Tony and Maverick led the way through the dark tunnels, the others close behind them, moving carefully through noisy puddles of water and trying not to make a sound every time a rat came scurrying past. There was a constant dripping sound echoing off the rough-hewn stone walls that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Maverick's contact had been very helpful in getting them to the catacombs, but that was apparently the extent of his helpfulness on this mission, since he knew very little about the catacombs themselves.
"Geeze, there's like a million tunnels in this place," Dodge said before letting a small intestinal bomb escape.
"Seriously, how are we going to find the right way in this maze?" Daisy agreed.
"My contact said the ceremony would likely be held in the cathedral at the lowest point of the catacombs. That's all he knew, but it stands to reason that if we keep picking whichever way goes down, we will eventually find it," Maverick said in the darkness, as the halls had only the occasional and very sporadic light sconce, covered in thick and hazy glass that made the light so dim it barely made shadows when they went by.
The four continued on in the darkness for some time, remaining silent except for the occasional burp from Dodge, as they peered into each opening they found and tested the floor a few feet in to see if it leaned downwards. Every time they came to a staircase going down, they took it, and every time they found a staircase going up, they kept going, until after a while it felt as if they were going in circles.
Tony gritted his teeth and tried not to think about the time they were wasting just searching for a way through, when he didn't know what was happening to Lucy and Bali. Guilt had been building inside of him each hour that had passed, knowing that Bali had been taken because of his plan and knowing that they had not resolved what was between them, and then to have Lucy taken right out from under him…
"Tony?" Daisy's voice broke into his distracted thoughts, and he could feel her body walking beside him in the dark.
"What?"
"Do you think Bali is okay?" she asked.
Tony didn't reply for a while. He didn't want to admit to Daisy that he wasn't sure if Bali was even alive, let alone okay. The thought had occurred to him that the witches may have killed her already, but he had pushed it from his mind, unable to consider it now.
"I don't know, Daze," he replied.
"What happened between you two?" she asked after a moment of silent walking.
"Daze, do you have to keep pushing this?" he asked her wearily.
"Yes, I do! You guys were perfectly fine, then you do one job and suddenly you're not even talking anymore. I mean, come on, Tony, before all this you guys were practically dating," Daisy said this in a whisper, but Tony had a feeling that the others could hear her anyway.
"She messed up, okay. It wasn't the first time either. Once we started going on missions together, it became obvious she didn't take the job seriously. We had another routine call that she showed up to unprepared, and it turned out to be a fourth-dimensional shadow. A kid got killed, and it was… it was bad," Tony said.
"She wouldn't have been able to stop a fourth-dimensional shadow, Tony, you know that," Daisy said, walking faster to keep up with his stride.
"You don't know that for sure, Daisy. You don't know if we couldn't have gotten that kid out if we had worked together. I can't work with someone I can't trust, and I can't date someone I can't trust either. I almost died that night," he replied.
Daisy walked silently beside him and said nothing. Tony didn't slow his pace, but he took a deep breath and exhaled before saying to her, "Look, Bali and I have been friends for a long time now. We grew up on the streets together. She's still important to me, and it kills me to think she's been in the hands of those monsters, but what happened between us changed the way I feel about her. I love her, but I could never be in love with her." Tony paused and then said with a deep sigh, "But I should have given her another chance as a friend and a partner, and if… when we get her back, I will tell her that myself."
"Good," Daisy replied, and then punched his arm gently and said, "'Cause you're both my family, and it would have been mean to make me choose."
"Stop!" Maverick hissed behind them, making them stop suddenly and crouch low. There was the sound of voices echoing through the tunnels behind them, approaching at a steady pace. Maverick raced ahead of Tony and Daisy, keeping out of the puddles of water and close to the wall, using his hand to feel the wall until an opening appeared a few feet ahead.
"This way," he whispered urgently. They all followed him through the opening and found themselves in what looked like a damp storage room full of crates. Without talking, they hid behind the stacks of wooden boxes.
"And what are her powers, Nadius?" A rather patronizing female voice could now be heard, drawing closer to the room they were in.
"Ssshe isss wearing dampenersss. They are proving hard to remove. Once they are off, we will know for ssssure," the familiar voice of the head witch replied.
"Are you sure she's the one?" The footsteps stopped in the doorway now.
"Do you doubt me, Narcisssssa?" Nadius asked dangerously.
"Of course not, but how can she be the one when all those years ago the child you saw in the crystal ball died? You said so yourself," Narcissa replied with an icy tone.
"The girl sssurvived. I don't know how, but she did," Nadius admitted angrily.
"How convenient."
