It could not be denied that they made a deadly pairing. Sam had taken to the air to gather any reconnaissance from there and then infiltrate the buildup from the rooftop. That had left Bucky and Miranda to enter through a door on the ground level that someone had used a crowbar to leverage open.
They moved seamlessly down the corridor, each step as silent as the next, following a dim trail of lit candles.
"I wanna know who spends the money on these wretched candles," Miranda grumbled as she swung around the next corner, automatic rifle raised, finger over the trigger. "These things are unreasonably expensive."
Bucky glared back at her, clearly unhappy with her decisions to speak at all, not to mention over something so trivial. But she couldn't help it, her body was wired on nervous energy, her mind still frantic over what she had done in the training room.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Bucky raised a hand, and she halted. Voices could be heard ahead. Several voices. Miranda stepped closer to Bucky, straining to hear.
"Do you think it worked?" a girl's voice asked.
"It should have worked," came a deeper voice. "We followed Oliver's direction to the "T." Oliver. What are you doing? Don't touch that."
"Chill." Came a third voice. Oliver, most likely. "It's this. This needs to be turned just a little…"
There was a snap in the air, like static electricity. Bucky glanced back at her and then lifted his gun, settling it on his shoulder wearily. Every hair on her arms raised, her skin tingling.
"What did they do?" Bucky asked. Clearly he had felt it too. His breath curled from his lips in a trail of steam.
Miranda shivered. The night had held fast in the eighties despite the absence of the sun. But here, she could feel her fingers begin to tingle with an unnatural cold. Warmth drained from the space as whatever they had just awakened pulled energy from the world around it. Light burst from the doorway they lay in wait beside. Miranda blinked, her eyes watering. Then it flickered and faded to a dim glow.
Something rumbled from the room beyond. A sound she would recognize anywhere.
"Shit," She snarled, pushing past Bucky.
"No! Wait!" He reached for her, his fingers scrambling over her Kevlar vest but not finding purchase.
The room looked as though it had once been a conference room. It was a broad space with tall ceilings that disappeared into shadows untouched by candle light. Evidence of its past life hung like skeletons on its walls in the form of faded motivational posters and frames whose accolades had long been torn from their mats. Three figures stood at the center of the room, their shadows stretched long in the wake of the ethereal light that burned before them.
Miranda moved forward slowly, gun raised, though none of them even seemed to notice her. The light rose from a body laying on the floor. No. Not the body. The runes carved into her skin. All at once the shafts of light all pulled together. Sound muted. The air stilled. Even her heart felt as though it ceased to beat in that stretch of time. Then everything that had drawn together burst apart.
Miranda was thrust backwards in a rush of heat and sulfur. All she could smell was the acrid scent of burnt hair. A horrible, piercing ring stabbed at her ear drums as she pulled herself to her feet, disoriented and aching. The walls were nothing but their bare bone structures, the aged sheetrock crumbled on the floor. Bucky was lying in the hall, rolling slowly to his side.
The woman, who had been standing nearest the body, lay on the floor, eyes wide as her body convulsed around the large spear of splintered wood buried in her chest. Blood bubbled around the wound and pooled on the floor. Her two male companions had pulled themselves to their knees. One cradled his arm, clearly broken.
And at the center of it was a writhing, wispy mass of blackness. The same complete blackness that Miranda had witnessed in the parking garage. It did not glow in the light of the fire lit by the Explosion. It unfurled itself, showing them the unnatural lengths of its limbs, the needle sharp points of its fingers.
Miranda took an unsteady step towards the creature. It howled. The sound was bigger than the room, pushing against the boundaries, scratching at her ear drums, and then it leapt up through the ceiling. It's body passed through it like it was no more than water.
Miranda stared at the place where the creature had disappeared and sighed.
"We did it," One of the men said, shaky and astonished.
Miranda snapped free the gun hidden at the small of her back and lifted it from its holster. Neat and methodical, she shot both of the men. They dropped like stones.
"Miranda!"
Veins of blue dispersed beneath the surface of their skin, distributing the substance into their system.
"They were Icers. God." Miranda snarled, grasping Bucky and hauling him up to his feet. "Come on, soldier. Shake it off. We can't let that thing leave the building."
When they reached the second floor, she and Bucky parted ways.
"We will cover more ground this way. But be smart," he told her as they split up. "Whatever happened down there, it's messed with our communications. I can't reach Sam."
She had nodded, before pulling a small flashlight from her belt and stepping away from him and into the dark.
Long, grotesque shadows stretched and twisted in response to the shaky beam of her flashlight. It was almost difficult to tell what she was seeing in the stark black and white world she found herself in. The building smelled faintly of smoke, a remnant of the events that had transpired on the first floor. She passed several office doors. Most of the rooms were empty, though some still contained a desk or chair. An eerie reminder that life had once thrived in this building.
Some shouted. Bucky? Miranda bolted to the end of the hall and hesitated, listening. It was quiet again.
"Barnes?"
The name felt awkward on her lips. Gun raised, she proceeded down another hall. Left, then right. Right again. She was in a labyrinth, and she felt no better than a mouse struggling to follow the scent of cheese.
Gunshots split the silence. They flashed at the end of the hall.
"Barnes!" Miranda shouted again, running now.
A body crashed through the walls of the hall in front of her and into a room on the right. Smooth as silk, the creature slipped through the craters, following what it had thrown. Bucky was firing again, relentless.
"It will do you no good!" Miranda shouted, but she knew he would never hear her over the volley of gunshots.
The click of an expelled gun echoed in her ears as she reached them. When she launched herself over what remained of the wall and into the room, she found that Bucky had thrown his gun to the side. A knife flashed as he pulled it from the sheath at his side. It flipped neatly in the air and settled into his palm like it had been made to fit his hand, a final piece that had not set into place until just that moment.
