Chapter 11 - Heartbreak
Hank had worked as quickly as he could to get Kate attended to, especially the more he heard from Tony and realized that this attack hadn't been a solitary incident. He was sure that there were more people in need of help headed their way - and Tyler hadn't answered his phone in all that time, either.
The whole situation was distressingly familiar, especially to the older heroes there. This time around, at least, Hank and Scott were in the group on the outside, but that didn't lessen the dread terribly much when they knew the children they'd tried so hard to keep safe were in the clutches of Department H.
For the moment, Jan was taking care of David, who was starting to look around for either of his parents, though Jan was doing a good job keeping him distracted. And Scott was staying close by, having muscled in on Tony's intel-gathering by that point. He'd called several others on the team, and it seemed at least that Westchester was safe; the school was still standing.
So when someone called Scott, Scott didn't even look at the ID before he answered it; he was just taking in as much information as he could. And he certainly wasn't expecting to hear a distressed-sounding Wanda on the other end.
"I don't know what the chain of thought was, but my son wished me to your house for safekeeping," Wanda said. "And aside from not being dressed for the occasion, I am very sure I need a ride."
"Right. I… can send Kitty your way," Scott said, doing a quick rundown of who was actually available, who was out retrieving anyone they hadn't heard from, and who was needed where they were.
"Take your time; I'm sure this wasn't just Genosha. Do you think Rachel will mind if I raid her closet?"
Scott let out a strangled sound for just a second before he nodded into the phone and then said, "Go ahead." He paused. "She and Nate are missing."
"Who else?" Wanda asked, sounding tense. "I know Vision is looking into things at home - he'd have to be, but-"
"Yeah, he called to say that he couldn't find you or your boys." Scott paused. "Or Alex, for that matter. And I was part of a group that got ambushed outside Avengers Tower; my kids and Cap are gone. Lexi Barton called a little while ago to let us know Bobby, May Parker, and Cassie Lang got taken as well… and we can't get a few others to answer their phones. Tyler usually picks up when Hank calls, and James…" He let that last part of the sentence hang. "Stark can't get the emergency armor to James. Someone knew to remove it. And that's not common knowledge." He glanced over at Tony, who was no longer on the phone and had sat down, his hand over his chest as he took his breath in gasps. "Damnit, Wanda, I'm going to have to call you back. Stark's either having a heart attack or a panic attack and I don't have time to figure out which it is." He hung up and ran over to Tony, though he was still slow on his feet from the concussion the department soldiers had given him and didn't get there as fast as Jan did.
"Give him space," Jan said, handing David to Scott so she could sit down next to Tony - but without touching him. She just sat with him, waiting and watching him so that he knew he had someone he trusted close by.
Before Scott could ask any questions, Betsy's arrival was announced by the rush of teenagers talking over each other - all of them anxious and worried - all of them speculating what to do next, and Betsy was at the center looking murderous. She had arrived at nearly the same time as the younger heroes, and seeing the state of them, she was already realizing the scope of what had happened to her husband and to Tyler and wanted it fixed now.
America flew past any of the older heroes who might want to ask questions and deposited Remy on one of the gurneys near Hank - and then swore when she realized, judging by the purple equipment Hank had taken off of Kate so he could work on her, who his current patient was. "Well, this day just keeps getting worse and worse," she said, drawing Hank's attention to yet another friend in need.
"No kidding," Natasha said as she arrived at the lab; she'd taken longer to get there because she had to get out of the armor. "We need to compare notes. Braddock and Angela got here about the same time we did."
"Where's Warren?" Scott asked Betsy, already prepared to add more to the list of missing.
Betsy tipped her head, looking ready to fight now. "Gone. Along with Tyler."
"Damn." Scott shook his head. "That makes twelve missing heroes, Betts. And they were angling for more."
"So which facility am I going to, and which one are you going to?"
"That's the worst part of the news today," Natasha said, her eyes narrowed. "I've been running through the intel in the suit on the way over, and absolutely none of the facilities we know about have any activity today." She paced a few times, visibly furious. "Wherever they've taken them, it's someplace new - probably created specifically for this operation, considering its scope."
"So we burn them before they use them," Betsy said.
"I'm on board for that plan," Lexi said, angrily nursing her wrist - which was, of course, when her dad came in from getting some footage from the tower security system, saw that she was hurt, and immediately moved to help her get herself wrapped up while everyone debriefed. It was perfectly seamless and wordless, and under normal circumstances, anyone there would have joked about how easily the Bartons took dressing injuries in their stride.
"Oh, um… if it helps?" Miles said, visibly bouncing with nervous energy. "I overheard them talking about switching from the vans to the jets, so… distance is involved in the transportation." He blushed when everyone looked his way. "Hi… I was this close to being missing too." He held his fingers together to illustrate how narrow his escape had been. "They were already doing the gloating part of the captive experience."
Natasha raised an eyebrow and fully turned Miles's way. "Anything else?" she asked.
Miles shook his head, still wide-eyed. "I mean, I just know they said something about getting us to the jets. And then it was a lot about how I was in for a rough time. You know, the usual." He made a face. "Why does this job have a 'the usual' for stuff like this? This seems insane."
