Chapter 11
I ran around the garage while dad was working on his computer. Trying to get his attention from the screen, I picked up one of the devices he had shown me from his lab.
“Put that down Jordan, that’s for adults only” he said, not even lifting his eyes from the computer.
Pouting, I made a frustrated noise, but put it down like he’d said. I wasn’t one to disregard commands because that was something my dad had said ‘he’d liked about me’. He’d also smile when I’d help him with his projects and call me ‘dads little helper’.
“Just one more tweak and we can start, '' he murmured after I’d put the random piece of tech down. His eyes finally swung over to meet mine.
“Can you connect those wires over there to that generator?” He smirked, “can you help your old dad out?”
Giggling, I gave him a mock salute and I went to do what he said.
“sir yes sir!” I replied.
Grabbing the tangle of wires, I took the ends and connected them to their individual places. After they were all in and I’d made sure they were right, I looked over to my dad with a goofy grin.
“Sir! The cables are attached, Sir!” I called, knocking my feet together and giving him another fake salute.
This got him to laugh,”well I see you’re already acting the part, soon you’ll be MY little super soldier”
Not knowing what that’d meant, I’d just smiled at my dad smiling at me and walked over to the chamber.
“Should I get in?”
*BAM*
Slowly opening my eyes, I rubbed my head as I’d looked up at the ceiling, and then to the bed I had fallen out of.
I groaned, not necessarily at the pain from falling, but from the fact that I’d had *the* dream again. It wasn’t a horrible dream, but it’d reminded me just how little my father had actually cared about me.
That was one of the things i'd realized in the extensive therapy I had after the accident. I'd come to terms with it, but It still really hurt my heart. No matter how much damage he’d caused to me- physical AND mental, it was hard for me to still not care. He’d been my dad.
For all I knew, he could still be alive. Alive, and possibly with a new family, one that I wasn’t a part of. I’d told that thought to my grandpa once and he had smiled bitterly, saying that there was basically no way for us to know. He’d looked bitter, yet hopeful, and I had to remind myself that not only had I lost a father, he had lost a son.
Moving to the side to grab my crutches to help myself up, I gave up and groaned, just focusing on manipulating my legs under me and pushing up. Moving to sit back on my bed, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Grabbing the phone next to my bed I looked to see if I had any messages from cap.
Still nothing I thought.
“Jordan?” I heard from outside the door, bringing me away from the screen, “are you ready for your morning exercises?”
“Uhhhhg” I sighed, not feeling up to it, but knowing it was necessary. ”yeah….you can come in, I guess”
Opening the door, my grandpa came in the door with a kind smile. As soon as he’d come in and shut the door he walked over to the windows.
“My granddaughter must be a bat” he said smiling while opening the black out curtains, “it’s always so dark in here that we should start calling it the ‘cave.”
He chuckled as I shrieked away from the morning sun. I gave him a patronizing look.
“You forget gramps” I went over to look out the window, looking into the room over, “the neighbors are suuuuuper close” I made a small gap with my thumb and pointer finger, demonstrating the difference. “I can 100% see into the neighbors room. It makes me feel weird, like a spy”
My grandpa rolled his eyes, “I swear, kids these days, soooo dramatic”
Deciding not to point out the fact that he’d just rolled his eyes at me, I just moved away from the window.
“Can we just get this over with? I'm planning an meeting Katie this morning before we make our way to school”.
He nodded, his smile returning. “Pam and I are excited to meet her. From what you told us, she seems like a nice girl.” He motioned to the floor, “alright, down you go- I’ll grab your legs”
Since the accident, my grandpa had helped me with a bunch of physical therapy exercises and stretches. My legs not working had been the biggest change from the accident, but if I didn’t actively work on moving my body I got stiff. We first started out with mobility exercises-upper body, and then to fine motor function activities using my hands.
We’d gotten to a point about a year and a half in that I really didn’t need his help any longer due to refining my ability, but now that I had a few “Natasha” exercises added on to my daily routine, his help just made the process go faster.
Positioning my legs on the ground, my grandpa held my legs for the sit portion.
“You're getting better at these,” he said, delighted.
I just huffed out a breath and tried to get through them as fast as possible, taking a break halfway through before finishing and letting my grandpa help me Into a chair.
“I’ll hook these up and then I’ll be on my way” he said, grabbing a resistance band and hooking it to the wall. After that he bid me a good morning and left to go make breakfast.
Running through a few resistance band exercises, I worked on upper body mobility and a few strength training exercises Steve had recommended. After getting through them as fast as I could, I got up and went to the shower to get ready to meet Katie soon.
After ‘freshening up’ as soon as possible, I walked down the hall to find Katie sitting between my grandparents laughing along to something she’d said.
What was with our breakfast nook and random people showing up in my house?
Hearing my footsteps, she looked up at me and smiled. Her eyes then trailed to the high ceilings of the rooftop apartment.
“Jordan!” She said, “your grandparents' place is so nice! I can’t believe we have a unit like this in our building!”
She was right, for what my grandparents paid in taxes on the condo, it could have easily gone for a lot more. It was the beauty of them having bought the place before my father had even been born, when New York real estate wasn’t as insanely priced as it was now.
My grandma smiled at her compliment, “well you’re more than welcome to come over whenever! I’m sure Jordan would love to have you!”
I nodded, agreeing to her statement.
“Especially when you live so close” I responded, looking down at my watch. “So what happened with meeting outside the building?”
