A/N: Well, this chapter was a bit of a pain to write. There I was, planning on it being some boring little chapter where the main character has some tests done to ensure she's not about to turn into some horrific monstrosity that devours all of humanity, or some similar thing. You know, leave the action for later and all that stuff.

But the more I wrote, the less I resisted, until...

Over all, I actually sort of enjoyed writing this chapter. Heck, the recurring case of writer's block might have even saved this chapter (in my personal completely unbiased opinion).

All that being said, I hope this chapter isn't too much of a weird rush of circumstances for you. : )

Chapter 23

Guinea Pig

The laboratory that the agents take me to is the closest the S.H.I.E.L.D base has come to the style of the boat that I've seen yet. The large room is dominantly white, with the odd hint of silver and steel to break up the colour scheme a little bit. It's so sterile, my eyes ache painfully just from peeking into the room.

"Dr Bridgham, we're here for Miss. White-Friar's appointment," Agent Coulson says politely to the one lone scientist in the room. He scoffs as he slowly stands and walks away from his computer, frowning at us in annoyance.

"The appointment was three hours ago," he says, coming to a stop several small steps away from Agent Coulson.

"We ran into some troubles while on our way to collect her," the agent smoothly says. The scientist narrows his eyes and nods briskly.

"Right. Of course you were busy," he says just a little too sharply.

What is it with these guys and hiring pricks like this?

"This is Dr Bridgham," Natasha unnecessarily introduces as the doctor leads me to a chair next to a seemingly random desk (considering that the large room has at least a dozen of the same desk). "He runs this laboratory, and specialises in almost everything to do with the human body."

"Of course it would seem that way to you," the old scientist snaps grouchily. Is he really so intent on being an arse that he even snarls at a compliment? Natasha just stares back coldly, before walking over at a brisk pace to whisper something near Agent Coulson's ear.

"Sorry, Miss White-Friar, but we have to go. Dr Bridgham will take care of you until we get back," Agent Coulson says apologetically.

"And if I don't want to?" the old man in question asks stiffly, slowly turning to glare at the agents.

"We should be back by the time the tests are done," Agent Coulson reassures the grumpy old scientist, who huffs and returns to the computer, softly muttering curses and swears under his breath.

-BREAK-

The tests take a couple of hours at the most. After what feels like several pints of blood (those damned vampire needles) and a dozen scans later, the agents still aren't back.

"Well, this is fucking shit," the lone scientist grumbles after half an hour of tense waiting. I keep silent, having already gotten into several vicious arguments with the arsehole during the testing.

I'm just seriously not in the mood to snap at that fucker right now.

He strolls over to one of the computers and starts typing on the keyboard.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, having long been feeling the effects of boredom.

"My job," he says shortly. I wait for him to elaborate, but he keeps silent as he works hard on the computer.

After about another ten minutes, I risk a peak at what he's writing. Across the monitor, I see what looks like a detailed account of all the scars that can be found on my body- particularly those made by Loki.

He suddenly stands up from the chair; I quickly return to staring at nothing. He looks at me suspiciously for a moment, and turns his attention to one of the few fancy microscopes in the room. I look back to the monitor only to find that he'd shut it down, making the screen look pitch black and unwelcoming.

With a defeated sigh, I sit down on one of the chairs near the computer, and look around the laboratory. I don't recognise any of the machines or chemicals; they're all alien and unusual. In fact, one of the weird objects on the counter top in the centre of the room actually does look like an alien...

"What did he do to you?" I hear the old scientist say. His light brown eyes are now fixed on my face. I stare at him for a moment, before realising what he must mean.

"Oh, he just froze me," I answer flippantly, waving a hand at my scarred forearm. He looks at me disbelievingly at my nonchalance.

"He didn't completely freeze me," I add on belatedly. He huffs a mocking laugh, and shuts the microscope off.

"From what I've seen, the cells of the scar tissue seem to be completely natural, but we'll keep you in a nearby guest room to further observe you." he says as a matter of fact. I stare at him in horrified confusion.

"What was that?" I hint for him to elaborate. Surely I heard it wrong.

"We'll need to keep you in one of the guest rooms to make sure there's no sudden magical reactions," he says, sounding like he's about to drag me off regardless of my opinion.

"No fucking way," I glare at him with my arms folded in refusal. "I was told that I'll be taken here and brought straight back home."

"Of course you'll be taken home," the scientist says briskly, pointedly opening the main door into the lab for me- a door that, though made of metal, isn't the sliding sort of door that most of the others seem to be. "After the experiments are-"

"I said no," I stubbornly refuse. "I was barely home for a day, and I'm already getting kidnapped all over again!"

