Chapter Text
When the deep snarling siren of the Emergency ring-tone on her phone jars Eva out of dreamless sleep, it is rapidly followed both by Mono complaining loudly and also by Helena's voice from the other room saying, "Jesus Christ what the hell is that?"
So it's rather a good thing that Eva has always woken up quickly and completely, bar illness or sedation, and that she does so now. She hits the touch-point for her bed-side lamp (an excellent illustration of why she got a lamp that turned on and off at a touch, without having to find any kind of switch) and grabs the earpiece, tapping the button and saying, "De los Santos."
On the other end is Maria Hill's voice, which says, "A driver is en route; the cold-water situation just developed in an extremely unexpected way."
Eva blinks as she sits up and pushes her covers away, staring at the wall across from her. The cold-water situation is Rogers' search, because at one point he and the missing man had shared a cold-water flat in Brooklyn and it was both unremarkable enough that it didn't immediately suggest anything, and yet distinct enough that it sticks in the memory so that, for instance, when one is wakened out of deep sleep it still triggers the right thoughts.
On the one hand, Maria is saying developed and unexpected, rather than exploded or catastrophic; on the other, it is - Eva glances at the clock - not quite midnight and there is a driver on their way rather than a please come as soon as possible. Which means the kind of emergency that doesn't care if one shows up in one's nightclothes, but definitely cares if one shows up immediately.
"I'll meet them downstairs," Eva replies, and neither of them bother with goodbyes: obviously whatever's happened is not something Maria wants to discuss on a phone connection and there's no point in wasting time.
Helena is standing in Eva's bedroom door in her housecoat and slippers now, eyes squinty in the light and her hair all in the rags needed for the curls she wants for the publicity shoot tomorrow. She's frowning deeply. "That is the most horrible noise ever," she says, pointing in the direction of the bedside table where Eva's phone is on its charger.
"That's the idea," Eva says. She's already out of bed and yanking her oversized sleep shirt off over her head. She grabs clean underwear and a bra and says, "Some kind of emergency, but no, nothing you need to worry about, and I apologize for the level of asshole he's going to be." She jerks her head at Mono, who is already standing on the bed meowing at her very indignantly for the crime of ignoring him after having disrupted routine this badly.
"S'okay," Helena says, yawning, "if I have to I'll lure him into the cat-room with the duck from last night and leave him there."
Which is entirely fair: Eva prefers to give Mono the run of the penthouse because he likes sleeping on her pillow in between patrols of the rooms to make sure nothing's wrong, but after she'd got him she turned the linked master-and-nursery setup she'd previously just used for an extra guest room and library into a giant cat enrichment room, which is also where his litter lives, and it's definitely not going to hurt him to spend the night in there.
He'll complain about it, and he might make a mess, but that's why those are cat-rooms and have laminate flooring now.
Eva drags on the pair of black jeans that are closest to hand, draped over her bedroom chaise; Helena says, "Here, catch," and Eva looks up in time to catch the black Egyptian cotton shirt tossed her way, picked up from the back of the chair by the door. It's a good call: it pulls on fast and while this is clearly not a situation where attire is the first consideration, on the other hand if Eva does have to do anything moderately-official without having time to come home, between the quality of the jeans and that top she probably won't have to send someone to buy a stopgap.
And she has full formal backups at the office, of course.
Helena also tosses her the wide-pendant amber necklace with the woven band, and then the earrings, while Eva pulls on trouser socks. There should be a pair of simple pumps by the door, along with her purse; she picks up her phone and the amber-ended hair-stick from beside it on the bedside table and makes a gesture at kissing the air over Helena's cheek on her way past and down the wide central stairs to the door.
"You're wonderful," she calls as she pulls on the first jacket to hand and slips her shoes on, "I love you, good luck at the shoot, say hi to Edgar for me," and hears the sound of Helena's response as she pulls the door closed behind her, if not the actual words.
