Chapter 77

"You're doing what?"

Maggie sat on one of the leather couches in the Avengers common room, her knees tucked under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. "I'm joining you on missions in a back up capacity."

Rhodey, Vision, and Pepper sat on couches around the cozy, mahogany-and-book filled room, but Tony was pacing around with a panicked look in his eye. "You're doing what?"

"Tony," Pepper sighed. "You heard her."

"But… she–" he gestured wordlessly at Maggie, his hair askew.

"I think what Tony's trying to say," Rhodey said, leaning forward in his seat and leveling a serious look at Maggie, "is why? Maggie, you've spent your life fighting. Are you sure you want to jump back in so soon?"

Maggie took a deep breath. She knew they'd do this. "That's the thing, Rhodey, I spent my life fighting for HYDRA. Helping you guys isn't the same thing at all."

"You mustn't let guilt dictate your life," Vision cut in softly. "No one can demand your skills of you."

She sighed frustratedly and unwrapped her arms from around her legs, dropping her feet back to the floor. "You don't get it, this isn't about HYDRA. I'm not doing this because of them, and I'm not doing it because the Accords Committee are manipulating me into it, I'm doing this because…" She leaned her elbows on her knees and looked around at the people in the room with her: Tony, still pacing back and forth behind Pepper's chair like an angry cat; Vision and Rhodey frowning at her looking for all the world like concerned brothers; and Pepper's cool, judgement-free gaze.

"I'm doing this because… look, let's be honest here and admit I've got a bit of a complex about helping people. Not the worst complex to have, but still. Even in a back up role I can help so many people in so many ways – I can protect civilians, make sure they never have to feel the kind of fear I felt when I was five years old and alone. I can help you guys, because there are three of you trying to save the world." She took a breath. "And I can help me, because I've been searching for something to do, something that makes me feel like I'm using my life well, and I think this is it. The advocacy and the philanthropy and the analysing data are great, don't get me wrong, but this is something that only a very few people can do. It's something that I can do. And I'm going to do it well."

Tony stopped pacing about halfway through her speech, and when she fell silent she looked to him first, because his opinion was the one that mattered in the end. The others would accept her choice, but Tony was the one clouded by overprotectiveness and fear. She knew he wanted to keep her away from the Accords and the Avengers as much as he could, because he knew better than anyone how dangerous it could all be. But she'd faced danger her whole life.

Tony stared back at her, his dark eyes pinched with fear. But she knew he'd been listening. After a long moment, in which she looked straight into his eyes and thought please, he sighed and folded his arms across his chest. "Alright," he murmured through gritted teeth, and rolled his eyes at the grin that crossed Maggie's face. "Alright. It's a stupid idea, but it's not like I've been able to stop any of your stupid ideas before."

"That's the spirit," Rhodey said, leaning back in his chair with an eye roll.

Maggie turned to him and Vision. "What do you say, guys? How do you feel about having me on your six?" This was their team, and despite what the Accords Committee said it was up to them to decide who they wanted to work with.

Vision turned to Rhodey politely. Rhodey gestured to himself. "Who, me? Uh, yeah, I've seen you fight. And I'm not too proud to admit we need the help." Tony shot him a sideways look and he shrugged. "Maggie's right, she can do this."

Maggie smiled at him, and then they all turned to Vision. He looked down at his clasped hands.

"It seems to me that to become an Avenger is not to pass some test or to sign a document," he said thoughtfully, and his eyes flicked up to Maggie's. "It is to step up and do the right thing when the right thing must be done. And Maggie, you have proven yourself of that time and time again. I'm certain I speak for Mr Stark and Colonel Rhodes when I say welcome to the team." His eyes warmed, and a smile crept across Maggie's face.

"Thank you, Vis," she said softly.

Tony watched on thoughtfully, his eyes tracking first across his team; Vision, Rhodey, and now his sister, and then to Pepper, who watched him with a small smile on her face. Damn it, she always knew what he was thinking. He shook off the rush of sentimentality and planted his hands on the back of Rhodey's sofa.

