Chapter 2: Bed and Breakfast, Actually

Rogers moved first. His shield was up, the one good edge of it angled toward Jarrin and Jazz as if the shield itself could judge them. Natasha was already lateral, sliding between the two of them with a blade that materialized from nowhere, a single throw that caught Jazz by the throat and pinned her against the nearest wall. The knife was at her jugular. Jazz didn't flinch.

"Talk." Natasha's voice was even. She held the blade like she'd been holding it since before the word left her mouth.

Clint had his bow half-put back together already, fumbling with a carbon fiber spar and a length of fishing line like this was a Tuesday afternoon. Tony's repulsor gauntlet had gone into some kind of diagnostic mode, red targeting lines sweeping back and forth across the hallway, the hum of it making Jazz's teeth ache.

Jarrin stepped forward. He opened his mouth, and Jazz could practically hear the gears grinding as he weighed every possible deflection his entire repertoire could offer.

"Whoa, whoa, easy." He raised both hands, the universal gesture for anything that started with 'please don't.' "We're on your side. Obviously. I mean, not obviously, we don't know who you are, but clearly we're not the bad guys right now because we just, you know, didn't die in an explosion."

Natasha pressed the blade a quarter inch deeper. A thin red line appeared on Jazz's skin. Jazz smiled at her.

"You have a nice knife," Jazz said. "Is that Karama? I saw one of those in a flea market in Marrakech. Expensive for what it is, but decent balance."

Natasha's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"Bed and Breakfast," Jarrin said.

"No." Natasha leaned in. "Right now, right here. I am going to press this blade an inch further into your throat, and then I'm going to ask again, and you are going to give me something more than a phrase that makes no sense."

"Jazz," Jarrin said. "I think she's serious."

She pressed deeper. Jazz exhaled, slow and steady, and then reached down with her left hand. Her fingers brushed the inside of her thigh-high boot and came away with a playing card. She dropped it. It hit the floor exactly beneath Natasha's feet.

Jazz stepped into empty air. The card's surface shimmered like a window, and she stepped through it as if walking through a curtain. When the air closed again, Natasha was standing in an empty spot of hallway, still holding her knife at her throat, still pinned against the wall, with Jazz gone and Jarrin still standing in front of her.

Jarrin looked at Natasha. Natasha looked at Jarrin.

"Where'd she go?"

"Card," Jarrin said. "Long story."

Tony was already moving toward them, repulsor charging up. "I was scanning that portal when she opened it, and I have never seen anything like that in my life. Is it teleportation? Spatial displacement? A portal to another dimension? Give me numbers."

"Tony, hold--" Rogers started.

"Wait." Tony cut him off, looking past Jarrin at the hallway behind them. "There. Movement. At the far end."

Someone was running. Fast, purposeful, the sound of heavy boots on concrete bouncing off the corridor walls. Kazir. He was heading deeper into the facility, past the junction where the main hallway split into three branches, and behind him he raised both hands.

The ceiling buckled. The floor buckled. A whole section of corridor behind them collapsed inward with a sound like a building inhaling, concrete and steel folding into each other like origami. The dust cloud rolled toward them in a wave that hit Jarrin in the face and made Tony cough into his suit.

When it cleared, the corridor was gone. A wall of rubble, twisted rebar and pulverized concrete, sealed off whatever was on the other side. Kazir was behind it.

"He cut us off," Clint said. "We don't know where he went."

Tony was already on his suit's HUD, scanning the rubble, looking for gaps or patterns. "The explosion had a signature I haven't seen before. Not chemical. Not conventional. It's like the concrete itself turned unstable, became the explosive. Whatever that man can do, he doesn't need to light a fuse."

Rogers was already planning. "Barton, can you breach?"

"Give me ten minutes," Clint said. "I can rig something."

"Ten minutes is too long." Natasha pulled her knife back and turned to face Jarrin again. "You. Explain. Now."

Jarrin held up his hands. "Alright, I hear you. Look, we have no idea who you people are either, which I know is not a comforting position for anyone. But I can tell you this much: that man, the one who just blew up the hallway, he has a power that turns things into explosives. Everything he touches, he can detonate. The floor, a wall, a--"

"Stop." Natasha grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him down to her level. "If you're lying to me right now, I'll find out. I always find out."

