Jessica

The Cube Part One

In a dark room where the only light sources were bright red monitors, there were only a handful of people sitting without uttering a word, the only sound amidst all that silence was the clattering of their fingers typing on the keyboard.

One of the workers saw that among all the notifications on her screen, one was on a completely different level of importance, thus she turned to a man standing alone in the middle of room and informed him

"Agent Flumm—"

"Not an agent. With Fury off to Asia, I'm director Flumm now. Remember that."

"...yes, director Flumm"

He walked towards her and now that he was standing so close to the scarlet lights she could clearly see the scar spanning across his left cheek "And don't make that mistake again."

"Winter protocols have been enacted, director Flumm."

"And here I was wondering why it took so damn long. Now that the big man himself gave us the go order, we can teach these Ultimates a lesson for their insubordination."

It was a good thing that there was such little light in that place because if they had seen the anger in his eyes when he ordered the destruction of his predecessor's project, they would have realised what they were truly dealing with.
_______________________________________

Jessica scribbled on a once-white piece of paper in order to ignore her surroundings and focus on her thoughts.

She was surprised by the sheer amounts of dilemmas flooding her mind, especially considering the short amount of time she had spent in this environment.

She wondered whether Charlotte was alright. She constantly asked herself if she could have done more for her, she knew that it was the psych team's job and that she was the least qualified person to ever help someone gain self esteem but she still wanted to help directly on top of continuing her investigation.

She thought about Miles and what he might have been up to. It was her job to keep an eye on him and show him the ropes the way a good big sister would but work was getting in the way and another part of her was still against this. She sadly recognised that no one was worried about her the same way she was worried about the boy.

Except, maybe, Monica who always seemed so supportive. Speaking of her, Jess needed to thank her for saving her ass in the last mission... and also excuse herself for getting in trouble like a rookie. Technically she still was a rookie but she felt like she should be better and was taken off guard too easily.

Thinking back to her last mission with the grownups over at the City, she kept finding more and more details she despised. You only needed to look at what she wrote on her paper to see what she thought about that ordeal: "Being on the Ultimates sucks!" written over and over in different fonts, sometimes with a minor hastily fixed spelling mistake and a little doodle of Nicholas J(erk) Fury.

She didn't exactly hate the people she worked with. They were fine. She wouldn't want to stand beside them at the end of the world and she didn't relate to them but they weren't all disgusting monsters. The higher ups were a completely different story.

She just hated wasting her time with them instead of fighting her war on Roxxon. Now, saving the world from an evil scientist wasn't a waste of time by any means but when Thor and Iron Man were right there with a fleet behind them, she just didn't feel that useful. 'These thoughts probably aren't good for my mental health, are they?' she thought. The answer is 'No, they're not.'
But that's what happens when you don't open up to others.

So to recap, she had to tutor a kid, thank her own tutor and continue her never ending battle for justice (and self acceptance) and yet she did none of these things. So another question popped up in her mind: 'Do I need to wait for the universe to blow up before I decide to do something?'