Chapter Ten: Kinesthesioception
A/n: Kinesthesioception = sense of acceleration. In both a physical and emotional sense. Finally.
This is actually part one of the overall chapter. Why is that? Because it took about 6400 words just to get to what I had initially envisioned as the scene for this bit, and that's turning out to be the midpoint of the entire chapter. I'm at 8400 words now, so of course I lose the plot a bit and am having trouble figuring out how to wrap things up and get our heroes out of the mess they're currently in. *headdesk* So as my tumblr is still pretty much inactive (I do have one that I'm going to start posting this story at. The address is aenariasbookshelf dot tumblr dot com, come stop by and let me know which other tumblrs I should be following!) and my cat is starting to give me death glares when I ask her fic related questions, I'm giving this part of the chapter a test run here. There'll probably be two more parts posted after this to bring the story up to what I've currently got written. Any comments you could offer up to help fight the writer's block would be most appreciated.
This chapter was partially inspired by this youtube dot com / watch?v=Ek0SgwWmF9w video. While the lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with the chapter, the scenery and the background music helped to set the feel for the scene, especially when I kept blasting the song while walking through the same subway station I warped for this bit.
It was one of the constants in her life that Darcy clung to: that when you really, really want something to happen a monkey wrench is going to get tossed into the works and there was going to be an issue. Sometimes it worked out for the better, like taking a certain astrophysics internship because she had put off the six credit requirement until the very last moment and that one was the only one left. Other times, like the incident with her father's car back when she was in high school, didn't go quite as well (they swore never to speak of it again, and she was able to work off the repair bill eventually). So it only stood to reason that trying to find a time that worked for both she and Steve to finally go out on that promised date was fraught with complications. Between the damned oil monsters in the south keeping Steve out of town for a good few weeks, and a spur of the moment business trip to Norway on her part because Jane found some readings that could not be ignored, it wasn't until the beginning of February that they were even in the same state. Text messages and phone calls could only go so far.
At the rate Darcy was going, she couldn't promise that she wouldn't jump Steve the next time she saw him. When the temptation was that close, yet so far out of touch, who could blame her?
Of course, the next time she did see Steve? Yeah, kissing him was the last thing on her mind.
The New York subway system is a complicated labyrinth of corridors, tracks, platforms, stairwells, bricks, metal, tiles, and turnstiles filled to the brim with millions of people every single day. That explanation is a bit simplistic for such an expansive system, but you get the gist of it. It's constantly overcrowded, you run the risk of getting eviscerated being pushed up against a support pole in one of the cars because of the crush of people during rush hour, and sometimes there's just an odd smell in the air too. But as it's been one of the easiest ways to get around New York City for the last hundred plus years, residents and tourists accept the subway and all its foibles. However, when the train that Darcy was in deep below Manhattan began to disintegrate into clouds of metallic dust that twinkled like distant starlight and streaks of jagged blue that resembled electricity but were entirely unlike electricity darted across the walls right in front of her and the other passengers on there, she was ready to swear off the subway for good.
But that was the good thing about having a number of superheroes living right in her city, that they could be on the scene in a matter of minutes to help evacuate the scared and worried passengers. The electric blue streaks stopped the heroes from getting the doors to the car open, but they'd managed to bring the train to a stop in one of the stations and were evacuating passengers through a hatch in the roof. It was a lucky coincidence that her two favorite heroes, Thor and Captain America, were assigned to her car to get all the people out.
They had already evacuated the children, their parents, and the elderly, and were in the process of getting the rest of the adults out. Steve was inside the car handing passengers up through the hatch to Thor, but beyond that Darcy couldn't see the rest of the deal. She was sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. had come up with some precise method for evacuating everyone, and was quite eager to experience it firsthand. Still, Darcy had moved to the back of the crowd and was helping to get everyone gathered under the trap door and out to safety. It wasn't even a conscious action; she just knew that she had to make sure they were safe before she was. At least she had her Taser on hand.
They were down to three passengers, Darcy, and Steve when things started to go really wrong. The disintegration at the other end of the car had been holding steady for a while, but without warning the dust and starlight crackles began to expand, surging up the sides and making the car list dangerously. Darcy grabbed at the closest metal bar as she felt her feet begin to slide out from under her. Steve was able to reach for the person closest to him and keep her nearby, but the two other passengers tumbled further down into the tipping car.
