Melinda, Mack, and Bobbi have a run-in with the Clarivoyent while recovering a stolen item, and Carol, Daisy, Jemma, and Fitz explore an empty Pantheon base that holds a key secret.
Melinda finished texting Phil. It hadn’t even been a full day since they’d dropped Daisy off and she’d left on her own mission in the Midwest, but they were both already missing their daughter and each other.
“Hey, May,” Bobbi Morse called to Melinda from across the mission hub on Z-1. She pointed to a screen where three quinjets were flying east. “Come look at this. It looks they are leaving the Fort, but we haven’t used that airstrip in years.”
“That’s not on the schedule.” Melinda examined the radar and pulled up a list of flight exercises in their same air space. “Definitely Shield planes, but not on the list. I’ll call it in, just in case.”
The quinjets were flickering on and off radar. Like they were trying to avoid being seen, making them even more suspicious.
Melinda wasted no time. “This is Shield 616. We’ve got bogeys headed east. Appear to be from the Fort.”
“Shield 616, this is Flight Control. The Fort was decommissioned in 2004.”
“Well, they weren’t on the radar until that area so unless they materialized….”
There was a long silence. “Confirmed these are not Shield-sanctioned flights. Repeat, these are not friendlies.”
Melinda, Mack, and Bobbi have a run-in with the Clarivoyent while recovering a stolen item, and Carol, Daisy, Jemma, and Fitz explore an empty Pantheon base that holds a key secret.
Melinda finished texting Phil. It hadn’t even been a full day since they’d dropped Daisy off and she’d left on her own mission in the Midwest, but they were both already missing their daughter and each other.
“Hey, May,” Bobbi Morse called to Melinda from across the mission hub on Z-1. She pointed to a screen where three quinjets were flying east. “Come look at this. It looks they are leaving the Fort, but we haven’t used that airstrip in years.”
“That’s not on the schedule.” Melinda examined the radar and pulled up a list of flight exercises in their same air space. “Definitely Shield planes, but not on the list. I’ll call it in, just in case.”
The quinjets were flickering on and off radar. Like they were trying to avoid being seen, making them even more suspicious.
Melinda wasted no time. “This is Shield 616. We’ve got bogeys headed east. Appear to be from the Fort.”
“Shield 616, this is Flight Control. The Fort was decommissioned in 2004.”
“Well, they weren’t on the radar until that area so unless they materialized….”
There was a long silence. “Confirmed these are not Shield-sanctioned flights. Repeat, these are not friendlies.”
“How should we proceed?”
Another silence. “We’ll handle it, Agent May. Orders stand.”
Melinda and Bobbi exchanged a look of doubt, but Melinda responded. “Copy that. Proceeding on schedule.”
The schedule was for Z-1 to land cloaked, sneak in and out of a known Pantheon R&D facility, and return a package to the Hub for analysis.
They barely made it inside before all hell broke loose.
As they crossed a huge, creepy abandoned lab and approached the storage room where the mysterious package was supposed to be, Pantheon soldiers sprung out of hiding and began firing automatic weapons. Windows, beakers, and glass cabinet doors became extra shrapnel in the assault.
“How did they know we were coming?” Bobbi shouted at Mack as they took cover from both the bullets and the broken glass flying around the room. “WE didn’t even get orders until we were in the air.”
“One of many questions I’ll ask when we get back to HQ.” Mack took aim over a desk and took out three of the soldiers, likely mercenaries promised a hefty fortune for their troubles.
Melinda shot another two soldiers with deadly aim from around the corner of a filing cabinet. “Capture one of ‘em and we might be the ones bringing the answers with us.”
Bobbi carefully picked up a shard of mirror that had fallen beside her and used it to see around the desk. Combined with the reflections off mirrors and windows that hadn’t shattered yet, she had a pretty good view of the room, all things considered. “I’m counting three more in here.”
“And two more coming.” Melinda nodded to the dark hallway she could see out the lab’s open door.
“I’ll finish off these,” Mack volunteered. “You two give the pair out there a surprise.”
Bobbi and Melinda nodded and snuck into the shadows by the doorway. They switched to their icers. Capture, not kill, was easier when the target was unconscious. They waited until the two in the hallway had passed the doorway and snuck up behind them. With their combined combat skills, the simple mercs didn’t stand a chance. Both took icer bullets and were cuffed in minutes.
