“What is that building over there?” A girl, around five, asks.

”It’s a nuclear plant. They have to keep it out of the city in case something goes wrong.” A woman says, glancing over at the building in the desert.

“Oh. When will we get there?” The girl asks.

“Still 40 minutes.” The woman laughs.

She turns on the radio.

“I love this song!” The girl says.

I awake from the nightmare sweating. I’m in the hospital. Like usual. Like I have been for the past week. The accident really banged me up. Two broken ribs, damaged vocal cords, a twisted ankle, and an infection in the cut on my forehead. Not to mention my mental issues. I jump as the door slams shut. Two doctors and one tough-looking guy with an eyepatch walk in.

“This is her?” The Eyepatch Guy says.

The doctors both nod. They show him a few things on the computer and walk over.

”Hi.” A doctor says. “I’m Daisy Willows, the other doctor is Janice Jackson, and he’s Nick Fury.”

That’s it. They run some tests on me, and suddenly Fury speaks.

”Are her vocal cords repaired enough to talk?” He asks Jackson.

She shrugs.

“Maybe. We can try.” She says, and nods to me. “Try saying your name, since we don’t know that.” She says.

“My...” I pause.

I clear my throat, noticing how husky and unused my voice is. “My name is..... Ka-a-“ and then I start coughing. Jackson jabs a needle into my arm, and everything goes black.

One week later

”Hi, Cassie.” Willows says as I come to. “That’s your name, right? Cassie?”

I look up at her. That name makes me feel a pang of regret and sadness.

“What about your last name? Wait, don’t talk. I’ll try to guess.” She pulls out a piece of paper. “Cassie Walker? That’s the name we found on your tablet. Cassie Rose Walker.” She says, and write some something down.

She doesn’t see me shake my head. Katie. Katie Elisabeth Wilson. Cassie is dead. Cassie is dead. I think, and a tear streams down my face. Then something amazing happens. I speak my first normal-sounding sentences since the accident.

”I’m not Cassie. I’m Katie. Cassie is dead. I should be too...right?”

The next day I take my first steps. I’ve been hounding Willows and Jackson with questions ever since I got used to talking again. They explained everything to me.

After the accident, I waited near the car wreckage. A plane sent to collect the bodies found me. They quickly discovered how radioactive I was and made a call to S.H.I.E.L.D. S.H.I.E.L.D took me to their best doctors, Willows and Jackson, who were very puzzled about my radiation. Then they found a shard of glass from the nuclear plant in my arm, and once they removed it, I returned to an almost normal amount of radioactivity.

I woke up a week after I got here. And I remember the rest. They didn’t want to tell this to me until I was able to talk. I wanted to know everything about S.H.I.E.L.D, but Jackson said no. Finally Willows said, for every three steps I take, she’d tell me something about S.H.I.E.L.D. So far I know that S.H.I.E.L.D is a sort of army place? And they said Fury wants to speak with me. I wonder why. By the end of the day, they’ve run out of things to say.

So I ask them, “Why am I still here? I’m fully healed, even if I should be dead. Why am I still here?”