Hawkeye, page 17
She set her jaw. “And your parents?”
His posture went rigid. A conflicted, pained look crossed his eyes before he turned them, sharp and cold, to Kate. “So, you know, then. And you’d fault me if I had murdered my grandfather? The man who tortured me, made me live my nightmares, only to find that they couldn’t kill me?”
“That must have been terrible.”
“Terrible,” he echoed, and shook his head. “Do you know what is terrible? I was supposed to spend a summer with my grandfather the year I turned thirteen, and I was so looking forward to it. When my parents came to pick me up at the end of that summer, I happily showed them the language my grandfather painstakingly carved in my hand,” he added, pressing his thumb into the center of his other hand, massaging it as if he was suddenly struck by a phantom pain. “I didn’t realize what I’d done. Of course I didn’t—I thought . . .” He hesitated. “Have you ever watched someone sleepwalk, Kate?”
She shook her head. “I can’t say I have.”
“They don’t even know they’re doing it most of the time,” Milo pointed out. “My parents were sleepwalking in a nightmare. They dragged me from my bed and tied us together. Someone started the fire, but I’ll never know who. They kept telling me they wouldn’t let me go, that they loved me. They loved me so much.” His eyelids fluttered, breaking from his reverie, and he looked back to her and offered a small smile. “They loved me so much that I had to be cut out of their arms when help arrived. Everything was burned. I was burned, too. My grandfather was beside himself. A tragedy, he called it. No, the tragedy is I can’t decide if those S.H.I.E.L.D. agents found me thirty minutes too late or two minutes too early.”
What a horrific story, and Kate couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. The entire thing really was a tragedy, from Milo’s grandfather’s hubris to his parents to everything that led him here. But still. He chose his path. She shook her head, “I’m sorry, Milo, that that happened to you, but whatever you want to do with your grandfather’s research—”
Milo barked a laugh and forced himself to his feet. “Do? Kate, I am my grandfather’s research. I know the language, I know the spells. I’m not collecting those books to save anyone.” His eyes darkened. “I told you I’m on your side. I’m collecting these books so that no one can stop me when I burn them to ashes. And I’ll do whatever is necessary to accomplish that. What’s a few people dead,” he went on, “when the world’s at stake?”
America widened her stance. “That’s not how this works, Milo.”
“Then how does it work?” he snarled.
Kate tried to reach for America. “Wait—”
Two things happened in that moment. One, America launched herself at Milo, but he had anticipated her movement already and whirled to the side. The second thing that happened was just as quick. He opened his book—the pages blank, every one of them—and scrawled something on it with the tip of his gloved finger. Ink swirled out into a sigil, one that Kate couldn’t see, but she had a feeling it was bad.
“America! Close your eyes!” Kate screamed.
America spun around on her heels, reaching for him again. He flashed the page at her. She stumbled as he stepped out of her way again. She fell to her knees and quickly pulled her arms around herself. Her breath hitched.
Milo looked down at her almost pitifully. “I doubt you can stop me.”
Kate ran over to America and knelt down, but the second she touched her, America began to scream. High, piercing shrieks. She grappled for air, like she was trying to grab hold of something, her legs kicking out. Kate told Milo, “Stop this! Fix her!”
“Oh, calm down,” he replied, tearing the page out of his notebook and folding it up. “She won’t die. She just feels like she’s falling. Apparently, that’s her biggest fear. Falling and falling, and never finding the ground.”
Kate froze. “You—you know other sigils.”
He looked bored. “Of course I do. I am my grandfather’s protégé after all.”
“Then fix her.”
America closed her eyes, gritting her teeth. “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not . . .”
Milo tore the page with the spell out of his book and dropped it to the ground. “I’m sorry, Kate, but thank you for telling me where the last book is, by the way. You were a real help.” Then he turned down the hallway, his footsteps light against the hardwood. She heard the front door open as she scrambled to follow him, turning out into the hallway. He stepped over the flowers as he descended the steps, closed the door, and was gone into the evening.
Kate gritted her teeth, torn between going after him or—
America screamed again, on her back, clawing up at the ceiling. Her hands were shaking, tears in her eyes. “Kate!” she cried. “Kate—help!”
Kate couldn’t just leave her best friend. Cursing, she turned back into the library, glancing around the room. Think. What could she do? Where could she—
Her gaze caught the folded piece of paper on the floor. If she looked at it, then she’d succumb to the spell, too. Think, think—what had those kids said about the language? It could be reversed with a mirror?
The mirror room!
She grabbed the piece of paper, clamped it down between her teeth, and grabbed her best friend under the arms. She pulled her as America kicked and screamed, each scream breaking Kate’s heart a little more, into the mirror room, where thousands of Americas writhed in pain and thousands of Kates looked on in worry.
“America—America, I need you to open your eyes,” she said gently, cupping her best friend’s cheek. “Hey, Mac. C’mon. You’re not really falling. I promise.”
“It feels like I am.” America, sucking a breath in between her teeth, cracked open her eyes. “I’m going to kill that guy,” she ground out.
