Chapter Text
Maria
Karen runs her fingers over the textured paper and its embossed golden lettering, promoting the auction house. Just a little too over the top in her opinion, but maybe the cliché appeals to the buyers. It screams exclusivity and arrogance.
She shows up an hour early, as is good form. Prospective buyers are expected to browse the catalog, inspect the wares up close, before they sit in cushioned chairs with faux-bored faces. It’s a poker game: the more interested they are in a piece, the less interested they want to appear. Ambling between the display cases, she pretends to weight her options.
Except not thirty seconds in, bile threatens to rise in her throat. The “items” on sale are mutant powers, in whichever form they can be harnessed. There are quite a few eyes arranged in tasteful boxes, next to severed hands, tongues. A lock of hair hangs almost innocently in between various body parts. Despite steeling herself, it’s hard to keep her composure in face of such cruelty.
Karen stops and focuses on her breathing, wishing she had a shot of tequila to settle her stomach. She – her conscience – cannot afford to be caught. Her article will come too late for these poor people, but she will be damned if she can’t save someone from the same fate.
At the back of the show room are the powers of the mind, which cannot simply be cut out or off. Not for lack of trying, Karen is sure. The pods’ glass is frosted, obscuring the occupants’ faces so that only vague shapes and colors are left to match to the description in the brochure. She counts a dozen cryogenic freezers, half of them holding children who barely reach her hip.
Vindictively, she imagines putting a bullet into every single person with an auction house uniform. Instead she gets that tequila from the bar, several actually, uncaring of the stares she gets.
When the proceedings start, she takes a seat and watches people bidding on each lot, each power, each body part that once belonged to a human being . The frozen ones come last, and with each knock of the hammer her rage morphs further into despair. These people are to be enslaved, psychologically broken, programmed, and used for their powers. She knows what will happen to them, and is utterly helpless to stop it.
“Lot number twenty-six. Sixteen-year-old Kevin here is a firestarter...”
The auctioneer’s prattling is suddenly no more than a dull roar in Karen’s ears. She barely notices as her hand rises; all she can do is stare into the frosted window and see her brother. The gavel bangs once, twice, three times, then everybody looks at her. Karen blinks. A heartbeat later, the next item is on the block.
Karen sits, the realization of what she just did sinking into her limbs like lead: She bought someone.
She bought someone, but it won’t help that boy at all. Because she does not have the kind of money to actually pay for him. There are a lot more zeroes on her bank account since she started at the New York Bulletin, but definitely not five of them squeezed between a three and a decimal point.
Best case, the black marketers only kill her for interfering. But if they think the boy’s somehow connected to her, and too risky to sell… she forfeited both their lives.
The second the hammer falls on the last item, a woman with the ability to erase memories, Karen is approached by one of the auction house clerks.
“Good evening, ma’am. Shall we complete the transaction?”
Karen gets up, smooths her hands over crinkles in her dress, wobbling a little in stilettos she’s not used to wearing anymore.
“Certainly.” She clears her throat, and fumbles her clutch purse open.
The clerk taps on a tablet. “Will that be credit card, or a wire transfer?”
“Wire…?” Trying to stall is all she can think of, and filling out a form with banking information must take longer than swiping a card whose limit is roughly a hundredth of the asked sum.
“In this case, we will require you to remain on the property until the transfer has been confirmed, ma’am. If the account is offshore, please bear in mind that this may take a few hours. I apologize for the inconvenience but I hope you understand that we have to be cautious.”
Putting on the bravest face she can muster, Karen nods agreeably. “Of course, this is a risky business.” Then she continues to dig through her tiny purse as if it contained anything at all, muttering to herself about finding the account information, and praying to the heavens for a miracle, a diversion, a chance to get the hell out.
A touch to her shoulder makes her jump.
“There you are! Almost lost you in the crowd.”
The clerk makes no outward sign if he thinks the comment strange, what with there never having been enough attendees to make a crowd in the first place.
A woman has appeared next to Karen, tall, brunette, dressed to the nines as the rest of the guests. She hands her glass of bubbling champagne to Karen with an air of authority - boss to underling - and effectively stops Karen’s search for a piece of paper that doesn’t exist.
“I’m sorry, we’ll be paying with this after all.” And then, like a magic trick, she twists her wrist and a credit card appears between her fingers.
