Loss and Revelations
As she raced through the New York City streets, Natasha could only hear two things: the roar of her motorcycle, and the pounding of her heart. A short ways behind her, Clint was on his own bike and trying to follow her as she weaved in between emergency vehicles and abandoned civilian cars. The bombings across the city had sent people scrambling in a panic. With each borough getting hit nobody felt safe anywhere, and responded by ditching their vehicles to avoid traffic as they ran to hopefully get somewhere safe. Unfortunately, that meant that the city had become a maze for EMS units to navigate, as there was nobody available to move cars out of the way.
The bombings also meant that the criminal element of the city was taking advantage of the chaos. Looters were hitting all the vehicles they could, and were being completely ignored by the police who were too busy responding to the bombings at their own stations to pay any real attention to the chaos that gripped the city. Their radio channels being jammed only exacerbated the issue. Different precincts had been attempting to organize on other channels, but that just led to more confusion due to the different channels being utilized.
Luckily for the Avengers, their channel wasn’t attacked, or if it was then Stark’s security did its job. The team had been communicating for a while about their individual operations across the city, mostly disaster relief with the occasional crime stopping mixed in. It was Tony’s update about the Widow who attempted (and as of yet may have succeeded) to assassinate May Parker that had been the most relevant news to their mission, but his detour to the Tower to save the woman’s life meant that the assassin, and the answers she may have been able to provide, were out of their reach for now.
Ultimately, it was up to her and Clint to figure out where in the city Taskmaster and the Red Room relocated to, but they hadn’t left any clues behind that she and her partner had been able to find. If anything had been left, it was destroyed when the bombs took down the building they had once used as a headquarters. It had taken longer than she liked, but Clint, as he usually did, saw the pattern that everyone else had been missing in the chaos.
If the bombs were meant to split up and distract the team from whatever the Red Room was doing, it had worked, the team of superheroes was scattered across the entire city, but Clint had noticed that the Jersey side of the Hudson had not been hit whatsoever. Most of the bombings happened in every direction of the tower except for the west, where the only bombing had happened in Hell’s Kitchen. Nat would bet that in the after mission debriefing most of the team would be frustrated that they missed it. Hell, Nat was already pissed that she hadn’t noticed the one area in the relative vicinity of Avengers Tower that was completely clear of any attack.
As such, she and Clint were now racing to reach Jersey City as quickly as possible. They were already far behind the Red Room’s agents tonight, and they had to make up for lost time before the nightmares of her past managed to slip away. Again. They’d tried the Lincoln Tunnel first, but the structure was closed as a sea of emergency personnel from New Jersey crossed state boundaries to assist from one direction, and crashes clogged the other. The NYPD officers who were in the area apologized to the Avengers, but had redirected them to the Holland Tunnel instead. They apparently had enough information to tell them the southernmost tunnel was clear enough for them to cross through to the other side of the river.
Soon enough, the night sky and reflected red and blue lights that bounced between buildings turned into a harsh yellow light and white tiled walls as they drove beneath the ground. The roar of their bikes increased in volume now that there was no open air for the sound to travel through. The deep sounds rattled through her, but still wasn’t enough to help her ignore the stress that squeezed her to her core.
She should have been more thorough all those years ago, but the feeling of actually being free made her sloppy. If she’d been smart, she would have confirmed the kill on Dreykov, rather than simply believing the bomb was enough. If she’d been smart she wouldn’t have rested until she knew the job was done and demanded to go on every possible mission against the Red Room. Instead she left it to the STRIKE team… to HYDRA , and look where it got her now. Dreykov is alive, the Red Room is still running, and yet another young girl is paying the price for her mistakes. For a moment, a flash of blonde hair, blue eyes, and a house in Ohio appeared in her mind before she shook the images away. Nat couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not again.
“FRIDAY, any updates?” Natasha asked, working to get her mind back on track.
“Quicksilver has found multiple of the jamming devices used to block EMS communications. Currently Lower and Central Manhattan have had communications restored as well as a small section of Brooklyn. Based on previous locations, I have designated a dozen potential locations for further devices, which are being investigated now.”
That was good. The faster things got organized in the city, the faster the rest of the team could refocus on the Red Room.
“Anything popping up in Jersey yet?” Clint asked, his voice only heard over her earpiece thanks to the distance between them, and the noise of their bikes.
“EMS units from all municipalities along the Hudson River have been dispatched to assist in relief efforts, but there are no reports of any activity that deviates from the average night.” The AI answered.