By this time Thor's entire torso was inside of the cab, arms outstretched and reaching towards Steve. "Captain, bring them here!" he yelled out, hair and cape spreading out around him, barely heard over the electric crackles that just seemed to be getting louder and louder.
Steve looked down to the far end of the car, where the final two passengers were clinging onto whatever they could reach. Then his eyes landed on Darcy. And while she was scared shitless at this point (she could admit that to herself at least) she nodded at him, trying to tell him that she'd follow his lead, whatever he decided. Finally, Darcy watched as he glanced up at Thor, and said, "All right, here goes nothing."
Before Darcy could see what Steve did, the crackling streaks on the wall flashed and pulsed a bright blue, and the floor tilted even further. She gripped her bar as hard as she could as the world faded away in a blast of harsh, white light.
Darcy wasn't sure how much time had passed from when she had lost consciousness to when she woke up with a rough gasp. In those first few seconds, however, she realized three things: that she was still in the train car flat on her back on the incredibly dirty floor, that the electric crackling stuff had been replaced with a dim, eerie blue-green-grey light coming in through the windows, and that there was a very heavy, unconscious super soldier currently laying on top of her legs. She winced and then wiggled her legs, hoping like hell that it would be enough to wake him up.
Thankfully, it worked. Within a few seconds she felt Steve tense up, then push himself up on his arms. His blue eyes, almost inhuman in the cold green-grey light and slightly shadowed by the cowl of the uniform, flicked around the car, taking things in at a rapid rate. He looked down at Darcy, who was attempting to push herself to her feet. "What the hell was that?" she asked, wincing at the sharp pain that lanced through the muscles in her lower back.
Steve scrambled to his feet and reached down to help Darcy up. "I have no idea." He looked around the car again, finding that the structure had seemed to almost miraculously rebuild itself after that final flash of light. "But I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
"You can say that again."
They heard some small scrabbling sounds, and looked around to see the other three passengers picking themselves up from around the car. Darcy could see Steve straighten up and adjust the shield that was slung over his back. "Everyone all right?" he called out. When he got a general affirmative coming from all corners he nodded and smacked his hands together once. "All right. Let's pool our resources and we'll figure out where to go from there."
There weren't a lot of supplies to be had from the bags and packages people had left on the train car before they were evacuated, but there was some food and some water at least. It was enough to be carried between the five of them, which led to the next question. "Do we stay here, or do we try to find a way out?" the Captain asked. "Whatever we do, we do by consensus."
From her perch on one of the long bench seats Darcy looked out the window. The platform outside was suffused with that blue-green-grey light, with the internal scaffolding of the station casting deep shadows over the tracks and bouncing off of the grimy tiled walls. What was disturbing her more than anything else was the utter silence in the station. In all the time Darcy had lived in New York City, she'd never seen the subway that empty. Not even at one thirty in the morning when she was stumbling back from a party half buzzed; it was almost a guarantee that there was someone more trashed than she was on the route. Day or night, there was always someone else on the train with her. But now? The only people were the five of them on that train car, and there was utter and total silence all around them.
Even the background noise wasn't present. There was no ambient hum of electricity coming from the third rail, no small water trickles dripping from splits in concrete or ancient, one-hundred year old pipes unable to cope with their load anymore, no chattering of people off in the distance, no wind rushing through the tunnels from escape vents or passing trains, and no sounds of the clicking of various types of heels on concrete and metal floors. For some reason, out of all of the strange things that had happened in the last hour, that bothered Darcy the most. She'd never done well with silence (even growing up in the middle of the woods like she did there were always background sounds. At least in New Mexico she had her iPod as constant companion to keep away the quiet), and she clicked her fingernails on the scratched up windows just to hear the noise echo throughout the car.
One of the other passengers, a tall woman a few years older than Darcy and dressed in heavy riding boots and a puffy down jacket, peered out of the window next to her. "Do you think anyone knows we're here?" she asked.
Darcy shrugged. "I don't even know where here is. It didn't feel – or look - like we went anywhere, but…"
"Yeah, I don't know either."
"Which brings us to the next question." Darcy sighed, and ran a hand through hair that had been tangled from being knocked about so badly.
"Stay or go," the other woman agreed. She twisted around to look back inside the train car. "What are your thoughts, Captain?" she asked.
