They were each given a headset so they could communicate over the volume of the chopper blades and motor. As Commander Hill finished explaining that Agents May, Mack, and Morse were going to be okay and Daisy’s dad would meet them at the hospital, Daisy’s hand tightened around the pantheon.
“Thank you.” Daisy swallowed and tried to steady her voice. She was sitting across from Commander Hill and looked directly into her eyes. Finding nothing but concern and steady authority there, Daisy made her request. “I have to talk to Fury. I mean, Ma’am. I need to speak with the director, ma’am.”
Hill let a shadow of a smile tweak her lips. “You will. He’ll find you. We have a lot of questions for you, Daisy Johnson. And your team.” She looked around the helicopter with curiosity. “Bit out of the way for a class field trip to the woods.”
“We were left without full awareness of the assignment,” Fitz grumbled.
“Commander. Ma’am.” Carol sat up straight and spoke as directly and with as much decorum as she could under the circumstances. “We have reason to believe Agent Garrett is aiding the Pantheon organization.”
“No, Miss Danvers. I have reasonto believe it,” Hill countered. “I suspect if you were at the Fort, you have proofof it.” She eyed Daisy’s clenched fist where the USB hid.
They were each given a headset so they could communicate over the volume of the chopper blades and motor. As Commander Hill finished explaining that Agents May, Mack, and Morse were going to be okay and Daisy’s dad would meet them at the hospital, Daisy’s hand tightened around the pantheon.
“Thank you.” Daisy swallowed and tried to steady her voice. She was sitting across from Commander Hill and looked directly into her eyes. Finding nothing but concern and steady authority there, Daisy made her request. “I have to talk to Fury. I mean, Ma’am. I need to speak with the director, ma’am.”
Hill let a shadow of a smile tweak her lips. “You will. He’ll find you. We have a lot of questions for you, Daisy Johnson. And your team.” She looked around the helicopter with curiosity. “Bit out of the way for a class field trip to the woods.”
“We were left without full awareness of the assignment,” Fitz grumbled.
“Commander. Ma’am.” Carol sat up straight and spoke as directly and with as much decorum as she could under the circumstances. “We have reason to believe Agent Garrett is aiding the Pantheon organization.”
“No, Miss Danvers. I have reasonto believe it,” Hill countered. “I suspect if you were at the Fort, you have proofof it.” She eyed Daisy’s clenched fist where the USB hid.
“I need to speak with the director,” Daisy repeated.
Commander Hill nodded and relaxed into her seat.
As they neared the hospital, a voice barked over the communications system. “Hill? I wanted those kids here 10 minutes ago!”
“Director, we are landing now. Oh… and I think we picked the right candidates for the Program, sir. You’d be proud.”
“I know I’m damn proud, Hill; I want them at this hospital!”
For the first time in several hours, the four students exchanged small, tentative smiles. By Program, they knew she meant the Secret Warriors. There was still a mole on the loose, and a dangerous Pantheon one at that, but if Daisy’s theory was right, when they had trained and proven themselves worthy, they were getting superpowers.
———
“Dad!” Daisy called out as she saw Phil in the hospital waiting room. He wrapped her in a bear hug until she pulled away to flood him with questions. “How’s Mom, where is she, is she okay, can I see her?”
“One at a time, my sky,” he choked out, stroking away tears from her cheek that she hadn’t even been aware had sprung up. “She’s gonna be okay. They are working on her now. She’ll have to do some rehab for her leg and she’ll be out of the field for a while, but she’ll be okay.”
He swallowed as he held back tears too.
“I think I caught Pantheon,” she whispered to him, unclenching her fist from around the USB souvenir just long enough for him to see. “Turns out there was more to the camping trip than planned.” She looked away sheepishly and caught Carol’s eye, who sent an encouraging nod.
“That’s my girl!” Phil’s eyes brightened in pride.
“We need to talk to Fury,” she continued, determined to solve the puzzle she’d been pondering since she first watched his video. “I think…”
She trailed off as the Director himself entered the room with Mack, who looked shaken and bruised but wasn’t wearing a hospital admittance bracelet.
