Something smashed loudly next to Scarlett’s head and she jumped upright very suddenly at the sound. Turning instantly with a wrench in hand, she was prepared to swing it at whoever may have been the source of the sound that had woken her. While her work had gone smoothly after the meeting with MedCo for the first week, she’d purposely slowed down in order to try and figure out where Scott had been kept. She’d hacked the computer system in an attempt to steal the video footage from the security tapes, in hopes of finding clues to where he was being held prisoner. She’d managed to take a few pictures of the footage with the cell phone she’d customized herself before MedCo had shut down her lab entirely upon discovering her intrusion.

After her third time hacking into their computer system, she’d been restricted diet and sleep as punishment for her lack of cooperation. Now, blinking so her eyes would adjust to the dimmed light of the room with restricted power usage, Scarlett turned her head to look back at the man walking away from her. He’d left a small plate of food on the desk next to her, which had been the source of the sound that had woken her.

“Still no scotch?” Scarlett called after the man, leaning her back against the desk and watching as he left her alone with her meal of indescribable food. He’d never bothered to respond, but he’d been the only companionship available to Scarlett in the past week, so she had to at least try to get him talking. Scarlett leaned her head back against the desk and grimaced. Slowly turning around so she faced the desk, she poked the plate and made a face. While she’d avoided eating any of the food that had been provided for her for the first few days, eventually she’d caved and started eating the minimal amount to keep her going. The food wasn’t awful but she also didn’t know what it contained and didn’t trust those preparing it not to poison her.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t work out a plan of escape when she was half dead, so not eating was doing her no favors, even if they’d laced the food with something to make her more cooperative. So far, nothing had altered her state of mind or her strength, other than the lack of food and sleep in general. In all reality, these things had just made her more determined to get out of there as soon as she could with Scott. Staring at the nearly completed set of robotic limbs in front of her, Scarlett felt the guilt churn in the pit of her stomach once again, as it had on many occasions over the days prior.

Pulling her phone out of where she had kept it hidden in her shirt in the side of her bra, where it had sat uncomfortably, she opened the photos she’d managed to snap of Scott’s holding cell. How could she know he was alive in those photos? They could’ve shown her video footage from any point in time and doctored it to say that it was a live feed of the man she was hoping to save. There was no time stamp on the video, not that it could be trusted if there were. For all she knew, Scott could be long dead and she could be building these machines and resisting escape for no reason at all.

The more she weighed about her options the more she considered risking Scott’s life to escape MedCo and to keep from having to build something that could potentially cause the next World War if put into the wrong hands. Was her boyfriend’s life really worth such potential destruction?

“That’s one way to get into the history books, I suppose.” She muttered under her breath, zooming in on the picture on her phone that had come out the clearest, searching the perimeter of the room once again in hopes of finding anything that would hint toward Scott’s location. Shuffling her feet against the floor out of nerves, she realized something and sat up straight. Before she could think her revelation through further, the door opened a second time and the guard who had brought her food returned, with a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. This had been the first good day Scarlett had in a long time.

Cocking an eyebrow quizzically, she watched as the man left her a half empty bottle of vodka and two shot glasses on the desk next to what had been intended to be food. Truly surprised by his actions Scarlett simply stared and the guard stared at her in return behind his dark glasses. After a moment of awkward silence passed between them, he poured them each a shot of the clear liquid, once he’d pried the cap open. Holding up one of the shot glasses as if to propose a toast to them both the guard waited for Scarlett to hesitantly pick up the other shot glass that lay nearly full on the desk.

“Well, it’s not scotch on the rocks, but it’ll do.” It was in Scarlett’s nature to disguise her discomfort in tense situations with humor. For a moment she thought she saw a smile on the corner of the guard’s lips and he spoke. It had been the first time he’d shown any proper emotion since they’d met.
“Vodka’s better. Gets the job done faster.” His Russian accent was thick, and his English was poor and broken, but still good enough for Scarlett to understand.

“Not if you’re drinking it right. But beggars can’t really be choosers, now can we?” Picking up the shot, she tapped her glass against the guard’s and without looking back at him, swallowed the alcohol. Inwardly grimacing at the rubbing alcohol taste of bargain store vodka and the burn it provided in her throat, Scarlett placed the shot glass back down on her desk. The guard swallowed his shot as well and placed his glass next to hers on the desk. Another awkward moment followed before Scarlett stood up. “Thank you.”
The guard turned away from her and walked toward the door, leaving the bottle of alcohol and the shot glasses on the desk for her to consume, presumably, on her own.

