Chapter 27

January 12, 2014 - 5:45 a.m.

Pietro left Stevie at the edge of the Triskelion's airfield, where she crouched in the shadows behind a troop carrier. Her announcement had worked - the tarmac was chaos, agents fighting agents, blasts of machine gun and pistol fire all around her - but Stevie's eyes were only on the sky. The Triskelion's floodlights were so bright that they drowned out the stars. In that flat, black pool, like some terrible leviathan, the Insight carrier hung, its glass panopticon glowing.

Pietro and Wanda appeared at her side in a gust of wind.

"It's worse than I imagined," Wanda murmured, dark eyes glued to the carrier.

"My God," Pietro said. "Wait...what are those?"

A cloud of black flecks, tiny in comparison to the carrier's bulk, were emerging from its sides like a flock of crows.

"The drones," Stevie said. Her stomach clenched in despair. They were too late. Unless…

She turned to the young man beside her. He was still staring upwards, face gone pale as his frosted hair.

"Pietro," she said, making him start. "How fast are you? Can you...catch them? Knock them away?"

"I...I don't know," he stammered. In their short acquaintance, Stevie had never seen him like this. All his swagger, his easy confidence, was gone. Suddenly he seemed very young.

"I've never done anything like this."

Stevie clapped him on the shoulder. He wasn't the first young man she'd had to give a pre-battle speech.

"You're the only person who can," she said, firmly. "You're all we've got."

Pietro met her eyes. He almost looked...panicked.

"Just one, Pietro" she said, voice soft. "One is enough."

The young man took a deep breath, and nodded. And then he was gone, leaving Stevie's hand hanging in the air.

God speed, Pietro.

She turned to Wanda. "We need a plane."

"Yes," the girl said. Her eyes were already glowing red. "Follow me."

Before Stevie could react, Wanda stepped out into the light.

With a muffled curse, Stevie rushed to shield her - she was right in the open, a target for either side. There was a shout from the left. Stevie raised her pistol. A squad of STRIKE agents had spotted them across the tarmac. They ran toward her, their own pistols ready. Hit the leader in the face with the shield. A good ricochet and I can get the one on his right. Shoot the others. She unslung her shield to throw it - but she didn't need to. As one, the men stopped, blinked, then turned and jogged in the other direction.

Wanda. She was doing this. Stevie looked over the shoulder. The girl had already walked out ahead of her, untroubled by the shouts and gunfire. Stevie followed, eyes darting everywhere, shield and gun still up. Agents on both sides parted around them without ever noticing they were there. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. As much as Stevie believed Wanda and trusted what the other woman had told her, she didn't like relying on a power she didn't understand.

Stevie heard the helicopter before she saw it.

"Get down!"

She pushed Wanda behind her, against the side of a troop carrier, using shield and body to protect her. An Apache helicopter roared down from one of the rooftop helipads, chain gun firing a deafening drumbeat. Combatants on the tarmac scattered.

"Who's piloting that thing?" Wanda shouted in Stevie's ear.

"Whoever it is," Stevie shouted back. "They don't seem picky!"

With a whoosh, the helicopter launched a hellfire missile, and a quinjet only thirty feet away from them exploded into flame. Stevie held the shield over them as shrapnel pinged off its surface. They were destroying the quinjets before anyone could use them. Probably Hydra. At least, Stevie hoped so.

"Wait here!" Stevie shouted.

Counting on the chaos on the attack to cover her, Stevie leaped to the top of the troop carrier, shield ready. The helicopter had circled back, gun already beginning its bone-shaking tattoo. She aimed for the tail, throwing her shield full force. The shield smashed the tail rotor, and as it bounced back obediently to Stevie's waiting hand, the helicopter spun to the ground and crashed in a ball of fire, fragments of its broken blades shooting past her.

She jumped back down to where Wanda waited.

"Good shooting, Captain," she said.

"Thanks." Stevie helped the other woman to her feet. "Let's get out of here."

They ran to the quinjet, and Stevie entered her access code into the doorpad. It blinked red.

"Damn," she said. They'd blocked her.

"Can you get in?" Wanda asked. The light of the burning helicopter cast red shadows on her pale face.

"Let's see," Stevie grinned. "There's more than one way to hotwire a car."

Wanda raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Tony Stark told me his emergency bypass code once," Stevie said. "And I have a very good memory." The pad blinked green.

"Still works," she said. "Come on. We've got a carrier to catch."