"Hardly! The delay hasss cost me. I have put up with her idiot brother all thessse yearss, keeping him closssse in the hopesss that she would eventually come looking for him if she were still alive. Once I realized ssshe ssstill lived, I ssearched, but by then she had vanissshed," Nadius replied as he turned from Narcissa and continued walking.
Narcissa replied, but they had moved too far away for Tony to hear them. Quietly, he crept from behind the crate and silently crept to the door and looked carefully around the corner.
"They turned right," Tony said to Maverick as he joined him at the door.
"Let's follow, but only stay close enough to know which way they turn. Stay close to the wall and avoid the puddles, and you…" Maverick said, turning to the redheaded man as he came out from behind a tall stack of crates and let out another anxious burp, "stop burping, or we will leave you in this storage room."
Dodge had just been about to burp again when Daisy punched her in the arm and said, "He means it."
"Fine," she replied angrily, "but you know holding gas in isn't good for your cologne health. If I end up with health issues because of this, I'm sending you the bill."
"Yeah, you go ahead and do that," Daisy replied as she followed Tony and Maverick into the hallway.
The witches were keeping a fast pace, and by the time they reached the end of the hallway and turned right, they could barely make out the low voices and shuffling sounds coming from the far end of the next hallway. They ran quietly, staying close to the wall, and were barely able to make out the sounds of the witches turning right again as they struggled not to get left behind and not to be heard. Finally, they heard the sound of a door opening and closing, and the voices of the witches stopped.
"They've gone through a door. I think they turned left first," Maverick said, picking up his pace, ignoring the splashing noises his feet made in the puddles. They sprinted down the hall and turned left, almost running into the wall of a very small room. It was barely big enough to hold all four of them, and Daisy had to step aside as Dodge came barreling in, almost slamming into the wall opposite the doorway.
"Whoa! Someone could have warned a fella!" Dodge said out of breath. "A man could break his neck running into a wall like that at full speed."
"You're not a man, Dodge," Daisy said dryly.
"If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it's probably a duck," Dodge replied smugly, making Daisy's narrow lips come together in a line so thin they almost seemed to disappear.
"You may look like Murphy, but you definitely don't sound like Murphy," Daisy replied.
Dodge stuck her tongue out at this, and Daisy reciprocated, making Tony raise his eyebrows questioningly at her.
"What?" she asked sheepishly.
"If I had known you couldn't work together, I never would have brought Dodge into this," he said.
"We can work together," Daisy replied a little defensively. "This is us working together."
"Yeah, we make a great team!" Dodge replied sarcastically.
"Then how about we focus? I don't know what we are going to find on the other side of that door, but I'm guessing it won't be Lucy and Bali just standing there waiting to walk out. I need you ready, Lucky," he said, using the nickname he reserved for very serious moments.
"I'm ready," Daisy replied seriously and then added, "Dodge is ready too, right, Dodge?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm ready. Me and Lucky here are ready to rumble, or wrestle, or cause a riot, or whatever you need us to do. Right, Lucky?" Dodge said, elbowing Daisy, who sighed and rolled her eyes instead of replying.
"How do we get through?" Tony asked Maverick, who had been examining the wall closely.
"It's just like the other wall. There must be a mechanism hidden somewhere that opens it," he replied, turning his attention to the floor.
Tony knelt down and began running his hands along the cold floor, looking for some variation, something out of place to indicate a button or mechanism. He found nothing and stood up in frustration just as Maverick cried out from his position on the floor near the door. They all rushed over and looked over his shoulder at an almost imperceptible indent in the shape of a circle that looked as if it had been chiseled into the wall.
"How does it open?" Daisy asked, perplexed. Maverick took out his augmentor and pressed it into the rounded spot. He pushed and turned the augmentor different ways, but nothing happened. Then he tried pressing his index finger into the hole and closed his eyes and concentrated, but again nothing happened, and he sat back on his heels and frowned.
"It must only open for the witches," he said finally, looking up at Tony, who had been pacing anxiously back and forth and then stopped at Maverick's words and put his hands on his hips.
"We don't have time for this," he said. "We need to get in there now, before the witches have a chance to do whatever insane thing they are planning."
"I know, Tony, but if I had to guess, I'd say this door was made to open with a key that only the witches have. It's not responding to my magic. I don't know what els…" Maverick had started to say when Dodge interrupted him.
"I have something we can try!" The redhead said with a mischievous gleam in his eye. He ran off back down the hallway they had come from and, after a few minutes, came back carrying a wooden crate in his hands. Gently, he set it down before them and pried off the lid with some effort.
"Saw this when we were hiding in the storage room. Should do the job!" He was clearly pleased with himself, and the others looked inside and saw that the crate was full of dynamite.