I'd Bleed for You

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

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{Steve Rodger's POV}

"Good work today." Fury complimented all of us the night as we sat around the large table at the bridge. He stood at the head of the table with Agent Hill standing a few feet behind him with a neutral expression on her face. The rest of us were seated around the table. I was seated between Bruce and Tony with Natasha, Clint, and Thor across from us.

An empty seat on Bruce's other side.

"Good work?" Tony looked up at him as though he were crazy. "Falconeri's dead. How is that 'good work'?"

"Nichole Falconeri knew what she was getting into the moment she stepped aboard this ship. Just like all of you did." Fury looked around at each of us before taking some files from Hill and tossing one at each of us. I picked mine up in confusion and opened it. The first page was of Nichole walking down a street, oblivious to fact that she's being photographed. The next page made me look back up at Fury, others did the same as they saw what the second page said.

"Nichole Falconeri wasn't her real name." He told us. "Her name was Veronica Elizabeth Falconeri. She was born to a middle aged couple back in the late sixties. We first became aware of her when she was eight years old and her teacher's desk suddenly caught fire when the teacher had given her detention for talking to one of her classmates. Three days later her mother was found dead in their family home. No sign of her father and the only trace of Veronica was a puddle of her blood on the floor of the master bedroom. The same room where her mother was found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound."

"After that there was no trace of Veronica up until last year when one of our agents found her waitressing at a local diner." He continued as we all just sat there and listened. "We were looking into a crime in the area and when we ran her picture it came up as a match to the picture of her from when she was eight. There was one problem though, she looked to be in her mid twenties when she should have been in her mid to late forties. It later became aware to us that she posses the X gene."

"What?" I furrowed my brows as I looked between Bruce and Tony, knowing that one of them would probably be able to explain the unfamiliar term to me.

"The X gene." Bruce held the bridge of his nose. "Some people are born with it, it's a mutated gene that leads to the person with it having some sort of abnormality. There have been people who are reported as having the gene that can control someone's mind, walk through walls, and change their appearance in the blink of an eye. Most people with the gene hide the fact that they have it, the government isn't too welcoming to people whom are different."

"That's why she could bend the elements and heal." Natasha added on.

"If she was able to heal then why didn't she this time?" Clint asked the obvious question.

"We aren't sure." Fury admitted.

"Did she have any family or friends?" I asked, though I was pretty certain that we all already knew the answer to that.

"No. She was good at keeping herself distanced from others." Fury shook his head, though I could see his eyes glance at Bruce for a moment. We all just seemed stuck as we just sat there. Some looking over the file that Fury had given us on Nichole- Veronica. No one dared to say or do anything. At least not until Tony shoved his seat away from the table and stormed out of the room.

{Tony Stark's POV}

I couldn't just sit at that table anymore with everyone just reading over the things that Veronica clearly hadn't wanted us to know. I pushed away from the table and hurried out of the room. Roaming through the maze of the halls in the hellicarrier I wasn't really sure of where to go.