In Which a Break-In Occurs
Lars, overall, was at a bit of a crossroads regarding the whole situation. On the one hand, he rather liked his job - good pay, good insurance (it covered dental and optical) - but on the other hand, he was growing increasingly worried that he was working for a very, very bad organization. The event which cemented this conspiracy into belief took place on a warm November day in 2025, when Captain America broke into his office building. Ugh, Mondays.
Lars arrived late to work again. His boss was angry, of course, and complained that he was fed up with Lars’s excuses, but Lars’s alarm clock really hadn’t gone off and if Mr. Kemper didn’t want to believe that then so be it. He entered the locker room at seven a.m., and had to duck slightly because of the low ceilings and his tall stature. The locker room was little more than a closet with a few lockers in it. Lars opened his locker; inside was his uniform, an extra pair of boots, and a crumpled newspaper from two months ago. The headline read, in bold letters: Murder, Corruption within the Justice System - Captain America, Barnes and Others Cleared for Murder Charges; Carter Indicted in Scheme to Frame Avengers for Murder. Lars ignored the paper and began changing into his uniform.
There was a creaking from the floorboards behind him. Lars turned around to find Mickey Jeffries, the short and gray-haired wacko who also worked in the building. Lars often saw him on breaks at the canteen.
“Hey Lars, got anything to smoke?”
Lars ignored the question and busied himself with polishing his boots. Mickey grunted aggressively.
“Hey, come on, old man. I’m just bein’ nice.” Mickey bared his teeth in an off-putting smile. Being a man whose mantra was “silence is golden”, Lars gave Mickey a cigarette to shut him up. Mickey pulled out a lighter and lit it. He offered the lighter to Lars, who declined with a wave of his hand. Mickey raised an eyebrow and pocketed the lighter. Smoke curled through the air from between his lips. “We have the same shift tonight. Stationed at the northeast entrance.” He looked Lars up and down. “Shouldn’t be an issue for a big guy like you, eh?”
Mickey was short, burly, balding and stocky. He had crooked, yellowed teeth and a broad and unlikeable face. Lars didn’t much like him. “No- ahem. Nope,” he replied.
Mickey made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Let’s get to it then, man.”
-
It was four in the morning. Lars was bored to death. He had been standing in the freezing cold outside the northeast entrance with Mickey for the last eight hours. They’d smoked the whole time to keep warm, and Lars had already gone through two packs of cigarettes. He was still freezing. On top of that, Mickey wouldn’t shut up about himself. He wouldn’t stop talking about how great he was at beating people up, and how he had a really smokin’ hot French girlfriend named Colette (whom Lars suspected was fake), and how he had a very wealthy family. If you have a wealthy family, thought Lars, why the hell do you work here of all places?
Mickey was still rambling. Lars wasn’t even paying attention at this point. He looked out into the woods in front of him, at the moon and the stars and the grass. It would have almost been peaceful if Mickey wasn’t there. Lars sat back and let out a quiet sigh, and then snapped to attention. He’d seen something in the woods.
“Jeffries- Mickey, I see somethin’ in the woods! Shut up for a goddamn second, will ya?!” Mickey stopped talking after a moment, because he’d seen something too now. It had been quick, almost imperceptible. Maybe it was an animal. Maybe it was something else.
Lars put a hand on his gun. Mickey drew his, and held it up shakily. His teeth were chattering, and so were Lars’, but more from the cold than from fear. All was silent for a moment. Lars could hear his own heartbeat with startling clarity. He could hear Mickey’s breath next to him, coming in short, hurried gasps. Wait.
Lars whipped around, gun blasting shots into the night, and found himself face-to-gunpoint-to-face with a girl. She grinned at him, ignoring the gun pointed at her. Then she spoke.
“That’s- what, a Smith & Wesson? You’ve fired six shots already, and with that particular model, that’s all the shots you have.” She suddenly jerked her head toward him, as if to scare him, and Lars let out a yelp and pulled the trigger. Click. She was right, he didn’t have any more bullets. Lars stared between the girl and the useless gun for a second until he remembered about brute strength and swung the pistol at the girl. To his utter shock, she caught his hand easily, and then caught his other hand when he swung it around. “You’re really gonna make this easy for us, aren’t ya.”
“What the hell-” Lars’ voice came out raspy and shaky. He pulled his knee up to try and kick her, but she kicked him right back in the ankle. He crumpled, and she let go of his hands and kicked him once again in the stomach.
Lars wasn’t the type to get beaten up by girls, especially not little girls who were 5’2 and probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet and definitely hadn’t gotten their driver’s license yet. Especially not little girls who were grinning rudely at him. This girl was. She looked up expectantly at the roof; Lars was still curled on the ground, and had a perfect view of the roof and what she was looking at. There was a sticky, slimy-looking something hanging from there, and wrapped around Mickey’s neck. Mickey was unconscious now, poor bastard. The slimy thing suddenly slackened its grip and then dropped completely. Mickey fell to the ground, coughed twice, and then passed out. Then something else dropped down from the roof.
