Blood Moon || Loki [2]

[52] On the Wire

25 DECEMBER, 2013

ASTRID

She only knew the grenade had gone off because her ears were ringing, and because she was on the floor, where a dull throbbing prodded her side. Seville had shot her there. She had found nearly all of her friends. There was still one more. They had been compromised. She had fallen for a trap. Someone had pulled the pin of a grenade and rolled it along the floor at her feet.

She had done nothing to stop it.

So why was she alive?

When the dust cleared, Astrid pushed herself onto her elbows and blinked the spots away. Her skin was shredded by the concrete floor-bad. She hadn't hit her head-good. There were three people lying on the floor in the hallway. She recognized them. They were her friends.

"N-" Astrid coughed, and then she vomited. Bile. "No," she croaked, like it would reverse time. Like she could go back and kick the grenade away. "No. No. No. No..."

Blood on the floor. She crawled to them. One body moved, to her left. Angus. She made a noise that was meant to sound relieved, but it stopped halfway up her throat and Angus supplemented it by groaning. Alive. One alive.

Astrid pushed herself up, higher, higher... On her haunches, she couldn't balance, and fell backward. She did a terribly awkward shuffle, scraping her hands and her ass and trying to call out to the two other bodies.

Around Michelle Laurens was a puddle of blood. Around what Michelle Laurens used to be. Now, it was more like a pile of flesh decorated with blood. She had jumped on the grenade. Shoved Astrid out of the way.

She vomited again, but to the side, so she would not desecrate the body. Not the body-Laurens. Laurens, who had stood up for Astrid before she became the Director. Laurens, who had never wavered from a battle despite her age, despite the uncertainty she would make it out alive. Laurens, who had driven her to New Mexico in the hopes that Astrid could preserve the last remnants of her connection to Loki Laufeyson.

Angus was pulling Fred to his feet. Fred was alive. They had lost Laurens. Astrid stood, stumbled, then stood again. She stayed upright this time. "We have to go," said Angus. Fred looked fine, but dusty, and a bit unaware.

"Gomez," she managed. Her voice was coated with dust. She couldn't swallow.

She would find Luca Gomez. She would not make the mistake of letting someone else fall on the blast for her.

"Take him home," she told Angus. "Get everyone ready. Get out before you die, but take her body with you."

"Astrid-"

"Get. Out."

She rolled her head around her shoulders and went back the way she came. Before she tore her old life down, she would do whatever possible to salvage one last piece of it.

~

Every Hydra agent was on the lookout for Astrid Louvelle, Director of the Organization Formerly Known As S.C.O.R.P.I.O.N. They had orders to kill on sight.

Not that it mattered much. Mara Harris had done her finest work, and the compound was in ruins. All of the agents loyal to the Director were dead or gone: gone away in hiding, under the orders of Operation Fallout. Some switched sides. That's how it was in a war like this. Astrid held no ill will against them. Her priorities had changed. Everything had changed.

Something had awoken inside Astrid Louvelle. It was an old, cruel, and terrible thing, something she had thought long ago extinct. It was a spark, and it was so bright that she felt no fear. She walked through the crowd and stood up on a table, but they did not shoot her. She held them with a gaze, and when she spoke, she spoke calmly.