Outside the Tower, the City's streetlights have come on as the sun dips behind the distant mountains. A haze is in the air, capturing the sun's last rays. Red light spirals across the sky like blood through water. A few dark clouds hang over the City's tallest skyscrapers, meandering lazily toward the south like sheep across a pasture.
"Aww, Nat," Clint is saying as Steve makes his way past the SHIELD compound's final barbed-wire gate and onto the empty streets, "why can't I bring this?"
"Because," Natasha replies, "Rogers didn't say where we're going. If we're using the sewers or going into the unlit zone, that'll give us away immediately. It'd be like painting a target on your chest."
Steve hears Clint's disappointed sigh; Natasha's answer seems to have convinced him. Whatever it was he wanted to bring, it's staying behind.
"There he is," Sam says as Steve turns into an alleyway. The team is standing between two decrepit brick buildings, their faces obscured by the darkness of falling night. Clint and Natasha are going through their gear. Sam is loading two handguns. The latter looks up, an easy smile on his handsome face. "You ready to go, Cap?" he asks.
"Yeah." Steve looks past Sam to Clint and Natasha. Between the two of them, they've magically managed to hide what amounts to a fully stocked armory in various strategic places beneath their (intentionally) baggy outfits. "Romanov, Barton, you guys ready?"
They nod in synchrony. Natasha's face betrays nothing. Clint's expression is a blend of curiosity and excitement.
Steve takes a deep breath. He reaches for the envelope in his back pocket. His fingers brush something hard and thin, a slender metallic device encased in plastic. His termination injection, he realizes. His heart jumps into his throat, and he swallows convulsively. With numb fingers, he pulls the envelope out and opens it. Inside is a map marked in several places with red ink-indicators of suspected Hydra activity. Tracing streets from his current location to the nearest red mark, he says, "First hot zone is two miles from here. Keep an eye out for anyone who looks like they're infected. We're heading through the Restricted District."
Natasha and Clint exchange glances. Sam shrugs and holsters his guns, pulling his jacket hem down to cover them. "We've all been there, right?" He says. "C'mon, guys, we've got this."
Steve shoots him a grateful look. He turns to Natasha, who is attempting to hide a stun-stick in each sleeve. "Romanov, I want you to take the map. Keep us on course." He switches his attention to Clint. "Barton, you've got the best chance of seeing someone coming before they see us. I want you to go with Romanov and signal Wilson if you see anyone—or anything—coming."
"So you want us in a reverse triangle formation?" Sam asks, clarifying.
Steve nods. "Yeah. Sam, you'll be in the back with me. Romanov and Barton will go ahead and clear the course."
"Got it, Cap," says Sam. Natasha and Clint break away and jog out onto the street. Natasha has the map cradled in her hands like a baby bird, her head bent as she studies it. Steve and Sam follow more slowly, walking side-by-side with their hands resting against the bulges of their concealed weapons.
The Restricted District is surrounded by a twenty-five-foot electric fence. The smell of burning dust and ozone fills the air around it, mixing with the City's fumes. The odor that results is a chokingly thick stench not unlike that of burning garbage. It seeps through the streets and collects in closed spaces, clogging the lungs of any creature unlucky enough to breath it in.
"This is it," Steve says to Sam, even though he knows that's obvious. Like Sam said, they've all been there—extensive knowledge of the place is a requirement if you want to work at SHIELD.
"Nat." Clint is crouched beside the fence, bent over a hunched figure on the ground. In the darkness Steve can't make out what it is, but he's pretty sure that whatever it is, it's alive. "Nat!" Clint says again, louder this time, "he's hurt."
Steve actually hears Natasha sigh despite the fact that she's roughly fifty meters to his left. She approaches stealthily, like a panther stalking a deer. She reaches Clint and drops down beside him. "Damn it, Barton," Steve hears her say. There's sharpness in her tone, but it's tempered by pity. She sighs again, rubbing a hand over her face.
"What is it?" Steve asks Sam as they move closer for a better look. Steve's wary of getting too close—this wouldn't be the first time Clint and Natasha got dangerously close to a wounded, possibly infected person.
"Dog," Sam replies.