It was another freak dressed in a costume with weird powers. Great, superheroes were attacking the place. Wait, superheroes were attacking the place?
“Who’s this?” asked the costumed guy to the girl (who was not wearing a costume, but instead a sweater and jeans like she was about to go to court or something).
She gestured to Lars, acting as if he couldn’t hear them talking about him. “I dunno. Figured he might be helpful.”
The costumed guy made a wild gesture. “Dude!- I thought we discussed this! These people can’t know that we’re infiltrating their secret evil lair.”
“Wait, evil?” Lars was interrupting now. He looked up at the two kids, who looked back down at him as if just seeing him for the first time.
“Yeah, evil, no duh,” said the costumed guy. His outfit was tacky and garish: dark navy blue and maroon, criss-crossed with black lines like a spiderweb. “So what do we do with him?”
The girl motioned for him to wait, and then crouched down to be level with Lars on the ground. “How do we get in?”
Lars scoffed. “Cantcha just kick the door down?”
“No,” replied the girl, “because we don’t want to make a loud noise. You know how loud it can be to kick a door down, don’t you?”
“Not- not really. Um.” Lars was shaking visibly now, all two hundred pounds of him. Pure muscle turned to jelly before these two wankers.
“Well, I can’t show you how loud it’d be, but I can show you how painful it would be,” she said menacingly. She wasn’t smiling now.
Lars’s teeth began to chatter even harder. “Th-thumbprint lock. My thumb will unlock it.” He looked up at her pitifully. “Please don’t chop my thumb off,” he whispered, terrified.
“No, I’d never! You just willingly gave us information. I’d say you’ve earned a gold star.” She glanced at the boy, who shrugged. The girl turned back to Lars. “In other words…”
The boy punched him in the gut. Lars blacked out. The last thing he saw was that goddamn little girl grinning at him, in just the rudest way possible.
~
“You don’t think we killed him, right?” asked Maggie as they hurried into the building, having just broken in using the unconscious guard’s thumb (it was still attached to the body).
Peter chuckled and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, there’s a good chance that I didn’t kill him, but y’never know.”
Maggie wasn’t sure how to respond to the remark, so she didn’t. They hurried on in silence.
The building was confusing. All the walls and ceilings and floors were painted the same shade of metallic gray, and there were no windows to be spoken of. Every door on the wall was placed at the same interval, and was unmarked, unlabeled. It was incredibly difficult to navigate the place.
“What are we looking for again?” Peter asked in a whisper. They’d been as quiet as possible for the last several minutes, creeping silently through the relentless halls.
“We’re trying to figure out what all their enciphered chatter has been about recently,” said Maggie. “Didn’t Sam tell you about this?”
Peter seemed slightly embarrassed. “Probably. I just forgot though.”
She sighed quietly. They went around a corner and found themselves in a new hallway, still looking the exact same as the last. “We snoop around and see what’s up in here while Sam and Bucky cause a distraction at the southern entrance.”
“Ri-i-ght. I remember now.”
There was a sudden crackle in both their ears, coming from the comms system in the earpieces. “Blue Sky to Red Beret and Eagle Two, do you copy? I repeat, Blue Sky to Red Beret and Eagle Two, do you copy? Over!”
Blue Sky was Sam’s code name. Red Beret was Peter’s code name, and Maggie’s was Eagle Two. Her choice of code name didn’t make much sense to Sam, because there was no Eagle One, but the kids seemed to think it was absolutely hilarious.
Maggie reached up and tapped her earpiece. “Eagle Two to Blue Sky, go ahead, over.”
Sam’s voice came out crackly and distorted, as if he’d run into bad connection. “They found us,” he said, “and I think they’ve found you guys too. Watch your six. Blue Sky over and out.” The channel went dead.
Peter, who had also heard the conversation, stared at Maggie with a kind of shock spreading over his face, mixed with realization. Slowly, he looked up at the wall behind Maggie, and let out a small and shaky sigh. Maggie followed his eyes, and saw it too: a camera, mounted on the wall and blending in, and staring directly at them. She came to life all at once with a spurious motion and grabbed Peter by the elbow, which prompted him to start moving also. They both ran away from the camera and down the hall. The sudden and terrifying sound of boots and shouts came from somewhere in the building; it was impossible to tell its exact location through the echoing walls, but the sound was invariably that of foot soldiers and more guards coming to find them.
The particular stretch of hallway where they stood didn’t seem to have any cameras. The sounds were getting closer, and the possibility of running or hiding grew ever more pleasing to the two heroes. Maggie looked around, and her eyes fell on the only door in the hall. “In here,” she said and gestured. “Come on! Quick!”
Peter followed her to the door, which she kicked open just in time for there to be shouts of “STOP RIGHT THERE!!” from the guards. Maggie and Peter practically tumbled over each other into the room, and the door slammed shut behind them. There was a sudden and dull whooshing sound coming from all over the room, startling them, and then a flash of light. When the spots finally cleared from their eyes, they were able to look around.
