A/N: This piece is an interlude in a larger series I've written (the Undone Universe, which starts with Saga), and probably won't make much sense unless you've read the stories before it.

And, mark.

The spec tech currently on security flicked his eyes up toward the top-left corner of the left-most screen, and missed the way the lower-right feed in his other screen flickered. Not a strong flicker - or else he'd have caught it anyway, of that Natasha had no doubt.

It was a flaw in their systems that she had pointed out to Fury the moment she'd learned of JARVIS' existence. They couldn't trust their computers anymore. The takeovers were becoming too quick, too fast, too subtle. Protective technology had been outclassed; even wired networks, when sufficiently complex, were no longer immune to wireless attack. Case in point: this base's security features were wire-only, but they covered thousands of cameras, response systems, protocols. The relay that Natasha had planted on the security post as she'd made her way across the room – a device stolen from a SHIELD's own R&D – had punched through in the blink of an eye.

Until firewall technology caught up, they really needed to return to older, alternate methods of supervision... but Fury had been correct when he'd countered that it just wasn't possible. Agents to play security guards, who could be trusted when the audio and visual record couldn't, weren't thick enough on the ground. That was why they'd switched over to using computer screens in the first place. High-profile targets received escorts or cells secure enough to need a minimum of supervision – but the minimum was never zero.

There were five other techs on security duty in this Hub, each with their own wall of screens to manage. None of them took any notice of Natasha standing half-way across the room, ostensibly watching the Big Screen – the security hub's central monitor. Security was stretched thin.SHIELD was stretched thin. A facility this size had thousands of cameras, and only a few dozen could be monitored in real-time. Only a few hundred could be continually checked. The rest ran on ultra-secured closed-loops, but no matter how secure, that had its own weakness: if someone did successfully cut a loop, no one would know.

Failsafe security was a myth. Natasha had cut several loops just an hour ago, replacing the footage they'd be recording for the next twelve hours. She'd done so in the full knowledge that she was leaving SHIELD's Pennsylvania facility vulnerable – the most populated complex SHIELD had was (more) open to attack, if anyone cared to try. But their enemy today didn't need to attack. They had an invitation.

Natasha left the virus running and turned to leave the Hub, giving a nod to Senior Agent-in-Charge Dai as she went. Dai's expression was sour; she didn't like outsiders in her base anymore than the rest of SHIELD did, and right now the Big Screen was showing the arrival of some veryunwanted visitors.

In Natasha's head, the clock began ticking down.

"This is a legal order, Director."

"By all appearances, this directive was attained through sub-legal means. Until you provide confirmation that..."

Natasha blinked sweat from her eyes, and imagined for a moment that she could feel directly the heat from the cabling pressed against her back. Her SWAT-style gear insulated her well enough, and the cables didn't throw thatmuch heat, but space was limited. Her own body heat would have been enough to make her sweat, in this getup.

Technically, the air-vent she was hiding in should have been considerably more cramped – and there shouldn't have been power cables running through it. It had needed some help to reach its current size. Enlarged, it made a decent hide-away, if cramped and smelling of anti-septic. SHIELD kept its bathrooms spotlessly sterile, but in terms of odour that merely traded the faint aroma of sewage for the strong stench of industrial-strength cleaners. It made her nose itch.

She ignored any discomfort in favour of paging once again through the feeds she'd hijacked. The relay she'd planted in the Hub ran signals to her custom-built Starktab, a phone three months old and still ten years ahead of its time. She'd have used it even if it were a year behind. SHIELD didn't know about it, and as far as this base's security was concerned, it wasn't even a ghost in their system: it just wasn't there.

She swiped a finger along the screen, and the feed switched to the hallway immediately outside the washroom. For once, Fury's conversation wasn't the important one. The security feed of the conference room – and oh, she was aware of the irony – had showed the two female guards quietly conferring, between themselves and then with the second-in-command, before requesting a guide to a nearby washroom. In that respect, they'd outlasted the men on their team. Now, footsteps sounded below and to the side of Natasha's position in the vent. Thisconference room was far enough from the hub of the main facility here that it was a single-room washroom; one agent remained outside with the guard while the other went in. Silently, Natasha slipped the Starktab into an open pocket, and smoothed the Velcro shut. Sounds from below drifted up to her, but Natasha held her position, tensing and relaxing muscles to be sure that they would be limber when she needed to move. The first agent wasn't the one she wanted.

