After reviewing some of my old stories I realized I fell out of a really fun habit readers tend to hate. I decided to fall back into it.

Chapter 7

The next two weeks were long and arduous. Clint was able to fulfill his promise and edge Morrissey into the position he intended. She had been working as Chadowski's personal secretary since Saturday's interview. When her night ended, she faked her exit toward home by heading to the garage with the rest of the secretaries. She climbed into the waiting car, drove away, looped around the city once or twice and returned to the garage through the underground private entrance. Bruce was always standing there waiting for her. She was so happy to see him the first time, devilishly leaning against one of Tony's other cars with an uncivil smile on his face. She jumped into his arms and, together, they rushed away into the night. Part of being undercover was emitting the idea of not being connected to the Avengers team whatsoever. In fact, even Clint had presented her as little more than the female cousin of the Greek chef from the cafeteria and, after their tour of the Tower, the archer avoided her like the plague itself.

Inwardly, the struggle was difficult to hide. She had a mission here whether the Avenger's knew it or not. Controlling Bruce Banner had proved to be less trouble than her handlers led her to believe. Part of the simplicity was the doctor's willingness to be controlled. He was happy, he wanted to be happy and that was enough to make her job with him easy.

Then again, that was becoming part of the trouble as well. She'd heard of instances where female or male agents got too deep undercover and lost themselves in the moment, like a form of Stockholm Syndrome. She didn't pity Dr. Banner in particular, but instead a new emotion overcame her. It was a strange, almost careless, happiness. Living this life with him was easy in ways that few things in her life were. It made her mission of destroying the Avengers Tower from the inside out all that much more challenging.

Every day, since her initial contact with Dr. Banner, was more of the same. Long days of office work as Morrissey tried her hardest to background the level floors. Security information was difficult to isolate over the JARVIS network, even with her SHIELD I.D. and the codes procured from Bruce's private files. Firewalls were constantly shifting and access codes changed within twelve hours of use. Each night, she spent it in Bruce's arms as they painted the town red.

The silence of the Tower offices, past midnight, allowed her to sneak up to the Avengers' wing with little more than Happy to watch to maintain her cover from the general workers. The weekends provided a wonderful two days of peace, solitude, and nothing more. She wasn't instructed to check in to her high command but once every three days. They knew, as well as she, the danger of hard line tap communications within the Stark walls. It was safer to maintain radio silence. She had her training and, as a Level Seven agent, it was enough to keep them silent to her work.

On the Monday of her third week, with Natasha Romanov slotted to arrive on that night's 7:55pm flight from Portland, Morrissey went to her office per usual. So far, she'd checked all of the security clearances within the mainframe of Tony's internal network. She had limited access to the JARVIS system, but Bruce assured her that he was looking into that security personally. She was able, instead, to concentrate on common lower level breaches.

Clint was hard on her. She knew from their dealings in the past that he wasn't the most open to outsiders. Tony was an enigma all in himself; he'd grill her for hours about absolutely nothing, and then inexplicably disappear. Bruce told her it was the typical tolls of living with a mind based on a mathematic algorithm that continued to subsidize itself into an intense vortex of fractals. She supposed, in geek speak, it made perfect sense.

Steve was just as she'd imagined Captain America to be; up front and civil, wary but trusting. She couldn't walk into a room without him shooting out of his chair like a real gentleman, and that made her feel beautiful. It was a behavior Bruce hadn't ignored and, instead, adopted.

Today, she toiled on Level 5's computer mainframe. She had access to a coworker's desktop and, by running a scan-ware program Tony had created in four and a half minutes, she combed around for any security breaches. A few trojans and tracking software was installed, but nothing of the level SHIELD would be concerned over. In the background, she ran her own security breach. JARVIS continued to keep her out, but over time she was pulling the layers away like an onion. Her progress was slow, slower than her handlers wanted. They needed results immediately and a strike team was even being considered. Moods in the war room accelerated from wanting to merely find out the latest and greatest Stark secrets, to eliminating the Avengers' threat entirely. For now she was told that option was off the table, but that Monday proved her wrong.

In fact, it proved many people wrong.

From the moment the first flash bomb struck, to the last gun shot fired, Stark Tower was reduced to a privatized war zone.

Morrissey was finishing in the file room and making her way out to the main floor when a door sliding closed caught her eye. She prided herself in recognizing faces instantaneously. The man that walked past her towards the Fourth Floor was very familiar. Not many red flags appeared in her life, but one was now waving like a matador's cape. The man, Grant Ward, was a common staple at the war room and, seeing him here in Stark Tower, meant only trouble. As he headed to the stairwell, he cast a look over his shoulder at her.

Bingo! This was going to be bad.

The minute he disappeared through the door, she back tracked his steps into the private office. There weren't many on Stark's open layout floor plan, but this was the international exchange floor and, occasionally, privacy was warranted for the long distance calls.

