Chapter Text
“The fact that you’re considering any other answer than no right now is telling me everything I need to know.” Sophia tries to be careful with her tone, but it spills out bitingly despite her efforts and she doesn’t miss the way it makes Lara’s face twitch minutely.
“You have no idea what I’m thinking right now,” Lara replies evenly, leaning back in her chair. Her face is relaxed again, expression betraying absolutely nothing in the way that’s always made Sophia feel a little bit crazy. As much as she’s loath to admit it, Lara’s right. Even the minor tic from moments ago isn’t something Sophia can confidently attribute any emotion to. It could have been anything from amusement to scorn. Still, if there’s one thing that Sophia does know about Lara for certain, it’s that she’s excellent at putting up a confident front—even if she’s wavering. She doesn’t let her own expression shift.
“Shouldn’t we let Yoonchae have a say in this?” Megan’s voice nearly breaks Sophia from her carefully arranged mask of indignance and in her haste to rectify it, she misses the way Lara’s eyes flicker to the ground guiltily. The youngest present member of their team stands up from her own seat, planting her hands on the table. Her eyes are a little wild and Sophia wonders absently if she’s been sleeping poorly again. “You’re acting like she’s fragile or something. She’s not. She’s Yoonchae.”
Lara leans forward, hands steepled in front of her.
“I never said—”
“Mei-Mei has a point,” Daniela cuts her off. She’s examining her nails casually, feet propped up on the table, boots shedding dirt onto some documents Sophia’s pretty sure are both important and one-of-a-kind.
“Don’t call me that,” Megan groans, shoulders slumping. Whatever fight had suddenly flared up in her seems to have run its course within seconds and she sits back down slowly. Daniela shrugs, slipping a nail file from her sleeve deftly. She runs it over the edge of one nail before looking up again.
“What? I don’t have anything else to add besides the fact that she’s right,” she says, flicking her hand to wave off the expectant gazes of the other girls.
“Manon?” Lara asks, wheeling on the last member who hasn’t spoken yet. There’s something desperate underlying her tone, the edges of her mouth taut with worry. She’s gripping the edge of the table like it might take off if she lets go, knuckles white. Sophia lets out a small puff of air. She’s been appraising Lara like some kind of enemy. She lets the firm set of her shoulders melt away and leans back against her chair as she waits for Manon’s reply.
“I think you all are foolish for thinking she’s not going to do whatever she wants regardless of what you say,” Manon informs them, one brow lifting gracefully. “And I’ll bet you anything she’s been listening to us this whole time, rolling her eyes.”
They all follow her gaze to the ceiling and Sophia wants to scream, just a little, when she sees the wide vent positioned square above their conference table. There’s a beat of silence before metal squeaks and clanks, two screws dropping onto the table before the vent swings open and a pair of socked feet pokes out. Yoonchae lowers herself easily out of the ventilation shaft until she’s hanging by one arm above them, clad in blue pajama pants and Lara’s old university hoodie, her hair a tousled mess.
“It’s late,” Sophia chides, narrowing her eyes at the girl as she drops onto the table with a nearly inaudible thump. Yoonchae’s nose twitches, eerily similar to the way Lara’s had just minutes ago and she pads across the table to drop down to the floor next to Megan’s chair. She crosses her arms, cocking a hip slightly.
“Look, Webs, you know it’s just about us wanting to protect you,” Lara breaks the silence, her stoic expression collapsing into one Sophia is much more familiar with—a shifting mix of exhaustion, fondness and determination.
Yoonchae doesn’t reply, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth to gnaw on it. It takes all that’s left of Sophia’s willpower not to scold her gently for doing so. She’s pretty sure that Yoonchae has picked the habit up from Megan and it makes them both look far too young for the job they’re all doing whenever she catches either of them sink their teeth into their skin.
“What Lara means to say,” Daniela says carefully, nail file abandoned in favor of the soft, open expression she really only adopts for the younger members of their team, “is that the choice is yours, okay?”
“I want to go,” Yoonchae says immediately. It makes every one of them, even Megan, tense a little, but Lara is nodding before Sophia can think of a diplomatic way to argue. It’s a dangerous mission, but Yoonchae’s been on those before—probably more times than Sophia herself has. She’s not sure how to tactfully explain that it puts Yoonchae right back into the reach of the very organization she’d been rescued from just years ago, but then again, Yoonchae definitely already understands that and doesn’t care. One glance at the youngest’s stubborn expression confirms that no amount of arguing is going to change her mind.