"You have to get used to it, or it'll eat at you," Scott said, frowning as he looked over the group, took a deep breath, and then looked toward Natasha. "We can trace jets."
"Already on it," she said, turning right back around to get out of the lab. "I'll see what radar picked up. And I'll see what Coulson knows while I'm at it."
Scott nodded and looked toward Betsy. "Did you catch anything from them?" he asked. "I know it happened fast, but anything at all you can give us…"
"They darted Warren," Betsy said. "Worked fast enough that he only had time to project to me to run. Otherwise, it was the usual thoughts from most of them, simply to collect all of us."
Scott nodded, his eyes narrowed. "Ororo is locking down the school. They haven't come there, but they attacked us right outside Avengers Tower, so we're not assuming anything in the way of safe spaces right now. She and Wanda had a few plans in place in case of emergency, but unfortunately, Wanda is at my house right now, and she apparently needs a ride to get here, so someone must have taken her powers offline." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Genosha was breached - the royals are missing. They must have been planning this for a while."
"Okay, but … what do we do now?" Kamala asked. "We can't just sit here and wait, right?"
"Right now? Yes," Scott said firmly. "Until we know how our defenses were breached and we can get everyone safe and secure, we're not losing anyone else with anything reckless. Right now, we figure out where they are, and we hit them fast and hard and get everyone out. And we can't do that if everyone is spread out, panicking, and trying to do their own thing." He turned toward Kamala, saw how wide-eyed she looked, and made a visible effort to drop his shoulders. "We're not just waiting around. We're going to move as fast as we can. We just have to make sure we do it together - and that we're not rushing into a trap."
Rachel slowly came to, her ears overwhelmed by the sound of humming machinery and the distant rumble of indistinct voices. She blinked herself awake only to see that, across the hall in a different cell, Billy was getting thoroughly questioned while wearing a collar - in what Rachel could see was a dampening cell. And still, those around him looked incredibly nervous. She didn't want to draw attention to herself, though. Not when she was trying to figure out what the situation was and how to adjust it.
The blatant fear directed toward Billy just didn't make any sense … until she heard some of what was being said, and very quickly, Rachel found herself trying to figure out if the Phoenix could help her boost her powers enough to work around the dampeners like Billy had apparently already done to save Wanda.
She didn't think she'd done anything to garner any attention, so she tried to eavesdrop for as long as she could, which didn't end up being long at all before she found guns pointed in her face with the same kind of senseless, closed-minded shouting that Billy was dealing with. And all she'd done was brush a lock of hair out of her face.
And then she cursed herself for relying as much as she had been on her powerset. She didn't realize how often she'd been using telepathy to scan ahead to see what people were thinking - so it took her a couple moments to realize how panicked they were just because she'd moved her hands. As if her hands were how she used her powers anyhow.
These guys were wound way too tightly.
But … the moment that one of them pulled the hammer back on their gun as it was pointed Rachel's way, the flames flicked on of their own volition. Yes, she had control. Yes, she could restrain the Phoenix, but … as Rachel had only seen on one or two occasions, there were moments - very much like this - when someone was directly threatening her when the Phoenix took it as a supreme insult. And it was determined not to allow Rachel to be harmed in any meaningful way.
Even then, she could direct it - to keep it from going too far - but that didn't mean she could stop it entirely. Or that she wanted to when they were threatening to shoot her. For a moment, she could see why they were scared … and she had no desire to reassure them otherwise.
With all the confidence of a reality-twisting cosmic being, Rachel got to her feet, then levitated a few inches over the concrete floor and atomized the bars of her cell. She looked toward Billy, who looked triumphant when he realized the soldiers were so scared of her. She tipped her head, and the bars to his cell started to disappear as well. So, she turned her attention toward the men still taking shaky aim - only to feel a sharp jab in the side of her neck. She spun to face her attacker and began to lose her focus.
The world was twisting, warping out of shape - and as she lost consciousness, the flames receded. Whatever they shot her up with, it was potent enough to totally scramble her thought patterns. When her feet hit the ground, she threw both arms out for balance and barely recognized that someone rushed in to take both of her hands and restrain her. She was slipping too quickly, and with a shake of her head, trying to focus, Rachel slipped to her knees and then to the ground - still awake, but unfocused and detached.
"Oh, that's a good idea," Billy said thickly. He didn't realize it, but upon seeing Rachel go down, his own eyes had started to glow - just faintly, but enough that everyone there was even more on edge than before. "Yes, definitely make sure the one person who's held in the Phoenix for years is dopey. That's brilliant. Wow, you guys are morons. Let us go now before you make this any worse."
The soldiers weren't taking any chances with Billy either, though, and as soon as his eyes started to glow, they fired… and the next thing Billy knew, a whole bunch of darts were lying on the ground. Not in his skin. Not in his clothes. They had bounced off of a spell he hadn't even meant to cast, but as soon as he saw the darts, he knew what had happened. He had panicked at the thought of being drugged, and his magic had reacted accordingly.