She slid into the computer chair and fired up the desktop. She was surprised when it didn't come to life immediately. She pressed the power key on the screen, but nothing occurred. Pushing the chair back, she leaned under the table and checked the tower. It was plugged into the wall. The plug continued to the tower, but there was something about it that didn't seem right and she wasn't sure why exactly.

Slowly, she pulled it back and away from the wall. The back cover had been removed. What she found inside was enough to set every hair on end. Carefully pulling her hands away from the machine, she retreated without touching it further.

Now was the moment of decision. Obviously, her boss decided he was tired of waiting for her report to come through. Soon, the company was going to be out and, to be sure they saw no opposition, the Avengers needed to be eliminated. The danger of the Stark Tower and its advanced technology must be stopped. She'd succeeded only in getting through some of the lower clearance tech specifications, but she assumed the plan must be to bring the infrastructure down and clean up the salvageable material after everyone was dead.

This was her job all along; befriend Banner, get in, and get out at the Go signal. Why the second thoughts? Why the hesitation? Hellen pulled out her phone, dialed the line Clint gave her for emergencies, and was connected within seconds to a voice.

"Stark Industries, home of billionaire genius extraordinaire and his merry men."

Morrissey had never needed the line before so, when Stark's voice came on, it took her a moment to change gears from what she'd intended to say.

"Mr. Stark, this is Agent—"

"Bruce's girl, I know. So, how's the high life?"

"Could be better. Look, we have a situation down here—"

"Non-secret agent talk, please? Is this a sexual harassment thing, cause I told Bruce not to be so grabby."

"Mr. Stark!" Morrissey almost screamed. She had to get this out. Perhaps she was experiencing a momentary lapse in sanity, because there was no way she was actually experiencing a desire for Banner and his wellbeing...was there?

"I have a bomb attached to a make shift time piece set to trigger with an electric surge in the Foreign Correspondence Office B of Floor Three. Now, what would you like me to do about this before it blows up in my face?"

The line went quiet for a long while. At some point at last he returned with a serious tone. "You found one, are there more?"

"I have one in front of me. It's the first I've found."

"Kill trigger?"

"Not from what I saw. One surge in this place, and this bomb is going to go." She said.

"Clint's coming to you now. He'll be there in three minutes. We should have time, my Arc doesn't throw power surges."

At the end of his words, the lights suddenly flickered on and off. The computer tower buzzed. Something cackled and, all at once, the world began to spin very fast. Morrissey launched to her feet and flung out the door, sealing it behind herself again.

"OUT!" she screamed. "BOMB! EVERYONE GET DO—" The world erupted in a flash of red before she could finish. The building tilted, her vision went black, and she knew no more.

:(:):(:):

Clint was only one floor away when he got the call patched to his phone from Tony. Overhearing that voice on the line, he knew at once Morrissey was not joking. Suddenly, his worst nightmare was being realized. Clint blew through the emergency door, setting the alarm as he went. He expected it would at least start the evacuation he was leaving to Steve to coordinate.

Then came the explosion.

It was strong enough to throw him off his feet. He hit his hip on the landing at the bottom of the stairwell. The emergency exit in front of him used to have a door. It was blown off, thrown across the hall and down the lower stairs. Men and women inside were screaming and running frantically. Clint got to his feet and rushed into the thick of it. Given that Morrissey was closest to the explosion, he expected to find little more than her corpse, if he was lucky.

The room was shrouded in smoke. Fearing fire, office workers had thrown chairs through the glass windows. Fearing death, others were attempting to jump to safety. At three stories up, Clint did not want to witness the result. He put himself right into the thick of the chaos.

He had a single goal, initially; He needed to find Morrissey, get her out, and then issue a general evacuation. As he bullied his way through the office space, he began shoving people toward the stairwell. The mob became so thick he had no choice but to jump onto the closest desk and shout to get everyone's attention.

"Get low!" he yelled. "Head for the stairs! You know where it is!"

Slowly, the panicked workers followed direction. They dropped from their positions and scrambled to the exits. The smoke was beginning to turn black. It billowed out the windows where some still attempted to jump to their rescue. A fire that had been contained to a closed door was now breaking out through the walls. The overhead sprinklers were showering the office but, given the scale of the fire, Clint knew it wasn't going to be nearly enough.

Then he heard the gunshots.

Clint dropped from the desk in a crouch. He pulled his bow and set an arrow against the string. There were enough arrows in his quiver to do the job, but, in case he ran into a problem, he also had his P30 pressed into a pancake holster at his back.

The gunshots approached from the northwest corner. The men, whoever they were, were already on the floor and clearing it. The side door, across from him, kicked open and the first assailant appeared.

