With each flicker and pulse, The Gate beckons, and you all squint against its unbearable light, undulating at you in demonic red.
Despite the incessant rise and fall of her chest, Robin tilts her head to you and Steve and Dustin to ask, "I don't understand. You've seen this before?"
"Not exactly." Dustin answers.
"Then what, exactly?"
You motion desperately at the rift with a hand, voice raised to match your panic.
"This is what I've been trying to tell you about! The monsters, the alternate dimension, everything!" You turn back to it, brows pinched, to gape at the terrible, ethereal glow.
"That was real?!" Her voice is almost demanding, betrayed even, downright horrified and her mouth hangs open wide.
"Yep, and it's bad."
"Like, end-of-the-human-race-as-we-know-it kind of bad." Dustin elaborates.
Robin shouts in disbelief, "I just thought your secret was, like, you were dealing drugs or something!"
"What?!" You question. "You thought I was a drug dealer?!"
"I don't know! There was that time last year when you were all beaten up! I thought it was that or you and Steve were in like, some illegal underground boxing club or something!"
"You can't be serious!"
"You were being so shady-"
"-And you landed on an illegal underground boxing club?!"
Steve tries to explain, "Last year, we-"
"-Um, Steve? Where's your Russian friend?" You interrupt.
The boy averts his gaze from the monstrous vortex, to where a Russian guard should be lying unconscious on the floor.
The floor is notably empty.
"Shit."
Next, the sound of angry Russian voices indicate you've been spotted.
"Go! Shit! Shit, shit, shit!"
You all scramble to escape, sprinting through a door and slamming it shut, bolting down some steps, down a passage, towards the opening to a large vent.
But the Russians keep on coming.
"Hold the door with me!" Robin urges, pressing her back to the doorframe, her red sneakers scudding against the floor the more she digs in her heels.
Without a second thought, Steve barrels over beside her to tackle into the door, grunting and panting as he labours to keep it shut.
You freeze. Then, you inch round to glimpse the image that is your two best friends, sacrificing themselves.
"Robin! Steve!" Anxiety courses through your veins, splits you in two - a part of you wishes to spring to their aid, the other is being dragged desperately away towards protecting Dustin and Erica, their small, clammy hands clutching you tight, also unwilling to leave anyone behind.
You lock eyes with Steve, his face contorting in his struggle with the door. All the while, a cacophony of jackboots pound the ground, the force at which they push through the blocked door growing evermore irresistible.
The boy's honey-sweet eyes convey a promise to you. To keep you safe. That this is the only way. They plead at you to go, get out of here and save the children.
Then, there's Robin, gritting her teeth and slapping a sweaty palm to the door, also begging you to leave.
"Go! Just get out of here!" Steve shouts, a vein pulsating from his neck.
Tears prick in your waterline, a sob barking out your lungs at the sight of them.
"What are you doing?!" You cry in guttural anger.
"Go!" They shout together.
You plant your feet in defiance, your nails digging painfully hard into the skin of your palms, any harder and you'll draw blood.
"I'm not leaving you!"
The strain in Steve's voice tears out his throat as he burns right into you, something splintering within him when he sees how you aren't moving despite time slipping rapidly away, precious seconds which could be used to escape with Dustin and Erica.
But you still just stand there, blinking.
Steve's anguished cry is the one thing to get you to leave, "Y/N, the kids come first, now go!"
"But-"
"-GO!"
Spurred by this final scream, you start into action. You jump a little, before peeling away from your two friends by the door and towards the kids. You scoop them up, one under each arm like a protective mama bear with her cubs, and they whine in protest as you carry them off into a vent.
"I won't forget you!" Dustin calls back before crawling away to safety.
The tension in Steve's jaw relaxes by a mere fraction, upon seeing you disappear from view. You're gone. Dustin's gone. Erica's gone.
You've got a better chance of not dying in this hellhole. And that, is all Steve needs to know.
