Faces, they surrounded me. Places, one slice of a setting belonged per one person.

I stood in the center. It was like I was in the middle of a pie, or a clock. Each wedge held a different person, with a different backdrop behind them. I looked at each wedge curiously. Some had more than one person to a wedge, others only had one.

"Tell me." I sidestepped away, seeing a fairly-dressed man beside me. Alexander Pierce. Head of HYDRA. "What do you see?"

"What is this?" I asked.

"Tell me what you see." He gestured to the wedges around us.

I looked around closely. There was a couple, a dark-haired man, with a redheaded woman on his arm. The woman offered me a kind smile, the man had something glowing blue through the fabric of his shirt. The backdrop looked to be an interior of a room, with a large window in the far distance.

On that wedge's right was a lone man who bore a white lab coat over his shirt, and he had himself stationed behind a laboratory table. He was experimenting on something, as though I wasn't looking into the wedge he was stuck in.

In the next wedge, there was a breathtaking view of a city. The sunlight made the city look like molten gold. The couple was dressed in different attire than the others. Asgardian attire. These were my parents. My mother, with her platinum-blonde hair, her purple dress that covered her feet. And my father, the man with dark, curly hair, who bore Asgardian armor. They looked happy, and they were looking right at me. Practically beckoning me to come home.

"Those are my parents," I murmured, gesturing to the city of Asgard. "And, uh...that's...Bruce Banner, in that laboratory over there."

I focused on another wedge. It contained two people, two spies, both who were engaging in a rather aggressive training session. The woman's hair was a fiery red, and she took cover behind a crate. The man opposite her was moving in on her, a bow loaded and ready to make her surrender.

"That's Tasha and Clint." I cleared my throat.

Another wedge looked oddly familiar, but some things I couldn't put my finger on. But I knew the man who belonged in that wedge. Captain Steve Rogers. He offered me a warm smile, and I could hear a song playing in the background. He had his hand out for me, asking for me to join him, probably to dance.

The last wedge I saw, I knew who was there. He was inside the interior of the palace of King Odin, garbed in the famous green Asgardian attire. He bore no helmet upon his head, but he looked as charming as ever. Those green eyes were alluring, almost begging me to pull away and run into his arms.

"Loki," I whispered, feeling tears gather in my eyes. I looked at Alexander Pierce in confusion. "What's going on?"

"These people have wronged you, Cynder."

"No, they haven't."

"Yes, they have." He gestured to each wedge, each holding people from my past and my present. "Countless times, they've turned against you."

I took a step back from Pierce. "You're wrong."

"Actually, he's not, firefly." From the wedge that was the interior of Stark Tower, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts left their wedge. Almost all at once, the others did as well. The music from Steve's wedge disappeared. They were forming a circle, closing in around me.

"What reason would you have had to wrong me?" I asked the circle.

"You ruined us, it was only fair that we returned the favor," Loki purred. Now, he bore a scepter, a scepter that I remembered all too well.

"Don't get that thing near me."

"You broke my heart, kitten. It was only fair that I broke yours."

I cried out as a blue blast rocketed from the scepter and smacked me in the abdomen. I fell to my knees, gasping.

"You killed one of our agents," Clint said harshly. "You set them on fire. You burned them alive."

"It was an—" I screamed again as Tasha shot me in the leg. "Accident." Bang. Another shot, this time to my other leg. "Odin's beard!"

"You're unstable," said Bruce. "You're a danger to the world, we had to keep you from destroying it."

"I'm a bloody Avenger!" I said hoarsely.

Not all of them participated in taking turns of dealing damage to me, that was mainly Clint, Tasha, and Loki. But what broke my heart most was that the others, Bruce and Pepper included, laughed at my pain. Laughed at the misery. All while Alexander Pierce stood by and watched. He never said a word, never called them off.

"Stop it!" I shouted through whimpers of pain. "Stop it."

"You were safer on Asgard," Steve said coldly. "You should've never left."

"Even if she hadn't, she wouldn't have been safe," Loki said, striking me across the face with the scepter.

