Chapter Text
He’s had nightmares ever since he was a boy.
His maimeó wasn’t exactly in her right mind the last few years of her life, and thought it appropriate to tell him how his father died. So she called little Steven Rogers over when he was four, pulled him into her lap, and told him with her beautiful brogue about the burning and the yellow and how they screamed, how it was the worst way to go and everyone knew it because the men were so brave and never screamed but the men with the mustard burns screamed. That was how his father had died—over the course of weeks, eyes swelling shut, skin boiling and changing colour, unable to keep his mouth shut from the pain. He had been a strong man, the best of men, but even the pain would have been too much for poor Joe, Steven. Even for him.
And Steve had been so terrified that he couldn’t breathe, lungs closing tight, and his mother had run in, grabbing him away from her mother in law, asking what was wrong with her, and his maimeó had clucked and said he’d never be strong like his father, that he’d never fight any wars.
She was dead two months later, a stroke in the night. But from the day he learned how Joseph Rogers died, Steve dreamed of his father, who he only knew from two pictures, one hung on the wall, one at his mother’s bedside. His maimeó was right—he’d never be strong like him. He was a tall, handsome man with shoulders that seemed too big for his uniform. He was pure black Irish, strong and cocksure. Steve knew long before he could articulate it that he would have been a terrible disappointment to him. Later, his father told him so in his dreams.
He dreamed of battlefields. He dreamed of gas. He dreamed of a man who would always be better than him, stronger and taller and braver and just better in every possible way, and he dreamed about him dying.
Steve isn’t sure if he’s had a decent night’s sleep in nearly a century. Sometimes he wonders if he even dreamed while he was in the ice.
He dreams of gas. He dreams of choking. He dreams of the sky opening and monsters coming through. He dreams about the end of days.
Most of all, though, he dreams of falling, and wishes he was a better man.
Jerking awake, Steve automatically reaches for the edge of the seat. He blinks a few times, and begins blushing even before looking across the jet.
He’s not sure if he’s more or less embarrassed since he’s with Clint and Natasha. Clint, well, if it was just the two of them, he’s pretty sure Clint would pretend like nothing happened. The thing is, though, he has a tendency to follow Natasha’s lead.
And she’s looking at Steve like his dreams are as simple a topic to discuss as the weather.
“Clowns?” she asks.
“Uh huh,” he replies, wiping some of the sleep from his eyes before squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Lots of them. And every time I cut a head off, two would grow back.”
He’s not fooling her, and he knows it. Yes, for maybe the millionth time, he was dropping off the side of the mountain. It’s fine—it’s a hell of a lot preferable to the reverse, when he’s the one who didn’t reach out in time.
“Clint’s scared of clowns,” Natasha says.
“It’s true,” Clint jumps in easily. “Laura was all set to hire one for Lila’s birthday, but I had to put my foot down. She wanted to argue—you know, you’re not even going to be here—but there’s some adults who get it and some who don’t.”
“Get what?” Steve asks, slightly confused.
“No child likes clowns,” Natasha answers.
Clint shakes his head in agreement. “Not a one. She wanted to argue with me, and I said, ‘Honey, I worked in the circus for years. Trust me on this.’”
Trying to get as much distance between himself and the dream as possible, Steve smiles a little, shifting in his seat. “How is Laura doing?”
Raising his shoulders, Clint says with his usual deadpan amiability, “Well, she’s talking to me this week, so we’ll put that in the win column.”
What Steve really hears is my wife and kids have to live deep undercover because you called me out of retirement, asshole.
Natasha pipes up, “You should tell Steve what Nathan’s favourite thing is.”
Clint glowers at her. “You know, I could have shot you all those years ago.”
“It’s nice that you still harbour that illusion. If you don’t tell him, then I’m going to tell him.”
“I’m not fucking telling him—“
“So,” Natasha says, and Clint growls, looking away. The jet dips under them lightly, and Steve glances out at the open, clear sky. “Laura takes him to this playgroup. All sorts of small, vulnerable humans slobbering on one another and everything in their radius. As they’re prone to do. And what’s Nathan’s favourite toy?”
She pauses for dramatic effect, to the point where Steve wonders if he’s actually supposed to guess. “When I was that age, my toys were a stick and a patch of dirt,” Steve jokes. “You’re going to have to give me something to go on.”