“What for?” The guard didn’t turn around, continuing to the door, opening it as he spoke. “I did nothing.” Closing the door behind him, Scarlett noted that he didn’t lock it behind him as he usually did which was another act of kindness she hadn’t expected. Staring curiously at the door and contemplating making use of it she also realized the amount of trouble the guard would get in after he’d gone out of his way to get her something he’d surely not been permitted to.

Sitting back on her stool, she pursed her lips and tapped her fingers against the desk near the bottle of vodka, weighing her options.

“Well, that was peculiar.” Reaching to pull her messy curls out of her face, Scarlett stared at the bottle of vodka left for her as she tied her rebellious hair back into a lazy ponytail. “Oh, you are going to come in handy for so many reasons.” Leaning her head down to look at the amount of alcohol she’d been left with, she decided it best to hide what remained. While she planned on breaking out of what had become her temporary prison that night, she wasn’t going out the door that had been left unlocked for her and she wasn’t aiming to escape. Escape would be foolhardy, but she had a far grander scheme in mind.

Realizing she had been in the middle of something before the guard had interrupted her Scarlett picked her phone back up off of the desk and examined the pictures she had taken of the security footage once again. The air vents in the footage were near the floor, one in particular being a large intake vent and while Scarlett knew she couldn’t climb through those particular vents because of how small they were and how they were likely in use, she knew that the vents in the basement were near the ceiling and far larger. Because the electricity had been limited to her room, Scarlett could only assume that the vents down there very rarely were in use.

The floors of Scott’s cell appeared to be concrete from what she could tell which had initially led her to believe that he’d been held in the reinforced basement below the large building like she was. Now that she’d found time to thoroughly investigate the photos she’d taken she realized he must have been held on the first floor and not in the basement. Most likely he was being held closer to the hangar doors where MedCo received their inventory shipments on the loading docks.

While she couldn’t crawl through the air vents on the floor above, she could definitely crawl through the intake vent to get out of her own room and to another on the same floor. She’d only have one chance at this since she was sure the air vents would be secured once she was caught crawling through them. Even finding out where Scott was being held on the first floor would give her a leg up. While she didn’t expect to escape that easily from her captors, the more knowledge she had about the building, the easier it would be for her to plot her eventual escape and rescue Scott from MedCo’s clutches. They’d messed with the wrong bitch.

“I wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t insisted he come with me.” Bitterly, Scarlett picked up the bottle of vodka, closed the top and secured it once she’d resisted the urge to drink a second shot. Then, along with the shot glasses, she hid bottle of vodka at the bottom of her crate of supplies that she’d been provided with for her project, covering them with a small grease covered rag to discourage anyone from touching it and investigating what laid beneath it.

Wiping her hands on her jeans once again, Scarlett hid her phone inside the side of her bra. Screwdriver in hand she dragged the stool she’d been working on over to the far side of the room, and beneath the intake vent. A few moments of frustration and work with a screwdriver later, the vent’s cover lay on the floor. Scarlett punctured the inside of the vent with her screwdriver to give herself an anchoring point while she pulled herself inside the large vent. She left the vent open behind her so if she were discovered they would know the escape attempt was at no fault of the guard who had shown her kindness and had left her door unlocked and trusted her not to take advantage of him.

Squirming through the tight confined space once she’d managed to pull herself into it, Scarlett could only hope that the ventilation system connected to another intake vent in another room and not simply to the air conditioning unit itself. If she had to, she’d break out of the side of the vent, but she preferred to draw less attention to herself during her escape if she could manage it.

After twenty minutes of awkward shuffling in the vent where each move she made echoed loudly and stopping to listen every few feet to make sure those sounds weren’t heard, Scarlett muttered under her breath, merely to amuse herself. “I can’t fucking believe this. Another basement, another elevator? How can the same shit happen to the same gal twice?”

Joking around for a moment assisted in calming the nerves that had built up in the confined space, and helped to ward off claustrophobia. Scarlett stopped crawling when she saw another large vent at the end of a turn, similar to the one she’d broken through in her laboratory. Relief flooded through her to know her efforts hadn’t been entirely in vain.