Karen doesn’t really know anything about credit cards, but there’s a roman soldier type picture on it, and based on the way the clerk’s eyes go round as saucers, it must be one even the wealthy rarely get to see. With a dopey little grin he swipes it, and barely glances at the tablet to confirm its approval before he hands it back… reluctantly.
The strange woman thanks him, takes possession of the purchase receipt, and walks out.
Only when she yells “Come on!” over her shoulder does Karen manage to unlock her knees and follow.
Karen catches up in a side alley, where her rescuer oversees a cryo pod-sized crate being loaded into a van. “Who are you?” she whispers.
The lady looks her over, head to toe, before she replies, “I hope you got what you came for,” and shakes Karen’s hand. Then she climbs into the stretch limo waiting in front of the van.
As they drive off, Karen checks the paper sticking to her sweaty palm. It’s another business card but much simpler, black font spelling out “Maria Hill” on top of a light gray Avengers’ logo.
Trish
“HIV, cancer, Alzheimer's - humankind still has no definite answer for some of the most cruel illnesses, causing gradual but inexorable destruction of the body and mind. For the thousands of afflicted, and thousands more who see their loved ones suffer, it is unimaginable that anyone would keep promising drugs off the market out of sheer greed.”
Karen rewrote the opening paragraph nine times already. She wants it to pack a punch, throwing out accusations she backs up with evidence later in the piece, appeal to the readers’ empathy for those who are sick, and clearly lay out the guilt of those who profit by stealing others’ life expectancy.
One of Foggy’s pro bono clients was part of a drug trial and hopeful that if he continued treatment, he might be able to lead a better life with fewer side effects, only to learn that despite its exemplary results, VirTuous was refused by the FDA. She already transcribed her interviews with the doctors leading the research study, and patients who had taken the experimental drug. The puzzle piece she’s missing is the one man who swept the results under the rug, and sold details to a rival medical company which he gets kickbacks from.
And she’ll get that tonight.
Karen checks the clock, and spends the remaining hours until the meeting with planning a little thank-you party for Foggy. Just her and him and anyone else he wishes to invite, who helps bring the corrupt FDA approver behind bars.
*
The underground parking lot is one of the worst-lit in New York. Every other neon lamp is out; the ones which still glow are covered in dirt. It gives Karen chills just looking out of her car. She is five minutes early, and leaves the headlights on.
A couple of cars come and go, but nothing happens in the appointed corner. She will have to get out and look around at some point.
Deep breaths to calm herself, mace spray in hand, and she opens the door. It is times like these that she hates driving an old car: there is no remote; she has to fiddle the key in the lock on the door, which puts her back to the room.
Karen is getting used to the adrenaline by now; her hands are mostly steady. Nothing happens, and she scans the garage level as far as she can see. She checks other parked cars in the immediate surroundings, but they’re all empty. No scared sources hiding and debating whether to really go through with it.
She starts walking, tennis shoes silent on the asphalt.
She can tell her mistake just as she rounds a pillar, a shift in its half-shadow cast by a murky lamp on the right. Pain stabs through her side like a knitting needle, then spreads out in bubbling heat all over her skin. She collapses, barely catching herself enough to not break her nose on the floor. Every muscle twitches uncontrollably.
It moves up through her body in a wave of prickly heat, her ribcage not expanding for long, long seconds in which she fears to suffocate, but then it travels into her arms and neck instead, and she digs her nails into the asphalt.
A few seconds more, and she starts to shake it off. She’s left sticky with cold sweat, muscles trembling from the overexertion. Whatever she was injected with, it doesn’t last long. Come to think of it, she expected kicks and hits that never landed. Karen rolls onto her back, only to see two figures dressed in black fighting it out like a scene from a Jackie Chan movie.
She has no idea which one attacked her, so she rob-crawls away, hides in one of the many shadowy corners until her legs work enough to carry her back to her car.
There’s a loud crash as one ninja is bodily thrown through a windshield. Stays down.
The other one pulls off their ski mask, revealing a long, blond mane of hair. “Hey, Karen, wait!” she yells, and jogs over with a disarming smile.
Karen stands frozen next to the open door of her car. Her fight-or-flight instinct must be broken, because she should be inside her car, revving the engine, pulling away with squealing tires, and if necessary run that blond ninja-lady over to escape.
