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Peggy blinks at that. She can accept the concept that SOMETHING is happened and she is not the Director of SHIELD. As for the other? "I most certainly AM Peggy Carter. Check my fingerprints, for goodness sake. And further, if things have been changed, of /course/ I wouldn't be recognized. Clearly you haven't done much with 0-8-4's, or you'd recognize the possibility."
Agent Hill isn't the sort to be pulled into a knowledge-measuring contest. "I'll take your prints if you consent." Due process and all deserve to be played out. Her mouth is hard, a firm line under the serious expression. She sinks down into the seat, leaning forward some, giving up a little of her height but not by much. "You may be a Peggy Carter. The name isn't exactly Boleslawa Wyrzykowski. But quite mistaken if you believe you either work here or have any scrap of authority whatosever."
Peggy's temper is being tested. "Of course you can take my fingerprints. As for the remainder, why else would I be here, Agent Hill? Are we to believe that somehow, I'm an agent of a foreign power, who /somehow/ knew where SHIELD's headquarters was, and /somehow/ managed to enter that facility completely undetected, /and/ make it all the way to the archive room? It stretches credibility a bit, don't you think?"
"Plausibility is a funny thing. Clearly you haven't done much with 0-4-7s." Maria doesn't break a smile. A gesture made for the benefit of anyone watching through the one-way glass produces results in a minute or two. "Right now, we are working with the simple fact you showed up and helped yourself to the archive during an exceptionally well-timed action or accidental blunder. Credibility is a bit thin on the ground with you either way. Especially on your insistence on certain facts that plainly can't be."
"If I were intentionally trying to deceive you, I would choose a more plausible story, would I not? And if you claim I'm not Peggy Carter, then who do you suppose I am? You have records of enemy agents. I'm not going to be in them. How do you explain my knowledge not only of this facility, but of various SHIELD agents? Shall I detail Project Rebirth for you? The Howling Commandos? The Winter Soldier? Please, by all means, take your pick."
Maria almost smirks. The door opens and in comes the same blonde chit who brought refreshments. She deigns to stay, watchful at a respectful distance. The brunette rises to reach for the ink pad and a selection of gridded pages, arranging the latter in front of Peggy. "Hardly a state secret." The lid of the pad opens and she examines the block, circling around to stand beside her subject. "Right hand, please." Supposing it's offered up, she starts in a perfunctory fashion rolling each digit across the dark ink and then onto the paper in time. No gentleness, no cruelty. "What are your aims, miss? Coming in here obviously to acquire information. Confusion doesn't seem the name of the game. Why?"
Peggy lets her prints be taken. "I've already explained my aims. You simply choose not to believe them. I'd suggest a polygraph, but we both know they can be beaten." She ponders. "Is SHIELD aware of the mutant situation at the Xavier Institute in this timeline?"
"Pointless, truly. They exist to entertain those who disbelieve other judicial processes." Hill gives a thin smile. Each print laid out on the page earns an appraising look and then she hands her acquisition over to her assistant. Goods picked up, they're carried out by the blonde. The door is pulled shut, indicative of someone else out there offering coverage. "Quite so."
"Then you're aware they have telepaths. They could verify my story. If Agent Maximoff is part of SHIELD in this timeline, then /she/ might be able to verify my story." Now that she's fully accepted the situation, Peggy is in full-on solution mode.
When will the woman tire of speaking? Probably absolutely never. A reasonable supply of information keeps passing Peggy's lips and Hill takes the cup of coffee, downing a rather hot mouthful. Caffeine solves all that ails one, short of the issues that Nick Fury deals with. Not her pay grade, not her problem. One of those blessings, really. "Your story checked out, you wouldn't be in here receiving questions by me. No matter what you're saying, miss, you are digging yourself a deeper hole. Plenty of this can be obtained by the right angles. But you're not Ms. Carter. Ms. Carter might hand you over to the authorities or a psychiatric hospital, but until we execute on that protocol, it's not happening quite yet."
Peggy frowns. "If you claim I'm /not/ Miss Carter, surely you must have verified her. Show me a picture of this imposter who's claiming to be me?"
"We have indeed verified her, and I don't feel like you have any particular grounds to be demanding anything of me. For one, you have no verified citizenship as yet," Agent Hill replies. "We can have a deportation order for you in six hours." Fact that's there. She pushes the coffee cup across the table. "Throw this at me and I'll be inclined to let the bureaucrats have their way."
Peggy groans. "You are the most intractable woman I think I have ever met, and that is saying something. What about the other alternatives? Telepath? Agent Maximoff? I am /trying/ to help resolve this confusion, which would be something I would think you would want to do as well."
Her hand hits the bony rise of her hip. Agent Hill isn't by any means a curvaceous woman, as shapely as a post. A nice post, at least, but a solid and skinny thing. "Look in the damn cup, miss, and you might find half your questions answered."
