The Tear of Celeste

Chapter 57: Where am I?

When you woke up again you found yourself leaning against a wall, slumped on the floor. The room seems to be spinning as you open your eyes, seeing double as your eyes can't focus on the same thing at the moment.

You feel like your stomach has been twisted into a very tight knot and then suddenly releasing, twisting, and turning with the force of just trying to correct itself, and you had a very firm feeling that had your stomach not been empty, you would have thrown up.

You try to slide down further, to get your head on the floor to help with the dizziness, but your feet hit another wall before you can get that far down, and the chill running up your spine clears your head in an instant as you realize you don't have enough room to lay down.

You close your eyes, taking a few deep breaths to get more oxygen to your brain so that when you open them again you can see where you are.

Your eyes quickly adapt to the light level now that you are fully awake, scan the room you are in, and that only confuses you more.

The room is clearly big, you even see people working on stuff, so why the hell could you not lie down?

You look closer at yourself and realize the answer is simple because you are in a container with glass walls.

Well, not walls, the container is cylinder in form, a circle at the base and top, so it's really just one pane of glass wrapping all the way around you, as you stand up you have no problem touching both sides of your container, there is enough room for you to stand, the cylinder having more vertical room the horizontal it seemed.

You try to remember what happened, what was the last thing that you remembered.

Your hand flies to your chest, the part over your heart as you remember. Tony's glare, you on the machine he builds, him calling you useless and sending you home.

They had kicked you out. And it seemed like the machine had not taken Loki's necklace with you, as it was now missing.

But before the tears threatening to spill in the corner of your eyes can overflow you realize that something is off. The machine was supposed to send you home, so why were you here? And who were all these people?

"Ah! The sleeping princess awakes!" A smooth voice says. You had not noticed him before he spoke, even though he was the closest person to your container, but when you did take him in, you knew right away where you were.

The red octopus on his breast pocket confirmed your biggest fear.

How the hell had Hydra hacked the machine to interfere with you being sent home?!

And why the fuck would they do that anyway?! If they had somehow infiltrated the S.H.I.E.L.D. or just hacked Tony's equipment why had they used it to capture you instead of just retrieving The Stella like they wanted?

Of course, you are not gonna ask him that, you are not stupid, there is no way he would tell you, and being silent is your best bet right now. You could only pray that Tony would notice his equipment had been hacked soon and care enough about it to rescue you.

"My my, someone is grumpy this morning," the Hydra agent said while looking at your face. He had a scar around his right eye, almost in the shape of a star.

You had a hard time masking how pissed off you were, but he just grinned back at you. "That is to be expected, we did have to give you quite a dose of drugs."

You knew you should just be quiet, but you can't help yourself from making a snide remark back. "Oh, but you must have been so disappointed right now?"

His expression is too innocent when he looks at you. "Whatever do you mean mine Fräulein?"