Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 8 - Control What You Fear

While they walked through the corridors, Keira saw some of the agents throwing them uneasy glances. Luckily, the Captain was protected by his image, so despite carrying a gun, nobody dared to stop them. As they approached the lab, Keira could hear low voices seeping through the closed door. And if she wasn't much mistaken, Fury had joined the party.

"What is Phase Two?"

The question was shot at the Director just as the words popped up on the monitor in front of Tony, and at the same moment, Keira and Steve slipped through the door.

Steve walked over to a nearby table and slammed the gun down, causing everyone to direct their attention to him. "Phase Two is SHIELD uses the Cube to make weapons." Not only did he look pissed, but he also sounded like he was, something she guessed didn't happen often.

Keira glanced between Banner and Stark, as it seemed like they finally had managed to hack their way into SHIELD's files. Or rather, Stark's UI. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for us." She folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the table as her gaze directed itself to Fury, waiting for some kind of explanation.

"Rogers, Nowak, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're maki-" Fury tried to explain as he walked closer to the table, but in Keira's opinion, it sounded more like the beginning of a defense speech.

Her face turned blank, not giving away any of the feelings that were boiling just beneath the surface. She hadn't needed to keep her emotions at bay for a long time, so to slip into this mask of impassivity felt odd. It felt like old times. Fury, out of all the people in this room knew about her history with HYDRA. He knew how much she despised the organization, and yet he was experimenting with their equipment?

To be honest, it felt like a betrayal.

"I'm sorry, Nick." Tony got up from his sitting position on the table and turned one of the screens towards them. And what did the screen reveal, if not SHIELD's plans to in fact use the Tesseract as a power source for weapons? "What were you lying?" The man asked sarcastically, and Fury threw him a dirty look that bounced off the billionaire without a problem.

"I was wrong, Director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Steve stated coldly, and at that moment the door slid open, revealing Thor and Natasha.

The redhead's eyes were directly diverted to Banner, who looked greatly annoyed at this revelation. "Did you know about this?" He asked, gesturing towards the screen.

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" Natasha suggested, completely ignoring Banner's question.

Banner laughed humorlessly before answering, "I was in Calcutta. I was pretty well removed."

"Loki's manipulating you." Natasha said, trying to defuse the situation.

"And you've been doing what, exactly?" He retorted. Well, good spotted, doctor. Not a bad observation at all.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." Banner took ahold of the screen and turned it towards Natasha. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction." He finished, turning towards Fury who would know the most about it.

Fury was silent for just a moment before pointing at Thor. "Because of him." He then took a deep breath, as if he was hesitant about the next few words he was about to utter before he pointed towards Keira. "And because of her."

Keira's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and Thor looked seriously affronted at being pointed out as the bad guy here. And she couldn't say that she blamed him. Why were they the cause of the weapons? "Us?" She questioned, a small frown on her face. This was not taking the direction she had expected.