Ethan Hunt was stuck.
Couldn't go up. Couldn't go down.
He set his jaw, gripped the rope with both hands, leveled his body parallel to the ground, and sprinted sideways along the 121st-floor exterior. He ran out as far as the rope allowed, then launched himself back—a pendulum in motion—and as he arced back toward the 119th floor and hit the closest point of the swing, he let go.
His calculations were slightly off.
Instead of swinging cleanly through the window, he slammed into the gap between the 119th and 120th floors. A heavy, muffled impact. His body lost control, and gravity took him.
Bella had already started moving to intervene when an arm shot from the 119th floor window—impossibly fast—and locked onto Ethan Hunt's left leg.
The downward momentum was too much. The arm's owner was yanked partially out into open air. A partner behind him grabbed his legs just in time to keep both of them from going over.
"Grab my hand—now!" Half the man's body hung outside the building as he dragged Ethan Hunt back inch by inch.
"Hold on—hold on—!" The man was drenched in sweat, veins standing out on his forehead. His gaze, by sheer coincidence, found the woman watching from the 95th floor.
There were twenty-four stories between them—far enough to be a real distance. But his eyesight was exceptional.
And Bella's was more exceptional still.
The face looking back at her, carved with lines, was Clint Barton's. ∑(O_O;)!
Bella: (￢_￢)?
A flicker of confusion crossed her mind. Who is this guy? Why is he looking at me like that? Did I do something to him? She had absolutely no memory of this particular man.
What Bella didn't know was that Clint Barton recognized those eyes all too well. Those eyes had appeared in his dreams more times than he could count—nightmares, at the start. Better now, but still never quite peaceful.
After Nick Fury had recruited Clint Barton, he hadn't sent him directly to S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead, he'd had him spend time at the CIA first—learning the full craft of intelligence work—with the understanding that new assignments would follow.
Clint had been with the CIA for over a year. Two days ago, he'd been deployed alongside Ethan Hunt for this mission.
His Eagle Vision and the analytical edge it gave him let him read the situation instantly—Ethan wouldn't be able to swing cleanly through the window—and he'd repositioned himself to catch him in advance.
Everything would have been fine.
Except that meeting Bella's gaze through that window unlocked something in him that had been carefully sealed away.
The praise of his childhood. The wild, uncontrollable fury of his youth—fury he still couldn't entirely forget. And then the calm and steadiness that had replaced it.
I'm different from who I used to be.
Different, yes—but still himself. The past still left its marks. Usually his mental fortitude was strong enough to push them back down. In this moment, all it took was a fraction of a second of distraction—his grip on Ethan Hunt's leg slipping just barely open—
Whoosh.
Clint's fingers parted. Ethan Hunt plummeted again.
Bella was watching the whole spectacle with focused attention when the main attraction suddenly came level with her window. Pure reflex: she reached out and grabbed him by the ankle.
She stood there for a moment afterward, mildly stunned by her own reaction. You people are incredibly inconsiderate to bystanders, you know that?
What was she supposed to do now? Throw him back up? Throw him down?
Neither was really an option. She simply held on while Gavin Banks helped with the rest, and together they hauled Ethan Hunt in through the window.
Ethan had courage in abundance—nobody could take that from him. But being dropped and caught at 600 meters (1,969 ft) above the ground twice in a row had completely drained the color from his face. He was pale, clammy, breathing so shallowly that he looked half-dead.
"Ethan? Ethan?!" His teammates' voices crackled urgently through his earpiece—and the sound pulled him back.
He looked at Bella, then at Gavin Banks.
"Uh... thanks. We were... we were actually playing a... a skydiving game. Totally safe, all under control. Just a game..."
On pure reflex, he flashed a reasonably handsome smile, waved a hand, and walked toward the door.
The moment he stepped into the corridor and glanced at the floor number and room placard, his eyes sharpened.
95th floor. Twenty-four stories below where he'd been caught. One hand had grabbed him mid-fall. And pulled him through the window as if it were nothing. Ordinary residents?
Too many questions. Not the time to pursue them—he had a mission. He headed back upstairs at a brisk pace.
"Mentor, you've been made," Gavin said quietly once the door closed.
Bella looked genuinely wronged. "It was pure instinct. How was I supposed to know his partner would suddenly let go?"
Neither of them gave Ethan Hunt a second thought. They went straight back to discussing the Brotherhood's funding problem.
Even with growing manpower, a decent real estate portfolio, and connections in various sectors, building a global hotel chain from scratch required far more capital than Bella had originally projected. The Brotherhood needed money. A lot of it.
The closest treasure trove she could think of was the Templar cache—the one her old friend 006 had always been so fixated on. She was well aware of what he'd been quietly working toward. A casual mind-read revealed more than enough—not that she exercised that ability lightly. She held herself to a high standard. But she would never let the people around her spiral beyond her awareness.
She hadn't paid it much attention before. Now she did.
The Brotherhood robbing the Templar Order's treasure? Was there anything more righteous? No one could fault them for it.
There'd be plenty of gold and silver, no question. Converting it to usable cash was the complicated part.
Cash would be so much simpler.
If all that gold and silver could just become cash...
She was still daydreaming when—bang bang bang—gunshots cracked from above. Bella instinctively moved back to the window.
Several shots. Then a blonde woman was kicked out of the 119th floor window, screaming as she fell.
What the—
Another one?
Bella stared, utterly done.
One rescue was the same effort as two. She reached out again and caught her.
The blonde had considerably weaker nerves than Ethan Hunt. Her eyes rolled back and she passed out before she'd even stopped falling.
A flash of irritation shot through Bella. Rescue a few more people at this rate, and she was going to be fully exposed. But the impulse to act had always been faster than the thought.
She leaned out the window and looked up—and met Clint Barton's gaze for the second time.
"Get down here and come collect her," she called up to him. Her tone was exactly like a union rep distributing holiday gift packages.