"Eavers! We are gonna need plan C!"
"Already?" Miranda threw her body against the storm door and wrenched it open, each breath burning like fire in her lungs. "What happened to Grand Plan A and B?"
She bolted onto the rooftop, the suffocating heat of the summer sun radiating up from the concrete. "God, can't anyone cause mayhem when it's 70 and wonderful?"
"We, uh," Sam Wilson was cut off by the sound of wood splintering apart, "may have underestimated the target a little bit."
The zipper of the rifle bag was loud on the quiet rooftop. "'Piece of cake' he said. 'The Winter Soldier could take care of this with one hand behind his back' he said."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam rumbled into the radios.
"I am handling it," Bucky Barnes snarled over the line, sounding a bit breathless.
"Bro, he just wiped the ground with your face. We're idiots. Admit it. Place C, Eavers. We need it now."
"Hey!" Miranda snapped, settling onto her stomach, gun in position. "This would have gone much faster if you had dropped me on the right rooftop, birdman."
"What?" Bucky snapped, "Where are you?"
"About two and a half miles south of you, which is about three blocks closer than where I got dumped."
"Two and a half miles? Are you craz—"
"Get him into position, Barnes. I'll worry about the rest."
She settled her sight on the building they were set to be in. She followed the windows down, down until she came to the ground floor. The wall looked as though it had burst apart from the inside, the cinder blocks scorched and crumbling. Movement blurred in the warped edges of the lens. Miranda shifted just ever so slightly, bringing the action into view.
Two figures grappled violently. Light glinted off the exposed metal arm of the smaller figure. The Winter Soldier. A laugh bubbled in her chest. Yes. They may have just slightly underestimated the target. The tip that had been called in was in regards to a young girl, standing alone on the sidewalk, behaving strangely. The only hint of a girl was a bright pink scrunchy holding back dark strands from the figure's brutish face.
Miranda took in a long slow breath, settling her body. Her finger settled on the trigger, the pressure gentle, ready. Barnes locked grips with the target. His muscles trembled with exertion as he pushed the girl-thing-monster back one step, then another.
"You aren't guaranteeing me a clear shot, Sargeant."
"Take what you can get," Sam responded. "We are out of options here."
Miranda drew in a long breath, holding it. The noise of the street below fell away. Each honking car, yelling pedestrian, and bark dog dissipated until it was nothing but the slowing of her own heart beat. She pictured the bullet in the chamber, waiting and ready. The target at the other end of her sight, angry and ignorant.
Then she pulled the trigger.
It always happened the same way.
A chain reaction of events as familiar as breathing.
First came the sound. The suppressor quieted a great deal of the noise, but it still consumed the air around her, shuttering the pebbles on the rooftop beside her. Then the gun kicked back against her in a familiar pressure. The tink of the shell exiting the chambler and striking the ground. Through the barrel of the sight, she could see the target crumple backwards. Barnes dropped, his body hitting the ground. He was swearing profanities into the communicators. His words shaky and raw. Behind his voice she could hear Sam whooping.
Letting out the breath she had been holding, Miranda sat back. She twisted the ball cap that had been turned back to allow for the sight so that the bill shaded her eyes from the unrelenting sun. Her fingers shook slightly as she lifted the rifle, adrenaline crashing through her like a bull in a china shop. The white hot brightness of the midday sun made her right arm and fingers a stark black and white painting of dark inked lines and pale skin.
Miranda pulled the communicator from her ear, looking for a moment of solitude before climbing back down the vacant stairs of the parking garage to join the rest of her team. She could vaguely make out Sam's voice as she settled the device in her palm.
"You did good, Eavers. You did damn good."
She rolled her head back, cradling the gun to her chest, enjoying the sun on her face and the warmth of the weapon in her arms. Then she moved her feet, boots crunching rock as she stood to strap the gun in its case. As she settled it across her back, the strap pressing a familiar weight across her chest and shoulder, she slipped the communicator back into place.
"Wilson. Can I expect an extraction here or do I have to take the stairs? Again."
"You're on your own, sister. You got two perfectly good legs. We've got a mess to pick up here."
Miranda couldn't help but smile as she pushed open the rooftop door, pausing a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the stairwell. "One of these days, Wilson, I'm gonna get that 'jump from the rooftop' extraction I've always wanted."
"Trust me, girl. It ain't all it's cracked up to be."
Miranda laughed lightly as she descended one floor, then another and another. The muscles in her legs ached dully. Too many stairs. Wilson's mistake would not be let go easily.
A scream erupted, echoing in the enclosed spiral of stairs. Miranda froze, foot poised in the air. Every hair on her neck rose in unison. Every alarm in her body came to life at once. Miranda twisted, leaning out over the railing to look up through the center of the spiral of stairs, then down at the shadows below. No movement.
