Miranda here.
In case you missed me for the last couple messages, it's because we are attempting to keep this in chronological order, and we guess I woke about the time she was being questioned – as best we can calculate it, somewhere around seven hours.
I woke up in a sitting position. For a moment, I wondered what was going on.
Then the headache hit, and it wasn't really all that important any more. It felt like something had exploded inside my skull. I kept both my eyes squeezed shut.
Footsteps sounded nearby, before they could register, something bit into my arm. My eyes snapped open, my hand flying instinctively to the spot.
Another explosion of pain as the light hit my eyes, and I went limp again, keeping my eyes closed. I seemed to be moving – the bit inside the truck, maybe?
Hands pressed a cup into mine. "Drink this," ordered a male voice.
I obeyed.
The pain eased slightly and I opened my eyes.
Everything was out of focus. My glasses were gone. I couldn't quite see who was standing in front of me, but didn't have to see him to guess who it was. Hawkeye. Under mind control, I guessed, by a certain alien who thought he was a god.
"What's going on?" I asked. My mind felt slow, like I was still waking up.
"What's your name?"
"Miranda Pond." Yes, Whovians, like the characters in Dr. Who. Still upset that they died.
"I have some questions to ask you. Answer them truthfully, and you can go home."
I had a feeling I didn't want to know what happen if the questions weren't answered truthfully. But would he keep his side of the bargain, once he had the answers? Would he even believe me? Risks I would have to take. I wasn't going to lie. Nor was I going to tell him about the Avengers movie. He would ask what happened in the movie, and he probably wouldn't be too happy about the ending – at least, not at the moment.
I have a friend who once said she thought it would be cool to be interrogated. I strongly disagreed with her at the time and still do.
I told him there were comics, and my friend and I had read them on occasion.
"You expect me to believe you?" he asked after I finished.
"I don't know what to expect. But it's true."
He stood up and walked away. "There's three possibilities right now. Either you're crazy, you're lying, or you're telling the truth. I've ruled out lying – I'm trained to tell when someone is lying to me, and if you were going to lie, I think you probably would have come up with a more believable lie. So the two options are crazy and telling the truth. Crazy would explain the story you have, but it wouldn't explain the information, so I'm inclined to believe you're telling the truth."
Somehow, his saying that reminded me of that scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Susan and Peter talk to the professor about Lucy discovering a world inside a wardrobe. My story was about as believable.
"Out of the three, it's the most plausible. Your friend with the red hair, she's from this alternate universe too?"
I nodded and squinted, trying to make out his face clearly. I still didn't know where I was or what was going on, my glasses being missing and all. I momentarily considered asking if he had them, then decided that if he had my glasses and was planning on returning them, he probably would have already.
He walked away.
Internally, I was panicking, trying to figure out was going on, and what was going to happen to me. Whatever I was in – probably the truck – was brightly lit. I looked around, trying to figure out where I was, but couldn't pick anything recognizable out of the blur.
I am the thinker – Ivy's opposite when it came to planning or caution. But the best plan in the world wasn't going to get me out of this.