He was dressed in black army fatigues, a surprise to Clint who expected perhaps an AIM or Centipede operative, or even some new underground movement. He reminded himself that costumes stores sold to all kinds of people, and he shouldn't let the wardrobe distract him from the assault rifle now aimed in the line of evacuation workers.

He stood from his hideout, drew back his string and fired. The first man dropped.

Twelve more rushed through the doorway in a mass and spread out expertly. Clint kicked a desk over and dropped to a crouch behind it, just in time. Bullets ripped through the metal top, narrowly missing him at every turn.

Clint grabbed his cell phone and flicked the audio switch to transmit. Tony's voice came through his hearing aid.

"Iron Delivery."

"Hey Stark, are you, by any chance, putting out a fire on the Third Floor? If you aren't, would you mind putting out a fire on the Third Floor right now?" Clint ducked as a man flanked him on the left. He pulled back another arrow and buried it in the man's chest. A second incendiary launched from the first arrow tip and took out the three men piled behind the first.

"Are you being shot at right now?" Tony asked.

Another bullet came too close for comfort. Clint ducked, fell onto his left side and fired another arrow.

"That is definitely an understatement!" Clint replied.

He was in the middle of jockeying another arrow from his quiver when the desk behind him was suddenly rushed. Clint rolled to his back, his bow sideways as he met the four soldiers standing over him with their automatics ready to fire. Clint was fast, but he wasn't that fast.

Four pops. They sounded like little more than fire crackers going off on the fourth of July. Clint released the only arrow on his string. It hit the center man whose head snapped back in response. He still didn't feel the effects of whatever bullet hit home, so Clint pulled another arrow and hit the second center man. The man stumbled over forward, hitting the floor at Clint's side with an arrow, and a bullet hole, through his head. The last two men dropped without the help of arrows, nor did they get the chance to shoot.

Clint rolled up to the balls of his feet. He grabbed his arrow from the head of the man beside him and sent it back on its string. Tentatively, he sat up and scanned the room.

Morrissey waved at him from the adjoining stairwell. So, she made it out alive somehow. He stood fully, checking the area again before crossing the room to her.

"Thanks for the coverage." He said. "Assess the situation?"

She pulled a handful of ammo from her pocket to refill the thirty-two in her hand. "Sub militant group. Explosions on at least two levels and ascending. Fifteen men on this floor, I don't know how many higher."

"Origin?"

"Unknown."

As it seemed they were safe from any potential attackers for now, Clint took the opportunity to do something he'd been planning to for some time now. As Morrissey turned to take the stairs up, He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her into the wall. She shifted, trying to right herself before he had a chance to grab her again, but Clint was faster. He took her by the throat and slammed her into the stairwell railing. There, with her body one shove away from dropping three stories he held her.

"All right, so you're going to start talking before I decide whether or not to shoot you or let you drop." He growled. She tried to say something, probably plead for her life or tell him how wrong he was, but his thumb and index finger came together to cut off her trachea. Her eyes unfocussed as she choked.

"Did I forget the part where I tell you that, if you lie to me, I will stab my knife through your neck and let you bleed out instead? Consider it said." He held her there a few moments longer, just enough for her to begin to see that light waiting on the other side before he eased his grip slightly. She coughed and choked against him, but he refused to let go completely.

"Talk!" He roared.

Her reply came out raspy through the damage to her larynx. "All right! All right, you know. I'm sorry, this wasn't me. It was my team, but it wasn't me. I never approved it!"

Clint squeezed tighter again. "You know he trusted you right? What was the plan? Sneak into the Tower and meddle around? Or did you just plan on burning us from the start?"

"I never thought it would get to that!" She replied, "Please, I wouldn't be this straight forward if it wasn't the truth. I don't know what happened. I was sent in, like you thought, to get close to Banner, but I—" She didn't know what she was saying, or at least she couldn't believe it.

This is what every agent was warned of: getting too close to a mark. She'd been on thousands of missions, so why was this one any different? It didn't matter. It was all out now and she's chosen her side.

"Who's directing you?"

"It's a secret operation. They've been hiding in SHIELD for years. I was part of project Blackstone, we're the forefront of tech research and management."

"You mean stealing?"

She nodded slightly against the fist he still held to her throat. "I've been part of Blackstone since Cap first came out of the ice and the Tesseract was brought to the H.U.B. I was pulled out when you were stationed to the project."

There was another explosion above them. Fire and debris rained down from the ceiling and Clint was forced to move them back against the wall to avoid the shrapnel of molten metal. This was a lot of information to take in all at once, but for some reason Clint remembered a Project Blackstone. It was a distant memory, shrouded in the fog of what Loki had done to him and the cognitive recalibration that freed him from his mental prison.

That was it. Blackstone. That was the entire reason Clint was at the Tessaract base. He remembered the debriefing with Phil and Director Fury. Someone needed to keep an eye on things and, as always, Phil put Clint on the case. Tech from Phase Three was disappearing, not enough to raise major alarm bells but, if it got a bug under Fury, it was enough to set the Hawk on it.

