Author's Note: This chapter title comes from Kafka of the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

This is the conclusion of Part 2 of the Erstwhile Universe: Five for Silver, Six for Hell. Keep an eye out for Part 3, coming soon!

Chapter Twenty-Three - Out of the storm (you won't be the same)

"They changed the goddamn security," she hissed. "They caught on to us and now we're gonna have to regroup on how to wipe 'em out."

"There's got to be a way in," Bucky murmured, watching as they carried another body in. "They're still collecting the dead bodies of the weird people."

"Weird— For the love of— Just say mutants. Or inhumans. Or literally anything else. They may be dead, but they deserve some modicum of—" Danielle trailed off, blinking. "Oh. I've got it."

Bucky turned to her, frowning. "What?"

"They're taking dead bodies in." Her eyes went wide. "That's how we get in. Or, not we, but me. Winter, the bodies go into storage until they can dissect them. It's not like they take them in and cut into them right away. There's a resting period and—"

"What are you saying?"

She licked her lips. "Do you— Trojan Horse. You know what that means, right?" When he nodded, brow still creased, she pressed on. "The longest it ever took me to come back was eighty-seven minutes and seven seconds."

And then his eyes were wide and he lunged forward to grab her by her shoulders and shake her. "No," he hissed. "Absolutely not. Are you crazy?"

"I have been called that. I—"

"No. Nell, I'm not going to risk you not coming back. There's—"

"Risk? There's no risk." She shoved his hands off of her. "Strucker might be insane, but he follows a scientific process and nowhere in that scientific process did I ever fail to come back."

He swallowed thickly and glanced to the side. Bucky shook his head. "No, I— No."

"I'll come back."

"I . . . I know. But Nell, please. No."

She eyed him for a long, long moment. "Hey, Winter," she murmured. "What if we made a deal?" She waited until he looked at her again before she continued. "We Trojan Horse this son of a bitch and then . . . we go see my dad. That's what you want me to do, right?"

He nodded.

"Good. Well, what I want to do is stop these savages from ripping apart the bodies of innocents just because they think they can find some sort of secret power. It's a disgrace to the dead and just an example of how sick in the head these people are. So, do we have a deal?"

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he thumbed the grip of his gun. "How do you want it?"

Danielle came back to life in total darkness. Gasping for air, she reached up and felt for the new, blood-caked bullet scar on the right side of her head. Then she shifted on the metal she was on and twisted, feeling around until her fingers closed on the spent bullet beside her, forced out of her head by the Tesseract. She breathed a sigh of relief. "See, Winter," she whispered. "Told you I'd be okay."

She reached up and pressed her hands against cold metal. She felt the latch and paused, listening for a long moment. Satisfied that she didn't hear any talking, breathing, or heartbeats, she pushed out the Tesseract energy and moved the lever. The door clicked and swung open. Danielle braced her hands against the outside and pushed and her tray slid out.

Wrinkling her nose at the blanket covering her bare body, she was very happy she'd left everything but her clothes with Bucky. She threw the blanket aside and sat up. After ripping off her toe tag, she pushed herself to her feet and closed her tray again. The moment she heard the lock click, she also heard footsteps. Danielle flickered across the room so she was standing just behind the door and would be hidden by it when it opened.

One heartbeat, steady. One set of footsteps, high heels. One opponent, non-fighter.

The door opened and Danielle caught her breath. A woman in a lab coat stepped in, focused on her clipboard. The door closed. Danielle flickered forward and nailed the woman in the back of the head. She dropped. Danielle tilted her head to the side, considering her. "Better than nothing." She bent down and began working the woman out of her clothes.

As she slipped into the pantsuit that was just a touch too small, she tilted her head and considered the clipboard. Names, with numbers coordinating to the drawers they were in. Shaking her head, Danielle snatched the paper from the clipboard and tucked it away in her pocket. "Nice heels," she mused. "Not really good for fighting in."

Barefoot, she stepped to the door and cracked it a little to listen. Three in the hall, all male, in discussion. She took a deep breath. And then she flickered out.

The moment she appeared in the middle of their circle, the agents reached for their guns. Danielle elbowed the one to her left in the face and his head slammed into the wall. Then she grabbed the other two with the Tesseract and threw them to the floor. A kick to the face silenced the first of those two, but the second scrambled for the gun he'd dropped. Danielle stomped her foot down on his wrist and felt something give. "Not so fast." She stooped down and retrieved his gun. "I think I'll take this."

She tucked it into her waistband and then snapped the man's neck. Danielle snatched up the other guns and glanced around the corner. It took her a moment to orient where she was in the layout of the building. She closed her eyes and thought of the map she and Bucky had made, tracing her way to the security room. Then she nodded to herself.

Danielle flickered down the hallway and two shots and a pistol whip to the head, followed by an elbow to the spine, took care of the agents in her way. Four more flickers, eleven more downed opponents, and she found herself in front of the door she wanted. Danielle kicked it open with a yell, though the yell was more for the splinters digging into her heel than anything else. The people inside shot up from their chairs, but two shots from the guns she was holding and three more from the one in her waistband took them out.

She closed the door with her foot. "Let's see what we have here," she murmured, eying the computers. "Ah, perfect." She pressed several keys and the alarm started blaring. And then a few more keys and a couple passcodes started the lockdown. Danielle stooped and started retrieving more guns.

The door opened. "You're not supposed to be in here."

Danielle looked up and grinned at the blindsided man in glasses standing there, clutching a half-crushed cup of coffee. "Astute. Truly." She shot him through the head. And then she took off at a run.

She flickered past two doors as they slammed down and slid under the third. As she approached the front door, she shot one more agent and tucked the gun away, hissing as it burned her skin. She clapped her hands together and they sparked blue as she burned them apart. "Hey, batter batter," she muttered. And then she pitched.

The energy slammed into the front and it exploded outward, wall and door and all.

Danielle turned and planted herself, palming two guns and grinning as she heard the agents approaching. The front three dropped before she even moved. Danielle glanced back at the figure standing in the distance. She grinned and threw herself into the fray.

"Let me see."

"I'm fine."

"Nell."

She sighed and sat up, folding her legs under herself. "I thought I was supposed to be getting some sleep. You don't expect me to make it through tomorrow on an empty sleep tank, do you?"

He rolled his eyes and sat down next to her. His hands came up to support her head, keeping her still. His left hand moved and she shivered as cold metal brushed over her newest scar. "I'm fine," she said again, this time softer. "I told you I'd come back."

"You did," he murmured. "But I am never doing that again. Promise you'll never make me do that again."

She watched him for a long moment. Then she closed her eyes and pressed into his hand and whispered, "I promise."

"Tony, you need to eat something. If Danielle is going to come home, don't you think she deserves to come home to her father? Alive and well?"

"I'm fine, Natasha," Tony murmured, frowning as he read through a file from drop-off number three for the fortieth time. "Let me get this done."

"Sir—"

"Not you too, J."

"Sir, you have received an encrypted email from a blocked account. I've decrypted it and discovered that it is signed at the end with the moniker 'Goose.'"

Tony dropped the papers. "Display," he croaked. He licked his dry, cracked lips and watched as the screen projected itself in front of him. Next to him, Natasha turned as well to read the email.

18˚33'08.9"N 75˚01'05.3"E

Come and get us.

—Goose