Chapter 10: Carol Danvers Does Not Trust Carefully

The report took Carol forty minutes to write and came out to three pages, which was eight pages fewer than it should have been.

She sat with it in the small office SHIELD had assigned her on sub-level three — a room that smelled like recycled air and institutional carpet cleaner and the specific nowhere-ness of spaces designed for temporary occupation — and read it back twice. Everything in it was accurate. She had checked. The date of first contact: accurate. Viktor's physiological presentation on the tarmac: accurate. Her decision to bring him in rather than neutralize the threat: documented as tactical asset acquisition, pending biochemical assessment, consistent with Avenger field discretion protocols. Every sentence true. The total picture assembled from those sentences was, she recognized, a photograph of a different event than the one that had actually occurred.

She filed it anyway. Then she pulled up Viktor's intake file and started from the beginning.