She let go. Jarrin straightened his shirt.

"I'm telling you what I know," he said. "Take it or leave it. Honestly, you seem like a professional. I respect that. But I'm just a guy who got lost and ended up here, and I don't have much more to give you."

Tony's voice came from the far end of the hallway. "I've got a route. Server room, two doors past the junction. He went that way."

Jazz's voice, calm and carrying, came from somewhere to Jarrin's left. He turned. She was leaning against the wall near the junction, arms folded, looking like she'd never been pinned by a knife in her life. Which, honestly, she hadn't. Natasha had been standing right there, and Jazz hadn't even looked worried.

"Jarrin," Jazz said. "Come here. I found something you should see."

Jarrin looked at Rogers, then at Natasha, then at Tony, who was pointing toward a hallway branching off to their left. "Server room. Apparently."

"Wait," Rogers said.

Jazz was already walking. Jarrin followed. They turned the corner into the junction, and Jazz pointed to a door marked SERVER ROOM ACCESS, PROTECTIVE SERVICES. Behind it, the lights were on.

Jazz pushed the door open. The room inside was exactly what a server room looked like: rows of racks, blinking lights, air conditioning pumping cold air. And Tony Stark was standing in the middle of the room with his faceplate down, scanning everything.

"Nice," he said. "I picked the lock on the way in. You should try that sometime. Way more impressive than standing in hallways talking nonsense."

"I do try," Jarrin said. "I'm more of a door that opens itself kind of guy."

Jazz ignored him. She crossed her arms and looked at Tony. "That man, the one with the explosions, he's a Stand user. He has a Stand called Bomb Voyage. Whatever it is, it can turn any physical object into an explosive. Not just nearby objects. Not just objects he touches. Any object in his vicinity. The floor, walls, anything."

Tony turned his head toward her. "Define Stand user."

"Don't," Jazz said. "That's not important right now. What's important is that if he reaches the main fuel storage tank, which I'd guess is either in this wing or the wing behind the junction, he can turn the entire storage facility into a bomb that levels most of Manhattan. We need to get to that tank before he does."

Tony pulled his faceplate up. His eyes were assessing her, calculating, trying to decide whether she was a threat or an asset or both. "Where's your partner?"

"Probably somewhere else getting himself into trouble," Jazz said. "Which, honestly, is where he usually is."

Tony looked at Jazz for another few seconds. Then he looked at the server racks behind her. "The facility's fuel storage is two levels below, Sector 4. I can get us there from here if you give me the layout."

"How do you know where it is?"

"Because I designed half the systems in this facility before they put me in a room full of unconscious bodies. You want to play trust games, save them for later. Right now, that fuel tank is probably the biggest bomb on the planet, and whoever's building it into one is walking toward it right now."

Jazz nodded. "Then we move."

They left the server room together, Tony ahead, Jazz behind him, and Jarrin bringing up the rear. The hallway they entered was wider, longer, and emptier. Emergency lights had kicked on, casting everything in a red glow that made the walls look like they were breathing.

Tony stopped at a junction and pointed left. "This corridor leads to Sector 4. There's a stairwell at the end, or an elevator. I'm guessing he took the stairs."

"Of course he did," Jazz said.

Tony pushed through a door and descended into the stairwell. Jazz and Jarrin followed.

They made it down three flights before Jarrin's feet touched something soft. He looked down. Blood. The stairwell floor was damp, and the smell of it made his stomach turn. Clint was sitting against the wall near the landing, one hand pressed to his side, the other holding his makeshift bow in a way that suggested the bow was more decorative than functional at this point.

"Hold it right there," Clint said. His voice was tight with pain and hostility. "Put your hands where I can see them."

Jarrin raised his hands. "No need for the dramatics, man. We're on your side. Obviously. Well, obviously not obviously. We're the strangers. Obviously."

"You're the ones who showed up right after everything went wrong." Clint's eyes were narrowed, scanning Jarrin from head to toe. "And you didn't even blink when that thing exploded."

"Fair point. I'm not the most reliable observer when things get explosive."

Clint stood up. Slowly, carefully, with his hand still pressed to his side. He was a big man, even sitting down, and standing made him feel bigger. "Walk me through what happened."

"I'm going to, but first, I should probably mention that I have a ghost next to me that can steal the properties of objects. So if I do something weird, that's the reason."