"Alright, you're an anointed Avenger. So how does this work? Sign on the dotted line, then jump on the Quinjet for the next mission?"

"Basically," she replied with a shrug. "Though the Accords Committee said they'd decide which missions I get sent on."

"What about training?" Pepper asked. "They required a lot for you to be an analyst, what do they want you to complete this time around?"

"Those assholes," Maggie replied as she slapped her hands down on her sofa. "said that the combat module I did apparently already qualifies me as a combatant."

Tony stiffened. "They always meant to send you into the field."

"Looks like it," she replied, glowering. "Manipulative assholes. As for all the other stuff like weapons checks and strategy training and team simulations, they said they'll run checks while I'm on the job. But no, I don't have to jump through hoops this time around."

"I don't trust them," Pepper said, because she wasn't Avenger and it wasn't tantamount to treason for her to say it. "Are you sure it's a good idea to play right into their hands?"

Maggie dropped her head back onto her sofa headrest. "I don't know. The alternative is saying no just for the principle of it, but I want to do this." She sighed. "Ross said that 'for now our interests are aligned'. I think he was telling the truth."

"And when your interests aren't aligned?" asked Vision.

She shrugged. "What happens to any of us, then?"

A few long moments of silence passed. Maggie couldn't bear to look any of them in the eye, so when the silence got too much to handle she stood up. "I've, uh… I've gotta go pick up my kit from requisitions and sign the contract." She turned to go, then hesitated and turned back. "Thank you, guys. For trusting me. It means a lot."

"We should be thanking you," Rhodey said. "Thanks for stepping up, Maggie. You didn't have to, but we really appreciate it."

Vision nodded solemnly, and Tony yawned.

"We needed a girl on the team anyway," he said.

Maggie scowled at him, though she was sure he could see the smile she was trying to hide. "You're an idiot."

"You're fired," he replied cheerily. "Go on Maggot, go get your stuff. We'll be here."

From: Maggie

So.

You know that job I got a couple weeks ago? I might've gotten promoted.

From: Bucky

Promoted? You're a senior analyst or something? That's great doll, I'm really proud of you. Did you get a pay raise? I'm looking to become a trophy husband.

From: Maggie

You have to be good looking to be a trophy husband.

And… no. I might actually be an Avenger now. Well not might. I… am. A back-up Avenger. A maybevenger.

It was the Accords Committee's idea. They're manipulative and I know if I stick even a toe out of line they won't hesitate to ruin me, but I've got to do this, Bucky. I think you more than anyone will understand. This is the mission.

From: Bucky

I understand. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm not really worried about you right now, because the idea of you going out without me watching your back is terrifying. But I know you're with a team you can trust, and… I guess I saw this coming. You've never been able to stand by.

I know you know what you're doing, but just keep your guard up. In the field, and back home. I don't trust those Accords Committee bastards.

I love you.

May 29th, 2017

Herat, Afghanistan

On Tony's birthday the Avengers got a lead that ARES had been sighted in the sweltering, sprawling city of Herat.

Instead of reporting to the operations room, Maggie went straight to the flight hangar in the standard issue Avengers agent outfit: a dark blue tactical suit. She'd cut two slices in the back in case she needed her wings, and fitted a new pair of nanotech energy blasters to her wrists, disguised as bracelets. The tactical suit felt familiar; the Kevlar blend felt strong against her skin and she found she could breathe a little easier, but the flashes of blue out of the corners of her eyes startled her. She'd spent most of her life in a uniform much like this, and she was startled to find how much it felt like a second skin.

The Avengers flew with Strike Team Alpha on the main Quinjet, but Maggie flew on the backup Quinjet with another cohort of Avengers agents. The flight to Herat was tense, as Maggie helped the Avengers plan their attack and coordinated with the analysts back at the facility. When they landed mostly everyone left to filter into the city, but Maggie remained on the Quinjet with the backup team of agents, working on comms and on a holographic map of the city.