“I’ll let you,” Kate promised, and then held the piece of paper up. “I need you to look at the ceiling, okay?”
America nodded. Her eyebrows knit together, tears streaming down her cheeks. She kicked her feet out, then back in again, trying to get ahold of her body as the vertigo sent her falling again and again. Her eyes could never quite focus.
Kate lay down beside her, in the room that was full of mirrors, and took hold of her hand tightly. She pressed it to her chest.
With her free hand, she shakily opened the page and flipped it so it reflected on the ceiling.
“Look at the sigil,” she said, squeezing America’s hand tightly, hoping it worked, praying it did.
America squeezed back.
In the ceiling above them, the character on the page looked foreign. Then, slowly, America’s face relaxed, and her breathing calmed. She blinked and looked around, and then closed her eyes again. “It worked.”
“Thank god,” Kate muttered.
They lay there for a moment longer, their hands clutched tightly together.
Then America said, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, “It’s official. You have the worst taste in men.”
“Yeah,” Kate replied, swallowing the taste of vomit.
She’d been so terrified she wouldn’t be able to cure America. She didn’t know what she would’ve done if she couldn’t. But she had. And that also meant, once she found that last sigil, she could cure herself, too.
The New York Public Library’s flagship branch, the Stephen A. Schwarzman building, was an institution of learning that offered free access to all. Except, of course, after closing hours. Which was why Kate and America found themselves on the rooftop of said building at nine that evening, trying to jack open one of the windows. It was a pleasant night, at least. The humidity had finally broken to a gentle breeze, and Midtown’s skyline actually looked soft for once against the backdrop of the velvet-dark sky. Maybe it was the smog, or maybe it was the whopping three hours of sleep over the last several days, but Kate rather liked the view.
“You know, I figured someday I’d be breaking into a public institution with you,” America commented as she propped open the window and peeked her head inside.
“Really?”
“Well”—she retracted her head and glanced at their third wheel—“the dog was a surprise.”
Kate patted Lucky on the head. “He needed to go for a walk; he’d been cramped up in that wittle apartment all day!”
“We are going to talk about replacing my running shoes, by the way,” America reminded her with a sharp glare to the dog.
Lucky pushed back his ears and gave a small whimper.
He was fooling no one.
America scanned the rooftop again. “Do you think Milo is here already?” She was still pretty unsteady on her feet, but she’d been trying to disguise it from Kate. It hadn’t worked.
“Most certainly, and he probably told Kingpin, too.” She had been thinking about this for a while, but she felt sure of it now. “If things go really south really quickly, I need you to leave me and go get help.”
America furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. “What? Kate, I’m not letting you do this alone—”
“But, America—”
“If you’re worried about me, I bounce back like memory foam. You know I do.”
Kate gave her a deadpan look. “I love you, and I know, but please do this for me. I’m already going to die if I don’t find a cure tonight—and we don’t know what all Milo is capable of. He could’ve used the nightmare sigil on you instead and not left the paper behind, but he didn’t.”
“Then I should beat him up until he realizes he should have—”
Kate held on to America’s arm tighter and looked into her eyes. “You’re my best friend.”
“Which is why I can’t leave you—”
“Please. I’m not saying anything bad will happen, but if it does . . . I really need to know I’ve still got my best friend with a backup plan.”
America’s face crumpled, because the fact of the matter was, Kate was right. They had no clear way of stopping Milo, and the worst thing he could do to them he’d already done to Kate—even if it was tangentially. And if Kingpin got involved . . . “This is a death sentence, Kate.”
“C’mon, you know me,” Kate scoffed, pulling her bow up higher over her shoulder. “I’m like a cockroach—hard to kill. That’s why I’m the better Hawkeye.”
She hoped she sounded confident, and not as scared as she was inside. She wouldn’t wish the eyes on her skin on anyone—not Kingpin, not her own father. No one. She felt them staring at her, looking through her lies because they could feel that she was lying, that she was scared. Going at this alone would probably be one of the worst things she’d have to do, but she had to believe in herself, and she had to have America believe in her.
Which she did. Unconditionally.
Kate held up her pinkie. “Swear it? At the first sign of trouble, you’re out?”
America hooked her pinkie through Kate’s, and they kissed their thumbs. “Who should I get?”
“Shoot for the big guns. I want everyone to see how cool Kate Bishop is,” Kate said with a playful wink, and then she grabbed Lucky and slipped in through the window and down into the rotunda on the third floor. America crawled through the window after her and dropped down behind them.
The rotunda was lavish: marbled floors and intricately carved wooden walls and stone archways, inset with beautiful murals of ye olden people reading, the ceiling above them splashed with deceptively happy cherubs across a blue sky. There were tall six-foot candelabras standing on either side of the entrances to the rotunda. The place was opulent in the way that only somewhere that smelled of tweed and Oxford commas could be.
And that suddenly made everything very, very creepy. Especially at night. The only lights were the bloody-red exit signs, glaring from either end of the hall. Kate hurried over to the information desk and plucked a brochure off the stand. She unfolded it to study.