For just a second, Billy stared at the darts. And the soldiers stared at the darts. And then, Billy started to grin. "Now then," he said, drawing himself up, because if he didn't try to take charge of the situation, he'd have to think about how scared and panicked he was at the too-familiar situation. "Like I said: let us go before this gets any worse."
"Who? Exactly?" One of the soldiers in the back asked, though he was dressed slightly differently than the others. "And worse how?"
Billy wasn't good enough at handling the godlike powers he sometimes had access to that he could pull off something properly intimidating like making his eyes flash bright, but he did his best imperious glare toward the guy. "You're going to let every Avenger and X-Man you've captured go free, or I'll tear this place to the ground. You and I both know I can."
"Why haven't you already?"
Billy blinked a bit too long and then shook his head. "Getting my bearings, that's all."
"Okay," the soldier said slowly - being obvious that he was testing the waters and building up the courage the others needed so badly. "Don't know who you mean or where they are."
"Let's start with James," Billy said, getting to his feet when it was clear they weren't sure they could stop him. "I know you've got him." He didn't actually know that, but considering he hadn't been near Rachel when he was captured, this seemed like a multi-pronged attack, and James was almost always in trouble, so he started with the assumption his sweetheart was in danger and worked from there. He was angry enough and confident enough that he could feel just the edges of power, and he grabbed onto what he could to do a quick searching spell that manifested in little balls of light that went out from his fingertips like animated fairies in search of his friends and family.
The problem, of course, was that he was grasping at a power he could barely use at the best of times, and he was in a collar. And two spells at once was too much.
The soldiers couldn't have known that for sure, but someone was smart enough to try - and when the first dart didn't hit a defensive magical wall, another several hit Billy in the back, and he dropped.
Like Rachel, he was losing his focus - but he didn't react in quite the same way purely because he'd been using magic at the time, and while his defenses hadn't held, they weren't completely gone either. He felt groggy, and he couldn't make himself move faster than he would have moved through molasses, but he was aware - which meant he was slipping straight into a panic attack even though he was sedated. No elevated heart rate or hyperventilation, but his chest hurt, and he had hot tears in his eyes.
Someone grabbed hold of his arms - one soldier to each arm - and started to drag him out of the cell that no longer had any bars, and all Billy could manage to think was that he couldn't do this again. He couldn't sit in a cell while someone hurt his friends, his family. He couldn't - he couldn't deal with drugs and torture again. Not after Viper. Not this soon after Apocalypse and Sinister and everything else.
He was absolutely terrified as the soldiers dragged him away, so of course, that was when his spell started to come back to him, each little ball of light drifting back and settling into his chest with a new report. Rachel was there, yes, but so was Nate, and so was Tommy…. Billy's chest felt tighter as each name came back to him, but the worst was James's name, which arrived just as the soldiers got to a new room filled with standing tubes that had green liquid in them.
One of the tubes was already occupied, and to Billy's horror, he saw James floating there, covered in ledes. And it looked like Rachel was going to end up the same way; several soldiers were manhandling her as they got her set up near another tube.
"No," Billy said around a tongue that felt thick and wouldn't let him say much of anything else. This was so bad - so bad. And what was worse, there were people with lab coats near James's tube, and Billy could swear they were talking about adamantium when the soldiers had dragged Billy past, but Billy was starting to lose his focus and couldn't be sure if that was his own panic talking or not. He'd had nightmares like this since hearing his grandfather swear to turn James over to the department and let them fill him with metal. That was their plan.
Billy's attention was wrenched away from James, though, when the soldiers got him close to his own tube and started outfitting him. They stripped him down and started setting up ledes and wires and … and Billy was starting to lose what sense he had left, because he couldn't breathe for how badly he was panicking. The manhandling, the drugs, the labs, the ledes - by the time they were done, he honestly didn't know what was currently happening to him and what was the vivid replay of his time with Viper.
Something went over his nose and mouth, and he was aware, for a few brief seconds, of cold, cold water before he lost consciousness entirely.
This wasn't anything that Steve had dealt with before - sure, he'd been kidnapped, captured, been a POW, tripped traps, purposely tripped traps - you name it, he'd done it. But this was different enough to be a new event on his dance card.
The silvery-lined jail cell was an interesting touch; it spoke to the caliber of their captors. Then, he looked out of his cell at the few other cells nearest his and let out a low whistle on seeing that at least two more were also lined in adamantium. It was rare to find someone with a small amount. This … was upsetting to see. This group had endless pockets, which meant that it had to be connected to someone legitimate.
He tried calling over a guard - who promptly ignored his existence. He tried waving over a white-coated doctor or orderly or … something. But they barely glanced his way - and suddenly, Steve found himself wondering what kind of place would blow him off. Then, he immediately felt like a jackass for even thinking that way.
He had nowhere to go, no visible way to get there, and for a long while, he was entirely alone - if you didn't count the guards that pretended he wasn't swearing at them.
After a while, though, a commotion started up far down the hall, and Steve tried to see who it was. He recognized the voice as one of the twins; he just wasn't sure which one - and by default, which one was going to be calling their mother in to obliterate whoever had been stupid enough to screw with her kids.