The side of her mouth pulls up slightly. “It’s stuffed, it’s as tall as he is—and it’s red and gold.”
Steve pauses, and then smothers a laugh. He coughs into his hand before saying to Clint, “Sorry about that, buddy.”
“Unbelievable,” Clint says, tossing up his hands. “He’s two. Two. And already, he’s messing with me. I figured a few more years, Coop would go pierce his tongue or something and I’d have to deal with that. But no. Nathan pitches a fit if he doesn’t get to roll around with an Iron Man doll.” He crosses his arms. “Traitor.”
Natasha starts to reach for her phone. “I have pictures—“
Clint starts cursing in Russian, and Steve lifts a hand. “I’m good.” Natasha settles back, shrugging. She yawns, and starts to pin her hair back. Steve glances at the pilot. She never speaks much. He doesn’t even know her name. They call her 37. He thinks of how Sharon used to be called 13 and wonders if there’s a new 13 these days with the new SHIELD. “How are we looking?”
“Entered Paraguayan airspace fifteen minutes ago,” Natasha answers, sticking a bobby pin in the side of her mouth. She keeps threatening to shave her head if the helmets are a permanent fixture, but Steve thinks that would be a crying shame. He trusts Natasha, is kind of scared of her besides that, and even with all the professional respect he has for her, he can still recognize that she is one absolutely gorgeous woman, and those red curls are a thing of singular beauty.
And then again, there’s literally no way Natasha Romanoff will ever not be gorgeous.
“We’re about ten minutes out,” Natasha says, finishing with the pins. She withdraws her helmet, smacking it against her leg as if to get the dust out. “No change, still have the go.”
“No one’s entered or left the compound?”
“Nada.”
“Payne’s holed up in there good and tight,” Clint says. “Guy’s not even poked his head out in twenty four hours. Not like there’s much to look at in Chaco except the insects and the trees.”
“When were we here? 2010?” Natasha asks him.
Clint thinks back and says, “No, it’s closer to when Lugo was impeached.”
“Really?” She shrugs, then unbuckles and starts to stretch. “Time flies when you’re trying to prevent coup d’états.”
“You’ve prevented coup d’états?” Steve asks with a crooked smile.
She smiles back, bent over. “I’m equal opportunity.” Picking up her helmet, she sighs before pulling it on. Tugging on her uniform, she looks across at Steve, as though this is all his fault. In a way, he supposes it is.
In his head, he hears a laconic voice mutter, you’re such a martyr.
It could be worse. They’re all in black, lightly armoured suits. The helmets are much like the one he always wore, save the colour is different. It’s black too, at least until they switch the smart suits on. Then everything will go the colour of their surroundings. They wear the same thing, not to make a statement, but simply because a soldier needs a uniform.
Even shadow soldiers.
“Here we go,” says Clint, taking out his own helmet.
“I swear to God, Clint,” Natasha says, “if you say it one more time—“
Clint tugs his helmet over his head, and grins, “Bring out the gimp.”
“And he said it.” Natasha pulls up her sleeve, looking at her watch. “Nine minutes.”
Steve rolls his fingers, making his hands into fists, then releasing them. He’s still tired. He got precious little sleep last night, and if everything goes according to plan here, he probably won’t see much sleep tonight either. He could always text Sharon. Tell her things took longer than expected.
Sleep when you’re dead, he tells himself, and gets his helmet out. No blue, no A, no wings, no nothing. A man who’s supposed to be invisible.
Keep busy, and think as little as possible. That’s the only way forward.
“Well,” says Steve, “let’s go catch the bad guy.” It’s dull and clichéd and that’s pretty much the story of his life right now.
He just has to keep moving.
37 drops them off two miles from the compound. Their suits and helmets react to their surroundings, turning shades of tan and yellow green interspersed with the bleached blue of the sky to blend in. They hoof it through thick grass that comes up past their ankles, and Steve can’t tell if the trees are dying or if this is simply their natural state.
The target is Frank Payne, aged 50 years old, former SHIELD agent who now goes by the code name Constrictor. After SHIELD’s intelligence division spent the last six months chasing him and other so called villains down, mostly in response to the terrorist attack in New York, they’re managed to locate Payne in the sparsely populated Chaco region of Paraguay. It’s not a place known for crime, and Payne’s retreat to the area is a curious one.
