Illusions (The Avengers)

22. Sacrifice

"TANYA-WAKE UP!"

Tanya jolted awake, her eyes blinking open to find Myra standing over her, her dark eyes wide.

"What are you doing?" Tanya hissed, still groggy with sleep.

Myra didn't answer, just grabbed her arm and yanked her from her bed, dragging her out into the hall.

"Myra-" Tanya yanked her arm from Myra's grip, glaring at her with blurred vision.

"What time is it?" she growled.

"It's 4:30 and we have a problem!" Myra snapped.

"There's always a problem! And we usually wait till it's at least 6:30 to discuss them!" Tanya ran a hand over her face," What's so important?" She blinked to clear her vision, finding the lights lighting the hallway had turned a blood red. Now she was awake.

"Why are we on code red?" she asked, looking down the hall at the red glow.

"As I said," Myra said, her impatient tone measured," We have a problem."

After earning herself another hurry-it-up look from her, Tanya ran back into her room, stripped off her t-shirt and threw on a suit, tying her hair back as she ran downstairs.

They were in the hidden bunker beneath the tower, which Bucky was using as a hide-out until further notice. Myra had moved her stuff down here a couple of hours ago, as this was the equipment she'd used to monitor dimensional travel. Everything was flashing and it sounded like a bunch of alerts had gone off.

"Dad, what's going on?" she asked Tony, who was staring at the monitors with an exasperated look.

"Oh, the usual," Tristan replied," Alien invasion, someone screwed something or another up- no biggy."

Tanya narrowed her eyes as she looked over at him, his hair was sticking up and he hadn't even bothered to change out of his pajamas.
"Well, look who decided to quit being a child," she threw at him.

He shot her a look, opening his mouth to snap a retort when Tony cut them off.

"Not now, kids."

"What are we looking at, Tony?" Steve asked, crossing his arms across the broad chest.

"It's inter-dimensional travel within our dimension," Myra cut in speedily," Like, between the nine realms. I rigged it to alert me if something psycho happened up there."

"So... what are we looking at?" Clint asked, blinking at the monitors.

"I don't know," Myra replied, shaking her head," a couple hours ago somebody who really isn't supposed to be here came into the dimension-"

"And by really not supposed to be here, you mean-"

"Somebody from outside the dimension came in," Myra answered Bucky, who looked incredibly confused.

"Now you've lost me," Austin said, voicing everyone else's confusion.

Tanya rolled her eyes," There's our dimension and the worlds within it- the nine realms for example. Then there's the dimensions outside of our reach, only ones that Nature Queens can access."

"Like Narnia," Tristan threw in.

"Right. And someone came into this dimension from outside our reach," Myra finished.