“What about social media? Any civilians making posts about suspicious individuals? Gunshots? Anything? We know they’d paid off a few NYPD officers, it's possible they did the same on this side of the river.” The archer continued. By now the two of them were rising up towards the surface again. One more bend and they would be able to see the night sky.
“Standby.”
The young AI was silent for a few minutes, giving her and Clint enough time to exit the tunnels and take stock of the immediate area at the very least. As expected though, nothing really stood out, and they couldn’t take the time to just drive around the city in the hope that they might run into something. Luckily FRIDAY came back shortly with workable intel.
“Multiple people have posted online about shots fired in a nearby industrial complex. According to some of the posts, police units don’t seem to be responding to the situation despite calls to 9-1-1.”
“Get us there Fri, that has to be them.” Natasha demanded, kicking the stand for her bike up and taking off down the street, burning rubber behind her. She didn’t even have to look to know Clint was close behind, the two Avengers operating with the same mind.
With the chaos across the river, Natasha couldn’t help but notice how much calmer it appeared over here. There was still the occasional emergency vehicle racing past with sirens blaring, but for the most part, she and Clint just had to weave between the average nighttime traffic as FRIDAY directed them to the industrial district of the city. The minutes flew by quickly, and the clean buildings of the commercial district no longer lined the road. Instead there were warehouses and factories.
“Three more blocks Agent Romanoff.” The AI alerted.
Before she could respond, she was forced to pull hard on the brake handles, the rear end of her bike leaving the ground as she skidded a ways down the road before righting herself. Clint had fared no better as the squad car that randomly pulled out in front of them cut off the road, its lights flashing and lighting up the street in red and blue. Two officers immediately exited the SUV, weapons drawn, but pointed at the road.
“Get off the bikes!” One of them ordered, causing Natasha to release a frustrated growl. They didn’t have time for this bullshit!
“Avengers business! Let us through!” She shot back. From the angle her bike had stopped at, she wouldn’t be able to easily get around them without them being able to take a shot first.
“Avengers? Yeah right! And I’m Thor!” The second officer mocked, laughing at his own cliche joke.
Sighing, Natasha pulled the helmet off her head, noticing from the corner of her eye as Clint followed suit. “We are the Avengers!”
At the sight of her and Clint, both officer’s backs straightened and they shared a nervous glance. Natasha narrowed her eyes as she saw one of their hands tighten on their pistol, rather than relax. They were nervous.
“What’s with the roadblock?” Clint asked, his voice jovial, but from the way his eyes raked over them, it was clear he saw the same thing she did. His left hand began to signal her subtly, telling her to get ready.
The two officers shared another look before answering. “Bomb threat. What with everything going on across the river, we need to make sure the area is secure.”
“Yeah well, we’re professionals and we are here to help.” Clint replied with a shrug.
The sound of a couple gunshots echoed down the street, far enough away to be their ultimate objective. Both cops flinched at the noise.
“That doesn’t sound like a bomb.” She remarked, flexing the tendons in her wrist enough to turn on the Widow Bites, the low whine as the electric weapons activated was barely heard by her own ears, so the two people blocking them didn’t stand a chance of hearing it.
“Some officers must have ran into the bombers!” One cop lied.
“So why aren’t you rushing to help?” Clint called their bluff, and she could see how pale they were. The two men were grasping at straws in hopes of getting them to go away, but her patience had run out.
“I don’t care how much they are paying you. You really want to get hit with an aiding and abetting terrorists charge? The feds might go so far as to call treason. Move now and we can put in a good word to make sure it's just bribery.” She gave them one last chance. The offer was a good one, but she was willing to bet the Red Room hadn’t told them the full plan and only paid them to keep people out of this area. For two beat cops, no amount of money was probably worth a fight with two Avengers and getting charged with treason.
Both officers holstered their weapons, and raised their hands in the air just as she expected. “The money was too good to pass up on, but we never thought they were going to bomb New York.” One of them admitted with a dejected sigh.
Clint laughed beside her humorlessly “Shouldn’t have taken the money in the first place.”. Immediately after he finished speaking, Clint drew an arrow and loosed it, the projectile crossing the distance between the two groups in the blink of an eye before latching onto the first officer’s chest and injecting a large enough dose of sedative to knock the man out for at least a few hours.
Before the other one could react, Natasha raised her own weapon and fired an electric charge that knocked him out as well, leaving the two Avengers alone.