“You four,” he waved a finger in the general direction of Carol, Fitz, Jemma, and Daisy and pointed to a small room just off the waiting area. They followed, and Jemma sent Fitz a strong, silent “no” as he nearly began to laugh at the wall of brochures with titles like “Living gallbladder-free!” and “The care and keeping of your spleen!” and posters with illustrations of cartoon organs and humans holding hands.
Fury gestured for them to sit down, as if it were his office. “I understand you four have some stolen information for me from a decommissioned Shield base you trespassed onto while you were supposed to be roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories on a class camping trip.”
Carol gaped and blinked. Jemma blushed deeply, and Fitz sputtered to defend them, but before any of them could say anything, Daisy held out her hand, with the pantheon USB in her palm. He accepted it but waited for their explanation.
“Everything I have on Pantheon, sir,” she stated somberly, before correcting herself. “Well, everything you didn’t already have that was on my old laptop.”
“Sir. Pantheon was using it as a base of operations,” Carol added. “We intercepted communications as an aircraft left the base, sir.”
Daisy’s stomach churned. The “eagle hunt.” Garrett was referring to the attack that hurt her mom and the other agents.
“He did this,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder, through the glass window, and down the hospital hallway.
Fury’s look of confusion was answered by Fitz. “Professor John Garrett, the one who dropped us off in the woods with barely a crash course. He was the one on the radio we heard communicating with the pilot. He must have flown out of the Fort after he abandoned us.”
“You’re certain?” Fury looked down at Daisy’s pantheon and back up at their young, haunted faces.
Jemma nodded. “It was his voice, sir. They were going to attack a Shield team. The pilot leaving the Fort called him the Clairvoyant.”
Fury’s expression hardened. He pointed to Carol. “You. Get me Hill.” He then looked to Fitz and Jemma. “You two are free to go. Anything else you have, I want in a debrief report to the agent sitting with Professor Johnson.”
“Yes, sir.” They repeated and all filed out, except for Daisy.
“Miss Johnson.” He leaned back in his chair, as if sizing her up. “You may have found in your … explorationsof highly classified Shield files that your captor was a follower of this Clairvoyant.”
“I didn’t—” She was interrupted by his pointed eyebrow raise and realized what he was really saying. She didn’t have clearance, but he was telling her anyway. “Oh. He was a student of Garrett’s. At Carter Academy.” She put the pieces together and felt like she was going to be sick.
“Formerly. Obviously, that privilege has been revoked. Between his arrogance and your skills tonight, assuming what is on this—” he held up the pantheon “—is what you say it is, Shield may have apprehended its greatest threat. Not John Garrett, but the compromised security of its assets and agents.”
“I just wish I could have warned you sooner.” Daisy shook her head and glanced to the hallway again. If she’d been able to let them know as soon as they heard, maybe her mom and her team wouldn’t have been hurt, or… “If I could have gotten on his plane, somehow, caught on to his plan earlier, maybe I could have helped fight him.”
“Miss Johnson.” Fury leaned in and his stormy expression made Daisy sit up straighter and focus on his words. “Shield isn’t all about punching bad guys or your martial arts belt color. It’s about protection. Whether that’s one man from himself or the entire universe against an alien invasion.” Her eyes widened at alien invasion. But Fury continued, hitting closer to home, “Or protecting the secrecy of information the world isn’t ready for yet. It’s a broad job description. One you can be part of filling as an agent one day.”
“Thank you, sir.” Daisy exhaled.
“I’m not here to congratulate you, Daisy. I’m asking you to lead.”
“Sir?”
“The mission your mother and her team are recovering from was a successful one. They recovered stolen property of Shield’s that will not only ensure our future, but yours. Specifically of that Program we don’t talk about.”
“Superpowers,” Daisy exhaled, not realizing she’d said it out loud.
Fury barked out a laugh and relaxed. “You can go now, Miss Johnson. But remember. I’m keeping my eye on you.” He pointed to his remaining good eye, and she wasn’t sure if it was a joke or a threat, so she simply nodded, stood, and thanked him again before leaving. As she did, she let in Commander Hill whom, she suspected from Hill’s wry hint of an approving smile, overheard the latter part of the conversation from the otherwise-empty hallway.
——-
Daisy awoke with a sore neck and realized she had been sleeping in the hospital chair next to her mom’s bed. She yawned and breathed in the sterilized smell hospitals always seem to have. Elsewhere down the hallway, there were so many beeping noises and people talking, she wondered that she was able to sleep at all.
