The Irony of it All

3

They stood outside a 15 foot barbed wire fence. It was locked and there were two guards at the entrance. Steve picked Natasha up and lightly tossed her over the fence. She cleared the barbed top, twisted and quietly landed in a crouch. 

   She ducked away from a search light, waiting for it to pass before running across the cracked pavement. She took out the first guard by lightly jumping on him, wrapping her legs around his neck and stabbing her tasers into either side of his neck. As he fell with a muffled scream, she let go, flipped back and kicked the gun out of the other guard's hand. She turned, switching feet to land a powerful roundhouse kick to his head. He crumpled immediately. 

  She quickly found a key and opened the gate for Steve. She registered in the back of her brain that this seemed way too easy already, but it had been supposed to be easy so she quickly dismissed the thought. 

  They used one of the ID cards she had swiped off of one of the guards to open the door. Two more guards were in the entrance, but they were knocked out before they could reach for their guns by a red, white, and blue, vibranium blur. 

  They made quick time of making their way through the corridors and removing any obstacles. Obstacles meaning guards. 

  As they were heading down another long hallway, they heard footsteps behind them. Steve looked around quickly for something to hide in. He tried the nearest door handle. It opened. He grabbed Natasha's hand, pulling her behind him and locking the door. They listened to the heavy footsteps of army boots walk past them, and start to fade as they got farther away. 

  Natasha turned to get a good look of the room they were in and froze. She raised her hand and settled it gently on Steve's bicep to get his attention. He turned and froze also, his breath caught in his throat. "I think we found what we were looking for," she whispered. 

   The room was dark, but there was an unnatural red, orange, and blue glow, coming from one small orb, about the size of a baseball. It was hooked up to one giant machine. The machine was long, with a large cone coming off the top and pointing downward at a 30 degree angle. The cone pointed directly at the center of a large metal circular opening. 

  “What is it?” Steve whispered, getting closer the orb. Natasha crossed the room to what looked like the control panel. She found a desk covered in papers of what looked like blue prints. She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight, scanning the loose papers for clues as she shuffled through them. 

  “Steve?” She called. He jogged over. “Look at this. Look at these formulas.”

  “They’re trying to crack time travel.” 

  “It looks like they already have. We have to get this to Bruce.”

  “Why? Why would they need time travel? Who is they?”

  “It doesn’t matter. This isn't good. We need to go.” Suddenly, an alarm blared in the hallways. Soon, thundering footsteps and shouts in muffled german followed. “We gotta go!” 

  Steve grabbed the orb, Natasha rolled up some of the papers and a couple of test tubes labeled "Target" in German, and they disappeared into the corridors. They managed to bypass all the guards and slip back out of the gate and into the night. As the quinjet took off back for New York, they were non the wiser about a tall shadow of a man slipping out of the dark shadows of the time machine room. They didn’t know how he marched his way down a secret passage to a control panel where two guards were monitoring the hidden security cameras. They didn’t know that he watched them pass by the two unconscious guards that Natasha had taken out earlier. They didn’t know that he spoke in German to the two guards, asking, “Did they take the orb?”

  “Da. And the blueprints.”

  “Good. Follow them. I want everything monitored. Don’t let a single detail slip, and don’t let them know that we're watching them."

  “Yes sir.”