Interlude: The Fracturing Eye
Interlude: The Fracturing Eye
[February 8th, SHIELD Headquarters, Conference Room]
Director Fury watched as the last person entered the room, and the doors were locked. Then he cleared his throat.
Everyone turned to look at him and the meeting began.
"As of one hour ago, SHIELD has been officially granted a new case," Fury said, as his agents passed down the stack of folders.
"The Farsight case?" asked one of them as he looked through the files. "I thought that was the Pentagon's."
"It was. And now it's ours, courtesy the World Security Council and one Mr. Happy Hogan."
Fury tapped his remote and turned around to look at the screen behind him. On the screen, a rather large, strong looking man was sitting at an interrogation table, one of the nicer ones reserved for important witnesses. The man would have looked better if it weren't for the dark circles under his eyes and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists.
"Mr. Hogan," said a calm woman. "Are you ready to begin?"
Mr. Hogan tensed again but then relaxed and agreed. Fury watched dispassionately as Hogan and the interrogator went through the standard procedures for a taped interview, and the details of how Hogan first met the person they were called Subject Pythia.
"Can you describe the girl in detail?"
"Yes. Tall, about up to my chin, but she sounded young. I'm guessing she was about 15? Dressed in a dark raincoat over another coat. Or maybe several coats? I don't know. I thought she was homeless because of how she was dressed."
"Did anything else stand out about her appearance?"
"Yeah. She was wearing goggles. But not ski goggles, they were… costume goggles? And she had an ax."
"Can you tell us about the ax?"
"Sure. It was small enough to hold in one hand. Brown handle. I didn't notice any unusual marks or a brand."
"What about the goggles?"
"They were brown? And the lenses were circular."
"Did you see her eyes or hair?"
"No, she was completely covered. Had a balaclava on, one that covered her mouth. Well, aside from a little bit of skin around her nose. Her skin was white, before you ask."
"Thank you. You mentioned that she seemed to have… special abilities?"
"Yes. She moved snow around. And…"
"Yes?"
"Well, when I was first pulled out of the car, I just remembered everyone suddenly going flying. Tony said I probably instinctively shoved everyone away and was too drunk to remember properly. Also… you've read the police reports?"
"I prefer to get the details straight from the source first."
Hogan grimaced on the screen.
"So they found lots of garbage split over the street. The police thought that she ripped open a trash bag and pelted the people attacking us with garbage while we were climbing the fire escape. That's why we didn't get shot. But… when I was talking to her, her gloves seemed clean. And I don't remember her bringing a trash bag up. Or carrying any trash."
"That's a very good point. Anything else you thought was strange?"
"Well… she was very strong? She moved a giant dumpster to block the alley all on her own. And I watched her pull herself up the outside of a fire escape with only her arms."
"Very strong indeed. Now, when you were talking to her: can you tell me what she said?"
"She wrote, she didn't say. But yeah. She said that she didn't want her voice recorded. And when I asked why, she said that someone close to her was kidnapped because they also had powers."
"Someone close to her? Were those her exact words?"
"Something like that? I remember it because I thought it was weird that she didn't say whether they were a friend, a relative, a boyfriend, or something else."
"A boyfriend?"
"Yeah. I think she said that the person she was talking about was a he. But I don't remember exactly."
"You have a very good memory of what happened."
"Yeah."
Hogan rubbed his eyes.
"I kept thinking about it, when we were looking for her afterwards. And recently with Tony…"
"The government is doing everything in it's power to bring him back."
"Yeah, and the police said that they'd do everything in their power to find the people who attacked me. Guess who's still at large?"
"We're not the police, Mr. Hogan."
"Yeah, that's evident."
Hogan sighed again and waved his hand.
"Let's just keep this moving."
"Of course. Did she say anything else?"
"No. I was trying to convince her that she could trust Tony and I when she pulled out the letter."
"Where did she take it from?"
"An inner pocket."
"Of the coat inside or the outside jacket?"
"I don't remember."
"Was the letter in an envelope, or a bag, or anything?"
"No, I think it was just a letter."
"I see. What happened next?"