"ENOUGH!"

A surge of power rose within me, and suddenly, the circle of heroes became a circle of flames. A circle of frantic people crying out, begging for the fire to stop eating away at their skin. One by one, they all crumpled to the ground in burned heaps, unmoving.

Steve was one of the few still standing, as was Loki, and Tasha. Their skin was melted off, their clothes black. Tasha caved first, keeling to her side. The flames faded on her corpse, winking out.

"You deserve to burn!" Loki snarled through his cries of agony.

I raised my hand out at him, turning up the heat. His fire morphed into blue, and the crackle of the fire was so loud it actually drowned out his screams. I held my head high in pride as he fell.

"Kiara," I heard Steve croak. I turned to him, turning his fire up as well. He went out in his last moments with a whimper.

Adrenaline soared through me. I felt the rush of power, closing my eyes. Even though the smell of rotting flesh wasn't pleasurable, I felt strong.

I was startled by a single clap of the hands. My eyes snapped open. Alexander Pierce stood on the outskirts of the corpse circle, looking as though he was a proud parent.

"You were right," I said, with an edge in my tone now.

"I'm glad you realized it," he said, stepping over Clint's burnt corpse. "Unfortunately, I have bad news for you, Cynder."

I looked at him warily. "What is that?"

"This was just a test."

"A what?"

Pierce held his hands up in surrender. "Easy. I wanted you to see the true nature of your so called 'allies'. I wanted you to see what I see. Now that you have, I need your help."

"With what?"

"We've got work to do. You'll get to this point in the real world soon enough." He put a hand on my shoulder. "Welcome to the team, Cynder."

***

"Look, look, she's up."

Licking my lips, I was semi-blinded by the lights in the room. I couldn't move my head, couldn't turn it. There were restraints on me. I couldn't break out of those either.

"Easy, easy." Someone was beside me, pulling a contraption away from my head. The back of the chair I was laying on moved up, so I was up in a sitting position. I looked around, and pairs of eyes were staring right back at me. I could see the fear in them. They feared me.

I guess they had good reason to.

"Cynder?"

At the mention of my name, I found the source of the voice. Seth Joyce. He had a calm face on, his brown eyes full of inquisition.

"She's attentive," he noted. I heard pens scribbling on paper. "Pierce is going to want to know the breakthrough we had with her."

"Pierce?" I said slowly.

Seth nodded. "Yes, Alexander Pierce. Your boss."

"Where is he?"

"He's busy. He left us in charge of you."

My arms tensed. I nodded down towards the restraints.

"Do we want those off her so soon?" someone whispered. "She only just woke up. We don't know how effective this is."

"We'll find out soon enough," Seth said. He went to one of my arms and unshackled me. He did the same thing with the other arm. I sat in the chair, unsure of what to do next. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to even move, twitch, or stand up.

I made slow movements, and every one that I made was allowed. I used the contraption for support to steady my balance. I wasn't sure what to do next.

"How do you feel?" asked Seth.

"Aching," I said, feeling a sharp pain in my forehead.

"You were hurt on a mission."

"I don't recall..."

"It was pretty severe."

I looked around. "This doesn't look like an infirmary room."

"We had to move, we were being pursued."

I rolled out my neck, inspecting my body. "I don't have any wounds to show for it."

"You heal awfully fast. You can thank your blood for that."

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"We'll move you to another room. Pierce wants you training with the Asset when he returns from his mission."

This was the first I'd heard of this "Asset". Did I know him before? "How soon will that be?"

"We're not sure. Follow me."

Something told me in the back of my mind to not follow Seth, to instead fight the people around me. I couldn't understand the alarm. These people, they rescued me from whatever mission had gone wrong. Did Pierce know of the failure? Was I going to get punished for the failure? It wasn't that I feared failure or consequence—I could easily battle any that came my way—I just wanted to know the facts.

The fact that I had holes in my memory troubled me.

Seth watched me with soft brown eyes. Trust me, the eyes said. We're on your side.

I decided to take the leap and follow him out of the room, shutting up the alarm in the back of my head.