She also hears the sound of Mono's paws hitting the door and the loud mrao!, but is moving to the elevator before the sound of the scratching starts.
The guard in the lobby - it's Tomás, tonight - looks a little bit surprised to see her, and in a totally friendly way says, "Exciting night?" because he's been in this job for years and knows she doesn't usually rush out the door at midnight, and also long enough that they are genuinely friendly. Eva flashes him a considered "such is life" kind of distracted smile.
"The joys of an international company," she says, and he makes an ahah, gotcha! kind of gesture.
"I wish you good coffee," he tells her, and she makes a joking salute as she sees the SI car pull into the building's driveway and hurries out to it.
"Good morning, Ms de los Santos," the driver says, politely; it's a young woman Eva doesn't recognize on sight, and she glances at the clock.
"Oh, god, it is officially morning, isn't it," she says, as a wry acknowledgement. "Good morning!"
The drive doesn't take long, but it's almost frustratingly uncomfortable anyway: there's nothing to actually do, since none of her files for something like this will update until she gets into the Tower's closed network radius, and so she's actually reduced to pulling out the sequestered mini-tablet she keeps in her purse uses for normal social media in order to keep from chewing her fingernails.
Running over various plans and contingencies won't actually help: the pre-planning that's possible is all well-established and she knows the relevant pieces by heart, and since they all go in wildly different directions depending on the circumstances, it's not worth letting her attention get dragged down one path in case it needs to go down the other afterwards. So instead she checks to see exactly how stupid Twitter is already today.
It at least gives her the joy of internally snickering her way through a thread about the scariest things you can hear from a judge that laypeople would find innocuous, so there's that.
The moment she's within the Tower's network her phone starts to vibrate both with file updates, document deliveries, and also the alert for the fact that Maria is calling her.
"I'm on my way up," Eva says, as she gets out of the car at the underground main door and waves a thank-you to the driver and a hello-but-I'm-busy to the StarkSec guard stationed at that door, who nods respectfully back.
"Barnes arrived at Rogers' apartment half an hour ago," is what Maria says, as Eva steps into the elevator and finds that the appropriate floor is pre-selected, which is convenient.
". . . well shit," Eva says, because she's in the elevator, the door is closed and it's moving, and she feels that more or less sums up her entire response.
"As yet no indications of violence or incident," Maria continues. "Rogers contacted us with the news, and he's also contacted Wilson and I assume the third number is the last one Natasha gave him as it's a burner out of Romania."
The elevator delivers Eva to Maria's floor, where one of the office support staff is standing to both open the door and to hand Eva a proprietary tablet and a mug full of sweetened Turkish coffee with cardamom, for which may the young man be forever blessed.
When Eva arrives at the central hallway to Maria's offices, the walls have shifted transparent. It's a technology still in beta-testing and development, but one that Maria had jumped on having installed in her inner set of offices, where she, Monique and her other key subordinates worked. The largest obstacle before it would become customer-ready was expense and complexity of installation, which isn't an issue for here.
As yet there's only Pepper, Maria and the new "receptionist", whose job Eva is well aware resembles much more closely "communications officer", and that makes sense: even Monique lives further away from the Tower than Eva and a couple of the others significantly more so.
And Eva's not surprised by Tony's absence, so much so that she suppresses amusement when Pepper's first words as Eva steps in the door are, "I sent Tony back to bed before someone murdered him."
"What was he doing?" Eva asks. "Specifically."
"Insisting that everything is fine, it will all be fine, Steve's perfectly safe, we're all stupid to worry," Pepper says, with a long-suffering look that turns into a yawn, "and then getting tetchy at any scepticism. Unfortunately the tetchy was making him a fucking five year old about everything else, so I told him to shut up and go back to bed and I'd talk to him in the morning."
Maria glances briefly upwards, eloquent in silence. There are also the really, really good sugar-dusted doughnuts from downstairs on the low table by the window, and Eva goes to grab one and sit down. "The alphabet soup know yet?" she asks, not bothering with much more preamble.