A distorted laugh that didn’t sound quite sane echoed through the hallway. “Excellent work, ladies. I’d expect nothing less.” Bobbi and Melinda looked around frantically, but the voice didn’t have any sign of a physical presence. They noted the speakers embedded in the wall and a poorly concealed camera in the corner of the ceiling.
“Show yourself and then we’ll talk about good work,” Melinda growled.
“You’ll meet me soon enough, Mama Bear,” the distorted voice laughed again.
“Yeah? How about you make it right now?” Bobbi called. “Or are you so scared of two women that you’d hide behind a dozen hired guns?”
“Oh, it’s not me who’s afraid, Agent Morse. But then, you haven’t checked in with your ex lately have you? It’s a shame. His little stunt in Havana will have … repercussions.” There was silence for a moment. “For you, I mean. My plans remain unchanged.”
Mack appeared in the hallway now, sweating and catching his breath, but not bleeding, which was a reassuring sign when reuniting with a team member.
“What are those plans, then?” Mack prodded as he subtly pressed the record button on his spy-tech watch. “So far Pantheon has been more bark than bite, all manifestos and threats, loading up on weapons and biohazards and capturing teenagers. Real intimidating stuff.”
The laugh sounded again, bouncing off the walls and unnerving them with its resonance. “You sad puppies won’t know what hit ya. By the way, speaking of teenagers, how is yours, Melinda? Keeping her close to home, I’d imagine?”
In a blink, Melinda changed guns and shot first the camera and then the boxy old speaker until it was hanging off the wall.
“C’mon, we have a mission to complete.” Melinda set off back toward the storage room as Mack and Bobbi loaded the unconscious soldiers onto an empty pallet cart from the lab. Melinda reappeared with a large, heavy black box on wheels—the package they had been sent to secure. They rolled their captures as quietly as they could to the exit.
A shuffle sounded by the alley backdoor they had come in. They stopped abruptly. Figures moved in the dim lighting.
“Did you hear something?” a Pantheon soldier standing guard by the exit asked another, out of sight.
Instead of the answer coming from the door, as the Shield agents expected, a voice came from behind them.
“Got ‘em.” The Shield agents spun around to see the smirk of a young blonde wearing a white Pantheon logo on a black jacket. As soon as she saw them, she shot Mack with a poison dart gun first, and then aimed for Bobbi but missed as Bobbi used her supernaturally fast reflexes to dodge out of the way.
The soldier standing guard attacked Melinda. They grappled for each other’s weapons, kicks and punches swinging. The cart with the unconscious soldiers got in the way, however. Bobbi pulled the guard off Melinda, but he shoved Bobbi away, causing her to trip over the cart, which knocked into the Pantheon woman right as she aimed her gun at Melinda.
The bullet missed its target, but still hit Melinda’s thigh. She cried out in pain but managed to aim and shoot the Pantheon woman directly in the chest, as if it were easy target practice and not life or death for them all. Seeing the young woman fall first, Melinda stumbled and crashed to the ground, leg in too much pain to hold her weight.
With Mack’s super strength, he recovered quickly from the poison dart. He approached the remaining Pantheon solider with determination to end this fight quickly. The guard’s eyes grew wide, knowing that his next move might be his last. He dropped his gun and scampered away down a side hall.
“Let him go,” Mack ordered, though it was more to himself than to his teammates on the ground. He helped Bobbi up, but she too cried out in pain as she put weight on her right ankle. Her right wrist and hand, which she had landed on when she fell, hung unnaturally.
Melinda pulled herself up on the handle of the cart, and Mack steadied her with another arm around Bobbi, who was looking pale, but managed to pull the wheeled black box behind her.
“Let’s get out of here,” Melinda grunted in pain, pushing the cart forward as a walker with Mack’s help. They exited the building into the night, vision struggling to adjust in the darkness pierced by the bright lights of Zephyr 1 coming to life, ready for their quick getaway.
“We need medical!” Mack shouted into his comms. The three awkwardly stumbled to the plane together, holding each other up as they made it across the parking lot.
Their field med agent greeted them as soon as the cargo bay door opened.
“May first,” Bobbi nodded in Melinda’s direction. “We need our pilot to get us out of here.”
