"Thank you for doing this. Ray tends to worry," Megan said as she got into Sarge's truck.
"Worry is my job. Until we know what's going on, one of us will drive you everywhere. I promised Clint you'd be safe living here and I keep my promises."
"I have always felt safe in your building."
"Do me a favor and lie down on the seat. I want to make sure no one sees you going out."
"Do you really think that's necessary?"
"Seeing the two big black SUVs parked down the street trying to look inconspicuous, I think so."
"Really?" Megan twisted her neck to look up at him.
Sarge nodded. "I'd feel a lot better about today if we turned around and went home."
"We don't know anything for sure about what happened this weekend. Maybe someone will say something that gives us a clue."
"There has to be a better way to get intel."
"I wish there were. Are we being followed?"
"Yup. Time to hit the drive-through for some coffee. I'm going to make it look like I'm running errands this morning. I wish I'd have thought to have one of the guys take your car out this morning."
"Too late now. If we meander too long, I'll be late."
"You can afford to be a few minutes late, Megan. Besides, we're in D.C. The traffic is always a wild card."
Megan thought a moment. "After you get your coffee, loop back and we can have someone take my car out for a drive after we leave." She dug her keys out of her purse and considered taking the one for her car off of her ring before deciding it wasn't worth the trouble. Sarge would be giving her a lift home and he had keys to her apartment if her car was on a late-afternoon adventure.
With a quick wave to Sarge, she hopped out of the truck and opened the door to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fancy lobby. The agent on duty—was it Paul maybe?— raised his eyebrows when he saw her. Normally she came up from the parking deck and used the doors furthest from his desk.
"Car didn't start and I didn't want to waste time messing with it," she explained, letting her frazzled state speak for itself.
"Isn't it brand new? Bright blue Subaru Impreza?"
"Yup." She sighed. "So now I have to get it towed to a dealer since it should be covered under warranty. At least my landlord was up and offered me a ride. I get to deal with making phone calls during my lunch unless someone can get it running. I'm lucky to live in a building of vets who like to fix stuff."
Probably Paul shook his head at her. "Should have bought American."
She just smiled. "Lots of so-called foreign cars are assembled on American soil. The price was right and I love the color. It's just a pain in the neck on a Monday morning.
"Have a good day, Doc."
"You too, Agent." She really needed to ask Steve the guy's name.
Her email inbox was rather boring when she logged in. She'd hoped for an official email from Deputy Director Hill, at least, heading off rumors and informing everyone that Fury and been killed. The lack of any statement was disconcerting.
Megan was still going through emails that had arrived when Emma knocked on her door. "Michelle texted that she's sick and needs someone to do her transfection* 1 this morning. The cells are ready, I looked, but we're all swamped. Any chance you can do it?"
"Sure. Is her lab book on her bench?"
"Should be."
"Okay. I'll be down in a few." She waited until Emma left to pick up her phone. It seemed odd that Michelle hadn't notified her as well. They'd always worked as a team. She sent a text off to Michelle to verify what protocol she had been using and where her transfection DNA had been stored. Taking over for someone else's experiment was always challenging, but life happened sometimes.
She grabbed her lab coat from the back of the door, slid her phone into her pants pocket, and headed down the hall towards the labs. There was nothing like cell culture to make Monday morning even uglier.
Her phone chimed as she reached the office adjacent to the cell room. "Protocols are in sheet protectors in the notebook on my desk. Lab notebook on top. I owe you. Food poisoning is the worst!" Michelle had written.
"Feel better soon." Megan turned her phone to silence and flipped to the last page of the notebook. Michelle's handwriting was as impeccable as always, belonging in a penmanship handbook rather than lab notebooks. Megan felt guilty ruining the look of the pages with chicken scratch, but accurate notes mattered more than pretty handwriting.
"Transfection today, time points planned for days 0, 1, 3, and 5. Please get well soon, Michelle, because I hate cell culture." Megan talked to herself as she moved about the lab. "I didn't get ice for the DNA vials. This is why I avoid cell culture."
She dumped the notebooks on the chair for the hood and grabbed an empty ice bucket, only to set it down so she should retrieve culture medium from the refrigerator and put it in the incubator to warm up and adjust to the proper pH. She hated days like this, where her mental plans were destroyed and she had to adjust on the fly. Once the medium was warming, she picked up her bucket and headed to the ice machine down the hall. If she worked efficiently, she'd have the transfection done and the initial time point processed before lunch.
"Do you mind if I turn on the radio?" Joel asked as he set up for the day in the other cell culture hood.
"I'll endure anything except rap."
"Heathen!"
Megan shrugged. "I recognize it takes skill and talent. I just don't happen to enjoy the style.
"Fair enough. I was planning on NPR."
"I will actively enjoy that."
"Even though you're probably going to be mentioned in the news?"
Megan rolled her eyes. "I'm hardly worthy of a mention in their hourly recap. And no, I don't have any idea what is going on with Steve."
"I know that. You and Captain Rogers stick to the straight and narrow when it comes to work responsibilities. I just figured if there were any news, it would be nice to hear it for ourselves. You've always had my back."
"You're a good scientist. We don't grow on trees."