Steve’s almost viscerally relieved that it means minimal casualties.
“Frank’s lost his mind,” Clint told him after the briefing yesterday, once they were away from the office. Barton gave the pertinent information in the meeting with Fury, but Steve wanted the whole story. Barton and Payne had come up through the agency together. “He was a normal enough guy. Good rep for Oscar caliber performances undercover. After his wife died, though, he got a little unsteady. Had a mission go sideways—wasn’t even his fault—and he took some time off to try and get better, be with his kid. But—“ Clint gave Steve a knowing look. “You know the company. Mission first.” He glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, even though both of them would have heard someone coming. “They called him back too soon. Last goddamn thing he needed was an operation that size on his shoulders, posing as some enhanced psychotic. And I don’t know. A switch flipped, or someone flipped it for him. Don’t know if it matters. You saw the recording. He offed the two agents who were undercover with him, and he’s been living his own cover ever since.”
“And his kid?”
“She thinks he’s dead.” Clint paused, and said, “Just for hypothetical sake—and I’ve said the same thing to Nat—if I ever end up playing for the other team again, tell my kids I didn’t make it. It’d be better.”
Steve didn’t know how to tell him he was wrong. That it was better to know. Even if the person you loved wasn’t the same, it was still them. But then he wondered if maybe Clint was right.
Clint stills, going low in the grass, and the others do the same, their suits reacting. Steve looks through the light tree cover, spotting the buildings through the sparse forest. They’re not sure what goes on there. Payne has been moving massive amounts of money, using his deceased mother’s maiden name, and that’s how SHIELD finally found him. The money always goes through at least three dozen accounts, and originates from legitimate, multinational corporations. SHIELD’s been watching people come and go from this building for two weeks, and they have only one satellite image with Payne in it, from two days ago.
But they have the picture, and the mission’s a go. SHIELD has a black list, and it has two columns. On the one side are people who’ve betrayed SHIELD. On the other are those who could embarrass them. Payne makes both columns, so he needs to be brought in.
Well—if Steve gets him first, he’ll be brought in. Natasha or Clint gets their hands on him, Payne will probably have to be resuscitated before debriefing.
Steve spots two guards out front. Both armed, but not exactly paying attention. They’re chatting. Judging from satellite intel, there’s likely another six in the building, plus Payne.
Natasha pulls out a long range scanner, holding it up. When Steve looks over at her, she shimmers against the scenery, only the exposed parts of her throat, mouth, and eyes sticking out. It’s enough to see her frown. Her thumb dances over the piece of tech, doing something that Steve’s sure his primitive brain probably wouldn’t even understand, and her mouth turns even further down.
When she actually hits the thing, he gets a bit concerned.
“You know, that might have worked on my old tube TV,” Barton says under his breath, “but I don’t know if it’ll have the same effect on that nifty little piece the futurist cooked up.”
“Steve, I’m getting some peculiar data,” Natasha says, voice equally low.
“Define peculiar,” he replies. In their lives, the word holds little meaning.
“I’ve got the nine guys, but I’m only seeing above ground. It looks like there’s a basement level, but they’re protecting it somehow. No way to tell what’s down there.”
“Or how many are down there,” Steve finishes. She shrugs, thumbing through the readings. Steve looks over the building. It’s single story, sprawling outwards. It appears relatively new. They’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no reason this building should exist, and whatever’s going on inside needs to be stopped.
Why does it have to be our job to stop it?
“Cap?” asks Barton.
Covering his pause, as if he was assessing the situation, Steve questions, “Nat, what are those doors made of?”
“That would be steel. The entire building has reinforced walls. Basically, they built a really large vault out here for obviously legitimate reasons.”
“I’ve still got drugs for the pool,” Clint says, assembling his bow.
Natasha shakes her head. “Too easy. My money’s on another military takeover, and this is their base of operations.”
“Ah, it’s been years.”
“So they’re due.”
Cutting into the chatter, Steve says, “Is there a back entrance?”
“Side entrance,” she says. “East side. One guy on it.”
Steve takes a deep breath, then pulls his shield from its holster on his back. It’s broken down into quarters. With a flick of the wrist, it folds into its usual circular shape, locking into place. Attaching it to his bracer, he says, “You two go through the front, I’ll take the side. Natasha, you think you can see him?”