Fair enough. Peggy looks at the cup, to see what's in there. She'd assumed coffee. Her own fault; she knows the rules about assuming. The British woman looks inside, with a sigh of vexation.
The woman looking back is probably eighteen, perhaps nineteen. Hunger does hard things to a person, at least in pronouncing cheekbones and giving the defined liens of a face that age and experience will eventually round out. Not all the hard lines that will come with pain and suffering. Hair colour is impossible to tell, eyes black in the coffee naturally, but the expression there isn't a woman of forty or thirty.
"…what?" It's a flat tone, as she stares at the image in the coffee. "What in the…" She sounds poleaxed, and for the first time, shaken. "Could I please have a proper mirror for a moment?" she asks.
Agent Hill fishes in the pocket of her uniform. What she comes up with is rather small, a round circle of unbreakable glass in a plastic case. Not exactly a compact as it lacks powder but something suitable. The fingerprints absent on the glass are telling. Holding the outer rim, she holds that out and sets the compact on the table.
Peggy reaches out, and takes the mirror, also by the rim. With mirror and her own eyes, she's going to give herself a full top-to-toe visual inspection. She is so far managing to hold her nerves back, but this has her spooked. Being mistaken for someone else was fine. But this is her very identity being tampered with.
"So. Miss." Agent Hill doesn't use the titles rudely or pointedly. She probably could if she wished, but the reaction is muted at best. "You might want to start again at the beginning. What's your interest in SHIELD and please, don't say time travel."
Peggy sets the mirror down on the table, closing her eyes a moment. "Is the year 1964, could you please tell me?"
"January 1965," Hill replies without hesitation. "The day after New Years. Have you ingested or imbibed anything unusual in the past day? Did anyone offer you something to eat or drink that you did not make with your own hands?"
"I had some odd dreams." If they were indeed, dreams. "There were refreshments. In the dream. If I was dreaming." She opens her eyes. "Agent Hill, I find myself in a quandary. To every one of my memories, I am, indeed, Peggy Carter." And now she's having to confront the possibility she might not be? "However, I will freely admit that based on that reflection, that is a teenager looking back at me. Either my mind or my body has been muddled with. And possibly both."
"You're not Ms. Carter of our acquaintance, and as a safety precaution, I do not authorize you meeting her. I assure you the director and other members will not allow it either." Maria doesn't want her coffee back, but she sits in her chair. "Given we have nothing back in fanfare and splendour, I'm going out on a limb to tell you that your prints do not match up with hers. Now trawling the deep ocean to assure us of whom you are or aren't may take longer, I have all night to figure out whom you are. My organization is perfectly comfortable knowing whom our affiliate is. You, on the other hand, are lining yourself up to a number of tests."
Peggy looks back. "I have nothing I can offer you, Agent Hill." Her voice is softer than it's been; less challenging. "Believe me, if you can figure out who I am, I would very much like to know. As I said…my memories align with that of a woman I do not appear to be. This means tampering with either my mind or body has been done, and I am as eager to know which as you are to know who I am." She sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Teenager. How can I be a bloody teenager?"
"That's going to have to be the next step. Where did you go to school?" Hill throws that out with a quick flick of the wrist. "You're a teenager and therefore in our custody until proven otherwise. If someone comes to reclaim you I should like very much to talk to them."
"So far as I'm aware, St. Martin-in-the-Fields High School for Girls. London, England. Class of 1939." Peggy rattles that off automatically. She checks her clothing. Teenagers don't dress as she normally does…has that altered along with her age?
Hill nods and goes quiet for Peggy to speak. She wants to talk, she can talk. The clothes she wears are right about what she expected to have come in with. They simply happen to be worn on someone rather slighter and less developed than a full-grown adult woman.
Peggy looks over. "I don't know how to proceed from here, Agent Hill. I'm not lying to you, or at least, if I am, I myself am not aware of it." On the plus side, if she is a minor, that's some legal protection.
"What we need is to put you in a room and wait a little. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all." Shaking her head, Maria gestures. "I'll need you to put your hands out for a pair of cuffs. For your own safety more than anyone else. We are going to place you in a holding space, and that will at least be comfortable for you."
Peggy sighs. "Lovely." She sighs. "Are cuffs really necessary, if I'm going to be in a holding cell in any case?" She'll hold out her hands, though, not showing any resistance.
"For all I know, you're a hexapod in a stabilizing belt, and releasing you means I have an eight-armed, arcane horror on my hands, eager to watch films at the cinema and devour the janitor." Agent Hill has a questionable sense of humour. It's something that leaves a sharp line of lemony acid. "Let's get you going. The cuffs are, and you'll make everyone feel a great deal better if you aren't sprouting purple appendages."
THAT actually does get a chuckle from Peggy, who can have a dry wit as well. "Fair enough." She lets herself be cuffed. "Lead on."