New Avengers: Breakout Prose Novel

by Kwitney, Alisa

  For a moment, everything was quiet. “Well,” said Tony, standing up and looking a little pale and sweaty in his black T-shirt and jeans. “Welcome to the Savage Land. On behalf of myself and my flight attendant here, we thank you for flying with us today.” He pressed a button on a silver bracelet around his left wrist and a compartment door slid open in the floor of the cockpit, revealing the Iron Man armor. As if magnetized, the leg pieces rotated and flew onto Tony’s legs, snapping into place. The other pieces followed, fitting themselves together with astonishing speed.

  “Okay, everyone,” said Steve, “time to gather up your equipment.”

  Luke stood up. “I don’t know about you, but I am going to take a minute to use the bathroom.”

  “My foot fell asleep.”

  Peter felt a tingling sense of unease, and then a full-scale premonition of impending disaster. “Guys,” he said. “We have to get off this plane now.”

  “What are you talking about, Pete?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “Okay, everyone, let’s move it,” said Steve. “If Peter says he senses something, I trust him.”

  “Me, too,” said Jessica.

  Outside the plane, Peter was hit by the heavy, fetid, overly sweet scent of overripe and rotting vegetation. Tony had managed to land the plane in a small clearing, but there was a dense tree canopy all around them, roped and knotted with thick vines and fleshy, shiny leaves. The air was so humid it was difficult to breathe, let alone speak, and Peter wondered whether this was contributing to his rising sense of alarm.

  Jessica came up to Peter and put her hand on his arm. “What is it, Pete?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Should we…”

  “Wait.” And then they heard something crashing through the trees toward them, its shrill screams filling the air. The moment before it came into view, Peter braced himself, knowing the first danger in facing a monster was freezing out of sheer surprise. All right, you big ugly reptile, he thought, come out and play.

  Only it wasn’t a giant reptile that came bursting out of the tree cover, cocking its head and looking down at them from its malevolent little eyes.

  It was a bird.

  E L E V E N

  “SWEET Christmas,” said Luke. “What is that thing? Big Bird on steroids?”

  “They’re called terror birds,” said Jessica.

  “Phorusrhacid,” corrected Tony, his voice sounding robotic through the Iron Man helmet. “Part of a clade of large, carnivorous, flightless birds distantly related to modern-day falcons and parrots.”

  “Hey, Polly,” said Luke. “Want a cracker?” He cracked the knuckles of his right hand. The seven-foot-tall terror bird turned to Luke, ruffling the dark gray feathers at its neck and cocking its head.

  Clint had an arrow nocked and was tracking the bird. “What’s it doing?”

  “Weighing its various dinner options,” said Peter. The bird fixed its beady eyes on him, opened its huge, sharply curved beak and gave a shrill cry. “It seems the customer would like one Spider-Man fillet, extremely rare.”

  Clint let the arrow fly as the terror bird raced toward Peter; the arrow caught the bird in the side, but didn’t even make the powerful legs falter in their stride. Clint raced alongside, nocking another arrow as he ran. The bird’s claws looked as sharp as its beak, and Clint hoped he wouldn’t have to get too close to either end of the creature.

  “Tony,” Clint called out, “think you can—” He broke off as more terror birds, a whole flock of them, attacked at once. Captain America flung his shield at a bird that was launching itself at Jessica, but Jessica was rolling to the side while shooting, and the shield intercepted one of her bullets. Iron Man was airborne, lifting another of the giant birds by the tail. Unfortunately, the creature still had Luke’s arm gripped firmly in its beak.

  “Tony,” Luke shouted, dangling twenty feet off the ground, “you’re not helping me, here!”

  Tony punched the bird in the beak and it released Luke, who fell to the ground rolling and came up on the balls of his feet. “You okay?”

  Luke spat out a mouthful of dust. “Just don’t do me any more favors.”

  Obviously, they still hadn’t quite gotten the knack of working as a team.

