Worlds Apart

Chapter 21

Of all of the places Max expected to be relocated to, the middle of the desert wasn't one of them.

She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, given how top-secret, government-run places like Area 51, even back on her world, were located out there. Still, hearing a desert's name come out of Fury's mouth instead of the name of some town or city had really thrown her off. It also really bummed her out that she was moving to such a warm climate.

Now, Max didn't mind the heat. In fact, she would have much rather moved somewhere hot than cold. She grew up in California, so she spent her childhood in that sort of environment and even preferred it that way. However, moving to a part of the country in a month where the average temperature was around 100 degrees was a bit much, even for her. She was just glad that (so far at least) every SHIELD owned place or mode of transportation she'd stepped into had good air conditioning.

Max had been given a brief tour of the parts of the facility she'd been allowed to see, but she hadn't been shown where she would be working. In fact, she had yet to see Dr. Selvig, but she was hoping to see him once they got to his lab - assuming she was allowed to see that space. She didn't know why she wouldn't, considering that she was going to end up working in that space once she completed her studies, but she knew better than to ask. Nicholas J. Fury was a scary man, and she didn't want to upset him by overstepping or asking for more than she should.

Just when Max was about to give up hope that she'd be seeing Selvig or the lab on this tour, Fury brought her into a room and she immediately recognized it, despite never having set foot inside of it before. And when her eyes flickered over to the glowing blue cube in the middle of the room, it only confirmed where she was.

Max did her best to contain her awe, but being inside of the same room with something she knew held such an immense power...it blew her mind. She kept her feet moving at a pace that matched Fury's, but everything else about her body seemed to have frozen.

"Max!"

Finally dragging her gaze away from the Tesseract, Max looked over to the source of the voice and saw Dr. Selvig's smiling face looking back at her. "Welcome! It's so good to see you!" he continued.

"Dr. Selvig," she greeted, returning his smile as Selvig rose from his seat to meet them. "A pleasure to see you, as always."

"I'm so glad you decided to join our team," Selvig said to Max. "And I'm very excited to finally get the chance to work with you after so many months of doing so over the phone."

"Same here," Max replied.

"As you know," Fury said, "once you've completed your studies, you will be working here with Dr. Selvig. Unfortunately I need Dr. Selvig's attention focused solely on his work on Project PEGASUS so he won't be your main advisor, but he will be around from time to time to check on your progress and help make sure your lesson plans are on course with what we need from you here."

"And of course I'll also be here to help if you need it," Selvig added. "Obviously you should be asking most of your questions to whoever is going to be assigned to you, but just because I won't be working directly with you doesn't mean I can't pop over every once in a while if you need it."

"Thank you, I appreciate that." Max gave him a nod of respect.

"You're most welcome," Dr. Selvig replied. His gaze shifted just behind Max and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "The Hawk has left his nest? To what do we owe this rare occurrence?"

The familiarity of those words resonated with Max, but she didn't have enough time to process what he might've meant by that before she turned around and saw for herself exactly what he meant.