Mirage // Marvel Universe

team-assignments-2006.pdf

I run down the hall, focusing on each step as a distraction from the fear bubbling in my chest. This is what you signed up for, Harper.

I can't believe I signed up for this.

The thumping of boots on cement and the clattering of assault riffles comes from down the hall. It's only when I see them that I realise that they're coming from both sides. With a heavy lurch of dread, I realise I'm surrounded.

"Surrender or we shoot!" One of the men demands.

I ground myself, ready for the inevitable fight. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass."

The group collectively aims their weapons at my chest. Something Natasha once told me plays in my head. "Don't fight the weapons, fight the man."

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the voice I hear isn't just in my head. "Hey boys," Natasha's taunts from behind the group, "You know, it's rude not to invite everyone to the party."

They all turn around, guns temporarily pointed away from me.

"Who are you?" Another man asks.

"I'm afraid that's confidential," Natasha answers him, but she's looking to me.

Knowing exactly what that glance means, I nod. Not two second later, Natasha kicks the man's chest and sends him stumbling back into the others. Encouraged by Natasha's partnership, I sweep out the legs of the man closest to me, taking the time that he's incapacitated to elbow another in the stomach. I expected a real fight to feel strange and foreign, but it doesn't. I find myself falling into the same patterns of training, the only difference being the stakes. Even the sound of bullets fade into the background, sounding a lot like the echos from the shooting range next to the gym.

Natasha and I can slip away, but the men soon to follow. It's not ideal, but this is what we trained for, right? Deep breaths, Harper.

The hall opens up into an expansive room entangled in pipes newly rusted at the seams. There is no steam or pulse of electricity like there once was in the power plant, nothing to fill the tanks or flow through the pipes. Our fight is likely the only lively thing to have happened here in a while, or at least since the last team SHIELD sent tried to raid the plant.

Natasha and I duck behind a collection of pipes near a maintenance door, both of us in close-company between the cement wall and metal runoff tank. Our frosted breaths mix as we slow our breathing.

Natasha reaches down to the harness on her thigh and hands me her handgun. "Here, take this and get to safety. That laptop is the priority."

It takes me a second to realise what she's doing.

She wants to buy me time. Of course, she does. Risking her life for a mission is a no brainer to her, but not me.

I shove the gun back to her. "No, Nat, I won't leave you to fight unarmed!"

"I've handled myself in a lot worse odds."

"I don't trust odds."

She thrusts the gun back into my hand, putting her other hand over my own. It's warm and oddly soft for someone with as much time in the field as she has.

"I don't need you to trust the odds, I need you to trust me."

I sigh to myself, peaking around the side of the runoff tank to peer out into the still uninvaded room. "If you die, Natasha Romanoff, I will kill you," I whisper, trying in some strange way to lend her my strength while I convince myself she won't need it.