He got Melinda patched up enough to fly, and they were in the sky on autopilot on schedule like clockwork.
Given their precision, Commander Hill was surprised to see them bloodied and bruised, sitting around the table in the briefing room instead of standing at attention. “What the hell happened in there?”
“They knew we were coming,” Mack stated. He stood, muscles aching. “We’ve got captures in our custody we hope can tell us how.”
“And the package?” she inquired with hope in her tone.
Melinda nodded. “Right here.”
Mack lifted the large black box onto the table in front of him and, when he saw Hill was still waiting for visual confirmation, he flipped open the latches and lifted the lid. They relaxed a bit as they saw it: the machine that had given them their superhuman abilities, safe and back in Shield’s possession once more.
————
Daisy, Carol, Jemma, and Fitz arrived at the unmarked base at dusk, exhausted. They rested in the dark woods, on the outer side of the tall, electrified chain-link fence, but out of sight and with a clear view of the runway, hanger, and one side of the buildings. There was no sign of activity, no lights on at the control tower or parked vehicles. It appeared completely abandoned.
Carol heard a thump and felt the ground surface change beneath her as her hiking boot hit something metal.
“What the…” A drainage tunnel manhole cover. She crouched down so she could see it more clearly. A Shield logo graced the cover. She smiled.
“Good ol’ Shield,” Daisy chuckled, coming up close behind her. “Guys, I think we’ve found our way in.”
“You think this is an old Shield base?” Jemma put the pieces together, visually tracing a path from the manhole cover to the hanger and control tower on the other side of the fence.
Daisy didn’t answer. “Where’s my pen?” She dug in her daypack and came up with a normal-looking ballpoint.
“Is that?” Fitz’s question was answered for him as Daisy twisted the top once and a flashlight, more powerful than any penlight they’d seen before, illuminated the metal rungs down to the (thankfully, dry) tunnel below them.
“We don’t even know where it leads or what’s waiting for us at the other end,” Jemma reasoned, but Daisy was already climbing down, with Fitz readying to go down after her.
Carol sent Jemma a look of concern. “It’s gonna be a long night,” Carol said sympathetically.
Jemma sent her a tight smile in response, knowing what Carol was doing. Well, she may not be a scout or a JROTC officer, and sure, she was a few years younger, but Jemma Simmons refused to be the scared little girl the others had to look after. She lined up to go down after Fitz. This seemed to impress Carol, who nodded at her with a reassuring shadow of a smile as Jemma descended. Carol followed, giving a quick look around to make sure they hadn’t been seen and the coast was still clear on the other side of the fence, before descending into the tunnel with the others.
They emerged in a janitorial closet inside one of the unmarked buildings on the base. At least, that’s what it appeared to be. With Shield, one could never be sure. They climbed out as quietly as they could and stood still even more quietly. Daisy cupped a hand over the penlight so they could see well enough not to bump anything but kept the light from shining under or around the door. When they didn’t hear any signs of life or alarms, she let the light shine around the closet, stopping when she got to a control panel on the wall.
“Ah ha!” she whispered. She opened it and evaluated the unmarked switches in front of her. Nothing. Not a single clue as to what controlled what on this base. Fitz reached out and flipped two of the biggest levers. A low whirr and all of the lights on the panel shut off. He flipped one of them back on, and half the lights reilluminated.
“Alright, alarms are off, but tech should still work.” He nodded to Daisy who just blinked at him in awe. “How?”
“It’s basic electrical—”
Carol interrupted. “We don’t have much time before someone notices that power failure, even if it was just for a second. Daisy, get ready to find any computer you can and do your thing. Fitz, watch her back. Jemma and I can look for any signs of bio experiments for superpowers. Meet back here in 10 minutes or less.” The latter was more of a question to Daisy, who nodded. Plenty of time to get the proof they needed and get out.
