Clint rubbed a hand over his face as he slammed the fridge door shut. Food had been low priority to all of them since the girls' disappearance. He didn't even feel like eating, even though he knew he should.
It had been five hours since Tony and Bruce's revelation, and they hadn't exited the lab since then. The rest of them had taken turns checking on them and taking them drinks.
Clint heard voices on the stairs, and peeked up the stairwell. What he saw gave him a start, to say the least, but he quickly tried to forget it.
Steve and Natasha stood on the stairs, the former holding the latter in a hug. He could just barely hear words of comfort being whispered, and Natasha's entire body trembled. It had been a long time since Clint had seen her like this.
It made sense, with all that had been happening, that they would seek comfort in each other. The two had grown closer recently, and when Clint really thought about it, Steve had been doing a little bit of flirting in their downtime.
It was unfortunate that these circumstances had to be the ones to bring them together.
Clint walked downstairs, and hesitated when he heard shouting. He walked into the lab anyway, and was glad he did afterward.
"Hammer, we can't get the tech in a day! It isn't possible! Some of this stuff is being built from the ground up as we speak!" Tony shouted at the ceiling as if it were the source of his problems.
"Well Tony, someone has to give, and it won't be me."
"Hammer, I know you're a raging maniac, but try to be reasonable! Don't you think we're working as hard as we can?" Clint shouted.
Tony and Bruce looked over at him, both silently begging he didn't say anything else. It wouldn't be the first time Clint sassed someone into violent anger.
"Oh, who's this?"
"My name is Clint Barton. You might know me as the over-protective dude with a bow. You're the target, right?"
Tony banged his head on the workbench. There was no stopping him now.
"Listen up Barton. If I don't have my tech in forty eight hours, you will never be able to scrub your conscience clean. No amount of soap can scrub these girls' blood off your hands. Now we don't need that, do we?"
Bruce put a gentle hand on Clint's arm and shook his head.
"Of course not," he said through gritted teeth. "We'll see you then Hammer."
"I wonder if Parks decided not to use me as a test subject," Carter wondered aloud.
"I hope. Probably not."
"Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose." She shrugged.
It wasn't two minutes later that the doors swung open as Parks and one of Hammer's lackeys entered.
"Get the brunette," Parks commanded.
Carter paled and tried to back away as the man approached her, but only ended up running into the wall behind her.
"No! Leave her alone!" Laynie shouted. She jumped up and kicked the man in the back of the leg, causing it to buckle slightly. She clawed and beat at him, but it didn't help. All she managed to do was make her wrist bleed more.
The man undid the chain from the wall and dragged Carter away.
"Well, say goodbye to your friend, you might not be seeing her for quite a while."
Carter looked back at Laynie with wide eyes as the doorway separated them. She frantically fought to free herself, but it was completely useless. Hunger and exhaustion made her even weaker than normal. She didn't have a chance.
Parks turned off suddenly into a room, and she was held still in the doorway while he ran around.
The room turned her stomach. There was a crude operating table in the center, made out of plywood and straps to hold her down. Machines, some of which she recognized as the tech her dad and Tony had been gathering, stood all around.
With a single gesture, Parks had her strapped to the table.
"What are you going to do?" Carter asked, her voice shaking.
"I'm going to inject you with a nano-serum that will reprogram your body. Should the experiment be successful, you will phase through anything you touch. Control is a different story in itself."
Parks moved around as he spoke, never meeting the eyes of his test subject.
He grabbed an IV needle and came to stand next to her. He quickly punctured her skin at the elbow, pushing the needle in.
"This may take a while, we don't want you getting dehydrated."
Carter shuttered.
He pulled a small table over. On it were twelve large needles. Grabbing a pair of surgical gloves, he pulled them over his hands.
Carter started panicking as soon as he picked up the first needle. Parks nodded to the other man in the room. Immediately, Carter was made to be still as he gave her the first injection.
She winced when it pinched her shoulder.
Hammer strolled into the room just as Parks withdrew the needle. The blank expression he wore as he looked on the scene was the sanest he had looked since she first met him, which felt a little ironic.
"Just don't kill her," he sneered before leaving the room.
It wasn't long before Carter started feeling a sudden pain in her shoulder. It slowly spread down the rest of her arm.
She wiggled slightly, but decided it would be best to stay still as Parks picked up the next needle.
Each needle was pushed into most of her major muscles, and it wasn't long before her whole body felt like it was on fire.
"Please, stop..." she cried.
Regardless of her pleas, he stuck her with the last needle. "That one," he said slowly, "was a sedative."
He rambled on about how the process would be impeded by her moving so constantly, but she was quickly unconscious.