Metallic Hearts {Metallic Charms Book #2}

Chapter 1: Explanations

Chapter 1: Explanations

~~~~~~~~~~~{Third Person}~~~~~~~~~~~

"Director Fury," Bruce jogged to catch up with the director as he stepped out onto the bridge. Steve was sitting in the chair and so was Tony, Clint and Natasha. The only people missing were Thor and Noel. Thor was back in Asgard, dealing with Loki while Noel was still stuck in her coma. It'd been five weeks now and she'd shown no signs of waking up anytime soon.

Bruce was now in charge of her since he was doing a better job than any of the other doctors had been doing. He'd been doing daily blood tests and he'd just completed synthesizing and testing today's blood. He'd found something strange.  

Very strange.

"Yes, Doctor?" Fury asked, turning his head.  

"I have news on Noel." He said and Steve looked up excitedly,  

"Is she awake?" He asked. Steve had been dealing with the loss of Noel surprisingly well, everyone knew that he and Noel had had something going on, but she'd chosen Tony over him. They were still friends, best friends actually, when Noel hadn't been with Tony you could almost be sure that she was hanging around with Steve.

Tony hadn't taken it nearly as well as Steve. He'd been quiet and brooding, but other times he acted as if nothing were wrong and seemed that he was dealing, but then you'd find him sitting next to Noel as she slept, close to tears before throwing himself into some kind of work that he kept secret. Director Fury had had to resort to ordering him back to Stark Industries unless he was called aboard the hellicarrier. That had been three weeks ago, and today was the first time anyone had seen Tony in three weeks.

"No, I'm afraid not. But I found something strange in her blood work today." Bruce pulled out the lab results. There was a high trace of something unknown in the sample. "None of the lab technicians knew what it was but I took my own sample and synthesized it, when the two parts separated I did some more testing." Bruce hesitated.  

"Do you know what it is, Bruce?" Tony asked, speaking up for the first time.  

"Can we help her?" Clint said over the top of him. No one really knew how Clint was going. He dodged the subject and masked everything he felt, but inside he was breaking, shattering like a piece of glass. Noel was the last person he hand left.

"That's the thing, Clint. I don't know. What I found...it's not...I'm almost sure it's a mistake." Bruce stumbled over his words.  

"What did you find?" Natasha asked.  

"Metal. Well, the anti-metal actually." Bruce admitted. Everyone on the table seemed confused by what he meant. No one knew what an anti-metal was, but Tony did.  

"Wait a second." Tony spoke and everyone shut up, "Are you telling me that Noel has vibranium in her blood?"  

"Yes." Bruce sighed.  

"Vibranium? That's the stuff my shield is made out of, right?" Steve said,  

"Yeah." Tony replied, getting out of his chair, "So what the hell is it doing in Noel's body?"

Tony couldn't help but notice how quiet Nick Fury had been this entire time. He'd barely said a thing and his face was unreadable. But Tony had a hunch that he knew something none of the others knew about.

"Fury. Do you know anything?" Steve seemed to be on the same wave length as Tony.  

Nick sighed and shifted on his feet nervously. That wasn't like him at all, Nick Fury didn't get anxious or nervous.  

"Nick." Tony said warningly.  

"Yes, I do know something." Fury said and continued on before anyone asked him to, "Most people say that the second World War advanced the world's technology twenty years ahead of its time. And that's true, but Project Rebirth was supposed to advance it a hundred years or so -and it would have, if it weren't for the murder of Professor Erskine. After the war ended, Howard Stark started trying to replicate the formula used on Steve Rogers. It took him years, but in the late 80's he did it. He successfully made a formula using vibranium."  

Fury paused, thinking carefully about how he had to phrase the next section of what he had to say. It was going to be hard for some of them to hear, especially for Clint Barton, but they needed to know the whole story.

"Within the next few years of him creating the formula, Howard started to look for people to test his serum out on. He looked outside of the army and towards S.H.I.E.L.D and one family in particular. The Bartons were very involved with Project Rebirth 2.0 and so when Howard approached Karen and Leonard about test subjects they agreed, but they didn't want it to be their son-" Clint flinched as he realised what Nick Fury was saying, "-that had to be the test subject. Instead, the adopted Noel and after her first injection of the serum we noticed some side-effects. The serum was taking over faster than we thought it would and we didn't want a child being involved in this, and so, reluctantly, we lied to her."

Tony glared at Fury, "So Syntheosis Vasmelra doesn't exist." 

"No. We told Noel she had the disease so she wouldn't get suspicious about her having to have needles all the time." Fury said, "I'm not proud of it."

Clint was the first to really snap.  

"You lied to her! You made her think she was dying all for nothing!" Clint jumped out of his chair. Natasha tried to calm him down by taking his hand in hers but he shrugged her off as if she were a pesky fly. "What kind of sick, twisted bastard does that?"  

Fury tried to reason with him. "Agent Barton, I understand you're upset but you have to understand."  

"Upset? I'm fucking furious, Nick!" Clint roared, slamming his fists down on the table while the others just stared in shock. "Words cannot fucking describe how much I loathe you right now."  

Clint left, storming out of the room with Natasha hot on his tale, but not before she glared at Fury.

Steve didn't say anything but he left the room, shaking his head in disappointment.  

The rest of the team was in shock, no one quite knew what to say. Everyone else left except for Dr. Banner. He didn't look angry or even the slightest bit pissed off, instead he looked worried.

"Director," He started, "If that metal is in her body for much longer, she might not make it."  

"I know, Banner." Fury sighed, "When we gave her the first injection we discovered that there were ...complications."  

"What type of complications?" Banner frowned,  

"The metal wanted to take over her entire body. It started eating away at her muscles and bones." The Director explained, "We didn't know what to do so we decided to stop it. On the fifth of every month, she'd have an injection of the serum and then twenty days later, she'd have an injection of the reversal serum. It didn't get rid of the anti-metal but it kept the symptoms at bay until we could find a way to stabilize the effects."  

"What happens if the effects don't stabilize?" Banner asked.  

Fury took a deep breath and stared the doctor in the eyes, "We don't know."

* * *  

Authors Note: so....yeah....I have really nothing to say after that bombshell.... 

So....opinions? Questions?  

Do you think Noel's gonna wake up?

Until the next upload! Comment, vote, like!  

*huggles* arielleblack