Clint uncovered the agency working within SHIELD. How long they'd been there he had no idea, but their label at the base was under a single banner – Blackstone. He compiled something; something he was meant to show the Director but, for the life of him, Clint couldn't remember what.

"You know what these agents are going to do next?" Clint asked.

She nodded.

"Are you with us?"

"Yes."

There was no hesitation, no questioning of loyalties. Clint knew she was lying before when she said she was just there for Bruce, but now he saw the truth of it. She flipped sides the way Natasha did once. He'd given Nat a second chance then, despite everything she'd done to him.

"Good." He said. He let her go and headed for the next level. There were strike teams sweeping the floors. "This area's secure for now. We need to go up. I'll lead, you bring up my tail."

"Understood."

Whether he liked it or not, he trusted her and, with an attack on this massive a scale, he needed all the help he could get. Clint edged out of the stairwell. He looked up and down before going forward and mounting the staircase to Level Four.

Smoke was still swarming the hall. Soon, they'd be engulfed in flames. Anyone on the Fourth Floor was most likely dead by now if they hadn't moved on. The two moved past the door, pushing people in the direction that lead down as they crawled past. Morrissey's phone buzzed at her side. She tapped Clint's back, handing it to him without reservation.

Clint put the receiver to his ear. "Barton." He said.

"Your phone isn't answering. Did you just feel that?" It was Bruce.

"Yeah, explosions on Levels Three and Four. Where are you?" Clint checked his pocket for his cell phone. It was gone.

"I'm on the first level of R&D. I mean, did you feel that in Pepper's office?"

Clint stopped. They were standing between the Fourth and Fifth Floor now. "What did you just say?"

"Steve's on his way down. Stark is too. Is Helen ok?"

Clint glanced at the traitor behind him. This wasn't the time to let Bruce get his heart broken. "She's fine."

"Do you need me?"

"No. Stick in the lab. It's possible they're after the R&D tech. If they get through that door, take care of it."

"Tony may not like how I do that." Bruce said. He hung up.

Clint passed the phone back to Morrissey. He nodded up the stairs and, together, they continued to ascend. The Fifth Floor's access door was blocked by a half ton chunk of concrete from the landing above. Clint leaned across it to feel the door. He pulled back sharply, the intense heat on the other side making the door steam.

"If there's anyone left alive, they must be cooked by now." Morrissey commented. Clint gave her a grim look and they continued to ascend.

"What weapons do you have?" Clint asked as he side stepped past the broken landing.

"One .38mm, a Derringer in a glove holster on my ankle. You?"

"P30, pancake holster at my waistband if you need it."

"What about you?"

Clint didn't answer. They made it to the Fifth Floor. The stairwell was surprisingly empty. Stark had installed at least three exit points in a triangular arrangement going from the First Floor to just below R&D. Beyond that, only one axis point led up and down. Clint and Morrissey were on the Eastern most exit which followed parallel to the elevators. Most of the office workers must have taken the other exits, hopefully, in their evacuation. When the Fifth Floor's closed door was within sight, Clint held a hand downward toward Morrissey. She paused on the second to last step and waited for his signal.

Clint stood to the side of the door and pulled it open with a single swift tug, sending it swinging in an arc away from him. No bullets followed. He made a quick gesture with his hand and beaconed Morrissey up close to his back. She pressed in until their bodies were barely touching. As one, they moved in. Clint went right, and she took left. The floor was abandoned, but clean. As far as they could tell, no bomb had gone off. Clint was concerned that there was still one waiting, so he wanted to spend as little time as possible here.

Like most of the offices, this was another open floor plan. They could see clear across the aisles to the second divider down the left of the room. Two entry points led past the divider to the second half of the floor that wrapped around the westward side of Stark Tower.

Clint led the march forward. They were going to breech the closest doorway. Clint would go through, leaving Morrissey on the other side in case anyone attempted to come at them from behind. Beyond the intact windows, they could hear the sirens from New York's finest on fast approach through the bustling city streets.

Clint kicked the door in. It flung inward and, after a moment, he followed. What he found on the other side sent him right back out of the door again.

The world exploded around them. Clint was just fast enough to duck behind the wall and drag Morrissey down with him. A fire ball followed him out. The second door pulled open and the team of forty or so militants flowed into the Fifth Floor. Clint made it to his knees before the next man came.

Clint set an arrow and fired off a trick tip. The far wall exploded, taking five men out with it. Morrissey pushed up to his elbows and fired her .38. A few kneecaps blew sideways. Clint looked back the way they'd come, only to find their exit blocked. Someone must have called in the reinforcements.

They were trapped!

as you can see, that old habit was cliffhangers

please review!