Nick Fury is my Uncle -COMPLETED-

Chapter Twelve: Mischef and Madness

Chapter Twelve:

Mischef and Madness

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Loki: What is it you want?

Natasha Romanoff: It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my Ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.

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We were back in Fury’s office, Rhodes by my side. My uncle strode over to his desk and took a seat.

“You want it the easy way or the hard way?” he asked brusquely.

“Hard,” I said at once. “No more beating around the bush.”

“Your parents –your birth parents – were killed by Loki,” said Fury. “Loki and his brother Thor are a highly intelligent, powerful, and strong version of human from a distant planet. When Loki was defeated, we thought he was vanquished, and back in prison on his home world. However, he escaped and made his way back to earth where he found the one thing that could hurt me, his greatest enemy. And that was your parents. Loki knew, somehow, that your parents were the only things I valued in the world.”

I took this in without moving a muscle, my face expressionless. This was like someone else’s story, but somehow, it was my truth. I tried to absorb that as Fury went on.

“We were alerted to Loki’s whereabouts by Thor and tried to get to Mariam and Edmund in time, but it was too late. He was halfway to the cradle before I put a bullet in him,” said Fury wearily.

I looked closely at him. It was difficult to imagine this man loving anyone or anything, but if what he was saying was true, then he had. I wonder if the pain of losing my parents had taken his heart.

“So he’s dead?” I asked lowly, halfway hoping he was. It wouldn’t be a relief so much as justice.

“No,” said Fury, “I injured him, but he escaped. He’s still at large.”

He ran a hand over his face, “If you read the files you managed to pilfer, you’ll see that the base of the formula is human blood, or, at least, near human blood. Thor gave a liter and Loki unwillingly gave one before they went back home the first time around. It interacted with normal human DNA in a way regular blood would not. It was everything I had been looking for, a breakthrough I had never imagined. Half of the subjects for Delphi got Thor’s blood, the other half got Loki’s. Of the twenty that got Loki’s, eight are dead, five are imprisoned in a secluded insane ward, and six are being closely monitored while in solitary confinement after unpleasant incidents.”

I did the math in my head. “That’s only nineteen.” I mad another quick connection. “Ryder’s the twentieth.”

Fury nodded. “And he is paying for my mistake.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked shrewdly, moving on quickly past my parents. I did not want to think about them, even though I had been desperate for the information. It was too foreign a concept, and I had to get used to the idea first. “What makes him more special than the other nineteen?”

“He had a higher concentration of the blood,” said Fury, “We tweaked the formula slightly for each person. As he had a prior condition, it made him more susceptible to the way the formula changed his DNA. It’s why we brought him on in the first place.”

“What prior condition?” I asked.

“Ryder was dying when we offered him the spot on the trial,” said Fury simply.

“What?” I exclaimed.

“There was no cure,” said Fury, “Project Delphi was his only chance.”