running

"...we're chained up. We can't..."

Hydra Facility - January 12th, 2016

She and Pepper had sat there in silence for quite a little while--gotten used to it--but then had come the rats.

First, only a little bit of scurrying could be heard. Nothing to worry about. Christa had thought it might have been creaking of some sort of pipes, because her ears were of course extremely unreliable. But then Pepper had made a comment on them, and Christa had realized with a pang of fear she tried to swallow that they were, indeed, those specific members of the order rodentia.

And that noise had gone on for hours.

And she kept hearing them. Squeaking. Scurrying. Eating.

It made her want to throw up.

The rats wouldn't shut up.

And neither would her brain.

Finally, there was something to distract Christa from the noise. Pepper, deciding there was nothing better to do, gave a sigh and began speaking about something Christa couldn't even imagine thinking about right now.

"I wonder how they're all doing. Whether they've found out we're gone yet," she said, voice tired.

"Probably looking for you. Mr. Stark's probably upset that you're gone. I mean, I don't know how upset he was when my mom left, but he seems to like you more than her."

Pepper tilted her head at Christa. "Christa, I don't know what impression your mom gave you of him, but Tony is a good man. He probably wasn't as loyal to women sixteen years ago as he is now, and maybe his heart hasn't always been in the right place, but it has always been good."

There was a pause.

Then Christa said, "Whatever." She paused again. "Whatever the case, I bet he's glad I'm gone."

Pepper sighed. "He may not seem like it right now, but he loves you, Christa. Or at least he's going to grow to love you. He just found out that he has a fifteen-year-old daughter. These things take time."

Another pause as Christa stared out ahead of her in the darkened room.

"Sure."

There was silence. Pepper reached out to touch Christa's arm for a moment, but Christa pulled her arm away after a few seconds, and Pepper didn't push it any more.

| | |

It took a moment for Tony to respond to Angus. He'd become a little delayed, he'd noticed, since this new source of stress had come into his life.

He lifted up the pointer finger of his right hand for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head facing a little off to his left side, turned to look at the boy--Angus, apparently--again, cleared his throat, opened his mouth again, and finally words were able to form.

"How did you get here?"

Angus cleared his throat nervously. "Christa told me everything, sir."

Tony felt his face whiten a little. "Everything?" Not that he had much to hide. He just didn't fancy all of his life's secrets going out to a boy he'd barely met.

Angus scratched the back of his neck. "Well... I mean, not everything, but--"

"Look, kid." The bags under Tony's eyes seemed darker in this light. "I don't know how you can help. We've done everything."

"You've done everything, Mr. Stark," Jackie, standing nearby, said quietly.

"Technicalities." Tony waved the woman off. Then he paused. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hand.

Gosh, would he love to get some sleep.

"Mr.... Mr. Stark, if now's a bad time, I completely under--" Angus began.

"No, no, no, it's just...." Tony lifted his face up from his hand suddenly. "How do you know Christa again?" he asked quickly.

"We met... at school, sir. Two years ago."

"You say you're her best friend?"

Angus paused. "I'd like to, sir. Now, if we could, I think we might need to hur--"

"You knew her mother?"

There was an even longer silence.

"Esther was quite a lovely woman."

Tony stared into Angus's eager, nervous brown eyes, contemplating.

"C'mon. My tech room is this way."

| | |

Christa was unsure of quite a lot of things right now.

What she was entirely sure about, however, was that she and Pepper needed and were going to get the hell out of there.

"Pepper." It came out as a whisper. "Do you know... do you know any entrances? Exits? Do you know the layout of the place? Have you heard of where we might be exactly in here? Anything? You've been here longer than me. Any hints of anything at all?"

The scurrying got just a little bit louder.

Christa thought she felt something furry brush up against her leg.

Quicker than a speedster, she pulled it back, shuddering.

She didn't like rats.

"I don't...." Pepper gave a shaky breath. "I'm trying to think...." And then Pepper started moving, trying to stand up and walking and only getting a few inches before collapsing due to the chains holding her to the ground. "I've sometimes... there's sometimes been a draft over here...."

Christa's heart began pounding very loudly.

"We need to get to that corner. Behind those big pipes?"

"Yes..." Pepper exclaimed. A sudden feeling of hope dawned over the two. "Right over there!" And then a moment where her face fell again. "But we're chained up. We can't--"

A small gasp and sudden rustling. "How did I not remember I had this?" Movement. Pepper did something to her hair, reaching into it, and pulled out a metal bobby pin.

Christa's heart started to pound. Hands shaking, Pepper used her teeth to bend the bobby pin carefully. She then took it to where Christa's wrists were chained together, searching in the darkness for where to place it.

"Almost--got it!"

Relief swept over Christa as she felt the metal grip loosen and fall off of one of her wrists, and then the other. Her arms fell and the shoulder she'd been shot in screamed, but she didn't mind as much as before. She was free.

"Let me have it!" she said, and Pepper gladly handed over the bobby pin. Christa started wiggling it in the little hole she found in Pepper's wrist chains, but it wasn't going in right. "Damnit..." she muttered, her voice shaking. She readjusted her position, pulled the bobby pin out and stuck it back inside.

Outside, Christa and Pepper unaware of this, people were opening a door to the hallway that led to their room.

