"Basically at this point, main street is a black hole. The National Guard has sent six soldiers in over the course of the morning and none have returned or made contact with the base team." Director Mackenzie drew a circle around the projected city at the center of the room as Miranda strode in, buckling the last of her uniform into place.
She felt uncomfortable in it, as though it was the final piece of the puzzle that made every lie she had ever told unto this point concrete and real. She could see how easy it could be to forget Mortekaia and simply be Miranda. The girl who had woken that morning beside a dozing, hundred-year-old super soldier.
Said super soldier glanced up at her entrance, his eyes catching on her. This was the first he had seen her uniform, and his eyes moved slowly over her. She ignored the tightness in her belly at his gaze. How it lingered on her legs, moved up her body to meet her eyes. There was a lopsided grin on his face and he gave her a subtle, but approving nod.
No one knew about what was developing between them. That they had spent the past several nights together, refugees against their own nightmares and finding solace in each other's company during their mutual insomnia. She kept her distance from him, settling herself in a chair near the back of the room. Daisy glanced over at her, offering a small smile.
"At this point, the plan is to send in a small team to infiltrate the dead zone and report back. Once you hit Main Street, Miranda we want eyes high. Rifle and scope. Wilson. In the skies. Bucky, Daisy, one the ground. Find out what exactly is going on."
"What do you want from me?" Daniel Sousa asked, shifting his shoulders towards Daisy.
"Shuri's flight was scheduled to leave this morning, but she has agreed to extend her stay. We want you with her, be her extra set of hands. She's working as we speak to attempt to modify your communicators against whatever it is that is blocking our communications."
The second Miranda stepped out of the vehicle and onto the street everything felt...sideways. It was no less unsettling for being difficult to explain. It lifted the small hairs on the back of her neck as something inside her rose to awareness.
Eiko had not answered her phone.
Eiko never missed a call.
Aristelle did not answer either. But that was not entirely uncommon for her. And yet, it did not settle well.
"Is everything alright?" Bucky asked quietly as he followed behind her on the street, automatic rifle in his hands. Safety off. She could see it in the way he carried himself. The tension in his shoulders. He felt it too. The wrongness of it.
"I don't know." Miranda replied. Her rifle still hung from her back, but she had little desire to carry her long range rifle like Bucky's automatic. Instead,her pistol was pressed tightly into her palm.
"It's really quiet." Daisy remarked.
And it was. There were no cars on the streets. No engines idling at stop lights. No children screamed in excitement. There was not even the absent sound of birds exhausting their morning chat.
"Do you still have radio contact?" Miranda asked, passing the open door of an apartment.
It had not been the first open door they had passed. As though those within had simply gotten up and walked out, not even taking the time to lock up in their absence.
"I do," Daisy said over the crackle of a voice from the radio on her belt.
Ahead of them on the street was a cluster of parked cars. Some had been kept to their lanes, but others had pulled into oncoming traffic or were angled this way and that. Every car had an open door. All of them empty.
They approached slowly. Guns raised.
"Where is everyone?" Daisy asked.
"I'm concerned that might be a question we don't want answered," Miranda said, peering into the backseat of a small SUV. There was a child's car seat. It was empty.
"Main Street will be just ahead," Daisy directed and lifted her radio. "HQ. Do you copy?"
"We copy. You are good to go."
A shadow swept across the pavement, broad winged and quick. She looked up in time to see Sam disappear over the top of a parking garage. They approached the next intersection. It would be Main Street. Tucked against the base of the buildings along the side wall, they gathered at the corner. Miranda closed her eyes, focusing, listening. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Once. Twice. Then it cut off abruptly.
"Miranda," Bucky touched her shoulder. "Up."
Above them hovered the end of a fire escape.
"I will boost you up," he said, settling his rifle onto the carrier on his back and cupping his hands.
"You realize that's like 10 feet up?" Miranda grinned at him, securing her pistol in its holder.
