Radioactive | Bucky Barnes

THOR: CHAPTER THREE

"What are you going to tell him?" Howard asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "That you think a big, buff guy is coming back for his hammer he just left behind? That fell from the sky? Along with two women and an old man?"

"Do I climb up to him?" Rhiley muttered, mostly to herself, "Or should I... yell?"

"Are you asking me?"

"No." Rhiley waved Howard off, her frustration building. She wanted to cradle her head in her hands and get the thundering in her brain to stop—but wait. She looked up, and that thundering wasn't coming from her thoughts. It was coming from above. The storm was picking up.

"It's raining." Howard's head snapped toward the hammer, a strange look crossing his face. "Something is happening."

Rhiley didn't need to be told twice. She moved quickly, cutting through the crowd of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and scientists scrambling around the hammer. There was a glow emanating from it, pulsing, almost as if it had a life of its own.

"It glows?" she muttered, surprised.

"It's radioactive," came a reply from Howard. 

"Hey!" Rhiley grabbed the arm of one of the frantic scientists as he rushed by. "What's going on?"

"There's something electrical breaking down our equipment," the man said, pulling his arm away to continue his work. "We can't figure it out."

"Shouldn't you be doing something?" 

"I'm not a scientist, Howie." This was the first time Rhiley had used her nickname for her brother since the hallucinations. 

Before Howard could say anything else, an agent's voice rang out. "We've got something outside the fence, west side!"

 "What is it?" Rhiley demanded, but nobody answered.

"What are you going to do?" Howard's voice came again, this time sharp, almost accusing. "Are you just gonna stand there and do nothing? Like you did that night?"

Rhiley's throat tightened at the remark, but she pushed it aside, determined not to let it rattle her. She didn't stop walking, ignoring his taunting words as she moved toward the hammer.

"Agents down! We've got a perimeter breach!"

"Get Coulson!" someone shouted.

Rhiley felt a familiar knot in her stomach. This was her first big mission with S.H.I.E.L.D., and she was already questioning whether she was ready for it. She'd been training with Phil for months, learning from him, assisting on smaller missions. But this was different. She wasn't just a trainee anymore. She was beginning to feel like her old self -- important again. 

Lightning cracked above them, and Rhiley glanced back at the hammer. Whatever was happening, it was because of that thing. "They're coming for this," she murmured under her breath.

"Good detective work," Howard remarked.

Rhiley rolled her eyes. "I heard the sarcasm."

But as she approached the hammer, her focus shifted. The man from earlier—the one with the broken coffee mug and the beautiful hair—was standing there, glaring at the hammer, an air of anger and frustration hanging around him.

"Who are you?" Rhiley asked, trying to keep the wariness out of her voice.

She wasn't about to question her sanity when facing a man who might as well be an alien from outer space. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she'd stopped questioning the bizarre things in her life long ago.