"I opened the letter and I tried to read it. When I looked up, she was jumping off the roof down onto the fire escape. I ran after her, but she was already on the ground by the time I took my first step on the ladder. I saw her run out of the alley, and that was the last I ever saw her."
Happy sighed again.
"The police followed her footsteps to an alley where the trail ended. Not sure where she went after that."
"Have you had any contact with her or that you think might be from her?"
"No."
Fury tapped the remote. "Those are the important parts."
He turned around.
"As many of you are aware," he said, "Four days ago at 16 o'clock Afghanistan time, 9 o'clock universal time, the convoy escorting Tony Stark in Afghanistan was attacked and Stark kidnapped. The attackers have since identified themselves as members of the Ten Rings.
"What makes this relevant is that the letter Mr. Hogan is talking about in his interview appears to be a Farsight letter warning of the attack."
"But sir," an agent spoke. "Farsight letters have only every been sent to organizations before, and always by mail."
"Correct. That is why we believe Stark and Hogan initially dismissed it, especially since no other letters were sent out."
"Wait," another agent said. "The person or organization sending out the Farsight letters is now using homeless youth to deliver the letters?"
"First," Director Fury said. "They might have always been using homeless people to post the mail. All previous letters were found to have come from the Queens area of New York, so it would not have been difficult for whoever writes the letters to simply pay some homeless people to drop them in a mailbox.
"Secondly, and more importantly, I would like to remind everyone here of an earlier part of the recording, when Mr. Hogan talks about the "powers" of the girl who rescued him, who we have dubbed Subject Pythia.
"The cops, Stark, and Hogan dismissed said powers as the product of mental illness, but the World Security Council suspects otherwise."
"So they think we have a homeless teenager who has the power to move things with her mind running around New York?" asked the first agent.
"Quite possibly yes," said Fury. "But this raises another point. There are now three events that Farsight letters have warned us of: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and now Tony Stark's kidnapping.
"Previously the assumption was that whoever wrote the Farsight letters was a defector from al-Qaeda. The Hurricane Katrina letters were strange, and investigators were split as to whether they were by the same person or another whistleblower who was trying to use the Farsight symbol to get attention. But now we have a third letter.
"So can anyone tell me what kind of person would know all three events and have access to an apparent psychic teenager?"
The agents murmured to each other, then Coulson raised his hand.
"Yes?" Fury asked.
"I feel like there's a specific answer you are looking for," he said.
"Correct." Fury nodded. "The World Security Council's advisors has raised the point that we may be dealing with a genuine precognitive, and I agree it's a possibility."
The room burst into murmurs.
"Precognition? As in seeing the future?" one of the agents said. "I know SHIELD has seen some strange things in its time, but that's a little too much, even for us, right?"
"I'm not so sure," said an older agent. "See if you can take a look at the old SSR files, specifically the ones dealing with Stark Pictures in Los Angelos. Now that was some wild stuff."
"It does fit the facts," mused Coulson. "And it would explain why our paranoid teenager trusts them, if they have powers too."
"It would also explain how Pythia knew about the attack," said Fury. "Especially since no one else did."
An agent raised his hand. "For the sake of being thorough, let's argue against it being a precognitive for now. Is there significant evidence that it is a precognitive?"
"There is not, aside from a lack of evidence, that it could be anyone else," Director Fury said. "That is something that we will need to determine on our own."
"It does bring up an important point," mused another agent. "I've looked into the Farsight letters when I've been bored, and all investigations have focused on people that could have plausibly known about 9/11 or the New Orleans levees being poorly built. But if we are talking about a precognitive, it could have been anyone."
"Could Pythia have been the precognitive?" asked an agent.
"Unlikely," said a formal female agent. "If Mr. Hogan is correct about Subject Pythia's age, she would have been 8 or 9 during 9/11. While half of our science division was doing calculus at that age, that kind of intelligence isn't necessarily the emotional intelligence our precognitive is showing. The combative levels of both trust and paranoia in the government the letters show isn't really something that happens at the age's emotional levels. We either would have been seeing more intense attempts to contact government officials and the tower's residents, or less attempts to tell the government and more attempts to tell media and/or fringe groups."
She glanced up. "Is it possible? Yes. But I'd argue it's very unlikely that Pythia is the writer of the Farsight letters."
