Blind

Kennedy had been joking about the waterboarding when she’d made that comment. She hadn’t expected her interrogators to actually do that to her. Of course, she could partially blame herself for that too. An ill-timed, completely inappropriate remark had left her in this position.

“Fuck you!” she choked, gasping for air as the cloth was removed from her face.

She twisted her head to the side, spitting water out. She was pretty sure she’d inhaled some of that water too so she wasn’t going to see that again unless she got a good thump on the chest. Kicking her heel into the table as her throat burned, Kennedy closed her eyes briefly.

“You couldn’t use something warmer than the fucking Arctic?” Kennedy spat once she caught her breath.

“Sorry, princess,” someone sneered and Kennedy spat a gob of saliva at him.

That probably wasn’t one of her finest moments ever either. Straining against the restraints, she snapped her teeth at the first hand that came close to her mouth. She almost got a mouthful of hand on that one.

And she was close to burying her teeth into a different hand when another hand grabbed her head and pinned her back down. She thrashed a little, tugging at the wrist restraints roughly. She was really considering dislocating her thumb at this point.

One of her interrogators started to say something but was interrupted by a loud explosion. They both jumped, stumbling about unsteadily as the craft rocked from the force. Kennedy inwardly sneered that she at least wasn’t stumbling about like a drunken idiot. The explosion did sling her about slightly, leaving her shoulder aching from where she’d been slung about.

Her shoulder throbbed, bringing tears to her eyes. Shifting, Kennedy rolled her shoulder as best as she could with the position she was in. It wasn’t dislocated, at least. She was grateful for that though.

An alarm was screeching from somewhere, loud enough that she felt like her entire brain was pulsating along with it. She twisted her head to see if the alarm was coming from somewhere in this room as well. But it wasn’t.

She did, however, see her two interrogators darting out of the room without a glance in her direction. She stared after them for several minutes, wide-eyed in disbelief.

“Hey! You can’t just leave me here!” Kennedy yelled to no avail.

Someone would come back. They had to. She waited for a few minutes, mismatched eyes staring up at the ceiling tiles in boredom. Kennedy counted the same row twice, on accident, before getting irritated with the wailing alarm. That wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

“Seriously? You have to be kidding me right now,” she mumbled to herself.

Shifting, Kennedy gave the wrist restraints another experimental tug. They gave a little, but not enough that she’d be able to slide her hand out without losing her thumb somehow. Her eyes glanced over at the clock on the wall before she looked back to the ceiling. Breathing in deeply and forcing herself together, Kennedy closed her eyes.

Her teeth were ground together so tightly by the time that she managed to dislocate her thumb, her jaw was shaking. A few tears pricked hotly at her eyes as she slid her hand out of the cuff. With some struggling, she pulled herself up into a sitting position. The table had been mostly lowered to it’s original position though it was still slightly angled.

For a moment, she debated over snapping her thumb back into place and then freeing her other wrist or vice versa. If someone walked in right now, it would be better for her to be able to move freely rather than to be chained to a table. So she freed her right wrist before snapping her thumb back into place.

“Son of a bitch,” Kennedy muttered, grinding her teeth together before climbing off the table.

She shook her wrist about a few times to get the blood flowing back. All the while, her eyes scanned the room for something to use as a weapon. If she wanted to fling ice cold water on someone, there was always that option.

“What kind of protocols are these? Run out on the prisoner in the middle of an interrogation?” Kennedy muttered as she examined the keycode box next to the door. “And they can’t even lock me up right in a cell? I am so writing a letter of complaint after this.”

She crossed the room and tugged at one of the few drawers in the room. Surprisingly, it opened. Another defect in S.H.I.E.L.D. security, most likely. Kennedy snorted to herself before rifling through the drawer. She grabbed a few sharp, and painful, looking, pointy-ended objects and a larger, sturdier object as well.

“I’m sure you’ve got cameras in here somewhere, Fury. So, just so you know, your security sucks ass!” Kennedy complained loudly. “I mean really, how intelligent is this?”

Turning back to the door, Kennedy set about in opening it. It only took a few minutes to access the panel and then for her to open the door. After a moment’s hesitation, Kennedy wiped her fingerprints from the tools and returned them to the drawer. She made sure to wipe all of her possible fingerprints off before slipping out of the room.

Honestly, she had no idea where she was going. Turning, she looked up and down the corridor before heading off in one direction. She was careful to look out for S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, lest they pop up on her. She was unarmed and not in the best fighting condition.

She froze was the entire ship shuddered before slowly beginning to list. Shifting unsteadily, Kennedy felt her boots begin to slide on the floor. Her hands gripped onto the wall for any kind of hold to keep her balance. Definitely time to get moving and find some way off of this ship.

Her mind flashed to Loki. The fucker probably knew how to get off of here. The only problem was that she didn’t know where he was. And she wasn’t really a fan of running off in search of him. But she needed him.

“Dammit,” she growled to herself.

“Hey!”

Kennedy turned, right hand dropping to draw her gun before realizing that it wasn’t there. She barely paid the person standing thirty feet away a glance before she bolted down the corridor. Undoubtedly, it was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and she wasn’t tangling with one of them.

She ignored the tight, throbbing pain in her chest as she ran. Darting around a corner, Kennedy flattened herself against the wall, her left leg slipping out slightly as the person chasing her rounded the corner. They tripped, falling face down and she pounced quickly.

Driving her knee into their lower back, Kennedy pulled their hands behind them and jerked them back tightly. It wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, at least. That didn’t mean much to her though.

As he started to shift, Kennedy shifted and drove her knee into his back harder. A low groan of pain reached her ears. Slightly satisfied, Kennedy grabbed his gun from the floor and checked to make sure the safety was off. Reaching down, she pulled the ear piece out before pressing the muzzle of the gun to his head.

She squeezed the trigger without hesitation before climbing to her feet. Wiping the blood from her face, Kennedy cleaned off the ear piece before putting it into her own ear. Immediately, someone’s voice came in.

“Parks? Parks, report now!” Barton snapped into the ear piece. “Did you catch her?”

“It’s more like I caught him, Barton,” Kennedy replied dryly. “And you’re down one man now.”

“You couldn’t have just tied him up?”

“And leave him for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Sorry, sweetheart. I don’t like leaving loose ends unchecked. Now, how are we getting off this boat?”

“We need to get Loki too. Do you have any idea where you are?” Barton asked.

Kennedy backed out of the corridor to see the top of the frame. Every new corridor had a letter followed by a set of numbers to denote what level someone was on and in which area. She read off the information to Barton before anxiously waiting on his response.

Thankfully, it came quickly.

“Follow that corridor until it branches off. Keep going right and you’ll get to Loki. Get him and get to the flight deck,” Barton replied.

“What about you?” Kennedy asked as she broke into a jog, sidestepping the body on the ground.

“I’ll meet you there,” he responded before going silent.

Shaking her head slightly, Kennedy followed Barton’s very simple instructions in taking only right turns. She rounded another corner slowly as she heard movement around it. Her eyebrows rose as she saw Loki standing on the platform and the large, hammer-wielding blonde inside the glass cage. Well, at least she didn’t have to break him out.

Loki turned, his emerald eyes spotting her. With a slight, discreet movement of one hand, he gestured for her to remain where she was. So Kennedy folded her arms over her chest and waited.