"I'm not kidnapping you," he hisses sharply.

"Well, what the fuck else do you call holding me against my fucking will?" I shout, starting to feel a minor panic attack setting in.

First Loki kidnaps me, I fall for him, then I lose him, and then I get kidnapped all over again by my supposed saviours.

Figures.

"We're helping you, you stupid little-" a loud high pitched alarm starts blaring, cutting off his exclamation.

"Shit," he says just as the door swings shut and forcefully locks itself, pushing the doctor back into the room..

"Fuck!" he cries out, holding his arm close to himself.

"What was that?" I ask him cautiously. The alarm has now been silenced, and all I can hear is the doctor's soft swears and gasps of pain.

"Must be one of S.H.I.E.L.D's many enemies," he finally says gruffly.

I stare at the scientist in horror, dreading what an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D would look like. I'm guessing something either incredibly monstrous, or just a bunch of men dressed in opposing colours.

I faintly hear what sounds like gun fire in the distance.

"I'm sure they'll have this mess sorted out pretty soon," he says, now sitting on the floor with his legs drawn up. He's starting to look incredibly tired.

The gun fire stops, and the silence starts again. I watch the doctor cradle his arm to his body as he stares towards the ground, his eyes drooping slightly in exhaustion.

"How's the arm?" I ask him. He shoots me a glare and protectively holds it closer to his body.

"It's fine," he says. I frown at the quickly growing patch of red on his coat sleeve.

"That doesn't look fine to me," I say carefully. He covers the patch with his other arm and darkens his glare.

"Don't worry about it, girl," he growls, before turning this eyes back to the floor again. Minutes tick by in silence, and nothing else can be heard from outside. The red patch has now noticeably migrated to his other arm.

"You should put some pressure on that," I say, remembering the line from the countless action films I've seen in the past.

"I'm fine," he quietly says again, his eyes now alarmingly closed.

"Bullshit," I say. "I'm not sharing this laboratory with a fucking corpse."

"Don't you know of any other swearwords?" he asks softly. "At least be original with it."

"Fuck you and fix it," I snap, feeling more than a little horrified at the amount of blood now covering his sleeves. With a sigh, he lifts his eyes to mine.

"Alright," the stubborn bastard finally says. "Just... Pass me a towel from the top drawer over there," he flicks his eyes to the large counter in question.

I quickly scramble over to the counter and pull it open, to found several bright white towels inside that are just begging for some irreparable staining. I quickly pull several out and return to the injured scientist, throwing the towels in his directions.

"Fuckin,'" he grumbles as he roughly pulls the towels away from him, except for one. As he pulls the others away, however, I'm treated to the discovery of what he was hiding with his uninjured arm- that being the dreadful state of his other arm.

"Fuck!" I screech, causing him to violently jump into a more alert state. "Shit! You're fucking dying, aren't you?" I ask him as he starts putting pressure on the place where his hand and half his arm used to be. He glares up at me as the gushing blood starts to seep into the towel.

"Is there anything you can do to? I don't know, maybe grow a new arm or something?" I ask him in mounting horror. I'm quite surprised that he doesn't seem to be reacting more to the loss of limb, aside from the wincing he's doing as he presses the towel on his newly obtained stump. He gives a humourless chuckle as his eyelids start to droop again.

"What do you take me for? Some kind of alien or lab experiment?" he asks me softly. "No, I'm the one who holds the sharp thingies and jab them with the doo-dads." His voice is almost a whisper now.

Holy fuck it.

I quickly start rushing around the lab in search for something. A magic serum, the first aid kit (because this place must have one), or maybe even a complicated device of some kind. I open and slam countless cupboards and drawers, before finding something that has some promise.

My logic is that this is S.H.I.E.L.D. I (as part of the general public) might not know much about this top secret not-so-secret government agency, but surely they've been putting some research into advanced healing and the extension of their soldiers' life expectancies.

After what feels like hours of flicking through drawer after drawer and stack after stack of instruction sheets, I finally find something promising.

"Okay, I think I've got it," I say a little breathlessly as I rush back to the scientist's side. A small shift of his head is the only sign I get that he's still alive.

"Okay, so... Put the pointy bit here," I mutter as I try to hurriedly assemble the gadget with shaking hands that are wet with sweat. "And- er- the round thing has to... er..." I freeze, staring down at the instructions.

It's just hit me. I don't know what to do.

He's going to die.

The dying scientist's breathing is now noticeably more shallow, and his skin has gone horrifically pale. He already looks dead.

"Shit!" I whisper as I look down at the unfinished contraption in my hands. The sounds of gunfire outside the door has picked up again; breaking the deathly silence in the lab.