"If Mr. Hogan is correct about her age."
She nodded. "If."
"Alright," said Coulson. "Say we're dealing with a precognitive. What are their limits?"
"Well," said an agent. "All letters were sent a few months beforehand. Maybe they can see a few months ahead of time?"
"That's only taking the letters into account," said another agent. "What about knowing about the attack on Mr. Hogan? If our precognitive is so focused on Stark and Hogan, wouldn't they try to warn Mr. Hogan too instead of having Subject Pythia interfere?"
"This might be a question of fate versus free will," said the first agent. "9/11 was planned as far back as 1999, so assuming the future is constantly in flux, I would guess that was fairly easy for a precognitive to see a collection of similar futures and understand the basis of 9/11. Likewise, with Hurricane Katrina, the levees were so poorly built that the next major hurricane would have probably done them in. But the attack on Mr. Hogan was probably fairly spur of the moment, so Pythia and the precognitive wouldn't have gotten a clear idea until a few hours beforehand at most."
"That isn't really how weather works," said one agent. "Hurricanes can form and change directions incredibly fast. But the Farsight Letters were specific that it was Hurricane Katrina that would cause the damage."
"That's assuming that all we know about weather is true. What if Hurricane Katrina wasn't natural?"
"Now you're getting into conspiracy theory territory."
"Agreed," said Director Fury. "The theory about how the precognition works is good though. Is there anything else that we can determine?"
"Whoever our precognitive is? They are both probably American and weirdly focused on Stark," said an agent. "9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were both American problems, whereas non-American issues, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that killed over two hundred thousand people, were not the subject of letters. So it's likely that whoever they are, only know or care about American issues."
He tilted his head. "Stark is an outlier. Which is concerning. Either our precognitive is obsessed with him in the way some people get obsessed with celebrities, or our terrorists have something bad planned for Mr. Stark. Something that would put his capture on the same level as the damage caused by 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina."
There was a pause, and several people shuddered.
"Good point," said Fury. "I'll make sure the relevant people are contacted. Anything else?"
A female agent raised a hand. "It's a bit of a stretch, but I was thinking about how Pythia and the precognitive could have gained their powers, if they have them… and well, do we have any idea what their exact relationship is?"
"We do not," said Fury.
"Then, could they be related? As in, by blood."
An agent leaned forward. "What are you suggesting, exactly?" he asked.
"Well, we're going under the assumption that, despite our incredible surveillance methods, there are at least two, probably three superpowered individuals that have flown under our radar but managed to find each other. That seems a little crazy to me, but if they were related, it would make sense."
"But wouldn't we have still found them? If there's a family of people with superpowers, at least one would have felt the need to show them off, if only to get the Randi Million-dollar prize," an agent said as he stared at the papers he'd been given.
"That's assuming that everyone in the family had powers," pointed out the first agent. "And that those powers were both powerful enough to really affect things and had visible effects. Also, didn't we have a Satanic panic in the 80s? Oh and the Red Scares. If you think about it, every few decades America has a big cultural movement that goes after people who are "different". That's more than enough to convince a few people with powers in each generation, especially those with less powerful powers, to hide them and tell their family members to do the same."
"And if they are family, they would both be extremely protective of each other and willing to help each other out," an agent said, nodding.
"Okay," said Fury. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Those are some good ideas, but we don't know for certain. I'd also like to remind people that if Pythia is telling the truth, there is either a person or group who was willing and able to kidnap someone because they had powers." He took a breath.
"The World Security Council has declared finding and recruiting the Farsight precognitive to be our top priority for this investigation, with finding and recruiting Subject Pythia to be a secondary objective. I am adding investigating the possible kidnapping to our objectives as well. Information on the particulars will be restricted to security level 5, with general information to be distributed on an as-needed basis. You will receive assignments within the week. Any questions?" he paused, then nodded. "Meeting adjourned."
…
[February 12th, SHIELD Headquarters, unnamed cubicle]
SHIELD agent John Wickers stretched his arms over his head and groaned. For some reason after Tony Stark's kidnapping the brass had all gotten bees in their bonnets about every single goddamn kidnapping that had happened in the East Coast, like ever. And as a newly appointed level 3 agent, and thus the newest agent to have access to more confidential data, he was the peon working late at night categorizing the more classified missing persons reports.
