Chapter 21: If
Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in
~Sappho, from If Not, Winter, trans. Anne Carson
If anyone had been in the room, they would have seen tendrils of red light suddenly appear in the air and slowly spread out in a sphere until it filled the room, lightly zapping the walls. At the center of the sphere, red light outlined two human figures. Then the light faded away, leaving Wanda and Nat in its place.
Wanda formed a glowing sphere in her hands to illuminate the room, a bank vault lined with safes.
"I'm just saying you should have tried asking me first," Wanda said.
Wanda had been angry about Nat's deception, but not nearly as upset as she thought she'd be. She seemed to have something else on her mind.
Nat looked over the numbers on the safes. "And if I had and you still didn't tell me, you'd be on the lookout for me trying to get the information out of you and I'd lose my chance."
"I would have told you."
"I'm not sure you would have." She found the safe she was looking for. "Could I get some light over here? It's going to take a minute to pick the lock."
"Here, let me." Wanda sent a thread of scarlet to the lock. In seconds, it turned, and she pulled the safe open.
"You are useful to have around," Nat commented. She pulled out a lockbox, leather gloves preventing her from leaving fingerprints. "So you've seriously never broken into a bank before?"
"It's not that I haven't considered it, but I never had a need." She used her power to unlock the lockbox.
Nat slid the lid off. Inside was a stack of cash, a collection of receipts, and a black leather notebook. She photographed the receipts, then flipped through the book, photographing each page with writing on it. Just skimming she'd seen enough to convince her that her hunch was right: Olson Carroll had built the spiderbots. With nothing but her own hunch to go on, there was no way she could have gotten this evidence through legal channels. And short of the murders and explosions her past self might have used to obtain this information, she wasn't sure if she could have obtained this evidence through illegal means without Wanda's help. Not without weeks of preparation, anyway.
Nat flipped through the book one last time to make sure she hadn't missed anything, then replaced everything exactly as it had been before. "Lock it up. We've got what we need."
With a few twists of her fingers, Wanda sealed the lockbox and secured it in the safe. "Anything else?"
"Nope. Let's get out of here."
Wanda took them to an Earth without sentient life, which she used for hiding out and traveling.
"We'll need to wait here a while to make sure we're out of the city before going back," Wanda said. "I hope what you found in there can wait a few hours."
"I hope so. It will take me a while to even figure out what I've got."
Wanda nodded. She didn't say anything while Nat looked through the photographs she'd taken.
The quiet grew heavy.
"Are you distracted, or are you just giving me the silent treatment?" Nat asked.
Wanda jolted slightly, startled out of the thoughts she'd been lost in. "Sorry." She smiled apologetically. "It's not you."
"What's on your mind?"
"Nothing really. It's stupid."
"What is it?" Nat pressed.
"Vision said something nice to me. I don't even know if he meant it to be nice, but I can't stop thinking about it. I'm being an idiot. I know he hates and fears me, but just a kind word from him leaves me dizzy."
"I don't think he hates you."
"He hates the things I've done. I feel it whenever I let myself read him. It's crazy, when I talk to him I turn to jelly. It's extremely unpleasant. But I keep thinking up reasons to talk to him. I never do, but I want to."
Nat didn't know what advice to give. She didn't know if Wanda talking to Vision, perhaps telling him her real feelings, would be a good idea or a terrible idea. The situation put both of them in a tenuous spot.
"I know what you're thinking," Wanda said. "I'm being an idiot. I need to just act like a grown up and move on."
"That's not what I was thinking," she said. "I was thinking this sucks for you, and I'm sorry."
She nodded. "Thanks."
...
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...
Nat stood at the head of the conference table.
"I've got good news and bad news," she began. "The good news is we know who's behind the spiderbots." She brought up a photograph of a middle-aged man with shaggy, sandy hair and large gray eyes. "This is Olson Carroll, millionaire software developer and noted trans-humanist philosopher."
"Which means?" Steve asked tentatively.
"He believes the goal of humanity should be eventually transferring our consciousnesses to computer programs. He's also argued that in the immediate future we should construct a supercomputer to serve as a fourth branch of government, using computer logic as a check on human irrationality in laws and government policies. Given his background, when I found out he was in Green Bay, Wisconsin around the time of the warehouse fire that covered up evidence of the spiderbots' construction, I decided to take a closer look at him. That eventually led me to get my hands on some of his private documents." She brought up photographs of pertinent receipts and notes from his book. "That brings us to the bad news: not only has he successfully duplicated the battery he stole from Stark, he's been in contact with a revolutionary group called the Cobra Conspiratorium, which Steve, Sam, Wanda, and I had the misfortune of crossing paths with when we were on the run. They have Chitauri anti-gravity tech in their possession. If Carroll gets his hands on that technology, or sells his robots to the Conspiratorium, it's a problem."
"But now that we know who he is, we can arrest him," Sam said.
"Not that easy. For one thing, we don't have enough legal evidence to convict him. For another thing, his current location is unknown. Other than his occasional unscheduled public speeches, he communicates remotely. He's become increasingly elusive over the past few months."
"I got the feeling you'll be able to track him down," Tony said.
"Eventually, but we've got a more immediate issue. Carroll wants to build more bots. He needs more raw materials, specifically some rare-earth metals for the electronic components of his bots. Judging by his notes, he's interested in robbing a metal refinery near Kinshasa. There's a large shipment scheduled to move out from there next Wednesday. If I were him, I'd hit it the night before the shipment."
"We'd need U.N. authorization for an international operation," Tony reminded them.
"You think you'll have a problem selling it?" Nat asked. "All you'd have to tell them is we think it might be robbed by flying robots. It's far enough from population centers that a fight there won't pose a risk to the public. I doubt they'll care about the details."
Tony nodded. "I'll see if I can get it authorized in time."
"And in the meantime, let's step up our training," Steve said. "If Nat's right, we could be facing a lot of killer robots. Let's make sure we're ready for them."
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Vision frowned at the knock on his door. Who would be paying him a visit this late?
He was surprised to find Wanda in the hall. They'd seen each other at training a few hours before, but due to her discomfort around him she didn't seek out encounters with him.
"Ms. Maximoff. Can I help you?"
"No. I..." She looked down. She was holding a small book. "I found this. It's a book of poetry you loaned to me, before... It belongs to you. I want to give it back." She held it out to him, her hands visibly shaking.
"Keep it," he said to her generously.
"No. I want you to have it. I've read it. You should read it. It's yours, and you should have it."
It seemed so important to her. He took the book. "Thank you. I'll let you know when I read it."
"Don't let me know. Read it, but don't tell me. You used to love those poems, and if you don't anymore, I don't know if I..." She bit her lip, took a step back. "Goodnight." She left. Fled, really.
It was baffling to him that someone so powerful could become so flustered from his mere proximity.
He'd been studying the records of her rogue psychic attacks. They were all directed against people who had committed horrible crimes, and while he still thought her methods were unconscionable, he was starting to consider he'd been judging her too harshly. But what was clear from her record was that she was bold, strong, and resolute. And yet she was reduced to trembling just from speaking with him. He didn't know what to make of her. He knew love could have a profound physiological effect on humans, but that didn't seem enough to explain her reaction to him. Perhaps it was the fact that she had to deal with his death, and now had to deal with him being alive. It had to be strange.
Perhaps it was that when she looked at him she couldn't decide whether the Vision she'd known and loved was dead or alive.
He wasn't sure either.