It's just been... a year. Already. And last year was multiple years. I love this story, sorry to make you wait.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Coronal Mass Ejection
Beep.
"You better be alive, Sharon, or Fury's going to have my ass!" It's Natasha.
"I'm here. Something just beeped!" Harris calls out from across the room.
Both women are barely audible through the screeching grind of glass striking glass, and Emory looks at the churning glass spinning around her. Pulling in additional air from above, she lifts the circling column up. With a silent apology to the scientist whose work gave her actual superpowers, Emory holds her breath and rolls out from under Iulia, hands protecting her face from the deadly tinsel shards. It takes a few seconds for her to adjust for spinning it from the outside, but the gunfire at the other end of the room helps her focus.
"Two tones just went off over by me. Calling a retreat!" Nat yells. She nods at Emory and jogs off with her weapon along the far wall towards the door, shouting something into the comm.
"Same!" Harris says, her voice nearer than before. "This one's one of ours, gas got her." She's dragging the body of the first goon to go down. "That gunfire should have let up by now!" she yells over to Natasha. To Emory, she says, "I'm guessing the old lady's pack-"
"-also beeping," Emory finishes for her.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Nat's back from her circuit of the room, and the fact that she's hurrying doesn't bode well. "Clint's in the helicopter, picking up whoever's left. The report isn't pretty." Natasha points to Emory's column of spinning glass. "Can you aim that?"
There's no amount of dark humor that can offset the knowledge of what that much broken glass would do to a human struck with it at speed, but it isn't like they'll be able to take any of these people with them. Emory looks at her own bloody hands and wonders how much of Natasha's humanity has been sliced off, and how young she was when it started.
Did she get addicted to this fierce, focused feeling?
All three of them duck down when there's a concussive sound somewhere in the building. Emory falls on her ass in her haste to tighten up the glass cyclone's rotation, her focus only broken when Harris throws something down that skids over to bounce off of Emory's shoe. It's an empty magazine for the gun that struck Iulia, and its dark metal reminds her of the vials she has to recover, over by the shattered window.
Agent Harris motions for her to stay down. "Any of ours left?" she shouts to Natasha.
"Not anymore!" Nat's pulling metal objects from the compact backpack she's wearing, tossing parts of them to Harris, their hands moving in a blur to construct some kind of quick barrier they can crouch behind. She pauses for a second, listening to her comm, before muttering a swear word under her breath that doesn't sound like English. "Our guys didn't find any serum anywhere in the building. Everyone who's left has nothing to lose." As if they'd been waiting for her to say this, there's a barrage of gunfire right at the door of the room.
It's even more imperative that she get that metal box. Emory strips off her blazer, tucks it under the unconscious double agent's torso and grabs each sleeve, ready to drag her over to the window.
She doesn't even want to think about how they're going to get into that helicopter. Managing her glass tornado and dragging the woman's dead weight distracts her from Nat and Harris's last stand, and Emory had just managed to forget the time crunch when she collapses, exhausted, by the vial box.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
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"You'd better be half dead or about to be tossed in jail, Tony. It's too early in the morning for this shit."
Tony smiles. There are two kinds of Morning Rhodey, and the one he has on the phone is the friendlier version. "I think it's still another hour and a half till the morning news, and they like to bait the big stories for six AM, so you probably won't see an impartial take on what's going on until-"
"Where are you right now?"
"Right now?" Tony looks down the front of the building he's on top of, but the hotel doesn't have any kind of awning to indicate where the 'front' is. "I'm on the roof. Northwest side? I dunno. Was hoping you'd let me in."
"I should have already hung up on you. You know that, right?"
"Yeah, but you won't. I can give you directions to the roof access point, but uh, keep this quiet, will you? I'm about to be named an armed and dangerous mentally ill fugitive if I'm reading the signs right, and the less obvious we are, the better. So, no uniform?"
Rhodes must have him on speaker, because Tony can hear shuffling noises, along with a few choice phrases that no doubt describe him.
"If you're on the roof, you're in that suit of yours, yes? You're far from covert yourself, and in that thing? Psshh." Rhodey sounds almost as tired as he is.
"You could bring a bedsheet?"
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"How many was that?" Nat asks, and Emory thinks she's asking how many gunshots, but then Harris answers.