Holding up the scanner, Natasha taps on a room at the back of the building. “I’m guessing he’s the heat signature with the metal whips attached to him.”
“You two take the west of the building, I’ll take the east. We need him in one piece for the folks back home.” When Steve doesn’t get an answer, he gives them both a hard look. “One piece.”
“I’ll handle him with kid gloves,” Clint replies.
Dubious, Steve says, “I’ll locate the entrance to the basement level, see if we can’t get some answers the old fashioned way. We good?”
Selecting one of his exploding arrows, Clint nods. “We’re great.”
They move out, going silent and fanning out. Clint takes the middle, Natasha to his left, Steve to the right. Steve moves away from them, slipping through the fragile trees, which afford him little cover. It’s a good thing he has the suit today.
Once he’s alone, he feels a bit better. Lately—he knows he’s been off. Being over a barrel doesn’t help, but ever since Brooklyn—
Stop it.
Steve pauses in the trees nearest to the east side of the building. His target is a woman in a black sleeveless tee, chewing on something and looking off towards the plains. Steve dislodges his shield, hefting it slightly in his hand.
He waits for the signal.
The signal is fairly loud. The arrow explodes against the steel doors, sending the two guards flying forward. Steve’s target pivots, raising her submachine gun.
He bursts out from the trees, using the moment of distraction to his advantage. He hurls the shield at such an angle that it collides against her stomach before rebounding. As she lifts back off the ground, finger automatically squeezing around the trigger, Steve leaps upwards and plucks the shield out of the air.
He can tell from the gunfire that Natasha and Clint are meeting some resistance, but it doesn’t last long. Slapping his shield against his arm, Steve walks over to the guard moaning on the ground, and picks her up by the arm. He’s dropped the magazine from the gun and tossed the weapon aside before she can even react.
Turning her towards the door, nodding at the keypad, Steve says, “Now, I’m afraid I don’t speak Spanish. But I’m hoping what I need from you will transcend the language barrier.”
She twists in his arm, and Steve hesitates before reacting. He’s done pretty well in the twenty first century, all things considered. Adjusted to a multitude of attitude changes. He believes in fairness and equality in all things, has been willing to fight and die for those beliefs.
Still, he really hates having to hurt a girl.
He squeezes her arm, just a little, but a little for him is a lot for most and she lets out a wail. The woman quickly taps in her passcode, and the door unseals.
“Thank you,” Steve says. He points towards the plains, and tells her one word. “Run.”
The survival instinct always outstrips the language barrier. Like there’s anything between here and the next thirty miles, she starts limping away as fast as she’s able, a hand to her stomach.
Slipping a few fingers inside the heavy door, Steve pushes it a couple inches. He hears another explosion. From deeper in the building, there’s the sound of footsteps, reinforcements for the assault on the front. Silently, Steve moves into the empty, low lit hallway.
He keeps his sidearm in its holster. He doesn’t like to use it. The shield is almost exclusively his weapon of choice these days. It can be lethal, of course it can, but he rarely uses it that way.
Someone’s coming.
Steve presses his back to the wall, and the moment the man rounds the corner, Steve grabs the gun from his hands and flips the guy over. He’s strong, though, almost as big as Steve, and a moment later he staggers to his feet. Not having the time or patience, Steve kicks him square in the sternum, hearing a crack, and the man goes sailing to the back of the hall.
Continuing on, Steve drops the magazine from this one too, only he keeps that in his hand and gets rid of the weapon. He pops bullets out one by one onto the floor, listening to the fight happening on the other side of the building. More weapons fire. If Clint and Natasha haven’t engaged Payne yet, they’re about to.
They’re fine on their own. It used to be that Steve was always the first in, the one leading the charge. That instinct has faded somewhat.
He opens doors, looking for some sign of what they’re really doing here. He sees assault rifles in one room, bottled water and canned food in another. However, there’s no neon sign that says ‘this is our nefarious plan and here’s the evidence, how about we all call it a day.’ Steve would have really appreciated that.
Steve lifts his head sharply when he hears Natasha cry out, through five layers of walls.
She’s fine. She’s possibly the most capable person you’ve ever known.
