A/N: Chapter 8 is here and I hope you all enjoy it. I don't really have much more to say then please read and review.
"Recapping our latest story, 33 are dead and 61 injured after an attack at Navy Pier amusement park in Chicago Illinois. The attacker in question is a young girl believed to have superhuman abilities as she was seen creating fire out of nowhere. It is unclear whether or not this girl is connected to the Avengers. More details will be released in respect to the ongoing investigation."
Tony switched off the TV and all of the Avengers seated on the lounge turned to face Natasha and Clint. It was the day after Phoenix's attack and the death toll had thankfully been lower than anticipated. Including the 33 dead civilians there were also 16 dead SHIELD agents which bumped the number up to 49. It was still 49 too many.
"You saw the whole thing?" Steve asked after a small silence.
"We watched the security footage but SHIELD now has the official footage that we stole from a news helicopter," Natasha answered. "We got the gist of it though. People burned alive and Phoenix vanished into thin air after publicly kidnapping a teenage boy."
"Have you figured out why she's kidnapping them?" Bruce asked. "Or if she's even kidnapping them at all, because from what I've seen they're all going with her on their own free will."
"We've discovered that all of the missing children so far were all treated by the same doctor when they were six years old. It was our mad scientist friend who experimented on Phoenix in the first place," Clint scrunched up a piece of paper and tossed it across the room angrily.
"We have a theory that these children might have abilities like Phoenix," Natasha continued when Clint slumped into his chair with a scowl on his face. "We have no idea how many there are, but we do know that Phoenix will be willing to do anything to get them. That was kind of obvious from the footage."
"I read the file," Tony folded his arms. "According to SHIELD she's a Threat Level 10. But when they gave her that risk assessment the only she'd done was escape from an island where'd she's been a prisoner her whole life. True, she did kill two agents but probably because she saw them as a threat. The only thing Phoenix has done that's really worthy of a high level risk assessment was what she did yesterday."
"But they made her Threat Level 10 before she attacked the Pier," Steve started putting pieces together as well.
So Natasha and Clint weren't the only people that had noticed it either, but they had left it alone after deciding that SHIELD had their reasons. Although now that they brought up the subject again the two assassins grew more curious. Tony had always been suspicious of SHIELD so Natasha waved off the comment. She wondered though.
"I do not know much about this Phoenix," Thor, who had been strangely quiet on the matter, raised his voice. "But surely the men in the air would've been able to stop her before she harmed the innocents on the ground. It seems to me like they did nothing to attempt to capture her."
There was something else Natasha had run through her head last night. The agents in the helicopters could've fired on Phoenix whenever they wanted to but they had remained still. There was no way of knowing why, because those men were now dead.
"Did anyone actually see the whole thing first hand?" Pepper didn't like to get involved with the Avengers business too much but clearly this time curiosity got the best of her.
"There was one of our Agents," Natasha looked at Clint sideways, they communicated silently and Clint allowed her to tell them. "Agent Eric Lawson. Phoenix didn't kill him, she only knocked him out but from what I've heard he's kind of shaken up about it."
Clint scoffed and crossed his arms tight, slumping further into the couch miserably. "We call him Screamer."
"He has a problem with confrontation when he goes out into the field," Natasha chose her words carefully, not wanting to pick at anything that might bring up too many questions.
"He runs away screaming whenever an enemy points a gun at him," Clint went for the more blunt approach.
The room went silent and Natasha sighed. The confused quiet was broken by Steve who had his eyes narrowed. "How did SHIELD not pick up on that when he was training?"
"Because it wasn't until his very first field mission that we found out," Natasha explained. "He's a good agent, but he doesn't have much guts for a fight."
Tony snorted and put a hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing. "I'm sorry but, SHIELD, the big bad spy guys that walk around all tough and save the world, have this one guy that screams and runs away when he gets scared. That is just hilarious."
"Anyway," Natasha said sharply to indicate that it was time for a subject change. "We've got agents tracking Phoenix's movements but she seems to have dropped off the radar. When she pops up again, and she will, we need to be ready. We have no idea how many more kids there are with abilities like Phoenix or even what they can do so we need to be on high alert."
