Space Between Us

Tracking A Magic Box

"Iridium, what do they need Iridium for?" 

It was a rhetorical question, a thought spoken out loud, but Tony Stark answered it as he walked in, "It's a stabilizing agent." He patted Thor's arm as he walked past, "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing." He looked back to Bruce, "Also, it means the portal can open as wide as, and as long as, Loki wants." He walked over to Fury's desk, looking at the screens with a hand over his eye, "How does Fury see this." 

Agent Hill crossed her arms, "He turns." 

Stark shakes his head and walks away from the desk, "Sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials Agent Barton the senior can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube." 

Agent Hill gave Tony a curious look, though the emotion was barely detectable, "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" 

The billionaire glanced at her, "Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" Mor had read through the papers, finding it a rather fascinating theory the doctor had written about, but no one thought she would understand it- if they did she would have been assigned to work on the cube as well. 

Steve looked in between Bruce and Tony, "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

 Mor cut in, drawing stares from the group, "He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." 

"Hell, when did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill gave her a 'what the actual f*ck look', along with a few others.

She smirked in the older agents direction, "I had to do something when I was on bed rest." 

Nat raised an eyebrow at her, "What happened to Netflix?" 

She fake-pouted a little, a mischievous gleam in her eyes, "I may have watched everything interesting on there." 

Tony clapped his hands loudly, drawing their attention, and he looked at Mor, "Unless he figured out a way to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Realization slapped her- it would explain why the doctor was spending more time making notes and experimenting. 

Bruce jumped back in, "Well, if he could achieve do that he could achieve heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet." 

Stark beamed at them and a look of relief flickered over his face, "Finally, people who speak English!" 

Steve looked at her in slight awe and major confusion, "Is that what just happened?" She was about to answer but she was interrupted by a hand being offered to her. 

Hesitantly she shook her former fathers hand, "I didn't peg you as a science nerd, Agent Barton." 

Her face was indifferent as she shrugged, taking her hand out of the shake, "And I didn't peg you as one to settle for one woman, but I guess we both learnt something." Nat, Maria, Bruce and Steve barely contained a laugh- Tony didn't find it as amusing, obviously.

~~~

One thing she always did before a mission, especially big ones like a bad tempered god, was sharpen her katana and blades. She had locked the door to her room so no one would barge in and potentially cause an Aqua Protocol. [Aqua Protocol: the mass spilling of harmful chemicals, resulting in the evacuation and detox of a room.]  Roughly half of her weapons had a thick layer of poisons on, with a system inside the sheath that put more poison on the blade. They were also poisons she developed herself; thanks to a few lessons at the academy she knew was rather good at the subject. She internally grimaced at the memory of her first test.

~~~

The girls of the Widow's Poison program were all stood behind a small white table, which had seven wine glasses on top. Six of them were spiked with different lethal poisons, one was just normal wine. Their task was to scale them from most deadly to normal wine, then they had to drink what they thought was the plain wine. The ages of the girls ranged from three to thirteen, but the test remained the same for all. Novice or expert. Madam B stopped in front of the table next to her. The girl was about four and could barely reach the table, so she had to stand on a stool, just like Maria Petrova. The girl picked up the glass she thought was wine and gulped down the entirety of the liquid. For a second there was nothing, then the glass crashed to the floor with the girl not far behind, screaming and thrashing. In the corner of her eye she saw the girl hack up an oozy black substance, before she stopped moving. Madam B gave the corpse a disapproving look before moving onto Maria. The five year old picked up the glass and swallowed, not showing any hesitation. Nothing happened. Only two other girls died that day.

~~~

She walked into the lab Tony and Bruce was tracking the Tesseract in, surprised to find Steve there. "I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Secure files that would include her true heritage. Ah f*ck. Things like this made her grateful her darkest secrets were only stored in her mind.

"Sorry, did you say...?" Steve glared at the billionaire.

Tony waved it off, as if hacking into SHIELD was baking cookies, "JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." 

Mor decided to jump in, letting her hand rest on the hilt of one of her daggers, "Yet you're confused as to why we didn't want you around?" They all jumped slightly. 

Tony gave her a, genuine, smile, "I didn't hear you come in." 

She gave Steve an exasperated look, "Why does everyone assume they're supposed to hear me coming?" The super soldier laughed, shaking his head.