Keeping that in mind, he continues searching.
There’s a strange skittering noise coming from below. Steve crouches, and turns his ear towards the floor, blocking out the sound of fighting. Yeah, he has a lot of movement under the floor. No voices, though.
He knocks on the concrete floor, listening to the echo. It sounds strange. Not just concrete, but metal too. And sound proofed. Only someone like him would be able to hear anything from beneath.
Straightening, Steve searches two more rooms (one entirely empty, the other looking like a break room) before finding what he needs in the latter. Behind the soda machine, there’s a hatch in the floor, locked with some kind of mechanism with buttons and whorls and a biometric scanner.
Steve takes off his shield and smashes right through it.
Erring on the side of caution, he protects himself with the shield as he pushes his hand under the hatch and flips it open. It falls back with a clatter. Nothing explodes and no projectiles come at him, so that’s a momentary success.
It’s gone silent below. It’s well lit, but there’s nothing directly in his line of sight except yellowing walls and what looks like a linoleum floor.
I guess fortune favours the bold, Steve thinks, then jumps through the opening, his shield up.
His feet hit the floor and he freezes. About forty pairs of eyes are staring back at him, equally unmoving.
The lower level is filled with tables and chemistry equipment. Looks like Clint is going to win the pool. The air smells like burning plastic, and the workers are all dressed in t-shirts and shorts and they’re wearing masks and goggles.
They’re also all children. The oldest is maybe twelve. The youngest ones are maybe eight.
Steve gets his bearings, and says, “Hi.”
One of the boys nearest to him grabs a gun off a table and starts shooting at him.
Jesus! Steve drops, hiding behind his shield as more of the kids pick up weapons and begin firing. Steve’s mind has gone blank. Just a flat, white blank.
Because how in the hell is he supposed to deal with this?!
Natasha comes on in his ear. “Target pacified. Wrapped him up in a bow—“
“I’m being shot at!” Steve yells.
“That happens in our line of work—“
“By kids!” he yelps, backing against the wall. He’s scared of what the ricochets off the shield will do. The children are keeping twenty feet between him and them, but he can hear six separate weapons being fired. “Lower level is full of kids and they’re armed!”
There’s a pause, then Natasha says bluntly, “Shoot back.”
“Not an option,” Steve says through gritted teeth.
“Need backup?” asks Clint.
Natasha will definitely shoot the kids, but Steve doesn’t know if Clint will. Steve’s recovered some of his senses, and he grabs a gas grenade off his belt, arming it, then tosses it into the middle of the room. “Negative,” Steve says, a bullet striking the wall behind him, and concrete chunks shower over his head. He slips his small gas mask onto his lower face as the grenade blows, grimacing at having to slip it up his nostrils. “Remove target from building, inform control we have approximately forty minors who’ll be in need of medical attention—“ A much bigger chunk is blown out of the wall, Steve ducking. “And possibly exorcism.”
The room begins to fill with a hazy white, and Steve knows he just needs to give it about ten seconds. The gas will knock out the average adult in twenty seconds, and these kids—Jesus Mary and Joseph—are all skinny and small and he is suddenly so furious that he hopes Natasha and Clint haven’t hurt Payne too bad, because he wants that distinction. He has 46 on stand-by in Chicago, ready and waiting. It was a backup, a just-in-case, because Steve knows he’s off his game, and these days he needs backups.
Kids. He can take a lot, but this is just one of those things he can’t.
It’s more than ten seconds, and then it’s fifteen, and then it’s twenty, and then it’s twenty five and they’re still firing.
Did he get a dud? Something off about the mix? Of course. Of course! Because why would things ever go right? That would be asking for the goddamn moon—
They hit the thirty second mark, and Steve can’t remember the last time he just hunkered down under fire this long instead of fighting back. But after everything, there’s some things he simply can’t do. Not for anything. Not for any reason.
The shots start going wild. They peter off.
Eventually, they stop.
Steve counts to ten, then peeks out over top of the shield. The children are all unconscious. They’ve fallen on the floor, over the tables, some with guns still in their hands.
Slowly, Steve gets to his feet, and says, “Hostiles pacified.”
“All five by?” Clint asks.
Steve spots a vial of some brownish liquid on a table. Others have spilled. That’s where the burning plastic smell is coming from. “Affirmative,” he says, even though it’s a bald faced lie.
