Mab: woke up this morning to all the snow cleared off our stoop
Steve: so strange. Who could have done that
Mab: an invisible brigade of assistants, methinks
Steve: but who on earth could have sent them
Mab: who indeed
Deep, deep in the Raft, where fresh air must be pumped by some force, lies the Box.
It is quiet there.
It is dark.
There is no conversation in the Box. No fury or outrage or explosions of power. Few prisoners sit in the Box as they waited for the days to lumber through them, and banks of power suppressors lined the walls to ensure that silence was maintained.
Tap-tap.
Well, almost silence.
Lukas held out his hand, letting the slow drips of water collect in his hand before overflowing and continuing their descent. He knew from counting his meals that he'd been in the dark for more than a week, but beyond that time seemed to blur at the edges. Blurring together, blurring apart into separate ideas and moments and thoughts, lost in darkness.
It was also comforting, somehow. Lukas couldn't hear the darkness in his head whispering those wordless commands. He couldn't feel the anger that wasn't his rise in his chest, couldn't smell that strange copper in the air, wasn't forced to remember every poor decision he'd ever made that led to agreeing to be a test subject.
Down, there in the silent darkness, the lonely dark -
Tap-tap
-the almost-silent darkness. The almost-darkness. He could still see his hands, holding water. He could see the walls lit by dim red lights straining to glow through thick acrylic panels. He could see, in his memory, the look of determination on Ma Ellis' face as she reached to embrace him.
"Are you still proud of me, Ma?" his voice scratched slightly, barely breaching the silence, interrupted by tap-tap.
I'm-here, the water tapped, I'm-here.
Steve: Is funnel cake still around?
Mab: Funnel cake is definitely still around.
Mab: Could probably get it at Coney Island.
Steve: we should get some.
Mab: It's like negative twenty degrees outside
Steve: It's only negative three
Steve: I checked
Mab: I'm willing to bet Coney Island is still closed due to it being December
Steve: you have crushed all my hopes and dreams
Mab: It's better if you steer clear
Mab: for a bit anyway
Mab: I picked up a cold so David's on the warpath
Ginny sat down heavily on the metal floor, chest heaving with exertion and skin slick with sweat. Hot panting breaths weren't enough to cool the fire in her blood, churning inside her body, demanding freedom. The tight quarters of the storage room didn't help; the hot uncirculated air seemed to get stuck in her throat as she prayed for a cool breeze. She knew better than to hope on that prayer. Hot, humid, thick air was all the prisoners of the Raft could expect these days. No one bothered to tell them if any repairs were forthcoming.
Her companion for the middle of the night seemed unbothered. The larger of Volkov's gargoyles, Valentin, leaned against the door with his arms crossed, waiting for Ginny to catch her breath. A whisper of the knock made Ginny flinch in alarm, but not Valentin. He waited for the second knock, then opened the door.
"Good evening," Mr. Volkov greeted, slipping into the already crowded room and quickly shutting the door, "or is it good morning?"
Ginny waved a hand, still too out of breath to properly reply. Ivan Volkov and Valentin exchanged words barely above a whisper. They spoke in Russian, so the whispering would have been unnecessary if it was for privacy against Ginny's ears, but it was all a part of the secrecy. The middle of the night, the small storage room, whispers against any echoes down long, damo hallways or along vents.
Mr. Volkov nodded to Valentin, who took that as a sign to step outside. The smiling older man offered Ginny an unbranded bottle of water, a godsend, procured from who-knows-where. "You're making good progress, I hear."
Ginny gulped down the water. Lukewarm, not cold, but better than dehydration. "Haven't managed to do much since we started."
He seemed unbothered. "It takes time. And we cannot ignore that there are significant obstacles to practicing." He lifted his wrist to jiggle his suppressor band. "Complicates things. We're not in a rush."
Ginny took another long draw of water. "We're in kind of a rush."
"Then let me clarify; we cannot rush that which takes time. You are making progress, and that is what matters." He didn't flinch at the knock at the door, even though Ginny did. "That's the hour-mark; all done for today."
Ginny didn't think she could take much more of the burning itch of the suppressor band anyway. Definitely milder at this late hour, as the Russian had reported when he'd drawn her into this insane plan at her insistence, but near-unbearable all the same. "Great," she said, forcing herself to stand. "Bedtime."
"Until tomorrow, Mrs. Ellis."
"Until tonight, Mr. Volkov."
Steve: Are you feeling any better?
Mab: I remember smelling smells once
Steve: Is there anything I can bring you?
Steve: or have the invisible assistants bring by?
"I just don't understand why the kids can't go to the museum," Janice huffed in irritation as she set down Paul's morning coffee at the table.
Because it was too damned expensive. Because their savings account was nearly empty and it had taken so long to save up everything that was now almost all gone. But they only had to make it a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer and he'd get that big check from the study, and then maybe he'd be able to buy himself more time to find real work again.
But Paul gave a more understandable reason to his wife. "Everything's too crowded with the weather still being so bad, and it's almost Christmas anyway; we need to save money if we're going to get them good gifts." He just needed more time.
Steve: Is there anything I can bring you?
Steve: or have the invisible assistants drop off?
The message delivered but sat unread for the entire day, and a full 48 hours later he was beginning to panic.