“That’s settled, then. No reason to keep gabbing,” Lara sighs, standing up wearily. There’s a hunch to her shoulders that worries Sophia. Megan and Manon follow quickly, but Daniela stays seated for a long moment, exchanging a long look with a tense-looking Manon before she too stands. Sophia swallows down the bubble of apprehension in her throat and pushes herself to her feet with as firm a nod as she can muster.
“You heard her,” she chokes. “Off to bed. We’ve got things to do in the morning.”
She tries not to imagine blinking red target dots on the backs of her teammates heads as she watches them shuffle out of the dimly lit conference room. When Yoonchae turns back to look at her, she has to avoid looking directly into the younger’s eyes.
…
She catches Lara in a hallway three wings away from her room, clicking along in the heeled boots she seems to never take off. Sophia isn’t sure where everyone else has drifted off to. Technically, they all have rooms—wings, really—in the sprawling underground complex that is Lara’s most recent architectural opus. Under a suffocatingly long H.Y.B.E contract, they’re all legally mandated to claim the complex as their sole place of residence. However, none of the Katseye members have ever been shining examples of cooperative citizenship. Sophia knows for a fact that Daniela has at least three apartments tucked away in the city for her to slip away to and that’s on the East coast alone. Megan threw Manon a birthday party at an apartment near Hell’s Kitchen that looked a little too lived-in to be strictly a safe-house. The only person who actually acts like they live at the Katseye compound besides Lara is Yoonchae and Sophia honestly tries not to spend too much time thinking about why that is or she’ll cry.
“Hey,” she calls out softly, trying not to celebrate too outwardly when her voice halts Lara in her tracks instantly. “Are you okay?”
She’d meant to ask what the hell is wrong with you? Or even, are you crazy? But the look on Lara’s face as she turned had blown all those things to the wayside.
Lara inhales sharply, brows furrowing as she drags her eyes over Sophia’s loose jeans and white hoodie. It’s taken her years to stop parading around her traditional armor. She only breaks it out for battle now, but she’s pretty sure Lara still expects to see Sophia in that regal red cape and the little gold crown with the wings on the sides.
“Are you?”
The response isn’t what she’d been expecting, but Lara is all smooth, rounded edges under the sharp corners of her eyeliner and designer sunglasses that seem permanently affixed to her skull. She’s gentler than anyone gives her credit for, given that she’s had her coffee and none of her projects have blown up in her face recently.
“Yeah,” Sophia murmurs. Her face twists. “No. I don’t know.”
She closes her eyes against the lighting in the hallway. The Katseye compound is tastefully lit everywhere except the medical wing, which must be where they are now because Sophia’s eyes are burning against the fluorescents.
“Here.” Lara shoves something plastic into her hands and Sophia jams those damn designer sunglasses over her eyes gratefully. Lara starts clicking away again and she strides forward to join her. “We have some time to prepare. Like, half a year, basically. And you saw H.Y.B.E’s schema. Yoonchae will be with Dani the whole way through. If it goes fubar, she’ll get her out.”
Lately, Lara always seems to know what Sophia’s thinking. It hadn’t always been that way. For a long time, Sophia and Lara couldn’t have a conversation that went beyond playful banter and innuendo. Manon thinks it’s because they were both getting used to not being the most powerful person in the room anymore, which Sophia can’t help but roll her eyes at.
“Dani’s just a human,” Sophia murmurs. She regrets it before Lara even replies.
“Dani’s a Widow,” the other woman bites back. “And you’re a human like the rest of us, you know. Just with a little more freaky-deaky outer space dust involved.”
“It’s not outer space—”
“I know. It’s a realm, blah blah, whatever,” Lara cuts her off again and the gooey feeling in Sophia’s chest starts to dissipate. She wants to rip off the sunglasses and toss them against the tiled floor, but her eyes really are sensitive to this kind of lighting and Lara isn’t slowing down, so she takes a deep breath and refrains. “Sophia, you need to sleep. I’m totally willing to argue about this more in the morning, but I’ve got shit to do and you look like you got hit by a bus.”
“A bus wouldn’t hurt me,” Sophia mutters, unheard. Louder, then. “You should sleep too.”
The look she gets in return is completely indecipherable and for a second, Lara looks exactly like Yoonchae. She wonders vaguely if Yoonchae got that expression from Lara or if it was the other way around.