She had to hand it to Fury. He'd managed to stall the retrieval team for six hours already – enough time to make a bathroom break necessary. She hoped he didn't manage to divert them entirely: that would be... awkward, later, if they were forced to break off their plans too soon. But at this stage, that was a highly unlikely development.

Below her, her target entered. The agent checked over the room, a quick glance that spoke of ingrained habit, before beginning to unzip her clothes. The gear, identical to Natasha's own, was not quick to remove. Natasha slipped the cap from the poisoned needle-ring on her third finger, and made sure it was turned palm-down – very old-school, but sometimes the old ways were best.

Her target almost had her pants down; it was time to move. Soundlessly, Natasha removed the ceiling tiles, then released her harness. The noise of the rope whirring through metal made her target look up – but Natasha was already on her, one hand over her mouth and nose, the other hand pulling down the riot-gear neck-guard and letting the needle find the vein. Special Agent Shelia Gaynes struggled, getting in one brief, brutal blow – Natasha absorbed it, ignoring the pain, and waited for Gaynes' twitches to cease before rapidly unclipping her own harness and stuffing Gaynes into it. She thumbed the recoil, and watched as Gaynes' still body was pulled up into the ceiling space, snugged up tight against those cable supports. Then she jumped up on top of the toilet and replaced the ceiling tiles. Nothing looked amiss.

Much later today, Gaynes would be discovered far from here – if she survived. Being dosed high enough to render all memory of the past forty-eight hours a featureless smear carried with it a significant risk; if she lived she'd be ruined for fieldwork for the next year at minimum. Once, Natasha would have simply killed her, and avoided the chance of extra complications.

Now, she hoped Gaynes lived. But it was only a vague hope. She had no illusions about getting attached.

Her own riot gear was bulky, restrictive, a far cry from her preferred suit and offering about the same amount of protection – SHIELD had all the best toys, if you excluded Tony Stark from the equation... and that was now and forevermore a given. Agent Gaynes' gear was far too standard: easy enough to make a duplicate. Her hair and face were more difficult to conceal, especially since Gaynes had not been wearing her helmet. Natasha had a wig. She also had Stark's prototype.

She flushed the toilet, turned on the tap, and used the mirror to adjust the wig and gear. The facial image replacement flicked on. She'd already practiced with it, but a few moments more wouldn't hurt: she made expressions, first careful, then quickly. Shelia Gaynes' face stared back at her. The imager's reactions were just a hair too slow, too bland; she'd pass it off as being bored and tired. "Wonder when he'll give up," she said in Shelia's voice – not much higher than her own. The other female agent's voice had been too low for her to pull off convincingly. They were fortunate that there had been two female agents among those sent – but the appearance of civility was important in an arrest as high-profile as this.

She turned the tap off, tucked her helmet under her arm, and joined the other agent out in the hall. Even Fury couldn't hold out much longer.

"Oh," said Pepper Potts flatly. "So it's come to this."

"Ma'am, please raise your hands above your head," the lead agent droned. His voice was just as flat as hers: training, though it might also have been a complete lack of sympathy. Pepper Potts was the CEO of Stark Industries, and in many minds responsible for Suicide Friday, the worst market collapse in US history since the Great Depression. The additional one-point-five million deaths were just icing on the cake as far as Americans were concerned. Those were Chinese citizens, after all, and those died every day. Economics was more frightening.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Ma'am, if you do not comply, we are authorized to use force."

Pepper hesitated, glancing past them to the two stony-faced SHIELD agents who had let them into the suite. Whatever she saw there made her eyes go as hard as granite: but she raised her hands, and Natasha moved forward with the other female agent to pat her down.

Pepper's eyes flickered between them and the lead agent, before settling on the lead. She gave no sign of recognizing Natasha, since she hadn't: Natasha was certain of that. The clear faceplate of the helmet revealed only Gaynes' face. Even with prototypes, Stark did good work. Had done good work.

Natasha didn't think about it. This was no time to be distracted.

The possibility of this operation ending badly for SHIELD was higher than Natasha liked. They were gambling a lot of political capital for a woman now little more than a pawn, unable to pay them back with any sort of intel or power-broking. Fury and Hill would be able to honestly disavow their actions if they came back to bite them in the ass, but the fact that those actions had taken place – committed by senior agents under their very noses – would cost them regardless.

It was a bad decision. Logically, she knew it. She just couldn't deny the insistent feeling that Pepper wasn't just a pawn, even now. And she'd learned to trust her feelings – a slow, painful process, but ultimately rewarding.