Ugh. Five more and he'd take a break.
He pulled up the next file when a note from his boss popped up. John glanced at it. Huh, apparently his boss would like this one file categorized as "not relevant" instead of something to be looked over a second time. Something about not traumatizing the family even more.
John navigated to the file, the case of a boy named "Tom Sawford" who'd officially gone missing August 2005, but had actually been taken into protective custody by SHIELD.
He winced as he read about what had happened. Apparently, the boy had been exposed to cosmic radiation during a meteor shower while he was at Boy Scout camp and had developed minor telekinesis afterwards. But something about either the event or the powers had caused a psychotic break, and he had to be removed from his family for everyone's safety. The removal had triggered a nervous breakdown from his mother, and eventually led to his parents' divorce.
It was a messy affair all the way around, and John's heart ached for the boy pictured in the file. Poor kid.
Making sure everything was in order, John checked the rest of the file. It looked like SHIELD was keeping an eye on his remaining family, to make sure that none of them developed powers and that they were all as safe as they could be. That was good.
John happily marked the file as "not relevant" and moved on to the next file. As he did so, he thought about the boy from the file.
It was somewhat terrifying being a SHIELD agent and knowing there were all those horrible events that could happen to innocent little children like that. But John was glad that he could protect the world in what little way he could. He just wished he could do more.
His boss had mentioned something like that, earlier. Something about having more control, to be able to protect people better. John knew that his boss sometimes met up with others, making plans to try and do more.
Maybe he should take him up on his offer to join in.
...
AN: Yeah, John's boss is Hydra. That's one of the ways Hydra recruits people; by showing them horrible truths and telling them the only way to stop them is by having more control.
And before anyone asks, Tony did make a cursory attempt to find Happy's mysterious savior, mainly by contacting all the homeless shelters looking for her and then asking them to keep an eye out. Aside from that, it's literally been only a month so he never went into anything more intensive.
Also! Mini win for me. With this chapter, my word count is now longer than the first Harry Potter book, which has been one of my personal goals, so I'm really happy. Hope you enjoy!
[February 8th, SHIELD Headquarters, Conference Room]
Director Fury watched as the last person entered the room, and the doors were locked. Then he cleared his throat.
Everyone turned to look at him and the meeting began.
"As of one hour ago, SHIELD has been officially granted a new case," Fury said, as his agents passed down the stack of folders.
"The Farsight case?" asked one of them as he looked through the files. "I thought that was the Pentagon's."
"It was. And now it's ours, courtesy the World Security Council and one Mr. Happy Hogan."
Fury tapped his remote and turned around to look at the screen behind him. On the screen, a rather large, strong looking man was sitting at an interrogation table, one of the nicer ones reserved for important witnesses. The man would have looked better if it weren't for the dark circles under his eyes and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists.
"Mr. Hogan," said a calm woman. "Are you ready to begin?"
Mr. Hogan tensed again but then relaxed and agreed. Fury watched dispassionately as Hogan and the interrogator went through the standard procedures for a taped interview, and the details of how Hogan first met the person they were called Subject Pythia.
"Can you describe the girl in detail?"
"Yes. Tall, about up to my chin, but she sounded young. I'm guessing she was about 15? Dressed in a dark raincoat over another coat. Or maybe several coats? I don't know. I thought she was homeless because of how she was dressed."
"Did anything else stand out about her appearance?"
"Yeah. She was wearing goggles. But not ski goggles, they were… costume goggles? And she had an ax."
"Can you tell us about the ax?"
"Sure. It was small enough to hold in one hand. Brown handle. I didn't notice any unusual marks or a brand."
"What about the goggles?"
"They were brown? And the lenses were circular."
"Did you see her eyes or hair?"
"No, she was completely covered. Had a balaclava on, one that covered her mouth. Well, aside from a little bit of skin around her nose. Her skin was white, before you ask."
"Thank you. You mentioned that she seemed to have… special abilities?"
"Yes. She moved snow around. And…"
"Yes?"
"Well, when I was first pulled out of the car, I just remembered everyone suddenly going flying. Tony said I probably instinctively shoved everyone away and was too drunk to remember properly. Also… you've read the police reports?"