"Deep breath, Shana," I whisper as I flick the instruction sheet flat in my hand. "Just take a deep breath and don't rush it."

I've never been good at rushing things. In fact, the more I rush, the more likely I am to make mistakes. But the problem is, this only makes me work slower, and slow is the one thing I can't be right now.

The instructions could still be entirely in Latin for all the sense they make to me (in fact, I'm pretty sure that some of the longer words are in Latin), but some sections are slowly beginning to make some sort of sense to me.

Well, time to make a guess at this, I think as I start putting pieces together using nothing but a black and white picture for reference.

"Hold on just a second longer, you arsehole," I mutter as the minutes tick by and the device slowly looks more like the one in the picture on the paper.

"You even still alive?" I ask the dying man as I examine what I've assembled. All I get in response is complete silence from him.

Well, the pointy bit is pointy and the sticky outy bit looks kind of like the handle I think it's supposed to be.

But, fuck it. It's now or never.

I stick the pointed end of the device into the wound (as I think that's what the instructions are asking me to do) and press a couple of buttons on the side.

I anxiously wait for some sort of reaction from the half dead man, who still seems to be growing paler by the minute. But no such luck. His eyes stubbornly remain closed, and his breathing stays shallow and nearly imperceptible.

"Did... it work?" I ask myself after several moments of there being absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Well, I guess that's a lie. His stump's now completely covered with a thick layer of some disgusting looking green hard stuff, but at least he doesn't seem to be bleeding to death.

"So, are you are going to wake up now?" I ask the unconscious scientist.

It's funny, because I would have thought that a top secret government agency such as this would have definitely invented a quick acting, cure all drug for all your common battle injuries.

Well, at least it solved the problem of him bleeding out.

Now all that's left to do is for me to bide my time and wait for rescue to inevitably arrive.

-BREAK-

I impatiently twiddle my thumbs as I wait for the damned doors to finally open. However, all I'm left with is the same sorry sight as two hours ago (I've been keeping a very close eye on the clock).

Damn fuck it, they said this shouldn't last too long! Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D with their fucking enemies and their damned fucking...

-BREAK-

Three hours. There's only so much time I'm willing to spend scared and stressed, and I think we've just about flown past it.

I throw another small balled up piece of paper and hope that this time it lands and stays on one of the old man's closed eyelids.

Nope. It hits his mouth again, instead.

"Fuuuuuck..."

-BREAK-

It's been five hours and I still can't seem to hit his eyelid. Am I cursed? Will I ever manage such a monumental task?

I narrow my eyes as I take aim and fire, only to hit his eyebrow. The small ball mockingly hops away to join its numerous fallen friends on the floor.

Hmm... Maybe I'm setting myself too big of a task. Maybe it's just not physically possible to do this...

With a reluctant sigh, I give up on my mission and instead decide to pick up a nearby elastic band.

In the last couple or so hours, I haven't managed to make so much as a single paper ball cling to his eyelid, but I've managed to make several hit it. I'll consider that a win for now, so now it's time to up the game a bit.

I wonder if I could slingshot a paper ball onto his eyelid using this rubber band?

-BREAK-

"Something, something, something, something, blah-dee-blah blah blah blah," I sing at the top of my voice as I slowly rotate around on one of the lab chairs whilst staring up at the pure white ceiling.

"Blah blah, something, blah blah, something, blabby blab blab blab."

Once I get out of here, I swear that I'll look into the lyrics for all of Lady Gaga's songs.

"Russian Roulette's something or another, something with a gun!" I keep on singing though, with my eyes frequently checking the clock. Unfortunately, the scientist still hasn't moved much under the small mountain of paper balls.

With a groan, I quit my pathetic attempt at singing and slowly stand up. I walk towards the old man, kicking away the small balls of paper as I go.

"Hey, it's been hours. Time to wake up, now," I moan at him. Either he's ignoring me or we seriously need some help really soon, because he doesn't so much as twitch in response.

"Oi, you old prick!" I yell in his face. His face twitches a little, but other than that, it looks like he's completely oblivious.

With a frown, I raise my hand to sharply smack him across his face in the hopes of shocking him awake, as I'm still not entirely certain that he's still alive. He could die at any moment, for all I know!

Yet when I smack his face, he still doesn't wake up

"Well, shit. It always works in the movies," I grumble to myself in the silence of the room.

I sit down next to him in a depressing mixture of boredom and defeat and watch as the seconds tick on by. My eyes grow heavy as I watch the hypnotic rotation of the second hand.

God, I hope we're not going to die in this damned lab.