It was a tense wait in the air conditioned Quinjet, watching her brother's team (her team) ghost through the city and surround the potential ARES hideout. It was a long, blocky building built in the local sun-dried mud brick style, with a few sentries posted around it and across the roof.

Maggie paced the length of the Quinjet, taking her holographic overlay with her as her eyes darted over all the feeds from Avengers, agents, and security cameras she could locate. She was just a couple of miles away but she still felt frustratingly helpless. Awareness prickled along the back of her neck and into the nanoparticles stretched across her back, making them tingle and shift. At any moment the Avengers could call deploy backup, the signal for her and the other backup agents to leap out of the jet and into action. She didn't know if she was ready.

"Commence contact."

War Machine kicked down the door, Vision phased through the roof, and Iron Man blasted through a window on the other side of the building. Maggie balled her fingers into fists and watched the noise and chaos that followed.

Five minutes later, Tony blasted a gun-wielding ARES agent into a wall and called: "That's the last of them. Let's clear up here."

Maggie let out a breath and dropped into a seat next to one of the other backup Avengers. She wasn't sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

"It was just a small outpost," Rhodey reported to the Accords Committee that afternoon. "Tessler and his team weren't there, the outpost only had a limited number of men and a small cache of weapons. The bulk of ARES is still out there somewhere."

"And what's more," added Maggie grimly, still in her tactical suit, "ARES got wind of the raid and they retaliated." She brought up a photograph of a bombsite a few miles out of Herat, a warped and mangled building with smoke still curling from the ruins. "This used to be portable hospital, funded by an Avengers relief organisation. Fighting moved out of the area two years ago but there were still three on-call staff members inside, and four patients." Maggie brought up images of each civilian; five women and two men, smiling at the camera. One man was forty seven, the exact age Tony had turned today.

Maggie let her eyes rest on the faces. "They're all dead."

Silence followed. Tony stared at the holographic faces of the bombing victims, a dark intensity to his eyes that promised nothing good. Vision's eyes were closed, and as she watched Rhodey his eyes dropped away, a look of sheer exhaustion on his face.

An Army general in the committee cleared his throat. "What do you intend to do next?"

As one, the Avengers turned to Tony. He balled his hand into a fist and sat up straight in his chair.

"We don't stop. Next time we go after ARES we go for the throat: we find their main base of operations and take down every single one of them until there's no one left to hit the detonator."

"How do you intend to do that?" another Committee member asked next. "How will you be sure that you're at the right place? We don't need any more retaliatory attacks."

Tony's eyes darkened. "Intel. Reconnaissance. We're quieter and faster than these bastards, we'll make sure they don't see us coming until it's too late. We won't storm in on maybe-leads and chances."

"We'll be unpredictable," Maggie added, and Tony looked over with a surprised quirk to his eyebrows. He met her determined eyes, and nodded.

"Exactly."

Tony had planned a small birthday celebration with the Avengers and their friends that night, but after the mission and the debrief no one was really in the mood to celebrate. But they came together and comforted themselves with each other's presence, eating and drinking and keeping the sense of failure at bay.

Maggie couldn't get the faces of the murdered doctors, nurses, and patients out of her head. She'd thought she was done with seeing the faces of people who were dead because of her, and the addition of seven more felt like a blade of ice in her stomach. She knew it wasn't the same, but… she knew they'd never be forgotten.

At the end of the night she gave Tony his present, wrapped in silver paper. When he tore it open to reveal a mug in the shape of Iron Man's helmet he groaned, and then went to show Pepper like an excited kid. When Maggie informed him that she'd also designed a range of new custom modifications for his nanotech armor he tried to run straight to the workshop, but Pepper reeled him back in and forced him to socialize for another hour or so.

Maggie went to bed heartsore and frustrated, but with a warm glow at the very center of her chest. It was disorienting, but she had the Kimoyo bead and Bucky on the other end to work through it.