That's when the Russians finally burst through. Big burly crowds of them forming an impenetrable wall around the pair, guns cocked, pointed right at them. He and Robin have no choice but to raise their palms and surrender, keep their heads ducked low and pray for a miracle.
***
If Steve had a nickel for every time he's had his head caved in for being involved in something he shouldn't... well, he'd have exactly 3 nickels. But still, it's not something he ever hoped to become a tradition.
Unfortunately, the pain isn't something he thinks he'll ever get used to, especially when the Russian guard who interrogates him lands a debilitating blow to his freshly swollen eye.
A deep shade of purple has settled around it, the bulging flesh smarting painfully against the coolness of the air in the cell where he's held, away from Robin. God knows where she is right now; Steve hopes she's alright.
He licks along his lip, which is burst - a sharp, persistent stinging setting every nerve ending alight along the delicate curve of his smile, disrupted by the rupture in the skin.
His vision is clouded red with blood in result of the bloodshot eye he's been so generously awarded throughout this seemingly endless ordeal.
Endless because, despite his earnestness and efforts, despite keeping a brave face against the odds, he's not getting anywhere.
"Who do you work for?" The guard repeats.
"For the millionth time, I work at Scoops Ahoy!"
"Scoops Ahoy." The guard echoes, unconvinced.
Steve tips his head back and groans, his frustration reaching boiling point, "What the hell?! Look at my outfit! You think I just wear this?! Think I'm a spy in a sailor's uniform?" He gestures to himself, a piqued hysteria jangling in his tone of voice.
"How did you get in?"
"I already told you. I told you before," Steve whines, inhaling a very deep breath, "My delivery didn't come, and my friends and I, we thought that it was left at the loading dock, so we went in the room, and then it turned into an elevator, and then..." He pauses to think. "And then we dropped and then, next thing we know, I open my eyes, and we're in this... wonderful facility."
The guard doesn't even show a tiny morsel of breaking, his mask firmly in place.
Steve implores, "But I swear to God, nobody knows about us, nobody saw us. You could just let us go, alright? And I'm not gonna tell anybody about this, okay?"
Still, the mask of the guard refuses to slip.
"Shit happens, life goes on. And, uh... ice... ice-cream," Steve stammers over his plea, clutching desperately at straws, in the hopes that anything right now could be his saving grace, even unashamed bribery. "Ice-cream, okay? You guys know what ice-cream is. Everybody loves ice-cream. I don't know if you have Russian ice-cream or if that's considered gelato. I don't know what's what, but whatever you guys want, seriously, USS Butterscotch, I mean, you gotta try it. It is out of this world, I'm telling ya!"
The guard's stoic demeanour remains unwavering, gazing down upon Steve with contempt. Until, a corner of his mouth begins to tick up, and a few unbecoming titters break free to reverberate around the walls of the cell.
Steve, not really sure what's happening, pinches his features and forces a laugh to mirror the reaction of the guard, for fear angering him will welcome another round of punches to his already pulsing skull.
The guard turns to another officer, cackling away and pointing at Steve who still laughs in frightened confusion.
"I like this guy! USS... Butterscotch," He slaps his knee before composing himself, wiping the smile from off his face to gather some semblance of an intimidating persona, asking once again, "Who do you work for?!"
Steve's shoulders visibly sag in defeat.
"Oh, come on. No, no! No, seriously..." He flinches. "Get your hands off me!"
Behind Steve's brave face, there's a fleeting glimpse of vulnerability, like a fragile thread snapping. Then, more beatings. Countless fists that smack and crunch against cheekbones and eye sockets and burst lips. After, the tranquility of blackness, when Steve slips into the embrace of unconsciousness and the pain in his face subsides, if only briefly.
***
Robin's incessant cries of desperation claw Steve back into the realm of reality.
As awareness seeps back into his body, he can sense the intense throbbing of his head that feels a mile wide - a reminder of the bloody ordeal that rendered him unconscious.
With each passing moment, his groggy mind clears like morning mist, and he begins to try and piece together the fragments of memory, cautiously reconnecting how he got here.
