A/N: Tried to make this chapter a little longer. I've been getting a crazy amount of story alerts for this! Even if it's only short, I'd love to get a review from some of you. On that note, I'd like to thank Mac n' Meez for her lovely review. Thanks very much!
I had lost a finger. A finger. While it wasn't something really important, like a thumb or an index finger, it was still a part of me, and I had grown quite attached to it in my 26 years of having one.
Also, I had been miraculously jumping from one part of the world to another near instantly. But still, my poor finger.
"Mevrouwtje? Bent u goed?" I turned my head, grass prickling against my scalp, to face the man standing above me, tiny round glasses balancing upon his round nose.
"Wow, you look so Dutch."
"U bent blijkbaar ziek, Mevrouwtje." I flexed my hand in front of my face once more, then pushed up onto my elbows.
"You spreken ze English?" I asked the man. He pushed his glasses up his nose – fancy suit, briefcase, some kind of businessman – and offered me a hand up.
"That is German, Mevrouwtje. You are in the Netherlands," he answered. His voice was clipped and clearly accented, but he seemed to know a fair bit of English. I rubbed the back of my neck, looking around me. Other than the wandering glances of passersby, I was mostly going unnoticed.
"Did you see how I got here?" I queried. The man shook his head, placed a hand upon the small of my back, and led me towards the path.
"I was walking through the park when I saw you; I worried you had been attacked, but you have only one injury," the man warbled, pointing towards the place my missing finger should have been. "Do you remember how you came to be here?"
I couldn't exactly tell this man the truth; firstly that I was working on a secret, American government project, but also that I was apparently able to teleport now. Uncontrollably.
Speaking of which, I should probably put a little thought into trying not to do that again. I'd like the rest of my extremities to remain firmly attached to my body, after all.
"Uh, not really. Just kind of woke up out on the grass." 'Oh, yeah, Molly, that's convincing.' "I never got your name, before."
"You may call me Mr. Rolf, Mevrouwtje." I heard the sound of a car door opening, and suddenly Mr. Rolf was gently pushing me down into an expensive looking black car, the tan leather seats amazingly soft. If it weren't for the seatbelt he was clipping across my chest, I probably would have rubbed me cheek against the seat.
I'm probably not well.
"Miss Hunter."
"Fuck!"
'How long has she been there?' The woman beside me had tightly bound brown hair, a stern yet flawless face, and the typical SHIELD uniform I usually wore. The patch on her arm betrayed her rank. 'Fuck, fuck, this is Maria Hill.' I mean, uh, what can I do for you, ma'am?" Without taking her eyes off me – crap, she was kind of scary – she reached under her seat and handed me a manila folder. Flipping it open, careful to keep my injured, bleeding hand away from the pristine files, I carefully looked over everything. It seemed like a mishmash, last minute attempt to explain to me not only what appeared to be some kind of response team known as the Avengers Initiative, but the history and experiments being done to the Tesseract. I shook my head as I read, utterly confused.
"What does this have to do with me?"
"The Tesseract has been stolen, Miss Hunter," replied Agent Hill, "Whatever happened when you got hit by that beam, we definitely want you around. Director Fury thinks you may be of use in the Avengers Initiative. I just hope you can help us find the Tesseract before anything else goes wrong." I nodded, going back over the files in the folder.
"So where are we going?"
"A SHIELD base. You'll be safe there, and we'll do what we can to learn more about your accident."
'Well, I wouldn't call it my accident.'
When Agent Hill said she was taking me to a SHIELD base, I had pictured a big concrete building surrounded by barbed wire fences, with spotlights and armed security and guard dogs.
But this was a boat. A really big boat. A floating city, almost.
'I christen ye, Boatopolis,' I thought, a grin creeping onto my face. Hill gave me a disparaging look. I felt my cheeks flush. "Uh, cool boat."
"Once we land, head straight inside. You won't want to be on the flight deck when the helecarrier takes off."
Mr. Rolf, who had been until that point looking out the front window at the floating monstrosity, turned back to Hill with a tiny of his eyebrows I took to be surprise. "This is a plane?"
"Of sorts," Hill replied. Something about her posture showed some kind of smugness. I leant forward against my harness, flabbergasted.
"That thing's gonna fly?" Hill nodded, a tiny smirk appearing on her usually tense face. "Okay, I've really got to meet the guys who made this thing." Hill's stiff posture returned.
