Meant to Be

As Chick tried to focus on her surroundings, the figure that stood in the way of the light started to move towards her. The figure emanated its own light and seemed to be talking. Chick could hear the voice but couldn’t understand what it was saying. She stared blankly, sleepily, trying to understand the garbled mess she heard. She smacked her dry lips together, trying to talk to it. All that came out were incoherent moans. The voice continued to talk as it came closer, but her vision had not cleared up.

It felt like she was looking at fireworks. The colors and the lights were too much to take in and she had to close her eyes. Suddenly, the voice was talking above her and she felt cold, as if she was being covered in ice water. The sensation creeped around her chest and her arms. She tried to talk once again, but to no avail.

When she opened her eyes again, she was alarmed, once more, to find that she was not in her bed. In fact, when she opened her eyes, she was confused to see the cold, grey sky above her. She started to shiver, unable to help it. Her teeth chattered, shocking her skull with a stabbing pain.

What’s wrong with me? she wanted to ask. Where is my medication?

She felt her stomach flip as if she was on a roller coaster, going up and down in the air. Blue and red lights flashed brightly around her and people shouted and screamed nearby. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. When she looked up this time, she was face to face with a red and yellow metal mask.

Before she had the chance to try to speak again, Iron Man had set her down on a gurney and she was loaded into an ambulance. She tried to raise her voice in protest, but it was too late. Iron Man turned, speaking once more before turning and flying back towards her apartment building. Before the ambulance doors shut, Chick saw the extent of the damage that had been done.

The roads were shredded and smattered with bullet holes. There was a large, black helicopter burning in a heap in front of her building. Billowing, black smoke lifted up into the sky. The top of her building was on fire. And where her window once was, there was a gaping hole in the middle of the building, over the half the length of the wall and spanning three floors.

She could make out EMTs asking her questions, but couldn’t answer them. All she could focus on was the shit storm she was about to face at work.

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Tony set another of the building tenants onto a gurney for the EMTs to take.

“Not sure if she went in with only one leg, boys. Better keep an eye on that,” he quipped after turning and heading back towards the building.

“There was a prosthetic on the floor of her apartment, Boss,” FRIDAY replied in Tony’s ear with a delicate Irish accent. Her voice was soothing and melodic. “Broken in the blast, it seemed. Poor thing.”

“Oh, my broken heart,” Tony muttered dryly. “I’m busy saving lives here, if you could spare me the sensitive crap. Give me eyes on more live ones.” Tony’s view turned to thermal imaging of the apartment building, scanning for anymore warm bodies still inside.

“You’ve got one more, on the roof.” Tony flew for the very top of the apartment building, looking for the body. “East corner,” FRIDAY added. He shifted his suit’s boosters to aim for the east corner, moving quickly. The man was passed out on the ground, huddled by an air vent. Black smoke swirled in the air from the fire below them. “Gunshot wounds and both fractured ankles,” she informed him. The man was covered head to toe in black. “It’s heating up out here, better hurry, Boss.”

“Fractures. So we’ve got a jumper,” Tony realized. This guy had been on the helicopter before it crashed and jumped to the roof before it came down. “Weapons?” His mask showed X-ray images of the scene in front of him.

“He’s got a vest.” Tony touched down onto the roof, holding an arm out with his glove’s blaster powered up. “45 behind his back, knife under his left pant leg. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.”

“Alright, let’s bring him down before the cops get bored of sitting on their hands.” Tony let go of the charge in his glove and reached out for the man quickly. Before he was able to grab him the man opened his eyes and kicked away his hand. He sprang up onto his feet and started to run, reaching for the gun tucked into his pants behind his back. “Oh, come on. We were almost done,” Tony moaned dejectedly. The man shot at Tony as he ran, not looking back. All five shots missed him.

“He’s headed for the door, Boss. Must hurt running with fractured ankles,” FRIDAY added, still chipper and pleasing.

Tony lifted up his blaster and shot once at the back of the man’s knees. He screamed and fell forward, not moving again.

“Since when are you so emotional?” Tony asked her.

“I was merely stating an observation.”

Tony flew to the man, stomping on the gun next to him to shatter it.

“Unconscious, but vitals are steady,” she added.

He hauled the man over his shoulder and turned to the edge of the roof.

“Building’s clear?” Tony asked once more for good measure.

“All clear, Boss.” Tony started back to the ground. “Maybe I’m not the emotional one.”

“What, I am?”

“You have been under rather a lot of pressure.” Tony made it to the ground, practically throwing the man off of his shoulder and into the hands of the waiting EMTs. He turned to the cops next to them.

“Buildings clear, officers.” Tony reached down to the man’s pant leg and retrieved the dagger he was hiding. He flipped it so he was holding the blade and held it out to one of the cops. “This guy was on the chopper, too.” They nodded and one of them went into the ambulance with the gurney with two pairs of handcuffs to hold him down.

“There’s no shame in it, you know,” FRIDAY continued. “Maybe you should go on holiday. I’m thinking sunny beach, warm water, pina coladas. Just what the doctor ordered.” The firefighters continued to beat back the fire. The final ambulance was loaded with the man in black, and the cop car followed it away from the scene.

“Mm, sounds boring.”

“By the way, I ran facial recognition on the people we pulled from the building. I’m compiling a list of names of the assailants from the chopper, but it looks like they’re all associated with HYDRA, unfortunately.”

“Great,” Tony muttered. He stood watching the wreckage and the fire as he spoke with FRIDAY. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.”

“Funny you should mention. The woman with the leg- or rather without- her name is Charlotte Abbott.”

“Who cares?”

“She works at the UN in Agent Murdoch’s division, working with IEAs.”

“Get to the point, I’m a busy man.”

“I’m just saying, it couldn’t hurt to grease some wheels after this. You know how Murdoch feels about you. After the Accords, you were the one he had to deal with, and you didn’t exactly make it the most enjoyable task.”

“I don’t know what you mean, I’m a pleasure to be around, honestly.”

“If you’ve got an in with the IEA department, you might have a better chance of fighting the backlash you’ve been up against. Might even make a good impression on a certain redhead.” Tony frowned behind his mask, watching the flames lick the brick walls of the building.

“I’ll take it into consideration.”

“I’m picking up another police scanner alert. There’s a problem in Queens.” Tony kicked off the ground, flying up into the sky, headed for his home in Manhattan.

“We could let the kid handle it.”

“It’s 1 o’clock on a Saturday. You think he’s awake?” Tony took a sharp turn to the right.

“Friggin kids.”

“ETA 15 minutes.”

“While we’re waiting, take a look at where they’re shipping the cripple kid to and reroute her to the bunker.” FRIDAY hummed thoughtfully.

“Told you I'm not the emotional one.”