He snatches the vial off the table.
A hand latches onto his boot, and Steve can’t help himself, he’s swinging the shield into position to attack.
But it’s the first boy who shot at him. He has shaggy black hair and his eyes are almost shut. Even now, after a minute breathing in chemicals that would have felled a man five times his size, he’s clinging to consciousness with almost rabid tenacity.
He’s gasping, and Steve’s afraid he’s going to hurt himself. “Go to sleep, kid,” he says. “I promise—it’ll all be better when you wake up.”
The boy looks up, and hisses at him, long and hard.
Steve strides out of the building. The vial is almost burning a hole in his pocket, he’s so aware of it. His shield is back in his holster. He knows that if he has it in his hands, he might not be able to stop himself.
Natasha’s lazily holding a gun on Payne, sitting on the ground about ten feet in front of him. Clint’s behind him, tending to a couple of nasty looking slashes on his arms. Natasha’s got some similar looking wounds, but she’s not bothering with them at the moment.
Payne has been pushed down on his knees. He’s white but his skin has tanned to near leather. He wears black lensed goggles, hiding his eyes, and black tactical gear. The most remarkable thing about him is the metal.
He has two long whips that extend from inside his shirt sleeves, at his shoulders, each thirty feet long. They’re attached to his body, though Steve can’t see it, and he only knows the length of them from the report. Natasha has actually tied the man up with them, one of her taser disks giving him a constant low shock. Payne is gritting his teeth, but he’s handling it much better than the average person would, and Steve realizes what that means.
“Keep it up,” Natasha says to Payne, lifting her wrist and aiming her Widow’s Bite at him. “Plenty more where that came from.”
“The others?” Steve asks without slowing.
“Taken care of,” Clint answers simply.
Steve reaches down and smacks away the taser disk. Payne relaxes slightly, sucking a breath in through his nose.
“What did you do to the kids?” Steve demands.
And he does that thing Steve hates. He smiles. He absolutely goddamn hates when one of these guys smile. “No idea what you’re talking about, Rogers.”
“What—did you do to them?”
Payne shrugs, looking disinterested. Steve grabs the goggles off his head, and tosses them aside. Squinting, Payne glances off into the distance before raising his eyes to Steve’s. They’re an unnatural shade of green.
“Tell me what you did to them,” Steve says, his voice low.
He hears Natasha rise behind him. “What’s wrong with the children?”
Searching Payne’s face for anything human, and coming up empty, Steve answers, “They’re enhanced. Forty kids, making this—“ He pulls out the vial. “And they’re all enhanced.”
Clint exclaims, “Jesus, Frank—“
Payne snaps over his shoulder, “There is no Frank.” He looks back up at Steve, with that awful goddamn smile. “I’m Constrictor.”
Steve stares at him. He has lived too long, and he has seen too much, and still—there are days when even he can’t handle what new horrors the universe has to offer him. “Want to bet?” Steve murmurs.
Payne smirks.
Holding the vial in front of his face, Steve say softly, dangerously, “I want an explanation, or I’m going to do something you really don’t like.”
With a roll of his bright green eyes, Payne scoffs, “What are you gonna do, Captain? Hit me?”
“Why would I do that, Frank? I want to hurt you.”
Steve straightens, turning, and passes the vial to Natasha. She pockets it, watching Payne dispassionately. Steve unfastens one of his pockets, withdrawing his cell phone.
“There’s nothing you got that scares me,” Payne taunts. “The worst you got is the Raft. And if you can get in and out of there, I like my odds.”
Texting, Steve replies, “I wouldn’t be worried about the Raft, Frank.”
Losing his temper again, Payne snaps, “I’m Constrictor! Frank Payne is dead!”
And it should come off as childish and petulant, but Steve is thinking about the boy downstairs, grabbing onto him even as he lost consciousness, imbued from childhood with hatred. With purpose.
Was there anything more poisonous than purpose?
Steve brings up the satellite feed, and turns back to Payne. “Sure. You’re a big bad guy, and the whole world’s gonna tremble at your feet. Nothing gets to you, nothing will ever stop you, right?”
