Chapter 6
"HELLO!? Can you open the fucking door please?! I want to go HOME!" I shouted as loud as I possibly could, tears running down my face as I banged and kicked at the door.
I felt like I'd been shouting for hours, maybe even days, begging for whoever had taken me to let me out of wherever they had locked me up. The last thing I remembered was Wanda standing in front of me just outside of Central Park. The next thing I knew I'd woken up here, wherever here was.
I had already tried the door of the office I was in but of course it was locked. I had looked around to see if I could find any other form of escape route or any clues about where I was but I'd come up blank. Aside from the general office furniture there was next to nothing in the room. A world map poster on the dull beige wall. A plastic plant. There was a notepad, a pen and a lamp on the desk. Nothing that would have been any use to me. There wasn't even any windows - it was seriously disconcerting not knowing whether I was still in New York or whether they'd taken me to the Bahamas, or England or literally anywhere.
I sank down into the corner of the room and sobbed. My bag was missing which had my cell phone in it so I couldn't even call anyone. I wanted to call Erica and ask her to come get me but even if I could, where would I send her? I wondered if I'd ever see her again. I felt so helpless and scared. My thoughts were racing at the many possible outcomes and I was in the midst of a panic attack when I heard the office door unlock and begin to open.
I stood up quickly, trying to muster the courage to defend myself if I needed to, my fists in tight balls by my side while I tried to hold my hyperventilating back. I didn't want them to know how scared I was. I was taken aback when Nat walked in followed by the man I had seen her with at Starbucks. He was truly intimidating when I had seen him then, but that was nothing compared to the fear I felt right now.
"Miss Marks, My name is Nick Fury. Please take a seat." He said, gesturing to the sofa on my left. He walked over to the desk and sat down while I stayed firmly planted in the corner.
"Melissa, sit down. We've already told you we're not here to hurt you." Said Nat. She had moved to stand next to the desk and looked far more serious than she had earlier in the day. I wondered if Nick Fury was an authority figure to her.
"Why would I sit down? I don't even want to be here, I just want to go home. Please?" I questioned.
"That is not a possibility right now. Do you know why you're here?" Asked Nick.
"Yep, because your little freaky friend knocked me out, kidnapped me and dragged me here against my will!" I snapped, feeling weirdly guilty at my outburst. Wanda had been nicer to me than Nat had and I didn't really believe she deserved to be called a freak. But on the other hand she was part of the cause of this entire situation, so it was hard to have too much respect for her.
"I apologise, but that was necessary. We asked you not to run from us." Said Nick.
"When did you ask me not to run from you? I've never even met any of you before!" I said, not letting on about my recent dreams although I suspected they knew.
"Not entirely true.." Nat muttered to herself.
"We sent an agent to deliver a message to you. He tried to tell you in person but you were unattainable, so we had to resort to different means." Nick said, confirming my theory. I felt relieved that I wasn't crazy at least.
"You're Shield right?" I asked, wanting to be certain.
"Yes." He confirmed.
"Great, so what does a top secret government organization want with a 22 year old College freshman?!" I snapped in disbelief of the whole situation.
"We're hardly top secret Mels. Pretty much all of our history is online. Didn't you Google us?" Said Nat.
"Yeah actually I did. Why did I need to?" I asked but they both looked as though they didn't understand my question. "All of the attacks on New York. In fact, across the whole world. You are all over the internet, everywhere, so why have I never heard of you up until last week?"
They glanced at each other with straight faces.
"Actually, you have." Said Nick.
"Umm, no. I haven't. I am pretty sure I'd remember hearing about you before now. You have giant weapons and agents and you take out bad guys and superhero's and shit. That's not the normal every day topic of conversation you know?" I said, sarcasm seeping through my words.
"We don't take out superhero's, we are superhero's." Laughed Nat, before Nick shot her a warning look.
"Yeah of course you are. Because superhero's are real and they randomly kidnap young women for kicks." I said mockingly.
In that moment my own words became too much for me and I burst into tears once again, heavy sobs pouring from my body. My legs had just started to buckle when I felt Nat's arm hook under my own and begin leading me to the sofa, where she sat down next to me.
"Hey, hey, come on, don't get upset." She said, stroking my hair gently. "I promise you we aren't the bad guys you think we are."
She had all of a sudden become so comforting to me and I was finding it hard to remember the patronizing bitch she had been in Central Park. I wondered what she could possibly want from me that would warrant this change of pace.
"You.. you need my help?" I whispered through sniffles, trying to compose myself, but failing.