  Clint fired three arrows at the bird chasing Peter—hitting it in the left wing, neck and rump—and swore under his breath as the bird reacted by increasing its speed. Clint wanted to select one of his special arrows, but he couldn’t manipulate the quiver while sprinting. Then Peter angled toward a stand of trees, stopped running and began firing off webbing at the lowest hanging branches. For a moment, Clint thought he’d lost his mind. Then he realized what Peter was doing: He was stringing his web into a net. The only problem was, he was never going to get it finished in time. Peter glanced over his shoulder and began to work more quickly, weaving the strands more loosely.

  “Clint? Do me a favor,” said Peter, holding his ground as the terror birds galloped closer and closer. “Don’t tell anyone I ran from a giant chicken?”

  “Sorry, man. I already posted the picture on Facebook.”

  At the last minute, Peter sprang up into the closest tree, leaving the birds to race straight into the net. “Hey,” Clint said, “I think you did it.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “I think I—oh, crap.” One bird tore a hole in the net with its sharp beak and lunged at Peter. Clint shot one more arrow; this time, he got a clean shot through the bird’s brain. It shrieked and fell to the ground.

  Clint looked around. Tony was blasting down to earth while Steve wiped clotted feathers off his shield. “I think that was the last one.”

  “You know,” said Peter as they caught their breath, “I kind of imagined being part of a super-powered team meant less running for your life. And it’s not as though we got attacked by a T-rex, either.”

  “I guess that’s what you get when you put together a team of loners.” As he spoke, Clint scanned the field. He spotted Luke crouching down beside a badly injured terror bird, snapping its neck to put it out of its misery. There was no sign of Jessica, however, and Clint began doing a more systematic search, mentally breaking the field into a grid.

  Nothing. She was gone.

  “We got to get out of here,” said Luke as Clint approached. “All that screaming is like putting out a big fat ‘dinner is served’ sign for every predator in earshot.”

  “Jessica’s missing,” said Clint, his eyes moving over the field again, searching for any sign of red. Thank God she was wearing her bright Spider-Woman costume instead of the dark S.H.I.E.L.D. jumpsuit. “Do you think another bird got her?”

  “I didn’t see any more birds,” said Luke. “And they’re kind of hard to miss.”

  “I’ll do a flyover of the entire area,” said Tony, beginning to rise up off the ground.

  Just then, there was a distinctively feminine shriek of pain from the dense tropical undergrowth behind them. Clint pulled a small survival knife out of its sheath and hacked at the thick vegetation, his jaw set as he prepared himself for the worst.

  What he saw was so unexpected, he burst out laughing. Instead of being attacked by a terror bird, Jessica was straddling the Black Widow.

  Jess’s black hair and red-and-yellow costume formed a perfect contrast with the smaller woman’s black body armor and auburn hair. Jessica bore down on Natasha’s arm, pressing Natasha’s own sharply bladed throwing star against her throat. Unfazed by this, Natasha was biting off a bunch of angry-sounding Russian, and Clint didn’t need a Ph.D. in Slavic languages to guess what the last word meant.

  “Well, how was I to know you were trying not to hurt me?” Jessica did not release the other woman’s arm. “You snuck up behind me and held a blade against my throat!”

  “I didn’t recognize you with the mask and costume,” said Natasha, a hint of accent coming through. “I thought you might be one of Lykos’s mutate gang.”

  “Jessica, I think you can let her
up now,” said Steve.

  Tony gave the other man a sour look. “Spoilsport.”

  Jessica didn’t budge. “Not until someone else secures her. She tried to slit my throat.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” said Steve, his hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “Let her go.” He tugged, and Jessica reluctantly rolled off the Widow. “So you took her down? Nice work.”

  Clint looked at his partner, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking behind the red mask covering her eyes. “Thanks, but to be honest, I think her fighting skills have been exaggerated.”

  Natasha’s green eyes narrowed. “And yours have been understated. I was told you didn’t have any powers.”

  “I don’t,” said Jessica, brushing at the grass stains on her knees. “So stop looking for excuses.”

  Natasha raised her eyebrows, patently disbelieving. “Oh, really? You’re saying you overpowered me without using any special abilities?”

  Jessica shrugged. “Sorry, honey. Sometimes the truth hurts.”