Steve had given up several hours prior to his worries and tried calling. Mab didn't pick up. He then tried calling the home line, the landline number that she'd given him in case she forgot to charge the smart Stark Phone and lost contact. No one answered.
Steve had contemplated throwing the phone out the window. But it had to be nothing, right? It had always been nothing; all the times he'd worried something more serious, more sinister, might be going on it had always been nothing.
No falling snow or rain on the window was remotely necessary to make him think of Mab, to feel the pull of the universe clawing at his heart. It tugged against even the memory of his fragile bones.
It took measured breaths to calm himself, staring out those perfect glass windows at the lingering afternoon sun already headed to an early winter's night. Because it had to be nothing. Because he couldn't overreact to something that had to be nothing. It was always nothing. Mab was a normal person and only normal problems happened to Mab.
Sam stepped into his view, pointing to his watch. "You coming, Cap? Alice is making those rolls from scratch and they're not to be missed."
"Yeah," he said, tucking the phone in his pocket as if he could just as easily put away his mounting fear. "Sorry to make everyone wait on me."
Sam was still talking and he did his best to listen, did his best to try and focus on this moment, and not the endless possibilities that inspired flares of panic. It was a short flight on one of Tony's choppers; they nearly qualified as jets but he claimed that keeping them as helicopters meant he could fly them in and out of the city at his leisure.
So it would be fine to just go to Sunday Dinner. It would be fine to travel out of the city and be further from a short ride to Greenwich Village because Mab would answer him and tell him that she'd tripped and dropped her phone down a sewer grate and avail him of the heroic recovery efforts of a street sweeper.
It would be fine.
Steve was not fine.
He'd lasted through the enthusiastic greetings as they'd landed on the expansive lawn of Alice and Bucky's new farm; how had he convinced her to move to New York, Sam had asked. Long Island isn't New York, Tony had quipped sharply. And Steve had barely heard it. He swore he could feel every individual part of the phone in his hand screaming in protest as he gripped it tightly, unable to put it down in case he missed the relief he repeatedly needed from Mab's reply.
It had only been 48 hours. 50 hours now. Much too soon to panic. He would be able to sit through the Sunday Dinners that Alice loved to host, be able to enjoy the return to the routine now that she and Bucky were back from their honeymoon. He would ask engaging questions and gracefully accept second and third helpings of her food.
He sat down at the table, penning a quick and pleading text just to appease the worry in his stomach.
Steve: Mab please answer me so I know you're okay
The message bounced.
A rushing, roaring, pouring sound filled his ears, blocking out all other noises. Cold iron seized him around the ribs and tightened with each breath like a huge and menacing snake. The world narrowed entirely to the warning message on his phone: message undeliverable.
Steve's chair screeched as he stood up forcefully from the table. The world was tilting and he needed air. The new house had a beautiful wrap-around porch that went all the way around the house; the perfect place to have a full-blown panic attack.
The late December air smacked him in the face as soon as he opened the door. The dark chill and jagged wind shook the frenzied heat from his face but did nothing for the iron dread. He knew, he knew, deep down in his soul that all was not well. And the damn phone wouldn't help him.
The phone taunted him. He knew from experience that if he gripped it any tighter it would break in his hands. The delicate metal frame, the perfectly clear glass, and the smart display that would appear if he simply raised to phone to check his screen. But it couldn't deliver a damn text message.
"You alright, Spangles?" Tony had followed him out into the cold, still pulling on a coat to defend against the bitter winter. The conspicuous lack of pop-culture references or smart comment was his way of showing he could sense something was deeply troubling Steve, he was sure. This was not his first, second, or third rodeo.
"I'm…" Steve clenched the phone tightly, to the point that the superhero-resistant casing started to creak slightly, "I need a minute."
"Stepford Wife said rolls were due out of the oven in three, so take three."
"Got it." He tried to ease his grip on the phone. He wouldn't be able to get any messages if it was broken.
"And go easy on that thing," Tony added from the threshold, "Stark tech can do a lot of things but it can't put itself back together."
Steve complied, but as he went to put it in his pocket - he couldn't break it that way - he froze.
The phone.
The Stark phone.
"Tony," he blurted out, looking up faster than any hesitation could catch up. "The Stark phones, are they really untrackable?"
Tony searched Steve's face, reading the shifting expressions and the building hope. "Why?"
"I need you to find one for me."
A/N: Thank you all so much for your patience as I got my feet back under me with this story. I recently decided to go back to school so obvs that's taking up a lot of my time, and my daughter was sick with something icky (flu? Cold? RSV? Who knows) and that just threw me completely off.
I struggled a lot with this chapter before just throwing out like 4 pages of dialogue and forced exposition. In the original, you got amazing clarity about this "plan" that Mr. Volkov has that Ginny is now a part of, but I think it works much better this way, especially as we start ratcheting up the tension. Why isn't Lukas upset to be in the box? What is this plan? Why is Paul so important to our plot still? Where is Mab? It's going to come to a head in our mid-story chapter a few chapters from now, but we've got: (19) Time in the Dark/Sunday - this chapter, then (20) I'm Ready/Being Alive, and our mid-season finale, (21) Two Cathedrals, Four Alarms, Pt2 (same title as our first chapter! I love recycling).
Until next time.