Fourteen
VISION
They held hands as Wanda reached up and touched the air. It rippled like water under her fingertips.
"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Vision asked. He knew in his core that she was not, and while he badly wanted to go on this journey, he had to give her the option of backing out now.
Wanda smiled faintly – so faintly anyone else but Vision would have missed it. She said, "Whatever happens, we're together."
Vision nodded. Wanda tapped the ripple again and it turned into a rip. The fabric of reality pulled apart in her grasp. She drew it back further, like a curtain, and revealed a dimly lit hallway with pools of light interrupting shadow. Vision had not had any expectations about where they were going, and yet this vexed him.
"Is it an office?" Wanda asked, squinting. Then, "Loki could have given us a little more to work with."
"He is the god of mischief, dear. You can only expect so much."
Wanda took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. Vision braced himself and followed. He knew he could not take Wanda's bubble of mind stone energy with him on this trip, but he wanted to hold onto his emotions as long as he could. If he focused enough, they would stay with him, at least for a little while.
The hallway was, unexpectedly, not empty. Or, it was for a moment, until a thundering battle rolled around the corner. Dozens of soldiers in black uniforms and as many civilians in office clothes stormed down the hallway, glancing back at some unseen terror that followed them.
Vision shielded Wanda as some stray fire flew their way. The onslaught kept coming. With no better option, they ran with the herd of fleeing people. The long, curved hallway ended at a set of ornate double doors. Two soldiers heaved them open and the group barreled inside.
A man with white hair and a mustache ushered everyone in plain clothes to the back of the room. "Hunter D-19, grab that desk. Quick, barricade the doors. Come on, this isn't a Sunday afternoon picnic."
The doors buckled as something slammed into them from the outside.
"We should help," Vision said. He was not sure what this was about, or if the people they were with were even in the right, but they were with them now. And it seemed their safety depended on being as helpful as possible.
Wanda took a deep breath and raised her hands – nothing happened.
"What's wrong?" Vision asked.
"I – I don't know," Wanda said. She rubbed her hands like she was trying to start a fire in them. Her eyes widened with a terror Vision had never seen in her.
"Powers don't work here." A docile-looking man a shy smile offered his hand for a shake then quickly withdrew it. "Uh, that's never bothered me since, I'm, uh – I don't have any. But you. I know who you are. You're Avengers."
The door buckled again, this time seemingly on the verge of failure. Without thinking, Vision swiveled his head and shot a beam of energy that welded them into one block of metal.
Wanda's fear turned into disbelief.
"Your powers work," she said.
"Not powers," Vision corrected. He eyed the electrified staffs wielded by the soldiers in black. "I'm a machine. Machines work here."
Wanda took Vision's hand and smiled sadly. She turned her attention to the office worker who was cowering next to them. She said, "you."
"Casey," he said.
"Casey, we're looking for something. A small gemstone. It'd be sort of yellowy-gold."
"You mean an Infinity Stone?" Casey asked.
"Yes," Wanda said. "Exactly."
Casey reached into his pocket and produced a handful of gems in all the colors of the rainbow.
"Where did you get all those?" Vision asked.
"Oh. I, uh, collect them. Just for fun. I kept them in my desk. When we had to run, Mobius said, 'Carrey, grab those stones.' He, uh, calls me Carrey. It's an inside joke. I think. Anyway, I do like them – they make good paperweights – so I grabbed them…and…"
"Can we have one?" Wanda asked.
Casey considered it. "You guys are Avengers. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you can have one." He held out his palm and let Wanda pluck a golden stone from the pile. "But they don't work here, either."
"Of course not," Wanda said.
Vision squeezed her hand. "It'll work back home, just like your powers."
The white-haired, mustached man climbed on one of the few desks that remained upright after the rest had been piled at the door. "Alright everybody, I'm calling it. This is now officially an evacuation. Please form two lines – there and there. Hunter B-15 and Hunter D-19, man the doors. Or, door, I guess. We'll go through after everyone else."
An office worker tugged once on the man's jacket. "Mobius, where are we going to send everyone?"
"As far as I can tell, the sacred timeline is kaput. So, send them to any branch that's stable and not currently in the middle of a multidimensional war."
"Vis," Wanda whispered. "Didn't Loki say something about Mobius?"
He had, Vision recalled. "Do you think he can help us?"
"I'm not sure a friend of Loki's is a friend of ours," Wanda said.
"But he told us the truth about the stones," Vision said.
Wanda nodded and hand-in-hand they approached the man on the desk. Loki had described him as grumpy, but Vision didn't think that was fair. This man was tired, sure, and maybe a bit snarky, but who wouldn't be with all that was going on? And, while Vision wasn't sure if he was a decent judge of character in his present state, he got the sense that this Mobius was a good man.
"Woah, you two are not supposed to be here," Mobius said. "Then again, 'supposed to' went out the window a while ago. That must have been you with the door, huh? Thanks for the assist."
"You're welcome," Vision said. "Perhaps you can assist us. Once everyone else is to safety, we'd like to get back to where we came from."
"Sure," Mobius said. Two gateways like the one Loki had left through opened up on either side of the room, and two surprisingly orderly lines of people filed through them. "We'll have this all settled in a few minutes and then we can get you – "
The welded front door groaned. They all stopped to look at it. A blast opened up a sizzling hole the size of a small car, and army in purple cloaks swarmed through the gap like blood through a wound.