June 2nd, 2017

Mashhad, Iran

"Enjoying your birthday so far, Mags? Is this how you pictured yourself at thirty one?"

Maggie didn't look away from her holographic screen as her fingers danced through shreds of local electronic transmissions, searching for what she needed. She didn't need to look up anyway since the question had been asked by Tony, who wasn't in the disguised van with her. He was in his armor in stealth mode, hidden in an alley several blocks away.

"This isn't really how I pictured spending my birthday, no," she replied, trawling through hundreds of innocuous communications. The other agents in the van with her watched silently, some of them monitoring security cameras and liasing with local law enforcement. Maggie wore the dark blue tactical suit again, her hair tied up out of her face and her comms unit snug in her ear. "Though I wouldn't change it for the world."

Over the past four days the Avengers had been looking for ARES nonstop, in quiet desert town and bunkers throughout the area. Two days ago Maggie had been looking through the mission footage from Turkmenistan and caught Tessler's 'unpredictability' speech a second time. That got her thinking, and she suggested at a meeting with the other analysts that ARES might be hiding in plain sight. Following up on that hunch, an analyst back at the facility found signs of a paramilitary group taking up residence in a suburb of Iran's second most populous city, Masshad.

Maggie had caught a glimpse of the city on their way in on commercial planes – the Quinjet was too visible. Masshad was a sprawling city with stretching spires, turquoise domes and gilt towers gleaming in the sun. Her mission research told her that it was a place of religious pilgrimage and culture, home to poets, composers, and artists. But aside from that first glimpse, she'd been stuck in the back of a van with seven other agents for the past four hours, watching the ARES hideout. Avengers agents had already been surveilling the building for the past day and a half and confirmed that it was indeed ARES's base, so Maggie's team was there to run final checks.

The building itself was a series of interconnected buildings that looked residential on the outside, spanning a few blocks. The sun beat down on the quiet tree-lined streets, and a late morning breeze fluttered against the curtains in the concrete buildings' windows. After a few hours of surveillance Maggie's team had called the other Avengers in to the area.

Rhodey had asked: "Are we absolutely sure this is the place? We can't be wrong this time."

"We're sure," Maggie had replied. "The surveillance teams were right, this place is all wrong. There's no foot traffic, there's sentries at the end of every block, and there's no sign of kids in the neighborhood. This is a base."

So now the Avengers and their strike teams were surrounding the complex of buildings and quietly evacuating civilians. Maggie, with Vision and F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, had been doing something else entirely for nearly three hours, uncertain that she'd even succeed.

She was beginning to lose hope, until:

"I found it!" she exclaimed, her kaleidoscope of holographic data suddenly coalescing around a single shred of a digital signal. "Well, F.R.I.D.A.Y. technically found it, but we found it!" She grinned breathlessly and glanced around at the other agents in the van, who… were all focused on other mission details.

Luckily she had the rest of the team on comms.

"You did?" came Tony's voice. "Where is it?"

Maggie scrutinized the blip of data she'd found and started to expand. So far every ARES base they'd come across had had an immensely destructive bomb hidden somewhere close by, specifically to punish the Avengers if they attacked. Maggie had been tasked with finding the bomb detonation signal receiver. She'd been painstakingly combing through Mashhad's gigabytes of electronic transmissions for hours, and though she had no doubt that she'd finally found the signal, ARES was good. She sighed.

"I can't tell. Vision, any luck?"

"I'm afraid not," he replied. "The signal itself is not enough to physically find the bomb. But we are able to block its receiving capabilities and prevent ARES from remotely detonating it."

"Great, do that!" said Rhodey.

"We can't do that," Maggie cut in. "Once the bomb's receiving capabilities are shut down that triggers a detonation countdown."

"How long?"

"The last bomb was set to five minutes."