Wanda had never liked flying. She sat uneasily in the co-pilot's seat and squeezed the pressure point on her wrist to try to keep from getting airsick. If her brother were here, he would have made fun of her "hippie bullshit." She almost reached out for his mind reflexively, then restrained herself. He needed to focus. The drones were in the air, all around them, setting out on their errands of death but the Captain, jaw set, ignored them all.

Of course, Wanda thought. If she acted like a threat, the carrier's automated defenses would target her. She shook her head. That knowledge wasn't hers. It was Sitwell's. Sometimes, after she...absorbed...someone's mind, it was hard to sort out whose memories were whose. It was always...unsettling. Wanda took a deep breath, squeezing the pressure point harder to ground herself in her body. It helped, being with the Captain. The closer she got to her goal, the more her doubts vanished, swallowed up by her purpose. There was a determination growing at the center of her mind, shining out of her. Being close to that purpose was like standing in the sunlight. Wanda felt stronger, more confident...better...just being near her.

The Captain must have noticed Wanda's unease. She smiled.

"Hey," she said. "Doing alright?"

"I don't like heights," Wanda answered.

"Well, don't worry." The Captain pointed through the windshield. "We're landing soon."

The carrier loomed out at them, huge and black, gleaming in its own surface lights. Jasper Sitwell's memories and emotions welled up in her at the sight. In her mind, his voice whispered. Magnificent. Her stomach lurched and she closed her eyes.

"Alright," the Captain said, breaking her out of her reverie. "We'll need those entry codes."

They were hovering over the top of the carrier, keeping pace as it rose. Its self-defense cannons had begun to track them.

"Of course."

Wanda typed the code that would identify their jet as friendly, and, after a tense moment, the cannons deactivated. The Captain expertly touched the quinjet down on the carrier's deck, and an entryway opened in front of them. Wanda couldn't help but see it as a yawning mouth.

"Time to go."

Out on deck, the wind was powerful. It almost knocked Wanda off her feet before the Captain steadied her, with an arm as solid as steel. When the entry hatch closed behind them, both were breathless. The Captain swept her hair out of her face.

"I don't think it was designed to be opened at this altitude," she said. "We're rising fast. Where to?"

Wanda caught her breath, considered the bare, metal service corridor, the shadows of the still-unlaunched drones visible on either side.

"This way."

She walked quickly, matching the schematics and half-built memories from Jasper Sitwell's mind to the reality in front of her. Down the corridor, then a ladder, then another corridor, until they came to a round, metal door.

"This is the central computer," Wanda said. According to her - Sitwell's - memories, the central computer for all the carriers. They were all linked into this one. "We should be able to shut the carriers down from here."

The Captain nodded. Wanda put her hand on the doorpad. She hesitated.

"He will be coming for you, Captain," she said. They both knew who she meant. The Soldier. "Pierce would never let such an opportunity pass him by."

"To twist the knife?" The Captain asked, wryly. "I got that impression. Don't worry, Wanda. I'll take care of it."

She believed it, too. That was the incredible thing. Wanda took a deep breath of the Captain's belief, and opened the door.

The room they entered was the other side of the carrier's glass dome. Invisible from the outside, a long metal scaffold led out into its center - to some kind of control kiosk. Below her, through the glass, Wanda saw the city lights, terrifyingly small. She grabbed the handrail and forced herself to look up away from the view...

"That's...not a computer," she breathed, shocked.

In the heart of the glass half-sphere, a...flower made of light hung. It was folding and unfolding, in a way her eyes couldn't follow.

"I've never seen anything like this," she said.

"I have."

Wanda felt the Captain's fear like an electric shock - she was surprised to see the other woman had drawn her gun.

"We have to shut this thing down now. Wanda?"

She nodded, tore her eyes away from the impossible shape overhead. They made their way to the platform. There were the touchpads, their complex symbols - she remembered that, but why hadn't the flower been in Sitwell's memory? She was staring at it again, without meaning to. There was something at the center, she realized, something around which everything else turned. A...a golden seed, maybe the size of an almond. What was it? She could feel something inside it, a brush like a moth's wing.

"Wanda?" The Captain was gripping her shoulder.

"It's...alive," Wanda said. And then it seized her mind, and she collapsed.

Hi all! Hope you're well. I'm going to post the chapters I have in hope that the cold breath of some kind of deadline will get me through the last ones. I look forward to your feedback. :-)