Only You

Chapter Nine

Pietro Maximoff wonders where the hell he is. The air in the hallways brushes his skin in gentle waves of cool, slow winds. He reaches the end of a long corridor and takes a right. Comparing this building with that of where he'd been kept throughout experimenting, he feels relatively confident — it was clean and neat, with no flickering lights or suspiciously marked entryways. There's that, as well as an odd recollection of hearing voices that he was familiar with when he moved in and out of consciousness.

Regardless of the degree of safety he begins to feel in the building, he's determined to get out and far, far away. He's filled with the sensation that he should have stayed dead.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters bustle with activity. It seemed that nothing was wrong or out of place, that operations were moving smooth and efficiently. The comments of a sudden and strong gust of air, made by a myriad of workers and agents on all different floors and in all different sections of the headquarters, are ignored. Strange drafts of air are often the least of people's worries — unless they were Tony Stark or Bruce Banner.

Tony holds nothing back as he stares at the empty bed, letting a stream of foul yet creative expressions out. Bruce runs a hand through his hair and sighs for a precisely six seconds.

"He could be anywhere," Bruce says. Tony gives him a screaming look of not-so-comforting.

"J.A.R.V.I.S., I need you to get into the mainstream and seal off any exits in the building."

"On it, sir."

"We have got to tell Fury," Bruce says. "If someone sees Pietro, they might panic." Someone being Wanda or any other Avenger, he gives Tony a pointed look.

"So what, we call for a Code Red Internal?" Tony asks sarcastically.

Bruce doesn't quite catch the sarcasm, replying, "No, then they'll actually panic."

"Brilliant," Tony sighs, exasperated. "So what do we do?"

"Get Natasha," Bruce says. "If anyone can find him, she can." Tony doesn't have any better ideas, and nods. "I'll get her."

"Watch the security cameras," Tony calls to J.A.R.V.I.S., "and tell me if you see anything."

"You do know he can run sort of fast, right?" Natasha asks, pulling on a light jacket after Bruce fills her in on the situation.

"Out of me, you, and Tony, you're the most capable of tracking him down." Bruce feels guilty after waking her up and asking such a favor of her. Natasha rubs her eyes, seemingly in no rush to save their skin. She moves into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. "Is that a no?"

Natasha doesn't answer. Bruce stares at the closed door and Natasha reappears half a minute later, with a glowing sort of wand in her hand. "It's not for you," she says with a roll of her eyes after seeing the bewildered look on Bruce's face. "If I find him, I don't want him running. And for your sake, don't let Wanda out of her room."

"All the exits are locked. We're trying to override whatever system is controlling them, but we aren't having a lot of luck." Natasha casually glances towards the dozen screens that show feed of twelve security cameras around the east sector of the building. "You know who's behind this, right? It has to be Tony." Natasha looks over at Clint, biting down on her tongue.

"He doesn't have any reason to," she counters, keeping it casual as she can. "Where is he right now?"

Clint shrugs. "Hell if I know. Probably down in the labs." Natasha looks at the monitors again but catching a look of dawning realization on her friend's face. "I'll find him." Clint exits the security room on the seventh floor and rushes down fourteen flights of stairs as fast as anyone could. He makes a direct trip to the laboratories.

"Clint's headed to the labs," Natasha mutters into a small band on her wrist. "Stark, whatever suspicious things might be out there need to go, quick." She watches as a small flicker of movement catches in a camera's feed. Checking her taser is in place at a holster on her side, she heads to the base floor.

Clint finds Steve stepping out of an elevator and into the basement where the laboratories are. "Any idea where Tony is?" He asks, falling into step with Clint.

"No clue."

Steve's jaw tightens. Clint gets the idea that Steve and him share a similar belief regarding who the culprit is behind the locked doors — no one in, no one out. Hacking into the system and overriding it with an anonymous identification and hidden address, it had to be the work of Tony Stark. He just needs to figure out why.

Of course, the door to the laboratory that Tony and Bruce have been slaving in is locked. Steve slams an angry fist into the door, leaving a small dent. "Shut it down, Tony," he shouts. The veins in his neck are tense.

"And there's the temper tantrum," Tony mutters under his breath to Bruce, stashing away the IV bag. The wall is up, hiding the room behind it where Pietro's bed was. A perfectly normal laboratory, clean and organized and with a door knocked off his hinges. "Don't get your spandex in a twist."

"It's time for you and Banner to tell us what's been going on down here," Steve demands. Clint stands next to him, a good bit shorter but no less angry.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Tony starts. Bruce grinds his teeth, hating the tension that's exploded into the room.

"You're locking the doors."

"Sources?"

"We don't need sources to know you're behind this," Clint says.

"The last time something like this happened, so did Ultron."

"I don't know, that," Tony argues, "that sounds like a stretch." He looks at Bruce for some backup, who can't say anything because he knows Steve makes a point. "Oh, come on." Bruce feels trapped, yet again, in an endless cycle of right and wrong choices in morality.

"So you aren't going to deny you're responsible for this?" Steve asks. Tony shrugs a bit carelessly and his calm demeanor ticks him off. "I'll ask again: tell us what you're doing."

"Weren't you raised in the early nineteen hundreds?" Tony asks. "Weren't manners really important back then or something?"

"Stop avoiding the question, Stark."

"Stop being —"

Bruce slams a fist down on a steel table, leaving a decent sized dent in the smooth surface. Steve and Tony both fall silent, fuming. It's hard to tell who has a redder face. Clint pulls Steve back, keeping a steady eye on Bruce. It would really, really suck to have a Code Green right now. "It's Pietro."

Well, there it is. "We're not doing him," Tony corrects after an moment of silence, created by sheer astonishment. "Not like that. It's more along the lines of necromancy, but less magic and more science." He wiggles his hands a little, like the explanation was more or less accurate.