Katie gave me a sheepish smile, “well. You said top floor, and I was just so curious…”
I rolled my eyes, “curiosity killed the cat”
Rolling her eyes right back at me, Katie got out of her spot and walked over to me. Moving behind me, she helped me put on my backpack that my grandma had given her.
Pushing me out the door and taking a to-go pancake, she smirked and ran down the hall yelling the rest of the old proverb behind her, “but satisfaction brought it back!”
After following after her, grumbling might I add, I caught up and we started making the trek to the coffee shop before school. At first the conversation surrounded Katie wanting to see franks trading if card collection, but then moved to Katie’s internship.
“So is it true, you haven’t seen him since the attack on New York? What about his company” I questioned.
Katie shook her head, “man jordan, you must live under a rock.” She said.
“Paparazzi spotted him in California on the west coast, in Malibu. He probably has a residence there.”
I furrowed my brows, “but the company?”
She laughed, “it’s a tech company, Jordan. He could probably do his job in space for all I know.”
She rubbed her chin, “plus, I’m pretty sure his girlfriend, Pepper, is taking over the company. She’s been seen walking in and out of stark industries with a lot of the higher ups.”
That made sense, I guess. He probably wanted more time for avengers related stuff anyway… which irked me because I still hadn’t been able to meet him yet.
“Speaking of space though,” her train of speech interrupting my thought. “We got a lot of good ideas for the project from AIM!”
Our project from school was fresh in our minds after visiting the think tank, the visit really giving us a lot of ideas on how to further our project. Since the lab we had at the end of the day was supposed to be a “technical free period” we were tasked with creating something by the end of the year.
Katie and I had decided to improve her project from last year, and while it wasn’t a new project, the teachers let us because many students developed the same project year over year-using the final product as a sort of portfolio piece for colleges and jobs.
Katie’s project last year had been fairly different from the other kids in the space elective, and was why hers had gotten so much visibility.
When most students tried to do things with theory, or model building, Katie had decided that she had wanted to design a new space suit- the ones they wore everyday, not the ones they wore outside the station.
She’d seen a documentary earlier in the week before she started her lab, about the effects of living in space for long periods of time, and thought she could make something that could reduce the wear and tear on their body. Because of the zero gravity, their joints and muscles would separate ever so slightly and cause them issues when they came to earth.
Wanting to fix this, Katie successfully made a prototype that actually yielded slight results when sent off to nasa for testing. Funnily enough, her fashion hobby, finding old and vintage clothes all throughout New York, had lead her to knowing a lot about different materials. And with the combination of both her parents being chemists, she had figured out a way to treat the fabric to be extremely compressed without being too tight. Essentially, she’d made a pressure sleeve for the whole body.
While what she did hadn’t exactly been revolutionary, she had still figured out how to create a space suit for fairly cheap with no prior knowledge about space.
THAT is what had gotten her so much recognition.
The part where I come in, the mechanical part, is adding additions to the suit where we think some added mech will help improve the design. Right now, we are trying to figure out how to add a feature that would automatically tighten and loosen the fabric based on the surrounding area’s pressure. My part is creating the device, while her part is figuring out how to attach it.
Luckily, since we were now in the mechanical lab, we’d have more access to materials. It was why we’d picked it, because it had the best facilities and funding out of all the other labs.
Don’t get me wrong, almost all the labs were funded well. But this lab was personally funded by Oscorp, as many people who had taken this lab now work for them.
It was a pretty good deal, honestly. Fund a Highschool of geniuses and in turn get rights over their innovative projects? The return on their investments was practically over 200%. They had practically made a talent pipeline right into their company.
I turned to Katie thinking about this,
“Do you think you’ll ever work for Oscorp?” I questioned.
While it was practically a job right out of Highschool, it meant many of us never went to college. Missing that higher education degree, it was hard to work anywhere else, giving the company unprecedentedly low turnover rates.
“I’m not sure…” she said, thinking on it
“It would be nice to work right out of Highschool, being I wouldn’t have to pay college tuition. But I kind of want to experience what college is like, I’ve heard it’s a great way to expand one’s network.”
I nodded as we rounded the corner of the coffee shop, agreeing with her statement.
“Yeah, I can see that. You strike me as an out of state college type of person. Like you’ll go crazy at one of the big ten schools…. I hear they party like crazy.”
Katie laughed, giving me an incredulous look as she opened the coffee shop door for me for us to go in.
“Yeah right” she continued to laugh, “I doubt I’ll ever leave this city.”
I shrugged, walking past her.
“You never know” I said, causing her to roll her eyes.
Walking up to the counter of the coffee shop, I saw Sam behind the counter again. I tried not to show it on my face, but I hadn’t seen him since the attack on New York… which was months ago.
“Hi Sam” I said, “I see franks’ not here again? Do you know when he will get back? I wanted to introduce him to my friend.”
Katie stepped from behind me and waved at Sam. Blushing, she put her hand on the back of her neck.
“Hi… um. I heard that he had an awesome comic card collection…. Not that I'm super into…. That stuff….”
I gave Sam a weird look, not knowing why she’d said something like that. Hadn’t she not been able to shut up about that on the way here?
Sam gave us a sad smile, a look I wasn’t used to seeing on her… it made her seem older than the college student she said she was.
“Ah, sorry girls. Franks out… indefinitely. He’s taking an extended leave due to the alien attack a few months ago. I’m… not sure when he’ll be back.”
I frowned, “is he ok?”
“Yes… now, what can I get for you girls?”
Ordering our coffee and then making our way to school, I couldn’t help but think about how her ‘yes’ had sounded like there was a question mark after it.