“Friday, try and get in contact with someone to pick these two up.” She ordered before revving her engine and heading down the street again.
The last few blocks led them to a large industrial complex. The largest building had multiple SUVs parked in front of it, the doors left open and the engines still running. If that wasn’t evidence enough of her objective, the scattering of rubble that used to be the front entrance would have been the nail in the coffin. The dust had long since settled from whatever explosion had blown the doors outwards, leaving only the debris and a red smear that ended behind one of the vehicles.
She looked towards Clint who’d just pulled up behind her, and motioned towards the building. Together, the two of them cautiously approached, passing by the SUVs until the first body appeared. Her breath hitched as she laid eyes on a Red Room Enforcer for the first time in over a decade. Their armor was the same, the grays, blacks, and red hourglass. This enforcer’s armor had a bit more red on it though, clearly the result of whatever trap was detonated when they breached the building. A shard of rebar was impaled through his gut, slowing the loss of blood to a trickle rather than the stream it could have been. The pool that had grown underneath his body acted as a testimony for how long he’d been lying there.
Forcing herself to bring her focus back to her objective, Natasha stepped over the rubble and entered the complex, pointedly ignoring the concerned glance her partner gave her while she was inspecting the corpse. As soon as she stepped inside, the visibility decreased drastically. Without the open air or breeze to disperse it, dust continued to hang in the air, a dull gray haze against the yellow industrial lights in the ceiling.
Automatic gunfire echoed through the halls, far louder to her ears now that she was in the immediate vicinity. Whoever the Red Room was here to kill, they hadn’t succeeded just yet. Wordlessly, Natasha picked up the pace, Clint right behind her as they cleared rooms and corridors, gunshots getting louder with each step they took.
They found the next corpses a few rooms in. Two enforcers had been eviscerated by an anti-personnel mine, a claymore by the looks of it. A third had lost the lower half of his left leg, and had been finished off with a bullet to the side of his head. Likely fired from the end of the hallway that was riddled in bullet holes. The ambush had been quick against the Red Room agents, but the four total deaths meant there were still eleven unaccounted for, and the amount of return fire they sent towards the defender or defenders of this complex showed just how dangerous they could be.
Continuing on, the next few hallways and rooms only had bullet-ridden walls and floors, and brass casings that glittered in the light. But Natasha knew they were getting close. As they turned another corner, they came face to face with another demolished doorway. This one was clearly blown to pieces with a breaching charge of some kind; all the debris was blasted inwards towards the room beyond. It was from that room that the sounds of fighting reached her ears. Quickly singling for Clint to cover her, Natasha moved quickly through the destroyed wall and took stock of the area.
It had clearly been a well provisioned facility at some point. A small kitchenette was tucked against one wall alongside a multitude of cots, two of which had clothes piled up next to them. The center of the room had once been dominated by a large computer station, but that was now nothing more than a collection of scrapped electronics as the monitors were torn apart by gunfire and the computers sparked with damaged wired and shrapnel embedded into their components. A larger open area was taken up by what seemed to be an old wrestling mat. Finally there was a parking area which contained a small brown sedan, and a larger matte black van, both of which had popped tires and, much like the rest of this place, were covered in bullet holes.
Natasha’s eyes took stock of the area quickly, even as she counted the remaining enforcers that she could see. She got to five, all spread out throughout the room with their backs to Clint and her, instead facing the dark van, and whoever was hidden behind it. The stalemate was clear. The enforcers had numbers, but they couldn’t approach due to the open area that separates the kitchen and computers from the van. They also had to be cautious in case there were more traps. The defender for their part couldn’t move or even attempt to fire back easily without having five guns shooting back at them. Luckily for them, reinforcements had just arrived.
Silently, she pointed out to her fellow Avenger the targets she planned to take out. They needed to clear them quickly and couldn’t afford wasting time shooting the same targets. Clint’s pistol rose in response, his bow still secured tightly on his back until they were back outside. After a quick countdown with her fingers, the two of them opened fire. Five pulls of the trigger, two for her, three for Clint, and the room was clear. It was quick and simple, and the Red Room’s agents never stood a chance against the threat they never saw coming.
“Rooms clear! You still alive over there?” Clint called out, standing slowly with his arms out to be as non-threatening as possible. Natasha followed suit a few moments later.
“Who the fuck are you?!” A gruff, pained voice called back from the other side of the room, still hiding from view.
“Avengers! Hawkeye and Black Widow!” The archer answered easily.