Said ninja pulls off her right glove before extending her hand. “Trish Walker. Sorry if that was a bit stalkerish. Jessica asked me to keep tabs on you while she’s off hunting down some other bad guy.”
Karen’s brain re-boots. “Jessica… Jones?”
“That’s the one. Sourly alcoholic and phenomenal PI.”
Finally, Karen takes Trish’s hand. “Uh. Thanks for the save.”
It shouldn’t be possible, but Trish’s smile becomes even wider and softer. “Don’t mention it. Just one journalist helping another out.” At Karen’s quirked eyebrow, Trish adds, “I’m a radio show host.”
A poster she saw on a metro bus flashes through Karen’s mind. “Right, Trish Talk ! Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”
Trish holds up the mask. “Kind of the point.”
*
A week later, the source finally has come forward, the article is published, and the FDA approver in custody. The party is in full swing with half of Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz well on their way to public indecency lawsuits, when Karen sidles up to Foggy and punches him in the arm none-too-gently.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You had your boss put surveillance on me!”
Foggy looks suitably chastised. “Sorry. There were so many corporate bigwigs involved, with too much money… I was afraid they’d send an assassin after you – which they did!”
Karen shakes her head, which sends the room spinning just a little. She may have over-indulged a bit, too. “That’s not why I’m mad. You should have told me. Ahead of time.”
He nods and stares into space with a frown; Karen recognizes the expression as him internalizing what is being said.
She pats his cheek, causing him to refocus. “You wanted to tell me, but you knew I’d be fighting it. So you avoided the argument and simply took the decision away from me. That’s why you feel guilty.”
Foggy’s eyebrows rise.
“Don’t say anything, just don’t do it again. And I promise that I’ll listen, next time you ask me to get a bodyguard.”
He smiles and pulls her into a hug. The warmth from the alcohol merges with the warmth of his body, and suddenly she feels better than she can remember feeling since Union Allied.
Clint
“Am I paranoid?”
Ellison laughs in her face, but it’s not malicious. It’s genuine amusement at a great joke Karen just told without meaning to. “You tell me,” he replies instead, “page three article if you’re not.”
Karen starts typing.
*
The jewelry store owner points an accusatory finger at her. “I’m not talking to you.”
Makes her wonder if she should be using aliases. Investigative journalists, the good ones who really uncover conspiracies to prove their paranoia, tend to make a name for themselves through the by-line. Witnesses and suspects turn shy.
“Sir, I would just like to hear your account of what happened in the Brooklyn branch.” And how you were involved, she doesn’t say. No matter where the Banshee robber hit, in a weird row of five coincidences, the owners were at their stores. Insurance claims filed in under an hour. You’d think their first order of business would be to calm down their salespeople, promise them security upgrades and free therapy sessions, rather than taking inventory.
“You need to leave, now.” The store owner is not accommodating, but Karen drove all the way out to Staten Island to meet the guy in person, and she won’t be easily gotten rid of without so much as a first-hand witness account.
Behind her, a bell tinkles as the door opens and closes. In front of her, the owner goes ash-white.
Karen clamps NoiseBusters over her head.
There’s a sound, high pitched and uncomfortable in a way that feels like squeezing brain cells on a molecular level. Everybody else around her is so affected, they drop like sacks of potatoes.
Slowly, Karen turns, and sure enough, there’s the guy the witnesses described. Late twenties, plaid shirt and jeans, full beard, shaggy hair, thick-rimmed glasses. She almost laughs at how the save-the-world hipster image clashes with the illegal pursuit of worldly riches.
He stares.
She frowns back at him. She’s developing a serious migraine, rivalling the morning after a most excessive night at Josie’s, when she always forgets to drink her water.
He switches tactics. Or frequency. Karen only has a second to catch the Banshee-guy’s neck muscles straining, then the pain between her ears intensifies to the point where she doesn’t even feel the floor underneath her knees, the hair between her fingers as she clutches her head.
Just as suddenly, it stops.
There is blood dripping onto the floor and the NoiseBusters, which she must have pushed off. Karen looks at her hands; they too are smeared red. She is bleeding from her ears and nose. Her throat is dry and rough as if she screamed, but she didn’t hear herself.