Just as quickly as the scream arose, it was cut savagely short. The stairwell fell into a silence so deafening, Miranda couldn't believe the pounding of her own heart wasn't echoing off the walls. Breath ragged, her legs screamed as she descended the stairs two at a time. Three floors down she came to an open door. She paused on the landing above it, listening. She could hear something beyond it. The noise was hard to identify. The sound of it didn't feel right against her ears. Something that didn't feel entirely...human.
Every fiber in her being sung as she popped the strap over the pistol secured to her thigh. She approached the propped open door, gun raised. Stopping beside the opening, she paused. Listening again. Silence. Her chest felt tight, like a string had been pulled taught around her lungs and tugged at her, beckoning her out onto the parking garage floor. One breath. Then another.
Something scratched against her eardrums. Something hard to make out. They were words she couldn't understand, but yet somehow a warm finger of familiarity slipped down her spine. Between one thudding heartbeat and the next she swung out through the threshold. The fingers of her right hand began to tingle as she clutched hard on the handle of the gun.
The floor was empty aside from a few lone parked cars. Sunlight angled through the sides, cutting into the shadows. There was nothing particularly unusual about the parking garage, it just felt off. The wrongness of it grated against her nerves, drawing every muscle in her body bowstring tight.
From the corner of her eye she caught a feather of movement. She turned. The harsh noon shadows were black as ink behind the pillars. They welled around the base then pooled towards her. Miranda took in a shaky breath, stepping back. Her mind revolted against what she was seeing, screaming at her to move. To run. To do something.
She blinked, hard, wiping a hand over her face. Sweat stung her eyes.
And then it was nothing more than the mirror of the pillar, straight and still across the concrete. It had never been anything but.
"No. God. Please. Not now."
A sound like nails across the concrete ground up her spine. Miranda gasped in a breath, bile rising in her throat. A bead of sweat trickled down her back. She took an unsteady step forward. Then another.
A half wall lined the edge of the concrete that surrounded the ramps that rose from one floor to the next. Something hunched and dark rose up over it from around the corner then dropped below it again, out of sight.
She forced her feet to move, boots silent on the surface of the concrete as they carried her to the pillar at the corner of the low wall. Scuffs and scrapes of movements drifted towards her. Something dripped.
Slowly.
Monotonously.
Miranda pressed into her communicator, "Wilson? Barnes?"
She was met with static. The sound of it filling her head. Again she tried and was met with nothing but the overwhelming sound of static. She was alone on this. Miranda leaned her head back against the pillar, drew in a long breath, and then swung out from behind it, gun raised, finger on the trigger.
A woman lay motionless on the ground, a great crimson pool of blood gathering around her. A creature was hunched over her. The woman lay in a shaft of sunlight, but it did not seem to touch this creature. Miranda had read about black holes. How the gravity at its core was so strong, that light could not even exist within it. That's what it was like to stare at this monster. It was not black. It was the absence of light.
It turned toward her, slowly unfurling itself until it stood at its full height. It opened its hands, long slender fingers spreading to reveal tips sharp as knives. She couldn't make out features, but her mind told her it was ugly. Hideous. Unworldly. It moved toward her like smoke on water and Miranda felt herself take one step back, then another.
Miranda squeezed the trigger again and again, emptying the clip into his chest. What she assumed was its chest? She could hear the rounds make contact, but the creature did not slow. It was useless. She had known it would be. But that did not stop her from pulling another clip from her belt.
The tingling in her arm intensified until it felt like a million needles pricked at its surface. Like she had slept too long on it, and it revolted at the lack of blood flow. The world around them fell away, consumed by the shadows that rose to swallow the sunlight.
"He told me to give you a message."
Her breath hitched in her throat. The voice consumed the chaotic cavity of her mind, scratched against the surface of her skull, echoed around her like it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. But she just knew, deep in her bones, that it was this thing before her.
"He wanted me to tell you…"
An angry, aggravated sound tore from her lips and she squeezed the trigger again, emptying the second clip.
"...he will see you soon."
Abandoning the gun, Miranda withdrew the long knife from its sheath at her belt. The blade was the length of her forearm, serrated and savage. She charged at the creature, bringing the knife up and dragging it across its chest.
Like a trail of smoke, it stretched and shifted in the wake of blow until it evaporated entirely. The darkness leached from the world and she felt the warmth of the sunlight on her skin once more. Letting out a breath, Miranda stepped back. It was an awkward step and she stumbled, landing hard on the concrete. The sounds of the city flooded her senses and it was all she could hear. The woman still lay prone and unmoving on the garage floor. The only evidence that everything that had just occurred was not some kind of hallucination.
"Eavers? You copy"
Sam's voice broke the static buzzing in her ears.
"Eavers?"
Lifting a shaky hand, she depressed the button on her communicator. "I don't know what the hell just happened. But I think you guys better get over here."