The Great Escape!
“What about Lindsey, down in Payroll? He’s pretty cute.” Becky Brooks, twenty-four year old full-time secretary, leaned back in her chair as she observed the lobby around her. She was conversing with Dana Aldridge, the other secretary who worked at the front desk. Dana was blonde and had a small, angular face. It was the sort of face that boys liked to fall head-over-heels for. Becky didn’t really understand why Dana was so popular with their male coworkers. The girl was rather plain.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s just so…boring.” Dana, legs crossed delicately at the ankles, played with one of the pens on her desk. It was one of those long front-entrance desks, with the SHIELD logo printed on the front.
Becky found herself rather annoyed with this comment. This was especially because, in her view, Dana was incredibly boring. “How ‘bout Neil? You know, that good-looking section chief on the twelfth floor? I don’t know what he does exactly but I’m sure you know him.” Dana stared rudely back at Becky, lips slightly parted, as if she would rather be anywhere else in the world at that moment in time. Becky sighed inwardly. Screw this. Dana was a total blow. She turned back to her own desk, feeling rather offended.
The elevator doors dinged; Neil, that handsome section chief from the twelfth floor, stepped off and into the lobby with a harried glance at his Rolex watch. He was wearing a well-tailored gray suit which was ironed to perfection. He looked good enough, at least, to grab Dana’s attention. She sat back slowly in the desk chair. “God,” she drawled slowly, “he really is a looker.”
Becky assumed that this comment was decidedly not addressed to her, and so she didn’t respond, only pausing in her work to glance up as Neil got off the elevator. He certainly was handsome, in a mature and almost fatherly way. Really not her type. Neil waved absently at Dana, perhaps in an effort to placate her staring. Becky watched him go only because she had nothing better to do. He went through the revolving doors briskly and risked another glance at his watch. Neil almost walked into someone else on the way out.
“Woah, bud, watch it!” The guy who had been walked into chuckled rudely as Neil side-stepped him apologetically. Now, though, both Dana and Becky were interested. This man was new; neither of them had seen him before. He was tall, dark-haired, and all that. He was wearing a business suit and tie (once again, it was quite extraordinarily tailored to fit him), a shiny pair of loafers, and a pair of leather gloves despite the heat. His hair was longer and slicked back jauntily with hair gel. Becky and Dana both leaned forward eagerly as he entered, wandered around the lobby for a moment, and then drifted toward the front desk with the lazy and dazzling smile of an actor. “Which of you gals might be able to direct me to Accounting?”
Becky stumbled over her words. “Oh, sir, it’s on level three, next to the weapons store…” The man nodded, grinning still, and winked as he started towards the elevator. “Wait!” Becky was surprised at how confident she sounded when she spoke again. The man paused tensely. Becky finished with a smile. “You’ll need a guest pass to get around, unless you have an I.D.?”
“Ah, I don’t!” He chuckled good-naturedly. “Ya think you could get one for me?”
Becky was utterly dazzled. “Sure, Mr…?”
“Rogers. James Rogers.”
“Of course, Mr. Rogers.” She typed out his name into a template form on her computer screen, pressed the print button, and giggled again at Mr. Rogers. He looked to be about thirty, but the sort of thirty that had maintained his boyish sense and hadn’t yet aged into maturity.
The guest pass was finished printing. She slid it into a clear plastic casing with a clip attached, and handed it to Mr. Rogers. He clipped it to his suit pocket, thanked her again, and started back toward the elevator. Before he could leave fully, Becky surprised herself again and reached over quickly, touching his arm. She felt him tense slightly as he whipped around, even though he was still smiling vivaciously. “This may sound like an odd question, Mr. Rogers, but do I know you from somewhere?”
The man seemed to freeze, but only for half a moment. “Yes, perhaps you do. I used to do some modeling for shampoo commercials.”
Of course he’d modeled for shampoo commercials! thought Becky to herself. She laughed again. “Wonderful! Have a pleasant day, Mr. Rogers.” She smiled at his receding back, only sitting back down once the elevator doors had closed behind him.
Dana was staring at her in that same infuriating, open-lipped manor. “Dear God, Neil is a sewer rat compared to him!”