"I ate a good breakfast this morning."
Miranda laughed, shaking her head. She set her foot in the cradle of his hands and balanced herself on his shoulders. She looked up to find Daisy watching them, a peculiar look on her face. Then she was moving up and away. The fire escape clattered as she grasped the bottom platform and she cringed, pulling herself up.
"Ready?" She could hear Bucky ask Daisy far below.
Daisy nodded and swung out into the street. She hesitated, taking one uncertain step. The determined expression on her face gave way to confusion. And then... nothingness.
Miranda pressed on, taking the fire escape stairs two at a time. She could hear Bucky call to Daisy. The crunch of his boots as he followed her out into the street. Miranda paused at the next landing, her breath uneven with the effort of her climb.
Daisy was moving again, walking forward in a manner that could only be described as drifting. Bucky grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. Daisy snarled and turned on him, lifting her hand.
"Don't make us do it."
The air rushed from Miranda's lungs. It was a voice she had not heard in years. Centuries. It took her back to that moment. The surge of power. The feeling of desperation, emptiness. The incantation taking hold and dragging its victim down, down into oblivion.
"I know who you are. What you are to my sister. We would like you alive."
The world bled to red. The final levels of the fire escape were a blur, and then she was on the rooftop, stumbling towards its edge. Bucky was in the street, gun raised, slowly advancing. Far down the street in front of him was a gathering of people. They all stood perfectly still, inhumanly still. At the center of their small circle stood a woman. Hair that blazed red as fire, streaked with gold. Her long features set on an oval face. Unmistakable. One of two faces that populated her nightmares.
Her sister raised her hand, fingers slowly folding until she was pointing at Bucky. "What have they done to your mind? I can see it, feel the shape of it, and yet I cannot penetrate its boundary."
"I'm a little over mind control," Bucky snarled.
The sound of his voice brought everything rushing in, enveloping her like a tidal wave. Miranda reached back and pulled her rifle from her shoulder. A gunshot cracked through the air. Bucky had fired. A figure collapsed in the street in front of her sister.
A girl.
Maybe sixteen. Blood gathered in a great crimson pool around her head, soaking her blood waves. A macabre halo.
The muzzle of Bucky's gun trembled.
Miranda drew in a long slow breath and settled herself behind the gun sight. She would not miss. She knew it would not kill her sister. Not really. But it would sever her hold on their minds. And she would be lying to herself if she said watching her sister bleed out on the pavement wouldn't be satisfying.
"Uh uh uh," her sister risked, then looked up, straight at Miranda. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea."
Her sister lifted a hand and pointed and Miranda's eyes followed the line of her finger. Seven figures darkened the edge of the adjacent rough top. Six uniformed soldiers, each with the same slack expression Daisy had collected the moment she had stepped onto the Main Street. And the seventh figure…
She could see the physical jerk of Bucky's gasp far below her on the street.
Sam. Wings tucked in. Goggles on. Arms at his side. A perfect mirror of the soldiers beside him.
"Are you willing to gamble on whether they fall forward or back when you shoot me?"
Miranda looked from Sam to her sister to Bucky. Bucky's eyes were on his friend. His gun was lowered and he had taken one step, as though he thought maybe he could make it to his friend before any harm did.
They were soldiers. They knew what that meant, what it could cost them. And maybe she could have done it to those nameless soldiers. Pulled the trigger and gambled with their lives as she had done with so many others. But Sam… To let him fall was the destroy a part of Bucky. Could she live with that? And would he forgive her for it?
"That's the thing about love. It makes you weak. But you've always known that. It's the code you've lived by." Her sisters gaze shifted to Bucky. "So what makes him do damn special?"
Miranda sat back, setting down her rifle.
The fortress of bodies around her sister shifted, parting to allow her a path towards Bucky. Miranda stepped up onto the short wall surrounding the rooftop.
"Let them go, Oclora. This is between you and me."
And then she jumped.