The Younger Agent - Natasha Romanoff x OC

Chapter 125 - Captain Marvel

"It's some kind of little device", Steve spoke as they walked towards the other side of the compound, one of the rooms they tended to work in, not rest in. Though Eleanor just wanted to rest as they headed into the high-techy room. She let out a deep breath and wiped an eye with the back of her hand, trying to get a grip and get back to work. Maybe they could fix their mistakes.

"And you said Fury somehow left it here?", Natasha asked skeptically, Fury had never been to the compound, the building was finalised after he had to fake his death. Maria had been here though, maybe she planted it for him. Walking through the door, Steve, who was now in regular clothes, nodded. "We got a notification, clearly someone who worked with Fury knew he sent us an end of the world device, told us to search in a specific box in storage, set it up with a transmitter, do some battery stuff... I don't know Bruce did all that".

Eleanor nodded slightly as she looked around the workspace lab, there was holograms set up on the central table, broadcasting the population numbers. The main thing she could see was that the numbers were significantly dropping. Eleanor supposed it worked by combining mobile phones connected to GPS that were no longer moving, or had disappeared with the person, producing a null signal in networks, combined with missing peoples reports to create rough estimates. Very rough preliminary numbers.

"It's this way", Steve guided them into a neighbouring room where behind yet another wall with a glass cutout was what looked like a pager, except the screen was blue and red, with a star shape in the middle. Neither her or Natasha had any clue what this was. Steve visibly deflated slightly, they had worked in SHIELD for years, worked with Fury for years, he hoped showing them this would trigger some kind of memory. He hoped that they'd suddenly erupt with realisation, exclaiming 'Oh yes this is a device that can reverse any catastrophe!', but their blank faces said it all.

He sighed a little and gestured to Rhodey who was watching the thing beep, powered by whatever was around it. It was held up by a mechanical arm with the transmitter hooked up to it, and surrounding it Eleanor guessed was the powering mechanism, some blue pillars probably providing the god knows how old pager with enough power to send the signal frequency. Which, according to Bruce in the corner, a little pager should not be able to transmit as strong a signal as it was currently pulsing out. This thing was trying to contact something in space. Eleanor shivered, space hadn't been kind to them.

They headed back out into the main room, staring at the holograms. Steve followed. Natasha and him stood close to the table with the projection, staring at the numbers, Steve leaning against the edge of it. Eleanor's eyes darted around a little before deciding she didn't want to be so close. She sat herself down on a chair a few paces behind them, propping a foot on the edge of it, the other one tapping the floor rhythmically. The numbers of people who got turned to dust were still coming in tenfold.

They stared at it for god knows how long. Different countries with a surge of losses being documented popping up, replacing other countries on the display before another set of countries appeared was just on a loop. Billions of people reduced to nothing but ashes. Their closest family reduced to nothing but ashes.

The UK looped round at some point. The number racking up to 600 thousand reported gone so far. The person who raised her was a number there. 600 thousand people. Reduced to a number on a hologram. And it was going to get worse, the numbers were not at all accurate yet. If Thanos wiped out half of everyone, that number would be careening quickly up to around 30 million.

Eleanor was chewing her finger again. She wanted to scream. "This is a nightmare". Her eyes darted over to Steve.

"I've had better nightmares". Eleanor nodded at Nat's words. She'd rather live through a hundred of those nightmares that Wanda gave them all those years ago, than live through this anymore. It was torture. Eleanor had had survivor's guilt enough times, losing friends and coworkers on assignments with SHIELD, wondering why it was them who got the stray bullet lodged in their chest and not her. But this was on a whole other level. She sat pondering how she kept managing to come out on top in every situation. There was so many times she should have been killed in action whilst trying to save the world. Right now, she was kind of wishing one of those had worked.