“You’re shittin’ me.” The voice snarked, not sounding any more pleased. But they did stand, limping out from behind the van to allow her witness Frank Castle in all his bloody glory.
The Punisher… that makes sense. Natasha mused humorously as her eyes panned over the mess again.
“Are we good to approach or are we going to run into a trap? Or get shot?” She requested.
“Nah you’re good.” The Punisher answered, reloading his guns before limping towards a different door. “We have to get moving, this wasn’t all of them.”
Clint nodded next to her. “There should be another six, not including Taskmaster.” Her partner eyed the vigilante's wound on his leg “Are you good to keep going?”.
“I’ve had far worse than this.” Castle scoffed, somewhat answering the question. Rather than wait for them however, the murderous vigilante went off on his own, forcing them to catch up with the man. Not that it was that difficult due to the wound she’d noticed on his calf.
BANG!
BANG!
Two shots broke the eerie silence that had spread throughout the compound, jolting the three of them into moving faster as they wandered through the halls. After a few more turns they found themselves in a long emergency hallway, the door at the very end of it was blown open, and two enforcers lay dead. One was adhered to the ceiling and the other the wall by what appeared to be webs, and each was leaking blood and brain matter through a single hole in each of their skulls.
“Look out!” Clint warned, his pistol already pointing downrange as two enforcers appeared in the destroyed exit. From her position in the back of the group, Natasha didn’t have a clear shot, but the combined skills of the Punisher and Hawkeye were enough to take care of the threat anyway. The enforcers barely got a few shots off before they each went down, one with a bullet to the brain, and another to the abdomen. Castle took two shots to the vest, which had sent the man back a step, but he wasn’t more injured than he had been previously. Seeing as the last shooters were down, Natasha ran ahead, squeezing between the other two to get passed. One of the two enforcers was still alive, and she had some questions for him.
The man in question was groaning on the ground, his lifeblood leaking out of the gap in his armor and slowly forming a pool beneath him. He weakly tried to draw his sidearm, but his injury made him too slow, allowing for her to grab the weapon herself and throw it to the side before pulling his helmet off his head, revealing a relatively plain looking man with a buzz cut and some rough black stubble growing on his chin. His eyes stared at her in recognition and raw hatred. She felt the latter of the two for him as well, though she didn’t personally recognize her.
“Na-Natalia Romanova…” The man coughed, blood spilling from his lips “The filth-filthy t-traitor herself” He wheezed.
Natasha stared right back at him as she pressed her hand into his wound. The more sadistic side of her, the one fed by the hatred of the Red Room, and of the red in her ledger, smiled. This man’s death would not weigh on her, that much she knew. “Where’s Taskmaster?!” She pressed harder, forcing the man to wheeze in pain “Where is Payton Parker.”
Despite the torment she knew he would be under from her actions, the man gave a bloody smile and a gurgling, wet laugh. “The answers… are one… and the same.” He taunted her.
Natasha refused to let it show on her face, but her heart dropped. She’d been holding out hope that they weren’t too late, that they would still be able to find the poor girl before she was lost. That was not to be, and it stung.
“Where are they going!” She demanded, her hand now covered in the enforcer’s blood.
He dared to laugh again, growing ever weaker. “Y-ou…alr-eady k-know. Home. The… the girl belongs to Dreykov n-now.” The light faded from his eyes with the final mocking words, and Natasha slammed her fist to the ground in frustration and rounded on the Punisher who stood a few steps behind her.
“You had Payton with you the whole time and didn’t tell anyone!?” She accused, knowing that the situation had her compromised, but not caring in the slightest. The nightmare of her past had returned, and she failed to save someone from it.
Castle’s own scowl deepened as he stared right back “Damn right I did, and things had been going fine until tonight.”
“Why didn’t you turn her over to the police? Or ask for help from one of the other vigilantes? Or even us?” Clint asked, arms crossed over his chest.
Castle huffed mirthlessly “The cops? These bastards paid ‘em off. Moment I turned her over she would’ve been in the wind. And Red and his little group of ‘heroes’? None of them would’ve been willing to do what needed to be done. At least you two understood that.” He replied, gesturing to the corpses at their feet.
Clint scoffed “And you didn’t think about asking us for help?”
At that Castle did laugh, even if it was a rough, mocking thing “Even if I knew how to reach you big shot heroes, I bet it would’ve been under your paygrade until tonight. You handle the big shit. Aliens, robots, HYDRA, whatever. Far as I knew originally, it was likely just some corrupt assholes from Oscorp, or some random trafficking ring trying to make a name for themselves in the underground.”
