Chapter Text
The soldier doesn’t recognise this place.
Only he does.
He should.
Faded images dance at the corners of his memory, flickering murky pictures that incite a sharp sensation, a sharp cold sensation whenever he concentrates, tries to think. He grits through the pain. Pain is good. Pain is important.
And this place is important. He was drawn here.
No.
No, the soldier wasn’t drawn here.
He needs to keep going, further.
But he can’t.
He’ll compromise the operation.
The soldier has to stay here, for now. Because the mission is there. The soldier must remain here. He needs to stay here until he gets his mission parameters, needs them updated. He needs the handlers.
But he couldn’t find the handlers. Not at any of the bases he checked. Maybe he will at the other bases. But they’re too far away, the asset was drawn here. He’s already checked the safe house here.
Grunting, the soldier pushed the brim of the baseball cap down, pulling the grey hood further forward with his flesh hand. There was a light drizzle tonight, stray raindrops soaked into his jacket as he pressed his back further against the brick wall. Electrical sparking has him glancing down the alleyway and pausing, brushing the handle of the knife in his pocket with his left hand only to calm when he realised it was just that street light again.
Three days. He’ll stay here another three days before he moves on to the next base.
The soldier doesn’t like this place. He hears footsteps running across rooftops every night. They head towards him but never close enough for the soldier to pinpoint them, not even from a vantage point high up on a water tower hidden from view, not from the highest window or fire escape ladder. The asset expects enemy soldiers to come slit his throat in his sleep.
It doesn’t happens.
He stays on edge.
An hour passes when the soldier notices a pair of figures moving further down the street. It’s late out, late enough that two people walking down the street is a strange sight. Late enough for it to catch the soldier’s attention.
The first is a woman. Tall. Slender. Blonde.
That last word sends a chill to his brain. The asset shakes his head, sending the sensation away.
She’s hugging a file close to her chest with her left arm, her right hand stealthily working its way into her purse. For a gun most likely, if the man following her is any indication.
The soldier turns away.
Stepping in will draw attention. Default protocol is to stay invisible.
He follows protocol.
But then there’s a woman’s scream.
And the soldier is running because Rebecca is screaming.
Karen stared at the screen of white.
Tapping an absent finger on the keyboard, she flicked her desk lamp on and off in a futile attempt to convince the light bulb in her mind to do the same. The empty word document stared back at her, the cursor blinking in mockery.
How could a single, blinking, pixelated, vertical line be so patronizing?
Groaning, Karen ran a hand through her hair, rubbing her temples as she glanced down at the scratches in the wood of the table.
Writer’s block thy evil bitch. This shouldn’t be so hard. She’s done all the research. Poured hours of work in. This should be easy. She knows what to write. She just hasn’t figured out how.
Leaning back in the office chair, she found her eyes straying over to the digital wall clock.
3:34 AM
Shit.
She knew everyone had gone home already but…
Okay. I need sleep. She winced when her vision blurred in response to that though. Maybe this was her brain’s way of saying coffee and Red Bulls were not an appropriate source of fuel. I can sleep in my office?
…
No. No Karen that’s a bad idea. Shutting down the laptop, she gathered her things and locked up.
In her sleep deprived state, Karen had forgotten that walking the streets of Hell’s Kitchen alone after dark in the middle of winter was not the brightest idea. After failing to unsuccessfully hail a cab, she decided to just power walk to her apartment. It wasn’t far. She’s done riskier things before.
Fumbling with her phone, Karen flicking through her list of contacts until she found the number she was looking for. She doesn’t want to disturb Foggy at this hour. But Matt might be out patrolling tonight. She could give him a call, ask him to ‘keep an ear out’, so to speak. Her thumb hovered over the call button.
She locked her phone.
Matt might be busy, in the middle of beating up some thugs and punching away at some lowlife’s face. No point bothering him if it wasn’t an emergency. She can take care of herself.
She’s two blocks from home when she realised there were footsteps behind her.
Despite being alert Karen hadn’t noticed them until now. She must be more tired than she initially thought. She can’t tell if they’re following her. While she wants to chalk them up to some harmless homeless person she speeds up her pace anyway, slowly reaching into her purse to run her fingers over the cool barrel of her gun.