  Clint, who was watching Natasha, grabbed her a moment before she would have attacked. The redhead struggled against his grip. “Durak! Can’t you tell she’s lying? You fought me yourself, remember. Is she really better at hand-to-hand combat than you are?”

  Clint didn’t say anything, but registered the fact that Jessica had managed to subdue Natasha much more quickly than he had, back on the Helicarrier. Maybe Jess was just a better fighter than he had realized; maybe she’d had the advantage of surprise. Still, he wouldn’t have thought Jessica could defeat him without her powers—and not, he hoped, just because he was a macho jerk.

  “Let her go,” said Jessica. “She wants another round? Fine by me.”

  “Forget it,” said Steve, his voice pitched halfway between camaraderie and command. “We’ve got a lot of work to do here, and this is not exactly a day in the park.” He gestured around them at the clusters of tall umbrella pines and hickory and oak trees, which could have hidden a herd of angry mammoths in their dark shadows. “We’re liable to get eaten by something while you two go at each other.”

  “If you let her go, she’s going to run back to Lykos and tell him where we are,” said Jessica.

  “I’m not with Lykos. I came here tracking Lykos.” Natasha looked over her shoulder at Clint. “You can let go of me now.”

  Clint released Natasha’s arms. “So we’re supposed to believe you happened to notice Lykos leaving the Raft and just decided to go after him?”

  Natasha moved so her back was to a tree and she could see all the other members of the group. “Most of the inmates were just breaking and running. Lykos moved deliberately, like he had a plan. I saw him down by the dock, meeting up with the Albino witch-woman and the baboon man and a few of the others, and it seemed to me that they didn’t all just happen to bump into each other there.”

  There were murmurs as the others took this in.

  “So why did you even care?” Jessica moved so Natasha had to turn her head to see her. “I would have thought you only cared for paying gigs.”

  “I’m not pretending to be altruistic,” said Natasha. “But I’m a longview investor. And as you know, I’m considering the advantages of working with your side.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Clint. “And how exactly did you make it to the Savage Land without Lykos’s assistance? It’s not as if you could just hop on a commercial flight.” Clint leaned against another tree and folded his arms across his chest, more interested in reading the Widow’s expression than in hearing her response.

  “How did I get on the Helicarrier? I have my ways,” said Natasha, folding her throwing star up and replacing it in her utility belt. “Maybe I could teach you a few tricks.”

  “I say we work together,” said Tony, raising his faceplate and walking over to Natasha’s side. “In fact, I’d be willing to work very, very closely with—what did you say your name was?”

  “Natasha Romanova,” said Clint, “and she’s working with me.” Jessica gave him a look that said she thought he’d lost his mind, but Clint didn’t care. Let them all think the Black Widow had ensnared him. He had his own reasons for sticking close to the Russian spy.

  If she was working for Lykos, it was his responsibility to make sure she didn’t deliver them into the doctor’s hands. He had disobeyed Hill’s orders to kill the Widow rather than permit her to escape; if it looked like he’d made a mistake in letting Natasha live, Clint knew he had to correct that mistake. And soon.

  CLINT kept one eye on Natasha as he passed around chunks of roasted terror bird. He figured the leaping flames would keep the local wildlife from attacking, but there was no question the aroma of roasting fowl was attracting a bit of attention. As the shadows lengthened, there were shrill cries and hoots from the tree canopy, and the rustling of some arborial creature moving through the leafy branches overhead. Because it was late November in the Southern hemisphere, the sun was just beginning to set even though it was only an hour before midnight. There would only be a few hours of darkness before it rose again, which meant none of them would be getting much sleep.

  Which was probably for the best, considering they were in a jungle surrounded by dinosaurs, mutated beast people, and various hostile tribes. On the other hand, lack of sleep wouldn’t help the team’s mood, which was already a bit low. After the terror birds had been dispatched, they had wasted half a day tracking down false readings from Tony’s mutant-energy detector, and now they were all exhausted and cranky.

  Well, at least they weren’t going hungry. “Anyone want more terror bird?”