Peeking suspiciously through the vent, Scarlett saw the room empty and dark, the door half open on the opposite wall allowing just enough light in from the hallway to show her the contents of the room. There were boxes around the room, piled up against each wall, she presumed since she couldn’t see the wall with the vent on it, it could have very well been completely bare for all she knew. Taking a chance, Scarlett kicked at the vent. It buckled but didn’t give entirely from the screws that held it its place. The sound it made echoed through the room.

Heart pounding in her ears, Scarlett stopped and listened to find out if someone had heard her kicking at the vent, but she heard nothing and while this didn’t mean that someone wasn’t on the other side of the door listening for the noise again, she had very few other choices. She took the risk of kicking the vent a second time and this time the top corner of the grated vent lifted free of its confines just enough for her to fit her hand through the gap.

After a few moments of prying and cutting up her hands on the now jagged piece of metal, Scarlett managed to free the vent cover from the confines of the screws that held it to the wall. Climbing instantly out of the vent to escape the growing claustrophobia that had overcome her, holding the cover in her hands to keep it from crashing to the floor, Scarlett jumped to the floor and stumbled, gathering her bearings. It took her a few seconds of blinking and focusing to manage to get her vision to adjust to the dim light of the room.

Leaning close to the floor, down on one knee, hiding close to the boxes nearest her she listened and heard footsteps outside of the half open door. It would’ve been too much to ask for all of the noise she’d made in her escape attempts to go unnoticed along with footage on the security cameras kept in each of the rooms. She was never the kind of woman to have such good luck.

Hurrying toward the door, making very little sound as she did, Scarlett stood on the side of it and waited for it to open, holding her breath as she did. Still holding the cover of the vent, and realizing it as the last moment she swung it hard at the person who opened the door, which turned out to be one of the guards presumably checking what the noise had been within the room.

The guard immediately stumbled backwards from the blow and reached for something on his hip, which Scarlett assumed was some kind of gun or another sort of weapon. Throwing the vent cover at the guard’s head, she watched him stumble a second time but try to recover so he could quickly aim at his attacker. Grabbing his arm instinctively, she pulled the gun from his grasp, flipped it around artfully and aimed it at the guard who had once possessed it. Without a second thought she pulled the trigger and was surprised when she realized it wasn’t a regular gun at all, but a type of stun gun she’d never seen before.

Much to her surprise barbs attached to thin electrical wire stuck into the guard’s skin where she’d aimed and he convulsed while Scarlett held the trigger down, the electrical current flowing through the wire to the barbs.

Startled for a moment since she’d expected gunfire, Scarlett stared in surprise until she gathered her wits which didn’t take very long. Letting go of the trigger, and thus cutting off the electrical current that had been traveling through the wires, she approached the startled and injured guard before flipping the stun gun around and swinging the surprisingly heavy butt end of it against the side of the guard’s head, knocking him to the ground unconscious.

Out of breath and surprised by the confrontation, Scarlett looked around the hallway and saw no other guards in sight. Deciding to buy a few extra moments before she’d been discovered by a second guard she grabbed the guard she’d incapacitated by the legs and dragged him into the storage room she’d exited. She made sure his pulse was steady after what he’d been through before pulling the barbs of the stun gun from his skin.

Expecting to have to rewind the expelled wire of the stun gun back into the front, she discovered that this new model simply released the wire and reloaded with a second charge at the back end of the gun. Impressed by this innovation, she checked to see if the propulsion system needed a reload and discovered it had been done so automatically. Despite these enhancements to a weapon that usually required heavy maintenance to reload, it seemed this particular model only had two charges in it. Scarlett would save the second charge for later, just in case.

Kneeling down, Scarlett quickly searched the guard for any other weapons that could come in handy and found a handgun stashed away in a holster beneath his jacket. Pulling the holster off of the guard, she slipped it around her shoulders and while it was far too big for her slimmer feminine build, it would serve its temporary purpose. She had no plans on discharging the weapon unless her life was threatened, but a gun was often a far more successful motivator than any other weapon could be.

Grabbing the pocket knife she found in the guard’s front pocket she folded the blade securely into the handle and slipped it inside of her sock. Though it was uncomfortable, if she was caught, perhaps it wouldn’t be found very easily and she could use it to her advantage when she was returned to her laboratory. That was if she wasn’t outright killed when she was discovered sneaking around after having attacked a guard.