“Go, Sophia,” Lara urges, hands gentle against her shoulders.
It isn’t until she’s many hallways away that Sophia realizes she’d never given Lara her sunglasses back.
…
It’s not so much that Sophia forgets about the whole “take down Hydra with one final master mission” thing that it is she just has other, more pressing things to think about. By the time they’re out on their next routine mission, her argument with Lara isn’t much more than a blip on the radar of her past few weeks.
“Breathe, Spidey,” Manon’s voice crackles over the comms. “It’s just a routine bust.”
“I am breathing,” Yoonchae replies, clipped.
Sophia can see her figure in the distance, crouched tensely on the edge of a building. She’s been skittish about missions lately. Sophia suspects Megan knows something about why, but she’s not being forthcoming about it if she does. The white eyeplates of Yoonchae’s mask sweep over the skyline once, twice. They dart up to the stars briefly before falling back down to the city. Megan snorts. She’s sitting beside Yoonchae, legs dangling over the side of the building carelessly. She’s doodling on something, but even Sophia’s sharp eyes can’t make out what it is that she’s drawing in the rapidly dimming light.
“Barely,” she teases. Yoonchae doesn’t rise to the challenge, but she does blow out a small amused breath that comes through the comms like static.
“Focus,” Lara intones over the line. It’s not quite a warning, not yet, but Yoonchae’s muscles regain some of their tension and even Megan tucks away her drawing to sit upright. “If our intel is solid, we’re about to get real busy.”
“When is our intel not solid?” Daniela chirps.
“Whenever it’s yours,” Manon shoots back, voice lilting and playful. Sophia lets a smile ghost over her face at the sound of Daniela’s spluttering. It’s rare to catch her off guard like that. Lara doesn’t scold them again, but Sophia can imagine the look on the scientist’s face as she listens to them banter. Movement out of the corner of her eye snags her attention and her smile drops, head whipping around to scan her surroundings.
“Intersection of 15th and 9th,” she hisses, sticking a hand out to her side. Energy thrums through her body, the hairs on her arms rising. She loves this feeling. There’s a tug in her gut, slight at first and then stronger, smooth leather smacking into her palm just as the pull is about to become uncomfortable. She wraps her fingers around the grip of her hammer, hefting it up as she shoots off the ledge she’d been standing on, crackles of electricity sparking around her right hand.
She doesn’t need to look behind her to know that Lara is hovering close behind, suspended in the air by her latest suit model. One time, she’d watched Lara tinker with one of the propulsion gloves of her suit, listening as the other woman explained how it worked in a slew of terms and jokes Sophia didn’t understand. She’ll never understand how any of it works, but she tries to for Lara’s sake, and for Yoonchae’s, since the girl spends half of her free time down in Lara’s lab building little robots and fiddling with Lara’s old projects.
Something whistles by her head next to her ear and it yanks her from her thoughts just in time to keep her from flying headfirst into a stoplight. She draws up, watching as Manon’s arrow buries itself in one of the tires of the van that, to Sophia’s relief, has plates that match the numbers they’re looking for. The vehicle swerves for a second before the driver regains control and pulls off to the curb. Three men spill out, arguing loudly amongst themselves as they circle the van. Sophia holds up a hand.
There is a long moment of stillness.
She hates this part. The waiting. She’s always been good at it, but it’s one of the only times that doubt starts to creep into the corners of her mind. Hovering there, mere meters away from one of what could be their most important weapons bust as of late, Sophia wheels through every mistake she’s ever made as a superhero. Faces, some familiar, some strange, flash eerily in front of her, bleeding, screaming, cheering.
“Soph?” Lara’s voice doesn’t come through the comms. It’s a whisper, carrying easily through the night air. Sophia blinks. She waits for her heart to thump, twice.
“Go,” she instructs sharply, clearly.
In the split second before Lara shoots past her, she registers metal-clad fingers brushing across her spaulders, adjusting her cape. No time to linger, Lara is landing with a crunch on top of the van, gaining the attention of the three men. The driver moves before the others do, reaching under his hoodie and pulling out a glowing weapon that makes Sophia’s stomach churn just to look at. He fires off a beam of deadly-looking light with a yell. It goes careening off into the night and Sophia abandons her post momentarily when she hears the familiar sound of rock crumbling.