Silence rang out over the comms. Maggie bit her lip, and looked over to the pair of agents at the front of the van, who were monitoring the feed from a mobile stealth camera they'd snuck into the ARES complex (Maggie had helped with the camera design: it was a little grey tube about the size of her pinkie finger that used hundreds of tiny filament-like legs to creep across any surface, and utilized retro-reflective panels that made it nearly invisible to the naked eye). So far all they'd seen were off-duty men and women strolling down the complex corridors or chatting in doorways. As she watched, the drone spied on a conversation between two men wearing the ARES sand-colored tactical suits.

"Hold off on blocking the receiver," Tony eventually said, his voice heavy. "But we can't wait around for them to show us where the bomb is, we don't know what they've got planned next."

"So what's the play?" Rhodey asked.

"We do this quietly – Rhodey, you help me on the perimeter, we'll capture all the ARES members we can and have the strike team question them for the location of the bomb. Vision, you search the area – you've got that scanning capability, and you can move faster than us. Maggie, stand by the receiver blocker. You might only have a second to deactivate it so stay sharp."

"Affirmative." The word slipped out of the part of her mind that was all Wyvern, a lizard brain that only knew missions and the ever present promise of death. She swallowed.

"The bomb containment unit's on standby," Tony continued. "I've done what I could in the past four days to reinforce the tech but it still probably won't contain the full force of the bomb, so let's keep that as a last resort." He sighed, but when he next spoke his words were grim: "Lets do this."

For the next ten minutes Maggie diverted her attention in three directions: first to Tony and Rhodey's video feeds as they slipped up behind sentries and off-duty ARES members and brought them to the elite Avengers interrogators in dark alleys. Second, to Vision's feed as he flew through the city, scanning buildings and phasing through walls. Third, to the feed from the tiny camera creeping its way through the ARES complex. She watched over the shoulders of the agents in the van, her brow furrowed.

The Avengers interrogators opened up the comms to inform them of another failed interrogation: "These sentries are low level, they don't know where the bomb is."

"Okay," came Tony's gritted voice. "Vision?"

"I am still searching."

"Maggie?"

"Nothing," she replied, then leaned over the van agents' shoulder to point out a door at the end of the corridor. "Try in there." She gripped the back of the driver's seat as she watched the holographic screen, tracking the stealth camera's journey across the stone wall. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Vision fly further above the city so he could scan a block of apartments.

The stealth camera slipped between the door and its hinge, and after a second of darkness Maggie's eyes focused on the room beyond: a wide room full of people in civilian clothes and ARES uniforms, ambling from tables covered in food to chairs and recliners around the edge of the room, or poring over files and documents at tables. The room itself was beautiful, with earthy Iranian tapestries draped across the walls and an intricate design of tiles on the high ceiling. Bronze and lapis lazuli ornaments lined the windows and adorned wooden tables. ARES was living richly, basking in the spoils of their raids.

"Okay, we've got something," Maggie said. "Some kind of meeting in the southwest corner, third floor. Looks like more senior agents, I recognize a few from the ARES files." The camera scuttled across the ceiling, and Maggie's eyes latched onto a man with a long face and white hair at the back of the room. He sat at a long desk, leaning back in his chair with his chin propped in his hand as a group of men and women in ARES uniforms spoke to him.

"Tessler spotted," she called.

Just as she did, the stealth camera picked up the audio as a radio on Tessler's desk squawked into life. "The Avengers are here! Send backup, Iron Man is–" it dissolved into static.

"God dammit!" Tony cursed into the comms.

There was no pause, no second of processing. Tessler's eyes widened and he lunged for a thin grey box on his desk, flipping open the plastic casing before slamming a finger down on a detonation button.

Maggie was half a second faster.

Once Tessler hit the button he shot to his feet and cocked his head, listening, even as chaos broke out in the room full of ARES generals. But outside the room, nothing had changed in Mashhad.

Realization crossed Tessler's face, and Maggie saw rather than heard his growl. He went back to his little grey box and jabbed the button again, though Maggie could see in his eyes that he knew it wouldn't work. A smirk curled up her lips, but then realization of what she'd just done thudded in her chest.

