Chapter 9: Chase Us Down To Queens

The tires screeched and the bike charged up its fuel. Barnes instantly hit the pedals and drove himself and Zoë out of the Wakandan embassy and towards the fastest route leading to Queens.

"Why do I have to be the plague bait?" The GAMA agent whined.

"Beats me. I was unconscious when the details were out," Barnes shrugged.

"Right, I forgot!" Zoë said sarcastically. "You were busy being a human Popsicle!"

Barnes ignored that last comment and hit the power on his bike. He had the bike dodge the other cars as they began to cross the heart of the Robert F Kennedy Bridge. "If we take the Grand Central Parkway, we should make it to Queens."

"What's in Queens anyway?" Zoë asked.

"Beats me."

"Great! So I suppose we're just supposed to scream 'We made it to Queens' when we get there?"

A scream got their attention. Barnes hit the brake on the bike. Drivers were either driving to land as fast as possible or they ditched their cars to run as fast as they could away from the bridge. The East River was turning red in the horizon and slithered its red waves towards the bridge.

"Great, it's Nile again." Zoë grumbled in exasperation when Nile the First Plague emerged and surrounded both sides of the bridge in two copies of himself until they towered upon them. Oh, and did anyone fail to mention that thanks to the oil spill in 2017, he was three times bigger than he was back in Dupont Circle while confronting Anubis, Marion, and Captain America?

And if that didn't help, thousands of vibranium lice marched up the bridge until they formed Louse.

"Two against two, should be fair." Barnes got off the bike and pulled out the gun he had brought with him from the embassy.

"Nile happens to have the black mercury that Louse recollected from the Avengers," both Nile copies said. "It would be easier if Erskine handed the Soul Gem fragment over and the Three Plagues can work together to destroy you mortals."

"Nile, Amphibian, and Louse, working together? That's not very fair!" Zoë protested.

"Neither is this!" Louse threw four of her arms at them, forcing the two mortals to dodge in order to avoid the lethal fists covered in exoskeleton armor. The Niles than dissolved by cascading onto the bridge. Zoë grabbed Barnes and made him get inside a Toyota Cruiser. As the bridge got full of blood that formed into more copies of Nile, Zoë grabbed the wheel and started driving towards the mainland, but Louse enlarged one of her arms to act as a road diverting the van in a loop. The mortals had to jump off the vehicle and climb back up to the bridge to face the walking blood zombies.

"Well, Plan A being to avoid them failed," Zoë sighed.

As if things couldn't get worse, Louse's lice suddenly dispersed and began to swim inside Nile's miniature clones. The latters began to have their own vibranium exoskeleton armor growing from the inside, which now made them look like armored walking blood zombies.

Barnes readied his gun. Just then, white webbing landed on all the clones' bloody feet. As they struggled to get out of it, their movements began to slow down, and suddenly, the blood on their feet began to solidify.

"They're... stuck," Barnes realized.

"Hey, guys!"

They looked up and saw a vigilante hanging upside down from the nearest pillar.

"Hey, you're the wall-crawler that Stark brought in at the airport," Barnes pointed at Spiderman.

"And you're the guy with the metal arm," Spiderman jumped down to the ground. He looked at Zoë. "I'm going to guess that you're a top secret scientist that the bad guys want to kidnap."

"Sure, let's go with that." Zoë looked back at the clones struggling to get off. "How did you know that we were in trouble?"

"Oh, I was on a field trip until my Spider-senses alerted me and I saw the East River turning red." Spiderman then asked Barnes eagerly: "Did Captain America ask for me?"

"I don't know. He just told us to go to Queens..."

"I am from Queens."

"So that's why he had us go to Queens!" Zoë slapped herself on the forehead. "Cap wasn't making use lure Louse away from the Wakandan Embassy! He wanted us to lure them as close to Queens as possible because he knows you live there!"

"And I'm kind of neutral on the entire Sokovia Accords deal." He paused when the clones began to wail as the solidification began to root its way up to their chests. "They're clotting. I knew it."

"You're joking." Barnes lowered his gun. "You gave them a blood clot?"

"Decreased movement makes liquid blood turn into solid gel," Spiderman explained. "Using my webbing, I delayed their actions, therefore delaying their blood movement. It helps being a geek."

The clones completely solidified, but the heroes couldn't celebrate. The vicious lice exploded out of the red rocks, causing fresh new clones to come out of the statues in doubles.