"Six? When did that lady's kid die?"
Emory can see Iulia's body through the spinning glass she's been sustaining.
"Not when," she realizes aloud. "How old! She was seventeen!" she calls back. So was I, she doesn't add.
"If that's it, there's 11 left!" Harris says, just as Nat yells something that sounds like 'get ready.' The two agents lift their handbuilt shield as two figures scramble into view across the room. A bullet pings up a gouge of floor two feet away from her.
"Do it, Em!" Natasha shouts.
She's horribly unready, but Emory doesn't want to die like this, so she gathers up the remaining bands of power around herself and sends them to bolster her death twister. She focuses on the shape of her creation, not its purpose, watching it undulate before she pushes it with all her strength toward their attackers.
At the last minute, Emory closes her eyes.
Given the sounds, that's almost worse.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Em."
She lifts her head. Natasha's trying to pull the body Emory's crouched over onto their makeshift shield.
"Sorry."
"There's not much time. You think you can help lift her up there?"
There's no way Emory has the kind of control that would keep from fucking up the airflow for that helicopter. Without her help, though, they're all dead.
"I can try."
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Tony wakes up with a crick in everything, but he doesn't feel like utter shit on top of that, which is an improvement. His helmet's off, and he's on his back on Rhodey's second hotel bed, his head propped up with pillows that weren't enough to stop his neck from hurting like a motherfucker. He can see the flicker of the television on the edge of a mirror in his peripheral vision, but the idea of turning his head is a serious no go right now.
"JARVIS, what time is it?" he asks, closing his eyes against the idea that he's asked the question with a clock in view, because Rhodey would definitely rib him for that. "JARVIS?"
There's no answer, and Tony lurches up like a vampire in a silent film, his gauntleted hand reaching for his ARC. He doesn't feel like something's wrong, but-
"Cool off, Tony, you put the suit on stand-by to reserve power," Rhodes says from the other side of the room. He holds up the remote control to the television. "You're at thirty percent, and you were right, you're going to need every bit of it."
The TV clicks off of mute, and Tony just has a second to look down and see that yes, his ARC is still glowing through the suit before he hears his name spoken by a concerned-sounding female news anchor.
-Tony Stark is still missing after a confrontation with his business partner that left his home damaged and Stark Industries' Chief Operating Officer fearing for his life. Bill Lysander is outside the Stark mansion with a report.
The slick-haired brunette is replaced by an older man wearing vivid purple.
"Jeez, they've got Count von Count doing on-the-spot reporting, now?" Tony cracks, walking stiffly over to sit at the foot of Rhodey's bed.
"He's got multiple pieces of bad news for you, so you're not wrong."
The grim expression his friend is wearing tosses a stone of dread into Tony's already deep pool of worry, and he misses the start of the vamp reporter's description of the scene trying to catch Rhodey's eye.
-diah Stane was thankfully not hurt, but as you can see, Stark's attack did leave a large hole in the building. I'm told the police called a foundation expert to ensure that there was no structural damage-
"Wait, he's saying I attacked him? When he's the one who showed up with fifteen police cars claiming I was armed and dangerous?" Tony can't fucking believe it.
Rhodey just points at the screen.
-press conference in just under fifteen minutes with Stane, whose long-standing mentorship over Stark has been a mainstay of Stark Industries since his friend and colleague Howard Stark was killed in 1991, along with his wife-
"Take a breath, you're turning purple!" Tony jeers at the overhyped run-on sentence. In response, Rhodey hits mute again, and turns to face him, arms crossed.
"I'm going to assume you weren't stupid enough to blow a hole in your basement trying to kill Stane, but you're going to want to come up with more plans than insults. My phone's on mute, but it's been ringing nonstop all day. Everyone wants to know where you are."
His friend is already in war mode if he's skipped past asking what the fuck is going on in favor of a game plan. Rhodey proves it by heading in for a quick shower before the press conference. Tony checks in with JARVIS before putting the suit back into standby mode, just in case. He's still got the other palladium insert and one earplug, oddly enough, and he hopes he won't need either of them.
"Do people know you're in NYC?" he asks, when he sees Rhodey next.
"Half of them do. It looks like they assume I'm useless to you because of the leg, which hurts, man. Since when am I the brawn to your brain?"