Whichever twin they'd caught had a bag over his head and was wearing swimming trunks, so there was no way to know who was shouting muffled threats under the bag until he was thrown into a cell across from Steve, the bag finally removed.
"...wish you'd never been born, you sorry sacks of-" Tommy had been rushing for the bars even as the door was slammed in his face, though he cut himself off and swore because he'd genuinely rushed enough that the door literally slammed in his face and sent him stumbling back with a bloody nose. "Don't you walk away from me," he shouted even as the guards headed down the hall. "You're dead; do you hear me? I'll break the freaking Avenger code of- oh Steve!"
"I'm not familiar with that one," Steve said dryly.
"Yeah, yeah, you're very funny - you got caught?" Tommy was staring at Steve, looking suddenly disarmed, especially as the guards were gone and the hallway was too quiet all of a sudden.
"I wasn't expecting that either," Steve admitted, gesturing openly. "I was with the Summers kids. Where were you?"
"At home," Tommy said, wiping his fist under his nose and glaring at the blood there.
"That's dumb of them," Steve rumbled.
"They shot Mom." Tommy craned to look down the hall, as if he was hoping he'd spot her there, but he couldn't look past the bars.
"That's really dumb of them."
"She didn't get back up. They shot her twice," Tommy said, his pitch rising. "Where's Billy - is he okay? Have you seen Mom?"
"You're the first one I've seen," Steve admitted.
"That's bad." Tommy prowled back and forth, sizing up the bars, both hands in his hair so that there was a little red in the white now.
"They're lined with adamantium," Steve said after watching him for a few minutes.
Tommy nodded more times than was necessary, though he hadn't stopped moving, and his grip in his hair only seemed to deepen. "We have to get Billy. He's not going to - he can't get captured again. It almost destroyed him last time. There's got to be-" He kicked at the bars, but not hard enough to actually do anything, just a way to let out frustration.
"I'm just waking up," Steve said. "We'll figure a way out."
"Yeah. Yeah." Tommy dragged a hand down his face. "They shot my mom, Cap. Some guy out on a boat just… and they had a telepath just waiting for me to get the shooter." He scrubbed his knuckles across his forehead as if that would help with the lingering headache. He still hadn't stopped moving; Steve didn't think he could. "Who else do you think they got? Do you think they got my dad? What about Mia? You said you were with the Summers clan? God, can that family even take another thing like this? Is David okay?" Tommy asked in rapid-fire.
"I have no idea," Steve admitted. "David wasn't with us at the time, though."
"That's something. Can you imagine if they had a baby?" Tommy looked pained at the thought.
"They've tried before," Steve said. "More or less."
"I know. I know. That's why I'm worried about it," Tommy said. He was walking in circles in the cell and hadn't stopped, though he was no longer kicking at the bars or looking for a way out.
"Are you - you're not okay, but can you get there?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm always fine," Tommy promised.
"You sure you're not part of the Summers family?"
"Yeah, no, I just - look, I'm not the powerful twin, so this whole -" He gestured at the cells. "If this is what they're doing for me, what are they doing to my mom and Billy if they're even alive?"
"Well," Steve said as he turned slowly to once again look at his cell. "If I had to guess, I'd say this is the section they use for people they don't think they can hold with other methods."
"Okay, fair," Tommy said. "But it's just you and me in here… there's other cells… maybe that's good, right? They didn't get their hands on everyone they wanted, right? Empty cells is a good thing, right?"
"As far as I'm concerned, yeah," Steve agreed, not pointing out that there were other kinds of cells these people were capable of using.
Tommy nodded - again, more times than he needed to. "Okay, yeah. Okay, good. I just…" He made a face and tugged fruitlessly at the collar he was wearing. "I'm going out of my mind here. Do you know what it's like not being able to go as fast as your mind is working? At least with Mom's spell when I was in trouble, she mitigated that so it wasn't literally torture. How do people live at this speed 24/7?"
"I'm pretty sure everyone's at their own speed. You'd do better to ask someone like Rachel or Nate."
Tommy took a deep breath and stopped, at last, leaning against the wall with his hands in his hair. "Cap, what if they killed my mom?" he asked, his tone shifting now that he had stopped into one much less demanding, much quieter.
Steve thought about it for a moment, then started to shake his head. "She's too useful."
"And too dangerous," Tommy said. He glanced over at Steve and then went back to looking straight ahead. "And Billy's more powerful and easier to manipulate. Be honest. You know that. He's not ahead of Mom yet, but he's on his way there. And they didn't shoot him."
"I hate to put it this way, but they didn't do that - when you saw."
Tommy swallowed hard and closed his eyes. "Yeah," he said softly. "I just…" He trailed off and let the sentence die for a long time before he tried again. "We were on the beach because Alex was trying to cheer me up, and if that's what got them-" He stopped again.
"I don't believe that," Steve said. "If they were that organized, it wasn't by chance that both of us got picked up. This was planned - they'd have struck one way or another."
"Yeah, I just - I just don't know which is worse. If this was all one big kidnapping or if there were assassinations thrown in," Tommy admitted. "Because at least if you're dead, you're not being controlled, you know? So which is worse, right?" He seemed to realize what he'd said and shrugged, resuming his pacing.