"No fair!" Spiderman exclaimed. "Now there's twice as many!"

"Yeah, Nile's made of hydra blood, so his clones get doubled," Zoë said. "He's supposed to be weakened by holy water and strengthened by polluted water, but see if you can keep clotting them with your webbing."

"On it." Spiderman shot a web swing at one of the pillars. For the next ten minutes, he was shooting and gluing the clones Nile clones onto the bridge. Or just tossing them into the river.

Barnes kept shooting at the armored lice, having no effect on them. "I'm almost out of bullets!" He warned Zoë.

"Gee, why'd you use bullets on bullet-proof vibranium lice?" the GAMA agent rolled her eyes.

"You're the genius! Don't you have a shampoo or something?" He started using his gun as a club to hit the invasive species with the way you'd swat a fly.

Zoë tapped her temples nervously. "Guys, you might want to figure something out quickly!" Spiderman shouted from the other side of the bridge. "The situation's heat is going up!"

"Heat!" Zoë snapped her fingers. "Lice hate heat and combs!"

"You know where we can find a 50 foot tall comb?" Barnes asked.

"No, but we have this!" Zoë pulled the container holding the Soul Stone fragment. "How did Anubis do it again? Ah, yes." She held the container up in the air. The plagues paused in their action to see sunlight reflect through the container's barriers and illuminating the stone fragment in an orange light.

Ra, morning and evening star.

Grant me your heat from afar

So that with justice I shall smite

The ones who defy your might.

The sun sent light transmissions to the container, making the fragment glow like police car signals. Zoë instantly held out the container and a heat beam charged. The vibranium lice wailed as the heat blasts moved in a clockwise matter, making them melt faster than ice cubes. Spiderman swung up to reach the highest point of the bridge to avoid getting hit by the beams. Nile must have thought of his action as a good call, because it instantly summoned its clones and went back to the East River's waves.

"AAH!" Zoë's hands began to redden. Even inside a container, the Soul Stone was easily burning through the minerals and reaching the holder's skin. Despite the pain, she still kept holding the weapon up to keep the Third Plague's soldiers at bay. Then the pain started going inside Zoë, making her scream as she felt the burning heat boiling her blood. She began to lose consciousness.

"Erskine!" Barnes slapped away the container from Zoë's hands and caught her before she could hit the earth. Louse wasted no time and reformed herself to grab the contained stone fragment and jump in the river. Nile formed a bloody bubble for Louse to land on and the two sank their way into the river. The blood drained away like stain being cleansed away by OxiClean, making the East River look completely normal. Like it did not suffer the same scenario of the River Nile.

Spiderman came down to join them. "I'm sorry. I couldn't stop them..."

"Tell that to Cap." Barnes growled when he saw a Wakandan helicopter pulling in.

An hour later, at the Wakandan Embassy

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Zoë screamed as she dunked her hands back in the bucket full of cold water and ice cubes. The others winced at the level of her screams.

"Look, until the ice melts, you will cool down your hands in the ice bucket," Bonnie said. And for some apparent tantalizing reason, she was eating dulce de leche ice cream in front of her human partner. "I mean, what were you thinking? You know we're not supposed to use our bare hands when handling with Soul Stone fragments. OK, normally we'd use the equipment from the Science Division lab..."

"Gah! Who cares? We lost the fragment and it's all my fault!" Zoë lamented.

"I couldn't stop them, Captain America." Spiderman lowered his head in guilt. "I'm sorry."

"Nobody saw it coming, soldier." Cap gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "At first, Louse seemed to be the only Plague we were dealing with. I thought that if we lured her... it away towards you..."

"I'd trap them in a web?" Spiderman laughed. "Sounds awesome! Except lice normally don't fall prey to spiders."

"Disadvantage fell upon us," T'Challa said. "At first, we were lucky enough to deal with Nile, Amphibian, and Louse when they attacked us on their own, but they prove to be a more challenging obstacle when they start working together. I can't imagine our fates if we had just dealt with the first three plagues all together."

"And now they took the fragment that brought Amphibian to life." Zoë bit her lip as the cold kept hitting her skin. A beeping sound came out of Cap. He pulled out his phone and put it on speaker when he found out it was Sam on the other line.

"Cap, we got a massive problem. The Dora Milaje soldier that Seth kidnapped? She turned into the first female plague..."

"Let me guess, she took the mercury?" Cap said.

"How'd you know?"

