Chapter Eight

Phil pulled his jacket tighter around him as he stepped out onto the runway at the small Chicago airfield. The Windy City was living up to its name, as well as being freezing and wet. Clint marched with his collar up next to him towards the car Natasha was leaning against.

"We thought we'd show up," Clint called across casually. They all got in the car before they began to talk for fear of civilians overhearing around them.

"The labs confirmed the presence of both hemlock and water hemlock in the victims' bodies," Natasha told them as she drove off. "Juliette is trying to narrow down her location by mapping cases." Phil nodded, he had been brought up to date on the flight, but Juliette had dropped off of Hill's radar out on the streets and exactly what she was doing was blurry. "How was Ontario?"

"Cold." The trail for Hornet had led to nothing and Phil was cursing Stark's interference. Back in Nevada Hornet had been easy to trace, firmly under SHIELD's watch and on hand for the moment Fury finally decided what to do with her. Now, Phil had lost her and one wasp in the whole world was hard to find. He didn't miss Natasha's bleak little nod.

"What do we do with Hemlock once we've found her?" Clint asked from the back seat. That, Phil sighed, was the problem. If Juliette could prove that Hemlock had killed, at the last count nearly fifty people, then Phil would have to authorise one of them to kill Hemlock. The Avengers Initiative would be incomplete, and they would lose their only link to the work Horizon had done in creating Hemlock.

"That depends on what we find," answered Phil. They kept quiet until Natasha pulled the car up outside the flat she had been assigned. It took Phil half a second to recognise the girl sitting on the curb. "Give me a moment," he told the others. Clint and Tasha carried on into the building. "Anything?" Juliette nodded.

"Southside warehouse due for demolition. She must have just attacked a string of people as she ran through the city, she's left a trail."

"Are you completely sure it's Hemlock who caused the deaths?"

"Beyond any doubt. I have four matching physical descriptions for her, all of whom saw her stepping away from a person as they fell over, the victims later died." That was good enough for Phil.

"We'll be back out and armed in five minutes." Unlike Greyhound, Hemlock still had an organisation behind her: Horizon. Like SHIELD, or rather more like Red Room, they had the resources to be a threat to four agents, making any fight more than just about Hemlock. Phil felt his phone in his pocket as he stood up to go and get his share of the more heavy weapons in Natasha's flat. Hornet had proved too much for Juliette, and almost for the whole team. He was worried Hemlock would be the same.

"Phil-" Juliette had caught hold of his sleeve and was holding him back gently. "We can manage." He swore the girl was psychic or something. However, he wanted her to be right. They could manage without the Avengers, his little team. Juliette wasn't the only person there with something to prove to the world.

The four agents walked along in pairs, Phil followed Juliette and Natasha with Clint at his side. Natasha had passed Juliette a gun to supplement the knife that would be hidden somewhere easily accessible. The warehouse took them half an hour to walk to, the air around them smelt of apprehension. Not fear, they were too well trained to show fear. Hemlock had killed, at the last count Hill had given them, at least eighty people now, the count went up as more died in their comas and Hill had a new number for them every time they checked in.

The door to the warehouse was shut, the chain firmly in place. It didn't take them long to find the window that had had its board smashed in and for them to climb through. Phil pretended to miss the brief second when Tasha held out a hand to help Juliette through the window.

"If one of you gets near enough for her to touch or breathe on you, you're grounded," he muttered to them, getting a smirk from Clint. Of course, they would also be dead, but he couldn't warn them outright.

The remains of a freshly stamped out fire lay in the centre of the warehouse floor, surrounded by a bed of rags and a pile of rubbish that could have been food wrappers or fuel. Cloth moving against skin whispered in the corner, drawing four sets of eyes to the figure standing by another smashed window. Phil hadn't expected a towering fighter, someone whose weapon was poison wasn't likely to look like Captain America. He had however expected Hemlock to be fed.

Black sunken eyes stared at them from a dark skull, there wasn't enough flesh there to call it a face. In the dim lighting of the warehouse Phil couldn't see more than the outlines of the skeleton that was facing them. Tasha had raised her gun, Clint and Juliette had their weapons out as well.

"Hemlock?" Phil asked cautiously, seeing his only chance at cooperation and a lack of bloodshed. "We're-"

"I was only running," the girl, and she was even younger than Juliette, barely out of school, or she should have been, squeaked. She darted forwards, Natasha fired a warning shot at her making her scurry backwards.

"How do we catch her if we can't touch her?" Juliette hissed at Phil. Clint had tranquilising darts and gloves, Phil only hoped they were thick enough.

"Hemlock, you can cooperate and come with us or-"

"They let me go." Phil frowned, somehow the girl wasn't listening to him. He nodded at Clint to fire the tranqs, he couldn't justify killing her immediately. The arrow hit her in the shoulder and she screamed, the tiny dart going into her skin. Hemlock ran towards them, forcing the girls and Phil to scramble out of the way of her hands, it was fairly safe to say that touch was the means of infection somehow. Clint had the gloves on, but he had to step back when Hemlock reached for his face, grabbing her arms and wrestling them down. Phil pulled on his own gloves only for a gunshot to echo through the warehouse.

"Horizon or gangs?" Phil heard Tasha ask as he and Clint wrestled a sleepy Hemlock down.

"Gangs," Juliette answered and a bullet went flying through the warehouse. "Time to leave." Suddenly the window they had climbed in through was swarming, yells and curses flying at them as well as bullets.

"Pick her up," Phil told Clint. Together they half carried half dragged Hemlock to the other broken board. The girls were fending off the hooded men.

"Shit." Hemlock stirred in their arms, moving her hands out towards Phil's face. They dropped her onto the floor instinctively and Clint swore again. Sedatives didn't work when you had poison in your veins. In the darkened warehouse bullets and flashlights crisscrossed the air, the screams the girls caused bounced off the walls. "I don't think she's cut out to be on the team. She's killed nearly a hundred people by now, Phil." Clint was firing at the gang alongside him as he spoke. "They'll kill her just like we will, only they won't bother with a legal reason first." Clint was right, and Phil couldn't lose any of them over Hemlock.

"All of you out," he ordered but reached down for Hemlock anyway. The girl was awake fully now and sprang at him. Phil's foot threw her back onto the floor and then she was gone in the direction of the window, with the agents busy keeping the firefight from killing them none of them could run after her. Phil managed to reach the window but she was gone.

Clint jumped through it in one bound, firing back at the now routed gang. Natasha and Phil joined him, Juliette came through a minute later.

"There." Clint pointed and Juliette was already off at a run after Hemlock, Natasha close behind.

"Stop right where you are and put your hands where I can see them." Phil cursed the megaphone wielding cops as they pulled up across the junction between Juliette and Hemlock. The skeletal girl vanished from view.

Phil missed whatever quip Juliette gave the officers as she slid under their car. Angry shouts followed her down the street.

"She's gone," Clint said as he and Phil melted into a side street. Hemlock had gone, even Juliette couldn't catch her now.