Bucky thanked his lucky stars that the elevator he’d gotten into was empty. He also thanked the powers that be for the fact that, in their utter fascination with him, he’d charmed the desk girls into forgetting the mandatory background check which was required for all SHIELD personnel and visitors. He was glad that the other, more perceptive front-desk girls had conveniently come down with the flu that day. Mostly, though, he was glad that he’d been able to pull his old personality of Bucky Barnes, Ladies’ Man out of the archives. Nowadays he wasn’t much of a ladies’ man. Not after everything that had happened in the last seventy years or so.
He hit the button for the third level, and put his hands in his pockets while he leaned against the wall of the elevator. He still was wearing the gloves, which covered his metal hand discreetly. Bucky had also found that he was rather fond of the suit, which fit him perfectly after he’d done a bit of amateur tailoring to the length of the sleeves and the bottoms. He adjusted the cuff of one sleeve, admiring the glitzy gold cufflinks which had been borrowed from Sam as they glinted from the background of starched white fabric. He could see his reflection in the floor (which was polished clean), and he realized that this was the first time in a long time that he’d felt so comfortable in his own skin. It had been literally decades since he had last felt so comfortably dressed up, his hair freshly trimmed but still long (and slicked back as usual), his clothes somewhat in style and well made. It was certainly a good feeling.
The elevator dinged, yanking him from his thoughts. Stepping out casually, he looked around, observed the sign that read Accounting which was mounted on a door to his left, and headed to the right. The weapons storage was located at the end of the hallway. It was guarded, of course, by two armed guards. This should go smoothly, thought Bucky, as long as I don’t ruin this lovely suit.
It didn’t take much to knock out the guards and then break into the weapons storage by use of their thumbs, which activated the thumbprint lock on the door. He carefully stepped inside and dragged the guards in with him. They were both unconscious, so he piled them in a corner and set to work. There were all sorts of standard government-issue guns and ammunition, including a few fancy knives. They were the ones that caught Bucky’s eye, and he pocketed a few of the more well-balanced knives and the sleeker-looking guns, then subsequently headed off down the hallway. He followed the length of the corridor down to the opposite end, where a reinforced-glass window was situated on the wall. He inspected the window, and then spoke aloud so that his earpiece would pick up his words. “Window’s locked. Gonna have to find a different entrance. Weapons secured, by the way.”
“Good,” replied Sam. He was listening in, and had been listening to the whole affair from the moment Bucky started talking to the front desk girls via the earpiece system.
“What if you land on the roof, Sam? I can open the doors from there.” He began walking quickly back to the elevator.
Sam was quiet for a moment as he mulled it over. “Okay,” he said finally. “Sounds like a plan.”
“It sure as hell is a plan.”
“Wow, are you starting to learn from me?”
Bucky snorted. “Whaddaya mean?”
“I always have a plan. You said that Steve had a plan. Now you have a plan. Student becomes the teacher. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Sam, you have a terrible sense of humor.”
“I know!”
Bucky snorted to himself as he pressed the button for the roof. The elevator went up.
“Oh my god! This is terrifying!-” Maggie was holding onto Sam with all her might as they glided over the city. Sam chuckled.
“Is this your first time flying with me? How’s it going so far?”
She gulped. “I’m only doing this for Peter! Never doing this again- holy shit!”
They dipped lower over the buildings. The tall glass-and-cement towers sparkled excitingly in the light of the sun. Clouds, large and puffy, were reflected in the plate glass windows. Maggie let herself enjoy the beauty of New York from a birds-eye view for half a moment, until Sam finally circled one of the buildings in particular and discreetly swooped down. He gracefully landed on top of the building. His wings smoothly retracted into the wing pack. Gingerly, Maggie touched one foot to the ground, and once she was sure that she wouldn’t fall, she hopped down onto the concrete.
“Okay. Now we gotta wait for Bucky to let us in. Kicking down the doors or windows will trigger the alarm system, and we need to maintain an element of surprise for as long as possible,” stated Maggie. Sam nodded. He already knew the plan - in fact, he’d thought of the plan himself - but he let Maggie have her moment. She was clearly enjoying this whole thing.
Just then, there was a soft clicking sound from the door which led to the rooftop.
“Buck? That you?” Sam frowned nervously when there was no response. The door slowly ground open, and both he and Maggie were enormously relieved to see Bucky there with an armful of weapons.
“Hey, guys, good of you to join me. Now let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“By popsicle stand, you mean getting Pete outta jail?” Sam raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. I thought that was implied,” replied Bucky nonchalantly. They all started back to the door.