She plucks Megan out of midair with one hand and catches a hunk of rock that tumbles off the side of a parking garage with the other, easing them both to the ground. Her hammer thunks to the ground, cratering the pavement in a way that makes her wince, but the street is luckily empty of cars at this hour.
“I would’ve been fine,” Megan informs her, which is technically true. She could’ve gone down with the chunk of concrete that had previously been her lookout post and been “fine.” Not unharmed, but “fine.”
“It would’ve hurt,” Sophia replies. Megan shrugs flippantly.
“I’m used to it.” She holds up one hand and it flops sickeningly over itself. Oops. Sophia must have grabbed her a little more forcefully than intended. As they both watch, Megan’s bones pop back into place and after a moment, she stretches her hand out with a sigh. “Good as new!”
“Skiendiel!” Daniela barks through the comms and Megan’s off and running before Sophia can say anything.
The scene she returns to is a little more chaotic than they’d planned out over the conference table that morning. Yoonchae has—a little too thoroughly—webbed one guy to the wall of a nearby deli. Recognizing the birthmark above his brow noted in their mission file, Sophia realizes he's the ringleader of the operation. He’s got the burner phone they need tucked away in his pocket. Yoonchae and Manon are working on unearthing it without letting the guy go while Lara rifles through the back of the van, tossing out deadly weapons to the various RAJ Corp metal skeletons hovering around them. She’s being a little more careless with them than Sophia herself would be, but to each their own, she supposes.
Daniela and Megan are busy wrangling the other two dealers, who are both wearing glowing gauntlets that seem to be the culprits of the various holes in the concrete around them. Megan’s left arm is dangling uselessly beside her as she waves one of her katanas at the guys.
Police sirens are wailing in the distance and Sophia thinks she’d really rather not deal with bureaucracy tonight and they need those contacts.
She takes a deep breath, pointing her hammer at the guy advancing on Daniela. There’s the tug in her stomach, sharp and familiar.
“Move!” She orders, feeling electricity shoot through her body as Daniela leaps out of the way. The dealer crumples to the ground, twitching and she winces. His gauntlets spark, once, twice and Megan realizes what’s about to happen before anyone else.
“They’re gonna blow!”
…
In the end, they get the phone from the guy, but they’re all smelling a little more like smoke than they’d like. Manon’s quiver keeps losing arrows, charred as it is, and Daniela’s grumbling about the singed edges of her hair. Megan’s suit is in tatters, but she’s relatively unharmed alongside Lara and Yoonchae, who both sport (mostly) flame-resistant suits. Yoonchae, with her enhanced senses, had been standing a little too close to the explosion and can’t hear anything quieter than a yell over the persistent ringing in her ears.
Daniela swipes the burner phone from Manon the second they reach the compound and stalks off to do whatever spy stuff she needs to do in order to get them the list of suspects they need. Manon trails after her with a plate full of snacks swiped from the kitchen that’s supposed to be reserved for Sophia, but has become more of a communal area than anything else. She’s well aware she invited it by begging everyone to try the food she cooks and putting out freshly baked desserts as often as she does.
They’re meant to turn the phone over to H.Y.B.E’s digital forensics department, but Sophia’s never been one to tattle on her members. She knows Daniela likes to have backup stores of information in case H.Y.B.E doesn’t give them complete mission outlooks, which they admittedly often don’t.
“Sophia?” Megan’s voice breaks through her musing. Her sunglasses glint under the low-hanging kitchen lights. She slides into the seat across the table from Sophia, an empty mug clenched in her hands.
“What’s up?” Sophia asks gently, reaching across to tug the mug out of Megan’s grasp. She motions for Megan to stay seated as she gets up and starts digging around in the cabinets, unearthing a small saucepan and sticking it on the stove.
Behind her, at the table, Megan lets out a slow sigh. Her glasses slip down her nose just enough to reveal the edges of the scarring around her eyes. Sophia pretends not to have noticed. She dumps some milk into the saucepan and flicks the burners on.
“Earlier,” the younger girl starts, “I—I feel like the mission didn’t go as well as it could have.”
Sophia nods, expression neutral. She turns, leaning against the counter as she keeps one eye on the saucepan and the other on Megan.
“Say more,” she prods carefully.
“We didn’t all need to be there,” Megan says. She pushes her glasses up her nose and shifts to look at Sophia.
She doesn’t need to see Megan’s eyes to know they’re hardened, resolute like she expects Sophia to argue with her.