Clint stared at him. "What."

"Long story. The short version is that there's a guy behind us who can turn anything into a bomb. The floor, walls, furniture, pipes, whatever. I saw it happen. I need to get past you to stop him."

"You're telling me you're going to walk into a facility full of explosive traps, alone, and stop a man who can turn the ground into a bomb?"

"Well, not alone. I have my wife. She's got some card trick. Very useful. Also, I might have a Stand. I've been saying ghost, but Stand is more accurate. There's a distinction, honestly, but I digress."

Clint didn't move. He stood in the stairwell landing, pressed against the wall, and stared at Jarrin like he was trying to decide whether the man in front of him was insane or useful.

A pipe burst somewhere below them. Pressurized gas hissed out in a sharp whistle, filling the stairwell with the smell of propane. The sound of it was loud enough to hear even over Jarrin's heartbeat.

Clint looked up. "Gas."

"Yeah," Jarrin said. "I see it."

Jarrin's body moved before his brain finished processing the threat. Jolly Roger materialized beside him, the white pirate figure with red eyes and a blue bandana, and a bubble formed at the tip of its extended finger. The bubble floated toward the ruptured pipe.

The pipe was glowing faintly, the metal around the rupture pulsing with that same orange light that had been in Kazir's explosions. The gas coming out of it was ignitable. One spark and this stairwell became a tunnel oven.

The bubble touched the pipe. It expanded, swallowing the ruptured section of pipe, and then popped with a sound like a cork pulling itself. The orange glow disappeared. The pipe was still ruptured, the gas was still leaking, but the gas was just gas now, not something that could catch fire.

Jarrin exhaled. Clint was still staring at him.

"Did you just--" Clint started.

"Stole the flammability," Jarrin said. "From the gas. From the pipe. From whatever Kazir touched. It doesn't burn anymore. The concept of being flammable is gone, at least from that object, for however long it lasts."

Clint pressed his hand harder against his side. Blood was seeping through his fingers. "You can do that? To anything?"

"To anything he touched, yeah. If he made something flammable, I can take that. If he made something explosive, I can take that. The question is whether I can get to it before he detonates it."

"Stay here," Clint said. "I can cover the next flight. I've got--" He held up his makeshift bow. "Not much, but enough."

Jarrin didn't argue. They went up one more flight, and when they reached the landing, Jazz and Tony were waiting. Tony had clearly been listening. His expression had shifted from skeptical to something closer to fascinated.

"You took flammability out of an industrial gas leak," Tony said. "In a stairwell with no oxygen control, no suppression system. You just neutralized a mass casualty event."

"It was on my list," Jarrin said.

Jazz looked between them. "We're wasting time. Clint, you're bleeding. Do you need medical attention?"

"I'll live."

"How long?" Tony asked.

"Hours."

Tony's eyes dropped to Clint's hand, to the blood, and something behind his expression rearranged itself. He looked at Jazz. "She's got a portal ability. He's got a property-theft ability. The bomber has a detonation ability that turns any object into explosives. We're in a facility full of flammable materials, pressurized systems, and a man who can detonate all of them."

"Correct," Jazz said. "And he's heading for the fuel tank."

Tony pulled out a small device from his suit's chest. A sonar pulse pinged through the building's structure, and a schematic appeared on his retinal display. He looked at Jarrin. "The fuel storage is right here, three levels down. We go down there, we find him before he finishes charging the tank, and we stop him."

"Sounds like a plan," Jarrin said.

They descended.

Sector 4 was a wide, industrial space with vaulted ceilings and rows of storage tanks that stretched into the darkness beyond the emergency lights. The largest of them, marked with hazard symbols and capacity ratings that made Tony whistle low, dominated the center of the room. It was the size of a small building.

Kazir was standing in front of it.

Both of his hands were raised, palms facing the tank. The orange glow had been building for minutes, and now the tank itself was pulsing with it, the steel shell shimmering as if it were made of something softer than metal. The floor around Kazir's feet was cracked and glowing. The walls were cracked and glowing. The emergency lights flickered, their bulbs dimming as the orange energy drained their power.

He turned his head toward them. No surprise. Just cold satisfaction, the expression of a man watching his final move go exactly as planned.

The entire building shook.