Intertwine

20 - Too Bad I'm Already Insane

ALINA

My phone began to ring in my pocket. Damn.

"You thought it was on silent?" Axel read my mind again. "Oh how sweet."

My phone rang again, I could feel the vibrations against my thigh. Not now.

"Oh... oh that's interesting, you made her ringtone different to other people's? How cute." Axel pouted in a very uncute way, "answer it."

"What?"

"Next time she rings. Answer. It. Act natural. Or Barton's dead."

Please don't ring again Ro. Please don't ring. Please don't ring. Please don't-

It rang.

"Show time 232. Put it on speaker." She stage whispered, and then grinned. I half expected fangs.

Roara's voice came through, sounding out of breath and full of worry."Hey Ali-"

"Sorry Ro, I can't really talk right now." I said, looking straight into the blonde woman's eyes.

"It's really important-"

I cut her off. "I'm in the middle of something, I'm going to have to ring you back."

I hung up. Back to business.

"So, Axel? Like in a car?" I asked, feeling a slight frown appearing.

"Exactly. I help the organisation move smoothly." Axel said, her voice like sweet poison. That was the only way to describe it. Sweet, like honey, but it was like that voice at the back of your head that was constantly telling you that you weren't good enough.

"Where's Black Widow and Scarlett Witch?" I asked, keeping an eye on Barton in my peripheral vision. She seemed to be keeping him in a state of not quite being able to breathe, but having enough oxygen not to pass out.

"You can join them if you like." Axel said, beginning to circle me and Barton. "Though I doubt you'll want to. Oh and don't think about using that darkness trick. You use your powers, I end Agent Barton's life. It's your choice."

"So what do you want." I could feel my hands begin to sweat around my gun.

Axel smiled at me, making me shiver. "Did we manage to trace that call?" Axel asked, presumably through an earpiece. "We did? How wonderful."

I felt my stomach drop. I'd fucked everything up. Everything. Oh god. Oh, oh god. That's what they wanted.

"Yes, but, at the same time, it wasn't exactly you. You were just following our plan. Poor thing, you didn't even know. How sad." She paused, as though listening to something. "So she is at the Avengers tower in Manhattan? How quaint."

I was racking my brains to try to understand what she meant by following their plan.

"Oh, we had you unguarded when the Avengers invaded the lab in Austria for a reason. They're all so pure of heart we knew they'd help you. It was just our luck that the girl herself saved you. We knew she'd be coming along of course, we thought we could test her healing abilities with her parachute malfunction, but when our security cameras picked her up at the compound we knew we'd have to do something a little bit more ordinary. That was a very useful bullet that hit her. Anyway, of course you'd all want to come after us. So we planted a few clues for you along the way. If our men inside S.H.I.E.L.D have done what they needed to, nobody will have any indication of how to find us. Most of your information is bogus."

I kept my mind blank. I could think about what she'd said later. I needed to stay focused. No plans. Nothing.

"Oh, look at that Mitch," Axel tapped one of the guards on the shoulder, "she's learning. Trying to stop me from reading your thoughts?"