“I agree,” she replies easily instead, abandoning her post by the stove to grab a wooden spoon and give the milk a stir. From the pantry she fetches a canister of hot chocolate mix, adding a few spoonfuls to the saucepan. It’s a little more than she’d use for herself, but Megan likes it strong. “It was overkill. We probably could have done with just sending Lara and Manon.”
“Yeah!” Relief is palpable in Megan’s voice and she stands, rounding the counter to stand a little closer. Her hands shake a little where they grip the edge of the granite worktop and Sophia shoves the spoon at her as something to occupy them, hoping she can slow the shake with the warmth of the stove. “It doesn’t look good for us when we beat up on low-level dealers like that. What if people had seen? Hell, they probably did.”
Sophia hums as she watches Megan swirl the concoction around in the pan. While Megan has always been sensitive to the public perception of Katseye, she’s been extra jumpy about it ever since her first name had been leaked on an online forum after the team held a press conference at which a security guard had carelessly referred to a few of them with their real names. H.Y.B.E had been quick to get it scrubbed from as many crevices of the internet as they could, but Megan insisted privately that it wasn’t enough.
“Megan,” she murmurs, catching Megan’s wrist before her too-vigorous stirring can send droplets flying out of the saucepan. She reclaims the spoon and gives the mixture one last stir before turning the burner off and grabbing an extra mug down from the cabinet. Megan disappears from her side and returns with her own mug, placing it gingerly down beside Sophia’s.
They sit back down at the table, dirty dishes abandoned in the sink.
“Why do you think H.Y.B.E sent us all out on this bust?” She asks Megan, dipping her pinky into her mug to test the temperature. Megan lifts her drink to her lips without checking. “Careful.”
“It’s fine,” Megan waves her off, even as she grimaces at the heat. “It’ll heal. And I think they just didn’t care enough to make sure they thought through the best course of action before they decided who was going.”
“Well, that’s awfully pessimistic,” Lara drawls from the entryway, leaning against the doorframe. She’s changed out of her mission clothes into loose jeans and a t-shirt with the logo of some band splashed across the front. Her feet are clad in the most ridiculous slippers Sophia has ever seen.
“What are you wearing on your feet? Are those animals?”
“Hedgehogs,” Lara nods. Seeing Sophia’s horrified expression, she quickly clarifies. “Not real ones. Hedgehogs aren’t blue on Earth, Soph. It’s from a video game.”
Megan snorts and even Lara can’t quite seem to contain her amused grin at Sophia’s confusion, but she can’t quite find it in herself to be well and truly mad when Megan’s shoulders have finally relaxed and her hands are steady around her mug.
“I would’ve made you some if I’d known you were stopping by,” Sophia says, lifting her mug at Lara, who shrugs.
“It’s glorified chocolate milk. I’ll live.” She crosses the room to drop into a chair at the table, leaning back comfortably. “So, are we being all doom-and-gloom again?”
“Lara,” Megan groans. “I’m serious.”
Sophia can see the softening in Lara’s brow at Megan’s tone. She’d never been able to recognize that before they started working together.
“I know,” Lara intones. “Look, Megan, there’s a reason H.Y.B.E sent us all out for such a simple thing.”
Any traces of teasing are gone from her face as she leans forward, eyes flickering up to meet Sophia’s briefly. They’ve talked about this. None of the others have. None of the others know, but Sophia’s beginning to doubt their choice on that. She gives Lara a tiny nod.
“There’s been an uptick of Hydra activity in the city in the past few weeks,” Lara says carefully. Megan goes very still, grip tightening on her mug. “Nothing crazy, just a few underground meetings. Some familiar faces, some new ones.”
Megan stays quiet. Sophia can’t tell where she’s looking beneath her glasses.
“It’s nothing to be too freaked out about just yet—”
“We were security,” Megan mumbles. “They sent us all in case something happened. We were walking into a potential ambush.”
Lara sits upright a little more, mouth pressed into a firm line as she shakes her head.
“It wasn’t like that—”
“But it could have been!” Megan shoves her mug away from her, sending droplets of hot chocolate splashing onto the table. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Megan,” Sophia cuts in, reaching across the table. She stops herself just before she can grab Megan’s hands and rests her own hands palm-up on the table in front of her. “Look at me.”
