Chapter 87
Triskelion
September 2011
“Nick?” Maria said, emotion coloring her voice.
Fury didn’t even look at her. His eyes stayed on Natasha, knowing full well she was the most dangerous person in the room. “Gun down, Agent Romanoff,” he said. “Or I blow a hole in your chest.”
Natasha slowly placed the gun on the floor.
“He won’t do it,” Maria said, walking toward them. “Not to you.”
“Don’t push me,” Fury said angrily. “Stop where you are. Alexander. Stop the file release.”
Maria stopped.
Pierce walked over to the computer and started typing, back to them.
“Why?” Natasha asked. Get him talking. Also, she wanted to know. Why, Nick, why would you do this, I thought–I wanted to trust you–
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice Hydra under my nose?” Fury asked. “I fight against war. Chaos. Anarchy.”
Natasha folded her arms, getting one hand close to the weapon up her left sleeve. She should’ve known better than to trust him. There was only one person in the world she could trust, and he was not standing in front of her.
Well. Perhaps there were others, now.
But Nick Fury was no longer on that list.
Black rage began to fill the hole her one-time affection for him left behind. Natasha did not react well to betrayal.
“Those things lead to death. We can engineer world peace with this. I can sacrifice twenty million people to save seven billion.”
Natasha drew her stings, threw one at Fury, and slapped the other to her own chest.
Electricity erupted from both of the little devices. She had a second to feel the pin on her lapel spark and die before her muscles locked, her pain receptors went off the charts, and she collapsed to the floor.
Triskelion
September 2011
Maria didn’t waste a second.
Fury went down beneath Natasha’s stingers. Weapons Maria had helped design. The phone fell from his hand. Maria dove for it.
Pierce got there first.
He stood up with the phone in his hand. “Don’t move, or they die,” he said, nodding at the Council members.
For a frozen second, no one moved.
“Look out!” Saliba shouted in Arabic.
Maria looked up. So did Pierce.
Maria’d left her earpiece with Sharon, but obviously, Steve, Sam, and Barnes had been successful. The helicarriers were falling out of the sky, shooting at each other as they went, and one of them was crashing straight for the Triskelion.
“We’ll be going now,” Pierce said, and hooked one hand into the back of Fury’s jacket. He hauled his unconscious friend into the elevator, thumb hovering over the phone. “Ground floor,” he said to the elevator. “Emergency override Pierce alpha one nine. Maximum speed.”
“Atrium. Emergency protocols: Confirmed.”
The doors started to close.
In slow motion, his thumb descended on the phone.
Five gunshots rang out in rapid succession. Maria hit the floor out of reflex and looked down.
Natasha, semiconscious and shaking and unnoticed, had picked up her gun off the floor and gotten off all the shots left in the magazine.
It hit Maria, really hit her, that Natasha was in many ways more than human. Her stingers put people out for anywhere between thirty minutes and two hours. Maria’d tested one once and it had been like getting hit with a truck; she’d been out for almost an hour. And Natasha was functioning after less than five minutes.
“Got Pierce,” Natasha rasped. She tried to force her arms beneath her. Her left elbow buckled and dumped her on the floor.
“Here,” Maria said, and got a grip under Natasha’s arm, hauling the other woman upright.
A ping caught her attention. She looked up. Prescott had stripped off her pin and tossed it aside with a contemptuous look.
“We need a way out of here,” Maria said.
Prescott whipped out a StarkPhone, scanned its screen, and smirked. “I have an escape chopper landing on the roof as we speak. Three levels of staircases?”
“Go,” Maria ordered.
Prescott took Natasha’s other side. With Saliba leading the way, the four of them bolted up the stairs as fast as they could. There were no windows, but Maria felt the looming horror of the helicarrier and knew that every heartbeat could be her last. It was eerily silent. In here, any noise the helicarriers made was distant, muffled.
Saliba burst through the roof door. Sunlight blasted down the stairwell.
“Over here!” someone shouted.
Prescott, Maria, and Natasha turned sideways to get out the door. Natasha got her feet underneath her and started taking some of her own weight. The shadow of the helicarrier slid across the hot pavement and Maria was running, dragging Natasha along beside her. The chopper was fired up and already moving. She lunged forward, grabbed the handle by the door, and hung on to Natasha with all her strength. Prescott scrambled into the helicopter on Natasha’s other side.
Maria’s feet left the ground.
She scrabbled at the edge of the chopper until her feet found a protuberance to balance on.
Someone took Natasha’s weight and tugged her up into the chopper. It banked hard and the thunder of the rotors grew louder still. It shot forward. Maria dragged herself up and over the edge. Hands were on her shoulders, arms. Her entire body hurt.
The helicarrier missed them by thirty feet and crashed into the Triskelion.
Maria could only hope Sharon had gotten out in time.