Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 2 - An Uninvited Guest

Maria was the first one out of the helicopter, but Fury quickly joined her side and walked up to the lonely agent who was awaiting them. The agent was none other than Phil Coulson. He looked very mysterious as he stood there, stone-cold amidst all the chaos surrounding him. Oh, and let's not forget the dark shades.

"How bad is it?" Fury asked as soon as they reached the agent, not the one to beat around the bush.

Just as Coulson swiped his shades off, he replied, "That's the problem, sir. We don't know." Perhaps he wanted to have a good look at the Director when he spoke with him, or maybe he just wanted to be polite.

"That seems like a problem, indeed." Keira said absentmindedly as she joined the group, her eyes gazing at the people running around them. Although the evacuation was in full progress, they were still none the wiser as to what was happening. And that did not bode well.

"If I want a sarcastic comment, I'll ask for it, Nowak." Fury said sternly, throwing her a death glare which caused Keira to look down in shame. Sometimes her mouth worked too fast for her brain to handle.

"I'm sorry, sir." She muttered to the ground, following in the older agents' footsteps as Coulson led them inside and into a lift. Keira hated elevators. The mere knowledge that she was trapped and doomed to fall to her death if a cable snapped was unsettling to her.

Besides, she had seen a few horror movies in which people who were trapped in elevators crawled out on their stomachs through the half-open doors between levels, only for the power to return. This caused the elevator to start moving again, and the person was effectively cut in half. So yeah, not a big fan.

But she had no other choice than to brave it as the lift descended deeper and deeper below ground.

There were still quite a few people around, despite the fact that the facility had been in full evacuation for a while now. Keira was surprised by that, as she would've expected the building to be almost empty by now. But no, people were still running around, trying to bring the bare necessities with them.

"When did you first notice that the Cube was acting strangely?" Keira asked, which forced both Coulson and Fury to look back at her over their shoulders, as they were marching in front of her and Maria.

"Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from the Tesseract four hours ago." Coulson replied in a somewhat hurried voice as they made their way through the radiation section of the facility.

Keira couldn't help but wonder what other secrets the PEGASUS projects held, since the radiation unit alone was enormous. And there was still a lot more room to cover. But as she had barely known of its existence, so it was no surprise that she didn't know what was going on in the other parts of the building.

Again, SHIELD and its secrets.

"NASA didn't authorize Selvig to go to test phase." Fury cut in. Why would the scientist test the Cube without permission to do so? As he attempted to get a grasp on the situation, a look of confusion painted his features. Not knowing what was going on made him uneasy. And he did not like feeling uneasy.

"He wasn't testing it. He wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous event." Coulson replied without hesitation.

Spontaneous event? That sounded serious. This wasn't her area of expertise, but if a Cube from outer space begins to act strangely, then there's definitely a reason to worry.

"It just turned itself on?" Maria asked, just as puzzled as the rest of the group.

"Where are the energy levels now?" Fury asked while completely ignoring Maria's question, which in Keira's opinion was quite rude. But when she threw a sideways glance at the brunette agent, she noticed that Maria didn't seem phased. She was too focused on Coulson and Fury's conversation to even notice.