A New Beginning

Chapter 9- Door's Open From Both Sides

Fourteen missed calls. Ten were from her boss, and four from her mom– not one from her dad. Not that Noelle could say she was surprised. She called Alan, her boss, back to tell him she was quitting, and she didn't know if she ever could come back or not. Not that she would miss it.

But her mom...

That was much harder.

"I'm not coming home, at least not right away. Something has come up, something big that I can't ignore, and I don't know how long I'll be... I love you."

Leaving that message was one of the hardest things she had ever done, because she felt like she was abandoning her family– again.

I'm protecting them, she told herself. So why didn't it feel that way?

Apparently she found out that Fury had been holding her at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters in New York City. It was a large, unlabeled, unsuspecting building literally two blocks away from Times Square.

Of course they had found her that easily.

Fury had offered her the choice: she could get up and go, and they would never bother her again as long as she didn't give them any reason to, or she could join them.

Noelle couldn't in right conscience sit back and do nothing, but she still didn't know what they were up against, or what exactly Fury needed her for. It was unclear to her if he just didn't know himself, or was refusing to tell her. Noelle suspected the latter.

"If you needed my help, why didn't you just ask?" she had questioned.

"Because I have limited time," he replied. "And I needed to know that you were on the same side as us."

Noelle still didn't know about that, but she didn't say anything.

Fury was holding an ivory-colored folder in his hands. He placed it flat on the table wide-open for her to see. On the front was a black and white image of some cubelike object and underneath were images of a skull head surrounded by tentacles.

"What is this?" Noelle looked up at him.

Fury lowered his voice. "What I've shown you is Level Seven Classified S.H.I.E.L.D. Information. This is an object of immense power known as the Tesseract. I believe it is an object of the Force, if you understand my meaning?"

Noelle stared at the paper. She had an idea of what he was saying, but she couldn't be sure.

"It's powered by the Force?"

"No, I'm saying, it is the Force, Noelle, an aspect of the Force."

So he did know.

Noelle decided to play along. "I thought the Force didn't have aspects," she said carefully. "There is Darkness, Light and Balance."

"There are six aspects of the Force," Fury said. "And six corresponding artifacts created in the beginning of time that have since been lost."

"And the Tesseract is one of these objects?" Noelle felt her blood run cold.

"I think there's a possibility, but I can't be certain."

There was a long moment of silence as Noelle digested the information. From the files, it seemed like S.H.I.E.L.D.'s knowledge on what the Tesseract could do exactly was limited, even with "Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S." as the research program was called. She didn't have an idea of which aspect of the Force it was supposed to be.

Noelle had heard about these six objects that corresponded to the six aspects in the Jedi archives. Technically, she had been forbidden to read about them. They were only for Jedi Masters to read. And the Jedi Masters had been forbidden to teach the rest of the Jedi about it, in order to prevent a lust for power so that Jedi would not try and unlock another Force-power from a different aspect aside from Mind.