She waits. Megan slowly picks her head up. In her frenzy, her glasses have slipped down her nose. Wide brown eyes glare up at Sophia, shining and red-rimmed, stark against the scar tissue that surrounds them.
“We were testing out a full team mission to see if that would be a viable possibility for us if the activity in the city does continue to increase. It wasn’t because we thought anything was going to happen tonight. Does that make sense?”
Megan nods once. She closes her eyes, pushing her glasses back up.
“We are going to talk to Yoonchae,” Sophia continues. “We’re going to talk to everyone. We decided to wait because she’s having a tough time with school right now. Manon’s struggling with her solo H.Y.B.E missions and Dani hasn’t slept in weeks. It wasn’t the right time.”
Lara’s nodding along beside her, but Megan doesn’t look entirely placated.
“Still,” she hisses. “You should have told us. We’re a team. We’re not your—your subjects or whatever.”
Sophia can feel Lara’s whole-body wince at that. The wooden chair creaks as she shifts, leaning forward. She doesn’t hesitate to grab Megan’s hand, engulfing it in both of hers gently. Her hands are covered in machine grease, but Megan doesn’t seem to care.
“You’re right,” Lara says tiredly. Megan’s eyebrows lift and her shoulders seem to forget her anger for a moment.
“I am?”
“Of course you are, Mei.” Lara lets out a defeated chuckle. “You usually are.”
Instead of looking smug, Megan folds inwards, oversized t-shirt swallowing her form even more as she curls forward over their entwined hands. She leans her forehead against Lara’s wrist, an imitation of some kind of prayer and Sophia makes her hands move to rub gentle circles across Megan’s shoulder blades.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” she whispers into the table. She can’t see Lara shaking her head, but Sophia gets the sense she knows it’s happening anyway. “It’s—I’m scared. That scared me.”
“It scared—scares—us too,” Lara agrees. Sophia traces her agreement into Megan’s back. Y-E-S.
“You don’t have to agree with us,” she murmurs. “But it would be nice if you could trust us. You don’t have to trust H.Y.B.E. You don’t even have to trust Son. Just us.”
Megan doesn’t say anything, but when she sits up and her glasses have gone askew on her face, she takes them off instead of fixing them back over her eyes. Without them, she looks much more like an exhausted nineteen year old than she does a witty, regenerating vigilante.
Sophia’s pretty sure it means I’ll try.
…
“You could have picked literally anyone else to do this with you,” Manon grumbles, tugging uncomfortably at the collar of her neatly pressed shirt. Sophia reaches over and loosens her tie for her, just enough to get the other woman to stop fiddling with it.
“But I didn’t,” she chirps, taking a quick glance down at herself to ensure her blouse is still tucked neatly into her pencil skirt. “Straighten up.”
Manon obeys instinctively despite her patronized scowl. The light spilling into the train car from outside flickers prettily across her face, illuminating the upper half of her face in bursts. They’re barreling along beneath the city on their way to a meeting that Lara had to bail on because she’d received a frantic email from Sohey that morning about a potential PR disaster for RAJ Corp. It had scared her out of her low-slung jeans and band tee into a full suit, hair done up to match, so Sophia hadn’t bothered trying to convince Lara to come anyway.
“You didn’t even brief me,” Manon complains lowly. Her fingers skitter anxiously across the tops of her knees, drumming out a stuttering beat. It’s a testament to how much Manon trusts Sophia now that she’d agreed to come along without knowing what she was getting herself into. Knowing this, Sophia doesn’t bother dragging out her explanation playfully like she might have for Daniela or Megan. She slings an arm casually around Manon’s shoulders, pretending she doesn’t notice the way it makes the archer’s shoulders relax.
“H.Y.B.E has some new contacts for us to read over,” she hums. “Lara wasn’t too worried about them, so I doubt they’ll have anything too different from the previous ones, but she didn’t want us signing them blindly just in case.”
Katseye is what Megan calls “a hand-wavingly legal operation.”
They make it through two more stops in silence. The subway car around them bustles with unceasing movement, enough chaos to make Manon’s usual restlessness turn into a flurry of tapping feet and fidgeting fingers. She’s so jittery that Sophia’s about to suggest they stand up when Manon suddenly stills.
“Do you think…” she starts, swallowing hard as she falters. Sophia rubs her thumb against her shoulder, waiting. “Dani and I…We’re still H.Y.B.E. Yoonchae too.”
