Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Four

There's actually something kind of fun about getting knocked off your feet by an explosion. Her abilities minimize the pain of the impact, so most of what she feels is flying backwards through the air. It's fun in the way a rollercoaster is fun, if immediately upon getting off the rollercoaster you had to go into the office and work overtime. Because funnily enough, she's never been knocked off her feet by an explosion and then just gotten to walk away. There's always work to be done when she stands back up.

She gets back to her feet and holds a hand out to Vira, who takes it. Steve's several yards away, already back on his feet and running to the sidewalk to get a closer look at the explosion across the street.

She immediately notices something off about it. The explosion was powerful enough to knock them off their feet, but not enough to destroy the building itself. There's damage to it--enough that they can see that that's where the explosion originated--but it's still mostly standing. Voices scream from inside the building, terrified, and Steve takes off running.

Leila sighs and follows after him. Vira arrives a few moments after they do. Crossing the street isn't far enough for her to fall far behind, but Leila's still holding onto the super-soldier serum, so the heels on her boots only slow her down behind Steve slightly.

Steve runs directly into the building, no hesitation, while Leila turns to Vira.

"Call SHIELD," she says. "They should know about this."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Vira says. "The call I got. It was a warning."

"What did they say?"

Vira takes a moment, like she's preparing herself.

"They said 'this is only the beginning.'"

"Vira," Leila says, after all the civilians have been ushered out, "can you handle the picnic?"

"I've handled worse," she says, and heads across the street. Leila turns back to Steve, hovering near the door of the library.

"This shouldn't be possible. The explosion was too controlled."

"You didn't find a second site?" Steve asks, as if that's not the first thing she would've told him upon returning from looking for one. She was going to stay and help with the civilians, but that's the thing--it really wasn't a two-person job.

"No. It had to have come from here."

"So how'd it knock us off our feet from across the street and yet not kill a single person inside the building?"

Leila closes her eyes for a moment, thoughtfully. "Vira got a call right before the explosion hit. Voice was pitched, but apparently they said 'this is only the beginning' before hanging up."

"So there could be another bomb about to go off at any moment," Steve says.

"Exactly."

"And if the bomber could figure out how to rig this--" he gestures to the library-- "they could also figure out how to rig something bigger and deadlier."

She nods.

"Only question is," he continues, "why would they? If they were going to kill people, why not do it now?"

"Theatrics," Leila says.

"Or attention."

"Same bitch," Leila shrugs. "Vira called SHIELD. No answer."

"So what do we do in the meantime?"

"We keep trying to get in touch and wait for further intel. SHIELD has the best hackers on the planet, aside from maybe Stark, and there has to be a digital trail behind this."