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[b]Location [/b] Forrest Hills Hospital, Queens, New York City
[b]Position [/b] 1st Floor, Admissions and Reception
[b]Time [/b] 1213 hrs 10th March 2012

It was mid-day in the hospital and the day staff were overwhelmed. On top of the normal hustle of visitors and in-patients, a large influx of patients from an incident in Glendale had every nurse, consultant and doctor rushing from post to post. None of the EMTs that were on site would discuss what they’d seen but the rumours had started and they were saying that it was a mutant. An exploding mutant. Linda Carter shook her head. Whatever next?


“Excuse me, nurse? Could you point me somewhere?”

Looking up, eyes bleary from her 18 straight hours, Linda saw a tall, dark brown haired man, rimmed glasses adorning his hazelnut eyes, a white coat wrapped around his impressive frame and stethoscope draped around his neck. In his hand, he held a patients chart. He was smiling down at Linda. She smiled politely back.

“I’m sorry, doctor, I’m kinda swamped here, isn’t there anyone else you…?”

The doctor raised his hand, “It’ll only take a moment, please? I’m looking for a…” He consulted his chart, “…a Mr Isaiah Bradley?”

 Linda sighed, turning to the computer and tapped away at the keys, bring up the patients’ medical files.

“It says here Mr Bradley is in Room 11 on the 2nd Floor in Patient Care. But he’s being treated for Alzheimer’s, shouldn’t you…?”

She turned back to find the doctor gone. She scowled and returned to shifting through the A&E admissions. New doctors always underestimated nurses, especially the ones laied over from the night shift.


Isaiah Bradley was propped up in his bed, the private room darkened except for the blueish glow of the cheap TV stuffed in the corner of the room, left on some generic local news channel. The pretty, young reporter was mouthing soundlessly towards Isaiah, a pillar of smoke rising behind her. Her location was Glendale.

The door of his room opened and a large man in a doctor’s coat entered, reaching up to pull off his rimmed glasses, tossing them on the small roller table over Isaiah’s bed. Masters pulled the low chair across towards his bed, settling in softly and smiling at the now frail old man. 

“Hello Isaiah, how are you?”

Isaiah’s head turned to face the soft voice, his eyes glazed over, looking right through Tony. Masters knew about Isaiah’s history, a young black soldier who was a patient to experiments of rehashes of the Super Soldier Serum, just after the murder of Dr Joseph Reinstein. He was one of the few survivors and currently the only surviving member of his platoon. It was his experiments that lead SHIELD to Masters’ current state.

“Isaiah, have you seen Eli lately? Do you know where he is?” Isaiah was Eli’s grandfather and his sole guardian. He was responsible for Eli getting accepted into SHIELD and, in turn, when Isaiah began to deteriorate, Eli set him up in the Forrest Hills. When Masters mentioned Eli, his eye’s sharpened slightly, staring right into Master’s eyes.

“Eli, is he alright? Is it the Red Skull? I knew it! I knew he shouldn’t go alone!”

Isaiah tried to get out of the bed, reaching towards Masters hurriedly. Tony gripped his shoulders gently but tightly and laid the feeble, old man back in his bed.

“It’s not the Skull Isaiah, we just can’t find Eli. Do you know where he’d be?”

The old soldier’s eyes glazed over again.

“Oh Eli… He’s such a good boy. Always loved coming with me to the lake…”

Masters sighed, settling back into the chair, rubbing his face. The 3 rogues had a week’s head start on him and, from SHIELD’s psychoanalysis records; Patriot was the weak link in the group. He was the one of the public face “heroes” of SHIELD; he was the more morally centred type, he would be the easiest to crack to find the other two, assuming they had done the smart thing and separated. He was also the green-horn of the group, with USAgent and Union both being black op veterans, meaning Patriot would be the simplest to track down. So far, however, the youth was proving extremely difficult to locate. Masters had thought Isaiah might provide some insight. It seems he was mistaken. As he got up to leave, he absent-mindedly listened to Isaiah’s muddled ramblings.

“The long summers we spent there, in the cabin, just sitting on the lakeside, fishing for hours. Eli loved that cabin…”

Masters paused, his hand on the knob as he had a crazy thought. Maybe this trip wasn’t an entire waste. He turned back to Isaiah, a friendly smile on his face to keep Isaiah calm. 

“Isaiah, tell me more about the lake….”