“They wouldn’t kill me outright, I’m far too valuable to them,” Scarlett muttered under her breath, her voice thick with disdain before peeking out the door into the hallway once again. The hall was still clear of guards as it had been earlier, so she took the plunge and snuck out of the room and down the hallway to where she recalled the stairwell being.

Having always made it a point to know where her exits were despite her circumstances had come in handy over the years and this moment was no different. At the stairwell she waited and listened for any signs of employees or guards on their way down and when she heard none she hurried into the stairwell and up the flight of stairs. Heading toward the main level of the building was dangerous but it was where she needed to go to find Scott. Peeking out into the hallway of the first floor, Scarlett saw several guards and employees, each hurrying to some destination or another.

Waiting out the crowd was growing wearisome after a few moments, but Scarlett knew it was the best move for her to make. After some time spent holding her breath and getting frustrated with waiting, all the employees had moved away and entered elevators and only one guard remained in sight. He was stationed at the far end of the hallway, in the direction Scarlett had intended to go.

Deciding that dealing with one guard was a simple enough task and worth the risk, she left the stairwell. Doing her best not to look suspicious she walked through the hall and carefully approached the guard from behind. Deciding it would be silly to try and sneak past someone when her footfalls had echoed from afar despite her light feet, she instead tapped the guard on the shoulder.

“Could you help me find the bathroom? I’m afraid that I’ve found myself lost.” Scarlett waited for the guard to turn around to face her before swinging the back of the handgun against his jaw. When he stumbled back, she didn’t wait for him to gather his bearings and instead punched the man hard in the stomach, then shrunk down low in a crouch to kick his feet out from under him. When he fell on his back, Scarlett instantly climbed on top of him, placed her hand over his mouth, and held his nose to keep him from being able to breathe properly.

The guard struggled to push her off of him but was so surprised at how quickly he’d been taken down that before he had a chance to properly defend himself or even consider doing so, Scarlett had rendered him unconscious on the floor. Pulling him out of view of the main hallway, Scarlett stole his MedCo hat and shoved it on her own head, slipping her hair through the hole in the back mostly to keep it out of her face. Her hair was too thick to hide under the hat entirely, so she made no attempt to do so. Grabbing the jacket of the man she’d incapacitated, she threw it around her shoulders.

Though it was obviously far too large on her feminine frame and looked odd on her, she hoped it would help her avoid suspicion from any passing guards or employees who didn’t bother to take a second look at her. She knew it would only be a few moments before the guard would be discovered in the hall and people would be looking for the stolen clothing on an intruder.

Seeing the communication radio attached to his belt by a clip, Scarlett grabbed it and pulled open the battery compartment. Easily she found the panel where the live wires were located and after she removed the battery itself she tugged on the wires so she could render the thing useless even if the battery was replaced and dropped it on the unconscious guard’s lap.

Grabbing the gun out of the guard’s holster, she stole the clip from inside the gun and shoved it into her new jacket’s pocket in case she might need to reload the gun later. She was hoping it wouldn’t come to gunfire before she’d reached her goal. If nothing else these small precautions would slow down her pursuers.

Rounding the corner of the next hallway, Scarlett tried to recall where the loading dock had been located when she’d taken the tour of MedCo’s facilities before she’d signed the contract to work for them. Closing her eyes for a brief moment to try and rouse the memory from her mind, she recalled the signs in the hallway pointing her past the consulting offices and laboratories. The sign was labeled Deliveries. When she’d found the tour of the building to be incredibly boring she’d taken to memorizing areas that could possibly entertain her if her work also grew boring. The loading dock had been one of those places. Not to mention, it was one of the largest exits in the building and the easiest accessible one at that.

Hurrying through the halls, but not at a pace that would make her seem suspicious to anyone except for guards who would recognize her if they took a good look at her, she continued past employees and through winding hallways that she vaguely recalled. Having to double back every so often was a setback time wise, but she only had to do that once or twice before she found herself on the proper path and found the signs that she’d recalled in her memory.

