Alternatively titled, "American Horror Story: Stark Tower."
I changed my mind. I don't want to see Civil War anymore. I do actually enjoy my emotional stability from time to time, and I just don't think I'm ready for that to be taken away FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
"In the dark, only the Devil can cast a shadow."
-Eduardo C. Corra
Avery's mind was going a mile a minute. She'd seen plenty of what the Tesseract could do—the mere mention of the powerful object sent images of a dilapidated and smoldering New York flashing before her eyes. Every last man, woman, and child who had seen the destruction of the city had learned to fear the mystical cube, but this was the first she'd ever heard of its ability to heal.
"Do you really think it would work?" she questioned haltingly.
Steve's bright eyes bored into hers. "Thor told me once it had healing abilities far beyond anything we have here. I hoped I'd never have to see that thing again, but it may be our best shot."
She was afraid to let herself feel anything beyond a dim flicker of hope. To give in to optimism, to believe that it would work, only to be permanently let down—it would crush her.
"But—how do we even use something like that? What if it just ended up hurting him? Steve, something that powerful—it scares me. The last time it was here, it—we—"
"I know," he said firmly, reclaiming her attention. "But if we don't try this, we got nothing. We're out of options. We have to try."
Beneath his sturdy, stable demeanor, Avery saw her own desperation and fear looking back at her. She swallowed painfully.
She looked back at the bed on which the Soldier lay, absentmindedly clasping her hands before her.
"How do we contact Thor?" she asked in a low tone, keeping her eyes on the bed.
He ran a hand through his clean-cut, sandy blonde hair. "Well...In theory, he's got a guy who can see and hear us right now, but we can never really count on that. With all the political turmoil Asgard's been in lately, it'd be best to try a more direct way."
Energy coursed visibly through his body. His entire posture had changed, and Avery could tell he was throwing every ounce of himself into this plan.
"I'm gonna go talk to Bruce about this. He may know of some Stark tech than can help us reach them."
Avery volunteered to stay in the room; Steve was out the door and up the stairs in two bounds. Steadying herself, she resumed her position at the Soldier's bedside.
Faced once more with the oppressive silence of the medical chamber, she drew her knees up to her chest, balling herself up in the chair. She forced herself to think of anything except for the Tesseract. Her mind wandered, and she found herself praying that her parents were doing alright in her absence, that Carmen had the restaurant under control, and that the neighbors whose dogs Avery walked on Thursdays had found someone else to do her job.
How descriptive it was of human nature, she thought, that she was occupied with the small things rather than the calamity before her.
She was in her own world for some time.
Abruptly, a distant, shrill sound shrieked and echoed from deep within the bowels of Stark Tower, jolting her from her reverie. The building shuddered ominously.
She tensed, her feet lowering cautiously to the ground, her hands resting on the seat of her chair. Instinctively, she looked toward the Soldier. He remained unresponsive, his mind sleeping on in its ceaseless state of oblivion. The clock declared that it had only been about half an hour since Steve left.
She strained to hear the threatening noise again—nothing.
The silence that followed seemed a great deal louder now, as if the very walls were preparing themselves for something gruesome, leering down at her and getting ready to suffocate her hundreds of feet below the earth's surface. A cool feeling of dread made its languid way into her veins, her limbs growing stiff as she searched for an explanation in the menacingly dead air.
Timidly, she stood, padding over to the elevator shaft. She pressed one hand gingerly up against the icy steel door, leaning an ear against its surface.
Her keen senses detected not even the shadow of a vibration.
She straightened, one eyebrow quirked. It was more than likely that Tony had an immeasurable number of machines and other technology in the works down there. Maybe one of them had jus spontaneously combusted. Or something.
She turned on her heel at a measured pace, made it halfway to the bed, and stopped in her tracks.
Every ceiling light, save one, died in the same instant, throwing the chamber into utter darkness.
Avery flung her back against the wall in apprehension, inhaling sharply.
The weak yellow glow that remained sputtered, ready to give out at any moment. The room appeared to shrink around her, the eerie shadows of the medical equipment shifting rapidly in the strobe-like lighting.
What she heard next was enough to make her nauseous with fear.
A sickening chorus of the shrieking noises—which she could now identify as metallic in nature—dragged rhythmically up the inside walls of the elevator shaft.
Screech, fwump. Screech, fwump. Screech, fwump. Screech—
She recoiled lightning-quick away from the door, her legs smacking against the Soldier's bed on the opposite side of the room. She gripped the metal frame for support. The flickering of the last light was coming and going in short, feeble bursts, the stretches of darkness getting longer and longer with each passing millisecond.
