Metallic Hearts {Metallic Charms Book #2}

Chapter 8: Welcome Back

Chapter 8: Welcome Back

"Great. Now I'm stuck up here with you." I moaned as slumped on the chair, pouting.  

"I love you too." Clint rolled his eyes and sat next to me. I rested my head on his shoulder and curled up next to him.  

"I'm not complaining about you, it's her I'm not so fond of." I replied, glaring at Agent Hill as she sat on the opposite side of the room. I heard Clint chuckle as he smoothed my hair down my back.

It was silent for a while, the power flickered but every time it ended up staying off until it switched on and stayed on.

"Come on, time to go." Clint said gently when he stood up, seeing all the lights of the city flutter to life once again.  

I sighed and didn't move, "I'm not going Clint, I told you."  

"Elle, you're being selfish -and a bit of a hypocrite." Clint pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing.  

I looked him in the eye, trying to keep my temper, "How am I being a hypocrite?"  

"Because you're staying with Mr. Stark!" Agent Hill butted in, "Howard Stark is the one who created the serum that changed you. And you're staying with his son while most of your friends at S.H.I.E.L.D had no idea what was going on, just like you."

I opened my mouth to reply but I couldn't. I didn't have a reply for that. I liked hanging around Tony, I didn't know it was Howard who had created the serum, Nick had never mentioned the person by name but I should have seen that before. The only other people I knew of that were trying to recreate the Project Rebirth serum were Howard Stark and Bruce Banner.

At that moment, JARVIS' system had rebooted. "Hello Ms. Barton."  

"Hey JARVIS." I replied quietly, ignoring Clint and Maria. "Do you have the files that Howard Stark created on Project Rebirth 2.0?"  

"I will search my hard drive, but such files do not sound familiar." JARVIS replied.  

I pursed my lips and thought of any other key words that might have been in the documents. "If not, try search any files with a mention of vibranium."  

"Yes, ma'am."  

"Thank you JARVIS."

I unlocked the workshop doors and skipped down the stairs, two at a time.

"Elle, what are you doing?" Clint called, 

"Finding out what the hell is wrong with me!" I yelled from the shop.

I sat around, playing around with new ideas for the Stark Tower, even trying to put a ginormous Playboy Bunny on top, above the Stark sign. It didn't work, but it was worth a try.  

Surprisingly, Clint and Maria didn't follow my downstairs, but I knew that they were still up there, I could hear footsteps and voices of hushed conversations -most of them about me, but also little snippets of discussions about Director Fury, Bruce, Natasha and someone named Sky. I'd never met a Sky in my life so I took it that she was a new recruit.

"Ms. Barton." JARVIS caught my attention,  

"Find anything?" I stopped what I was doing, which was designing new weapons for the Iron Man suit. I wanted to try improve the lasers but I was having a bit of trouble.  

JARVIS replied, "I didn't find anything labeled 'Project Rebirth 2.0' but I didn't find a file labeled 'Barnes.' there are multiple mentions of the element vibranium within the document." 

"Great, bring it up." I told him and he showed me a screen with a whole lot of pages of notes on an experiment.

I read the file, it wasn't very big, only about ten pages long but it was very, very interesting.