Tony looks down at the suit. "That's, uh, not going to get better, Buttercup." The 'suck it up' part is unfair, but implied.
Five minutes into Stane's press conference, Tony has to remind himself that if he screams at the television, someone will call the cops on them. Rhodey has already retreated to the bathroom to watch on his phone where he can actually hear it, after Tony reactivated JARVIS to demand surveillance tapes of the night before.
"-what kind of mental state he's in, so as much as I don't like it, I'm going to appeal to his sense of showmanship. Tony, I'm asking you to meet me in twenty four hours at the Statue of Liberty, okay? Just you and me, I'll ask all the police and FBI or whoever to wait out on Coast Guard ships-"
The reporters interrupt with screaming fervor, "Mr. Stane! Mr. Stane!"
Obie holds up both hands and feigns a look of annoyance, but then he points to a guy holding an orange mic.
"What about your safety, sir? Without Stark at the helm, won't the company need you to keep things running smoothly?"
It's Albert Hare, Tony would recognize him anywhere. He's well named, because the man hops to Stane's bidding every time there's a new product to push or a contract to bid for. If he's being called on to ask strategic questions, then Stane has been planning for Tony's downfall for longer than the past few hours. Hare lives in California.
"Check flight logs, J. Find out when that Jack rabbit got to the city."
"My safety's not at issue, I've got some tricks up my sleeve," Stane says with a folksy grin. "What I want to know is, has anyone seen that girl he supposedly rescued? The one from Afghanistan? We did a sweep of the house, and there were signs of a woman having been here. Has anyone thought to do a welfare check on her? When did she leave? DID she leave?"
He sees red at this, and it's only Tony's need to be vindicated and ensure she's home safe from the mission that leads him to picture her red hair and not the heat of a fired rocket.
"Are you accusing Stark of-" a reporter is saying, but Obie steamrolls ahead with false geniality and concern.
"I'm just saying, if we don't see her in, what? Twelve hours? Ten? I'd be wondering what kind of control Stark has over her. The man is out of control, and we all know he can't be trusted with women."
"Hey, hey, hey," Rhodey's saying, rushing over from the bathroom, his phone tossed onto the bed. Stane's voice is doubled from the two audio sources, but Tony can't discern anything. "Stand down, okay?"
"I'm down," Tony says thickly. "There's no way she'll be back in twelve hours. He has to have contacts at SHIELD. Shit."
"Tony, I hate to say it like this, but for years you've seen Stark Industries as a playground. Sleep around, sleep late, show up once a month with an idea that would take the best minds in the company six months to come up with." Rhodey hands him a plastic cup of tap water. "That whole time, people like Stane were happy to keep you in the Fun-Vee, but you've shown them you can lose them a lot of money. It's time to grow up."
"Time to grow up, so suit up in your fantasy flying armor and fight the bad guy at the Statue of Liberty?" Tony holds up his plastic cup in a toast. "Game on."
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Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Twelve. Emory winces. She's braced in the broken frame of the window, weaving delicate updrafts beneath the stretcher being winched up to the helicopter. The two SHIELD agents are on it, and there's just five feet left to lift.
The diciest five feet.
Emory sings under her breath to stay calm and focused, tuning everything else out. She remembers how emotional those moments were in the cave, singing for her life in front of terrorists and Tony Stark. She'd had no idea how important he would be to her, and now all she wants is to get back to him. Do you drive your Ferrari with the top down, feelin' the wind like my hands in your hair?
All sound drops away for those last moments of balance. She watches Nat fire off her rappel anchor when Harris is pulled into the helicopter, destabilizing the raft. It spins away and still Emory focuses on Nat, glass shards digging into her hand where she's gripping the broken window frame.
Only once Natasha is wholly inside the helicopter does Emory realize her mistake.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
She'll have to get up there without the stabilizing base of the stretcher/shield. There isn't time to climb down to it or propel it up with her powers. And there are only two minutes left.
"I've done this before," Emory reminds herself. Her instincts tell her that she doesn't have quite enough bands of energy to get all the way up, but it isn't like she is going to fare any better staying put. With a surge of desperation, she launches herself towards the copter, pulling at the air around her recklessly.