Steve's about to say something along the lines of 'Clint wouldn't stop in the middle of a mission to help a dog' when he realizes that yeah, that's exactly what Clint would do. As he gets closer, he realizes that Sam is right. It's a Border collie, curled mere inches away from the electric fence. "Must've run into it," Steve says. He feels a wave of sadness wash through him. The only way that such a smart animal would run into the fence was if it was being chased and had nowhere else to go. Which means…
Natasha glances up at Steve. Her eyes are hard chips of ice in the fence's dim blue-green glow. Her expression is darker than December rainclouds. "We need to find shelter. This attack was recent." She indicates several wounds on the dog's body that Steve hadn't previously noticed—a deep set of four gashes down its flank and a gaping hole in its right shoulder. "The people who did it might still be around."
Steve hears Clint make a sound suspiciously like a growl. "Fuck that," the assassin says, "I'm gonna use whoever did this for target practice. Who the fuck does that to a dog?"
"Infected people," Natasha replies dryly. "They were hungry, Clint." Her voice softens slightly, and Steve sees her hand move to rest between his hunched shoulders. "Stand back. You know what I have to do."
"Nat…"
"Barton," Steve cuts in, putting as much authority into his tone as possible, "the dog's infected. If it lives, we can't risk letting it go. What if it gets into the population centers? We can't risk it."
"Sorry, man," Sam says as Clint stands up and walks away from the scene. "I hate it, too. But Rogers is right."
Clint stops twenty meters away, fists clenched and posture rigid. "Do it," he says through gritted teeth. Steve keeps his eyes on Natasha as she backs up a few paces and lifts her gun. There's a small pop as a single dart is fired into the animal's neck. She follows it up with three more—enough to drop a horse for several hours. There's no way an animal as small as this dog is walking away from that kind of overdose.
Afterward, as they power down a section of the fence and climb over it, Clint is more silent and tense than Steve's ever seen him. At first Steve is surprised—he's seen Clint kill infected people and Carries without flinching—until he catches Natasha's eye and sees the soul-deep weariness there. It's affecting her, too. Clint's pain is bleeding into her. Steve realizes then that maybe this is Clint's weak-spot; maybe Clint cares about animals more than people. Maybe that dog's death will haunt him the same way the deaths of hundreds of innocent infected people haunt Steve.
On the other side of the fence, there is nothing but dented asphalt and crumbling, decrepit buildings. Boarded windows and peeling paint tell a tragic story of neglect and disuse. Shattered glass and garbage litter the sidewalks; half-decayed paper cups clog the grime-thick gutters with rotting fibers. Steve sees all of this through a pair of night vision goggles; in the Restricted District, the darkness is complete. The City's power grid spares no electricity for this forgotten corner of civilization. The only illumination comes from the faint orange glow to the east, where the City's main population centers are awash with artificial light. Night has fallen, but even the moon and stars are hiding. A storm is coming. The smell of it is carried on the brisk northern wind.
"Turn your coms on," Steve says. His voice is like a bomb blast in the utter silence. He pulls out his own intercom unit and sticks it in his left ear, adjusting the wires so that they lie flat against his neck. He fumbles with the tiny controls on its surface, finally finding the 'on' button. With a loud crackle, the device begins broadcasting and receiving. "Sam? You reading me?"
"Loud and clear," Sam replies. His voice is so crisp that Steve jumps.
"Barton?" Steve prompts after a moment of extended radio silence. "Are you online?"
"We're here," Natasha answers for him. Far ahead, Steve sees her pause and crouch low to the ground. "Looks like we've got fresh tracks, Rogers. The infected people that got to that dog aren't outside the fence after all. They must've gotten back in when they heard us coming."
"How'd they get past the fence?" Sam asks. It's a question none of them can answer, and he knows it.
Natasha's voice fades in and out like the heat of fever dreams. "Something just moved up ahead and to my right." Her tone sinks to a whisper. "We've got company, boys. Get ready to engage."
"I thought this was a civilian infiltration mission," Sam complains, but Steve can tell by the lift in his tone that he's excited at the prospect of finally seeing some action. They all are. No one appreciates a dead mission. "Why aren't we in combat gear, Cap?" Sam asks when Steve doesn't acknowledge his first statement. "I'm not immune. One of those guys bleeds on me and I'm done, remember?"