The horrifying screams from the elevator were shortly drowned out by a nightmarish static din emitted by JARVIS' speakers, a racket so inexplicable and random that it threatened to send the remnants of Avery's sanity packing.
As her knees buckled, Avery felt the bedframe behind her begin to shake violently, and she spun just in time to behold the Soldier's back arch in an unnatural C on the white mattress.
The inhuman gasp that tore from his lungs was audible over the screaming chaos all around them. His eyes flew wide open, and he battled wildly with his restraints for a few seconds before Avery could force herself from shock and rip the mask off his face.
His skin was clammy, his forehead shining from exertion as he shivered and convulsed. Somehow, he managed to realize that another person was near him—in one decisive jerk, he snapped the harness around his organic forearm and latched onto her wrist in a familiar vice grip.
He yanked her down to his level, and in the sickly light, the rapid change of his expressions left her practically quaking with fear—first, recognition; then, understanding; finally, what she could only describe as unmitigated hysteria.
"Av—ery—" he hissed and bit through his teeth, stopping short to brace himself against the pain of an oncoming seizure. "You have to—get out—" he panted. "Get out—They're—coming—"
The rhythmic metallic screams continued to echo from the elevator shaft. A particularly harrowing screech told her that whatever was coming would be there very soon.
Her free hand shook as she cupped his face desperately and shouted in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. "Who's coming, Bucky? What's happening?"
Face contorted almost beyond recognition, he managed, "This was—a trap—they planted a sc—"
His back arched again as he gave a muffled scream of anguish. Tears of fear and pity pricked her eyes, her white-knuckle grip on the bed tightening as the building swooned and dust trickled down from the ceiling.
Practically foaming at the mouth with strain, he squeezed his eyes shut and choked out, "A scrambler—they planted a s-scrambler on me—to mess—with his security system—I was just—the decoy—"
Another yell ripped from his throat, and Avery hid her face in the crook of her elbow, unable to watch him struggle.
"The Romulus—device—it's too late—You have to get ou—"
The convulsions, now stronger and lengthier, robbed him of speech. His grasp went limp, his head lolling back. The screeching was right behind the elevator door now.
Avery sprung to her feet, almost blind with panic. Her eyes swept the room, zeroing in on a medical device the size of a small refrigerator. Sprinting toward it, sneakers slipping on the marble floor, she began pushing the leaden mass toward the door with all her might; next, she dragged a free hospital bed over; then, a tall titanium shelf. Every heavy object in the room was fair game. She concentrated all of her strength on blocking up the door, though she knew it would do little to help them.
The Soldier drifted in and out of consciousness. She was on her way to pick up a wicked-looking hacksaw for defense when, as she passed his bed, he flailed, reaching for her. She ran back.
"NO!" he yelled, his shaking hand pulling her down again. "They won't—" he gulped, "—come for their bait—they're going for—everyone—else—"
Their horrified gazes held steady for two heartbeats. She couldn't just leave him like this—if someone did stumble upon him, he would be a sitting duck—totally defenseless and right in the open.
He read her thoughts by face. Adam's apple bobbing, his free hand trailed up her forearm and squeezed. "Go."
Her lip quivered. She bent over him, bringing her face closer to his as she promised, "You're going to be okay."
Hardly thinking, she hurriedly pressed her lips to his forehead. She was darting toward the stairwell before either of them could respond.
What followed was the longest climb of her life. She paid no attention to how many flights of stairs she ascended, single-mindedly focused on reaching her friends before whatever was in the elevator did. She didn't have time to rejoice that the Soldier was conscious, or to guess at the nature of the attackers. It was a deadly race between her and the enemies, and whoever got to the Avengers first would have a decisive influence on the battle that was sure to follow.
Her heartbeat skittered loudly in her ears as she leapt up the stairs two at a time. At last, with a surge of joy, she rounded a corner and saw that she'd reached the entrance to the lounge. She threw herself against the door, crashing unceremoniously into the room.
Steve and Bruce, deliberating in the corner, started, looking toward her in bewilderment. From the the white leather couch, Sam jumped to his feet.
"Steve!" she yelled, wheezing and stumbling toward them. The three men drew near her immediately, clearly concerned, and she collided into them. If they spoke, asking her what was wrong, she didn't hear.
The moment she opened her mouth to warn them, the elevator dinged.
Time ceased ticking as her head swiveled toward the door.
A deafening explosion knocked them all backward, blowing the elevator face clean out of the wall. Cinder block and insulation clouded the atmosphere with a whoosh, and Avery blinked rapidly as she tried to breathe without choking on debris. Miraculously, she had avoided the massive chunks of flying concrete, stuck down purely by the force of the blast.