She still doesn’t. Her heart hammers in her chest, but it is dead quiet.
Shoes appear in front of her before she can panic. Military combat boots.
The man crouches until they’re eye-level, taps her chin to tilt her head back like a reminder that this is how you deal with nosebleeds. Karen recognizes the square face and spiky hair, even without the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
Hawkeye mouths words at her, slow and precise: You will be fine.
She relaxes, nods. While he gets up and does something in the room, she looks for her purse. There are tissues which she balls up and stuffs into her nose, wipes her hands and ears.
Looking over the room, the hipster-Banshee is on the floor, an arrow sparking blue electricity still hooked into his shoulder blade. Hawkeye cuffed him, and put a muzzle over his mouth.
He returns and tugs her towards the front door, but she resists. She came here to do a job, and it’s the perfect opportunity to find proof. She points at the door labeled “Office” instead. He follows.
It doesn’t take more than a minute to find it: the insurance claim form filled out already, listing every single collier, brooch, and stone which was supposed to go missing. Grinning widely, she punches the air. “Yes!” she yells, overly loud because she registers it only as a low rumble. “Thank you!”
Hawkeye flicks on the hearing aids she never noticed. “You’re welcome.”
*
The article appears on page three, but it does get a one-line teaser on the front page.
Karen sticks with her real name.
Rhodey
Disgusted with herself, Karen snaps the file folder closed. It’s been two weeks since various banks started putting up alerts about devalued cash currency – old bills which had their serial numbers registered and were sent for destruction – circulating, and she still hasn’t managed to come up with a lead which doesn’t fizzle away into nothingness. Each time she asks for information so she might trace a particular bank note, she is stonewalled by bureaucrats for “security reasons”.
She pours herself a finger of whiskey and looks down at the files spread all over her apartment floor. She tracked the serial numbers of each resurfaced bill to the bank they were originally collected at, but they came from eight different branches of five different banks. It is unlikely that a bank employee used unfit currency as their personal savings account.
The transports from the bank branches to the Federal Reserve never reported issues or irregularities, so they were either very good at covering their tracks, or the theft happened later, at the Federal Reserve or the East Rutherford Operations Center.
Lots of frustration and half a bottle of whiskey later, Karen decides: If she can’t follow the money on paper, she will do so in person.
*
It is pure luck, she figures, whether she is following the right armored truck. There may be decoys like in the movies. But so far it goes in the right direction, even if not on the shortest route.
They’re entering a large park. Karen checks her phone; GPS is updating, but the map underneath it remains disorientingly empty. No bars.
The roads are deserted, which means she’d be easily spotted as a tail, so she decides to hang back further. Not being able to call for help is even more reason to stay out of sight.
The armored truck continues for another five minutes, and stops in front of a bridge. Men climb out of the underbrush. They don’t bother with the back door; the truck driver hands them a sack, receives one in return. Ten seconds, and they’re underway again.
Karen filmed the exchange happening in broad daylight, and turns her car around. She cannot pass by the men at the bridge; she has to go back the way she came.
She’s in the middle of reversing, with the car sideways on the street, when pain explodes in her left thigh. “Fuck!” she yells in surprised agony. She is shot!
There’s a man and his gun by the bridge far down the road – he probably aimed for her head. Two more shots, one pings off the car’s A column, cracking the windshield, and the other smashes the backseat window. The sound of the discharges reaches her somewhat delayed.
“Fuck!” she screams again, decidedly more anger in it, and hangs herself bodily on the steering wheel to turn the tires in the opposite direction. As soon as it hits the lock, she presses her right foot down on the gas. The front tires kick up dust and slip. The car jumps forward, but the park road is too narrow. The left front tire goes over the shoulder into the ditch, hangs free. The right one has traction for another second and the forward momentum swings the car back towards the left, and then both front wheels spin in the air.
“Shit,” Karen curses, throws herself down across the passenger seat, making herself a smaller target. “Shit shit shit,” she continues as bullets start hitting the car again, zipping through the already broken window. The man is getting closer, his aim better.
She pulls the handle of the passenger-side door to open it. Her purse on the seat cushion digs into her ribs, and Karen gratefully pulls out her registered pistol. Gun in hand, she wriggles forward until she drops to the ground. The car’s undercarriage rests on the edge of the ditch, but the back tires still lift the car enough to give her a wedge to look through, to point her gun at the shooter’s knees, and pull the trigger.
