Agent Raven of S.H.I.E.L.D. (COMPLETE)

Watch List

"I was wondering when you were going to call back."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been busy for the past couple of days," I retorted, sitting cross-legged in front of my laptop on my bed. "If you wanted a response within one to two business days, you should have called the front office."

Sam snorted, and I imagined he was probably rolling his eyes. "No thanks. I'd rather go directly through someone I trust. How you doin'?"

Glancing at my leg, I decided it was better if I didn't go into details. "Trying to recover after the mess in Washington. I assume you saw what happened?"

"I saw what I was allowed to see," he pointed out, "which wasn't much. I'm glad you didn't get hurt, though."

Ironic as it was, I decided not to correct Sam's belief. "Don't worry about me. I'm more interested in your friend, Antonio. Can you give me a minute to run a search on him?"

"Sure, do your thing," he told me, and I found Sergeant Antonio Hernandez in our database again. This time, though, I intended to be a bit more thorough with the search.

"Alright, I've got everything in our system. What were you saying last time we called?"

"You're alone, right?"

"Just you and me and the fly on the wall."

He sighed, probably thinking about where he wanted to start. "Antonio's a good kid, he's not the type of person to hurt anyone, but he got roped into some nasty stuff while he was deployed. Not his fault, by any means, but from what he's told me, it wasn't good."

While he was deployed, huh? I pulled up his army records and skimmed them quickly. "He completed basic training a year after the Infinity War. Stationed in Korea for about two... almost two years before he was taken prisoner for about a month. The Army launched a rescue mission and recovered him, but he was discharged when he got back."

"Yeah. Does it say why on there?"

"Hang on, I'm looking..." I had to scroll down a few pages to find it. "Metal hands FUSED onto his wrists?"

Sam snorted into the phone. "That's the least of it. What else is there?"

Exiting out, I looked over the other documents and found an evaluation from two years ago. That looked like what I needed, so I opened it. "Paraphrasing a psych eval from 2021: extreme PTSD and other trauma responses, claims to have undergone experimentation while a prisoner of war. The results of the experimentation inconclusive, was assigned therapy for six months. I'm guessing that's how you met him?"

"Bingo," he affirmed. "I gotta be honest, even though he's recovered since then, we never figured out exactly what they did to him."

"Other than blunt trauma to the chest?"

"Actually, that was something else. Hernandez was in a military vehicle, and they hit a mine. The truck flipped, and the engine blew."

"That still sounds like the Koreans were responsible for it."

"But he wasn't taken prisoner until they found him afterward."

Okay, fine, but the damage was from the Koreans. "Let me just..."

While I got to work, I guess I left Sam hanging. He couldn't see my screen, after all. "Just what?"

"I'm digging into U.S. military files. I want to know more about that rescue operation."

A moment of silence followed. "You can do that?"

"Yep."

"How?"