"I prefer to get the details straight from the source first."
Hogan grimaced on the screen.
"So they found lots of garbage split over the street. The police thought that she ripped open a trash bag and pelted the people attacking us with garbage while we were climbing the fire escape. That's why we didn't get shot. But… when I was talking to her, her gloves seemed clean. And I don't remember her bringing a trash bag up. Or carrying any trash."
"That's a very good point. Anything else you thought was strange?"
"Well… she was very strong? She moved a giant dumpster to block the alley all on her own. And I watched her pull herself up the outside of a fire escape with only her arms."
"Very strong indeed. Now, when you were talking to her: can you tell me what she said?"
"She wrote, she didn't say. But yeah. She said that she didn't want her voice recorded. And when I asked why, she said that someone close to her was kidnapped because they also had powers."
"Someone close to her? Were those her exact words?"
"Something like that? I remember it because I thought it was weird that she didn't say whether they were a friend, a relative, a boyfriend, or something else."
"A boyfriend?"
"Yeah. I think she said that the person she was talking about was a he. But I don't remember exactly."
"You have a very good memory of what happened."
"Yeah."
Hogan rubbed his eyes.
"I kept thinking about it, when we were looking for her afterwards. And recently with Tony…"
"The government is doing everything in it's power to bring him back."
"Yeah, and the police said that they'd do everything in their power to find the people who attacked me. Guess who's still at large?"
"We're not the police, Mr. Hogan."
"Yeah, that's evident."
Hogan sighed again and waved his hand.
"Let's just keep this moving."
"Of course. Did she say anything else?"
"No. I was trying to convince her that she could trust Tony and I when she pulled out the letter."
"Where did she take it from?"
"An inner pocket."
"Of the coat inside or the outside jacket?"
"I don't remember."
"Was the letter in an envelope, or a bag, or anything?"
"No, I think it was just a letter."
"I see. What happened next?"
"I opened the letter and I tried to read it. When I looked up, she was jumping off the roof down onto the fire escape. I ran after her, but she was already on the ground by the time I took my first step on the ladder. I saw her run out of the alley, and that was the last I ever saw her."
Happy sighed again.
"The police followed her footsteps to an alley where the trail ended. Not sure where she went after that."
"Have you had any contact with her or that you think might be from her?"
"No."
Fury tapped the remote. "Those are the important parts."
He turned around.
"As many of you are aware," he said, "Four days ago at 16 o'clock Afghanistan time, 9 o'clock universal time, the convoy escorting Tony Stark in Afghanistan was attacked and Stark kidnapped. The attackers have since identified themselves as members of the Ten Rings.
"What makes this relevant is that the letter Mr. Hogan is talking about in his interview appears to be a Farsight letter warning of the attack."
"But sir," an agent spoke. "Farsight letters have only every been sent to organizations before, and always by mail."
"Correct. That is why we believe Stark and Hogan initially dismissed it, especially since no other letters were sent out."
"Wait," another agent said. "The person or organization sending out the Farsight letters is now using homeless youth to deliver the letters?"
"First," Director Fury said. "They might have always been using homeless people to post the mail. All previous letters were found to have come from the Queens area of New York, so it would not have been difficult for whoever writes the letters to simply pay some homeless people to drop them in a mailbox.
"Secondly, and more importantly, I would like to remind everyone here of an earlier part of the recording, when Mr. Hogan talks about the "powers" of the girl who rescued him, who we have dubbed Subject Pythia.
"The cops, Stark, and Hogan dismissed said powers as the product of mental illness, but the World Security Council suspects otherwise."
"So they think we have a homeless teenager who has the power to move things with her mind running around New York?" asked the first agent.
"Quite possibly yes," said Fury. "But this raises another point. There are now three events that Farsight letters have warned us of: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and now Tony Stark's kidnapping.
"Previously the assumption was that whoever wrote the Farsight letters was a defector from al-Qaeda. The Hurricane Katrina letters were strange, and investigators were split as to whether they were by the same person or another whistleblower who was trying to use the Farsight symbol to get attention. But now we have a third letter.
"So can anyone tell me what kind of person would know all three events and have access to an apparent psychic teenager?"
