Summers' Purpose

Chapter 18

The jet safely landed at the Avengers compound. Natasha had called in beforehand to ask Helen to prep the med bay. Helen waited nervously, unsure what to expect after the call ended. It seemed like she was urgently needed, but Natasha won't elaborate further. She looked at her phone, the numbers 4.47 am staring back at her. She leaned on a counter, yawning as sleep slowly tempted her once again.

She dozed off for a little before she was woken up by shuffling footsteps that approached the med bay. She straightened herself, watching as Steve carried what seems to be a large bundle of blankets in his arms inside. When she looked more closely, she realized that there was a person in the blankets; someone she didn't recognize. Steve walked towards the examination table, gently placing the stranger on it. Wanda and Natasha greeted her as they rushed in the med room as well, followed by Vision.

"Good morning, team. Who do we have here?" she asked as she approached the examination table, pulling the blanket back from the stranger's face. It was a woman, her skin and lips pale with a tinge of blue under the light.

"We found her in the snow Doc, God knows how long she's been lying there," Steve said, stepping back to let Helen take a closer look at the young woman. She hurriedly checked her pulse, noting how low it is.

"She's hypothermic. How was she when you found her?"

"She wasn't moving, pulse was low. Pupils were dilated by then. We removed her wet clothes, tried to warm her up. That's the best we could do on our way here," Natasha explained as she watched Helen asked Vision to help get a heated blanket from storage. He disappeared through the walls soon after, Helen now checking the woman's temperature.

"84.2 degrees. Her core temp's very low." Helen shook her head, her face deathly serious as she prepped the young woman for IV therapy.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Wanda asked, her voice almost too small to be heard. She winced when she watched the needle enter the young woman's skin.

"I can't promise anything, to be honest. I have to warm her up and stabilize her condition soon, or we could very well lose her."

Steve and Natasha sighed worriedly as Wanda took a moment to understand what was going on. Vision came in, quickly handing over the heated blanket. Helen replaced the damp blankets with it, draping it carefully over the young woman. She decided to give her some heated and humidified oxygen as well to improve her chances of recovering.

The four of them stood aside to let Helen work on the woman. Each of them has questions that they'd like to ask, but instead they stood in silence together. Steve decided to gather them in the meeting room to discuss what happened, quickly letting Helen know where to find them before they left the med bay. Helen nodded, saying she will update them if anything.

The four of them took a seat at the large table, faces apprehensive about what happened for different reasons. Steve was the first to speak up, noting how the rest were still unsure where to start.

"It seems that this woman is wanted by HYDRA for some reason. Could you help elaborate on that, Wanda? What did you manage to get from her?"

Wanda sat quietly in thought for a few seconds before replying. Her eyebrows scrunched as she tried to recall what she saw.

"I think she was captured by them. I saw her being brought to a... a lab. That's where they did something to her," Wanda thought of the painful sensation she felt around her neck earlier, "They hurt her for some reason. I think they shocked her. Then this old man took her blood. I—that's mostly what I saw."

"And she retaliated by blowing them all up? Did you see that happening when you were in her head?" Steve asked, worry creeping onto his facial features.