Bringing Down the Town | Maria & Magneto
It was quiet. Too quiet.
The halls of SHIELD Headquarters were bustling during the day, but it was eerie at night. The lights were dimmed, computers hummed softly, and there occasional sound of vacuuming could be heard halfway across the building. There wasn't an agent in sight when Maria walked through the top floor to Fury's office in hopes he would be around. She intercepted some kind of encrypted message from five days ago, and it was traced to one of the members of the Brotherhood. With Magneto on the loose, she could only assume it came from him, which meant something was happening.
She stepped up to his office and rapped gently on the wooden door. With no immediate answer, she tried again but there was no response. Maria decided to leave a note on his desk, so she pulled the door open and stepped inside.
As soon as the door shut behind her, she felt a presence in the room, and she looked around the blackened space until her eye caught sight of glimmering metal. Please be Nick, she thought to herself as her head slowly turned towards the shimmer. One of the curtains had been pulled back, slightly, allowing a sliver of light against the wall, and a white shadowy face could be made out from where she was. The rest of the person formed a silhouette against the black drapery, save for what she guessed was a helmet.
Shit.
“I was wondering when you would get my little message,” The other person spoke. “It's been quite a long time, hasn't it, Maria?”
The voice caused her throat to swell. She hadn't been in the same room as a mutant in years, and yet the biggest bad of them all was standing no more than fifteen feet away. Maria's first instinct was to grab the door handle, and as soon as she did, it locked.
“Ah ah, I didn't come all this way for you to run. I thought you had a bit more spine than that, dear.” The man said again.
“The hell do you want Magneto?” Maria finally spat out.
Silence fell upon the room, and he didn't respond for almost a minute. She watched as Magneto balled up the curtain in his hands and dragged it across until the moon shone completely through the window.
“I want you to watch.”
Maria braced herself as her attention went from Magneto out the window. She tried to come up with some kind of strategy to get herself out of this situation, but she couldn't think of anything. They were on the top floor, so if she bolted through the window, she'd be dead by the time she hit the pavement. It wasn't in her nature to follow orders from criminals, but with no other options, she had to comply.
It looked like any other Saturday night in New York City. Cars were stuck in traffic, little ant-like bodies were moving about from bar to bar, and the only thing really moving were the taxis that didn't care about traffic signals. Her eyes were set out on the horizon, and she glanced over at Magneto who appeared to be counting down.
Three...
She heard, and her hand went to her gun.
Two...
Her other hand went to her earpiece.
"One." Boom.
A giant explosion lit across the city, and Stark Tower went up in a burst of flames. She heard another loud bang come from the distance, and she ran up to the window to see where it came from. Shit. That's Westchester, she thought as she saw a rise of smoke coming from that direction. Pressing down on her earpiece she said, “Attention all agents, Start Tower and the mansion have been compromised. I repe-”
Her message was cut off by a swift grasp to her throat and she was slammed into the glass. She tried to kick herself free, but the more she fought, the tighter he grabbed. For an old man, he was incredibly strong.
“I don't think that will be necessary, Agent Hill,” Magneto purred as he moved closer to her ear. “In a few moments, this building will erupt just as the others did.”
Maria felt the glass cracking behind her as Magneto pressed her farther into the glass. She was gasping for air at that point, and she pulled his hand away just far enough to let out an audible word:
"Why."
The question turned the criminal's smirk into an angry scowl. That's when the building began to moan, and Fury's desk drawers started to shudder. The question seemed to anger the man and she saw from the corner of her eyes, the metal window frames begin to bend and the glass crackled. He lifted her from her neck and tossed her a few feet across the room, where her breathlessness caused her to flop over. Maria felt her gun leave its holster and when she looked back up, she saw it hovering before her, pointed straight at her forehead.
“You think I'm an idiot? You think I don't know?” Magneto questioned, his voice filled with rage. “I've seen your files, I've seen what you've done. Testing on mutants like they were nothing more than animals. You may not have been there, but it happened under your roof. In your facilities, with your employees. This is about war, and you already have a death toll. Now it's my turn.”
The gun cocked back and as Maria tried to roll behind the desk, it shot. She felt a stinging pain of the bullet digging right into her abdomen and she held back a scream. She heard the glass behind her finally shatter under the pressure, and the floor began to sink. There was a low buzz and then a blast that came from just outside the building and she the desk covered most of the wave of bursting building but it was too late to try and escape. The floor caved beneath her as she felt herself losing consciousness. They weren't prepared, they weren't ready. Magneto and whoever he was working with had just...won.