“Okay, we’re here in the McGraw Rotunda. Now, if I was a priceless bioweapon, where would I be?” she muttered, flipping through the rest of the brochure, at a loss as to where to begin—when she caught sight of an ad for one of the collections in the basement.
America pointed to it over her shoulder. “‘A Storybook Love: Collections from Childhood Fantasy’—there first?”
Kate glanced down to the dog, as if he had an opinion. He sniffed his butt.
She looked back at America. “Right, worth a shot.”
The last time Kate had gone inside this building was during a field trip in high school, so she remembered very little of it, though at night it all looked different, anyway. The shadows were longer, their footsteps louder. The sound in this place seemed to echo on and on, as though she had just walked into an endless space.
They decided that the easiest way to get to the ground floor, based on the map, was down the stairwell on the left. It went all the way down. So that’s the stairwell they took. Kate also vowed when this whole mess was through, and if she survived it, she’d visit this place in the daytime instead of just lounging out on the front steps, watching kids fall off the stone lions. She’d even promised to finally remember which lion was Patience and which one was Fortitude.
“And I’ll actually come here and read or something,” she went on, and America rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know if they stock smutty romance novels in the esteemed Schwarzman building, Kate.”
“What a shame. Some of the best fight scenes I’ve ever read.”
Lucky was close on their heels as they reached the bottom, and then he suddenly stopped and drew his lips back in a growl.
Kate froze—and grabbed on to America’s arm to stop her, too.
Suddenly there was a scream of irritation, and someone toppled something loud and large in what the map told her was the children’s center.
Where they needed to be.
She cursed, because it had to be Milo.
Pulling her bow off her shoulder, she nocked an arrow and tiptoed down the length of the hallway to the children’s center, America and Lucky close behind her. Inside, a young man dressed in black had laid absolute waste to a kiosk of library cards, and had pulled a stuffed animal who resembled—quite tragically—Winnie the Pooh out of its case in the collections and was shaking it in frustration.
Since she probably wasn’t going to be able to shoot straight, she slackened her bowstring and stood in the doorway, much to America’s confusion.
“And what did that poor teddy bear do to you?” she asked Milo just as he wound his fist back to punch it in the face again.
He whirled around to her in disbelief. His eyes were wide and wild, like someone at the end of his rope. Curious. For someone whose life didn’t depend on finding that last book, he certainly was going through all the emotions as if it did. “You? How are you here so fast?” he snarled once he’d recovered, his hand going to the notebook on his hip. “You and your friend?”
“Oh, come on, man, you know my name. You slept on my couch!” America replied, throwing up her arms.
His face contorted. “I’m surprised you can walk.”
“Better than falling,” America replied. “That was a real Chad move, by the way, Milo.”
Milo stared at her. Kate said instead, as his fingers leafed through the notebook on his hip, “I reversed your spell, so I wouldn’t try another one on us. We know the trick.”
“Well, it’s a surprise you figured it out so quickly,” he replied, and dropped his hand. He dropped the teddy bear behind him and turned to face them. “I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
America snorted. “And here I was hoping for an apology.”
“I needed to slow you down. And it was better than inflicting a nightmare on you, wasn’t it? That’s what my grandfather would’ve done. Do you know how exhausting it is, every night for years, to keep running from the nightmare that’s going to kill you in your sleep?”
“A little bit actually, yeah,” Kate replied flatly. She stepped up to Milo, angry and tired. “And quite frankly, I don’t see a difference between you and your grandfather right now.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Take that back.”
“Hit too close to home?”
“I’m nothing like that monster.”
“No, you’re just a different font.”
America interjected between them, her voice urgent, “Guys, I think someone’s coming.”
Neither Kate nor Milo heard her. Kate took another step toward him. They were so close now, she had half a mind to grab him by his stupid scruffy costumed collar and shake him.
“I am nothing like him!” Milo argued. He turned away from her and began to pace across the ruined collection, quicker this time. “He tried to kill me!”
Behind Kate, Lucky growled, as if he wanted her to pay attention, and America tried to interrupt again, “Hey, guys—”
Kate said, “So you killed him instead?”
“No! But I wish I would have.”
She scowled. “I can’t believe I kissed you.”
“And you liked it,” he volleyed back, jabbing a finger at her.
America cleared her throat again. “Anyone? Hello?—”
Kate scoffed. “I’ve kissed better.”
“You’re cute when you lie.”
“Excuse me?” She rolled up her jacket sleeves and Milo took a step back, a bit alarmed. The eyes writhed but she was too angry to really care about them at this point. She said, “You better start running, because I’m about to kick your a—”
A deep and sly voice interrupted her from behind, “Well, well, it seems you brought some friends, Milo.”
Oh, this was just getting worse and worse.
Fisk inclined his head, leaning against his cane like he was enjoying the most leisurely afternoon. He took up most of the doorway, and even then he seemed bigger than he was because of the way he carried himself. Like he owned the air he breathed. Behind him were a dozen of his men, their angry-looking assault rifles aimed at the three of them, like he was here to fight someone like Spider-Man or Daredevil.