Now that she’d discovered their true purpose, MedCo’s labyrinthine hallways made perfect sense to her. It had seemed very annoying to her when she’d toured the building but now it was genius. Simplicity would allow too many people to escape too easily and allow intruders to find their way inside just as simply. Finding the sign for the loading docks pointing to a big heavy door, Scarlett didn’t hesitate.
Entering the room, she scanned the large garage like space where trucks were lined up at the end, employees emptying their contents of weapons and supplies through various doors that slid from the floor to the roof. There were at least a dozen workers unloading and loading supplies but none seemed interested in the woman who had entered the garage. Whatever work they were doing, it seemed far more important.

Scowling at the sight of Stark Industries crates lining the floor near one of the emptied trucks, Scarlett took a deep breath before swallowing the renewed rage she felt toward the company and is owner. Tony Stark had always been a joke to her and her peers, but only because he was such a cocky asshole in public and had a reputation of being a man-slut of sorts. But now that she’d seen the darker side of his vast empire, she had far worse insults for him that outweighed his promiscuity and arrogance.

With publicity as great as Tony Stark’s and a company as powerful, he had a responsibility to the world to do great things, not manipulate things to his whim. Scarlett thought how lucky it was that the man was nowhere near this facility because she’d certainly hunt him down and kill him.

Now that she’d reached her desired destination Scarlett had to find out where MedCo would be keeping Scott hidden. There was no space in the loading dock itself for hostage cells so Scarlett assumed it had to be a room hidden against the wall. Surely it wouldn’t be as obvious as a room labeled Hostages or anything similar.

It would be something simpler. It would be something that didn’t look suspicious. In her experience as a mercenary, though she hated that word, over the years she had discovered that often the most ordinary things about a room would disguise the most extraordinary. Frequently, people with something to hide worried so deeply about being discovered that they worked too hard to make something look plain. Now Scarlett just needed to find something so ordinary that it was out of place in the loading dock.

Creeping with the pilfered hat’s brim held low over her eyes, Scarlett walked through the vast loading dock, searching each door and window that led into another area. Halfway through the room, everything seemed as it should be and nothing felt out of place enough for Scarlett to investigate it further.

She came across an office closer to the far end of the room which turned out to be nothing but that. Since it’d been empty, she’d searched it for a secret entrance or for any useful information while she’d had the time. While she’d been lucky that the foreman of the loading dock had been out of the room when she’d investigated, she couldn’t be so lucky for very long so when nothing seemed amiss and no secret entrances had been found, she hurried back out of the office and clear down to the other end of the loading dock.

Leaning with her back against a maintenance room entrance, Scarlett tried the doorknob behind her back but found it locked. Looking around the room she searched for any reason to spend time breaking the lock to take a look inside. After a few seconds of scanning the room, she found a more than perfect reason to break the lock.

There were tools, supplies, chemicals and cleaners lining the opposite wall of the loading dock, where she’d first entered from the main hallway. The loading dock itself was essentially a giant maintenance room so what was the point of labeling a second room for such purposes? Surely, if it had been such a room there would be no point in labeling it either. Those who worked there would know what its purpose was. Not to mention if they had a place for supplies, it would be silly for an entire area of the loading dock to be filled with it. It seemed like the room was trying far too hard to fit into its surroundings without casting suspicion.

Picking the lock would take too long and blowing the handle off with the handgun she’d stolen would be too loud and would risk shrapnel causing her harm at such a close range. Instead, Scarlett did her best to not seem suspicious, grabbed the handle, turned and slammed her shoulder into the door as hard as she could. The wood splintered around the lock and without looking around to make sure she hadn’t been heard, she slammed her shoulder into the door a second time. Making loud noises all at one time seemed less conspicuous than taking too much time between sounds and drawing attention twice. This wouldn’t be the first time she injured her shoulder shoving open a door and she was hoping it wouldn’t be her last.

The second slam against the door did the trick. While the door didn’t break entirely around the lock, it broke enough that Scarlett could maneuver the deadbolt out of the way and open the door. Sneaking inside, she closed the door quietly behind her, reactivating the deadbolt despite how little security it would provide now that she’d splintered the door. Anything that would slow down her eventual pursuers even for a second would prove useful and worth the extra effort it took.

Searching around the dark room, Scarlett knew she’d hit the jackpot at once. There were boxes piled around the room but they were so caked with dust that it was obvious some of them hadn’t been moved since the building’s construction. If this had indeed been a maintenance room, everything would have handprints and scuff marks on it. The entire room was too suspiciously pristine to be used as frequently as a maintenance room would be used in a loading dock.

