21. Sunday Night Football

. . .

Loki wrenched the darts free of his neck, rubbing hard as he continued to stagger back. Rogers stepped forward, ready to keep the other four off of him while they tried to figure out what had just been done to the alien. Coulson hadn't moved yet, save for the few steps to keep watch on his friend. His gaze remained stuck on Loki - and at the patch of blue skin barely showing under the long fingers.

Steve froze as the raspy breathing became a hollow, rattling, utterly furious jangle of laughter that poured out of that white throat like a windstorm. "You fools," came the hiss. Loki's back was against the wall. The white hand dropped, pockmarked along his palm with twinned drops of bright red blood. The patch of his injured throat was still a fading inhuman blue. Steve turned to share a look with Coulson, not quite understanding what was happening. Thor had said something once. There had been the odd readings on the Helicarrier when the prince been a prisoner. But Steve didn't know what this meant.

Obviously, nor did Control.

"You absolute idiots." Fury was rising in the voice, Loki's face dead white with a rage Coulson hadn't seen in years.

"He'll fall momentarily. Prepare for containment." Control still sounded like it believed the situation was handled. Coulson would have laughed at the absurdity of it, but he was frozen, waiting for the explosion that was about to happen.

"No." The teeth were bared, his stare fixing on the one that had dared to shoot. The other four looked hesitant. "I will not."

"Three more seconds. Hold your positions."

Loki waited for those three for the sake of pure viciousness, his expression slowly becoming more feral. And when he didn't fall, the men began to scramble back to find cover. Too late for them. Far too late. Loki moved with all the speed and strength his alien nature gave him. And where he went, blood splashed, vital and dark. Coulson reached out and grabbed at Steve's shoulder, pulling him back. Taran had already been hidden back around the corner, kept from viewing what was happening. He knew full well there was no point in trying to stop this particular fight from ending the way it would. These were dead men, having attempted an offense that had only one form of retribution. They'd taken their shot, failed, and laid bare the old secret. There would be no calming Loki, not yet. He had to burn down on his own terms.

"I don't understand." Control sounded almost human in its confusion.

The rifleman ducked back into the hallway, his expression panicked while he fumbled for a reload of something more useful. Loki followed him like a ripple of lightning. A single rattling scream filtered back into the spattered lobby and was cut off abruptly.

"Our calculations-"

Loki stalked back into the lobby, the knife in his hands stained dark and dripping wet. He reached up and grasped the speaker with his free hand, snarling into it. "I'm not Asgardian, you useless box of data." Then he easily snapped the speaker off the wall with a rush of sparks.

In the silence after, still he breathed. Raspy, but slowing. He didn't look at the other three. His neck had already healed. Whatever chemical had been designed to try and halt him was already vapor in his system.

From behind Coulson, Taran's voice filtered in, worried. "Is he okay?"

Loki licked his lips. The words were a struggle, hoarse but calmer now for the boy's sake. "I'm fine, Taran."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Barely." Loki flickered a glance towards Coulson. Rationality was back, but the eyes were far too hot and wounded. He turned away, looking towards the corridor they needed. "Let's move on."

"Wait." Coulson took the gamble. There something that needed to be asked now, just in case. "I'm sorry. Something's bothering me."

"Is it the blood?" The dour snark was back, still rattling under his breath. "Watch for the puddles."

"No it's… why were they prepared for an Asgardian? How?"

Steve looked down at Coulson, then at Loki.

More of that ancient rage drained from the pale face as he turned to look over his shoulder, leaving the tactician behind. "That, Coulson, is a very damned good question."

"Let's go ask Control about it, then." Steve gestured towards Taran. "Keep your eyes on Coulson, kid."

"I've seen worse." Unbothered, Taran kept an eye on Loki instead. "The rest of the guards are going to be preparing a last stand, though. To keep us from the core."

Ice filled the room on Loki's whisper. "Then they die, if they so choose."

To that, Steve only nodded.

. . .

There were two rushed barricades set up between them and the stairwell to the engineering floors that lay between them and the sub floors, each pile of broken furniture and steel tables barely manned with a sacrificial crew. The first fell to a hard rush by Steve Rogers, backed by the screaming winds summoned by Loki and a handful of shots from Coulson. Two men died trying to fend them off, the other wounded enough to stop fighting and focus on his own survival.

