Unexpected

Switching Assignments

"And what do you have to report Agent Copper?" Jenkins was standing in a dark room with a huge screen along one wall again where a large display of heat signatures in some desert-like land was playing in real time. She was up to her elbows in files and pictures, shuffling through them wildly and spreading them out further over the desk she was standing in front of, not even glancing up at me once even as I announced myself.

"Nothing."

She froze. Face still turned down at a profile of some Arabian-looking man in camouflage, "What?"

"I've found nothing new again." I responded again with a dry tiredness though I tried to keep my voice professionally level, "Agent Jenkins... I don't think I can be any more use on the Mandarin case. He's not related to any oriental languages or cultures as far as I can tell, nor do any of the other snippets of language in his messages lead to anything. It's all for show, just pomp and circumstance as far as I can tell-"

"Director Fury was certain that you-"

"Director Fury was wrong." I retorted. Fury? What did he have to do with any of this? "Look. I'm wasting my time here. There's no connection between any of what I've been looking into and what the Mandarin is trying to do. In fact there's less than nothing. He just sent out another message today. A military base church in Kuwait full of women and children set ablaze, no warning, no reason except to teach America 'a lesson'. People are freaking out. The government and the media have tried to keep this as under wraps as possible, but it's not working. There's mass fear, and I'm wasting my time looking up references to people calling themselves the Mandarin and double-checking the grammar of signs that are only flashed for half a second on blurry terrorist footage!"

Jenkins sighed, shoulders slumping and lips puckering, "What do you suggest then."

"I don't know." I admitted, "But please, just give me a task where I can do something useful. Right now I'm just about as helpful as War Machine's new paint job."

Jenkins huffed a laugh, clicking on her open laptop a few times, dropping files into a flash drive, "He's called Iron Patriot now."

"Exactly. What's the difference?"

"Fine. I'll contact you with a new directive once I have something new, until then... continue in your normal work, I suppose. We can't drop everything else we're working on just because some sadistic crackpot is trying and failing to make a point. You're dismissed."

I nodded and left, inclining my head at the guard at the screening room's door as I blinked at the brightness of the hallway. Surreptitiously, I tried to hide a yawn as I passed agents in the hallways as I returned to my office. I hadn't ended up sleeping the night that Loki had appeared to me again. Instead, after I had shed a few tears I had just lain in bed, staring at the darkness of my ceiling and went over our conversation over and over again, trying to commit every second to memory. The next day I returned to my work full force, riding on small shocks from my little device to keep me going like others relied on espresso or energy drinks to get them through the day, but that ended up draining me by the time I had returned home and I had passed into a deep, dreamless sleep hardly an hour after I entered my apartment.

After pulling together another moot translation today I had had enough. My assignment was getting me nowhere. I was more use doing most anything else at this point, I realized, so I had gone to Jenkins, and now as I clacked my heels down the hall and swung open my office door, I wondered if I had done the right thing. I was no use towards solving the Mandarin problem, but was not being on the case at all any better?