Steve blew out a rough breath, and looked over at the final two passengers in the car. The boy and girl were probably even younger than Darcy, and she suspected that they were college students. She'd become good at spotting college students lately, especially now that she'd been living with them for over a year. They were huddled together on the opposite bench, arms wrapped tightly around each other. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked back at the other two. "We're safe here," he said. "We can bar the doors, unhook the car from the others to give us an extra level of protection. But that shouldn't stop us from exploring, to figure out what else is around here that we could use to our advantage."
"And possibly search for a way out?" Darcy suggested.
"Getting out of here should be our first priority," Steve agreed.
The woman standing next to Darcy looked around, turning her eyes out the window once more. "If we're in the same place we were before. Maybe I'm just being paranoid but something feels off about this."
"It's too quiet," the boy chimed in, speaking up for the first time. "I haven't been here all that long, but this can't be right."
"I've never seen lights like this in the subway either," Darcy said.
"And if it's this weird down here, what's it going to be like out on the streets?" the girl asked.
"First things first," Steve broke in, "let's find out more information about where we are before even thinking about heading up to the surface. We'll explore in groups." He pointed at Darcy and the woman next to her. "You two stick together and I'll go with these two." Darcy nodded and grabbed her bag, pulling her Taser out of its convenient front pocket. As quiet as it was, it didn't hurt to be prepared for any unexpected guests. "We stay within shouting distance," Steve continued. "It's quiet in here, so our voices will carry pretty well. First sign of trouble, you call for help and, if it's safe, retreat back here."
"We'll have to scream for it," the girl said, waving her cellphone in the air. "Signal's totally gone."
The woman rolled her eyes. "Isn't that a given anyway in the subway?"
"Hey, some phones can still get some sort of connection down here."
"It doesn't matter," Steve broke in again, making Darcy suspect that he could see the potential fight brewing just as well as she could and knew it would be a bad, bad idea to let it go any further. "Yell, scream, sing a song. Just do whatever you need to so that we'll come running." He turned his eyes over to Darcy. "What about clocks, or watches? Are they working?"
Darcy knew that the question was directed towards her, even though Steve was doing very well at giving the impression that they'd never met before in their lives until this day. It wasn't true, but feeding the rumor mill was the last thing needed at that moment. She pulled the pocket watch out from where it was clipped to a hidden loop inside her bag and clicked the lid open. The second hand ticked ahead at a steady pace but it seemed slower, more sluggish than the normal pace of a second. "It's working, but really slowly. If you'll pardon the pun, the timing's off. Maybe because it's a wind up one?"
"What about your phone? What's the readout on there say?" Steve asked, turning back to the girl.
The girl snorted and shook her head, a look of resignation spreading across her face. "It keeps blinking 12:00. I don't think I've ever seen a smartphone do that before."
The boy, who Darcy assumed was her boyfriend by the way he was hovering, squinted down at the phone. "What about the stopwatch function on there though? If that's still working we might at least be able to count off chunks of time."
"Good idea," said Steve. "Does one of you ladies have a phone that can do the same?" They nodded. "All right, we'll set the timers for twenty minutes. As soon as that bell goes off, you get back here as quick as you can."
With that they split off, with Darcy and the woman heading up the creaking metal stairs to the upper level while Steve and the teenagers explored around the platform. The light seeped in through vents and cracks, providing an ambient glow that let them make their way around without stumbling into garbage cans and whatever other detritus was scattered around the place. White tile had crumbled off of the walls to create little mounds of dust and debris heaped on the floor, leaving exposed brickwork behind. Some of the metal bars that looked down to their platform below were bent and rusted, even though they could feel no moisture in the air.
"You know," Darcy said, unbuttoning her coat as they walked up a small concrete slope, "it feels downright balmy in here. Usually you can feel that it's thirty-five and raining inside."
"And you'll feel it when it's a hundred degrees out too," she agreed, looking upwards at the walls as they continued their walk. "Right now it just feels…temperate, I guess. I've been riding the subway my entire life. You get to know how it behaves, even when shit goes wrong."
"Like the water main break last week jamming up some of the lines for hours."
"Exactly. Pain in the ass, but not out of the ordinary at all. The way the station feels right now, however? Alice down the rabbit hole. If my feet weren't solidly on the ground I wouldn't even be able to tell which way is up."
Darcy looked over at the woman, who was brushing some long, auburn hair away from her face. "What's your name, by the way? If we're going to be exploring buddies down here we should probably get to know each other."
"Tallie. You?"
"Darcy. Good to meet you, Tallie."