She stood and put the bowl in the sink, blasting it quickly with water and then placing it in the dishwasher. "Sometimes Tony gets a little... sidetracked."

"And I'm the thing he got sidetracked on?" Max hadn't meant for it to sound so snide or challenging. She didn't value Tony's opinion enough to care that she was taking time away from what seemed to be his significant other.

"No," Pepper said bluntly. "You're one of the things he's forgotten. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that if not for an incident within the company that needed his help. I'm sure by now you've noticed that he has the attention span of a small rabbit."

Max's laugh took her by surprise and she choked on it, coughing for several seconds before being fit to speak. "What was it?"

"Someone stole something." Pepper went to the refrigerator and pulled out out a large red cup with a straw poking out of the top. She set it down in front of Max, who quirked her eyebrows at the mysterious cup. "It's a smoothie. That's why you came in here, right? To get something to eat?"

Max shrugged and unscrewed the top of the cup to smell it. Banana. "What was stolen?"

Pepper looked thoughtful for a moment, her maternal instincts that pushed her to finding food for Max dissolving into her strict business persona. "Something Tony should have guarded more closely."

Max sipped at the smoothie, its inherent nothingness helping her to feel full even though she didn't really need to. Her hunger was mostly in her head; the intense craving to do something except rip her own hair out.

"Pepper," she said, holding her hand out for Max to shake. "CEO of Stark Industries."

"Max," Max replied, reaching over to grasp Pepper's hand with the smoothie straw still in her mouth. "Mutant."

Pepper's mouth quirked into a smile. "SHIELD dumped you on us, huh?"

"Nah," Max replied. "I asked to go with Tony."

Now it was Pepper's turn to laugh. "Why?"

Max shrugged and looked off into the distance. She wondered if she should say the real reason behind her choice or not. "I didn't want to be in one of their prisons anymore."

Pepper's demeanor became silent and somber. She stood from her seat at the kitchen table and made her way towards the hallway, pausing by the door frame. "I know I'm not your mother, but you should probably go to bed soon. It's late."

Max paused, a smile beginning to surface on her face. "Shouldn't I be saying the same to you?"

Turning back towards the door, Pepper shook her head. "Good night, Max."

It was a rude awakening the next morning, when Maximum opened her eyes to heavy pounding on her door. She sprang from her bed and immediately entered a fighting stance, but then realized that it was only Tony, lazily slamming his fist over and over again.

"Wake up, bird brain!"

Max's heartbeat didn't slow. She wasn't sure how much she could trust anyone here, and after their meeting in the air she knew that Tony could prove deadly if he wanted to. She doubted that at this point he'd kill her. The bird girl was a shiny new toy.

"Go away," she shouted back, hesitant.

The pounding on the door stopped, as if Tony was contemplating Max's existence for a moment. "Nope. I got a call from Fury saying you need to be at the training center in an hour and I'm not going to be the one he yells at if you're late. Get your ass up, it's breakfast time."

Max collapsed onto the bed with a groan. It was sort of luxurious, having other people take care of her for a change, but all at once she felt extremely uncomfortable. The training SHIELD has been giving her for the past week has actually proved helpful, but she would go to her own grave before admitting it. She knows the only reason that Fury is even letting her roam somewhat free is because he wants to convert her into one of his superheroes to have at his disposal. She needed to keep up the charade that she was cooperating, or God knows where they might send her next.

It took her a few moments of silence before she could muster the ability to stand. Max looked about the room for her clothes from the night before only to find an outfit neatly folded on top of the dresser. A shiver went down Max's spine as she wondered who had snuck into her room while she was sleeping to place it there.

Max changed into the black tank top and the pair of tight leggings. There was a pair of tennis shoes and socks set out by the door. She decided that going barefoot was a better idea.

"What do we even do with a sixteen-year-old girl, Pep?" Tony's voice filtered in down the hallway. He was trying to whisper, but Max's enhanced hearing could easily hear it. "Is she getting enough vitamins? Should we let her run around outside? How do we check if she's eating-"

"Tony, stop," Pepper interrupted him. "She's just a visitor, not your daughter. If you keep asking questions like this, I might even think you care for her."

Tony slipped back into his joking attitude. "Hey, you know I can barely take the time to care for myself, let alone a recombinant DNA lifeform."

As Max entered the kitchen she could see Pepper snickering, a cup of coffee in her hand and her hair perfectly coiffed. Tony had his arm around her waist and was trying to sneak a quick kiss in before she could run away. They looked like teenagers.

"Morning," Pepper said when she noticed Max.

She shuffled past them both, an unimpressed expression on her face, and grabbed a plate of eggs that they'd set out for her.

"Good morning to you too," Tony said to the hunched form of Max's back. "Sleep well?"

Max turned and leveled a glare at Tony that she didn't break even when she sat down at the table and began eating her eggs. "You're one to talk."

Tony narrowed his eyes at Max and pulled a chair up to the table. "What do you mean?"

