Universal Chaos

Chapter 6

Ash and smoke filled her lungs. There wasn't any room left for air.

Sutton tried to gasp, tried to breathe, but there was still an immense weight keeping her pinned, her chest squashed into the ground. She cried out, panicked and afraid. It took her a moment for the confusion about what had happened to clear.

And then there was a shifting. Some of the weight lifted off of her and there was a low scraping of rock on rock. Sutton's chest finally expanded but sharp pains shot through her ribcage. The air sent her into a coughing fit, her lungs desperately trying to clear themselves of the foreign debris. The last of the extra weight was lifted off of her and all she was left with were her heavy limbs.

"Are you alright? Can you walk?"

She gasped in more air as she pushed herself up. Steve had Natasha cradled in his arms. She'd been knocked out, probably taking the brunt of the impact that Steve and his shield didn't disperse. Sutton was wobbly, but she rose to her feet and nodded. Steve adjusted Natasha's weight and nodded back sharply.

"Good. We have to move. Come on."

Steve was quick to leave the rubble of the destroyed bunker behind to get back to the truck. It was a struggle to keep up with him. Her balance was off and her head was ringing, but she scrambled, grabbing at the dirt as she tried to remain upright. Sutton looked back once.

There was nothing left. Only sparse chunks of concrete and random rods of rebar that jutted out of the chunks like broken bones.

They had survived that.

How had they survived that?

Steve laid Natasha down in the back seat of the truck before racing around to the driver's side and Sutton scrambled as best she could into the front passenger's seat. She was still wheezing, still dazed, but if Steve was rushing they probably had something to worry about. Her eyes darted up at the sky, searching for more missiles, but she saw none.

Steve threw the truck into drive and tore away from the base just as she saw faint lights appearing in the sky out of the still rising smoke.

Sutton panted and hacked a few more times, still expelling ash from her lungs. Her reactor sang out a high pitch which threatened to damage whatever was left of her eardrums that the explosion had missed. She threw a hand over her chest, pressing down on the strip of metal surrounding the reactor, and growled in the back of her throat.

"I've really got to get Tony to disable that feature."

"Are you hurt?"
Steve glanced at her from the corner of his eyes and Sutton shook her head.

"I've been worse. Natahsa's the one who's still out."

She craned around in her seat and caught one of Nat's limp arms. Pressing against her wrist, Sutton waited until she could feel a beat.

"Her heart rate seems steady. She's at least breathing."

She noticed, then, that her own hands were shaking. Sutton turned back in her seat and jammed her fingers under her thighs to hide the trembling.

"What about you? Are you ok?"

"My shield absorbed the impact."
Sutton frowned as Steve continued to keep his eyes on the road.

"I'm sure you're physically ok," she said. "But, I mean, my gosh, Steve. Do you-do you need a break or anything?" He had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and it was amazing that it hadn't bent already. "I can drive." Sutton offered.

"I'm fine."

"We just- we just found out HYDRA is alive and well. If you need a-"
"Thank you." He cut her off sternly. "But I'm ok. We need to put distance between ourselves and that base and we don't have time for trading places. Besides, you don't know how to get to where we're headed."