Lacuna [1] {Completed}

Chapter One

****

The building was dark, the only light came from the broken windows high above in the main entryway. Everything in the building screamed abandoned. Scattered pieces of furniture littered the floor of the lobby and fallen debris was everywhere. Weeds crept in through the cracks in the floor and a thick layer of dust seemed to cover everything. There was still a check in desk in the middle of the lobby. Erin walked past it towards the back of the room. There was a sitting area with broken and knocked over chairs just outside of an open door that led into sectioned off hallways. Erin crossed the threshold and ventured into the back of the building.

She could still hear the bustling of the street on the other side of the building, but it felt like a whole planet away. The quiet made the complex feel like another world.

Erin followed the passages that led left. The further in she went, the darker it became. There were other hallways that sectioned off of the main passage that led to the right and the left. She heard a noise come from one of the hallways. Quietly, she followed the sound. For the first time in months, she reached out with her senses. When she turned a corner she saw the three figures she spotted earlier walking deeper into the maze of hallways. Like a tingle in the back of her brain, she could feel the slight pulses that radiated off them.

            The three figures headed straight through ignoring another passage that led to the right. Erin would have ignored if too if she hadn't felt what was coming.     

She stopped in her tracks just before a fourth dark figured appeared from the shadows of that dark passage, but the three people ahead hadn't noticed it. Erin stopped and looked at the figure that had just emerged. The figure was a tall male. He hadn't noticed Erin yet. He was dressed in a dark combat suit, a few guns strapped to his hip. Erin didn't know if it was the darkness of the building or if she was starting to believe Ana's stories about the monsters that the locals said lived in this building, but he looked like a dark soldier sent by the devil himself.

It wasn't the gun strapped to his hip that had Erin worried. It's what she felt him reach for in his belt that made her cry out. In two seconds, he clicked a button that made the circular object blink red. He lifted it up and Erin knew what it was.

            "Look out!" Erin called ahead.

The three people ahead whipped their heads around just as the dark soldier was about to release the bomb from his gloved hand. It was two men and a woman. Erin had seen their faces so many times, she knew exactly who they were.

            Wanda Maximoff's hands instantly glowed red as she directed her telekinetic energy to stop the man's arm from throwing the bomb. Next to Wanda, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson moved into action.

Steve sprinted down the passage managing to leap and bound over the debris and was in reach of the man within 5 seconds. With one punch, he knocked the dark soldier out and the small bomb rolled out of his hands and onto the floor. Erin held her breath for a moment, but it had stopped blinking red and she released her breath.

            Until now, Erin felt like she had been watching a movie, but she came crashing back to reality when Steve Rogers looked straight at her and started stalking over her.

            Shit. Erin thought to herself. Realizing she was no longer invisible, she stumbled back and started to run back the way she came, but she knew it would be in vain.

            Steve's powerful grip grabbed her jacket and spun her around to face him, pinning her to a wall. Erin couldn't suppress the painful gasp that escaped her lips as her head collided with the wall. Stars danced in front of her eyes for a moment until they focused on the angry expression on Steve Roger's face. Erin thought he had looked big and strong in videos and her grandfather's pictures, but he was much larger in real life.

            "Who are you?" He asked her, his grip unrelenting.

            All Erin could do was gape. She would describe her behavior in the moment as star struck. Captain America was a legend among her family and meeting a legend apparently caused Erin to have a temporary brain lapse.

"Why did you follow us?" He demanded.

Erin couldn't focus. Not because of Captain America in front of her, but because of the body of the dark soldier on the floor. He had countless electrical gadgets strapped to him that were now distracting Erin. She couldn't seem to shake it.

"Are you sure she speaks English, Steve?" Sam Wilson said coming behind Steve with Wanda at his side.

"She said 'look out' didn't she?" Steve looked from Sam back to Erin.

His blue eyes roamed her face suspiciously. "Do you know who I am?" Steve asked her calmly in broken Romanian.

            Erin managed to regain control of her focus. "Most of the United States military are looking for you," She replied back in Romanian, "Captain." She said in English.

            Sam's eyebrows shot up. Wanda looked fierce as ever, but slightly impressed.

            "So you're American." Steve said speaking English now.

            "Born and raised."

            "What's your name?"

Erin didn't have time to answer before the explosion set off behind them.

"It didn't matter that she fell apart,

it was how she put herself back together."

-Atticus