"Controls can always be broken," Steve said gently.
"Doesn't change what happens until then," Tommy said.
"No, but it's still better than being dead."
"Maybe." Tommy kicked listlessly at the bars again. "Like I said, depends on what happens before the control gets lifted. Say Mom or Billy gets forced to, like, rewrite a reality without mutants. Or Rachel burns a genocide for them. You ever had someone get in your head and tell you to do something like that?"
"No."
"Okay, so don't tell me what's better."
"Tommy -"
"Don't make a thing out of it," Tommy said, waving Steve off with one hand. "In fact, don't listen to me. I probably have a concussion and don't know what I'm saying or something. I'm just not good at sitting still."
Steve slid down the wall to sit - watching Tommy the whole while. He wasn't about to say anything just yet - but he didn't believe a word of Tommys deflecting. He just couldn't do anything about it. All he could do was watch Tommy pace the room in circles, getting more and more agitated, full of energy that was both nervous and frantic until he finally stopped and sat down on the cot at the far end of the room, drawing both knees up so he could rest his head on them. He couldn't stop thinking - and when he did stop and try to focus, when he tried to use what his dad had taught him when he had first gotten his powers and had felt overwhelmed, when he tried to clear his head, he couldn't find calm because clearing his mind only pushed to the forefront everything he'd been ignoring with Apocalypse. But to Steve, it just looked like Tommy had curled up with his knees to his chest and started hyperventilating - and there wasn't a thing Steve could say or do to help him, since he didn't know what, exactly, had Tommy finally breaking down like that.
"What is even happening?" May shouted as she looked around the cell she was sharing with Cassie Lang.
The girls had woken up from being drugged and tied and … and she didn't even know what, but she was freaking out.
"Would you calm down?" Cassie said from where she was seated, leaning against the far wall and hugging her knees. "Someone will come and get us."
"Okay, but who?" May demanded. "Who's going to be stupid enough to come to … wherever we are and get us out?"
Cassie rolled her eyes. "I mean, if we go by how this usually works, the Avengers ought to be on the way."
"No," Warren said from across the hall. "Not the Avengers. This is over their heads."
"It can't be over their heads," May scoffed, arms crossed over her chest. "It's the Avengers. This is what they do."
"Not this," Warren said. "This is almost exclusively an X-Men problem."
"Which is a problem, because they probably caught all the X-Men," Cassie said with a frown.
"No," Warren argued. "Betsy got away. I'm sure of it. And she's the best ninja on the planet along with being a world-class telepath. She'll bring backup and destroy them."
"No offense-"
"Taken," Warren said, cutting May off. "Don't say anything you'll regret saying later. Just don't." When May huffed, Warren continued. "Besides, that kind of outlook won't help you get through this. We will get out. Just … take your first kidnapping like an X-Man, not an Avenger."
Cassie looked between the two of them with raised eyebrows. She couldn't stop the smile that started to tug at the corner of her mouth, either. "That is the long-term tease," she said to May. "Guess it's not really a tease."
"It is not," Warren confirmed. "But this is bad. I don't mean to down the Avengers that hard, but-"
"But they've consistently failed mutants as a whole and even individually. Yeah, I know. Hopefully that changes, though," Cassie said. "Because even though I'm not a mutant? Some of my favorite people are, and I don't want any of us to get hurt worse."
"I know," Warren said with a more pleasant expression. He even tried to smile, but that fell short. "This … we'll get out of this. Somehow."
Alex had woken up just before the transport arrived at wherever the bad guys were trying to take them, so he did his best to be obnoxious to move, even with a badly broken arm. He used his height to his advantage to try to see over soldiers' shoulders to see who else had been kidnapped, seeing as he knew Tommy hadn't come back from going after whoever shot Wanda, and he'd seen Billy being manhandled. He was half expecting to see Lorna or Vision as well - and dreading seeing either of his kids.
What he wasn't expecting was to see soldiers carrying Rachel and Nate, completely unconscious, out of a different vehicle.
And that just had his heart sinking. If these guys had grabbed members of his family who hadn't been on Genosha, then this was a coordinated attack. This was bad.
He tried to call out to Nate or Rachel, but neither of them responded. And what's worse, the vehicle wasn't even done unloading.
Alex needed to know who else was there, so he elbowed one of the guards trying to steer him toward the main door in the gut and kicked another one, ducking around the third guard's attempt to grab him so he could dash toward the other transport.
About a half dozen soldiers ran toward him with their guns raised, ordering him to stop - but that wasn't necessary. He'd already skidded to a stop when he saw that there were two more people inside: Scott and the soldiers weren't manhandling either of them. Instead, the last people in the vehicle were medics.
"...have to consider whether it's worth the effort," one of the medics was saying, and Alex could feel the blood draining out of his face.
"Wait, wait, wait," Alex breathed out. He tried to crane and see how bad it was, but the soldiers had their guns in his face and wouldn't let him move.
The medics didn't even acknowledge his presence - and they didn't keep up whatever examination they were doing. Instead, the second medic in the truck stood up and started stripping off her gloves. "Neither of them are high-value targets," she said. "We'd put in more resources than they're worth."
