Chapter 34

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The chatter over the Comms was constant

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The chatter over the Comms was constant. More words and quips than Kat could keep up with, so instead she filtered them out. She couldn't turn them off completely though, not when it was her only line of connection with Bucky as their army assembled on the plains.

Instead, she just had to tune the noise out as she worked. Deft, rhythmic strokes of her fingers severing tiny projected lines no more than a hair's breadth thick that surrounded the projection of Vision's stone that hung above the workstation where she and Shuri stood. Wirelessly guiding microscopic nanobots to make those severances with surgical precision down where Vision lay on the table below them, watched over by Wanda.

"They surrender?"

"Not exactly."

She couldn't think about Bucky's exchange with Steve on the edge of a battle. She couldn't think of the spaceships and freaking aliens waiting to tear them limb from limb outside that forcefield. Nor the fact that those aliens would be fighting tooth and nail to reach the lab she stood in. And certainly not the fact that if they did so before they managed to separate Vision from the stone, Wanda would have to kill the man she loved. That outcome was unthinkable, so she couldn't linger on it.

She didn't look up when the running commentary in her ear indicated that the first creatures had breached the barrier. She knew where her gun was, where her knife was. Wanda was standing watch, there were guards at the door, even a member of the Dora had remained with them. They would be fine, as long as her hands kept working.

"Trade sides, ikati – I need to follow this pathway..."

"Sure thing." She breathed, raising her hands out of Shuri's way as the princess ducked under her arms to continue her work, leaving Kat to shuffle around and start again in the gap she had left, ignoring the sounds of muffled gunfire that still made their way through the thick glass window of the lab. "You holding up okay, Vision?"

The somewhat strained smile she received from the synthazoid on the level below was enough of an answer.

"Just wanted to check I wasn't tickling you." She joked lamely as she returned her focus to the motions of her fingers.

What did draw her focus away though, was the sound of T'Challa's voice over the Comms.

"On my signal, open Northwest Section Seventeen."

"Is he..." She breathed, her eyes lifting to the blue-tinged dome visible through the window, unable to stop herself scanning the chaotic battlefield that had formed whilst her head was lowered. The frantic, animalistic scrambling black specks caught between flashes of blue and the fire of small explosions. She could make out one winged shape flying above it all at the edge of the dome, the rest was uniform ranks, a blur of Wakandan colours, but she couldn't pick out individual figures.

And then they began to charge. Their forces tearing across the grassland towards the forcefield at some unheard signal – but once again, she heard T'Challa's voice.

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