“Contractually, yes,” Sophia nods. Manon and Daniela are technically still employed under H.Y.B.E, while Megan and Sophia are considered something like freelancers—assets, really—under RAJ Corp. Yoonchae is something in between it all. As well as Sophia can understand, Lara has the closest thing she can to legal guardianship over the girl, but she still has to defer to H.Y.B.E when it comes to certain matters (particularly those concerning Hydra).
“They control us,” comes the hesitant reply. Manon refuses to let her gaze settle on Sophia in the silence that follows, eyes darting around the train as she scans their surroundings carefully.
“We won’t let them take you away,” Sophia murmurs finally, taking a blind stab at the core of Manon’s concerns. She knows she’s hit the nail on the head when Manon’s breath wooshes out of her shakily, the weight of her head tilting down to rest on Sophia’s shoulder. “Dani would never let that happen, anyway. She’d pitch a fit.”
A tremor runs through Manon’s body, but she stays quiet. Sophia doesn’t let go of her as the train slows at their stop, twining their fingers together as she leads the other woman out of the station and onto the street.
“It’s not in the Helicarrier?” Manon asks softly as she’s guided into the lobby of an upscale hotel. Sophia shakes her head.
“Son said he would send a car for us,” she explains, scanning the few people milling about the lobby. She seems to lock in on her target and drags Manon along with her in approaching a shorter man by the elevators. “Smithson?”
The man inclines his head.
“Ma’am.”
They follow him through the winding halls of the hotel’s first floor, taking so many turns that Sophia completely loses track of which direction they’d come from, and eventually exiting the building through a nondescript employee door. They stumble out into what Sophia assumes is the parking lot behind the hotel, but there’s only one car idling a few paces away. Smithson stops short and gestures for them to get in.
Manon’s hesitation is palpable, but she curls her fingers around the bottom of Sophia’s blazer and climbs into the back of the sleek black car. It’s blocky with tinted windows the way all H.Y.B.E cars are and Sophia’s in the middle of wondering how that could possibly be more discrete than a fleet of random, unrelated cars when the divider between the front and back seats slides down.
Son’s face greets them, familiarly stoic as he gives them each a nod.
“Agent Bannerman. Ms. Laforteza.”
“Sir.”
He says something quietly to the driver and the car starts moving. Manon’s hand finds Sophia’s and grips tightly. She’s been extra skittish regarding H.Y.B.E lately. More and more solo mission requests are piling into her inbox and she’s having to decide between working herself to the bone or passing them off to someone possibly less qualified. For Sophia’s part, she’s wondering why the hell Manon’s personal workload has kicked up at the same time as Katseye is being called upon more and more.
Son doesn’t give her much time to think about it, nor does he seem to hear her start to fire off a question.
“We have new contracts with a few international defense agencies. They won’t impact your personal contracts. They just outline some guidelines for our communications on non-domestic matters. As you know, we’ve been dealing with an increase in international activity, so we need to make sure we’re not stepping on any toes,” he explains, rapid-fire like he expects them to throw themselves out of the vehicle if he stops talking for too long.
“Can we read them?” Manon asks.
“They’re long and dense,” he replies, but he doesn’t deny her. He passes back a thick manila folder. Manon spreads it out on her lap and goes quiet. Sophia opens her mouth to attempt conversation with Son, but the man is already turning to face forward again, so she clamps it shut and gazes out the window. They’re flying over a bridge that she recognizes; they’re headed back towards the Katseye compound.
“Soph,” Manon murmurs, then more urgently, “Soph, look.”
She’s jabbing her finger at a line of text and Sophia bends to look at it, but the car jounces over a bump and her head knocks into Manon’s chin, eliciting a hushed string of profanities from the other woman.
“Sorry, I’m sorry!”
Her fingers cup Manon’s jawline apologetically, but she’s already being waved off.
“It’s fine, just—” Manon shoots a glance up at the passenger’s seat and reaches up to tap on the divider that Son had closed again without Sophia noticing. It slides back down again. “Son, what the hell is this?”
The man doesn’t turn around.
“I thought you might have something to say about that clause,” he says lightly, too flippant for the distressed expression plastered across Manon’s delicate features.
“So what, they can never go abroad again? Never go home?” Her tone is demanding, fiercer than Sophia thinks she’s ever heard it in a professional setting.
“They can never defect again,” he shoots back, finally turning to face them again. “It’s a precaution.”
