Chapter Text
It started with a message, an urgent message from Pierce to Number Fifteen-Oh-Seven, so classified that it couldn't even be committed to paper, but complex enough to require an EID. That would be me. My job is remembering things, complicated things, long things, secret things, and then to forget them as soon as I've delivered the message. It takes a certain kind of mind to do that. I was recruited right out of high school. There wasn't really anything special about me except that memory thing, and a few quirks of my personality I guess--I've always been good at keeping a secret, though how they found that out I have no idea--it certainly wasn't my grades. My guess is that at least one of those standardized tests I took during middle school was put out there by SHIELD. I remember which test I suspect it was, too, but I won't tell you. That's why I'm good at my job.
I forgot the message as soon as I told it, of course. All I can say is that I delivered it to Fifteen-Oh-Seven while he was working in lab BB17, a place I had never been before and had only heard shady stories about. It was a large-ish room, green, filled with computers and medical equipment and other things I can remember but can't identify. I now know what a few of them are, but then I didn't, and I recall wondering just why this particular room was so special, so secret.
That's when he walked in. The man with the metal arm.
You know the phrase "tall, dark, and handsome"? Take that image and twist it, so that "dark" becomes the predominant part, the defining part, and not of skin or hair, more like a clinging shadow that never left him; and then you'd know him anywhere even without the arm. Though the "handsome" part was nothing to sneer at. Usually, when I'm working, I think of myself as a tool, a widget. The moment he walked into the room, I was very aware of the fact that I was a woman, and more than that, the only woman in the room. I did my best to shake it off and be professional, but something about him unnerved me. He gave me a quick look, head to foot, evaluating me not sexually but professionally, and I instantly knew he was a killer. His eyes were utterly, completely cold.
Then something awoke in them, deep, way back behind the chill. Something like recognition.
He said in a voice that was gentle and hesitant and nothing at all like what I would have expected him to sound like, "He never got to dance with you, did he?" His voice revealed what his eyes didn't: he was still a young man. And he smiled, but it was the saddest smile I've ever seen.
Everything in the room stopped, and everybody turned to look at him.
My inner alarms began ringing like crazy, and I glanced around the room, looking for some kind of help. I had absolutely no idea what to do or how to respond; everything about the man would have ordinarily had me backing up to the wall and trying to be invisible, but there was no chance of that now. Fifteen-Oh-Seven stared at him, and then stared at me. And then everybody was staring at me, which was a bad thing; I was supposed to be unobtrusive, unremarkable. I was supposed to be an organic recording device. I wasn't supposed to be... whatever it was the dark man thought I was. Someone to be danced with. I'd never danced in my life. Some crazy part of me wanted to say that out loud, to protest quickly that I wasn't who he thought I was, but I knew that talking would only make things worse, so I stood there and waited for someone above my pay grade to give me some kind of an order.
I didn't have to wait long. Fifteen-Oh-Seven abruptly said, "That'll do, Jessie, thank you."
I practically sprinted from the room. The dark man's eyes followed me until I was out the door. It took me ten minutes to stop shaking inside.
Three days later, I was called to Pierce's office again. This time, instead of doing his usual pacing-and-pontificating bit, he actually looked at me. After a moment, he smiled. "I see."
I squirmed on the inside. We're not supposed to ask questions, so I had no way to respond to what he had said, and that always leaves me feeling uncomfortable. I stood still and kept my eyes calm.
He got up from the desk. "Jessie, I'm assigning you to a different outfit. I want you to go back down to BB17 and report to Thirty-One-Six and tell them you're the new PWT. And you have a new designation: your name from now on is Nine-Twelve."
A number instead of a name. I blinked. I had just been bumped up three levels of seniority.
He nodded. "That's right, this is a big promotion." He leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've done an excellent job as an EID, and I expect further excellence from you in the future. Report to your new station immediately. That will be all."
I walked out of the room feeling as though I'd been clubbed in the head with a rubber bat. My ears were ringing and I was disoriented. I knew that the promotion had to be related to that strange moment I'd shared with the metal-armed man, but apparently that was all I was allowed to know until I went back down there into the lion's den. I can't say why I felt it was such a dangerous place. It was just a feeling I had. But the strange thing was, it wasn't the dark man I was afraid of. It was something else.