“He’s got a point.” Natasha admitted. While it wasn’t true that they would’ve ignored it, mostly because of the postcard she had gotten from her sister, there was no way for Castle to have known that. He’d worked with what he had, and unfortunately that didn’t include the fact that the Avengers were looking for the girl.
As the three of them stood around awkwardly, the sound of approaching sirens began to be heard. Seems the police who weren’t paid off finally got wind of what was happening here, which made the situation more awkward. Two Avengers were right next to one of the most wanted men in the city, and they all knew it. But Natasha didn’t care. Castle defended himself against her mess, and she had no intention of making the man pay for it.
“Go. Clint and I can’t pretend that you weren’t here, but we can say that you were gone before we got here.” She offered, and received a grateful nod in turn before the Punisher turned to leave, but stopped after a few steps.
“Make sure they get the bomb squad here. Plenty of mines left in there that those assholes didn’t set off.” He warned, before continuing back into the night.
“Well, the police will be happy to confiscate Castle’s armory. Should keep him off the streets for a few weeks at least.” Clint remarked after Castle was long gone, and the first squad cars were pulling up to the building.
Natasha allowed herself a small smile at her partner’s words, his upbeat view enough to help raise her spirits slightly, though her heart was still heavy. She wanted to continue the chase, but after a quick chat with FRIDAY she found that Taskmaster and whatever surviving enforcers he had with him were long gone. As such, she and Clint would have to stay here to assist with cleaning up… It was going to be a long night.
When the sun finally rose over New York City, a sense of peace came with it. Most of the city had been in fear of more bombings throughout the night, but they never came. As soon as Quicksilver had finished with the jammers it became far easier for the city to organize relief efforts. By the time the fires that started were put out, and power was turned back on for the buildings that lost it, they also had a total casualty list. Luckily, the fatalities were low, only about two dozen, which was far better than it could have been. Injuries were far more numerous, numbering at nearly two-hundred. Most of which were minor. It was clear the main purpose of the bombs was to serve as a distraction for the Avengers, as well as the city as a whole.
After Natasha and Clint reported in regarding their own situation the picture became clear for the team as a whole. Taskmaster couldn’t risk a response to his attack on the Punisher’s home, and attacking the Punisher meant that plenty of noise would be made, thus the distraction. According to Steve it was ‘tactically sound’. According to himself it was ‘annoying’ and ‘cheap’. Of course, Tony never liked being made to look like a fool, and he couldn’t help but feel like one. Sure he saved May Parker’s life, but he failed to catch her would-be assassin, and the team failed to save the woman’s niece. Needless to say, it sucked .
Something that made Tony feel somewhat better was that the morning news cycle was singing the Avengers’ praises, thanking them for their quick response times to a ‘random terrorist attack’ and it just so happened to be the most positive news regarding them since before Sokovia. Pictures and videos of them helping out across the city took over the internet (with a little help from FRIDAY, though Tony would never admit it out loud).
Now though, after a night full of hard work Tony was working on his third, no fourth , cup of coffee. The caffeine kept him going through the debriefings with the city, the FBI, and the team, each one ended up as a different meeting, rather than just going all at once which was a huge waste of time in his own opinion. Now though, he was going to one final meeting before he planned to crash for at least ten hours. Helen had asked him to speak as soon as he had the opportunity, and that time had finally come.
With a quiet ding , the elevator doors opened to the medical floor that was reserved specifically for the Avengers. Helen Cho was in charge of course, but she wasn’t the only person on staff, as was shown as Tony walked through the floor and saw through a window into the only occupied patient room on the floor. The medical team had also worked through the night to get the toxins out of May Parker’s system, but they had done it. The poison had made the woman weaker, but from the last report Helen sent, they expected her to get back on track for full recovery shortly. Best estimates had her waking up within a week or two. Though the woman wouldn’t like the world she woke up to.
A few more turns had Tony standing outside Helen’s office, and after knocking, he opened the door. The doctor looked almost as tired as he felt, her lab coat thrown haphazardly over a random chair, and a random assortment of tablets and papers were spread across all the surfaces in the room. At his entry the woman looked up at him, and looked nervous.
“Tony. Thank you for coming.”
He gave her a tired smile. “You said you had something important to tell me before the rest of the team, and you know how much I love having things to hold over them.” He joked, though it was a tired, humorless thing.
