Logs:Vignette: Out of Time

Vignette: Out of Time
Dramatis Personae Steve	World War II, Present Day "Goddammit, Steve, why are you like this?"
Location North Atlantic, Times Square
The Valkyrie - Somewhere over the North Atlantic - March 23rd, 1945 Steve shakes his head, blond hair a tousled mess, blood and sweat dripping down into the labyrinthine controls of the mechanism embedded in the deck of the plane. "It's no good. The course is locked in. If I just smash this 'autopilot' --" His uniform is so torn and filthy and burned from recent struggle that it hardly even looks blue anymore. "Absolutely not!" Howard Stark's voice crackles over the radio. "You said the manual controls were shot. If you destroy the autopilot -- no, there's got to be another way." "There's not enough time." He sits back on his heels, glancing at the display screen showing distance to target. "This thing’s moving too fast and it's heading for New York." "Steve," There's a warning note in this, and one of well-concealed panic. "Right now I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die." "Steve..." Frustration, affection, and fear, all in that one spoken word. "I gotta put her in the water," Steve says gently. "Steve!" Furious, heartbroken. He closes his eyes for a moment. "This is my choice, Howard." It's a few second before a reply comes. "Goddammit, Steve, why are you like this?" Even through the static, Howard's voice is rough with emotion. "You don't actually want me to answer that, do you?" Steve straightens up, picks up the shield leaning against the console beside him, and drives its edge into the autopilot mechanism. As the machine sparks and powers down, the horizon begins to rise in the wide viewport in front of him. "Howard?" "I'm here." "I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance." "Alright. A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club." The Valkyrie accelerates as gravity pulls it down. A few alert lights are blinking amidst the ruin of the control column. Steve hauls himself back into the pilot's seat. "You got it." "You know, they'll kick us both out of the service." "You're not even /in/ the service. But the Resistance will be happy to have us full-time, anyway." He smiles faintly. "You know, I still don't know how to dance." There's a strained chuckle. "I'll show you how. Just be there." The ocean fills the entire view screen now. Steve's hands tighten on the armrests. "We'll have the band play something slow. I'd hate to step on your --" Icy water rushes up and shatters the glass, and everything goes black. ***** Fragments of half-awareness, like a fever dream. Then nothing again. ***** Consciousness, more gradual this time. With it comes pain, sometimes dull and sometimes searing, punctuated by spells of nothing. Eventually other sensations, too, although pain remains the strongest. His world becomes these endless staccato snapshots. Each time he wakes, everything grows just a little clearer in the bright intensity of agony. Noises resolve into voices and, finally, words. "...conscious again? Up the dosage." American. Mid-western? "That's already enough to knock out a rhino." That one might be a New Englander...trying to sound mid-western. "To bad he's not a rhino. Up the dosage." The next time he's aware, he gets his breathing under control -- slow and even. It takes them longer to realize he's awake. He catches occasional snatches of conversation, often laced with impenetrable medical jargon, but he does not have the strength to reply, much less move. Until the day he does. ***** It feels different, somehow -- less like coming out of a drugged haze and more like just waking from an overlong nap, sleep clinging stubbornly to his thoughts. There's a voice, speaking fast and with a sharp New York accent. He focuses, tries to make sense of the words even as he struggles to open his eyes. "...the crowd well knows that with one swing of his bat, this fellow’s capable of making it a brand-new game again. Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field. The Phillies have managed to tie up at 4-4, but the Dodgers have three men on." He slowly levers himself up, muscles blazing with pain, head still muzzy but clearing fast. It's a cozy room, white and pastel green, very simply furnished but absolutely spotless. Something familiar about that game on the radio... "Pete leans in. Here’s the pitch. Swung on. A line to the right. And it gets past Rizzo." The crowd roars in the background. Steve turns toward the radio, brows furrowing, breath coming faster as the familiarity of the game clicks into place. A rush of adrenaline sharpens his sluggish senses and dulls the burning agony in his muscles. "Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third. Durocher’s going to wave him in. Here comes the relay, but they won’t get him!" Footfalls outside the door, which opens to admit a young woman in SRS uniform. "Good