He remembers his feet dragging along the floor, the rubber soles of his sneakers squeaking against the ground.
He remembers being dropped heavily into a chair, leather straps tightening around his arms.
He remembers Robin screaming, demanding to be freed, spitting into the face of your interrogator.
She's still screaming now.
"Help! Help! Help!"
"Hey, would you stop yelling?" Steve groans.
"Steve! Oh, my God! Steve... are... are you okay?"
His eyes are heavy curtains as they flutter open, revealing a clinically grey room bathed in sickly light. The air is hostile. Clearing his throat from the coppery taste, Steve begins to summarise the brutality of his injuries to the girl...
"My ears are ringing, and I can't really breathe, my eye feels like it's about to pop out of my skull, but, you know, apart from that, I'm doing pretty good." He tries to scoff.
Robin quips, her voice tired, "Well, the good news is that they're calling you a doctor."
"Is this his place of work?" He squints whilst drinking in his surroundings, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "I love the vibe. Charming."
"Yeah, tell me about it. So, okay, do you see that table over there to your right?" The dizzy boy with the bloodied up face turns his head the wrong way. "No, your other right." Robin gently corrects.
"Oh. Yeah, okay." Steve refocuses his gaze to lock onto a silver platter adorning a nearby desk. Decorating the tray, an array of shiny, sharp, steel devices. Their intended purpose, purely medieval.
"And do you see those scissors?" Robin asks, her voice barely above a whisper, like she's afraid someone may overhear. Steve nods. "Yeah, well, I think that if we move at the same time, we could get over there, and then maybe I could kick the table and knock them into your lap."
His eyes widen with newfound determination. "And I could cut the binds."
"Yeah, and we could get out of here."
Together, they share a beat of silence. Just staring at the scissors glinting atop the silver platter, beckoning them to take the risk.
"Gotcha. Okay, yeah, we can do that," He can't help but snicker against the odds, against the blaring protest of his battered face, surging with electric pain every time he moves it. "Those morons. They left scissors in here?"
"Yeah, morons."
"Total morons."
Readying up, they count to three and shuffle. Not far. But it's a start.
Again.
1-2-3.
Shuffle.
"Holy shit, this is gonna work!"
"We're close. Ready?"
One last time.
1-2-3.
Shuffle.
Steve slips. And with a clatter, the pair slam to the floor on their sides, still strapped back-to-back with one another, still bound to their chairs.
Well, at least they tried.
He feels her body shaking against his back, then comes the unmistakeable hitch of breath and ragged little gasps of despair.
"It's okay, it's okay," Steve soothes. "Don't cry. Robin."
Those little gasps that escape her grow louder, until Steve realises she isn't crying at all. She's giggling.
"Are you laughing?"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. It's just... I can't believe... I'm gonna die in a secret Russian base with Steve 'The Hair' Harrington. It's just too trippy, man."
"We're not gonna die. We're gonna get out of here, okay?"
"Do you remember, um, Mrs. Click's sophomore history class? Mrs. Clickity-Clackity. That's what us band dweebs called her..."
To Steve, her question comes seemingly out of nowhere, but she just smiles, the bittersweet memories flooding back.
"It was first period, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so you were always late. And you always had the same breakfast. Bacon, egg, and cheese on a sesame bagel. I sat behind you two days a week for a year."
Robin carries on, a slight tremble in her voice and Steve wonders where this could possibly be going.
"Mister Funny. Mister Cool. The King of Hawkins High himself. You were a real asshole, you know that?" She sneers.
"Yeah, I know." Steve sighs resignedly.
It sucks, he knows for sure he's not that person anymore. But realising people still think that? It really hurts.
"But it didn't even matter. It didn't matter that you were an ass. I was still... obsessed with you," Her confession makes his jaw lock, probably because it catches him off guard. That word. Obsessed. "Even though all of us losers pretend to be above it all, we still just wanna be popular..."
