Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Six

It's twilight when she wakes up.

She'd managed to get Steve to agree to letting her call her contacts before she fell asleep. Not that she wouldn't have done it anyway, but listening to him bitch about it as she got voicemail after voicemail might've actually made her snap, so it's still for the best.

Now, though, she's the one getting the call; she's woken by the feel of her phone ringing in her pocket. It's kind of unsettling how easy it was to fall asleep with him there, but she ignores it and pulls her phone out of her pocket, hitting accept. "You're on speaker, Vira."

"I got ahold of Fury," Vira says breathlessly on the other end. "I mean, he got ahold of me, but I told him what happened. Where are you?"

"We're five minutes out," Steve replies, not looking away from the road.

"You were right. Harker has chitauri tech. We think he's used it to enhance one of his students' projects but we don't know which one."

"Which one is most conveniently explosive?" Leila asks, and there's the sound of typing before Vira responds.

"One kid made a fission generator," she says finally. "But it's pretty small."

Leila thinks for a moment, tries to place what chitauri tech is capable of, and then remembers suddenly, the way that all the chitauri in new york were linked. With each other, with their weapons--it was like fighting one single entity, with all the cost and benefits that came with it.

"But if he built a bigger one, he could connect it to the smaller one. Blow up one, blow up the other."

"That means we have to stop the bigger one," Steve says, glancing at her. "Like Stark did with the missile."

"Vira, do we know where the bigger generator would be?"

More typing. "There's a huge energy signature coming from the boiler room," she says. "It's in the basement on the other side of campus."

"That's where Harker will be," Leila says.

"And the generator," Steve adds.

"We can only hope," Vira says dryly. "SHIELD is on their way with evac, but they won't be there in time for diffusion. The fair started ten minutes ago, it could go off at any minute. Disarming the explosion is on you."

*

The parking lot is crowded when they arrive, cars packed like sardines alongside each other, a monument to the prestige of the exhibit. Leila would be surprised if there was even one spot available. Steve doesn't even try, just parks across the street, cuts the engine and takes off running. She follows.

There are a few security guards walking the perimeter, and she pulls out another fake cred, this time FBI. Security guards usually don't have the same God complex that cops do, she's found.

They pass a guard and she flashes him a badge. "Where's the boiler room?" she demands, and he peers at the badge before his eyes widen and he points southwest of their direction. "Across campus, in the basement under the cafeteria," he stutters.

"Great. Don't let anyone else in the gym," she tells him, putting her badge away. "Even if they work here."

"Especially if they work here," Steve adds-slash-corrects, and she nods and follows him into a run.

*

The boiler room is locked, but Steve manages to break the lock anyway while barely trying.

"Remind me to try that later," Leila says.

"You still have the serum?"

"Only until I need an excuse to see you shirtless again," she quips, and he scoffs, but she's sure if the lights were on she'd see him blushing.