It streaked like lightning through the air as he slashed once, twice, three times at the creature. Each time, no matter where he struck, the blade met with nothing but smoke. It trailed along the arch of the blade like a streak of ink in the night.
For just a moment, Miranda stood in the opening, transfixed by him. He was relentless and savage. It was a side of him she had not witnessed in the field, and only caught it in glimpses last night. After all, it was hard to truly see him when she was trying not to be smeared into the mats. It was glorious to see him embrace what she knew he was capable of, but he would be no match for this monster. Not when he had no idea what he was truly dealing with.
And as she feared, just as she stepped into the fray, he faltered. This thing was not human. It did not have mercy. And so, when it saw the opportunity, it took it. It reached forward through the gap in Bucky's defense and sunk the tips of its needle sharp fingers into his skull.
"No!" Miranda screamed, pushing her legs as hard as she could muster.
Bucky sunk to his knees, his body gone limp. His lips parted, and a slim curl of black smoke slipped from them.
And then, he began to scream.
The sound was raw, filled with the horror of a wretched memory. The sound of it nearly made her sick. And that horror would be tenfold of what it had truly been in the clutches of this monster. It would have warped his mind, played on the fears buried there. The creature had so focused its energies on capturing Bucky's mind, that his body was the most tangible it had yet to be.
It was terribly solid when she collided with it, going low with her shoulders in hopes of knocking it off balance. Her shoulder screamed in agony at the effort of it, but she succeeded. The creature screeched its protest at her intrusion, and she felt it shutter as it released Bucky from its hold. They staggered together, monster and human struggling for balance, but they would not get it.
The creature dissipated when they hit the ground, its body dissolving into mist. Miranda was on her feet instantly. It was gone for now. But it would not stay gone. Bucky was on his knees, his forehead pressed against the dirty carpeting. The heels of his palms dug into his temples. His body trembled when she touched him.
"James?" She said softly, kneeling beside him. "Bucky" did not feel proper. "Bucky" was the term his friends used towards him. An endearment. They were not friends. They were barely acquaintances. Coworkers only. And in this moment of vulnerability, she felt ashamed to be the one to witness it.
He jolted away from her touch, scrambling across the floor.
"No!" He screamed at her. "Please don't. I can't do it again."
His eyes were not seeing her. They were seeing whatever suppressed horror that monster had dredged from the swamps of his mind.
"It's me," She said, even softer now. "Miranda. It's safe." Then she paused, considering. "Well. Safe...ish. For now."
His chest heaved in ragged breaths. A single tear rolled over the ridge of his cheekbone. But slowly, his eyes focused on her.
"Hey," She smiled at him. "Welcome back."
But before Bucky had a chance to say anything, a wave of black rushed up through the floor. A screeching, clawing mass flung Miranda backwards. She landed on her shoulder, pain sparking as the joint was pulled awkwardly, and rolled back to her feet. It barreled at her again, and before she could move out from its path it struck her. The breath oofed from her lungs in a horrible wheezing sound. They fell backwards against the windows of the wall behind her, which shattered the instant they collided with them. Their momentum carried them through and they plummeted to the shop floor below.
They hit the ground hard, though the creature's body broke a fraction of the concussion of the fall. She pulled at whatever her hands could find purchase on, struggling to breathe, to orient herself, to focus on what needed to be done. The creature rasped a groan. Pulling herself to sitting and using her weight to hold the stunned creature, she reached down and pulled free the long dagger that was sheathed against the length of her thigh.
"Mistress, please…." It hissed, pleading. "Have mercy."
For just a moment, her raised blade hesitated, flashing like lightning as firelight struck the serrated edge of its blade. But only for a moment.
"Do not plead for your life like you are one of mine," she snarled. "You have earned no mercy from me."
And then she plunged the dagger down into the creature's chest. With a beseeching cry, it burst apart, exploding in a thunderous swirl of smoke and wind that left her breathless. Concrete bit into her knees, the cold seeping through the material of her pants. Gasping, Miranda held the dagger in her hand, twisting it in the moonlight. No blood stained the blade. Ornate, ink black designs swirled over the gleaming silver surface, dancing around runes inscribed down its length.
How was this possible? How had it crossed the Divide?
"Miranda?"
Every muscle in her body jerked into motion at once. She slid the dagger back into the sheath at her thigh and staggered to her feet just as Bucky rounded the threshold of a set of doors nearly thirty feet from her.
"Are you alright?" He rasped, rubbing his throat. "You just fell like two stories?"
"I'm okay. I think." She patted her hands over her chest and stomach, making a half hearted attempt at an inspection of her person.
"You are bleeding," he said, his hand absently touching his own forearm.
Miranda looked down. She was in fact bleeding. Dark red fluid welled over the edges of a gash across her forearm. Her breathing was steadying, the adrenaline slowly leaving her body. In its place came the ache of the injury.
"I am." She pressed a gloved hand over the wound. Pain spiked up her arm and she winced. Blood dripped from the tips of her fingers.
For a moment they were both quiet, both staring at the blood drops on the floor gathering around her boots.
Finally Bucky spoke. "That thing. Where did it go?"
Miranda looked up at him, hesitating, unsure how to answer him.
"Is everyone alright?" Sam called down from above them, leaning over the jagged edge of the window she and the monster had plummeted through.
Bucky's eyes never left her.
"I'm alright," Miranda called up to Sam. "But I'm not sure where it went. I think I blacked out for a sec. Figures you'd show up after all the action is done."
Bucky's eyes never left hers. She waited for him to say something, to call her bluff. To yell or storm across the space between them and demand the truth. Instead he simply said, "You should have that looked at."
Things are getting interesting... :)