He screams, and she screams at the noise.
Something loud, something deafeningly loud starts firing. Large caliber automatic. Pebble sprays where the bullets impact in a straight line across the street, between her and the robber. It’s a clear warning to stop the nonsense, like a parent going between their petty fighting kids.
From the blue sky, War Machine descends. “Perfect, asshole. You just added aggravated assault and attempted murder to your charges. Put down your weapon; you’re under arrest.”
Without taking his eyes off the man who throws his gun and a couple of knives away, War Machine adds in her direction, “Don’t worry ma’am, an ambulance is two minutes out.”
*
She writes the article from the hospital bed, featuring an exclusive and very illuminating interview with Col. Rhodes, about how the intelligence community supported the Federal Reserve to bust the crime ring.
Natasha
Karen sighs. The SkinTec CEO sighs.
“I really wished this was over by now. I need to cancel my manicure. Dylan!” Sarah, the CEO, clicks her fingers.
Dylan ends the call he was on, and slips the phone into one of the pockets built into the sides of his motorized wheelchair. “Just did, ma’am.”
Sarah smiles at him. “You’re the best PA I’ve had this month.”
He beams back at her, and Karen gags. She needs to get out of here before this dissolves into D/s workplace sex. Not that she judges, but Sarah doesn’t exactly scream safe, sane, and consensual. More like unhealthy, mad, and power-imbalanced . Karen wants no part in that.
With her hands bound behind her by thin but durable household cord, she calculates herself some pretty good chances, actually. She fiddles with her watch, tries to get at the tiny blade of a dismantled Swiss army knife which she has duct-taped to the underside. It’s the only reason she has started wearing a watch again.
Once that is out, she twists it between her fingers until it catches against some of the cord. With small movements, Karen starts sawing.
Sarah stops eyefucking Dylan long enough to throw another question at Karen. “Have they figured out the overheating issue yet? How do they manage to get the performance people are so used to on their cell phones and wearables, without ice packs over the skin?”
That calls for a bullshit answer, just to have a little fun. “They’ve found a way to trick the wearer’s body into cooling the implanted chip for them.”
Sarah’s eyes narrow at her, obviously torn between calling Karen on it, and wondering if that is biologically possible. She’s a CEO with zero medical or technical background, so all she has is her imagination.
The cord snaps, and Karen doesn’t wait for it to fall to the floor. She jumps up and rushes Sarah, simply runs her over. Dylan squeaks. In his panic to retreat, he opens the door that Karen would have needed a passcode for, and rolls backward as Karen advances.
He thumps into something, almost topples over, and when he sees that he tripped over their security people’s unconscious bodies, he squeaks again.
Down the hall, a redhead in black leather catches some reinforcements by surprise, attacking them as they come in from the stairwell. It’s five against one, but when that one is Black Widow, it’s hardly a fair fight no matter how many you send.
Karen pulls Dylan’s laptop out of its bag, while he cowers in fear. She wags a finger in his face. “You really are a great PA. Go find yourself a less crazy employer. Like an NGO.” Once Dylan nodded, clearly too terrified to do anything but agree with whatever she says, Karen hands the laptop over to the superspy. “Whatever you find on it, be it about SkinTec being HYDRA-funded or plain old corporate espionage, I want an exclusive.”
Natasha laughs, and calls the elevator. “Clint told me you’re trouble.”
“In hindsight, I should have published under a pseudonym,” Karen replies. “Although trouble did tend to find me even before I became a reporter.”
The elevator car releases two more security men, one of whom Karen knees in the groin while Black Widow does her leg-chokehold-sideways-flip signature move.
“Show-off,” Karen grumbles, a little bit jealous. Natasha only laughs, and in that moment Karen realizes this may be the perfect – only – opportunity. Looking up through her lashes, she asks: “Actually… Could you teach me that?”
Natasha considers her for a moment, then points to the laptop. “Let’s get this to Maria. She has all the Stark tech necessary to break any encryption on it. The facility also has the coolest gym,” she adds with a wink.
Karen giggles, and is just a little bit star-struck at the idea of actually going to the Avengers Facility.