"Avengers," she breathed into the comms. "The detonation countdown starts now, we've got to–"

Vision cut her off: "I have located the bomb!"

"What?" She turned to Vision's feed, which showed him soaring down to a multi-storey apartment building a few blocks away. He phased through the top three stories and came to an abrupt halt right in front of a large black case in an empty apartment. Maggie's heart skipped a beat, and a breath of relief whooshed up from her chest as Vision set about scanning the bomb and trying to get it open.

"Avengers agents en route to clear the building, and the bomb defusal unit is in the atmosphere above the apartment complex," Rhodey called. "Get started on defusal, Vision."

"I've got Tessler," came Tony's voice, and Maggie turned back to the stealth camera feed just in time to see the south wall of ARES's headquarters implode under the force of the Iron Man armor. He burst into the room, a red and gold wrecking ball, and the ARES agents either opened fire or fled.

"Iron Man is in the building," Maggie reported to the agents on the ground. "ARES are scattering, close in on the exits and take them down. We can't let them get away this time."

Once the initial hailstorm of bullets had all bounced off his armor, Tony cocked his head and the suit released dozens of heat-seeking sedative projectiles. Within two seconds the projectiles hit each remaining ARES member, injected sedative directly into their bloodstreams, and sent them crumpling to the ground. One man collapsed against a mahogany ornament table in a spectacular display of splintering wood and shattering vases. Maggie's eyes darted toward Vision's feed to see him prying off the top of the bomb. She checked her digital countdown: they were almost at four minutes. She swallowed thickly.

Back in the ARES base, Tessler remained standing. Iron Man's white glowing eye slits turned on the ARES leader and he took a step forward, his metal foot crunching in the rubble. Tessler didn't back away.

"It doesn't matter," the white haired man sneered, gesturing to his useless detonator. "You think you're so clever, but I warned you–"

"We know where the bomb is Tessler," Tony cut in, still pacing slowly toward the man. "Give it up. We beat you and we're taking you in."

Tessler held his ground, and through Tony's video feed Maggie saw an unholy gleam spark in the man's eyes. She wondered if the Avengers profilers were right, if his undiagnosed personality disorder had triggered a psychotic break with reality. She wondered if that would make their job easier or harder.

"Vision, how are you going?" she murmured into the comms.

"They have adapted and changed their construction technique as you predicted," the android replied, "though I believe I can defuse this device in the time left."

Maggie bit her lip and turned back to Tony's feed. Out of the corner of her eye, her timer read 3:45.

"You're a fool," Tessler spat, and finally reacted to Iron Man's approach; he sidestepped around his desk and backed away, matching Tony's steps. "After today ARES will make ten more bombs and detonate them across the region in the Avengers' name." His eyes narrowed. "Today we build the shrine to your failure."

Maggie heard the faint intake of air as Tony opened his mouth to deliver a snappy retort, but then, faster than she thought he could move, Tessler swiped something off his desk and hurled it at Iron Man. The suit automatically targeted and destroyed the thing – a small black disc – but not before it activated. A pulse of blue light exploded from the device, swept across the room and slammed into Tony's armor. His video feed went dark.

"Tony!" Maggie whirled back to the stealth camera feed, which had thankfully escaped the blue light. Iron Man was still exactly where he'd been standing before, only now lifeless – the eye slits no longer glowed, the arc reactor flickered, and his limbs seemed frozen.

"Tony!" she repeated, fighting back the rising panic. "Tony, report!"

Another agent in the van leaned over. "Looks like an EMP. I thought those didn't work on the armor?"

Maggie swallowed. "Most wouldn't," she said, and she forced herself to think rationally. "Tessler must have access to potent tech, but even that won't affect the suit for long. Iron Man will be back online soon."

"Maybe not soon enough," the agent replied grimly. Maggie followed his eyes back to the feed, and narrowed her eyes at the sight of Tessler now in the far corner of the room, pulling back an ornate rug to reveal a metal trap door. The man looked over his shoulder at the still-dormant Iron Man armor, sneered, then pulled a ring on the trap door to swing it open.