  “Not after watching you rip its head off,” said Peter. “I’m fine with the freeze-dried beef stew, thanks.”

  “I guess I’ll have another piece,” said Luke, walking up to the spit where the enormous fowl crackled with savory juices. A few feathers still clung to the wings and legs; every once in a while, someone would spit out a feather that had floated back on the tropical breeze.

  “So, Tony, you got any idea why that gizmo of yours didn’t work?” Luke gestured with his giant drumstick. “’Cause I do not want to spend any more time running around in circles.”

  “There’s only one possible explanation.” Tony looked up, a tiny screwdriver in his hands and one of his gauntlets on his lap. A panel was open, revealing some of the complicated circuitry inside. “Lykos must be inside some sort of structure containing large amounts of Vibranium. That’s the only thing that could throw the sensors off.”

  “Okay, so that should narrow it down,” said Luke, taking another bite. “How many Vibranium buildings does this place have?”

  “A few, actually,” said Steve. “The Savage Land is one of the biggest sources of naturally occurring Vibranium, so it’s been used to build some of the science stations.”

  “I saw something on the map,” said Jessica, standing up and stretching. “The ruins of a citadel.”

  “It’s worth checking out. And then there’s the S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost.” Clint was very aware of Natasha, sitting quietly by his side and taking all this in.

  A snapped twig made everyone jump. Luke threw down his drumstick and got to his feet. “Okay, what was that?”

  “That was me,” said Peter, holding up his hands. “You going to shoot anyone who goes to the bathroom?”

  “Sorry, I’m used to urban jungles.” Luke picked his drumstick off the ground, and then threw it into the fire. “Put me in a neighborhood so bad even the rats are scared to come out at night, I’m fine. But I didn’t spend my summers hiking and camping.”

  “It’s not exactly my comfort zone, either,” said Peter, groaning a little as he sat back down on the ground. “Swinging through trees instead of buildings uses a different set of muscles.”

  “What a bunch of whiners,” said Tony. “Maybe we should call our team the Urban Avengers, and explain that we just can’t take on any jobs outside a major metropolitan area.” He had peeled off his armor and was wearing a white undershirt that showed the sha
pe of the mini-reactor embedded in the center of his chest. “I’m so sorry the bad guys decamped into a swamp,” he continued in a breathy falsetto, “but dealing with wildlife just isn’t in my contract.”

  “You think I’m scared of wildlife?” Luke’s voice was so low it sounded like a growl. “Last month I had to deal with six Cane Corsos, bio-engineered with Adamantium bones and teeth and no inhibitions against attacking humans.” Luke pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Peter might be a pampered city slicker, but I deal with wildlife all the time.” He glanced sideways at Peter, the only clue that he was playing with him.

  “Yeah, anyone can be tough when they don’t get so much as a scratch.” Peter unzipped the neck of his costume and pulled it down enough to reveal the livid bruises on his ribs. “And my wrist is broken.”

  Jessica winced a little. “Oh, Peter, ouch.”

  “Spare me your sob stories.” Tony pulled up his jeans leg. “Take a look at that.”

  Luke, collecting plates, cast an amused glance over his shoulder. “At what? Your skinny white chicken legs?”

  “No, my skinny pink chicken leg, where a crazy volcano lady tried to melt off my flesh. It goes all the way up to my thighs. Let me tell you, a little cut or bump does not compare to a third-degree burn close to the family jewels.”

  Jessica handed Luke her plate. “Guess you weren’t wearing your armor, huh?”

  Tony shrugged. “What can I say? She was a very attractive crazy volcano lady.”

  “Well, if we’re playing ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…’” Jessica pulled back her long black hair. “See this?” She pointed to a thin, almost unnoticeable scar near her hairline. “That’s where Dr. Octopus tried to scalp me.”

  “No kidding,” said Steve, pulling back his hair. “I’ve got one of those, too, from Arnim Zola. He was trying to extract my brain so he could use my body for his own devices.”

  “Who could blame him,” murmured Jessica, and Steve looked so startled that Clint nearly fell over laughing. “What scars have you got, Hawkeye?”