Steve, closest to Avery, had shielded her the best he could. Bruce's glasses hung askew on his befuddled face as he craned his neck toward the source of the detonation. Sam had himself braced against a coffee table, shaking his head to clear his senses.
Before anyone could even get to their feet, a solid wall of arc reactor blasts fired in unison from the gaping maw of the wall.
Steve rolled, snatching his shield swiftly off the ground, deflecting as many blasts away from the others as he could. The entire panel of glass behind Avery shattered, fragments pelting her prone form in a deadly mockery of torrential rain.
Before her eyes, Bruce's skin melted and expanded; she blinked, and suddenly an emerald beast was bellowing from where he had been seconds before. Sam had already made a run for his ammunition in the adjoining room. She flipped over, scrambling backwards as to get a better look at the invaders and get out of the Avengers' way. Finding scant shelter behind the leg of a chair, she blinked furiously to clear her vision.
For a good ten seconds, she conjectured that maybe she had hit her head during the explosion. Out from the elevator crawled swarms of the exact same figure—the same musculature, the same stature, the same clothing. Only when she saw that each figure moved independently did she realize that her vision wasn't faulty—that it was duplicates of the same person.
Each one of them was bedecked in a tight navy uniform, so dark that is was almost the color of midnight. Identical silver armguards encircled their limbs; their legs were a flurry of the same ivory combat boots; their fists, a hurricane of the same ivory gloves. Navy hoods hung low over their faces, each of which was hidden by a macabre skull faceplate. Their eyes glowed an unearthly shade of yellow, and their cadaverous masks seemed permanently stuck in grins of hellish delight.
Perhaps most disquieting of all: each was using a different portion of Tony's familiar maroon armor.
Some had palm reactors, others had one or two boots with thrusters, some had singular limbs sheathed in the scarlet titanium. Wherever they had gotten them from, they were using them like pros, firing on the three Avengers with insane accuracy.
Fighting his way through the onslaught of reactor blasts, Steve finally got close enough to one of the demonic intruders to engage him face-to-face. Captain America threw a mean punch to his jaw, jabbed a decisive knee to his stomach, and roundhouse kicked him to the floor. In three clean moves, the opponent was permanently down for the count.
What Avery saw, however, the others didn't.
While Steve had been occupied with his partner, a group of about five or six others paused, lowering their weapons.
They merely stood there, watching.
The moment their comrade went down, they sprinted toward Steve in one formation. Steve saw them coming, and immediately slung a fist in the direction of the closest one.
The enemy threw up his hand so quickly, it was invisible. With a muffled buff, he caught Steve's fist in mid air.
The group swallowed him, obscuring him entirely from Avery's vision. As Steve struggled, the body of his first victim twitched ominously on the floor. Avery watched in horror as the figure's joints popped and snapped back into place. He pushed himself effortlessly off the ground, standing up without a scratch, and added his weight to the dogpile.
From the right, the Hulk howled; the whole floor of the high rise shook, and Avery rolled out of the way just in time to miss a layer of drywall plummeting down from the ceiling. She cried out as an energy beam grazed her shoulder, cauterizing the flesh as quickly as it was sliced open.
One of the deathly attackers saw her. It stopped in mid-step, started toward her with inhuman speed, and raised its glowing hand. Her scream died in her throat as an enormous mass of green tackled it from the side, sending them both through the wall and into the opposite corridor. Three more metallic blurs rushed after them.
"What the hell?" yelled a figure covered in more armor than the rest. No doubt having heard the raucous, Tony came stumbling down the stairs, wildly trying to reconcile the situation before him. With little hesitation, he leapt directly into the fray and began battling ferociously alongside his teammates.
The high-pitched shrieking of the arc reactors firing on all sides crashed together with enraged, frantic yells in one cacophonous blur. A series of ear-splitting rips tore through the air as the Hulk rent metal from screeching metal.
She couldn't place when the tide of the battle turned. They were everywhere. Silent. Calculating. Precise. And they knew. Punch, kick, shield throw, energy blast, missile fire—they countered everything with literally no effort. It was like they knew every move that would be made before it was made.
The room lit up in an electric blue flash, a beacon in the midst of the white reactor light. Had she been one hundred years old, Avery would have been able to place that voltaic tone and cerulean blaze.
It was the same energy that had incapacitated the Soldier in the street that day.
She twisted toward its source. A sickening noise—half grunt, half scream—accompanied the sound, and Avery turned to catch Tony fall to the ground, a skeletal enemy standing over him with a wicked, crackling baton in hand. Before she had time to think, two more electric flashes lit up the room, and Steve and Sam went down writhing. The Hulk's frenzied cries had gone quiet.
The battered, bloody heroes were losing.
They were dying.
And no one was coming to help them.