"If Pepper was in here at one last night eating all of your Lucky Charms that you hide behind the sink," Max pointed at the cabinet in question that held the plumbing. "Then you must not have been in bed at all."

Tony gasped dramatically. "You ate my Lucky Charms?"

Pepper shrugged. "You're supposed to be eating healthy, Tony."

"My guess is that you two don't even sleep in the same bed at the same time anymore," Max said, chewing absentmindedly on her eggs. "Anxiety attacks or night terrors or something similar. Maybe a few marital problems because Tony's obsession with something red and gold and shiny is getting the best of him. He probably stays up all night trying to find out what he did wrong with that suit, tinkering and changing it once he figures out what works. And Pepper has to be a morning person because of meetings and brunches and that ponytail with not a hair out of place, but she wants to see her husband, boyfriend, whatever, so she's practically become nocturnal to join you and instead ends up frustrated because you won't focus on her enough." Max's fork clattered against the plate. "And that's why she was in the kitchen with me last night, eating all of your Lucky Charms."

Tony and Pepper stared at her, unsure for a moment what to make of her. After barely spoken a word since she was discovered by SHIELD, this was quite the outburst.

"Well, they didn't say to look out for mind reading on the powers list," Pepper said with an uncomfortable chuckle.

Max put her plate in the sink. "I'm not the version with powers." She left the room.

It was in the way Max said it that puzzled the pair. Almost as if she was alluding to there being more that one of her. It was something that had been niggling at the back of Tony's brain ever since he'd heard that another mutant who was made instead of born had come into SHIELD's possession. Whenever someone makes a good prototype, they always want to follow up with a version two.

After Max left the room, the lack of her presence seemed to lift a weight off of Pepper and Tony's minds, but let a whole host of other problems fester as their thoughts ran free. Is it really that obvious that they rarely spend time together? Can everyone see they're not doing well? Or rather, can everyone see that they've been doing differently than before?

Tony and Pepper exchanged a glance and seemed to decide to push it under the rug altogether.

Fury had never truly outlined what the terms of Max's release was, but because SHIELD didn't technically have her on the books as a prisoner or as an agent, she was a hard operative to pin down. A car had come after breakfast to pick her up, with a stone-faced agent in the front seat that did nothing except drive her to the SHIELD facility she was kept in last week.

Welcome back, Max thought sarcastically.

The imposing doors seemed different now that she was walking in conscious and without handcuffs strapped to her wrists. Some part of her brain told her to be thankful for that.

She was lead through the front door and was granted entrance by a guest pass that had been issued to her a few days ago. Max wondered absentmindedly if she'd had an actual pass when she completed whatever training that Fury wanted to put her through. The notion of being able to walk the halls of SHIELD headquarters freely was addictive. Who knows what she'd find?

The training room was large and airy, with higher ceilings and a small track that circled the room on the balcony upstairs. Black mats covered half of the room. Max liked how completely different the training room in SHIELD looked compared to the rooms they used at the School. Here there were younger agents sparring and stretching, laughing even, whereas at the School everything was tightly controlled. The grunts weren't in concentration, but in pain.

"You ready?"

Max turned to see Agent Jacks. He was a run-of-the-mill agent with brown hair and blunt features like a rock formation. A standard-issue trainer that definitely did not know what he was getting into when he was first assigned to train Max. Ever since their first session together, the trainers nicknamed her "Problem Child."

She did nothing but stare at him, a defiant expression on her face.

"Alright then," Jacks said with an exasperated smile. "Go wrap up your hands and we'll go over what we did yesterday."

Trainings were always tedious for Max. The skills she had already learned were enough to get her out of a bad situation, and it wasn't as if she went around actively picking fights. SHIELD valued discipline over anything else, and Max's tendency to explode didn't exactly help matters. She quickly became impatient after practicing the same move over and over again.

"You have to land the kick with more force, Max," Jacks explained. He pointed to the shoulder of the training dummy. "You have the power to nearly take the head clean off."

But do I want to?

Max grunted in acknowledgement and launched her leg into the air again, but it missed its mark and she became unbalanced, slamming into the ground. She laid there without making an indication that she wanted to get up any time soon.

Jacks walked towards her, but someone else pushed him out of the way.

"Don't worry, Jacks. I've got her."

Natasha's voice rang out across the training room. The next thing Max felt was Natasha grabbing her hand and pulling her upwards back to standing.

"Romanov-" Jacks began with a warning tone.

"She can't hurt me," Natasha said to Jacks. She turned back towards Max and slipped into a fighting stance. "Attack."

Max studied Natasha for a moment before dipping low and going for Natasha's legs, which was a mistake. Tasha had Max flipped over in a matter of seconds.

"I know you can hit harder," Natasha said, barely breaking a sweat. She waiting for Max to stand up again. "You're better at this than you think."

Max cocked an eyebrow. "Oh really?" She raised her fists again, preparing for attack. "What makes you say that?"

