A Hero's Journey

Glorious Purpose

Three weeks after they pulled Steve Rogers from the ice, Ghost was in the lab specialized to contain the Tesseract, at a black site in New Mexico. This visit was part of his monthly check-in on Barton, who was now codenamed as 'Hawkeye'. Even eight years later, Clint wasn't that trusted in Nick's eyes, despite him proving himself multiple times.

Ghost looks up at a panel, Erik Selvig reading a machine and looking at him warily. Erik still didn't trust Ghost, and that was understandable. Ghost was called the 'Angel of Death' and that nearly got him killed by a god.

Well, he uses 'god' because it's easier to say rather than 'alien species who came Earth centuries ago with powers humans could not understand, which caused the humans to declare them gods and the alien species decided to embrace it and make it true to satisfy their egos'.

Yeah... calling them gods were easier.

Looking at the panel, Ghosts eyes narrowed. "Shit." He replied, and Clint looked at him from his left.

"What is it?" The archer questioned.

"Selvig, call Fury. Clint, get an evac started. We have a big problem."

~~~~~~~~~~

Ghost listens to the end of Maria and Nicks conversation about something called Phase Two, and it wasn't anything he had heard of before. What the hell was Phase Two?

Nick walks in and immediately says, "Talk to me, Ghost. Is there anything we know for certain?"

Ghost, turning his head slightly to look at Nick, just turns back to the machine. "The Tesseract is misbehaving. Very active. We tried flipping it off, but it's an energy source, so it flipped itself right back on again. There's a reason I started the evac order. If that thing decides to explode, we're screwed."

"We have been working on harnessing energy from space."

"While true, Selvigs calculations are far from complete, and after that thing in ninety-five, you'd think we should be more careful." Ghost remarked, turning his head to give him a look, arms crossed.

"We are not going to talk about that here." Nick told him.

"Done. Anyways, that little cube," he points under where his arms are crossed, a slight glare crossing his face at it. He could still see the flashing images in his mind whenever he slept, sometimes just when he blinked or saw the color blue. He continues seamlessly, like the man in white never thought of anything at all, "is giving off low levels of gamma radiation. Only radiation it's emitting."

"That can be harmful." Nick notes, and Ghost huff a laugh as Nick adds, "Where's Barton?"

"In his nest." He shifts to look at the corner of the facility. "Clint! Get down here!" They saw movement as he sifted to a rope before starting to slide down. "You know, my luck fucking sucks. There was that week last year, then I found Rogers, now I come here for my check-in on him and this thing that was almost the reason I died decides to act up." He turns to Nick. "Would you be mad if I killed myself?"

Nick turns to him, raising his eyebrow. "That is not funny."

"It wasn't a joke, St. Nick."

"You said you would stop saying that a decade ago."

"I lied." He replies as Clint finally gets to them. "See anything new up there?"

"No, but I did get some thinking done." Clint replies.

Ghost snorts. "You have enough brain cells to do that?" He jokes.

"They come and go. I happen to have some today." He jokes back, and Ghost chuckles.