Her partner nodded and helped her hop out of the truck, then walked around to the front to slap the cab of the truck. "Go around back. These last two are headed for the incinerator instead."
Alex was shaking his head without even thinking about it, and he took a step toward the truck, only to get hit across the face with the butt of a gun. He ended up sprawled out on the ground, and he could feel himself going cold with shock even as someone dragged him to his feet and started to shove him away from the truck.
"That's my brother," he said - and at first it was quiet. But then, as the reality of what was happening hit him, he raised his voice and tried, again, to get away, to get to Scott. "Please, you can't - that's my brother!" he shouted, and then next thing he knew, he felt the bite of a needle in his neck and passed out again.
Never in the history of all that had happened to the two groups of heroes had Scott and Tony been so much alike.
Both of them were pulling their hair out, frustrated, feeling helpless, and burning the candle at both ends because of it. Both of them had high stakes in the safety and well-being of those taken, too. And neither of them could rest while so many of their own were missing.
But they had very different ways of coping with everything. And neither of them were sharing too much with the other.
Scott had been combing the intel, sifting through reports and taps into every known organization on the planet. All of them were suspiciously quiet, and he didn't trust it one bit. It was almost as if they were all covering for each other, which had Scott wondering if it was a concerted, organized effort.
But that didn't matter, because he knew - he just knew - exactly who was behind all of this. And he wasn't going to let them get away with it.
Against his better judgment, he reached out to Deadpool as an opener. There was no better source that he knew of that had been that deep into the Department's business over the years - and no one knew their dirty laundry better.
He stepped outside for that call, only briefly stopping in on his way out to check in the lab. Kate was making a good recovery and had David with her, and since David was eating, Scott didn't want to interrupt. Remy was still out on painkillers, but Hank said he was going to be just fine - his luck hadn't run out yet, apparently.
With that determined, then, Scott headed to the roof. He wasn't fully comfortable leaving the tower premises, but he also didn't want anyone overhearing him - and didn't fully trust Stark's systems after Kate had said that she'd seen Stark's technology being used. There was a leak, and the last thing Scott needed was for that leak to go back to SHIELD or someone else in the government with him contacting Wade after Fury had made a fuss about that very thing.
So, he went up to the roof and pulled out a device James had given him long ago that would temporarily confuse any microphones in the area. And then, he called an old number, knowing that Wade would still have it, because Scott had given it to him for emergencies and Wade had called with it after the news broke that Logan had died. It had been the one time he'd used it before he went dark, and Scott had assumed he got himself killed trying to fix things.
Scott paced a few times as the phone rang, and then, as soon as he heard the click on the other end that said Wade had picked it up, he started in before Wade could: "My kids are missing. All of them."
"Did you retrace your steps to remember where you left them?" Wade asked, though it was easy to hear him scrambling on the other end of the line - and the sounds of various guns being loaded was crystal clear.
"I was with Rachel and Nate when Department H took them," Scott said.
"And how was it that they didn't take you, too?" Wade asked. "Seems like they'd want the big daddy Summers. I know I do."
"They tried," Scott admitted, ignoring that last bit. "Kate threw a flashbang and grabbed the nearest person. She's in the medical wing right now - got shot during the escape."
"Uh-huh," Wade said, then paused. "So, it's only been like seventy-three years. What can I do, oh, first-X-man of them all?"
Scott took a deep breath and settled his shoulders. "You know the Department. I need you to do whatever the hell you need to do to get them back. And tell me how I can help."
Wade was quiet for a long moment. "You said that without any prompting."
"Wade, it's my kids," Scott said as if it should have been the only necessary explanation - and it kind of was.
"Yeah, I know. I just …" Wade sighed and was quiet for a long moment before he continued more under his breath than anything. "... not used to anyone admitting that."
"You're the foremost expert on them these days," Scott pointed out. "You saying I don't know what favors to call in?"
"Take it easy, sweet talker," Wade said, pushing for some levity just because he couldn't operate well with that much heavy on his shoulders. "I already told you I'd do whatever it took to help those kids."
"Yeah, thanks for the blade, by the way - helped against Apocalypse. I'm asking now, though."
"You think my love has an expiration date? Au contraire. What are you thinking? Just so I know where to start and who to kill first?"
Scott nodded to himself. "Black Widow and I are running intel trying to track down the location. It's someplace new, or we'd have found it by now," he started out.
"Loop me in," Wade said. "I can tell you what's going through their fake-out locations. They don't have much anymore that's real, but the fakes keep shifting where they are. The real ones? Offline."
"We suspected some were fake. That's good to know." Scott was pacing a small circle. "What I want you to do is focus on the people in charge. We can find a building; those are logistically hard to hide."
"You'd think, but yeah, okay. I can kill a few at the top, see who squeals."
"I need to know what their plans are. I'm not naive enough to think they're not already in motion."
"Thought you knew what their plans were?"
"Broadly, yes. Details, no."
"They are not known, historically, for sharing the before sections. Just the after."
"Get creative. I need anything - anything - you can get."
"You got it, boss," Wade said and hung up - which told Scott he was taking this deadly seriously, since he didn't try to stick around for chitchat or jokes.
