Scorpio

TWENTY EIGHT - Ghosting

"About time. Don't get me wrong, I trust my brother's word that this international job is a good cause, but a girl can only handle so many colonizer meetings in a day." Estella tried to laugh, but the sound was caught in her throat, so she opted for a smile instead. It seemed to do the trick, either way. The princess looked appeased.

"Come. I have something to show you."

Shuri dragged her through a set of self-sliding double doors, entering a quaint, yet extremely state-of-the-art medical facility. Lining the main hallway was about half a dozen rooms – operation rooms, Shuri explained. For teaching foreign doctors new techniques, attending to new injuries, practicing new methods of fixing up people and machine alike so it could be recorded for future use. Each had a clipboard on the wall beside the door, stating the type of operation scheduled for each room. A booth sat right up against the wall of the main hallway, where residents and learning doctors could take notes behind a one-way glass from the comfort of several chairs.

Shuri led them to the last room down the main hallway, nodding at the clipboard on the wall. "Our most recent patient," she told Estella. "A delicate case, really. He's part of the Avengers family, even though they only ever visit him once a month. The captain told me you might know him."

She pushed open the door with her fingertips, revealing a brunette stranger swiping through a tablet on his lap. His pale, milky eyes seemed outlined in an inhuman fashion, yet the rest of him seemed so mundanely normal Estella didn't quite know where to place him. A SHIELD agent, perhaps?

The man looked up at their arrival, and his stoic face brightened with a small smile. "Princess Shuri," he acknowledged with a nod, before looking behind her. "Sam. James. I saw you coming. I kept seeing the gentleman without the arms, the grimy lady, the glowing tree, but they haven't seen me yet." He then focused his strange eyes on Estella. "We haven't met yet, have we?"

Estella blinked in response. "I'm...Estella." Perhaps she didn't appear as purple as she was before? Why...why was he talking so weirdly?

"This is Vision, by the way," Shuri piped in, as if hoping to jog her memory.

Vision. Vision as in Tony's Vision, that morning after she had first found herself in the new world and been immediately sent off to the SHIELD headquarters for...how long? Did he know what was to happen to her afterwards? Was this why he dropped her there?

"The... red guy with the gem in the forehead?" Estella asked as she cycled through her memories and tried to grasp what information she could from their encounter.

"Holographic projection system," Shuri responded automatically. She hesitated for a moment, the chipper smile fading from her face, before taking Estella by the arm and pulling her into the connected booth of the room.

"He may be a bit disorientated from the last testing, which may explain his lack of memory – although androids like him generally don't forget anything." She explained, looking confused. "Do...do you know when you last met him?"

"I don't know," Estella answered honestly. "A month ago, maybe?"

"Wanda admitted him to Wakanda half a year ago," Bucky intoned from behind them, his brows furrowed in confusion – at least, more than they normally were. Perhaps she had been in SHIELD for a lot longer than she thought she had...though the only person who could either confirm or correct the theory was currently not speaking to her. But then, time was pretty hard to tell when trapped in a locker for goodness knows how long.

"Then...at least that long ago," Estella amended, wondering if it was entirely true. Maybe her time in SHIELD had drastically warped her perception of time. Shuri pulled out a tablet and began tapping a few notes out before Sam piped in about his observations on Vision's well-being this month.

Estella watched the glass. Vision seemed so forlorn, on his own with his own friends treating him like glass because of his experimental condition, his lack of stability. Was this how she seemed, without Alycs?

Suddenly, Vision's eyes flicked to hers, and she almost started. His previously pale eyes now shone a brilliant, piercing saffron yellow. She found herself captured by the blinding light, as if it was drawing her in, trying to suck her existence into its power - she could vaguely feel herself moving closer and closer to the glass...

Estella, pull back.

The loud booming in her head caused Estella to flinch, almost whacking her head on the window as the connection broke. She tumbled backwards, rubbing her temple as a team of mechanics began filtering into the room, ushering her, Sam and Bucky back into the main hall.

"What was that?" Estella asked, a little shaken.

Sam made a face, straining to hear the bits of intense conversation from behind the closed door. "A woman said something about an energy spike. Vision might be reacting to our visit."

Another question came to mind. "Was...was that why was he admitted in the first place?"

"Wanda said he had been acting strangely when she first brought him here – talks about the Chitauri, even though he hadn't been alive for the attack on New York, and sometimes starts glowing in the middle of the night, with occasional fits he can't control. It was scaring the heck out of her." Sam began walking out of the medical facility, pressing a button on the nearest elevator to take them back to the treehouse.

"We put it down to the stone in his head. Cap said it was from a scepter that had the power to control minds, though the man who had brought it to Earth had been whisked away before anyone could fully comprehend the full capabilities of the thing."

"So Shuri's trying to remove it?"

"More like reroute it. Vision's a robot – a complex one at that, but a robot nonetheless. His stone is his source of power. If Shuri removes it, we're not sure we could still have him function the same."

"But it is an alien power source?" Estella asked.

Bucky nodded. "You could put it that way."

Estella's mind was whirring.

"Everyone's a bit on edge these days."

"There's been too many rumours floating around about some big bad recently, and not enough solid evidence."

Where had they gotten the rumors from?

The pieces seemed to meld. Tony's jumpiness. Their need to train. The Avengers' infrequent visits. Vision's ability to find Estella through that one-way glass. Maybe even the comment about the grimy lady and the glowing tree.

"I saw you coming."

It was obvious, wasn't it?

Vision's been having visions.