"Let's just say it's old news. She made off with the Soul Stone fragment along with Nile. Dealing with two plagues at once is a whole lot harder than one."

"Shit. And to make matters worse, the chick took another person away."

"Did she take Amphibian's host?" T'Challa asked.

"No, the agent's still with SHIELD. It's worse. Steve, Louse took Sharon."

Cap's grip on the table tightened. For a moment, he managed to squeeze in the metal as if it were tin foil.

"That doesn't make sense." Zoë managed to ignore the pain the ice was giving her. "I thought Louse was aiming me as the next Fourth Plague host for Seth. Why kidnap Captain America's girlfriend?"

"Where were the other Avengers when Louse attacked?" T'Challa asked.

"On their way to Thor's spaceship. Tony revealed to Ross that Thor was going back to question Loki, and Ross..." Sam answered.

"Wanted Loki apprehended?" Bonnie guessed in boredom as she licked off the ice cream on her spoon. "He does realize that Loki's a god, right? You can just lock up a god in a mortal prison."

"Yep. Sharon tagged along because she wanted to see Steve again... and also because I kinda told her that Zoë was Erskine's grandkid and Sharon was excited about meeting the living family of the scientist who made Steve buff... But then, you know, we had a lice invasion on the highway."

"So the evil lady was able to be in two places at once," Barnes said.

"I still don't get it." Zoë pulled her reddened hands out of the bucket and shook them in frustration. "Why would Louse joke about me being a possible host if she simply took Agent Carter with her? And why did she keep talking about the Black Widow?"

"She asked about Nat too?" Sam asked through the phone. "She looked confused when she saw that our beloved Russian wasn't with us."

"Who did the Third Plague expect Black Widow to be with?" Spiderman asked in confusion.

His question got the attention of Cap, who managed to put the pieces with us. "Of course! Nile attacked me and Amphibian attacked Vision because we were with Anubis! I bet that Seth's remaining powers of the Eye of Ra might link him with Anubis while he's got the necklace on, or since Seth is Anubis' father, perhaps Seth is using their blood connection to track them!"

"That makes sense, but don't you think that if that was true, Louse would be attacking Nat or the news would have spread the headlines of the Hulk going nuts?" Sam asked suspiciously from the phone.

"Oh, wait." Bonnie pulled out the Themis Protocols and flipped through the pages. "Section 2, Paragraph 3 declares that all divine immigration organization agents' main habiting locations will be unknown to the other agents and will be shrouded from the knowledge of undesired ears."

"What?" Spiderman asked.

"The agents' main domiciles are completely classified. We are not allowed to know our coworkers' addresses nor can we try finding them or visiting them unless it's for an emergency. In other words, nobody knows who lives where except for the boss, Tiresias. And if somebody tries to locate us via phone or email tracking, mist magic keeps us covered."

"And we have no idea where Anubis and Marion live!" Zoë realized. "So if we don't know and we got nothing in the GAMA data that can locate them, than Seth and his plagues can't find them! By bringing Black Widow and the Hulk to Marion's hometown, they've hidden them in the mist. That's why Louse was unable to find Black Widow!"

"Joys of private rights," Barnes gave a small smirk.

"Wait!" Bonnie cut the good move. "Anubis and Marion's three-days leave ends in two days. Once that happens, they'll be back out in the open and who knows if Seth will either send the Fourth Plague or give Louse the privilege to torment Black Widow?"

"You're not going to suggest them to just stay home, are you?" Spiderman asked grimly.

"No, that's stuff Stark would do."

"So what now?" Barnes asked. "It's not like the bad guy is just going to sit down and wait until the other guy comes back out."

"Perhaps while we wait for Anubis and Marion to come back, we can go back to Sekmeth. The least we can do is try to figure out where the next five pinpoints are located, who they are, and prevent Seth from plaguing them before he can unleash the tenth one and kill... well, everyone whose a firstborn," Cap said.

"Wait, are you saying that everyone who's a single child or an older sibling will die?" Spiderman gulped. "You know, I happen to be an only child."

"Don't worry, they'll stop Seth before he does anything crazy," Zoë said. She looked at her hands nervously. "In the meantime, Bonnie and I have to clock out."

"Yeah, we need to get back to your house to get the seaweed for the Soul stone poisoning removal," Bonnie said. "Good thing we know that Colchis Kelp grows in Florida and we can use it to cure any mortal affected by the Soul Stone... if they are still alive."

Bonnie and Zoë made their way to the door. "You guys are just gonna leave?" Spiderman asked incredulously.