The footsteps pause. She hears the scuff of boots as they turn around and walk away.
Karen let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Adjusting the strap of her bag, she continued her fast walk.
Just another block.
She didn’t make it.
Karen was walking past an alleyway when she was suddenly yanked into the shadows.
Everything happened so fast.
She barely has time to yell when a hand slapped over her mouth and nose, her back’s slammed against the cold wall and her head bounces off the brickwork. For a dizzying few moments, the world spins, everything a dark blur.
Something cold is pressed against her throat. When she snaps back from confusion she realises it’s sharp. Karen heaved out a panicked breath, her heart threatening to burst open from her ribcage as she blinked to try and force the world to refocus.
“Hand your shit over, bitch.”
Karen gasped as the pressure on her throat increased. She hadn’t realise she’d been hugging her manila folder so close to her chest. The folder she’d been using to disguise her laptop. The laptop with her countless hours of blood, sweat and tears filed away on and not backed up because she’s a moron who doesn’t back shit up and thinks walking through Hell’s Kitchen alone at night is a perfectly dandy thing to do.
She blinked the tears out of her eyes. She could make out her assailant’s scruffy dark hair jutting out from under his dark hood. Blue eyes. Five o’ clock shadow, six foot, medium complexion, large build, terrible gin breath-
Her head’s greeted the wall once again and she yelped, feeling warm blood slide down from her hairline. He must have figured out she was profiling him. Karen sucked in another breath, blinked more tears from her eyes. They refused to focus.
“I said HAND IT OVER!”
The pocket knife’s pressed further in and Karen can feel the thin bead of blood slide down her neck. She grits her teeth.
He’s taken her purse. She can’t reach her gun. But her phone’s in her pocket. She just needs to reach Matt.
“Fuck you.”
She spat in the fucker’s face.
The guy grunted, startled. She brought her leg up, slammed her knee into his stomach, knocked all that wind out of his breath and shoved her body away from his. She kicked off her heels and ran.
She didn’t make it far.
A hand hooked around her ankle and she tripped, face first with only snowfall to prevent her nose from shattering. She clawed desperately for her phone, scrambled to somehow regain footing whilst kicking back at the same time. The hand grabbed her shoulders and in an instant she’s flipped over onto her back. Concrete bites her skull for a third time. The world’s spinning again.
Phone.
She needs her phone.
Matt.
She just needs to-
The phone’s smacked from her hands.
Before she could scream for help she tastes that hand over her mouth again. The stinging of her eyes obscured her vision but not enough to hide the figure atop her. His arm raised. The blade glinting.
No.
God someone please-
The weight’s thrown off her body.
Karen wheezed, scrabbling backwards and propping herself up on bloody elbows. Pain shot up her arms and she winced, hunching forward as she pressed a hand to her bleeding skull.
What? What happened, what-
WHAP!
She looked up. There’s a second man. A second man who had her attacker lifted by the throat with a single hand. A second man with a look of pure rage in his eyes as he snarled at her attacker. A second man with a fucking metal arm. A metal arm that was raised and about to-
Karen shrieked, throwing her arms over her eyes. It didn’t help.
There’s another Whap! Another blow, and another. Another and another and another and each one sounding wetter and wetter, just Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap!
Seconds ticked by and they continued. Her useless legs refused to move from where they had fallen, refused to get her away from there and towards safety, refused to get away from that horrible sound.
She was trembling so bad she was forced to peek through the gaps of her arms, only to see red coating the snow. More and more red, and it just kept going and going and-
“STOP!”
The noise stopped.
There would have been silencing if not for her own shallow breaths. Karen doesn’t know how much time passes by until she chanced looking again.
The second man’s frozen mid swing. There’s blood. There’s so much blood everywhere but even so, her eyes land on the metal fucking arm with the shiny silver that’s been painted red, the fist dripping with blood and her attacker-
Oh god.
His face.
Or what’s left of it.
But the metal arm.
“Sergeant Barnes?” her voice shook as she asked it. She doesn’t get a reaction, but she noticed the sideward glance in her direction. She sucked in another breath. Shutting her eyes, she tried to control her breathing before finally getting her legs to listen to her.
“Let him go.”
There’s a thud.