Steve's eyes dance about the cold floor his cheek presses to.
Robin continues.
"Y/N despised you. She never got it, my fixation on the cool kids. It's one of the reasons I love her so much. She's always herself."
"Yeah. She always has been." Steve huffs admiringly.
The girl shuts her eyes for a moment, pulse steadily ticking faster and faster inside her ribcage.
"It wasn't just me in Click's class who was obsessed with you, though." She admits.
"No?"
"Tammy Thompson," Robin utters weakly, her voice so small when the name escapes her mouth. "She wouldn't stop staring at you and I was like, insanely jealous."
Steve swallows dryly, a warmth prickling the tips of his ears.
He grits his teeth. "Oh God, is this where you reveal you have a secret crush on me?"
A snort can be heard from behind him.
"No. No. No. I do not have a crush on you." Robin plainly states.
"Oh thank God, because that'd make it super awkward to tell you I have a major thing for your best friend."
"I know that," The girl blinks, searching each corner of her mind, gathering the right words and deciding the precise order in which to say them, "It's, just... Tammy Thompson... I wanted her to look at me."
A frown begins to knit across Steve's brow. What exactly is she telling him here? And why is she telling him it?
"But... she couldn't pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair. And I didn't understand, because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor. And you asked dumb questions. And you were a douchebag. And- and you didn't even like her and- I would go home... and just scream into my pillow."
"But Tammy Thompson's a girl." He smiles in confused disbelief.
Then, the penny drops.
"Oh... oh!" He stammers, then laughs under his breath. "Holy shit."
She feels the tears prick in the corner of her eyes, a swell of exhausted triumph exploding in her gut. Proud of herself. A weight lifted. Another person who knows.
And strangely enough, she's sort of happy it's Steve.
It feels kind of... normal.
Like telling a secret to a trusted friend.
Letting out a deep sigh, Robin replies, "Yeah. I guess I kind of wanted to tell someone else besides Y/N or my mom, in case we- you know... die."
They still where they flump on the floor, a singular baited breath between them, as if all the oxygen in the room has suddenly vanished.
To ease the oppressive mood, Steve tilts his head and offers Robin an amiable smirk.
"I mean, yeah. Tammy Thompson, you know, she's cute and all, but... I mean, she's a total dud." He remarks amusedly.
The freckled girl guffaws, unsure whether to laugh or cry at their sorry situation. So instead, her mouth hangs agape in mock annoyance, making a noise of offence.
"She is not!"
Steve nods emphatically, a hint of glee playing across his features. "Yes, she is. She wants to be, like, a singer. She wants to move to, like, Nashville and shit."
"She has dreams." Robin defends.
"She can't even hold a tune. She's practically tone-deaf. Have you heard her?"
They laugh a little louder. Like, actual hearty laughter that shakes their cores and warms them from within. It feels great. It feels raw and right. It's what they should have been doing all these months when working together, instead of dishing out snide digs here and there. No rivalry. No simply putting up with one another for your sake. They could have been hanging out together, or with you as a trio. A proper trio.
Steve thinks about the sheer amount of time he's dedicated to being liked, to being popular, to being the king. And it was... miserable.
Then, he thinks about these two girls. You. Robin. Two outcasts. And they feel like... home.
Still laughing, belly sore, Steve begins to sing through his nose, purposely putting on an exaggerated nasal quality not too dissimilar to Kermit the Frog - the voice with which Tammy would dazzle her audience every school talent show.
"She sounds like a Muppet. She sounds like a Muppet giving birth." His comment spurs on another ripping roar of snorts, Robin allowing herself to tip her head right back in spite of her red face that flushes with embarassment.
It finally subsides, melting down from body-wracking convulsions, to small tittering hiccups that make their lungs ache.
Cheeks burning, Robin speaks again, "You know, I never really heard the story."
"What?" Steve quirks an eyebrow.
"About how you and Y/N became friends."
He sighs.