"Clear," Natasha reported, and cuffed Pepper's hands behind her back. The cuffs were ridiculously over-strength; clear or not, this was the CEO of Stark Industries, and the former girlfriend of the Merchant of Death. Who knew how many of his secrets she might still hold?

"This way, ma'am." They fell into guard formation around her, escorting her out of her room and past the SHIELD agents on guard duty. The walk was short: three stories down into the underground parking garage. They took the stairs rather than the elevator. Natasha wondered if, had JARVIS still been among the living, he'd have managed to stop them anyway.

But he was dead, as was Tony. And Steve had vanished, so swiftly and so completely that SHIELD had spent the last two days combing Stark's New York lab for a teleporter. Moving Pepper back into a SHIELD base had been a compromise, and one that they'd known wouldn't last. Natasha was honestly surprised that it had taken as long as it had for a hard-line interest to gather enough power to force SHIELD to hand Pepper over.

The transport van was being guarded by four SHIELD agents, carefully watching-without-watching their six counterparts. Pepper's walk up the ramp into the back was a silent affair: the CEO herself had on an expression that practically dared anybody to look at her. Natasha wondered where she thought she was going – she had to have guesses.

It was to her credit that, despite that, she showed so little fear.

Natasha strapped her in without uncuffing her. The van started moving as soon as the rest of them were secured, and the clock flickered in Natasha's head, hands adjusting slightly to account for their current time – a few minutes shorter than their initial estimate, but since Fury wasn't in on this that had been just a ballpark anyway. The van pulled smoothly away. Outside, their escorts would be in position around them. There were no windows through which to keep an eye on them; no windows through which to be kept in view. Two security cameras were wired in, watching the back. These were on a closed loop within the van; she hadn't been able to compromise them in advance.

Motion evened out. The van made no stops; it had priority, and all obstacles in its path would have been cleared. But that didn't stop the acceleration of turns in the road, of blocks that couldn't be ordered out of the way – that was to say, buildings – so it was easy to pinpoint when they'd gotten onto the straight route leading to the airport. The clock in Natasha's head skipped backward a few seconds. She waited.

Mark.

The time window opened in her head, and she triggered the tiny EMP hidden in her boots, taking down the surveillance. The imager didn't even flicker; Stark had had more reason than most to develop anti-EMP technology. The EMP's small signal wouldn't be able to breach the van's metal walls enough to get to the front with the drivers, but this didn't need to be fancy. She let herself relax, forcing all her muscles to go limp.

"Gaynes?" asked the lead agent, and that was when the clock in her head synced with the one in Clint's.

When Clint aimed to thoroughly stop a vehicle, he didn't play around popping tires. The van lurched and dropped to one side, its undercarriage warping up and in; if Natasha had to wager a guess, they no longer had a back left wheel. SWAT body armour protected them where seatbelts would have left bruising – except for Pepper, who let out a small cry as they were all slammed up and then back down. The back right wheel went next – a perfect shot, just as the first one had been. Any less than perfect and they'd have been flipped into a roll-over, despite the admirable job that their driver was doing. But for all that Clint would wax rapturous about the silence of the bow, he knew his modern weaponry damn well. He just liked them a little... bigger... than conventional guns.

Natasha had been ready, and wasn't dazed. She hit the seatbelt release at the same time as she pulled at the turtleneck that the agent to her left was wearing; her right arm came up with her stungun – not her usual electric version, but a much less conspicuous drug-filled model – and she jammed it into the opening in his body-armour. The agent went down, not quite unconscious, but out of the fight except as an obstacle to trip over.

The first agent to realize what was going on had a very good reaction time, but very bad reaction instincts; he raised his gun and Natasha slapped his hand down before they could all be sorry, bringing herself low as well so that she had access to a vulnerable point on his leg; click, went the stungun, and she backhanded him away while he twitched.

The last two agents had made it from their seats, but they were shaken – literally; the van was still skidding across the road, bumping and jarring, and the floor of the back was tilting downward, throwing their footing. She used one as a vantage point and sent him flying, temporarily out of the way – with that much body armour on, he wouldn't be put down so easily from a single hit, not without lethal force. But all she needed was a bit of time. This was the sort of close-quarters combat she was made for, even if she'd have preferred her usual flexible suit. It impeded them more than it did her, though. Blocked fists – tasers slapped aside (they'd come prepared for Pepper) – a leg around the neck,leverage – and click, click: they were down.

"Oh my god," said Pepper, shaking all over, more than could be accounted for by the van's dying, jerky motion.

