Isolated [Degenerate Series, Book 2][Blackfrost]

Chapter 12

Author's Note: Just wanted to let you all know that reading your comments on each chapter is my absolute favorite part about posting chapters. I look forward to your input as well as your insight on the story, and no matter how many chapters I post, reading your comments will never get old. Please, if you are a silent reader, feel free to leave your thoughts and make yourself known! I read every single comment <3

To finish off, I just wanted to say that if you are enjoying the story, please spread the word! I greatly appreciate all of my readers and I can't thank you enough.

________________________________________________________________________________

It was many, numerous days after the meeting with Nick Fury and after I had first tried my new hairstyle. Nothing much has happened to me over these past few days - no mission alerts nor any news from Asgard. In fact, even though over three weeks had passed on Earth, Loki had made no appearance to visit, and I had no way of reaching him in turn.

I am sitting on one of the stone benches in the lobby of the headquarters. The lobby was wide and open with high ceilings and large windows. There were stairs that led up to a second floor of sorts, which overlooked the lobby from a balcony. The SHIELD logo, the bird, was featured as a large statue in the middle of the room.

Everyone seemed to ignore me as they moved quickly across the lobby. They were too focused on their tasks to notice me as I used my thumb fingernail to clean underneath my other fingernails. It was a habit I am subjugated to out of boredom.

I was hoping that going to DC to work with SHIELD once more would take my mind off of Loki by putting me to work, but the lack of missions was making that plan pointless.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when, without warning, the pager in my pocket jacket pocket began to buzz. I pulled it out and saw the small green screen not lit up in a neon-like color. Black text that was previously not there also appeared on the screen. It read:

MISSION ALERT

Clutching the pager tightly in my hand, I jumped to my feet and off the bench. The SHIELD Agents and other workers continued to move past me, ignoring my sudden excitement. I moved past the people, going against the flow of movement as I moved towards the stairs.

By this point in time, I had already spent weeks in the SHIELD headquarters, and making my way to the elevator was easy. I could have done it with my eyes closed if there weren't so many people bustling around in the hallways. 

I ran into Brock Rumlow when I reached the elevator. He was leaving the elevator, so I assumed he had already gone to see Fury. 

"Romanoff," he said when he saw me. "Come with me. I already know about the mission. I'll inform you about everything in the jet. Where is Rogers?"

"I haven't seen him," I said in response, making a 180 to turn away from the elevator and walk side by side with Rumlow instead. 

"Maybe he doesn't have his pager on him," Rumlow said with a slight edge to his voice. One of the few things Fury had told us to do was to keep the pagers on us at all times, after all.

"I'll text him," I said, tucking my pager back into my pocket and pulling out my phone instead. I quickly sent Steve a text, only praying that he would receive it. 

Mission alert, I texted him.

Rumlow and I continued to walk as we waited for Steve's response. After a few minutes, when the two of us had just about reached the entrance to the compound where we were keeping the jet, I recieved the text from Steve.