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"Would you look at who made the news." John said as he entered the common room, holding his phone out in front of him.
'WHO IS THIS GUY?' the heading of the online news article screamed, accompanied by a picture of Bob sitting on a Watchtower balcony.
Bob glanced up from his cards just long enough to read the headline.
"And? They've run articles like this before." he said, pulling a card from his hand and setting it down between himself and Ava.
John shook his head.
"They haven't run it on a major news outlet before."
Ava set one of her own cards down.
"Who cares? Let Bob live his life."
"I care that he has a criminal record."
"That Valentina got expunged."
"But can still be found if someone digs deep enough." John crossed his arms. "This could look bad on all of us."
"Didn't you kill a civilian?" Bob interjected, still looking at his cards, "I don't see how things can get worse for you, reputation-wise."
John glared. Bob put another card down on the table with a smile. Ava huffed and drew a card. Then she smirked.
"Your turn."
Bob pondered his card choices, the sly smile still on his face. Ava spoke again.
"You know Bob, you have control of the narrative right now - if the world wants to find something, give them something good to find."
John spoke up, still glaring.
"Well I hope you find something good before the dirt shows."
Bob dropped his smile and looked up at John. An expression flickered across his face - hurt, or resignation. He started to say something, but was cut off by a loud, electric crackling noise. Bob's expression froze and he swayed for a moment, then toppled sideways onto the couch, his cards falling from his hand.
"Bob?" Ava asked, alarmed.
Bob lay motionless, staring blankly into space as the crackling noise continued.
Startled, John reached down and shook Bob's shoulder.
"Hey! Bob!"
Bob didn't respond. It was then that John noticed the whites of his eyes had turned blood red.
"Oh- Oh shit- Bob!"
~ ~ ~
Yelena was going over reports with Bucky when the tower's intercom dinged and Ava's voice came on.
"Yelena? We need you in the common room. Now."
"What's wrong?"
"Bob's dying."
Yelena didn't need another word before she bolted from her chair and rushed to the elevator, Bucky close behind.
When she got to the common room, she saw John kneeling over Bob's still form on the floor, frantically trying to breathe life back into him.
"Come on, come on, breathe..." John's voice was barely audible. "I didn't mean it... don't die on me..."
Ava was nearby.
"He still has a heartbeat." she said quickly, "So he's still alive, right?"
Yelena paled as she hurried to Bob's side, across from John. She looked down at Bob, his blood-colored eyes giving the empty stare of a dead man. It was then that the crackling noise registered.
"What's-"
"The noise?" Ava stated, "It just happened and he slumped over."
Bucky spoke.
"We need to get him to a hospital - our med bay can't handle this."
Yelena was on the phone with emergency services in seconds. John kept giving Bob breaths, even when his teammates offered to take a turn.
"No. I've got this." he said between sets. "Just make sure he still has a pulse."
~ ~ ~
"They said there's a device in his head that's doing this." Yelena said, "They can't remove it while it's active - they said that in his condition, it would kill him."
John stared into the window of the ICU room.
"Didn't you tell them he's indestructible, that he could just bounce back once they dig it out?" he said.
Yelena exhaled loudly.
"You think they believed me? He's already flatlined twice."
John kept staring through the window. The sight of Bob laying motionless, hooked up to so many machines, wires attached to his arms and a ventilator tube strapped to his face, was unsettling, but he couldn't look away.
"Valentina has to know something," Alexei said, also looking into the window, "She was in charge of Sentry project."
"We've been trying to contact her." Yelena said. "She isn't answering."
Bucky's phone dinged. Everyone turned to look at him.
"It's Mel." Bucky said, gesturing for them to step outside.
"Val's in a meeting. What's going on?" Mel's voice came over the speakerphone once the team had stepped into a phones-permissible area.
"Bob is in the ICU." Bucky replied. "They're saying there's something in his head that's killing him. Makes a noise like a taser. Know anything?"
Mel went silent. John flexed his hands.
"It sounds like you know something." He said loudly.
There was an extra second of silence before Mel spoke again.
"If it is what I think it is... it's the safeguard."
"The what?"
"There was a safeguard on Sentry - something to shut him down in case he went out of control. We used it once when he went rogue, before he turned into that... void thing."
"How do you shut it off?" Ava asked.
"You don't - it was supposed to... kill him in one shot." Mel said uneasily. "But you said the taser noise is still going?"
"Last I checked." said Bucky.
There was another silence before Mel spoke again.
"There was a remote that activated the safeguard. It went into an archive with the rest of the Sentry project stuff. Someone could have gotten in and wired it keep sending a signal."
"Who all has access to the archive?" Bucky asked.
"I don't know- anyone with high enough clearance in OXE Group."
"Can we get in?" Yelena responded.
"... I'll see what Val says."
"Fuck what Val says!" John burst out, "Bob is literally dying!"
A silence followed John's outburst.
Bucky spoke.
"Mel, can you get us in?"
"... You want me to go behind Val's back?"
"We want you to save a man's life."
After another pause, Mel let out a long breath of air.
"I'll send you the coordinates." She said, "You owe me one." Then she hung up.
Bucky pocketed his phone. Ava held up a hand.
"Wait, why are we going to the archive?" she asked, "If someone else has the remote..."
"A place that secure has to have cameras." Yelena answered, "Logs of who came and went."
"Unless someone snuck in." Alexei said.
"In which case there could be evidence left." Bucky said, "Either way, it's our first step in saving Bob."