"It's me," said Natasha, pulling break-proof syringes from her boots and setting about the quick process of stabbing each downed agent in the neck with a Serbian flavour of forget-me drugs: short-term memory only, but it was fast-acting and the combination of it and the knock-out drugs was unlikely to be lethal. "The morning after the Expo disaster I brought you both Starbucks and you said you were hiring me back to Legal, SI had better benefits."

"Oh, Christ," said Pepper, and flinched away as Natasha reached behind her, not undoing Pepper's seatbelt, and made short work of the handcuffs. Heavy-duty or not, they had disappointingly ordinary locks.

Pepper didn't scream, though, and Natsaha didn't blame her for flinching. A lot of it was probably due to pain; Pepper was going to have terrible bruises on her wrists and hands, but Natasha's quick glance didn't reveal anything too obviously broken.

The van had stopped. Natasha grabbed – gently – Pepper's hands before she could undo the seatbelt, and strapped back in beside her, the clock in her head still running down.

"What are we – " Pepper started to ask, and then the van got hit again, this time solidly in the side with something that tipped it over and sent it skidding. Natasha let herself relax and go with the fall, reaching out to keep Pepper from banging her head. When they skidded to a stop, Natasha unclipped them both.

Clint was absurdly precise with every form of ammunition. The van would be exactly where he'd planned on putting it – which meant that the top front corner, on the left side (now lying on the ground) would be right over their escape hatch.

The pocket-laser that Natasha pulled out next was SHIELD issue. Based on Stark's design, of course, but even if Tony would have been willing to part with the weapons-tech breakthroughs he'd made with his lasers, he'd never have given up the secrets of the arc-reactors, and Natasha had been one of the analysts who had agreed that his particular lasers required energy output that only the miniaturized arc reactors could provide – at least, if you were looking for something portable. The battery packs hidden throughout her gear, primarily meant to power the imager, wouldn't last longer than perhaps ten seconds – long enough, if just barely, to cut through the side of armoured van like a hot knife through butter. Since the pocket-laser was very nearly the exact size and shape of a butter-knife, Natasha felt that this comparison was, for once, quite apt.

She grabbed the sliced plating with gloved hands and tossed it aside, then reached further down and pulled up the small metal plate covering the hole in the road. It extended down into darkness. Natasha looked up at Pepper's face, at the way she brushed a strand of hair from her eyes with her whole hand – definite sprains in her fingers – and beckoned her forward. "It's not far."

She helped Pepper down – it really wasn't far, which was a good thing because the hole was claustrophobically small, a factor that would have been favourable if not for the presence of a civilian and Natasha's SWAT gear. For a moment, she thought she might have to take off an outer layer, but when she emptied her lungs of all air she did manage to wriggle through.

As she made her way down, she reached up one more time to hit a small emitter just beneath the rim of the opening. It blinked on, projecting the image of concrete overtop of the gap – nothing that would stand up to serious scrutiny, but it would buy them time. Fixed structures were the easiest things to hide; SHIELD had been doing exactly this long before Stark and Banner had started working on human-skin holograms.

But it didn't need to last more than five minutes. Wouldn't, in fact. The activation of the emitter turned on its auto-destruct as well.

They'd chosen this spot specifically: past the first crunch, they dropped into a private-access tunnel for the factory complex across the road. All they'd had to do was bore upward at a steep angle – a preparation carried out days ago, just one among many, most of which wouldn't ever be used. Now, they emerged into a ready-made escape route.

"Why?" asked Pepper, as Natasha pulled herself out of the hole, taking a quick survey – the tunnel was deserted, as expected, but there were always risks. She activated the second holographic emitter implanted on this side, and its explosive timer. Four minutes, thirty seconds. They couldn't go yet – Clint was very good, but he couldn't teleport anymore than she could. The timer synced to the clock in Natasha's head.

"Because you don't deserve what they're going to do to you," Natasha said, which wasn't an answer to Pepper's question at all.

Pepper was a good woman. But there were plenty of better people out there in the world, with less blood on their spotless white suits.

"This is – this is permanent, isn't it?" Pepper asked, small gasps marring her speech – she was running on adrenaline and fear, and a small amount of dissociation. Natasha wanted to frown, but didn't. They couldn't delay here after all – if Pepper lost that rush, Natasha would have to carry her, and that might make the timing... tricky.

Timing.

Now was no time to be nostalgic for the days before every possible target in the world knew her face. These were the types of missions she had now, and if they required an overt display of force to work more subtle messages in, then – so be it.

