different » marvel ¹

nine

"What the hell was she talking about, Raven?" Steve turns to me, "No, you know what? We're gonna talk about this later, I — we don't have time for this now."

We meet up with Natasha outside of the mall, all of us wearing our disguises. "Who decided we'd wear the most obvious disguises in the entire universe?" I asked. Natasha pointed a finger to Steve.

He rolled his eyes as we begin walking through the building. I keep my hoodie pulled up around my head, making sure it doesn't slip off.

   "First rule of going on the run, don't run, walk." Natasha pointed out how fast we were walking. Steve slows down a little, "If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off."

   I lead them into a Mac store, immediately moving to one of their computers. "Does it have a homing program?"

   Nat nods, "Level six. So, as soon as we boot it up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are."

   "What does that give us? Like, ten minutes?" I look to the small clock on the screen.

   "Nine, actually from right . . ." Natasha plugs in the flash drive, "Now." She begins typing in code to break through the security protocols.

   "Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." She complains as she continues working.

   "Can you override it?" Steve leans against the counter.

   "The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." She responds as Steve continues to nervously look around. I nudge his shoulder, "Stop looking around so much. You're making it seem like we're doing something we aren't supposed to."

   "We are doing something we aren't supposed to." He sighs. I turn my attention back to Natasha, "Still can't get in?" She shakes her head. "Then run a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, right? So, if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

   "You do it." She moves out of the way, letting me take over. I begin writing a code that brings in a tracer, my fingers dancing over the keys quickly as Nat moves over to the entrance of the store, checking to see if anyone has found us.

   "Can I help you guys with anything?" An employee approaches us and I tap the enter button, letting my tracer do its thing as I lace my hand with Steve's, "Oh, no thank you. We were just looking at some possible honeymoon destinations." I fake excitement.

   "Yeah, we're getting married!" Steve goes along with it. I move back behind him, checking the status of the tracer. I zoom in on the map, narrowing it down to New Jersey.

   "Congratulations. Where do you guys think you're going?" The employee asks, trying to get closer to the screen, but Steve leans against the counter and blocks him.

   "New Jersey." Steve looks at him and the screen.

   The employee nods, "Oh." He pauses for a second, "I have the exact same glasses."

   "Wow," I turn to them, a smile on my face, "You two are practically twins."

   The employee scoffs, "I wish." He gestures out to Steve with his hands, "Specimen. Uh, look if you guys need anything," He holds up his name card. "I've been Aaron."

   Steve nods to him, "Thank you." I let out a sigh as the guy walks away.

   Steve turns back to me, bending down with his watch near our faces, "She said nine minutes, come on."