At the next barricade, only several meters down the hall and around the final bend, the crew broke and ran down to rejoin what had to be the bulk of the resistance left. What was left behind was an automated turret system. Coulson blocked its output for several wincing seconds with his deployed shield while Taran managed to hack into its netcode and shut it down. When that was done, Steve tore it apart with old school efficiency, finding it close to an upgraded version of similar turrets he'd seen in the war. It seemed to be a theme here, old Nazi tech giving way to slightly newer iterations. Believing in the efficiency of themselves. And ironically not understanding the value of stronger evolution.

Loki kicked scraps out of his way with a steel-reinforced boot as they swept through the ruins of that last blockade. "Any guesses on how desperate they will be, the next floor down?"

"Very." Steve said it quietly. "That's going to make it exceptionally dangerous."

"I don't think I care overmuch."

Coulson led the kid along with an arm across his shoulder, friendly but not overly paternal. He wasn't trying to insult the kid. "Taran, hang back best you can. Keep your safety a priority."

"What about you?"

"I'm used to ducking when these guys get violent. I'm running defense. Captain?"

"Yeah."

"Engineering looked like had some serious side rooms for experimental tech set up. I doubt we're gonna run into anything too special, they haven't had time to really hunker up, but we're probably going to see some more turrets. Laser systems, maybe. Drones to keep an eye on us."

"Noted." Steve gave Loki a curt nod. They'd push, but they'd push carefully enough to not soak up more damage than necessary. It was all about the output. "Let's go down."

. . .

Coulson had been right. He shot down two drones patrolling the stairwell, knowing that was as good as showing up on their cameras for the defense monitoring them. Still, it kept their movements a little more shrouded. Any tactical value, when they knew they were going to be badly outnumbered. The question was going to be, were they going to go all-in, or were they going to try to break them up in waves?

Steve carefully scouted the corner separating the squad from where they'd heard the faintest rustle to alert them that something lay ahead. Barely showing skin, he peeked and popped back.

Bullets came after him in a hail. "Yeah, I'd say they got more turrets," Steve said, his expression easy and unsurprised.

"You get a glimpse how many?"

"Well, three stationary on ceiling mounts and, ah, they got a robot version type thing."

Coulson slumped against the wall. "I was not betting on an ED-209."

"A wha?" Taran furrowed his brow.

"It's from a movie. Ask me when you're like 18, because the good one's not a very family friendly flick." Coulson checked his gun, mostly out of habit. A sidearm wasn't going to stop an armored, mobile turret. "Was it moving?"

"It's on treads. Looked slow, but it was moving. Bet you five bucks Control's running it. Yeah, it's what we heard down the hall."

Loki looked down at his hands, flexing them. "Rogers, can you draw its fire for a scant second or two without dying?"

"What exactly did you have in mind before I answer that?"

"Roll to the opposite corner, focus on the not dying bit, give me a cone of access to duck in while invisible. The stationary turrets are a problem, but I can almost certainly stop the mobile."

"I'll try to get into the signal while you're disrupting the bot. Shouldn't be difficult." Taran fumbled the laptop open, distracted. "They all seem to be running on the same protocols when they're automated like that. It's so dumb, Control has to micromanage all this stuff just to feel powerful. But yeah, the robot is probably hardened."

"Well, Zola wasn't half as smart as he thought he was about some things back in the day. Arrogance has a way of being a brain drain." Steve looked at the hallway gap, calculating. "Let me know when you want me to dive."

Loki was already whispering to himself, fingers working in complicated patterns. "When I snap my fingers," he said, barely pausing in his work to do it.

Steve hunkered low, waiting for it. When the sound came, he dove, feeling air cut to shreds behind him as the mobile turret targeted him. He didn't hear Loki, knew he wouldn't see him. Every part of him was focused on the split second needed to get back into cover.

By the time he did, gunfire still filled the hall, along with squealing metal and the sound of something tearing apart.

Taran nearly pounced out of his hiding place, excited. "Get back, I just sent a-"

Coulson yanked him back with a startled shout, catching out of the corner of his eye as Loki did as asked anyway. The three turrets high on the walls focused in on the mobile, unloading the rest of their ammo supply into its already-exposed guts.