"That's right." Said Nick. There wasn't a stitch of emotion on his face. He was extremely hard to read. I couldn't tell whether he felt sorry for me or whether I was just irritating him.
"But how? How can I help you? You guys are the protectors! You have your agents and your weapons and your defense tactics. What could I possibly have to offer you? I'm just... I'm no-one." I said, exasperated. "I'm not special."
Nat chuckled slightly but looked apologetic when I turned to face her. She still had her arm wrapped around my shoulders in an effort to keep me calm. I looked into her grey green eyes as though they would answer the millions of questions I had.
"Not entirely true." She said again, winking at me as though she knew something that I didn't.
"Miss Marks." Said Nick, pulling my attention back to him. "We have been monitoring you for seven years now. While you have many traits that are some what questionable, one thing I can say for certain is that you are the very definition of special."
"..What?" I said, stunned by his statement about watching me for almost a decade.
"Surely you must know what you are capable of by now?" He asked.
"You sound like my Aunt." I said rolling my eyes. Knowing what I was capable of was line I had heard at least a thousand times before from Erica, but usually in relation to bettering my life. She'd said it when she wanted me to get a job after high school, then again when she wanted me to leave that job and get a better one, and again when she wanted me to enroll for college.
Nat quickly stood up and walked over to Nick, her back turned to me as she whispered something to him so quietly I had no chance of hearing it.
"It's possible." He said in response to her whisper, while looking at me curiously as if I was a problem to be solved.
"When I told you you had heard of us before I was being sincere Melissa." He said, using my first name for the first time. "However you're right to ask why you don't recall hearing of us."
"That literally doesn't make sense." I said putting my head into my hands. I was so tired and confused at this point my brain had started to hurt. Nick sighed heavily and stood up.
"When you were 15 years old you were involved in a life changing incident. Do you remember what happened?" He asked.
"I.. no. I don't." I said. Deep inside I knew my life had changed when I was 15. At 15 a part of me had sort of died, and most of the joy I knew became a distant memory. I became a sad uninspired person who had little to no interest in anything. I withdrew into myself for the best part of two years and never really recovered from it. But I wasn't aware of what had caused that change. Nick had started pacing the room while he spoke to me.
"You were taken by a woman named Sarah. Sarah was known to us and so when we found out she'd taken you, we fought to get you back safely from her. I can't say it went exactly to plan - there were more than a few hiccups along the way but we eventually succeeded and you were returned to your father." He said.
"That isn't true, You're lying to me. I know I would remember that." I replied, shaking my head in protest.
"You don't remember because we couldn't let you remember. You were exposed to so much information that day that would have broken you entirely. Your father asked us to ensure that didn't happen and so we took measures to protect you further. Obviously those measures had some unwarranted side effects." He stated.
"What measures? What did you do?!" I shouted, panicking that they'd messed with my brain somehow.
"We have mind control techniques." He said so matter of fact-ly, like that wasn't the most insane thing he could have said. "In the same way Wanda put you down earlier, we were able to make you forget what happened that day, and to all references you heard moving forward to Shield and the avengers."
"The who?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We'll get to that later." Nat smiled at me, knowingly.
"When Sarah took you and realized we were close to getting you back she tried to kill you. Obviously she didn't succeed. However the way in which she tried, left you with certain abilities. Abilities that we now need to utilize to protect America against an on-coming threat." Said Nick.
"Abilities? Right. Am I being pranked or something? This cannot be real." I said laughing at the impossibility of what I had just been told.
"No." He replied sternly.
"I don't have any abilities. I cannot help you!" I said.
"Yes Melissa, you do. It seems that in re-wiring your memories to forget any references to Shield, it has made you unsusceptible to your own powers. You have them, but you don't notice them." He said.
"No. No. This is too much. I'm leaving. I'm done." I said and stood up, heading for the door that I knew they hadn't locked behind them.
"What color do you see when you look at me?" Asked Nat suddenly.
"What are you talking about?" I said, rolling my eyes as I turned to face her. I had had enough. I just wanted to leave.
"What color is Fury?" She demanded.
I sighed and looked over at him. I looked him up and down, wondering if there was a right answer. My vision focused and unfocused. I looked over him, and then around him. It was as though right in that moment something shifted in my brain, as though I was unlocking something that had always been there but now I knew that it was. I couldn't ignore it now I was concentrating on it.
"What color Melissa?!" Nat snapped at me, making me snap back into reality.
"GREEN!" I shouted back at her.