“It’s a violation.” Manon flips the folder shut. “I can’t sign this.”
“You don’t have to. Ms. Laforteza does.”
Manon wheels frantically on Sophia, eyes blazing. Sophia’s hands flutter upwards again, trying to soothe in the best way she knows how, but the tension in the car is so intense she can feel her fingers buzzing with barely-contained electricity and she folds them back into her lap again.
“I don’t understand,” she admits, eyes locked on Manon’s.
“Dani and Yoonchae can’t leave the country,” Manon explains, shaking the folder.
“Agents Avanzini and Jeong are not permitted abroad without certain security measures in place,” Son corrects. He lifts a brow at the two. “Again, it’s just a precaution.”
“Manon, what does it say?” Sophia ignores him. She trusts Son, but Manon is freaking out too much for it to be that simple.
“He wants to collar them when we travel,” Manon rushes out. Her hands release their grip on the documents to mime wrapping around her own neck. It clicks in Sophia’s mind with the motion and her stomach twists.
H.Y.B.E has shock collars. Well, not shock collars, Lara had explained once. She’d tried to explain electromagnetism to them, but as an Asgardian, Sophia had never attended school, so she’d gotten a little lost in the details of it all. She doesn’t need to know the details to know that those collars are awful. They’re intended to dampen mutant and extraterrestrial abilities—cut off superpowers—but they’re finicky and they hurt. Sophia’s only been on the receiving end of one once and it hadn’t even worked, but she remembers how painful it had been.
“Wait, but Dani doesn’t have powers,” she blurts. It’s the only coherent thought she can form around the blur of indignance and worry.
Manon’s face collapses and Son’s mouth tightens. Sophia feels like they’re all barreling off a cliff for a long moment before Manon’s soft voice reels her back in.
“She’s enhanced. Not superpowers, exactly. More like surgery,” she admits. “Some kind of low-grade super serum. She’s not on Yoonchae’s level of strength or speed, but she’s got more of it than a normal human.”
Breathe.
Sophia nods once. She can handle this.
“Agent Bannerman is correct,” Son cuts in. He stumbles a little over his next few words. “The collars also have a built-in failsafe. Only to be used in the most extreme circumstances.”
“Failsafe?” Manon’s almost yelling.
Breathe.
“Manon—”
“No, Son, this is too much—”
Outside, the car rockets off the edge of the bridge and buildings whizz by dizzyingly. Sophia can see the reflection of the vehicle in the shining glass.
“You have to understand—”
Breathe.
“There must be something you’re not telling us.”
She’s surprised at how steady her own voice sounds. The other two fall quiet and she fixes Son with a look, raising a brow. He meets her eyes and she knows, instantly, that he’s withholding something. A jolt of electricity curls around one of her fingers and Son’s eyes shoot towards it.
“We have reason to believe that Hydra installed their own failsafes in Agents Avanzini and Jeong,” he breathes, voice fragile like he regrets it. “We don’t have any concrete evidence. Just some whispers from informants that have come in with the recent increase in local activity. But psychological subjugation is a tricky thing. We can’t afford them turning against us.”
“And what about Megan?” Sophia challenges. “What about Lara? They’ve had their run-ins with Hydra? Why not collar us all?”
“Ms. Skiendiel and Ms. Raj have encountered subsects of Hydra with limited technology. The Red Room is a massive branch with its fingers in half of eastern Europe. Hydra X9 is the biggest underground science coalition we know of. We don’t know the full extent of what they’re capable of.”
The car slows to a stop, but the driver doesn’t turn the key. This is a drop-off.
“I’ll sign it,” Sophia chokes out, reaching for the folder. Manon’s fingers are limp and yielding under her own. She can feel Manon’s eyes on her, but she can’t bring herself to look back as she accepts a pen from Son. Her hand trembles as she scrawls her signature, messing up her S and she finds herself wishing Lara were here to take on the responsibility of the signature.
She brushes the thought away as soon as it forms and straightens, taking another deep breath. The folder goes back to Son and he presses his mouth into an apologetic line.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
The door clicks open and Manon is out of the car before Sophia has even undone her seatbelt. The weight of her own signature weighs heavy in her chest as she follows, slamming the door behind her a little too hard. Her fingers make divots in the metal, but Son doesn’t say a word as the car pulls away.
With a world-weary sigh, Sophia turns to make her way out of the compound parking garage and into the building.
When did being a superhero get so complicated?