Metallic Hearts {Metallic Charms Book #2}

Chapter 17: Stark Tower

Chapter 17: Stark Tower

~~~~~~~~~~~{Noel's Point of View}~~~~~~~~~~~

When we returned from New Mexico with an injured Jane and a distressed Thor it seemed like everything had calmed down back at S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury had the hellicarrier back up and running without any engine failures or navigational problems. Maria Hill was away on a mission and I wouldn’t see the likes of her for at least two weeks. Natasha, Sky and Starlie were begrudgingly all on good terms. Apparently, Sky and Starlie had some kind of background history that none of us really wanted to go into. It was a case of Alice going down the rabbit hole –only this rabbit had master assassin skills and a super soldier boyfriend instead of a pocket watch and the ability to talk.

“Safety is an issue.” Bruce said two days after we’d returned from rescuing Jane. We were on board the hellicarrier but none of us had had a good night’s sleep since before the Loki incident.
“What do you mean?” Natasha asked,
“It’s obvious isn’t it? We’re sitting ducks on the hellicarrier. The S.P.A and Loki –if he even is the Asgardian threat- both know where we are. And we’re all together. It’s like we’re begging them to come and throw grenades at us.” Bruce stated.

I couldn’t lie; I had thought about the millions of things that could go wrong about a hundred times in the past hour, but I hadn’t had the courage to voice them.

We were all in the Avengers meeting room, with mountains of files piled up to our necks trying to figure out what exactly the S.P.A was up to. While I’d only been able to get the few conversation files, Starlie had been able to hack in during all the chaos and make copies of everything and anything the S.P.A was hiding.

We were cross checking anything. Bank accounts, transactions, target lists, contacts, safe houses, unexplained disappearances, murders within the agency, their supposed ‘corrupt’ justice system. Anything and everything. So far, we had squat except the hunch that this agency was in cahoots with an Asgardian who didn’t like Thor.

According to the man himself, it was quite a long list to go through. We’d narrowed it down to Loki, Thanos and a few others but their names were incredibly hard to pronounce.

“If we’re not safe here, where are we safe?” I asked, “Everyone knows Tony’s identity and the press follow him twenty four-seven. After New York, most people know that Bruce is the Hulk, Thor is recognisable from a mile away. So is Steve and Natasha and Clint. I was on the Tower for most of the battle so I doubt anyone knows me –and Sky and Starlie would only be known by agencies.” I sighed. “Anywhere we go, we’re not going to be safe.”

Tony shrugged, flicking through papers. “We could go to the Stark Tower. It’s still under maintenance but the top floors are pretty much finished. We could hide out there. No one would notice except for the workers, but I finally have the private elevator so I highly doubt that they would see us.”

“It could work.” Clint admitted.

A day later we had set up shop in the Stark Tower. We decided that we’d take shifts in studying the documents and write down anything we thought was important or seemed strange. At the end of every day we’d regroup and go through what we had collected.

Bruce and Starlie had the first shift.

~~~~~~~~~~~{Starlie's Point of View}~~~~~~~~~~~

It was awkward. And that was putting it lightly. Bruce –I mean, dad and I were sifting through the files, on the third stack for the hour, and we hadn’t said anything to each other. I didn’t even know how to bring up a conversation with him, let alone broach the subject of him being my father with him. He’d missed out on nineteen years of my life and a lot had happened in those nineteen years.