"I did warn you," Tessler called, his voice cold. Then he swung his legs into the gaping hole beneath the floor and dropped out of sight. The trapdoor closed with a clang.

"C'mon, c'mon…" Maggie hissed, her hands clenching and unclenching. "Rhodey, Tessler's just escaped the main room, can you–"

All at once, Tony's feed flickered to life again and the Iron Man armor lurched across the room toward the trap door.

"–sneaky pompous asshole!" came his voice, hoarse in a way that suggested he'd been shouting inside his suit for the past ten seconds.

"Tony!" Maggie breathed, as he ripped open the trapdoor hatch. "I'm scanning the building, it looks like that chute leads to the sewer system - if you follow him you should catch up in no time."

"Got it," Tony replied grimly. "How's Vision doing on the–"

She didn't hear the rest of his sentence, because one moment a flash of orange light filled his video feed, and the next a familiar boom resounded outside the white van. The van swayed, and Maggie slapped a hand against the side to steady herself even as her heart seemed to stop in her chest.

"I thought we had three minutes!" cried the agent in the front seat, clutching his head where it had hit the driver's side window. Maggie leaned past him to look up at the ARES complex. A fireball consumed the entire southwest corner, and before her eyes the structure crumpled and fell in on itself, floors and floors of the building crunching down. The sound was horrific: the screech of rending rebar and the concussive cracks of concrete as the building caved in.

"That wasn't the main bomb," she breathed, even though the fire hurt her eyes and her ears were still ringing from the blast. She looked over her shoulder at Vision's feed, where he was still precisely and carefully dismantling the large bomb. She turned back to the corner structure of the ARES complex, which was already starting to look less like a fireball and more like a smoking pile of rubble. "That was Tessler's exit strategy." She pressed her fingers to her comm piece. "Tony! Tony, report!"

She was met with nothing but silence and the fuzzy grey of his disabled video feed, but Maggie kept the edges of panic at bay by reminding herself that in his suit a building ten times that size could explode on top of him and he'd walk out without a scratch.

"Tony!" Rhodey echoed over the comms, his voice threaded with panic. "C'mon, Tony, we don't have time for your dramatic pauses–"

"He'll be okay," Maggie cut in, as she checked on the agents inside the van – aside from the driver's minor head wound, they were all fine. "His suit'll hold up but even our comms struggle to get through tonnes of concrete. What's your status?"

"Still working on rounding up the rest of ARES," Rhodey replied grimly. "Though Tessler just dropped a building on half of them."

"Keep at it," Maggie replied. "They'll go after civilians to punish us, so make sure to keep them from getting past the evacuation line. Vision?"

"I have deactivated all the external traps and am now accessing the detonator," Vision replied. "I will need at least another two minutes to ensure I'm cutting the right wires."

Maggie checked the digital timer. "You've got three. Be careful." Her heart was pounding, partly from the knowledge that her brother was stuck under a building and partly from the much-larger bomb that Vision was currently elbow-deep in. But she knew that he could defuse it. And if not, they had the bomb containment unit on standby. Vision had already easily survived one blast and the Avengers agents had already set up a wide evacuation perimeter around the bomb.

But for some reason, Maggie couldn't stop nerves crawling across her skin like so many bugs. The feeling itched at her, sending her pacing back and forth across the tight space of the van like a caged tiger. She thought of the gleam in Tessler's eye, and the building he'd sent crashing down around Tony. She thought of him fleeing through the sewers – he was alone now and they'd get him, but why couldn't she shake off the feeling that she was about to come apart at the seams?

She double checked the progress of the agents in the van – they were coordinating civilian evacuation, trying to get Tony's comms back online, and monitoring the overall situation. A few garbled crackles came over Tony's comms, sounding much like frustrated grunts, but other than that he was still offline and buried.