"It's a long story... involving monsters."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Robin still hasn't quite come to terms with that minor detail. Still unsure about how to even begin to believe it. How she can even allow herself to believe it?
But she saw what she saw.
The crimson malevolence of that rift.
The Gate, they had called it.
"It's funny, you say she despised me..." Steve shrugs as he admits unashamedly, his voice growing hard and resolute, almost reflective, "Well, I wasn't so sweet on her either. She was a mean, rude, stick-in-the-mud, and I guess I hated she was the one person who didn't fall for that popularity bullshit. Like she was immune to my spell."
"Yep. That's Y/N." Robin beams with pride.
He falls silent for just a moment, rifling through his early days with you, a light fondness etching over his features when he remembers being in your passenger seat, nursing a newly swollen eye, feeling very sorry for himself. What a child he was.
"And then, one day, I did a stupid thing and she rescued me. And she lost her shit and didn't hold back. That's the day I realised I didn't want to be the asshole king of the school anymore; she made me want to be a better person."
"I see." Robin utters.
"Since then, I've sort of made it my mission to be the good guy she always says I am. I guess you've gotta mess things up to figure things out, right?"
"I hope so." The girl quietly agrees.
"I feel like my whole life has been... one big error, except in one respect: being her friend, and protecting those kids. If there's one thing I'm doing right, it's that."
Robin almost instantly responds, incredulous, "I get it now."
Steve frowns, a pleasant curiosity crossing over him.
"Get what?" He asks.
A pause.
Then.
Robin takes a breath.
"...Why Y/N is falling in love with you." She finally says with a gentle grin, her eyes soft.
This would floor Steve, if he wasn't planted face down on his side already, unable to get up.
The swell of footsteps entering the room makes them writhe where they lay, craning round to see what's going on.
Dark chuckling from the guard sends shivers down Steve's spine, mentally preparing himself for another beating.
"Where were you two going?" The guard taunts, tutting and gesturing wide.
Two more men force the pair back upright in their chairs, tightening the straps even more so they cut into the skin.
The guard crouches down level with Steve, and for the first time, he's able to get a good look at him.
Middle-aged, possibly in his fifties, greying and stern. His voice is hard when he suggests, "Try telling the truth this time, yes? It will make your visit with Dr. Zharkov less painful."
He sweeps a few stray strands away from Steve's face, muttering in a deceptively soothing manner, before pinching him furiously on the chin that he has to suck in his teeth at the pain.
Meanwhile, a bright white shape catches their eyes from the corner of the room - a lab-coat, donned by a bespectacled man. Zany and bookish. A mad professor. He twists a blue phial onto what appears to be a gun.
Steve tracks the movements of the doctor, all the while, his gaze remains transfixed to the gun-like device in his hands.
"Wait a second. Wait. Hold on. Okay!" He blabbers. "Wait, wait, wait! What is that thing?"
"It will help you talk." The guard simply answers with menace.
Steve's eyes dart nervously around the room as he fidgets in his chair, clearly wrestling with the utter, utter fear that grips him.
His hair is wrenched roughly back by the doctor, freeing the vulnerable flesh of his throat. Attached to the gun, drawing nearer and nearer to its target, a needle designed for pinpoint accuracy to find the vein, releasing the blue serum into his bloodstream, and allowing all tension to ebb away.
The last thing Steve remembers of this moment is how much he screams and screams and screams.
***
Steve sits in a daze, his battered and bruised head swirling like leaves caught in a whirlwind. Robin, equally drunk with a heady cocktail of brain fog and whatever drug is pumping round her body, presses her back to the boy whom she's tied up to.
Their eyes slowly rake over the room, trying to focus on something solid to drag them back from this dizzying dance of disorientation that's sent them adrift.
After a while of not speaking, just sitting there mouths agape, recalibrating their trains of thought, Robin speaks a little too confidently, "Honestly, I don't really feel anything. Do you?"
"I mean, I... I feel fine." Steve mumbles.
"I feel normal."