The trip back down was slightly more stressful. The trio encountered several more armed guards and agents along the way, almost all of whom wanted to know how the hell Captain America had broken into SHIELD without being noticed. And then, of course, they also were all bent on arresting them too, but that bit was taken care of pretty easily with some punches and kicks.
Sam caught his shield as it bounced back off someone’s head and then ricocheted back in his direction. They’d left a trail of unconscious agents on the ground, which was quite conspicuous. He surveyed the damage and turned to Bucky.
“How many spare broom closets do you think we’ll need to hold all these people?” he inquired. Bucky shrugged.
“Six?”
It took seven broom closets to hold all the unconscious people. With that whole mess taken care of, they continued down the hall to their destination. But of course, Sharon Carter had to come and screw up their plans.
“Y’know, it’s weird. The secretary at the front desk could’ve sworn she did a security check on you. But I guess you didn’t go through the metal detector. Would’ve been a dead giveaway.” Sharon was leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway. They’d just turned a corner into a new section of the building, and now stood at the end of a hallway.
Bucky straightened tensely as soon as he saw her. “Yeah. That was the point of the ruse.”
She rolled her eyes. There was a gun in her hand. “Okay. You guys know how this works. My people can take you without a fight, and no one gets hurt. Or, you guys can battle it out with some of the most well-trained government agents in the world.”
“I think I’d rather do the second option,” replied Sam. “I mean, we’ve literally fought an entire army of genocidal aliens before. I think we got this in the bag.” He nodded to Bucky, who nodded back at him and slid off the blazer.
Sharon snorted a little when Bucky tied it around his waist. Sam did too. “Come on, I don’t want to get blood all over the jacket. It’s new,” snapped Bucky. “Okay. Now we can fight.”
Sam bent down so that he was level with Maggie (she was considerably shorter than him, to the point that Sharon hadn’t even noticed her yet). “Maggie, we’ll take care of this. You go find Peter. Carry out the rest of the plan if you can. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
A wave of SHIELD agents, dressed in full battle gear, entered from behind Sharon. Maggie slid away, unnoticed, back through the door from which they’d come. She didn’t stick around long enough to see much of the action, but instead concerned herself with finding another way to get to Peter.
Meanwhile, Sam and Bucky busied themselves with taking down the full force of SHIELD’s New York Headquarters. Commence action movie take-down montage.
Pow! Slam! Bang! Crash!
“Ow, my tooth!”
Zing! Ka-chow!
“DUCK!”
“Oh my GOD, did he just throw his metal arm at me?!?”
“That’s why I said ‘duck’!”
Hi-yah! Kapow! Krak!
“Oh, HELL no-”
“Seriously? In the face?”
Wham! Whack! Blam! Whiz!
Finally, they’d finished with all the SHIELD agents.
“Finally!” sighed Bucky. “That took a while longer than I thought it would. Where’d Sharon go?”
“She musta slipped away in the chaos,” replied Sam tiredly. Just then, a bullet whizzed past his ear, and they both whipped around to see more agents pouring into the hallway. “Jesus Christ, how many are there?!?”
“A lot more, it looks like. I think we’re gonna be here for a while,” grunted Bucky.
Glancing over her shoulder, Maggie hurried down the hall. She had to find a way to get to Peter without being seen or having to get through whatever mess Sam and Bucky had gotten themselves into. Maggie frowned, surveying the hallway for ideas.
There it was! It was obvious!
“God, I’m an idiot,” muttered Maggie, and she set to work unscrewing the screws which held the vent cover. The vents had to access every room; if she could find one which led her to an elevator or somewhere with no people and an elevator, she could get right to Peter. She knew he’d be on one of the underground floors, because all the interrogation rooms were below the surface to prevent breakouts.
Well, she’d just have to get underground then.
Maggie crawled through the vents for ten minutes until she found a suitable drop-off point. She slid back out of the wall and quickly got her bearings. She seemed to have crawled into the area where the employee bathrooms were located, next to the cafeteria. Thankfully, it was three p.m., so there were not many people there. Plus, there was an elevator!
Once in the elevator, it wasn’t hard to figure out which floor Peter was on. There was only one floor below ground level - labeled Q. She wasn’t sure what “Q” stood for, but it had to be where Peter was. Without wasting any time, she hit the button, and the elevator started downwards.