❝Just because I'm smaller than you doesn't mean that I couldn't easily take you in a fight.❞
Subject: Carter May
Number: 17
Age: Nine
Sex: F
In which the nine-year-old test subject escapes, using the powe...
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A LITTLE WHILE after Tony got back-- when he had calmed down--Carter went to visit him in his office. She had had something on her mind for ages that she wanted to tell him and for some reason, she wanted to do it right then.
She knocked on the door first, wary that he might get angry at her for barging in. But no response came, so she just opened the door anyway.
"Tony?" She called timidly. "Can I talk to you about something?"
He looked up from his office chair, an exhausted expression on his face. "Don't tell me you like Bruce's ice cream flavour better than mine." His tone, which was irksome, didn't match his joking words.
"Uh, I do, but that's not what I wanted to say."
His expression changed as he noticed her tone of voice: nervous and cautious.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
She took a seat across from his desk and sat back, keeping her eyes locked on her hands.
"This is something, uh, something about-- something about the lab."
Tony leaned forward onto his desk as he said, "Oh?"
"Um, so, I don't know when I got it or why I got it, but I remember the day I saw it." Carter's voice was slightly shaky, but she still pushed the words out. She hadn't told anyone much about the lab, for she wasn't ready to talk about all of the horrors yet, but she still managed to tell some things. Even though whenever she talked about it, she felt a bit better, she still wasn't ready to let out everything, and everyone respected that and didn't push her. "I was in the room where I had to... try for powers. There was a mirror on the other side and once this guard... grabbed my t-shirt to pull me out of the room, and I turned my head and I- I saw this black mark on my back. I never knew what it was and I never got to see it again... until I got my own room here with a mirror. I don't know what it means, but it's the number '17'. It won't come off no matter what I do, and I don't know how long it's been there."
At that point, she stood up from the chair and lifted the back of her t-shirt, revealing the small of her back, where, indeed, marked in black ink, was the number '17'.
"Seventeen," Tony muttered. "Carter, was seventeen ever a significant number? Do you have any memory of seventeen ever being related to you?"
"Related to me? How can a number be related to--"
"Not family related, I meant was there anything important about that number? Try to think about it."