The agents murmured to each other, then Coulson raised his hand.
"Yes?" Fury asked.
"I feel like there's a specific answer you are looking for," he said.
"Correct." Fury nodded. "The World Security Council's advisors has raised the point that we may be dealing with a genuine precognitive, and I agree it's a possibility."
The room burst into murmurs.
"Precognition? As in seeing the future?" one of the agents said. "I know SHIELD has seen some strange things in its time, but that's a little too much, even for us, right?"
"I'm not so sure," said an older agent. "See if you can take a look at the old SSR files, specifically the ones dealing with Stark Pictures in Los Angelos. Now that was some wild stuff."
"It does fit the facts," mused Coulson. "And it would explain why our paranoid teenager trusts them, if they have powers too."
"It would also explain how Pythia knew about the attack," said Fury. "Especially since no one else did."
An agent raised his hand. "For the sake of being thorough, let's argue against it being a precognitive for now. Is there significant evidence that it is a precognitive?"
"There is not, aside from a lack of evidence, that it could be anyone else," Director Fury said. "That is something that we will need to determine on our own."
"It does bring up an important point," mused another agent. "I've looked into the Farsight letters when I've been bored, and all investigations have focused on people that could have plausibly known about 9/11 or the New Orleans levees being poorly built. But if we are talking about a precognitive, it could have been anyone."
"Could Pythia have been the precognitive?" asked an agent.
"Unlikely," said a formal female agent. "If Mr. Hogan is correct about Subject Pythia's age, she would have been 8 or 9 during 9/11. While half of our science division was doing calculus at that age, that kind of intelligence isn't necessarily the emotional intelligence our precognitive is showing. The combative levels of both trust and paranoia in the government the letters show isn't really something that happens at the age's emotional levels. We either would have been seeing more intense attempts to contact government officials and the tower's residents, or less attempts to tell the government and more attempts to tell media and/or fringe groups."
She glanced up. "Is it possible? Yes. But I'd argue it's very unlikely that Pythia is the writer of the Farsight letters."
"If Mr. Hogan is correct about her age."
She nodded. "If."
"Alright," said Coulson. "Say we're dealing with a precognitive. What are their limits?"
"Well," said an agent. "All letters were sent a few months beforehand. Maybe they can see a few months ahead of time?"
"That's only taking the letters into account," said another agent. "What about knowing about the attack on Mr. Hogan? If our precognitive is so focused on Stark and Hogan, wouldn't they try to warn Mr. Hogan too instead of having Subject Pythia interfere?"
"This might be a question of fate versus free will," said the first agent. "9/11 was planned as far back as 1999, so assuming the future is constantly in flux, I would guess that was fairly easy for a precognitive to see a collection of similar futures and understand the basis of 9/11. Likewise, with Hurricane Katrina, the levees were so poorly built that the next major hurricane would have probably done them in. But the attack on Mr. Hogan was probably fairly spur of the moment, so Pythia and the precognitive wouldn't have gotten a clear idea until a few hours beforehand at most."
"That isn't really how weather works," said one agent. "Hurricanes can form and change directions incredibly fast. But the Farsight Letters were specific that it was Hurricane Katrina that would cause the damage."
"That's assuming that all we know about weather is true. What if Hurricane Katrina wasn't natural?"
"Now you're getting into conspiracy theory territory."
"Agreed," said Director Fury. "The theory about how the precognition works is good though. Is there anything else that we can determine?"
"Whoever our precognitive is? They are both probably American and weirdly focused on Stark," said an agent. "9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were both American problems, whereas non-American issues, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that killed over two hundred thousand people, were not the subject of letters. So it's likely that whoever they are, only know or care about American issues."
He tilted his head. "Stark is an outlier. Which is concerning. Either our precognitive is obsessed with him in the way some people get obsessed with celebrities, or our terrorists have something bad planned for Mr. Stark. Something that would put his capture on the same level as the damage caused by 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina."
There was a pause, and several people shuddered.
"Good point," said Fury. "I'll make sure the relevant people are contacted. Anything else?"
A female agent raised a hand. "It's a bit of a stretch, but I was thinking about how Pythia and the precognitive could have gained their powers, if they have them… and well, do we have any idea what their exact relationship is?"