"I've seen you work," Natasha replied. "You slog it out in this gym every day, you must have learned something in that time."

"I already know things," Max tried to land a hit with no success. She could tell that Natasha had to have some sort of mutant gene in her; there was no way a normal human could move that quickly.

"No," Natasha replied, swiftly blocking Max's fists. "You were intuitive, but you weren't skilled. Potential doesn't mean that you're already good enough."

"Yeah?" Max almost jumped in triumph when a roundhouse kick landed on Natasha's shoulder. "I think I'm doing just fine."

"Come on, you can hit me harder than that," Natasha quipped. "Fight like you mean it!"

The subtle jut of Tasha's jaw sparked something in Max that felt strange and foreign. She immediately wanted to destroy it. With a grit of the teeth, Max launched herself at Natasha with a war cry, but Tasha's skills got the best of her.

"You're not trying hard enough," she shouted at Max over the din of the training that echoed against the walls. "I bet you don't fight this way in the real world."

"You don't know me!" Max screamed at Natasha. She struck out at her with all of her might; a blurry, undisciplined mess. The way that Natasha treated her, as if she was her child, as if she needed protecting, as if Natasha knew better, resonated at Max's very core. It was a feeling she had been fighting against her entire life, especially from people in power. Natasha was as powerful as one gets around SHIELD, and she was one of the only female agents that Max had noticed walked the halls. Max could already feel the impending comparisons between them. She roared at Natasha, grabbing her wrists and forcing her up against the wall with a smack.

"Yes, I do!" Natasha used her weight to flip their positions and pinned Max up against the wall of the gym. There was a fire in her eyes that Max knew was not from the adrenaline, but from something else. They locked eyes for longer than either of them felt comfortable doing. Natasha held Max's wrists tight the entire time, painfully pressing them into the wall.

Look at me, Natasha seemed to say. I am your future.

A light knock sounded on the training room door. Then it came again, slightly louder. The sound broke both of the women out of their staring contest and Max turned her head slightly enough to see Steve Rogers leaning up against the door frame.

"I'll be there in a minute," Natasha said, releasing Max. She pushed her hair back with one hand and secured the top half in a small bun.

"Don't worry about it," Steve said to Natasha. He glanced at Max. "Coulson hasn't even gotten here yet. You have time."

Max wanted to run over to Steve and tell him everything that had happened since he left; how she escaped and was caught again, the trainings with SHIELD agents, the midnight talks with Pepper. She thought that he probably already knew about all of it, somehow. Fury might have told him, or Tony even. Max stayed where she was with feet rooted in place on the gym mat, the sting from Natasha's gaze like a weight in the back of her mind.

"You were looking good out there, Max," Steve told her. "You've got a clean roundhouse kick. Where'd you learn that?"

Max shrugged. "Just good at it, I guess."

Steve pressed his lips together as if he was going to say something. There was a strange mix of emotions behind his eyes, as if he was altogether disappointed and slightly proud. Max couldn't decode the reason behind it; whether it was her presence or Natasha's that incited the feelings.

"So what are you guys doing?" Max asked, changing the subject.

"We've got a meeting to go to," Steve said simply.

"Superhero stuff?" There was a hint of disapproval in her tone.

"Superhero stuff," Steve confirmed. "Who told you?"

Max laughed humorlessly. She gestured to his body. "It's not exactly hard to guess, you know. Captain America."

"They did say secret identities were always out of the question," Steve said. "I always thought secrets were overrated."

Max's expression darkened. She was suddenly made hyperaware of the wings that lay on her back, stray feathers poking out through the racerback of her tank top. "Yeah, well, sometimes they're a necessary evil."

Jacks approached her, having finished cleaning up their section of the training room. His hand hovered over Max's back. "It's twelve o'clock. Dr. Bahar wants to see you for a checkup."

Max shot him a venomous glare. "Tell Dr. Bahar that he can eat my ass."

Jacks laughed. "For some reason, I can't see him taking that as an insult. Let's go."

Steve raised his eyebrows at Max at the same time she rolled her eyes. "Duty calls?"

"Something like that," Max said in that petulant voice that was wholly teenager. She hesitated by the doorway. "You'll still be in the building when I get back, right?"

"Can't make any promises," Steve said. He noticed her expression and softened slightly. "I'll be here tomorrow. Maybe you can show me more of the roundhouse kick."

Max grinned. "I'll beat you into next week, old man."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Steve said. A light smile settled on his face.

Natasha approached Steve, a bottle of water in her hand. She looked at Max and gave her a firm, silent nod. Max didn't need to hear what Natasha needed to say to her, she already knew.

Good work.

As always, the same rules stand. If you comment over four sentences and it doesn't include the words "please update," you get a sneak peek at the next chapter and it's shaping up to be a really good one.

Make sure to check out the new trailer on Youtube at /watch?v=FqMlq6aUpZc.