Heating up
I got up early and did my morning run up and down the Mall. I hoped Steve would remember my dedication to cardio the next time he put up some ridiculous obstacle on the course and I yelled at him about it. Because: civilization. Civilization means never being in mud up to your panties. Because there's gosh-darn PAVEMENT everywhere. And there were stairs, too. At the Lincoln memorial, my favorite. It's inspiring. It makes you realize that anyone can change their way of thinking, given attention and even a slightly open mind, because Lincoln didn't start out to be anti-slavery. He came around to it later in life, and the results are legendary. And the speeches. So clear and evocative and concise. A righteous guide. And then you can feel like you've had kind of a workout for the soul, the reminder that it isn't easy to do the right thing, seeing the mercy after the hard times, because you just know that Reconstruction would have looked very different if he'd been charge of it.
Steve is obviously a larger-than-life second coming of Lincoln, although without the presidency thing. But he can be so irritating. Then again, when I saw the movie Lincoln, I thought that he could be a colossal pain in the butt, which made him more human and approachable rather than the colossal marble martyr he's become. Also. I don't believe that Lincoln would have ever put on a tight red, white and blue suit. Given his physique, it's probably for the best. He'd need one of Tony's suits. Steve's physique could probably make ancient Greek sculptors weep for joy.
My musings are interrupted by Steve himself, telling me to cut the run short (?!), get the guys, and report. There have been Developments. And yes, I can pretty much hear the capital D. I trot down the hotel hall and pound on doors as I go. Heads pop out. "Get your gear, there have been developments," I inform them.
Sam squints at me suspiciously. "You sound awfully cheery for this hour of the morning"
"It's 7:30 am, it's not the ass crack of dawn," I point out.
Scott looks enlightened. "Did you get laid last night?"
I stop dead and scowl. "No! This must be a runner's high. I've never had one before. Don't harsh my mellow, guy." Peter starts to laugh.
'You run all the time at the complex," he points out.
"No, I run a little, then have to do some godawful thing, then I run a bit more. It's not nearly as nice."
I hear snickering through the com. Tony's monitoring. "Ok, let's be ready in fifteen," I say, and hustle into my room for a quick stretch and shower.
Steve looks up grumpily when we get to the suites at the other hotel. To make up for the peremptory summons, there's breakfast. I help myself and sit down at the table.
"I can't believe you hate the obstacle course so much," he complains. "That's all I've heard from you this week, how nice it is just to get the cardio in."
It dawns on me that he's a little upset. He does design the course. "Well," I say carefully, "It's just that I've never needed to crawl under a sheet of barbed wire through mud. Or go through a mudfield the size of a football field. Or carry a five gallon bucket filled with sand halfway to Rio. Or--"
"At least you're not dealing with live fire when you run the course," Bucky pointed out, dropping into the chair beside me. I nod. There is that.
"And I appreciate that it provides challenges, and I can see that perhaps there might be times when I'll need to climb a cargo net or traverse a vertical wall. And I really do love the zip line," I say, trying to cheer Steve up, wishing like hell I'd been more discreet. "It's just that a simple run is a nice change of pace, pardon the pun." He brightens, marginally.
Steve turns away to answer a question from Natasha, and I breathe a silent breath of relief. "What happened last night?" Bucky asks me, sotto voice. "Because he's been in a foul mood since he got back and Stark's been irritably smug."
"Is THAT what this is about?" I whisper-snap at Bucky. His eyes widen.
Fortunately, Tony hits the projector before this can go any farther, and a booking photograph of a younger Ms Smith is shown, scars and all. "This is Anna Smith, aka Madame Hydra, Leona Hiss, Viper. Her real name is Ophelia Sarkissian, originally from Hungary. HYDRA leader, mercenary, subversive, terrorist, smuggler, criminal. Wanted by INTERPOL and the security forces of several countries, including this one. She wears hybrid Kevlar/metal armor and uses various guns as well as a bullwhip and throwing darts dipped in poison. She is a normal human female with extensive martial arts training. She's smart, cunning, and has extensive contacts throughout the world's criminal enterprises. And this is where it starts to get interesting. She's has a lot of money and influence, an uncanny streak of luck, very stealthy and experienced in espionage. And she's used controlled exposure to become immune to most common, and many uncommon, toxins. The darts she uses are coated in a combination of snake venoms, chosen to wreak the most havoc possible before the victim dies.
"Currently, she's the leader of the Serpent Society, a group I've never heard of." Headshakes around the table. This must be something new and icky. "Individuals known by the code names Copperhead, Fer de Lance, Puff Adder, Cobra, Rattler, and Asp form this society, led by Viper."
"Sess and Namitar make a lot more sense now," I said sourly, and Tony nodded.
"Information recovered from the safe Scott cracked indicated payment to them and the rest of Night Terror. There were also separate payments to those two individuals and it seems that they might have had a hand in devising this compound, whatever it is, as well as improving weapons for this group. We don't know how far their work extends in this current project. Namitar's involvement makes this a scarier proposition."
"I'm working on intelligence about these people's abilities, but I think we can assume that they're all dangerous. Once we have this information and find out where the substance they're cooking up is being held, we'll be able to move."
"We'll need to alert the authorities when we find out more," Steve sighed. With that, the meeting sort of broke up; everybody got more serious about their breakfast, then the house-bound Avengers create a schedule to monitor the surveillance on the house. Tony goes to work searching and hacking his way through the internet with the help of Vision. The rest of us start a cutthroat game of gin rummy. Peter is dispatched to the drugstore around the corner for M&Ms, the supergigantic bag, to use for stakes. And occasional snacks. It doesn't do to eat your stake by accident.
By mid afternoon, Tony has a likely location for the stuff, a unit in a mostly abandoned industrial park outside of Falls Church. Sam and Scott get to go check it out. They take their winnings when they go for a treat on the way.
It's almost four hours later when they get back. We've given up on the cards and are watching the news. "It's definitely the place," Sam reports, and Scott describes an extensive operation; there are several different apparatuses set up which we can see allows for the synthesis and purification described in the formulas we saw earlier, including a complex distillation apparatus. Suddenly one of the steps makes a lot more sense.
"Why does everything have to be purified?" Natasha asked. "It's just going to be used to sicken or poison people."
"Because otherwise you won't get as much active material; the syntheses will react with the unwanted products from the prior reactions, cutting down your yield. It could also disrupt a reaction if there's enough crap in there," Peter said, and I nodded.
"How close do you think they are to producing enough stuff?" Steve asked, and Scott shrugged.
"They had three containers the size of pony kegs that were full and one that is about half full. There weren't any other empty ones, so however long it takes to fill that one is my guess." It seemed reasonable.
"Ok, go back tonight. We need eyes and ears," Steve said, and they nodded. I started to hope that we'd have this thing wrapped up soon.