Walking carefully through the dark room once her eyes had adjusted, Scarlett stepped around the boxes, searching for any sort of secret doorway that would guide her to where Scott was being held. Even if she didn’t find him now, she knew about their secret place and it would help her with her plans of escape later on. Starting at the back end of the room, behind the boxes, Scarlett put her hand against the wall and brushed her fingers across it as she walked, searching for a seam of any kind. Stopping halfway through, she listened and heard something amiss. Leaning her head against the wall, she held her breath in hopes of better deciphering the sound from the other side.

Before she could contemplate what it was, the wall slid open as if to unlock and opened away from Scarlett. Having had most of her weight on it, she stumbled forward but didn’t fall, managing to catch herself at the very last moment. The two armed guards on the other side jumped backwards and out of the way in surprise, clearly not having expected a beautiful woman to come falling through the secret entrance. Scarlett regained her balance and stared awkwardly at the two armed men in front of her, who seemed just as confused as she did.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to let this slide, are you?” She smiled slightly, flipping the hat off of her head quickly so her hair slipped out of it then putting it back into place on top of her head. The two guards exchanged glances then without responding, reached for their guns. “I didn’t think so.” Pulling the hat off of her head a second time, Scarlett tossed it in the face of the man on the right then made a blind grab for the man on the left’s arm that was reaching for his holster to remove his gun. Swinging the man she’d grabbed, she urged him into his companion but he had knocked the hat to the ground and stepped out of the way so the man in her arms had merely hit the wall instead of his partner.

The first man, having caught wise to her plan of attack, pushed her back into the dark maintenance room, knocking her into the boxes and causing an avalanche of them to fall to the floor behind her. Rolling to the side and pushing the boxes off of her body as they nearly buried her, Scarlett narrowly dodged the man as he tried to grab her ankle. The second man was calling into his radio for back up. It had only taken them a moment to recognize her as the prisoner behind held on the floor below.

“Well, so much for stealth.” Scarlett picked up the nearest box, which was deceivingly light, and Scarlett guessed, empty and tossed it at the man trying to grab her. To her surprise, the box wasn’t empty at all but instead filled with foam packing peanuts which flew out of the box in a brilliant spray of lime colored foam. Not having the chance to be amused as the static of the foam peanuts drew them to her attackers, Scarlett threw her arms up defensively as the box was thrown back in her face. Aware that she would be blind for a second, Scarlett shoved the box out of her face and rolled to the side, thankfully dodging an angry stomp of a large boot from her attack.

Reaching down to try and grab the knife from her boot she didn’t get the chance as the man who had radioed for back up grabbed her foot and started dragging her back into the well-lit secret hallway. Attempting to grab at the floor did nothing but injure her nails and cause them to bleed so instead she bent her knees to give her some leverage. As the man pulled her close enough to try to pin her to the ground, she extended her legs, drawing herself closer to the guard and kicked him hard in his knee, hard enough to knock his leg out from under him and force him to the ground.

Swinging her legs back into the air she used the momentum gathered to jump back onto her feet. Pushing her messy hair out of her face, she swung the jacket she’d stolen from the guard in the basement and tossed it onto the head of the guard she’d knocked to the ground only a moment prior.

Before she could make her next move to disarm the man on the floor she was tackled around her waist from behind. Stepping sideways she was pushed into the wall of the hallway rather than to the floor. Putting her hands up defensively to protect her face, she managed to brace herself. Feeling the guard attempting to pull her back by her hair, she grunted in annoyance. The man, being larger than her by a few inches and having at least sixty pounds on her, and likely having had a proper diet over the last few weeks, gave him an advantage. Even if she had been eating and sleeping properly, he would’ve had the advantage over her.

Scarlett was clever and knew when to use leverage to her advantage, thankfully. Pushing her weight against the guard behind her, she managed to put both feet against the wall for a split second. With a shove against the wall with her feet she managed to push the man backwards, causing him to teeter off balance. Scarlett and the guard who held her hit the wall across from them and she fell free of his grip and onto the floor.

Stumbling to get to an upright position, Scarlett noticed the other guard coming toward them just in time. He had some kind of gun raised and aimed at her so Scarlett immediately abandoned her attempts to get to her feet and dropped once more to the floor onto her knees, throwing her arms protectively in front of her face just in case. The gun fired and the two electrical barbs on the thin strands of wire dug into the guard behind her who was using the wall to try and get back to his feet after having been knocked down. Looking up and behind her to see the man against the wall twitch from the electrical current flowing through him, Scarlett saw her chance to seize the moment.

