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Sam comes to in the back of a transport vehicle, trussed up like a damn turkey with his hands behind his back and shackles on his legs. The humming of the engines echoes inside his skull and in his bones. His wings are gone.
His first panicky, confused thought, as he struggles to make sense of the pounding in his head and the full-body ache originating from somewhere in his ribs, is Oh god, no, Riley.
His second thought is a correction: Oh god, no, Rhodes.
He pries his eyes open and waits, disoriented, as they adjust to the dim lighting in the back of wherever the hell he is. He’s strapped into his seat, shoulders knocking against metal from the movement of the — plane?
“Welcome back,” he hears, and manages to lift his head enough to see Clint strapped in across from him, looking similarly trapped. “You okay in there?”
“Where the hell are we?” Sam asks. He tries to shift his weight to take some of the pressure off his wrists and groans as his ribs shriek in protest.
“Nowhere good, that’s for sure,” Clint says. “All I’ve got is that we’re in a Quinjet, we’re over the ocean, and we’re probably heading for somewhere I’m technically not supposed to know about.”
“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
The headrest of Sam’s seat doesn’t allow for a lot of peripheral vision, but he strains his neck forward and manages to make out Wanda, out cold, two seats down from Clint and outfitted with restraints of her very own.
“Somewhere we’re going to need help getting out of.” Clint pulls a face and kicks his feet, apparently just to hear the chains rattle. “Ant-dude is here too, by the way, but his whole Supersize Me thing apparently took a lot out of him, ‘cause he’s passed the hell out. They tranqued her,” he adds, jerking his head towards where Wanda’s locked down. “She won’t be waking up for a while.”
Sam takes a moment to breathe. In, out, in, out. You’ve been in worse shit, Sam Wilson, keep it the fuck together. In, out.
It’s another twenty-eight seconds of measured breathing before he can bring himself to ask. “Rhodes?”
“I don’t know, man.” There’s nothing but sympathy in Clint’s voice, but Sam still can’t look up from the floor, counting the lines in the grating along with his breaths. “I wish I did.”
“You didn’t see anything?” Sam asks. “Hear anything?”
“I heard sirens,” Clint offers, “but they black-bagged us pretty damn fast after you went down. Didn’t see what they were for.”
“Fuck,” Sam says, with feeling.
“You fuckin’ said it, man.” Clint sounds tired, like something’s been wrung out of him, and Sam takes a moment to remember that he’s not the only one who’s been put here by someone he’d called a friend.
“We are so goddamn screwed,” he says.
“You ain’t kidding. For starters, we’re about to be locked away in a very small room for a very long time,” Clint says, and then he grins, ruefully. “And for seconds, if I ever do manage to make it out, Laura is going to disembowel me her own damn self.”
Sam offers up a grim smile of his own. “So you might as well stay put, is what I’m hearing.”
“We’ll see what the room service is like.”
Sam can’t help a short, surprised bark of laughter at that, even if it’s immediately followed by a grimace courtesy of his bruised-to-hell ribs.
The pitch of the engine’s whine changes, and Clint’s head comes up like he’s been called to attention. “We’re landing,” he says, and he shifts his feet further under him, chains clanking. Even now when it’s the definition of pointless, when they’re outnumbered and outclassed and out of options, he can’t help the fighting stance.
The lurch of the plane touching tarmac jerks them back against the restraints, and Sam hears a groan of sleepy protest come from Scott’s general direction.
It was worth it, Sam reminds himself. It has to be worth it. The ramp lowers with a mechanical whine, and the stone-faced, black-suited agents with guns pour in. Outside, it’s raining. There’s nowhere to go but down.