Everyone nodded unanimously and Tony put up a hand proudly. "I've already put the tower on a very strict lockdown and sent away all the girls that have been cosplaying down in front of the lobby. This tower is more secure than Area 51 right now. Nothing is getting in here without permission."
Tony stood proud but his moment was ruined by JARVIS "Is this a bad time to mention that we have a security breach sir?" the AI asked.
Pepper threw up her hands and walked out of the room and Bruce groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. "More secure than Area 51 huh?" Clint asked sarcastically.
Natasha was actually the only one in the room that sprung to action and prepared for an imminent attack. She grabbed a gun that she had stashed between the couch cushions when she first arrived at the tower and ran to the lift, standing beside it and waiting slowly as it went up floor by floor.
It pinged once it reached the top floor and Natasha moved the second the doors opened and pressed her gun into the intruder's forehead. They shrieked in disgust. "Get that awful thing out of my face!" the voice sounded young and high pitched. Natasha inspected the intruder up and down.
It was a teenage girl who looked around the age of 16, and she definitely did not look happy. The girl was a walking cheerleader stereotype, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a sculpted face smeared with make-up that looked a little too much like a Valleygirl model. Natasha lowered the gun slowly and the girl stormed past her with her nose pointed at the ceiling and stood in front of the Avengers huddled onto the couch.
"You know if I were going to attack this tower I wouldn't have come up in the elevator," the girl said while inspecting her manicured nails. "Honestly you call yourselves superheroes?"
"Who the hell are you?" Tony wasted no words when his reputation as a genius was at stake.
"My name is Heather James," she told him like it was obvious.
"Thank you Heather but we have a serious situation on our hands at the moment," Steve tried to be as polite as possible.
"That's why I'm here," she flicked hair off her face as she spoke. "I know about Phoenix and Doctor Blake. "
Natasha did not like the presence of this girl, but if she knew about Phoenix then she was an important ally. As Natasha continued to survey the girl she realised something else. This girl was 16, all the kids that had been kidnapped by Phoenix were 16. She also knew about Phoenix and Doctor Blake. Both of these facts contributed to only one conclusion. This girl was one of them.
"Alright then enlighten us," Tony spread out his arms in an invitational manner, but he still sounded annoyed that this girl had broken into his tower.
None of the others seemed to make the connection, but Natasha picked up on something in Clint's expression and realised that he knew as well. They shared eye contact for a second, but a second was all they needed. Clint nodded and Natasha mirrored the almost unnoticeable act.
"So Doctor Blake experimented on you as well?" Natasha turned to the teenager, needing conformation on the matter.
Heather nodded and for a minute her stuck-up appearance faltered and she shifted uncomfortably where she stood. "There are six of us altogether including Phoenix," Heather explained, her voice full of misery. Natasha did some quick maths and figured out that - excluding Heather - Phoenix had already rounded up all of the other kids.
"What is it you can do?" Steve took over the questioning while Natasha sat back and observed.
"For each of us it's something different. You've already seen Phoenix's power and I can do this."
Heather looked like she hated herself for doing it, but the teenage girl raised her hands and held them in front of her. Almost immediately, every small intimate object in the room began to levitate and float in the air. A pen floated in front of Natasha's face and Clint tapped on a mug as it drifted through the air past him.
Natasha had no words for the situation, which was a first. The other Avengers each mirrored the Black Widow's reaction almost identically. This kind of thing was unheard of. Such an ability had never ever been seen before. If this girl was telekinetic, there was no telling what the other kids could do, how much control they had over the impossible. Doctor Blake could have the most dangerous people on the planet at his disposal.
Natasha looked back to Heather, knowing that there was more to it than she was letting on. Heather saw the assassin's hard gaze and lowered her hands. The floating objects slowly dropped back into their original places and Heather bit her lip as if to stop herself from crying.
"You fear what I can do, you fear what the rest of them can do," Heather's sniffled as she carefully ran a finger underneath each eye to wipe away the oncoming tears and prevent her make-up running. "You think that what I can do is impossible, and it should be, but for me, it just isn't. Just the idea of being able to do these things is wrong. The other kids feel the same way, we all hate being freaks."