Once again on her feet, she jumped at the guard holding the stun gun, who looked stunned himself to have accidentally attacked his partner instead of the curly haired woman. Thrown off by her sudden movements, both Scarlett and the guard fell to the ground. Being thrown immediately off of the man she’d tackled and onto her back on the floor, she managed to grab her own stun gun from its holster, roll onto her stomach and shoot at the second man who was attempting to dislodge the first charge of his gun from his partner’s flesh.

Watching the guard twitch in a fit of electrical current, she dropped the gun and hurried to her feet. Planning on taking the stun gun from the man who laid unconscious on the floor from friendly fire, she hurried forward.

Before she had the chance to grab the weapon, something hit her in the back like a ton of bricks. Much to her surprise she felt the strong current of electricity pulsing through her flesh, causing her to see stars nearly instantly. Limbs tingling from the relentless voltage, her senses went crazy in an attempt to fight off the electricity. Unfortunately, there was only so much anyone could do against such a device so Scarlett fell to her knees helpless. She attempted to catch herself with her hands but the numbed feeling the stun gun left them with caused her to instead land face first on the floor.

The current stopped and Scarlett could feel her limbs still twitching, her fingers feeling distant and awkward. Knowing she didn’t have time to lay incapacitated and recover from the blow, she attempted to roll over and reach for the gun she’d stolen from the guard she’d met earlier in the main hallway. Managing to wrap her fingers around the handle after the second try she swung it behind her quickly, hoping to hit anyone who had gotten close enough to attack her in her moment of weakness.

Having guessed her new attacker would be coming to incapacitate her further, her swing hit the guard in the face, but with far less force than she had intended. The blow from the stun gun had weakened her drastically and her limbs weren’t cooperating as they should. Being merely annoyed by the smack of a gun to the side of his head, the guard pried it from her fingers and handed it to someone behind him. Peeking up once her vision was fully restored, Scarlett saw four more guards surrounding her, looking angry and preparing to go after her if she retaliated.

Feeling slowly returning to her limbs, Scarlett kicked hard upward, right in the guard’s crotch, causing him to fall over in pain, whimpering. This was something Scarlett only did when she was desperate. She felt it undignified to kick such a sensitive place. Though, the man had shot her with a stun gun when she’d been unarmed so if anyone had deserved it, she figured it was him so she felt very little guilt.

Grabbing at the leg of the nearest guard from this new wave, she tugged hard and twisted, nearly knocking him off of his feet. Pulling her up by her arms, a third guard attempted to pin her against the wall. Struggling to get him away from her, she flailed and thrashed and threw a punch, hitting him square in the nose. He let go of her and grabbed onto his now incredibly bloodied nose. Knowing she was outnumbered and outmanned, Scarlett refused to give up easily despite the futility of the situation.

Dodging a punch from one of the guards she knew she couldn’t avoid harm forever. Another pushed her face first against the wall. Elbowing behind her, she managed only to anger the guard who had grabbed her by knocking him in the throat. He grabbed her arm and flipped her around to face him. When she made to hit him again with already bloodied knuckles he took a swing at her and managed to hit next to her eye since she’d moved her head to the side only a moment too late.

Feeling dazed from the blow, Scarlett shoved away from the wall with her feet and pushed the guard to the ground, swinging hard at his face to return the blow he’d given her. When the guard fell forward with the blow, Scarlett launched herself at the guard but was grabbed on either side by two of the other guards before she could make contact. One of the guards she’d previously injured had a cloth in his hand and pressed it hard against her nose and mouth. Trying hard not to breathe in what was surely chloroform or something related to it, Scarlett shook her head in an attempt to get away.

A second punch to her stomach caused her to gag and forced her to release the breath she had been holding, forcing her to immediately inhale afterward. Despite her struggle and willingness to continue on in her fight, she felt the darkness creeping in on her vision. There was no use trying to fight against the chemical beauty of chloroform and after several moments of struggle, Scarlett fell unconscious and slid to the ground against the wall, helpless.

Notes

I do not own Iron Man or the Marvel Universe, but I do own Scarlett Damien so please don't steal her!