morning," she says, closing the door behind herself while still obscuring the view out with her body. She glances at her watch as she steps toward him, though maintaining a comfortable distance. "Or should I say afternoon?" There's something off -- everything from her clothing to her hair to her accent is just slightly...off. "Where am I?" he asks. His voice is hoarse and grates terribly in his throat, but he barely registers the pain. The crowd is going wild over the broadcast. "You're in a recovery room in New York City," she replies, paying the grand slam absolutely no mind. The announcer's excitement more than makes up for her lack. "The Dodgers take the lead, 8-4. Oh-ho, Dodgers! Everyone is on their feet. What a game we have here today, folks. What a game indeed!" Steve's eyes dart to the radio, then return to the woman. "Where am I, /really/?" He gathers himself as subtly as he can manage. Oddly but fortuitously, he's already wearing boots. She smiles, all easy openness. "I'm afraid I don't understand." "The game," he say slowly, "it's from May, 1941. I know, 'cause I was there." Heedless of his body's vehement objection, he rises from the bed. "Now, I'm gonna ask you again. Where am I?" Her smile has faded, and there is fear in her eyes, though she stands firm before him. She's palming something -- too small to be a knife or pistol. "Captain Rogers..." "Who are you?" Steve demands, starting forward. The door opens again, this time for two armed men in black from ballcaps to combat boots. They are looking to the woman, but Steve doesn't wait. He body-checks both of them into the doorway they haven't yet cleared. The doorframe crumples with disturbing ease, the wall to either side tearing open like so much cheap particle board. The two men crash to the floor on their backs, stunned, while Steve lands on his feet between them, staggering a few steps farther. He finds himself in a cavernous space, like a warehouse containing just the the single room he had just quite literally broken out of. There's a wide double door and he makes for it. Behind him, the woman is calling out, "Captain Rogers, wait!" Then, when he pays her no need, "All agents, code 13! I repeat. All agents, code 13!" He stumbles, vision going dark from pain, but pushes on, out the doors, into a hallway. One long curving wall of the corridor is glass -- /all/ glass, looking out on a cityscape at once familiar and alien. The startled passers-by in the hallway are all dressed in oddly severe black suits, as though attending a state funeral. They converge on him, expressions somewhere between awe and alarm. He shoves them aside and runs. He turns a corner, the next hallway looks exactly the same. There are more people ('agents'?) trying to intercept him, but though several are visibly armed, no one draws so much as a baton on him. He doesn't stop to marvel. There's a sign at the end of the hall, backlit in red, that reads 'EXIT', and he follows the arrow on them to the next sign, and the next, until abruptly he's out in the daylight. The streets are wet with recent rain, smooth and black and glistening. The damp makes an otherwise mild winter day unpleasant despite the watery sunshine breaking through clouds. The air smells like a chemistry lab that someone has dosed in gasoline and torched briefly before putting it out. The crowds on the sidewalks are dressed in a dizzying array of unfamiliar styles, many still needlessly holding umbrellas. Cars trundle down the street -- strange, sleek cars in bright colors, and they blare their horns but do not stop as he stumbles across the street. Agents pour out of the building he just vacated, and he breaks into a run once more. Buildings tower around him, all glass and steel except for the giant television screens on their sides, playing indecipherable videos in unreal sharpness and color. He knows this place, somehow, he's sure of it. Large black cars seem to materialize out of the near-gridlocked traffic, moving just slow enough to avoid the parting crowds of people. As Steve spins around to look for an escape, his eyes lock on a distinctive arrangement of buildings at the wider end of the the trapezoidal plaza. Broadway. 47th Street. 7th Avenue. Times Square. This is Times Square, somehow. "At ease, Soldier!" calls a voice from behind him. Steve turns. The source of the voice is a middle-aged black man in a long black duster. He's bald but sports a neat van dyke beard, and wears a black patch over his left eye. "Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there." He doesn't sound particularly sorry. "We thought it best to break it to you slowly. Steve's frown deepens again. "Break what?" "You've been asleep, Cap. For over seventy years." His one eye focuses on Steve, appraising his reaction. "You gonna be okay?" "Yeah." Steve casts around, as if looking for something -- anything -- that makes sense. "Yeah, I just...I had a date."