"We do not," said Fury.
"Then, could they be related? As in, by blood."
An agent leaned forward. "What are you suggesting, exactly?" he asked.
"Well, we're going under the assumption that, despite our incredible surveillance methods, there are at least two, probably three superpowered individuals that have flown under our radar but managed to find each other. That seems a little crazy to me, but if they were related, it would make sense."
"But wouldn't we have still found them? If there's a family of people with superpowers, at least one would have felt the need to show them off, if only to get the Randi Million-dollar prize," an agent said as he stared at the papers he'd been given.
"That's assuming that everyone in the family had powers," pointed out the first agent. "And that those powers were both powerful enough to really affect things and had visible effects. Also, didn't we have a Satanic panic in the 80s? Oh and the Red Scares. If you think about it, every few decades America has a big cultural movement that goes after people who are "different". That's more than enough to convince a few people with powers in each generation, especially those with less powerful powers, to hide them and tell their family members to do the same."
"And if they are family, they would both be extremely protective of each other and willing to help each other out," an agent said, nodding.
"Okay," said Fury. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Those are some good ideas, but we don't know for certain. I'd also like to remind people that if Pythia is telling the truth, there is either a person or group who was willing and able to kidnap someone because they had powers." He took a breath.
"The World Security Council has declared finding and recruiting the Farsight precognitive to be our top priority for this investigation, with finding and recruiting Subject Pythia to be a secondary objective. I am adding investigating the possible kidnapping to our objectives as well. Information on the particulars will be restricted to security level 5, with general information to be distributed on an as-needed basis. You will receive assignments within the week. Any questions?" he paused, then nodded. "Meeting adjourned."
…
[February 12th, SHIELD Headquarters, unnamed cubicle]
SHIELD agent John Wickers stretched his arms over his head and groaned. For some reason after Tony Stark's kidnapping the brass had all gotten bees in their bonnets about every single goddamn kidnapping that had happened in the East Coast, like ever. And as a newly appointed level 3 agent, and thus the newest agent to have access to more confidential data, he was the peon working late at night categorizing the more classified missing persons reports.
Ugh. Five more and he'd take a break.
He pulled up the next file when a note from his boss popped up. John glanced at it. Huh, apparently his boss would like this one file categorized as "not relevant" instead of something to be looked over a second time. Something about not traumatizing the family even more.
John navigated to the file, the case of a boy named "Tom Sawford" who'd officially gone missing August 2005, but had actually been taken into protective custody by SHIELD.
He winced as he read about what had happened. Apparently, the boy had been exposed to cosmic radiation during a meteor shower while he was at Boy Scout camp and had developed minor telekinesis afterwards. But something about either the event or the powers had caused a psychotic break, and he had to be removed from his family for everyone's safety. The removal had triggered a nervous breakdown from his mother, and eventually led to his parents' divorce.
It was a messy affair all the way around, and John's heart ached for the boy pictured in the file. Poor kid.
Making sure everything was in order, John checked the rest of the file. It looked like SHIELD was keeping an eye on his remaining family, to make sure that none of them developed powers and that they were all as safe as they could be. That was good.
John happily marked the file as "not relevant" and moved on to the next file. As he did so, he thought about the boy from the file.
It was somewhat terrifying being a SHIELD agent and knowing there were all those horrible events that could happen to innocent little children like that. But John was glad that he could protect the world in what little way he could. He just wished he could do more.
His boss had mentioned something like that, earlier. Something about having more control, to be able to protect people better. John knew that his boss sometimes met up with others, making plans to try and do more.
Maybe he should take him up on his offer to join in.
...
AN: Yeah, John's boss is Hydra. That's one of the ways Hydra recruits people; by showing them horrible truths and telling them the only way to stop them is by having more control.
And before anyone asks, Tony did make a cursory attempt to find Happy's mysterious savior, mainly by contacting all the homeless shelters looking for her and then asking them to keep an eye out. Aside from that, it's literally been only a month so he never went into anything more intensive.
Also! Mini win for me. With this chapter, my word count is now longer than the first Harry Potter book, which has been one of my personal goals, so I'm really happy. Hope you enjoy!
