MANHATTAN

It was busy the next day at the coffee shop. Really busy, even by New York's usual overcrowded standards. There was only one other person working, a bubbly guy who Eva purposefully did not remember the name of, and they were drowning under a mountain of ridiculous, over-complicated orders. It didn't help that Eva hadn't slept well at all last night. After getting back from the HQ, she had lain in bed and tossed and turned until the sun rose, unable to calm down enough to drift off. She couldn't stop worrying about Vision, and then assuring herself that there was nothing to worry about, then trying to think of something else, then inevitably finding her brain drawn back to the matter of her best friend again. The half-hour of slumber she had got was filled with nightmares about that ghastly burn across his chest.

At least now she didn't have the option to think about it. There was nothing like a coffee shop of hipsters impatient for their caffeine to keep her mind as well as her body busy. Her shift finished at one and she was already fantasising about going to her favorite rowan tree in Central Park and taking a nap. Hopefully, this one wouldn't be as upsetting as last night's.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Ex-cuse me, but I've been waiting fifteen minutes and –"

"I'll get to yours in a moment," Eva snapped at the bespectacled, be-moustached man, who frowned.

"Somebody got out on the wrong side of bed this morning," he muttered, folding his arms and turning away. Eva pulled a face at the back of his head before hopping back over to the coffee machine and changing the beans. Her fingers fumbled on the filter and she dropped it, spilling stinking brown sludge all over the floor.

"Crap," she muttered, dropping down and grabbing some paper towels to clean up the mess with. "Crap, crap –"

"Kresk!" Mr G appeared over her like an omen of death. "Stop fussing and get back to work!"

"Sorry," she said breathlessly. But her hands were still shaking and her sight was blurred now, too. Why was she crying? This was so stupid. She was so stupid.

"Employing you was the worst mistake I ever made," Mr G continued as she chucked the mess in the trash and washed her hands. "You've brought nothing but trouble to my door, you know that? All these damn capes coming in here all the time, taking up table space."

She apologized again, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron, and tried to put on her best customer service mask. "Can I help you?" she said in a trembling voice, grasping the till with both hands.

"Yeah," said the customer, as Mr G frowned over her shoulder. "Can I get a, uhh…" He frowned and stopped, as though there was something very confusing about coffee. As anxious as she was, it was enough to make her smirk. Then he reached up, to swat a way a fleck of what looked like dust from his cheek.

As it floated away, half his face went with it.

Eva stepped back, hands over her mouth in horror as the man, still with that funny look of befuddlement on his face, turned to ash in front of her; as that found itself caught in the shop's air conditioning and carried away through the open door.

"Kresk?"

She felt something brush her shoulder and looked down to see a hand dissolve on it until all she could see was the black cloth of her shirt. She followed the disappearing arm up to the face of Mr G, who was staring at her.

"Help me," he said. Before she could do anything, move or speak or even blink, he was gone too.

They weren't the only two. Half the shop was vanishing, while the rest looked on in shocked, impotent silence. Without stopping to think Eva vaulted the counter, barged past the customers and staggered outside. A driverless taxi cab screeched past her, smashing into a fire hydrant that exploded and sent water gushing everywhere. Someone in the back seat pounded against the window and she ran forward, gasping as the fountain splashed freezing cold against her, and yanked the door open. A young man in a sharp suit fell out onto his knees, face bleeding from where he had hit the partition, and crawled onto the sidewalk.

The screaming had started. Eva could hear crashes all around her, not just from the road but in the sky above, too: on the skyline she could see a skyscraper with a fiery hole in its side, the tail of a helicopter sticking out of it like a dart on a board. Much closer to her than that, a woman stared at her empty stroller, unsure of what to do next.

The man who had fallen from the taxi was still slumped at her feet, staring up at her with glassy eyes. "What's happening?" he asked. "What's going on?"

A recent memory stirred in the back of Eva's head. A soft, English voice saying that "if they get the mind stone and its sisters, then their master has infinite power. Power that could tear the universe in two."

The stone in Vision's head hadn't been destroyed. The bad guys must have got it. If it was intact, then he must be too. He was still alive, at least. He had to be - wait, no. That wasn't important. Not now. This was no time to be selfish.

Eva pulled her phone out of her back pocket and opened up the news. The signal and internet were all still up; the most recent bulletin was about some kind of battle going on in Wakanda. Spaceships had been spotted, similar to the one that had been seen over New York this morning. And so had the Avengers. The update at the bottom of the page, added about a minute and a half ago by an independent source called Athena, noted a massive blast that had shook the earth.

She locked her phone, stuck it back in her pocket, and helped the man to his feet. "You need to get to a hospital," she said.

"What's going on?" he mumbled again. She doubted anything she said would get through to him, so just ignored the question and pulled his arm over her shoulder. Knees almost buckling beneath his weight, she started hauling him along to an ambulance parked down the bottom of the street – in New York, one was never far away. A neon yellow paramedic saw her coming and ran up to her. They took the injured man and, before they could ask any more questions, Eva was gone again.

Her motorbike was parked half a block away. She had left her helmet and leathers back at the coffee shop but, right now, she was willing to take her chances. Eva kicked up the stand and revved the engine into life, grateful that she had a vehicle small enough to weave through the chaos that the traffic had become. She was halfway out of Manhattan before she realized that her brain, working on autopilot, was taking her to the Avengers compound.

They'll know what's happening, she told herself, as the air and the ash whipped at her bare cheeks. And it's safe there. I go to the compound and I… I wait for them to get back. And when – if – when they do, they'll know what to do next.

Shit!

She skidded to a halt.

I forgot Rachel Carson!

A/N IT'S ALL KICKING OFF NOW LADS