New Recruit

I Need To Tell You Something (Chapter 63)

*Y/N*

"When you told me you were getting your PhD and working in a lab, I definitely didn't expect this."

Y/n and Gwen walk further into the communal lab area as Gwen points out the different lab benches and equipment, explaining to them the layout of the lab and the different scientists who work here. The lab itself has multiple floors but the main floor, known as the central hub, is home to the PhD students and their work. Lightly dragging you to her small office area since you got stuck staring at a hologram of DNA replicating and mutating at rapid speed, Gwen ushers you inside before handing you a lab coat.

"If you're this blown away by the PhD student section of the lab, I'm not sure you will be able to contain yourself if I take you to the main floors of this place. This is like the basement compared to the rest of the lab areas."

"I just can't believe this place. I thought the lab back at the Tower was something, but this blows our lab out of the water. I'm going to have to tell Tony to step up his game." You continue gazing out of the window in her office, completely missing Gwen's utterly confused state at your slip.

"What do you mean 'Tower'? I thought you worked as a PI, not in a lab? I'm pretty sure you told me explicitly you actually hate spending too much time in labs."

Ok just hear me out right now. I didn't lie to the girl, I just omitted some of the truth.

I mean, what was I supposed to say? Oh hi, my name is y/n and I am sort of an Avenger? Yes, I do in fact have powers. Want to watch me jump from a building and land on my feet? How about I crush this car with my hands?

No. I wasn't going to say all of that. So I told her enough of the truth. She knows about my educational history and she knows I decided to be a PI instead of working in a lab because I wanted to help people in a more hands-on type of way.

So I didn't lie, I just didn't tell the whole truth.

"I am a PI and I do hate spending an extended amount of time in labs. I find it boring honestly, but I doubt I would find this place boring. It's seriously amazing." You continue to gawk out of the window, just taking it all in.

"Ok nerd." Gwen makes her way toward the door to head out of her office and to the side room that houses all of her materials and ongoing experiments. "We can just ignore that 'lab back in the tower' comment for now, but we will come back to it later." You gulp at her words, not sure what you are going to tell her. It's not a surprise she didn't immediately peg the three of you as 'superheros'. Yelena has only been in the country for less than a full year at this point, and blowing up the Red Room didn't get as much news coverage as one would think. Yourself and Kate are fairly new to the game and have only been on a few lowkey missions that never resulted in media attention.

I feel like I could trust her. She doesn't seem like an evil genius or someone that's trying to get close to me to take out the Avengers.... Right?

"This is my little area." Gwen gestures to the small room that is covered in whiteboards that contain an endless amount of scribbling and formulas, an empty lab bench that you assume is cleared off to do prep work, and two other lab benches that hold every type of machine she needs to run her experiments. She also has a microscope that can project holograms just like the one in the Tower.

You slowly walk around the room, reading all the writing on the walls, picking up a few papers and glancing at her work, doing your best to take it all in. "You really downplayed how smart you actually are. This is all really incredible." You stop in front of a board that has a drawing of DNA strands splitting and being reattached to new, foreign, RNA strands. Walking closer you notice the RNA strands that are binding to the DNA contain unknown base pairs that seem to be able to bind to the DNA strand. Usually a DNA strand can only bind to an RNA strand that has the correct base pairs on it, but in Gwen's work it seems her goal is to get her experimental RNA strand to bind to a DNA strand regardless of the matching base pair rule. Before you can ask Gwen to explain her findings the door to her lab room opens revealing a taller man with glasses.