They worked in silence, each focused on their own tasks, then listened, staring at each other, as Steve's voice came over the building loudspeakers and explained how S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by Hydra.
"Okay then," Megan said, standing up as soon as Steve's call to action was over. "Relax, Joel, we're on the same side," she added as she locked the door and turned out the lights. It wasn't much protection, given the large windows in the door, but maybe it would buy them a few seconds. "Do you have your wallet on you?"
"No."
"Okay." She yanked up her shirt, loosened her vest, and unpinned a small fabric pouch from the gore of her bra.
"What are you doing?"
"You'll need metro fare."
"You keep money in your bra?"
"Family tradition. Mom always said if someone found it on me, I had bigger problems. But if someone took my purse or left me stranded, I had a few bucks to use. I used to carry a twenty, now I carry two. Sorry it's sweaty, but that's the least of our problems." She handed over the cash and pinned the pouch back into place before securing her vest and pulling her shirt back down.
"You're wearing a bullet-proof vest. Am I to assume you're armed?"
"Steve and Natasha insisted." Grabbing the huge wrench they used to connect to carbon dioxide tanks to the incubators, she climbed up on the bench and slammed the wrench against the window. It took a few tries, but eventually, the glass cracked, then gave way.
"We're on the second floor."
"Yup. You can hang from the windowsill and drop down from there. Even if you sprain an ankle, it's safer than the stairs. The road off the island will be blocked off by now. Head straight for the Metro and get as far away from here as you can. Take the first train out, either direction. If they stop the trains, hide as best you can. Get into a maintenance closet." Megan got down and laid the wrench on the counter.
"You're not coming with me?" Joel winced at the sound of gunfire reached them from somewhere in the building.
"Got some stuff to toss in the autoclave, then I'll be right behind you."
"Let me help. We can leave together."
"Joel, no." Megan took his shoulders between hers. He was slight in stature, with a jawline no amount of hormone therapy could turn rugged. It angered her that society judged him for it. "You and your husband have a baby girl at home who needs her dads. You and I are not trained to fight. At least I have a vest. I'll be in and out of the cold room in no time. Please, just go. Once you're to safety, get the word out. Find someone with a phone and use social media to let the public know what's happening. Hydra is inside S.H.I.E.L.D., who knows how wide they've spread inside the government. We need to sound the alarm. You need to sound the alarm. I promise I'll be out of here in a few minutes. Now go!"
Joel closed his eyes a moment, then nodded. "Okay. For Rose…" He opened his eyes again. "Promise me you won't hang around."
"I'm not a soldier. I run from danger, not towards it. I just have to autoclave some stuff so Hydra doesn't get it. Please, get out of here!"
He hugged her quickly, and climbed nimbly up on the counter, pausing in the window.
Megan flashed him a smile and poked her head into the hallway. It was clear. The cold room was just around the corner. She unholstered her handgun and loaded the chamber before running like her life depended on it.
"Bin. Bin. Bin." Megan changed to herself softly as she dug through the stacks of nutrient agar plates stacked on the shelves. Most were stored in the sleeves the Petri dishes had shipped in, others were wrapped in paraffin wax to keep the contents moist. But sometimes her coworkers carried them in an autoclave pan and were too lazy to transfer the plates to the shelves. There… she saw such a tray in the back and shoved the other plates aside, trying not to knock them over and make noise.
Empty bin in hand, she spun and darted over to the dewars where so many mammalian cells were stored in liquid nitrogen. She knew from hiding them before that they were all in a single dewar; she had made sure of that. Now, it was just a matter of pulling the cans out, each loaded with canes of vials, and tossing the entire lot into the autoclave.
"What are you doing?" Emma's tone was sharp.
Megan startled, having not heard the cold room door open. At least her gun was out of sight, a heavy weight in her lab coat pocket. "Come help. Shut the door behind you."
Emma pulled the door shut and Megan saw a bulge in Emma's right lab coat pocket. The weight pulled the fabric out of shape.
"Have any Hydra agents come down to our wing yet?"
A strange look flashed across Emma's face before she regained control. "No gunshots yet."
"Good. Hopefully, we can all evacuate before they get down here."
"What are you doing?"
"Hold this," Megan said shoving the autoclave bin into Emma's stomach. "Steve gave his life trying to protect us from the Nazi's. If they want his cells, they'll have to get them from him. Once we clean house, I'm sure he'll give you authorization for tissue access the next time he's hurt." As she talked, Megan continued to load the canister haphazardly into the autoclave bin.
"How do you know which ones are his?"
"I memorized where I moved them to."
"And you're just dumping them all? How many dewars do you need to unload?"
"Three," Megan lied blandly. Emma's presence was sending off warning bells and she was running out of time. Carefully, she moved her right hand to her pocket as she lifted another can out of the liquid nitrogen while she focused on what she had to do next.
"We have six."
"Yup." She hesitated, then asked. "What are you doing here? I'm not sure even the cold room walls will stop bullets." She whipped her handgun up and fired.
"Great minds think—"
Emma's reply was cut short as the bullet entered the hollow of her throat and tore through her neck. Megan grabbed the bin and balanced it on the open dewar as the woman fell, eyes opened and somewhat stunned at what Megan had done.
