Project H.I.D.E (sequel to Newest Recruit)

Chapter 8 - The Woman

"Do you see anything eagle eyes?" Tony said, coming up to stand besides the sharp-eyed agent who was staring out of the helicarriers window, watching the sand pass below.

The blonde shook his head, "No, not yet. Where's the kid?"

"Artie?" Tony asked, "He's with the Doc helping him prep for whatever we find."

"If we find anything." Corrected Agent Barton.

"Yeah, if" Tony sighed, "If, you ask me, this whole mission is just a waste of time. There's no way anyone else could've survived this long without water in the desert since the supposed incident that allowed Kelsey and Artie to escape."

Tony sat down in one of the chairs that were along the side of the helicarrier. The heli itself was one of SHIELD's smaller ones. At the front was the pilots cabin, computers lined the walls and two other agents were flying, while Tony and Clint watched the ground below out of the large round windows on the side of the carrier. From the pilots cabin in the front, the carrier opened up into a large room, with maxi-glass walls separating the room into two, a med-room, and a waiting room, or more actually a get-out-of-my-way room the doctors liked to use. From there another door opened up into the back of the jet, the room was were Tony and Clint were at the moment. It was a wide room, the ramp that led outside was at the end, two large windows were installed, one of each side. Throughout the room, tables and chairs were nailed down to keep them from moving.

"Yeah, I don't know. I supposed we just humor h-" Clint stopped talking, and whipped out his radio, "There's movement, just below our position, land 5 kilometers away."

"It could be nothing." Tony said, leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah, but it could be somthing." Clint responded, walking towards the pilots cabin.

Fifteen minutes later, Tony, Clint, and Artie were using the specialized sand-rovers to check out what Clint had saw before.

The agent pointed ahead, "Just past this sand dune."

The trio stopped their bikes at the top of the sand dune, and sure enough just below them a person was lying on their side in the sand.

The two avengers and the newbie parked their bikes and ran over to the body. It was a woman, dark brown hair, tied into a bun but was coming unraveled, the beginning of blisters were starting to cover her face, she looked about mid-thirties.

"Artie do you who she is?" Tony asked, as CLint bent over her to see if she still had a pulse or was breathing.

Artie shook his head, "I've never seen her before. Unless -"

"She's got a pulse! We've got to get her into the heli-carrier. Now." Clint said, picking her up under her arms and legs. He carried her over to the sand-rovers, "Let's go."

Once the trio and their unexpected find were back on the heli-carrier and Banner and deemed her in "stable condition" the four Avengers sat in the waiting room across from the med-room.

"Well she's dehydrated, but not a severely as you and Kelsey." Banner said, looking at Artie, "She also isn't as starved as you two were, and she looks like she had only been in the sun maybe four, five hours, she had signs of the beginning of sunburn."

"I don't get it. I've never seen her before so she can't be one of us." Artie began, talking to no one in particular, "She looks to old to be an experiment too, she has to be one of the whitecoats."

"Too old? What classifies as too old?" Tony questioned.

Artie shrugged, "Kelsey was the first one to make it to twenty. I'm nineteen so I'm the second oldest. There was another twenty year old, a few years ago, his name was Barry. He would help calm us down after a rough day, he'd always make sure we had enough to eat, even if it meant starving himself, he would take care of himself. But then one day he just disappeared, never to be seen again."