Worlds Apart

Chapter 25

Everything inside of Max was telling her to run, but even if Loki's grip on her arm hadn't been cutting off her circulation, her body stayed frozen in place. She was afraid that Loki would kill her if she made even one wrong move. He seemed to have an interest in her, but she didn't trust that his curiosity was great enough to outweigh his desire to kill her, should the opportunity arise.

Following Loki's instructions, Clint walked up to Max and took her arm in place of Loki. The moment Max was passed to Clint, Loki spun on his heel and took off towards the exit. Clint started to drag Max along, but the sudden movement caused pain to spread throughout her abdomen, and her hand flew back to grip it as her face contorted with pain.

When Max came to an abrupt halt, Clint turned around and seemed to notice just how bad of a state she was in. Seemingly very emotionally detached, he then wasted no time in stepping behind Max and scooping her up into his arms. From there, he took large strides as he, another doctor (Dr. Greenwood, a man on the team that Max had come to know since her arrival), and Selvig, who had stopped to pick up the Tesseract's case, caught up with the god.

At first, Loki walked ahead of them all, but as they exited the lab, he slowed down and allowed Clint and Selvig to take the lead. A wave of exhaustion washed over Max and though she was very tempted to simply lean her head against Clint's chest and give in to her weariness, she fought to stay awake. She wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with her, but she figured that falling asleep was most likely a bad move.

Max struggled to keep her eyes open, but she did, however, let her body relax against Clint. Every movement hurt her abdomen, so while she was a few feet off the ground, she figured that she might as well let Clint do what he planned to do, instead of risking falling and injuring herself further. As she watched the path ahead of them with squinted eyes, Max didn't recognize the path in which they took, but as soon as they stepped foot into the garage, she instantly knew where they were from having seen it in the movie.

"I need these vehicles," Clint told Agent Hill as they passed by her.

Max thought about signaling to her somehow that she needed help, but with Loki less than five feet away and laying in the arms of a brainwashed Clint, she was worried that Loki or one of the men following him would notice and punish her in some way. So instead, to keep herself from giving Hill any accidental signals, she kept her gaze on Clint's chest.

"Woah, is she alright?" Hill asked.

"She's fine," Clint answered. "There was an accident in the lab, so Fury told me to take her with me for the evacuation."

Hill seemed to accept that answer, because Max heard nothing from her in response. She did, however, speak as Clint placed Max in the back seat of a truck. "Who's that?"

"They didn't tell me," Clint answered.

As Dr. Greenwood got in next to Max, Clint shut the door behind them. Selvig got in the passenger seat and shut his door a mere second or two after Clint shut Max's, and once all of the doors were closed, with just Clint remaining on the outside, the voices outside of the vehicle became muffled and unintelligible.

A few moments later, Max flinched as she heard more gunshots. It surprised her that these things made her jump as much as they did. Maybe it was the trauma she'd been through, but still, she knew these movies (especially this one in particular) like the back of her hand, which meant that she knew exactly what was coming and when. Though she hated the fear, she figured it was probably for the best. If she acted as unafraid and excited as she did when she watched the movies, somebody would definitely get suspicious of her. At the very least, they'd think something was seriously wrong with her.