"Singing. Singing helps," Emory reminds herself. What comes to her mind instead is Tony's voice crying out for her, when she'd been buried in sand. Spin yourself out of there! FIGHT! She is fighting, lifting herself with a simple tune repeating that word, 'fight' over and over, as she gets closer to safety.
Ten feet.
Five feet.
Multiple hands reach out for her from inside the helicopter, and she is almost close enough to-
An explosion goes off below, followed by tens of detonations all across the building. Terror grips her; the shockwaves will stretch up and snatch all of them out of the sky in seconds. Emory strains to reach the skid of the helicopter, but when another larger explosion sounds, the fear of death causes her grip on her power to evaporate. She starts falling.
I'm so sorry, Tony, I'm so, so-
"Gotcha!" Clint says, his strong arm wrapping around her waist. All Emory can do is clutch at him with her eyes closed, hearing and feeling the various clipping noises that mean he's securing her safely to him. He had to have launched himself down from the helicopter, just as he'd done when she'd fallen outside the Triskelion. "This is really going to suck," he warns her, and then they are surging sideways and up, swinging beneath the helicopter, clouds of angry death billowing underneath them.
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"Tony, oh, my God!"
It's the third time in their thirty second phone call. Unusually, each one has been for a different reason, and not all of them are his fault. "Pepper, I promise you-"
"I GAVE it to him, Tony. The one you built in the cave. I found a place that takes and frames things in glass display boxes and I was going to take it over to them and he offered and this is terrible!"
Her voice is going in and out on the other line, and he just knows she's walking back and forth, probably gesturing. Given that she's already told him about the blueprints she and the SHIELD team found in the company computers, the combination is bad news for the Statue of Liberty, and worse news for him.
"What's done is done, Pep. You're safe, Happy's actually safer than I could have made him, ironically enough-"
"He's going to give himself a heart attack in there, Tony."
He scratches the top of his head and winces. "Yeah, that's valid. Unfortunately my ability to pull strings has dropped into the negatives, at the moment."
"Don't look at me, I'm not supposed to know anything about it," Rhodey says. Tony knows he's been doing his own quiet information-gathering, but by necessity, he hasn't asked.
"Am I on speaker phone?"
"No, Rhodey's just a smartass."
"I need to get to the flight. Stay inside, will you? Please?"
"I will do my best. Bye."
Tony hangs up before Pepper can ramp herself up again. She'll be flying on forged documents, which was against his better judgment, but the only way 'Virginia Potts' can fly to the east coast is under a different name. She barely made it out of Stark Industries; the whole reason they'd risked the call was for her to tell him that she'd been unable to get any Palladium to fly back with.
They didn't have a plan to smuggle some onto a plane anyway, but it means he has to ration his use of JARVIS. Pepper had suggested they enlist SHIELD's help with that part, but Tony's seen enough in the scans to make him balk at that. It was bad enough letting them near Stark Industries' files, but at least there, he has legal protections, encryption, and a few different flavors of leverage, if they want to play hardball.
Just thinking about SHIELD makes Tony reach for the helmet, but Rhodes actually throws a pillow at him.
"No. She can't possibly be back yet anyway. Preserve the power."
Rhodey won't even let him try to hack up a charging station in the hotel room, saying it's a red flag for Tony's presence. He's right, but that doesn't mean Tony's not resentful.
"I'm renaming you Colonel Buzzkill."
"If it keeps you alive, you can rename me Colonel Butthead," Rhodey shoots back. He immediately regrets it, Tony can tell, but it's too late.
"I'm going to hold you to that."
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It's not long after takeoff when a flight attendant comes over and asks Emory if she's the person pictured in the article on her phone. She's already shell-shocked and exhausted after telling her friend and colleague that the organization he's been risking his life for is infiltrated by literal bad guys. She'd told Clint while still hanging underneath the helicopter, but once they were inside, the atmosphere was too tense to tell anyone else. Agent Rumlow and his team had lost two guys and a few more were wounded. They'd all been furious and demoralized, and that was without knowing the secret about HYDRA's infiltration.
"Miss?"
"I'm sorry, it was a long day," Emory says. She feels stretched, like keeping a secret this impactful can multiply in a person's system until the infection takes them down from within. "Yes, that's me, but what-"
"You were the one in the cave with Tony Stark?" The young woman's excitement dampens as she frowns at her phone. "He- he didn't hurt you, did he?"