Steve's mouth goes dry. His heart is pounding. For a moment he can't speak, his attention wandering down the street toward where Natasha and Barton crouch, shadows in the dark. He finally manages to say, "I didn't know there'd be infected this close to the fence. The mission was to get into the underground Carrier network operating beyond the Restricted District. In case we're about to die, maybe I should…"
"Shut up, Rogers," Natasha's voice hisses in his ear. "There're six men to your right and seven coming straight for you. If you give away your location, you'll be dead before you hit the ground."
Steve sinks down and draws his handgun slowly. "We're hunting the men who almost killed Stark," he continues in a whisper. "But we can't kill them. We need to find out who they work for first."
"He's saying we should take prisoners for interrogation," Steve is surprised when Clint's voice comes online. There's a sharp bitterness in the assassin's every word. "No kill shots unless necessary."
"What he said," Steve agrees. "Romanov, Wilson, I want you two to take out the six to my right. Barton, cover me. I'm going in straight ahead."
"Stop, strangers, and tell us your purpose in the Restricted District." The voice that speaks is loud and raucous, like a sick crow's caw. Through his night vision goggles, Steve tries to match the voice to one of the approaching men. When he speaks again, Steve realizes that it belongs to a tall, thickset lion of a man with long, tangled golden hair and keen eyes. "Put your weapons down and we won't kill you," the man says, baring his teeth and lifting a huge machine gun. He aims it at Steve's chest. His companions—all of them rough-looking and dressed in torn leather and denim—quickly cover Sam. Natasha and Clint seem to have disappeared into the night. Steve's infinitely grateful. Hopefully their absence means that he and Sam aren't completely screwed.
Hopefully.
The gang's leader stops ten feet from Steve. Even in the darkness, his eyes are like liquid flames. "I said put your weapons down," he snarls. Steve obeys at once. He hears the distant clunk of Sam's guns falling to the asphalt. The lion-man smiles, cruel and satisfied. "Rumlow," he says, turning to the man on his right, "I want you to take this one back to base. He's the leader. The others are nothing."
The man called Rumlow nods. He adjusts his gun against his chest, bracing it against his shoulder. "Should I kill the rest?"
"Only the one," the leader of the ragged men says. His eyes are fixed on Steve. "The infected are coming. We can't risk sticking around any longer to look for the other two. Pierce wants us back by dawn."
Before Steve can do more than reach for the knives hidden in his boots, Rumlow has lifted his gun and sighted straight at Sam's chest. He pulls the trigger. The report bounces between crumbling, rotted buildings like a ball tossed between children. Its sound deflates quickly, the hollow tones fading into the night. Steve launches himself at Rumlow, fear and wariness consumed by a wave of overwhelming anger. His fingers find purchase in the soft flesh of Rumlow's exposed throat, and they go down onto the asphalt together. Yelling insults as he draws back his fist, Steve slams his knuckles into the other man's face, once, twice, three times. And then a sharp prick in the back of his neck sends ice surging through his body, and he goes down like a corpse dropped from a tower, crushing Rumlow's body beneath his own. Before consciousness leaves him, he manages to roll over and look up at the sky. With the last of his strength he reaches up to his com, pressing it back into his ear.
"Cap?" Sam's voice comes through momentarily, weak but coherent. "I'm hit, but it's not that bad. What happened?"
Letting out his breath in relief, Steve pulls the com from his ear and crushes it in his palm, throwing it away. If Hydra's about to take him prisoner, the last thing he wants is for them to get their hands on the device that tells him where the rest of his team is. Even if it means cutting off his own communication with SHIELD, he has to protect his team.
"He's not out. Give him another dose," the leader says, glaring down at Steve's upturned face.
Rumlow obeys eagerly, sending another jolt of ice directly into Steve's bloodstream. Even in the darkness, Steve can see the blatant satisfaction on Rumlow's face as he begins to fade. The night rises up and surrounds Steve like a dark fist, cloaking his mind in cold silence.
For the first time in his life, unconsciousness doesn't bring relief.