"Yeah, I feel... I feel fine," Steve mumbles again, more trying to convince himself than his captured companion. He frowns in amused self-reflection, a curl twitching in the corner of his mouth. "I kinda feel... good." He chuckles flatly.
"Wanna know a secret?" Robin snickers, a slight slur drawing out her words.
Steve cants his head back to listen with morbid curiosity. "What?"
"I like it, too!" She erupts into a fit of giggles, head lolloping against Steve's, followed by his own uncontrollable laughter.
"Morons!" He snorts, overwrought with an inflated sense of triumph. "They messed up the drug!"
"They messed it up!"
"Morons. Hey, morons!"
"Moron! Mor... Hey!"
"Whoa-oh!" Steve hollers at the door, testing the waters with how far he can push it, being this loud and obnoxious, his eyes shimmering pools of laughter.
The feeling, however, fades away into awed silence, with a dash of harrowed realisation the more they take note of how their limbs have lost all tension, succumbed to fluid and exaggerated movements. Also, the languid way they drop their faces and roll their heads around atop their necks. The pulsing of the room. And finally, the euphoric ease at which their words come gushing out their mouths like waterfalls.
"Oh, no. There's definitely something wrong with us." Robin gasps.
"Something's wrong." Steve slurs.
Re-entering the room, the Russians march with purpose. Two jackboots, the doctor, and the guard.
The doctor who injected the pair leers over the Buckley girl, his gaunt, pallid face marred by a twisted sense of masochistic cruelty, before turning and carefully laying down a bone-saw atop the nearby table.
But Robin, numb to fear right now, simply greets him with a deceptively brave smile.
"Would now be a good time to tell you
that I don't like doctors?" She snickers.
Steve, on the other hand, quietens when the superior Russian guard, the one who beat him, once again gets right up in his face, stale breath invading his nostrils.
The man addresses Steve, who can barely look him in the eye, "Let's try this again, yes? Who do you work for?"
"Scoops," Steve bluntly utters before tittering like a belligerent child. "Scoops Ahoy."
"How did you find us?"
"Totally by accident." He blurts, a shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.
"More lies."
Meanwhile, the doctor busies himself with methodically realigning his equipment that awaits patiently on the silver platter.
He lifts a pair of pliers from the tray, its sharp edges catching the harsh light of the room and glinting in a way that looks as if it may be awarding Steve an evil grin.
The boy with the swollen eye scoffs, "What is that shiny little toy?"
But the doctor doesn't respond, he just prowls slowly over to Steve, the device primed in a lilac gloved hand.
Next, he takes Steve's hand into his own cold fingers; they're thin and rubbery from the glove. He handles Steve forcefully, drawing out a swell of panicked mutterings from the boy himself.
He aligns the pliers' teeth with a fingernail, clamping down and making Steve cry out even louder. The cries reach a marvellous crescendo, when a painful pressure begins to lift the nail from its bed.
That's when Robin suddenly exclaims, "There was a code! We heard a code!" She yelps this desperately, pleadingly.
The doctor removes the pliers and Steve relaxes his shoulders.
"What code?" The guard shifts suspiciously, eyes questioning, voice raised with heightened emotion.
Robin cocks her chin to recite the old words. All the while, she writhes with a self-assured cockiness.
"The week is long. The silver cat feeds
when blue meets yellow in the west. Blah, blah, blah," Her head lulls sloppily as she rattles it off, lungs quivering with quiet laughter that she has to bite her lip. "You broadcast that stupid spy shit all over town, and we picked it up on our Cerebro, and we cracked it in a day," She beams like a Cheshire cat. "A day!"
The men all exchange a disbelieved glance with one another, positively teeming with fury and perhaps a slight bit of unease.
The girl continues, "You think you're so smart, but a couple of kids who scoop ice-cream for a living cracked your code in a day, and now, people know you're here."
Another exchange of uneasy looks.
Then, the guard narrows his eyes cuttingly sharp at Robin.