Mr. Rolf returned to his seat as the jet we were in slowed down and hovered to a stop on the flight deck, directed by men in bright jumpsuits. As soon as the doors began to opened I fiddled my way out of my harness and flew across the deck, straight to the edge of the boat, which was terribly unsecured, considering the massive turbines lifting themselves out of the water. I could only imagine how much power those turbines would output; though I was sure the longer I stayed outside the worse the forces would get.
"Hunter! Inside, now!" Hill's voice, even while screaming, was almost drowned out by the sound of the turbines starting up. As the wind began to pick up around me, and flight crew scrambled to tie everything down, I pulled the zip of my uniform jacket up to my neck and jogged back to Hill before she led Mr. Rolf and I inside. My ears roared in the sudden drop of volume.
"Remarkable," breathed Mr. Rolf. I nodded.
Immediately inside the doors to the flight deck was some sort of control centre, filled with SHIELD agents and employees either busy at work stations or speed walking between them. In the centre of the room, looking down at the bustling employees like some kind of God on a pedestal was the almighty Cyclops Lord himself, Director Fury. The rumours were true; the man did wear an eye patch. His look of restrained fury – ha, get it – really gave him more of that 'Fearless Leader' vibe.
"Seriously, I thought we were the good guys. We need to update our image." Director Fury turned his gaze to us, his one good eye betraying that constant anger at the ineptitude of his employees.
Employees like me. I smiled sheepishly at him.
"Miss Hunter, Mr. Rolf. Nice to see you made it." He turned away, soldiering down a set of nearby stairs to meet us. He nodded sharply at Hill, who relaxed into an 'at ease' posture. I chuckled, filled more with nerves and cynicism with that one sentence that I had held in a good long time.
"I can't promise I'll stay long."
"That's something I intend to help with." This was a new voice, another cutting new accent of the day, this one more oriental than European. Perhaps Chinese. If the appearance of the woman descending the stairs, with black hair and sharp dark eyes surrounded with laugh lines, meant anything, it seemed the voice had come from her. Her lab coat fluttered along behind her as she approached, shaking our hands. She identified herself as Doctor Carol Lin.
'Oh my God... really? Carol Lin?' I snorted, though thankfully I went unheard. I don't think I could take another one of Director Fury's looks.
"It's my job to find out what's been going on with you the past few days, Molly. Hopefully, we'll be able to help you get more control over it." She seemed genuinely excited to meet me. Not 'mad scientist' excited, more 'making-the-world-a-better-place-to-be' excited. I liked that.
"Miss Hunter, Dr. Lin will take you up to her lab to do some tests. Mr. Rolf, Agent Hill, if you would follow me," Director Fury commanded, leading my two companions off. I wasn't exactly going to stare after then like an abandoned puppy, so I turned to face Dr. Lin, waiting for her to take charge and take me to her lab.
"How do you feel about a locator chip?" Dr. Lin tapped my knee with the little hammer, watching my leg spasm.
"Woah, what?"
"Don't worry," she chuckled, laugh lines crinkling, "you can say no. It's just in case... it happens again, so you don't get lost."
"Oh, well, that's not so bad then." Assuming having a locator chip put in didn't hurt as much as some of the things Dr. Lin had put me through during my 'quick check-up'. I'd already been given two injections, one to each arm, and would continue to get them in the coming weeks as it became safe to do so. ("There are lots of diseases in the world, Molly, and you never know where you'll be going next!") Dr. Lin had been surprisingly open for a doctor undertaking secret government experiments, talking me through each procedure and what the results would tell her.
Lin hummed, what I had learnt very quickly was a 'that's not good' hum. Hopefully it was something about my BMI again. "You give off the same gamma signature as the Tesseract." She tapped a note into her phone and sent it off with a little whoosh. "Better let someone know, or they might think you have it."
"Is this bad?" I squeaked, ice running through my veins. "Will I get cancer or something?"
"Not as far as I know," replied Lin. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, feeling the ice melt away. "Cases of gamma poisoning are few and far between, and this isn't a typical case. Luckily, we have an expert in the field coming in."
I'd read about that in the file I got in Amsterdam; Doctor Banner was an expert in gamma radiation, and was getting brought in to track the Tesseract. I'd heard a few titbits about SHIELD's dealing with him. Back when Barton was around, and not a total mind slave, he has told me the only way they were bringing Bruce Banner in was in handcuffs, if they could make some to hold The Other Guy.
His big draw to the Avengers Initiative was that, thanks to his gamma experiments, he was now able to transform into a green giant of uncontrollable rage, known as the Hulk.
I certainly hope nothing like that happens to me.