"How do you know about the other children if you've never met them?" Bruce asked, adjusting his glasses as he spoke.
"Our minds are linked together," Heather calmed her breathing to a normal level and began to explain. "We know each other's names and we're just somehow connected. I don't know why, maybe it helps us perform together as a group or something, but it's not very pleasant. Also, sometimes strong emotions are sent across the link."
"What can you tell us about Phoenix?" Steve asked and everyone sat up straight, this was the topic they all wanted to know about.
Heather looked like she was going to change her mind, but she decided to tell them anyway. "Phoenix was the first. After he was successful with her the Doctor went all around the states and selected the best children to inject. Phoenix however was injected when she was 5, unlike the rest of us that were injected then we were 6. So Phoenix is 15, a year younger than the rest of us. In concern to the link Phoenix has always felt superior to the rest of us, like she stands one level higher. I can't explain it properly in a way you understand."
Natasha could sense some unspoken words behind Heather's explanation. The assassin leaned forward and looked her in the eye. "Why are you so scared of her?" Natasha recognised the girl's tone of voice and the look behind her eyes when she talked about Phoenix. It was terror.
Heather took and deep breath and glanced around quickly before talking. "Phoenix is broken. She's twisted, not right, gone in the head, whatever synonym for crazy you want to use will describe her. Whatever's wrong with Phoenix is very severe. He did something to her, I don't know what, but sometimes in the middle of the night I would wake up screaming because of the pain I felt through the link. Phoenix is nothing but an empty shell driven by rage and desperation. You can't reason with her and you can't control her. I don't think she has a single inch of humanity left. I've never even met her but I know that she is dangerous. She can't be saved."
Natasha felt her body tense and her knuckles go tight as she clenched her fists. The answer to why she had tried to help Phoenix in the basement came to her. She saw herself in Phoenix, a girl who had been stolen as a child and tortured and brainwashed as nothing but someone's pawn. Through the silence that came after Heather's chilling speech, Natasha debated on Phoenix and what could be done about her. The answer was obvious.
Natasha was going to help her.
"You don't know that for sure," Natasha said firmly looking up at Heather.
"And you can't prove me wrong," Heather flared her nostrils and pulled an iPhone with a pink case out of her pocket. She saw Steve and Thor look at the piece of the technology curiously and Clint for some reason, glared at the two of them. After putting the phone back in her pocket Heather looked at them all again.
"By now Phoenix should've reached Philadelphia and realised that I've run from her so she'll be moving off elsewhere. I'm leaving now and you are never going to see me again," Heather declared. "If you even think about dragging me back into this freak show then you can be certain that I will not come willingly. So goodbye."
"Wait!" Tony called after her as she began walking towards the lifts. "How did you get into my tower?"
"It wasn't just superpowers that we got once we were injected," Heather turned back around to face the group again. "Our very biology warped and twisted and our brains refigured themselves. With my enhanced brain I can do things natural that takes decades of training for others. Breaking into a supposedly secure tower is easy for me."
Heather turned back around and pressed a button on the lift, but she continued to talk even with her back to them. "Phoenix is devoted to the Doctor. She follows his every word like he's a god, and I know fully well that the Doctor has some big issues when it comes to SHIELD. So if he hates you guys then you can be certain that Phoenix will hate you to. They want to see you destroyed."
With that she stepped into the lift and the doors closed, signalling the exit of Heather James. All of the Avengers glanced around the room at each other. They had a hard time finding a starting sentence for the conversation they knew they couldn't avoid.
"Why is it all our main enemies have sanity issues?" Tony of course was the one to officially open conversation with a supposedly funny comment. "Do we just attract the crazy people?"
"Phoenix is obviously planning something," Steve quickly took over. "Clearly she has something against SHIELD. The way she reacted when our guys intercepted her on the pier, obviously she's got some kind of a grudge. We need to figure out what her next move is going to be."
"You heard what Heather said about Phoenix. She and Doctor Blake want to see SHIELD destroyed," Bruce took his glasses off and rubbed his forehead. "I can only assume that SHIELD is one of her main targets. You should probably tighten your security measures Agents," he looked at both Natasha and Clint. "Because she's coming, and you have something she wants."