Once Scott got done with Deadpool, though, he thought long and hard on his next move. Yes, Wade was doing what he did best, but there had to be a second option to hit the same creeps.
He tapped his fingers on the table as he stared out of the mirrored high rise that was Avengers' Tower. There had to be someone else … someone with different inroads …
He looked down across the street to Central Park, where the last vestiges of fall were clinging to a few determined branches. He frowned, then straightened up as he almost glared at the trees when it came to him what, exactly, he was missing.
The next moment, he was digging through his contacts for how to reach out to one of Logan's oldest and most trusted friends. He made the call and let it ring for what seemed like forever before it went to voicemail, and he left a terse, businesslike message.
"Call me back at this number as soon as you can. It's about the kids."
Scott hung up feeling like he was wasting his time and probably showing his cards a little too openly to a possible security breach. He had no way to be sure that Heather Hudson still had that number … and he'd handed over his cell phone information to what could be a dead line. At least he hadn't given up more-
As Scott got back to his pacing, and before he could really get after himself for trying to call Heather, the phone in his hand rang with an unknown caller.
"Hello?"
"Scott!" Heather said in a breath, and Scott could almost hear her clasping the phone tight. "I didn't think you'd ever call me, but I'm glad you did. What's wrong? What happened?"
Scott stopped walking and leaned against the wall. "My kids are missing. All three, including James. We know for sure Department H took them, and we're hitting a wall with intel," he explained, practically all in one breath.
Heather let out a little sound. "When did this happen?"
"Yesterday. More than twenty-four hours now," Scott said. "It was a multi-pronged attack; it took us a while just to confirm who was and wasn't taken."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," she said - obviously not catching on to why Scott would call. "That's terrible. What can we do?"
Scott let out a breath. "Honestly, I'm grasping at straws, and I'm calling in a favor," he told her.
"Scott," Heather said in a slow meter. "We've been retired for years now. I don't know that we're of any more use to you now than we were back then."
"I need you to try," Scott said. He ran a hand down his face. "We can't find them. There's someplace new. Even if you can't find the location itself, maybe you can find something. Anything would help. They've been preparing this for a long time; they've hidden their tracks too well."
"Oh, wow," she said. "I … I didn't know they were doing anything like that. I suppose … yes, I think I still know a few people. I'll call in some favors - but it might take a while. The nature of where they put those places … they're almost always in the middle of nowhere. Communication is slow at best. And I don't know if any of my contacts are anywhere useful."
"I'd even take a rumor at this point," Scott said.
"I'll get back to you as soon as I can," Heather promised. "I really don't like the sound of that."
"Thanks, Heather," Scott said and hung up, leaning against the wall and feeling like he'd gone nowhere fast.
Tony, on the other hand, was working alone, blatantly ignoring anything but active good intel on what had happened, and though no one outside of his command center knew it, he was desperate to find anything on any one of those that had been kidnapped.
Certainly, he was most worried about the kids with the off the charts power capabilities … Nate, Rachel, and Billy absolutely didn't need to be tools in the wrong hands. And obviously, he was worried about James in an entirely personal way. That was his kid, as far as he was concerned. Regardless of what Scott thought.
But he also now had Peter and MJ Parker breathing down his neck to find their daughter. Cassie Lang's parents - and step father - were freaking out in ways that simply weren't healthy, too. And while the new kids had gotten out relatively unscathed, their entire families were more or less camped out at Avengers Tower as a precaution. And giving Tony looks every time he was foolhardy enough to poke his nose out for a moment.
So he simply wasn't going to stop. He couldn't. He had to find a way to get his people safe and to get every damn one of those that had been kidnapped back to safety. He swore he was going to end whoever had pushed for this if he had to do it with his bare hands. But that was the trouble with shadow agencies. He'd find them; he just hoped it would be sooner than later.
And in the meantime, his panic attacks had merged together, going from one after another to a low rumble of can't breathe, can't sleep, can't rest kind of buzz that made him far too aware of his arc reactor humming away in his chest - which hurt.
But he didn't have time to think of that while he was looking. Natasha and Scott had the spy networks covered. Tony was throwing out a wider net. He'd programmed a virus to divert anything even remotely describing anything from all of those that were taken directly to him. And then to erase it from the source once he had the location.
Pings were coming in from around the globe, but Tony kept glaring at the northern border shared with Canada. It couldn't be a known facility. If it was, Natasha would have found it by now. So how the hell had they managed to make something entirely new under everyone's noses?
This was the kind of chess game that Tony hated. He could strategize. He could see the possible outcomes and potential in just about anything, but this … this was all centered on backward thinking and brute force. It was inelegant and so far beneath where he'd been operating for so long it was an insult. The fact that this kind of force was being applied to his team and his kids …
Tony found himself forced to step back for a moment. A sharp pain just left of the center of the arc reactor in his chest had taken his breath away, and he felt suddenly dizzy.
For a moment, he stood there, not focused on anything and beginning to panic because he wasn't working on the solution. He couldn't stop … whatever this new mess was poking at his chest, he didn't have time for it.