One agent at the back of the van was flying a drone over the city, spying out fleeing ARES agents. The sun-baked buildings and bustling streets seemed jarring against the smoke plume blooming from the ARES building. But despite the fire and pile of rubble, the situation was mostly in hand.

The Avengers, Mr Stark, are predictable.

At the memory of Tessler's cold, scornful voice Maggie clenched her fists again and forced herself to take deep breaths. You're overthinking it, Maggie. Tessler's a two-bit traitor and he's played all his cards. She kept her eyes on the drone feed, watching the Avengers sweep through Mashhad's streets.

But her skin still crawled. Tessler's voice echoed in her mind: Today we build the shrine to your failure.

The agent controlling the drone pulled it up a little, reporting into the comms that he was going to see if he could track Tessler in the sewers, but as the feed tilted up Maggie's eyes snagged on a smooth, round shape amongst the blocky apartments.

"Wait," she said, her hand coming to rest over the agent's and holding the drone where it was. The agent jumped and looked up at her, blinking.

Maggie didn't look away from the feed. The shape she'd spotted was a dusty, faded blue dome a few blocks in the other direction from the fighting. Just a temple. But Maggie's mind was whirling, thoughts flowing and coalescing, and something thrumming in her veins wouldn't let her look away from this irrelevant bulb poking out of the suburban buildings. All the action was in the complete other direction, and yet…

She slipped the drone controls out of the agent's hands. He didn't protest, just watched her with a bemused look on his face. Mouth dry, Maggie piloted the drone away from the smoking ARES headquarters, away from the fighting, and toward the old, dusty temple. It was obviously an ancient structure: the painted blue dome had almost completely faded back to its original sandy color, and scaffolding covered its entire northern side. It sat in the middle of the busy suburban area, an odd afterthought from the past. It didn't look like anyone had worshipped there in many years.

"Ms Stark…" the drone-less agent said, a furrow in his brow.

A shrine to your failure.

Her thumb inched forward on the controls, and the drone dipped down to the temple and in through a crack in one of the boarded-up windows.

She didn't know what she'd been hoping for. But the instant the drone's camera adjusted to the dimmer light and picked out the dark, sharp lines of a large black case in the middle of the temple's empty earthen floor, a sickening sense of dread seized her heart and squeezed, sending the drone controls tumbling out of her numb hands.

She heard the agent's horrified murmur of oh god but she couldn't process it because there was another bomb, another bomb–

"Another bomb!" she blurted into the comms, panic constricting her throat so the words came out high and thready. "There's another bomb, it's in the abandoned temple two blocks west, is anyone in the area?"

"Christ," Rhodey breathed. "It's active?"

"When we blocked that detonation command we blocked all receivers of all bombs in the area, it's just as active as the other one," she replied, her heart pounding against her ribs. "There's got to be hundreds of civilians around it. Vision?"

"I'm not finished disabling this one!" Vision replied, as panicked as she'd ever heard him. "I'm hurrying, but–"

Rhodey's voice cut in: "I might be able to go but I don't know how to disable it, and ARES is gunning for the civilians now." Maggie's eyes flickered to the blinking digital timer: less than three minutes. Another crackle came through Tony's comms, but then cut out again.

Maggie's heart thudded so strongly that it reverberated through her bones, and she opened her mouth to speak but Rhodey got in first:

"Deploy backup." His voice was steady. "You're up, Wyvern."

Maggie didn't even think to hesitate. She kicked the van's back doors open (startling the agents inside) and dived out, her nanotech wings sprouting through the back of her dark blue tactical suit like unfurling metal leaves. She leaped off the ground in a blast of dust and roaring engines.

The wind tore at her face as she arced out of the street and into the sky, all her pent-up energy flowing through her limbs and streamlining her through the air. As she flew, she pulled on a pair of F.R.I.D.A.Y.-equipped flight goggles and through the red lenses kept her eyes fixed on the faded cerulean dome in the distance.

"I'm on my way."