As she and Fitz looked for a computer they could access that might have Pantheon files, Daisy wondered how she would transfer them without giving Pantheon access to Shield, at least, not more than they already had, and without Shield recognizing it as a hacking attempt and shutting her out. Alerting them wouldn’t be an issue, nor would triggering a trace, but much harder would be getting the incriminating information out, vital proof she would need if she was going to accuse a level 8 agent and Carter Academy professor of being not only a mole but a Pantheon double agent…
Pantheon. The pantheon was the key. Or keychain, rather. She could almost feel it rattling around inside her daypack behind her as she darted from hiding place to hiding place. Daisy had added the USB-holding trinket to her keychain, and the souvenir-like disguise meant it hadn’t been confiscated by Garrett when they got off the bus. Surely Director Fury would have given her write access and plenty of storage space to work with… she begged, practically prayed, that Fury really was every bit the genius her father told her about these past few months.
Fitz and Daisy raced to a door with a glass window. An office with a computer inside. It was locked, but Phil’s antique spy pen had many more talents besides being a flashlight, and between the two of them, Fitz and Daisy managed to pick the lock using its tool for the job.
“Going to have to get me one of those.” Fitz nodded to the pen as Daisy stashed it in her bag and pulled out the Pantheon USB.
“Let’s just hope this gift from the boss keeps on giving.” Daisy held it up before plugging it in.
“Ah. Was that your recruitment tool? Mine was a monkey.”
Daisy sent him a quizzical look before returning to her search for Pantheon files.
“It’s a long story,” he dismissed. “Things got a bit out of hand while experimenting with AI-trained monkey spies. Scouts, really, with tiny sensors on their little helmets. Of which the monkeys were notfans. But it got Fury’s attention somehow and he…”
“Got ‘em.” Daisy grinned and stretched her fingers. “Okay, and now for the show.”
A few minutes later, a siren wailed and an announcement played over the intercom. “Shield code 95603, repeat 95603, the Fort is under evacuation, please proceed to the nearest available exit. Shield code 95603, the Fort is under evacuation.” The message looped as emergency lights flashed.
“What the hell?” Fitz covered his ears and shouted. “Did they find us?”
“Not yet, that’s me. I’m sending the Hub a distress code so they come search this base. Time to go!”
They ran back to the janitorial closet and nearly collided into Carol and Jemma.
“It’s a former Shield base!” Carol shouted at Daisy and Fitz.
“We got that part!” Fitz shouted back. They rushed into the closet but found their exit sealed with a layer of steel.
“Now what?!” Jemma shouted.
“We’ll have to find another way out.” Daisy led them back out of the closet, and she caught Carol’s eye. Reading the dread there, she realized. If the base was under evacuation protocol, the real exits wouldn’t be blocked. It would try to force everyone in the base onto the runway where they could be seen, counted, and airlifted to safety. Which now meant they’d have to expose themselves to the lights and openness outside the building but inside the fence. No other way.
They burst out a side door expecting relief from the flashing lights and blaring sounds of the evacuation alert but were met with the pounding of helicopter blades and the blinding reach of searchlights. They’d been found.
Just as they were about to run and hide, the helicopter turned to reveal a Shield logo and a woman on a bullhorn shouted Daisy’s name. The helicopter landed, still running, and they could see the person beckoning them inside was Commander Hill.
“Agent May’s been hurt! Get in!” Daisy recognized her and rushed toward the helicopter, but when the others looked skeptical and called out to Daisy to wait—unsure of who to trust now that they knew their professor was a mole and the Fort was a former Shield base—Hill waved her hands quickly, gesturing them inside. “All of you! That’s an order!”
It was Daisy’s trust and clear desperation as she looked back at them that had the other three running full speed to the helicopter. They grimaced at the roar of the motor and the gust of wind and dirt that the blades stirred up, and they all exhaled in relief once an agent inside slid the door closed behind them. Once they were all strapped in, it set off again, en route to the Shield hospital where the team of Zephyr 1 was being treated.
After a breakfast of bread toasted over the campfire and forest berries that Jemma and Carol helped identify as safe, the freshmen were unsure what came next. They had to survive until tomorrow evening, but the instructions besides that were unclear. A small group asked Daisy to resolve whether they should find the creek to catch fish for lunch or get firewood for later. Luckily, another group offered to find kindling, sticks, and small logs for firewood, so she was spared from making a judicial ruling. She shared a silent why are they asking me? look with Carol, who tried to hide a grin in reply as she assisted a few students whose tents had not been properly pitched the evening before.
“Did something happen with you two last night?” Jemma asked, startling Daisy. Daisy turned to face her suspicious friend.