"No!" Emory says, deeply confused. "What-"
She grabs the phone, and it's a testament to what she sees written there that the flight attendant doesn't protest.
"What is it?" Agent Rumlow asks her, startling from his doze. She must have bumped his arm.
Emory has to immediately picture her calming static, because the article claims that Tony's volatile, on the run, and tried to kill his business partner. The latter isn't very likely, but the first two are. She's in a pressure vessel thirty-five thousand feet up, there's no room for error here.
On top of that, Rumlow doesn't know about her relationship with Tony. He knows that she and Tony were captives, but nothing else, thanks to the mission and the need for her to appear disconnected and desperate.
"You okay?" Rumlow says, and she looks from the picture of Tony's mansion surrounded by emergency vehicles to the SHIELD agent's frightened face.
"It's just all so much," she says weakly, hyper-conscious of the fact that everything she said might be relayed to the very same reporter whose byline led the article. She searches for the codeword that means 'all clear;' this isn't quite the situation it was designed for, but it should help the SHIELD agent relax. "I'd really hoped that surgeon in Novi Grand could help me, but I guess all I can do now is wait."
The flight attendant's eyes widen, and her expression turns sympathetic. "You two were kidnapped for a long time. Malnutrition can do a number on you, ask me how I know," she adds in a quieter voice, sliding a hand from her hip to the hem of her miniskirt, which falls pretty high above her knee. Emory offers her a corresponding look of sympathy, and the woman moves on to help someone else.
"I don't know, it might have been worth it," Rumlow remarks under his breath. He's got his head tipped sideways and is definitely ogling.
Emory hasn't spent much time around Rumlow. She knows he's one of the leads for Ops, that he is abrasive, commanding, and most of all, someone she needs to be able to trust. The sexist thing isn't surprising, but it makes her very uncomfortable. The flight path out of Sokovia is convoluted, and the flight crew asks everyone to remain seated, even to the point of avoiding the bathrooms. Emory's very conscious of the fact that she's got papers under her shirt, and there's no chance she's going to try to adjust them, not next to Rumlow.
It's another hour before the light goes off, and she heads for the bathroom, waiting in a makeshift line for long enough that she's probably got a papercut from the odd angle of one of the pages.
There's really only time to look at the top page, but it's inflammatory enough. In with wispy, juddering lines, Iulia has sketched out a command structure. Although full of gaps and question marks, the names Emory does recognize are terrifying. Alexander Pierce and Gideon Malick are both members of the World Security Council-
Someone jiggles the door of the toilet, and Emory calls out that she's almost done. She stands up, holding the pages to her chest as she hits flush. One more look, she tells herself, spreading the group of pages out on the mirror, just in case the sink is still wet.
There are seven names above a notation that Emory's mind wants to translate as 'senior,' and she races from circle to circle, struggling to read the handwriting. This has to be years' worth of careful reconnaissance, Emory realizes- and then she sees it.
Brock Rumlow.
Emory's numb as she folds the pages back up and tucks them more securely into her bra.
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Tony's well of patience has run dry.
"It's just for a few minutes, Rhodey! James. This is important. It's only a few minutes," he says as he tucks the contaminated palladium into his ARC. The handshake deal he'd struck with his best friend was about how much time Tony would spend with the green recruits if he wasted any more percentage points of the uncorrupted insert. Not this one.
"I don't know why your board is so worried. You're still thinking corporate- even your loopholes have loopholes!"
"Didn't they always?" Tony quips- and then JARVIS comes online. "J, give me everything you've got with Em's phone tracker, and fast."
"Processing, though might I say, sir, this isn't a good idea."
"Yeah, I'm sensing that," Tony says, feeling the beginnings of nausea stir in his stomach. It's probably psychosomatic, but try telling his tummy that.
"The tracker is no longer active. It appears to have been destroyed. There's no further information, and I am taking initiative to shut down. Please remove the contaminated chip as swiftly as possible?"
Sure enough, the HUD goes dim and Tony feels the weight of the full suit tug at him now that the servos aren't energized anymore. At least, he thinks that's what he's sensing, because that tracker? Shouldn't have been easily destructible. Not unless Emory's also-
"Sit down before you fall down, Tony!" Rhodey says, and he does, but barely.
