Universal Headaches - Revised

Chapter 21

A commotion erupted outside the lab. Heavy footsteps came down the hallway beyond the double doors and tension filled the room like static.

"Barricade the doors." Ordered Steve. "It won't keep them out for long but at least it can buy us a little more time. We'll set up a perimeter around Tony and Bruce and hold off whoever gets in until the portal is ready to go."

Sutton hurried to help. She grabbed the end of a long table opposite Clint and helped him shove it in front of the double doors Loki barged through. They rushed from the table to find more items of significant weight to stack in front of entryways. Sutton found a large metal drum and she attempted to scoot it across the floor, but it was too much for her to budge. She searched around the room and finally made eye contact with Steve.

"Hey!" She waved him over. "Can you move this? It's super heavy."

Steve picked it up and carried it to a door with minimal effort. She could tell because the muscles in his arms didn't even quiver and she could see his back muscles shift easily under his shirt. She eyed the drum and shot Steve a petulant look.

"Ugh, now's not the time to show off your muscles, Steve."

He threw a bemused look back at her.

"Now's not the time for you to notice them."

Her face went immediately red. He was supposed to be flustered and then she'd laugh at him and for a moment she'd forget her life was getting flipped upside down.

"Okay, touché," she said. "I forgot you can give as good as you get."

An unbarricaded doorway caught her attention and she ran over.

"Oh shoot, it's not even the turn handles, it's just a pull. We'll have to wedge it closed with something."

The far set of double doors rattled violently and someone shouted a warning through the wall. Sutton blanched. Steve drew her attention back to the task at hand.

"Hey, there should be some scrap metal leftover from Bruce and Tony that's long enough to reach across the doorway. Find one and put it through the door handles, okay?"

"Right. On it."

She scrambled off to a pile of cut off pieces of metal and dug through them. Many were too short and a few were too weak to take a forceful impact. Near the bottom of the pile she managed to find one that would work and rushed to shove it through the handles all the way across so that the metal went past the thresholds as well. The doors shook as she pulled her hands away and she jumped back with a shriek.

"Okay! It's official, we're surrounded!"

Everyone gathered back around the portal to be a last line of defense. Loki, the tyrant, lounged on his back on a cleared table top and casually tossed a wrench in the air and caught it. Sutton wished he'd miss it at least once.

He could probably do something to help. Like maybe make a force field or cast a sleep spell or something. But she figured it wouldn't do any good to ask, plead, or badger him about it. He'd only be amused. He'd been working the entire time to make sure she had no realistic hope of living happily ever after when they left, so it'd go against his agenda to do something useful now.

She made sure to stay away from him and placed herself near Clint and Natasha.

"Okay, so now what?" She asked.

Clint raised his bow and took aim at the double doors.

"Now we wait for them to break through."

Natasha looked at Tony and Bruce.