All sounds of the guards had faded. They were in a small, dark room, comfortably furnished and not at all matching the coldly industrial design of the previous hallway. There was a thick carpet on the floor, ornately spun and decorated; a carved mantle; mahogany furniture and even bookcases stacked with books. The whole room smelled faintly - almost comfortingly - of wine and cigarettes and women’s perfume. Maggie dug her fingers into the carpet. It was an old-fashioned carpet, like something out of a movie, but it looked to be in brand-new condition. Peter stood and went over to look at the books, all thoughts of guards and fighting forgotten. The books were beautiful; once again, old-fashioned titles, mostly Proust, with a few novels by Daphne DuMaurier and, interestingly, several bound copies of Einstein’s papers on relativity and Brownian motion. It was an eccentric mix. Each book was leather bound and the title stamped in a delicate gold filigree. Peter gasped audibly when he pulled out one of the Prousts for further inspection, and noted that it was a first edition.
“This room is beautiful,” whispered Maggie.
“It is,” agreed Peter. He almost didn’t want to leave.
She looked at him with half a smile. “Probably should check to see if the guards are still here. I think they’ve moved on,” she stated reluctantly.
“Yeah, I’ll go first. They’re gone by now.” He went to the door and opened it, looking around outside. Almost immediately he slammed the door shut with a bang and stood with his back pressed flat against it, eyes wide with shock. He pulled his mask off.
“What? Whatsa matter? Are they still there?!” cried Maggie urgently. His expression was worrying her.
“Go see for yourself,” he whispered. “I think I’m hallucinating or something.”
She went to the door and opened it. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw what was outside: another dimly-lit, smoke-and-wine-scented hallway with old-fashioned rugs and candle sconces and the same dark-oak paneled walls as the room they were in now. She whirled back inside and slammed the door shut. “Oh my god. Oh. My. God.”
“How the hell did the hallway switch? Did we come in through a different door?!” Peter’s voice cracked comically on “door”, which would’ve made Maggie laugh in any other situation. She had no response now.
“I- I dunno!”
They both looked at each other for a few terrible seconds, and then they both jumped again because someone outside was talking to them through the door.
“Hey! You in there! Put your weapons down and your hands up!” It was a man’s voice, and it was quickly followed by a woman’s.
“Do not attempt to harm us or you’ll be swiftly shot!” she added compunctually. Her voice came out with a British accent. As soon as she spoke, Peter frowned a frown of recognition.
“What’s wrong?” asked Maggie again urgently.
“I’m definitely hallucinating. There’s no way that this isn’t some sick, post-traumatic induced nightmare. Can you pinch me, Maggie?” He looked at her with a watery smile and a trance-like stare.
Maggie forced a smile as she looked back and forth between him and the door. “That’s not my top priority at the moment, Pete,” she said, gathering all her calmness and pushing it to the surface. She spoke again, now to the people at the door. “We’re all clear, and we mean no harm.” She tossed her gun and knives to the floor and gestured that Peter should do the same. He tossed his balled-up mask to the floor in accordance, and they both held up their hands.
The door was kicked in by a woman, presumably the same as the one who’d spoken earlier. Peter let out another strangled gasp of recognition. “You’re kidding me,” he groaned.
The woman seemed offended. “Excuse you, young man!” she said with a frown, and held up her gun to point at him.
There was someone else poking out from behind her, also with a gun, pointed at Maggie. He was a rather short man with a funny, familiar little goatee and mustache. Peter laughed out loud when he saw the man. “Oh, this is so messed up. I feel like I’m in a horror movie.”
Maggie shot him a quizzical look, and he laughed. “Look! That guy’s a dead ringer for Mr. Stark, and the lady looks like Sharon Carter!” He said it quietly so that the man and woman couldn’t hear, and then laughed again. It was almost maniacal, and it scared Maggie a little. But he was right; the woman had something about her that reminded her of Sharon Carter. And the man did bear a striking resemblance to the pictures she’d seen of Stark.
“Enough. Who are you and what are you doing here?” snapped the woman. She looked really angry now.
“Um- before we answer that question, would you mind telling us where we are?” said Maggie nervously. Peter was being unreasonably immature at the moment. Agh, teenagers.
The woman tilted her head. “Why don’t you know?” When there was no response after a moment, she continued. “We’re in Dallas.”
Now it was Maggie’s turn to be immature. “Dallas. Great. Dallas, Texas. I’m gonna die in Texas. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse…”
Now the man seemed mildly offended as well. He muttered something to the woman while keeping a watchful eye on the two intruders. His voice rose after her response- “They’re kids, Peggy. I mean-”
He cut himself off with a sigh, and then cocked the gun. The woman followed suit. Maggie squeezed her eyes closed and prayed for a quick death. Dying in Texas is definitely the equivalent of hitting rock bottom, she thought to herself. There were two sudden pops, instantly followed by a searing pain in her side. The last thing she heard before falling unconscious was Peter. He was yelling about something. Her head hurt, and then it all went black.