A few seconds later, the hall was silent and filled with grey smoke. Taran sounded sheepish. "I told you it was dumb. I redid the protocols to help kill the robot. I just didn't want anyone else to get hurt."

"It was a good thought, but next time warn a person before you do it." Loki patted at his gauntlets, looking at new scratches in the blackened finish from where he'd manually torn out the back of the machine to get at the vitals. Between that and the traitorous gunfire, the thing was dead and gone.

"Unfortunate," came the whisper from a speaker down the hall. "Most unfortunate." Then it clicked out again, leaving them with the stench of machinery and oil.

. . .

The final line of defense numbered about twenty well-armed guards, lined up in professional positions between them and a steel door with a complicated-looking control panel that to the stairwell down into Control's core. Coulson eyed them on a quick peek himself, finding himself reminded more than a little of Arizona's absolute rout he'd unleashed. That was all they had left to stop them - these armed men. They wouldn't be as inclined to break and run, and their firepower was stronger. But beyond that, little difference.

He glanced at Loki, seeing the same thing in the grey-green eyes. They were going to get rolled, this last line. Nothing more to it. A look at Steve next to say Loki would take shield-point.

Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Really, thought Coulson, it's barely Sunday Night Football.

Loki charged in, whispers keeping the bulk of the gunfire off of him and ensuring the Captain in his wake would be safe enough. He barreled into the center of the group, dividing and scattering them immediately and lessening the use of their guns. Well, unless they wanted to circle up and fire inward at each other just for a chance to plink the armored murder machine. Steve broke left, his arm coming out and hooking one uniformed Nazi around the neck, piledriving him downward and bodychecking a second as he went. A third got grappled hard and flung into one of Loki's broken discards, the black figure tearing people's defenses apart as he moved.

Twenty, down to fourteen already.

Screams peppered the hallway, but they fought back anyway. One in a ranking uniform weaseled into point blank range on Loki, his firearm coming up into the pale face from the side. Barely breaking his attention from the man whose ribcage he'd just smashed, he reached up and tore the gun free, tossing it away. Similar to Steve's initial feint, this would-be enemy hero got grappled around the neck as well, but a few seconds later, he had gone a shade of blue that would be incompatible with life if it lasted too long. He was dropped and ignored. Good enough. They could live or die by their own choices and incompetence.

Eight left. Coulson was now safe to take opportunistic shots. Two got winged when they tried to duo the Captain, one got a clean head shot when Coulson blandly recognized harder ordinance - a grenade, it looked like - coming out of a pocket for a last ditch shot at blind fanaticism.

Three, and them already wounded. Two ran after all, dripping blood. The last was trapped. He passed clean out, air guttering in his throat.

"That was almost anticlimactic." Loki looked down at the prone figure, his voice grating.

"Call it a compliment on our skills." Steve holstered his weapons, looking around for salvage and also for a way through the door. "Taran, think you can get this?"

The boy scuttled neatly around Coulson, who kept an eye on the prone figures to make sure nobody was coming back up for some sort of final, desperate stunt. "Let me take a look. It's going to be under Control's own command and not anyone else who lived here, so it's not going to be exactly like the others." He fumbled with the panel for a while, prying at plastic covers to try and see how it was wired. "I don't know. This is… it's not how I expected."

Soft digitized laughter came from somewhere nearby. Coulson looked around for a speaker and didn't see one, knew there had to be one regardless.

"Jerk." Taran said the insult softly. "Can one of you help pull the panel off more? I want a better look."

Steve was closer. Fingers curled in around the covers the boy already loosened, tugging with a little strength and then a lot more. A moment later, the full guts of the panel were exposed; chips and tangled wires and all of it leading into some sort of advanced processor none of them could identify on a glance.

"That's what it is. It's a piece of Control itself. Like a finger." Taran studied it, worried. "I don't know how-"

Steve's hand wormed in again, gripping the processor and unceremoniously tearing it out.

"Sometimes you simply break the finger," observed Loki, bemused at the way the door clunked loose. It would pull open relatively easily now. "I wager that hurt."

"I hope it hurt," said Taran, hot. His head hung low, tired under the anger. "I hate it."

Coulson nudged the boy with his hand. "Come on. Let's get to work on ending this. Let's go down."