"Yes," Natasha said, herding Pepper toward the exit into the factory – slowly. They didn't want to get there too soon.

"I was never just his puppet," Pepper said. She sounded uncertain. It had come to this, after all.

"No," Natasha agreed. "You had real power. Power over people." She touched Pepper's shoulder briefly, and then started her way up stairs with steps never meant for high-heels. Pepper didn't falter, avoiding putting a heel through the grating with the sort of grace that required both natural talent and long practice. "Over him. Over others. The deepest sort of power in the world."

"And the weakest," said Pepper, and the bitterness in her voice told Natasha that she'd got it.

The weakest, because it was never entirely your power. It was theirs, too. Cajoled away, or taken, or loaned out, but there always remained the possibility that they could it back.

Pepper was much better than her at influencing people; Natasha could lure them in on a personal level, but Pepper could keep them there for years, for business, pleasure, or any combination in-between. And while Natasha had made a career out of gaining and abusing that sort of power, she was used to having it taken away; and that was half the reason she was so very, very good at the other sorts of things she did. Always have a fall-back plan.

But at the end of the day – there was no such thing as a failsafe system. Natasha was known as the deadliest woman on the planet, and she had always known she wouldn't survive to die of old age.

"I wouldn't say that. I'm here to rescue you, aren't I?" Natasha asked lightly, and Pepper bit her lip. The clock ticked down. Their next window arrived.

Natasha pulled Pepper along at a faster clip, now, up more stairs and through back tunnels that all smelled very faintly of old sweat, beneath the layers of cleaning chemicals, air fresheners and someone's attempts to fix the air circulation system. Through the walls, the machinery of the factory hummed on, even this late at night. But they weren't here at a change in shift. If they –

A door opened to one side, and a woman in overalls stepped casually out, not particularly watching where she was going; her face was turned back as she answered somebody in the room. " – to pay," she finished saying, and Natasha yanked Pepper into a run, sprinting down the length of the hall. They were nearly at the fire escape. "Hey, what the hell?" the woman behind them exclaimed, bewildered.

This wasn't a stealth mission. As long as the woman didn't follow, Natasha didn't give a damn. The metal bar of the fire exit doors was sticky, but she wrenched it open, and fire alarms began blaring throughout the building and outside, instantly deafening. The air outside smelled the same as it did inside, dry and static. She turned left and broke into a jog for the last twenty feet, pacing herself so that Pepper stayed in stride.

"Up and in," Natasha yelled, and grabbed Pepper's wrist to pull her through the illusion of cement-and-brick-and-empty-space that hid the tiny helicopter beyond.

It was empty inside.

Shit.

People were already beginning to stream out of the factory. She could see them through illusion; it was a one-way projection. No one was turning toward the alley yet, and it wasn't on any path to a muster point, but there would be someone using shortcuts to get where they wanted to go. There always was. Natasha took the pilot's seat and ran through the emergency pre-flight, hitting the lights first so she could see what she was doing. The flood lights outside only did so much. "Strap in," she told Pepper.

Something hit the angled roof of the factory above, having dropped from a higher roof further back – someone, who tumbled across the roof and down onto the ground. Someone dressed all in black, with enough SWAT gear of his own to be large and looming when he rolled to his feet. The not-a-rocket-launcher-Nat he had with him was also large and looming. Natasha relaxed immediately; Pepper tensed.

"You're late," yelled Natasha, over her shoulder. The blaring alarms nearly swallowed her words.

"Well 'scuze me," Clint snapped back, surly, hauling himself into the little helicopter – he had to duck, and the not-a-rocket-launcher bumped into the roof. "Strap in, Potts." He stowed the launcher and shimmied into the pilot's seat as Natasha wriggled out of it, staying low in the back so that she didn't bump her own head.

She had to help Pepper with the straps, in the end; the sprains in Pepper's fingers were swollen enough now to be giving her serious problems. The roar of the blades whined up, up, but the ear-piercing factory fire alarms had been given a hefty upgrade last night, and managed to be louder still. They pulled away from the ground as Natasha found Pepper a headset, their ascent so smooth that it was barely noticeable.

"Where am I going?" Pepper asked, her voice coming through clear over the mic.

'I.' She understood, then, without Natasha having to say – they were getting her out, but they weren't coming with her. Couldn't, wouldn't – it didn't matter which, in the end.

They were SHIELD. Like Pepper, they'd given their loyalties long ago.

Natasha shrugged. "It's up to you."