Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Fifty-Six: Employment

The wooden floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I entered, the nails flexing where they were jammed into their sockets, rusted. A general stench of sweat hung in the balmy air, warm from the inhabitants.

Beyond a veneer or windows was a track; even in the frigid tempest, being weathered by the wind and blinded by the barrage of rain, the resilient recruits ran laps on the tarmac. Some retired, sopping wet with both rain and perspiration, taking refuge within the walls of the accommodation.

"Not much to see here," Maria said with disinterest as she started towards the next stop on the tour.

Far from the masochistic conditions of the gym, we reached a lecture hall: the chalkboard smudged with a white residue of lessons learned, scratched in places and, still marked with jagged vestiges of letters that had eluded the eraser. Rows of bleachers filled the auditorium on a gradual incline, orbiting the central focus of the teacher's podium where a lectern resided. The room was musty, evidently the oldest building on the campus; a sense of history lingered in the wear and tear of the room: the scraped desks - some with etchings of names and dates - with their chipped varnish, the torn fabric of the seats where foam bled from the punctures, and the peeling pain from the cornflour beige walls.

Maria flicked off the tarnished brass lightswitch as we exited the room and headed for our final destination.

"You hungry?" She chirped as we headed to by far the most interesting stop on the excursion.

The canteen was buzzing with agents, clothed identically like a hive. They milled about in a military fashion, queueing with their trays of plates, cups, and cutlery. Everyone was served selfsame meals: a healthy helping of vegetables, balanced with a slab of meat, and supplemented with a nondescript condiment.

Maria forced a tray into my hands and cued for me to queue behind her. In turn, I received my meal and we settled on a bench at the mess table.

"So, Clint Barton, tell me about you. Where're you from?" Maria asked, chasing her peas around the plate as they thwarted her attempts to spear them on her fork.

"Some titchy town out in Iowa," I mumbled, shovelling the food into my mouth - the most balanced and delectable looking meal I'd seen in months. Pizza was great, sure, but after a while, stringy cheese and oil doesn't do you much good and the novelty wears off. No offence to Kate - I love her, really I do - but her homecooked meals were more like homeburnt meals. "Doubt you've heard of it. You?"

"Chicago," she said curtly. "I didn't realise they were enrolling out there." She managed to scoop a forkful of peas into her mouth.

"They're not," I spoke around a mouthful of roast beef. "But I found myself in NYC as of lately."

Maria followed her greens down with a swig of milk. "Great, isn't it? So how'd you end up here?" She quirked a finely plucked eyebrow. "It's not every day Nick Fury makes house calls." Her eyes traipsed up and down my scrawny figure.

"I got myself into... Uh..." I stabbed a punch of honey-glazed carrots onto my fork. "...A spot of bother." I popped them into my mouth and gave a satisfied hum. "With the police," I added as an afterthought.

Her eyes bloomed wide in her face and an expression of shock blossomed on her features. "What did you do?" She hissed, keeping the conversation quiet between us.

I chuckled, a droplet of gravy dribbling from the corner of my mouth as I did so. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I spoke, swiping the gravy up with my fingertip and animalistically lapping it clean.