"Who knows we are here, little bitch?" He spits.
Steve, however, interjects.
"Uh, well, Dustin knows." He giggles.
"Hey, Steve?" Robin warns.
But he continues babbling along, "And, Y/N knows. And oh God, she's just amazing, you know?" At the mere mention of you, Steve melts in his seat, his head drooping lazily to the side when he sighs your name.
"Is that you're little girlfriend?" The guard smirks, but there's anger in his stone-like eyes and the rolling muscles in his jaw give away his true feelings.
Steve, still flooded with images of you, getting carried away, describes, "Small, angry, super hot? Yeah that's her. She's not my girlfriend, though, even though if we had it our way we would've totally had sex right there on the lunch break table before we broke in here."
Robin's face fully falls.
"STEVE!" She gasps in abject horror.
But something washes over the guard - an understanding. It causes his mask to finally slip ever so briefly, revealing underneath something that gnaws at him.
It's only for a moment, then the mask slips back over his face once more.
"Where is she?" He demands. His voice curt and clipped, but urgent.
Steve recognises that gnawing feeling in the guard. Could it be fear? This grown-ass man?
"Oh, she's long gone, you big asshole, And she's probably calling Hopper, who's kind of like her dad. And Hopper's calling the cavalry. They're gonna come in here commando-style, guns a'blazin' and kick your sorry asses back to Russia."
The guard's jaw rolls again, pops right out the side, and Steve wordlessly confirms within himself that yes, it is fear he sees underneath, and it sparks something within him. A determination. The feeling of hope.
Another lesser guard enters the room. There's a quick quality in the manner that he strides, walking right up to his superior.
Naturally, Steve doesn't understand a word of their conversation, nor Robin. But they speak in hushed tones nevertheless - heads tilted into each other, voices lowered to nothing more than a whisper.
Whatever is said, it causes the main guard's pupils to dilate and his fist clenches. He inches even closer to the man he speaks to.
"Сколько?" He asks.
"пятьдесят."
"Мертвый?"
"Не все. Некоторые недееспособны."
Their mouths twist, and Steve's fairly certain he can almost see the whites of their eyes when their panicked gazes flicker towards the exit.
The guard makes a conscious effort to deliberately compose himself, schooling his demeanour into something more steely before veering back round to his victims.
"So, she's long gone, hm?" He questions.
There's an undeniable satisfaction about how clearly rattled these Russians are, that it tugs an impish grin across Steve's cheeks. He arches an eyebrow, a detection of condescension lacing his tone.
"Uh, yeah." He sniggers with Robin following suit.
"Because I've just received word that she is still somewhere in the facility. And when we find her, she will be the first to die."
The impish grin quickly disapparates, Steve's jaw locking immediately tight.
He burns into the guard, warning him, "If you hurt her..."
But before Steve can even finish whatever threats of unspeakable acts he plans to do, if so much as a hair on your head is harmed, a klaxon begins to blare.
Its wails of danger reverberate through the walls of the room, the guards immediately exploding into a hubbub of bewildered movement, as if a thunderbolt has struck them into adrenaline-fuelled chaos.
The interrogator's face whips right round from the flickering warning lights to Steve, his eyes dancing over the boy searchingly, unable to conceal the bob of his Adam's apple. That. That pleases the bloodied-up boy to no end. And he pokes the inside of his mouth with the tip of his tongue.
Then, in the midst of the clamour, the doors burst open, and there you are.
Upon seeing you, Steve feels his heart swell and shatter at the self-same time.
Your breath is ragged, shoulders heaving. Your eyes are feral, scanning the room.
Cocked and aimed, an assault rifle so large you need to carry it with both hands. Holstered at your hip, a baton no doubt stolen from another guard.
You look tired, with violet circles under your sunken eyes. Paling skin. Hair slicked back with sweat.
But most notably, spliced across your face, matting in your hair, drying brown into your clothes. Blood. Not your own.
What have you been through to get here?
And what lengths did you go to?