"You people really need to read the Themis Protocols!" Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Divine immigration organizations are not allowed to go to other countries!"

"But they can contact each other in case of dire emergency," T'Challa pointed out.

"Only after we give them a chance to protect themselves. If a divine immigration organization admits it can't handle the attacking threat, that's when it can contact others for support," Zoë said. "GAMA never contacts other organizations but Tiresias knows the locations of all of them. Try figuring out with Sekmeth or wait until Anubis gets back on the possible locations of the next plagues. Once the countries have been singled out, ask Tiresias if you can use the contact list to reach out to the leaders of the organizations and help them prepare for the threat. But remember, if two more countries get attacked, it's a revealing gathering of all the organizations with the UN."

Cap sighed. "Very well, but take Bucky with you. In case Louse attacks you again, he'll be there."

Barnes merely shrugged. Zoë blushed in bafflement. "Bonnie and I are capable of taking care of each other," she said firmly.

"Girl, I'm not the one who needs protecting." Bonnie remarked.

Meanwhile, in Thor's spaceship

"Yes?" Loki snapped his fingers. The doors opened and Thor came in. Naturally, the king of Asgard threw the nearest vase at Loki. The God of Mischief caught it with his bare hands.

"Glad to see you among us, brother." Thor smirked.

"Whatever suits you." Loki put the vase down on the nearest table. "How's our old friend Anubis?"

"He's in for a lot, really." Thor paced a bit in the room. "He recently found out that his father is stealing his idea of the plagues."

"How so?"

"Using human hosts to mark his points, making each plague to target one of the Avengers, and planning on decimating every firstborn on Earth with the final plague, whether they are mortal or immortal."

"A good half of the population then," Loki said grimly. And let's make a note that this came from the guy who tried destroying the realm of the Frost Giants and taking over Asgard and Earth respectively. "Haven't we seen this scenario repeatedly? Somebody saves the lives of millions by destroying those of a thousands and it changes history."

"There's more." Thor gestured to the nearest armchairs. The two gods sat down to continue their conversation. "There was also a discovery that Seth might have been freed by somebody who promised Seth to have what he deserved if he afterwards gave him the Soul Stone and wiped the Earth of all possible threats." Thor leaned over. "You were given the scepter holding the Mind Stone and an army by someone who wanted the Tesseract holding the Space Stone. This can't be a coincidence."

Loki sighed. "I guess not. Very well, I shall tell you. His name is Thanos and the best thing you should know is that he's a pure dark soul. I don't know what his plans are for the Infinity Stones, but what I do know is that when he gave me the staff and an army to take over the Earth, he made me promise that once I dominated the planet, I would return to him the Tesseract and the scepter. As a plus, he said that he would never bother the Earth once our trade was over."

"So he had no intention of letting you keep the scepter?"

"None."

"So he hoped to get two stones from you, and it seems pretty obvious that he freed Seth just to get the Soul Stone. I'm assuming he doesn't know about the Aether or Doctor Strange. Did he say anything about the Power Stone?"

"Other than having someone else fetch it for him. I think the man's name had an assonance with Roland." Loki noticed his brother tapping nervously on the armchair. "You're not going to tell your friends, are you?"

"The problem with Seth and the plagues is already having them preoccupied, I wouldn't want them to overdo their panic with the news of another possible alien invasion." Thor got up and made his way to the door. "I'd better go back to them. They'll probably want to start finding the next pinpoints."

"Thor, wait!" Loki made his brother pause and turn to see him look a bit more worried than usual. "You said that Seth would aim at all firstborns, whether they were mortal or immortal. What about the demigods?"

"What about them?"

"Well, a majority of them aren't the firstborn children of their immortal parents, but at the same time they might be the firstborns of their mortal parents. How will that affect them?"

Thor bit his lip. It was an excellent point that the God of Mischief had just made there. What would happen to the demigod populace on Earth? Would they all die from being half-mortal firstborns? Or survive because they were among the long lists of immortal offspring?

"That is an excellent question. I'll ask Anubis when I see him."

"And while you're off playing hero, I don't suppose you could come up with a cover story for me? I need to go to Norway."
Thor sighed. "Loki, she made it clear that she'd never forgive you. She told you no 76 years ago and she slammed the door on you after the Battle Of New York. You really think that she'd take your apologies in just because you are linked by blood?"

"I can't stop trying." Loki shrugged. "That's what fathers do."