"I doubt they could track Barnes up to the point he arrived at Rogers' place," Maria replies, "so they're working on the same timeline we are at best, and that's assuming they've got agents on-the-ground in Rogers' neighbourhood. And if they're doing that then they already consider Rogers a very high level risk and are using their best, because there's no sign of that as yet - my next step is contacting operatives I know are good enough to find out."
She glances at Eva with slight amusement and adds, "They're legal to operate in the US."
"I wouldn't dream otherwise," Eva replies, blandly, and doesn't add you just told me about them in as many words, after all. She's already assigning alerts to the team she'd assigned to this response-project, who are also primed to expect them - from here they'll go to either the Tower call operators or they'll go to the direct-phone alerts, depending on what any individual employee has set up. After which, if the employee doesn't acknowledge the alert, they'll go to the call-system.
"It'll take at least twenty-four hours to get them in place," Maria continues, "and we may get threatening noises before then, or we may not - it's not possible to tell what level of surveillance they've got on Wilson given he's literally working in a Federal job, or how compromised that burner of Natasha's is or isn't. JARVIS is maintaining exterior surveillance via any wireless cameras in the area, and location surveillance on Rogers' phone - "
"But part of Tony being a pain in the ass is he refused to let JARVIS use Captain Rogers' phone for anything more than location surveillance," Pepper finishes, resignedly. "That's how we got onto the topic in the first place. He's not entirely wrong on that one, in terms of . . . " Pepper trails off and gestures with one hand to indicate things in general. "But."
Maria looks slightly exasperated, and part of Eva doesn't blame her: this is in fact part of the definition of an extraordinary situation. But the other part of her also actually agrees with Tony, although she'll leave that unspoken for now. It's not necessary to have the argument, as Tony's already preempted them.
"Our preliminary responses to any movement on their part are ready as of now," Eva says, or rather confirms and reaffirms. "And the preliminary work on the proceeding round is as done as it can be before we know which direction they're going to break."
"JARVIS currently says basically nothing's happened in the building that's noticeable since Rogers went in with his friend," Pepper says. "There's still lights on behind the blinds, but there's no sign of any disturbance, and minimal activity visible."
"And since while there is a chance the guy could have got enough of a drop on Rogers to kill him without it even causing a thud, it's really slim," Maria says, "we're going to operate on the assumption that this means things are peaceful for now. And if he is dead, we'll know in a day or so. And that's current status."
Out of the corner of her eye Eva sees movement, and turns her head to see Monique in yesterday's pants and blouse, with blue flats, her hair bundled up and wrapped in a blue silk scarf with pink and yellow flowers on it, and her own coffee in her hand. Eva has never previously seen the younger woman without flawless makeup, but isn't entirely surprised to discover she's one of those women who doesn't really need flawless makeup and just looks that damn good anyway.
As Monique comes in the door she says, "Good morning! Holy shit!" in an acidly cheerful voice that is somehow very cheering.
"Cap still alive?" she asks, grabbing her own sugar-crusted doughnut and coming to join them.
"So far, as far as we know," Maria replies, dryly. Monique makes a gesture of well that's a blessing, and pauses to swallow coffee.
"I'll get on waking up Mockingbird and Wu," she says, "last job they're down as taking was in Florida so could be worse there."
Eva's tablet is in the process of letting her know that three quarters of her alerted team are on their way, and of those remaining half have acknowledge receipt of the alert and just haven't left their homes yet, and the other half are in the process of trying alternate contact points.
So it's time to decamp to her own office and also make sure there's food and coffee up there.
"I'm going to go make sure Tony doesn't touch anything," is what Pepper says, clearly having similar thoughts about it being time to move into the next phase. "And then get the rest of the week readjusted. Keep me in the loop and please make very free use of the catering and auxiliary facilities."
"Just tell Yolanda that our people are exempt from her wellness concerns for the next few days," Maria says, in a voice that isn't actually as sour as she's pretending it is.