Christa bit her lip, trying to remember the video she'd watched on lock picking back when she was in middle school.

"Insert in bottom... add slight pressure... insert at top of lock... add more pressure... set pins...."

It was taking so long.

"Aha!"

Christa couldn't help but be proud of herself, considering how long it had been since she'd last done this. It took only seconds to get the other lock, and then the ankle and waist locks on both herself and Pepper.

Suddenly, echoing footsteps could be heard very, very faintly outside.

Christa started running in the direction Pepper had pointed in minutes ago, eyes scanning everywhere, up and down and left and right.

"That vent up there--" Pepper, right beside her, muttered breathlessly.

"It's too high. We won't reach it," Christa said. An edge of panic laced her voice now.

Pepper looked around briefly. "That table over there--"

"It looks like it's about to collapse, it's only got three legs--"

Pepper was pulling it over anyways.

Christa ran over and helped her. She grabbed a pipe from off the ground as a feaux leg, and, miraculously, it worked--wobbly and very unsteady. She held it to the table as Pepper stood up, balancing on the table, and was now able to reach the vent. She tried to loosen it, but was unable to, unsurprisingly.

Voices could now be heard. The rats around them were squeaking even more loudly, as though they were coming from the vent in the ceiling.

"I can't--" Pepper grunted, trying harder to shake the vent screen, but it wasn't working.

Christa's eyes grazed the ground, searching violently for something, anything, until they fell on another large metal pipe.

"Let me!"

She ran and grabbed it and quickly traded places with Pepper on the broken table. It fell and they had to fix it again, Pepper now holding the leg replacement pipe to the table more steadily. She started hitting the vent with the new pipe.

"It's not worki--!" she yelled. But then, her injured shoulder screaming with pain, with one angry hit, a large dent was made. And another. And another. And then at last, arms shaking violently, fingers fidgeting horrendously, Christa was able to pull the vent screen from the ceiling. It fell to the floor with a clatter that nearly shattered her eardrums again.

Christa reached up and felt open air where the screen used to be and her heart gave a leap. She jumped upwards a few times, trying to grab onto an edge, but it wasn't working. And then it did, but her fingers were barely grasping it and she was slipping. The pain in her shoulder made her eyes begin to tear up. "Pepper, help me up!"

Pepper stumbled as the table fell down, and she tried to stand up on the edge of the table, unable to keep the pipe as a replacement table leg, but managed to give Christa a push and she was able to get her torso into the vent. It stank of dead animal, and she gagged.

The footsteps were getting louder.

Christa gave a gasp as she managed to pull her legs in down to her knees, grunting, heart pounding faster than she'd thought it could go.

And then her feet were in.

"Pepper!" she exclaimed, a wild smile on her face. "I'm turning around so I can pull you up!"

"Okay!" Pepper yelled up,  looking at the door and then back up at where Christa now was.

Something furry brushed up against Christa again, and then she felt sharp teeth sink into her right calf, and she screamed and kicked whatever it was away. Squeaking could be heard, the hold on her flesh released, and then scraping of claws on metal away from Christa.

Christa's voice shook as she called out, "Okay, Pepper, I can pull you up now!"

Christa looked down through the vent, arms reaching precariously down, but then heard a scream and a gunshot and saw Pepper falling to the ground, something dark red pouring from her shadowed figure, now unmoving.

"No," she whispered. Agony was starting to pierce the adrenaline going through her.

And then the woman who had pretended to be Pepper came into sight below her, and she froze.

The woman shook her head chidingly, as though Christa was a misbehaving schoolgirl and the woman was the disappointed teacher.

"Now, this simply won't do. You'll have to come down now, my dear."

Christa was torn. Pepper was down there, severely injured, and escape was so close.

"This could be so easy, Christa. Don't make me have to get up there myself. You might get hurt."

Christa swallowed. "Is she dead?"

The woman tilted her head. "Who? My template? Why, that would hardly matter, my dear. It's you who matters."

Christa paused. And then she repeated, much more loudly this time, "Is she dead?"

The woman below her sighed. "Check her." There were people around her--Hydra agents, Christa presumed--whom Christa had barely registered until now. She saw one of them kneel down and feel Pepper's neck for a pulse.

The agent stood up and nodded to the woman, who looked back up at Christa. "I'm afraid there's no pulse, my dear. But if we act quickly enough, we might be able to get her heart back pumping. If you come down, that is."

Christa so wanted to get out of here.

But Pepper didn't deserve this.

And so, after one agonizing moment, she started to climb down from the vent. Her shoulder and leg screamed at her to stop, but she didn't.

The woman smiled. "Good."

As Christa fell down, entire body shaking now, she knelt down at Pepper's side. "Come on! Get her now! She's not--!"

"Grab her."

Arms suddenly wrapped around Christa, and she started pulling at them, hitting them, trying to get to Pepper.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET PEPPER!" she screamed.

"Take her away." 

Nobody was doing anything about Pepper. They were going towards the door and nobody was touching Pepper, nothing happening to get to her, save her, anything--

As Christa was pulled towards the door, taking her last look at Pepper before one of the agents shoved her head forward, she yelled out at Pepper, "No--Pepper--!"

But a gag was shoved in her mouth, and she couldn't speak anymore.

And she was dragged away, Pepper still lying helpless on the ground.