“Yes. Well. I had hoped for better news from last night before I shared this, but it wouldn’t be right to keep it secret.”
“What else is there to know about Parker? Did you get details on whatever her enhancements are?”
Helen turned, and didn’t meet his eyes. He’d never seen her so nervous before, and that was beginning to make him nervous.
“When I was running the DNA tests I noticed something…familiar.” She admitted, grabbing one of the tablets and swiping to something he couldn’t see from his perspective.
His mind immediately went to the Sokovian twins who were sleeping just a few floors away. They’d received their powers through Loki’s scepter, though apparently the two of them did have the X-gene, it had just been activated and enhanced by Struker’s experiments, but that wasn’t the point. The scepter had left evidence of its tampering in their DNA, and if the same thing was found in Parker’s DNA, then it meant bad news for the experiments Oscorp was running.
“So I ran the tests again, just with some… comparable DNA. There was a match.”
“To the DNA changes in Wanda and Pietro?” He asked, interrupting the doctor.
“No. To you.”
He swore his heart stopped “What?”.
“The test I ran was a paternity test, Tony. Biologically speaking, Payton Parker is your daughter.” The bombshell she dropped seemed to lower the temperature in the office by a few degrees, if the chills running up and down his body said anything about it.
When Helen passed him the tablet, it was turned to the results, and he immediately recognized his own DNA test, back before Sokovia, when Bruce was still around, the two of them taught each other a lot about the fields that they were better in. One of the fields that Tony had lessons from Banner from was genetics, and they’d looked at his DNA sequence enough for him to have essentially memorized it. Next to it on the screen though, was Payton Parker’s DNA, and the bold green word “MATCH” blinked at the bottom of the screen.
Swallowing harshly, Tony didn’t even notice when his right arm went up to massage the left, the tingling numbness returning to the arm as it often did when he was stressed. His mind immediately started racing trying to do the math based on her age and where he was fourteen years ago. Of course, those years were often spent mostly drunk, high, or both, and much of his memory was blurry. He’d always thought it was possible, though unlikely as nobody had tried to approach him for money or anything else. But, then again, Parker’s biological mother died when she was a toddler, maybe the woman never had the chance to ask. Maybe, maybe maybe. The thoughts tumbled through his head like a landslide until he was pulled back to reality by Helen’s hand on his shoulder.
At some point he had sat down in one of the chairs and he hadn’t even noticed. His chest heaved as it often did after he was done hyperventilating. Dragged back to reality, Tony looked down at the tablet again, before looking at Helen. “This… This is…”
The doctor nodded her head. “I know, it’s a shock. It surprised me too, but well, the evidence is right there.”
Tony laughed. It was a stressed, strangled sound, borne of the absurdity of the situation. “FRIDAY? Bring up the files on Payton Parker again.” He requested, and moments later the tablet he held switched over to the requested information.
The very first page had a large picture of the girl (his daughter), taken straight from her school ID. Looking at her again, he could begin to see the resemblance. Not really to himself, but to his mother.
“Look into the old archives FRI, see if we have a picture of Mom when she was around Payton’s age.” He asked
This request took slightly longer, but soon enough a black and white photo of Maria Stark, at the time Maria Carbonell, at the age of 18 displayed next to the picture of Payton. The similarities were obvious now in this context. It seemed the main trait that Payton got from the male-line of Starks was the hair color. Much of her facial structure matched his mom’s from her youth. Only her eyes didn’t match anything from his bloodline. The pale blue iris weren't a feature his family had, which meant they likely came from Payton’s mother’s side.
“You alright Tony?” Helen asked, her eyes displaying her concern.
Truthfully, he felt like a horse kicked him in the chest while he was falling down a cliff, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He would be fine, he just had to do what he did best and find answers. Who was Payton’s mother? Why didn’t she approach him about her? What did this mean if, no when , they found her? Too many questions needed answers, which meant he had work to do.
Standing abruptly, he passed the tablet back to Helen. “I’ll be fine Doc, just, keep this between us for now? I want to figure this out myself.”
Doctor Cho nodded her head. “Of course Tony. Doctor-Patient Confidentiality.”
When Tony left her office a minute later it was with a new mission in mind. First he would find whatever answers he could from the past. Once that was done he would do everything in his power to find where the Red Room took Payton and get her back. He still didn’t know what he wanted from the future once they got her back, but there was no way in hell he was going to sit on the sidelines when his own daughter was in danger.
Time to get to work.