Chosen

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six: Freefalling

"Th only way to make a man trustworthy is by trusting him." -Henry L. Stimson.

-

My hand shakes violently as I attempt to maneuver through the foreign mainframe. I can hear the blood pulsing through my ears thanks to the pressure I feel to work as quickly as possible. The adrenaline that once flooded my body still lingers, not helping my ability to think. I call back to my training to calm my frantic self. Gradually, my hands become steady again and my muscles loosen. I emit a sigh of relief when I can finally access the hard drive that contains all of the Black Order's files and intel, thanks to Lucis's translation from jumbles of symbols to English.

"Can you go any faster?" Uncle Rhodey asks impatiently.

"No, because I want to stay on this ship longer," I retort as I fumble to plug in the flash drive.

"Well, with all of the sirens and the fact that we just killed their leader, I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here." It's true, the overlapping sirens do not mean anything in our good favor right now.

"Are your shoulders getting tired?" I joke.

"Ha, as if."

"Hey! Tony spotted incoming," Natasha shouts at us from below.

"Yeah, she's working as fast as she can," Uncle Rhodey retorts from where he flies with me on his shoulders as I work on the main computer that is mounted to the wall.

"I was going to ask how much time you need?" Agent Romanoff responds with a hint of snide in her voice.

"Give me five minutes," I reply as I continue to search through Black Order's files as they download onto the thumb drive.

Natasha nods once before she strides out of the door. With Black Widow gone, now only Bucky and Hawkeye remain in the demolished control room. With Ebony Maw now out of the picture, we can focus on the smaller details. Again, everything that is done is in effort to erase and undo all that is of the Black Order. Tony, Steve, and now Natasha are our lookouts; they sweep the hallways around us to make sure that no enemy will impose as a threat. Sam and Thor went as escorts for Agent May, who Director Coulson sent to scour out the Black Order's vaults. It is now my task of retrieving all of the Black Order's documents and information from their system and save it for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. The only problem with that is that the records have to be saved manually and the computer necessary for this is on the ninth floor of the command center. Since there is no long any floors to the upper levels of the center and to try and save what battery I have left, I currently reside on Uncle Rhodey's shoulders as he hovers to the computer. With him as my lift, I can easily access the computer without draining Magnetar's energy.

"New York, what is the news with the Detroit and Paris bombings?" Bucky asks for an update on the cities.

"Casualties are rising, discuss of aftermath problems is prominent, and most people are asking why the Avengers are not there," Agent Hill responds.

"I'm afraid the organization's name isn't looking too well right now," Simmons adds.

"Hill, I want you to call in to double the clean-up and rescue crew," Director Coulson commands, "I want every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in those regions or close to to be working in the disaster zones."

"On it," Agent Hill says affirmatively.

"Skye, Matthews, any luck on getting into their system again?" Director Coulson asks.

"No, sir, we're still out," Skye grumbles.

"Monica, you should be able to reroute their signal to us if you're directly in their mainframe," Alex informs me.