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She's dead tired by the time the plane lands. There's just no chance of sleeping next to Rumlow, not after everything Iulia did to get those pages to her. Even if the elderly scientist was lying or mistaken, even if she there's a hidden agenda (and there is, almost certainly), there has to be a reason why she'd known his name, why she'd written it down in such a way.
Emory's just so grateful she'd entrusted the serum container to Clint.
They disembark and walk to get their luggage like a couple, though Emory's got her hair tucked into a baseball cap to mask her identity. Hopefully they can get out of the airport before the flight attendant calls somebody.
The wheelchair and oxygen tank were destroyed in the explosion, and it only just now occurs to her that there might be news about it. She wants to know what they're saying, but given that they've just come from Sokovia, that's probably risky.
"Emma, I've got some things to ask you- dinner?" The expression on Rumlow's face probably counts to him as charming, but she'd be more charmed if he were an actual snake.
A tentacled beast might be more apt.
"I'm completely beat, but thank you," she says, glad her exhaustion is authentic.
"Tomorrow, then," he says, a hair more forcefully than is polite. In her previous job, Emory might have accepted that boundary cross, but she's all out of fucks to give anyone but Tony Stark.
"I'll see if I have room in my schedule," she smiles up at him. It's her Rory smile, the placating one that promises her ex-boss is a diva who deserves all her accolades. Rumlow takes it in stride, but he's not convinced. Given that Natasha also works for SHIELD, Emory wonders if he wants her to know he's not convinced, or if he has a temper. The sexism tells her it might be more the latter than the former.
"At least let me drive you back? Don't want a taxi driver to recognize you."
"Smart, thanks."
The drive is tense. Just as she had in the airplane, Emory spends the entire ride employing her power-mitigation strategies, and even then, she can hear fluttering papers in Rumlow's back seat. When they get there, she's completely unsurprised when he parks the car and turns towards her, instead of unlocking the door so she can get out.
"You did amazing back there. You really did. We wouldn't have all made it if it weren't for you."
She settles on, "Terror is a good motivator."
"About that, I want you for Ops. We can train away the fear."
"Do I have a choice?"
Agent Rumlow holds her gaze for a few seconds too long before smiling broadly. "Have a good night, Em." Only then does he unlock the car doors.
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"Give me three hours, Tony. Three. We're not the only people looking for Emory Autumn right now, you know that, right?"
He's going to charter a fucking boat if he has to, and to hell with-
"Tony!"
Tony looks up, stony-faced and furious, but Rhodey's holding up his own phone, displaying a single message.
Tell Tony we're back? Couldn't take my phone with me and I'm tired as hell. No energy not to knock the whole building down with my superpowers, he's just going to have to steam till tomorrow morning.
He'd given Emory Rhodes' phone number for extreme emergencies, and given how pissed he is, how worried he'd been, how dead his phone is right now, it was the most genius idea he's maybe ever had.
"Now, will you get some fucking sleep before I report you to Stane myself?"
"Yeah, okay."
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Emory's second message is to Natasha's burner. The SHIELD agent made her memorize the number on the helicopter.
Home at Clint's now. I should probably assume everything's bugged all to hell, just for pranks and funsies? Not that I have any energy to look at my homework anyway. I could really use some advice on when and where it would be safe to look at that. Turns out my traveling companion wouldn't have appreciated it if I had done it in transit.
Nat had told her to assume anything could be misconstrued (or understood, for that matter), so Emory's phrasing is as careful as she can make it. If somehow her phone is under HYDRA's control and they read it, the last bit could be taken as frustration about being hit on- but she's really hoping that the Black Widow will see it as the warning it really is.
She gets a notification just as she's finishing brushing her teeth, which she checks before rinsing.
Tony was ready to mount a rescue by horseback if necessary. Get some sleep, but not all day tomorrow too, all right? He's going to need you.
Emory's really grateful that Tony's best friend hasn't just handed the phone over, because she'd been serious in her message: there's no leeway for her tonight. If someone decides to show up at the house, the resulting power implosion would make international news, most likely.
EM, DO NOT READ THE NEWS TILL TOMORROW MORNING.
Tony had managed to get ahold of the phone after all.
In the shower, her precariously-balanced body wash bottle is swept off of its ledge by the resulting power burst. It's exactly what she didn't know she needed.