And yet … breathing was harder. And his chest kept getting tighter. Before he knew it, he had to sit down before he fell down - and it was a fine thing that he'd managed that.
"I don't have time for this," Tony grumbled to himself, rubbing his shoulder as he tried to catch his breath.
His mind was rushing, and he was getting more and more distracted by the growing discomfort and outright pain when he realized what might be happening. He frowned to himself as he ran down all the classic symptoms - and tried to ignore it based on the arc reactor.
Until an errant thought came to him: He couldn't die like this. If … he was having actual heart trouble or an extreme panic attack or whatever it was …
He scoffed at his own inaction, then called out for his artificial intelligence to do a medical scan. Quietly. The plan, of course, was already in place to get his sorry ass back to work when it came back as anxiety.
Which was about when Scott came in looking like he belonged in a special ops team ready to lead an assault.
Tony didn't try to ask what was happening as he watched Scott head his way. He'd had that same locked-jaw look since he and Kate had been peeled off the building, but this time, he obviously had something to say. So Tony waited for Scott to open what he hoped was a brief encounter. Especially since, so far, Scott had precious little to say to Tony that didn't sound at least half accusatory.
This wasn't helping his pain or stress levels. But he wasn't about to draw attention to either of those things.
"Still nothing useful," Scott said, shaking his head. "Called in a few favors, even Heather Hudson, but no one's got anything. Damn Department had too much time to plan ahead, probably been planning it since the day James's face was on the news…" He had been glaring, but as he got closer to Tony, he frowned and put a hand to his temple… and then remembered that he couldn't actually scan Tony anymore.
"Upgrading the scanners on the suit for distance," Tony said in a staccato tone. "I'll fly over every inch of that country if I have to. Just need the build to finish." He had his eyes closed, and after a moment, he forgot to stop squeezing his shoulder.
Scott watched Tony for a long time and then took out his phone again. "I'm calling Hank and then Jan."
"Why? Think they have a new lead without you?" Tony rearranged himself with his arms crossed tightly.
"You don't get to die right now, Stark," Scott said, already calling Hank, who picked up and didn't get a word in before Scott was filling him in. "Stark needs help. Pretty sure it's a heart attack."
"Just anxiety," Tony grumbled. "Go … do whatever you were doing before."
"Oh, you mean trying to save lives?" Scott shot back. "Shut up, Stark." He hung up on Hank and then called Jan. "Yeah, your husband's trying to ignore his own medical emergency."
"It's not an emergency-" Tony said first under his breath, then half shouted it for Jan's sake. "Summers is overreacting."
Scott waved Tony off as he listened to Jan on the other end of the phone call. "Yeah, you got it," he told Jan and then hung up and headed over to Tony to sit down beside him. "I don't have those scanners you gave me anymore; show me where you'd get scan results in. I know you've got monitoring in this lab; you test on yourself often enough."
Tony gave him a dry look, but when it was clear Scott wasn't backing down, he rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "Already ran it. Or I was. Pretty sure you walked in during."
"Which monitor - you know what, I'll find it," Scott said, quickly looking over the monitors until he saw the results coming in. "Looks like the scan sent the results to Hank's lab just now."
"Great. Then we can both get back to work."
"Yeah, results say you're having a heart attack. So, do you want me to take you there, or do you want Hank to bring a stretcher?"
"If you kiss me-" Tony started with a warning look.
"Then James will never stop making jokes about his dads and you know it, so I won't," Scott said without missing a beat.
"I'll walk." Tony got to his feet but swayed where he stood. "You were all … fired up. Go. Fire things up."
"Yeah, they've been set in motion," Scott said. "I'm waiting on a few calls anyway, and like it or not, I don't actually want you dead, you idiot."
"Sure about that?" Tony asked with one eye closed. "Free shot."
"Tempting, but then I'd have to take a shot in the dark at another co-parent, and who knows how that'd go," Scott said, already moving to steer Tony. And because Tony looked like he was hurting, Scott gave him something else to focus on. "Hey, want to watch Jan's head explode when I tell her Annie and I need her to design onesies for us?"
Tony frowned and did a full double-take, smiling in spite of himself. "I thought you said you weren't trying to kill me?"
Scott chuckled. "You said it was a free shot."
"Well hot damn. Congratulations."
"Thanks. You're the first outside my kids, Ororo, and Sinister to know. That last one wasn't my idea, obviously."
"I'd hope not," Tony agreed, effectively distracted as he thought of all this might mean. "Sinister, huh?"
"Yeah."
"He didn't manage to die in that mess, did he?"
"That would be convenient, but no, he rabbited."
Tony nodded to himself. "Gonna have to put that on the to-do list. Before the shower, obviously."
"The way Annie tells it, that's the top of her wish list." Tony was distracted enough that Scott didn't have to fight him about putting his shoulder under Tony's while they walked and Tony ran lower on steam, and then, once Hank came rushing to meet them, it took almost nothing to get Tony on a stretcher and the rest of the way to the lab.
Scott stood back once Hank was doing his thing and dragged both hands down his face before he spun on his heel and left the room. This was just one more thing piled on top of another, and he had to keep moving and find something else to do, or it would catch up to him, too.