Disgusted, Payne says, “Just put me on the quinjet—“
“Your plans are so big, so important, that you don’t care about anything else. Certainly not destroying forty innocent kids. Because you’re the big—scary—bad guy, and Frank Payne, well, he’s dead.” Steve turns the phone to show Payne the screen. “Guess who’s not?”
Payne stills.
Steve leans forward, looking at the display. A young woman sits on the edge of a fountain, writing into a book. She has long brown hair that she keeps absentmindedly pushing back.
“Mia seems like a good kid,” Steve says quietly. “Had a pretty rough time after her father died. Losing two parents by eighteen, that’s a curveball. Two turns in rehab. But she’s got a year sober. She’s tough. Or maybe she’s hanging by a thread and I just don’t see it, because I want to believe the best in people.” Putting two fingers to the screen, Steve zooms out slightly. “See that guy there on the bench? That’s my associate. 46, can you give us a wave?”
The man in the cap looks up, and salutes.
Payne is breathing heavily through his nose. Steve zooms back in on the girl. “Now, you want to tell me that you don’t care about what happens to her, you can try. But you know how we found you, Frank? The money you’ve been putting in that trust fund for her. She thinks she’s getting a scholarship. Got her life together, going to school, a year clean—but what is it going to do to her when I get my associate to walk over there and tell her about you?”
“No,” Payne says quickly. He begins shaking his head. “You wouldn’t do that, you wouldn’t—“
“I’ve got over three dozen children who’re trained to pick up a gun instead of run when the authorities arrive. This is the tip of what I’m willing to do to you right now.”
Payne licks his lips, and Steve can practically see him weighing his options.
Standing back up, Steve flicks off the feed. “Fine. 46—“
“Wait!” Payne yelps.
Steve arches a brow. He angles his phone unobtrusively to get whatever Payne is about to confess recorded on video.
Payne shakes his head. “They’ll kill me—they’ll kill her—“
“Better give me something, Frank, because I’m about to make sure Mia Payne has a really bad day—“
“I’m just here on contract!” Payne bursts out. “I watch the plant, I keep the workers going, it’s not my op!”
“Whose is it?”
“I don’t know—“
“Unacceptable,” Steve says, lifting a fingertip over the phone.
Payne starts to push himself up, begging, “No—“ and Clint shoves him back down. Payne rocks himself back and forth slightly. “You have to protect her, if I tell you—“
“I don’t have to do anything. You’re a child-soldier-using drug merchant. I’m trying to bargain with you, but you’re giving me nothing. So—“
“The Corporation! I’m on contract for The Corporation!”
Steve pulls back with a blink. Natasha steps up beside him. “The Corporation,” she echoes, glancing up at Steve. “Organized crime.”
“I pulled the contract through them, through the power broker. I do this for six months, I get some money together—they even said they’d help me get guys after for my own plans—this wasn’t my idea, this wasn’t my op, I’m just doing a job. Leave my daughter alone.”
Steve isolates the video, and asks, “Why let her think you’re dead in the first place? If you’re such a kind, caring father?”
Payne snarls, “I am dead.” Something in him seems to take over. “The Constrictor has no family. He has no ties to the world.”
Steve stops the video, and nods to Clint. “Get him up.” He turns to Natasha as Clint hauls Payne to his feet. “How far out is medical and forensics?”
“Ten.”
“Get him on the jet,” he says to Clint and Natasha. “I’ll wait for the others.”
Clint drags Payne forward, muttering, “C’mon, Frank—“
Payne digs in his heels, pleading, “What are you going to do? You’ll leave her alone—I’ll tell you anything, just—“ He stops himself, swinging wildly between self-disgust and desperation.
Steve studies him, and says coldly, “You’ll tell interrogation everything no matter what.” He flips through the apps on his phone, and speaks directly to 46. “Target was uncooperative. Show the girl the video I just sent you.”
46 gives the affirmative, and Payne starts screaming at him. Steve can see the surprise from both Natasha and Clint, but if either of them ever decide they’re in a place to judge him then hell might be the next thing to freeze over.
“Get him on the jet,” Steve repeats, turning back to the building.
Payne’s calling him every name in the book, swearing revenge, but Steve’s had a lot worse than a middle aged man with silly metal whips. He goes to stand watch over the children until help can come.
And honestly, he doesn’t feel bad about Mia Payne. Not at all.
He knows that’s a problem.