Megan took a step forward and stumbled, almost falling as her left leg gave out. She would have gone down if not for the wall that was right there. The bin fell from her hands and the contents spilled to the floor. Dazed, Megan touched her thigh and her fingers came away sticky with blood. Vaguely, she remembered something bumping her leg as she'd fired her own weapon.
"That's not good." The voice sounded detached. Who had said that? "Jar- I mean, Ray, I've been shot. Emma's dead."
"How can I help?" His voice seems tinny and distant.
"You can't. Just wanted to explain." Megan leaned heavily on the wall, gasping for air as her vision got dark around the edges. Making sure the safety was engaged, she tried to hold the gun under her chin as she shrugged out of her lab coat. Fumbling, she finally laid the gun on the nearby bench and tied her lab coat around her leg as tightly as she could. No matter what else happened, the cells that had been stolen from Steve, cultured, and put into storage were going into the autoclave.
Gunshots continued to echo in the corridors as Megan lay on the autoclave room floor, her left leg extended and propped up against the wall to try to slow down the process of bleeding out. She still wasn't sure how she'd managed the journey, but the autoclave beside her was hissing as steam flowed into the chamber. Steve's cells were dying.
"Ray? Call Sarge for me?"
"He's connected." Jarvis's voice was tinny and distant to her ears as it came from her wristwatch.
"Megan? Talk to me."
"Sarge, you were right. I should have stayed home."
"What's going on? Can you tell me where you are so I can come to get you?"
"You'll never make it inside." She paused. "Sarge, I never killed anybody before. It's not like the movies."
"No, it's not."
"No one warned me about the smells."
"War's an ugly business. Ray said you're hurt. Can you get to a window? I'll meet you right outside, get you to a hospital."
"Nope." She popped the P. "It's okay. I appreciate the offer, but I'm out of gas. Just keep me company, okay? I don't want to die alone. If you and Ray stay with me…"
Jarvis joined the conversation. "We're here, Megan. Sir is trying to find a way to evacuate you."
"Not gonna happen, Jay. Did you know that I can't watch violent movies? Even though I know all of the gore is fake, I can't watch it. PG13 is my limit. This time…. I saw everything. I did that to her."
"Don't second guess yourself. You made a decision in the moment. That's all anyone can do."
"I shot her while she was preparing to kill me.
"That's how it goes sometimes."
Another explosion rocked the building and she curled up more. "I'm not a very good soldier. I didn't panic, though, so Natasha should be happy. I hit my target, just like Clint taught me. Thank you, Sarge, for keeping me safe in your building. I was always able to go to bed at night feeling safe."
"I'm glad, Megan. I expect you back there in a few days, once you get out of the hospital."
"I love my bookshelf. Jay, tell my family, my Mom, how much I love them for me."
"I will relay your message, Megan."
Sarge interrupted, "Does anyone have eyes on Steve?"
"According to radio chatter, he's on one of the new helicarriers," Jarvis informed them.
"Of course he is. Listen, if he comes through this, which he still might, serum and all… make sure he knows this isn't his fault. I chose this. I chose to stay instead of run. I wasn't going to let Hydra have his cells."
"We'll tell him, Megan. Don't give up, though. We're still working on a way to get you out of there." Sarge's voice was calm and reassuring.
"So cold. Tired. Tell me a story?"
"What kind of story?"
"How did you meet Clint?"
"In a bar, over a game of darts."
Megan closed her eyes, ignoring the sounds of war around her and focusing instead on Sarge's voice. "It was a real dump of a place. I think it's closed now. It was poorly lit, had sticky floors and greasy food, but they keep the music low. No matter what was playing on the jukebox, you could still hear, you know? There I was, fresh out of Walter Reed…"
"Good-bye, Steve" she whispered before she gave herself over to the void.
1 Transfection is a fancy word for force-feeding DNA into a cell. There are different ways of doing it, but all of them beat up the cells a bit to make them take in DNA abasing their will.
Remember that DNA is our genetic code, a blueprint if you will, for all of the things our cells need to make to do their jobs. Scientists can insert a DNA sequence of interest into a host cell and then evaluate how well the cell followed those foreign directions. The directions may be for a tool that we deliberately broke in different ways. Or it can add a new feature to the cells. The fluorescent fish you see in the pet store had a foreign gene added.
If the DNA codes for a hammer, maybe we tweak the code to see if we can make the handle lighter, remove the claw, and make the stinking head smaller. We force-feed the new DNA into the cell and then collect the product a few days later, evaluating how our new directions affected the cell. We can even track where inside the cell those defective hammers are being manufactured and used.
The fluorescent fish you see in the pet store had a foreign gene added. The purpose was to design fish that would fluoresce in the presence of toxins so scientists could track pollution. The first step was getting a fish to fluoresce all the time. They are pretty, so the new look jumped over to the pet market.
This is a huge oversimplification but you hopefully get the idea.
Dewar images are on pinterest.
A/N Remember, I promise happy endings. I do not break my toys, I just beat them up a lot. So, try not to hate me too much! Please?