Alexei agreed to stay behind and keep the team updated on Bob's condition. Investigating archives wasn't his style anyway, he'd said. Investigating archives wasn't anyone's style, everyone being the more the punch-shoot-explode types, but they were desperate.
Mel followed through on her word - the archive's security staff let them in and gave them free reign of the place, no questions asked. Yelena went through the visitor logs while Bucky went to check security camera footage. John and Ava went to search the remote's previous storage spot for any clues on who might've taken it. They didn't expect to find a very large clue.
"Think it was an accident, or do you think they tried to take the whole shelf down?" Ava asked as she looked over the mess of scattered boxes and paperwork.
"Who knows." John said, picking through sheaves of fallen papers. "But whoever did it knew what they were looking for. The rest of this stuff would fetch a pretty penny on the black market."
Ava narrowed her eyes.
"Should you be touching that? This is a crime scene."
"Relax. I have gloves on." John said, picking up a particularly thick sheaf and paging through it.
Ava just stared at him. Finally, she spoke.
"What are you even doing?"
John flipped through several more pages.
"Looking for something."
"You hate reading paperwork."
"Bob is dying. I'll read if I have to."
"Because you want to save him, or because you don't want to feel guilty?"
John's jaw tightened, but he didn't respond. He just kept paging through the papers.
Ava continued.
"You keep charging forward like it'll undo what you said to him. You keep doing this, and it'll just-"
"Here we go!" John said loudly, holding the papers out for Ava to see.
The schematics for a handheld control were laid out in black and white, with the title 'SAFEGUARD ACTIVATION UNIT' in block letters above it.
"The remote." Ava stated. "So that's what it looks like."
John turned through several more pages of diagrams until he reached a new set of schematics bearing the name 'Neural Termination Module'.
"Is that..." Ava started.
"... The thing in his head." John finished. He unclipped it and its accompanying pages from the sheaf. "The docs will want this." he said, folding the papers and stuffing them in a pocket. Then he noticed Ava staring at him in disapproval. "What? I'll put them back later." He tapped his earpiece. "How's it going, Yelena?"
"Nothing." Yelena's voice came through both of their earpieces. "Nobody but the security team have been here for the last month."
"Yeah, well that nobody made a mess over here." John said, then relayed what he and Ava had found.
Bucky's voice came on.
"There isn't a camera on your location, but I can see the walkways around it. I'm not seeing any movement in the area since..." he stopped. "Walker, is that a piece of paper near the main walkway?"
John glanced down the aisle. Sure enough, some papers from the fallen shelf had slid that far.
"Yeah?"
There was a pause before Bucky spoke again.
"Those papers weren't there last night."
Ava tilted her head.
"You're saying the break-in happened this morning?"
"I'm saying... do you remember what time Bob collapsed?"
"A little after 8 this morning."
There was a pause.
"The papers don't show on the camera till 8:07."
"So someone-"
"No, there was no someone. I think the shelf just collapsed." Then he added, "The remote could still be here."
The realization hit John and Ava at the same time. Instantly, they started digging through the mess of broken boxes and paperwork.
"How big did that paper say it was?" Ava asked, pulling a busted box open and rifling through it.
"Something like the size of a pistol grip." John said, eyes racing over the mess as he shoved things around. The remote needed to be here. It needed to be here!
Then he spotted it; the remote, wedged upside-down between two pieces of broken shelf, the corner of a box jammed against the trigger button. John yanked it free. Then he dropped it on the floor and brought his foot down on it with an impact that could be heard across the archive.
"Was... that it?" Ava asked, stopping her search.
John lifted his foot. The now-smashed remote emitted a few sparks. John stomped on it again. Then again. And again.
"John- John, stop. It's dead." Ava said.
John kicked the remains of the remote against a shelf for good measure. He was breathing hard, teeth gritted.
Everyone's earpieces chimed with an incoming group call. It was Alexei.
"You got it! Device is off!"
John gave a long breath of relief.
"Yeah. We got it."
~ ~ ~
Bob hadn't woken up by the time the team got back to the hospital. But according to Alexei, his vitals had improved drastically and he was breathing on his own now.
John handed over the papers he'd swiped from the archive to the hospital staff. Now that the device was off, they could figure out how to remove it before anything else could potentially happen, 'when he's strong enough', the doctor had said. John had given him a weak laugh and replied 'That'll be sooner than you think.'
It was only a matter of hours before Bob finally cracked his eyes open. John was the only one in the room, the others taking turns watching him. He didn't notice when Bob woke - he was too busy reading on his phone. He snapped alert when he felt a hand grab his wrist.
"Walker!" Bob yelped, looking around in alarm. "What hap- Did I go somewhere? Did the- the dark come back?!"
John was about to pull Bob's hand off, but stopped. He was too relieved to see Bob's eyes had gone back to normal.
"No." he placed a hand over Bob's. "No, you did fine. There was a kill switch on you that got flipped. I- We shut it down."
Bob let go and sank back onto the hospital bed, tears of relief in his eyes.
"For a minute, I thought..." he dried his eyes on his sleeve.
John watched him for a moment.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
Bob shook his head.
"I was playing cards... and..." he blinked. "You were angry at me."
John's posture deflated.
"Yeah... I was."
"The media was getting nosy."
John gave a hollow laugh.
"After today, they're going to be worse." He held up his phone, displaying headlines asking why The New Avengers were gathered at the hospital.
Bob gave a dejected sigh.
"I'm sorry... I always just make everything worse."
"No-" John found himself gripping Bob's shoulder. "Don't say that. You're the best thing that's happened to this team."
Bob looked up at him with watery eyes. John continued.
"Don't think about the media. We'll give them something good to find."