“He’ll pay,” On the other side of the bed, Phil was reassuring Melinda, who had an IV in her arm and a cast on her leg but, from the fire in her eyes, still looked ready to fight someone.
“I wanna kill him,” she grumbled.
“I know,” he soothed. “Me too. Let’s just rest a bit, okay? Oh, look who’s awake!” They both turned to look in Daisy’s direction, where she was stretching and adjusting her eyes to the morning light.
“Hi,” Daisy mumbled, still groggy. She felt like once she got into a proper bed, she’d sleep for a week. Reality flooded back in as she looked around. “Mom, you’re awake! Are you okay? I mean, obviously, you’re not okay, but …”
“Daisy,” Melinda interrupted. “I’m going to be fine. I heard you did good work last night.”
Phil held up the pantheon thumbdrive. “Fury himself said so. Key evidence for arresting and, we assume soon sentencing, John Garrett.”
He tossed the thumbdrive back to Daisy across the bed. It took all of her brain power to catch both the pantheon and what he meant. “They got him?”
“With your help,” Melinda added, the most impressed Daisy had ever seen her mom look.
Daisy looked back down at the thumbdrive. “What about the other kids, at the campsite?”
Phil sent her a look she couldn’t quite interpret, perhaps pride, or perhaps seeing a bit of himself in her. “The buses went back to bring them home almost as soon as Shield received your alert signal at the Fort. You don’t have to worry about them. They all wanted to know about you though, if you and your team were okay. Seems you made some friends out there.”
Daisy nodded, feeling the weight of responsibility back on her. Remembering the way they had all looked to her. Remembering last night, Fury asking her to not only join the Secret Warriors but lead. Her mom had said her dad had been Fury’s right-hand man before he changed jobs to raise her. Maybe it was in her blood and she had that potential too, to rise to the heavy expectations everyone seemed to have for her.
For now, there was one person in particular whose opinion she was most worried about. Melinda sensed her emotions and saw her glance to the door.
“An agent took the other students back to campus last night,” she informed her daughter. “They’re all fine, and they were instructed to get your stuff back from the bus and bring it here this morning.”
“They’re coming back?” Daisy clarified. She realized she probably looked terrible and raked her fingers through her hair. “Um, I’ll be right back.” Her parents exchanged knowing glances as she rushed out to the restroom in the hallway to fix what she could of her appearance with limited resources.
As she did, she walked past a room with a few Shield agents around the bed of an agent from her mom’s team.
“I have to warn Hunter,” the agent mumbled, attempting to get out of bed.
“It’s okay, I’ve got my contacts looking for him.” She couldn’t see him, but she could tell by the voice it was Agent Mack, their team leader. Daisy slowed her pace and glanced in at a better angle. The woman in the bed was Agent Morse, who sounded like she was in a lot of pain.
“Hey!” Agent Morse tried to shout at the door but couldn’t make it sound authoritative. Daisy ducked and continued walking past, but Mack caught up with her.
She blushed at having been caught. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to overhear.”
Mack’s expression said he didn’t believe her, but since he didn’t call her out on the slight lie, she glanced back into the room and continued, “Is she gonna be okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Mack’s expression softened. “She’ll be fine. She wants to talk to you though. Come on.”
He held the door open and Agent Morse sat up as best she could, wincing.
“Daisy Johnson.” Morse attempted a smile, but was too exhausted and in too much pain to be convincing. “I hear you helped them get the intel to find and capture the bastard who ordered this.”
Daisy shook her head. “Just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
Agent Morse looked to Agent Mack, who chuckled lightly. “From what I heard, you four did more than that.”
Daisy looked up to him and back to Agent Morse. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get it sooner.”
“Nah, don’t think like that,” Agent Morse reassured her. “Hell, when I was a freshman, I would hardly have known valuable intel if it’d been handed right to me. You’re doing great, kid.”
Daisy felt it again. The honor of having so many believe in her and yet, the pressure of the expectations she was under.
“Thank you. I hope you feel better soon,” she added meekly, not knowing what else to say. She backed toward the door and the agents resumed their earlier conversations, in more hushed tones.
———
Daisy did her best to clean up at the restroom sink, but paper towels and hand soap and brushing her fingers through her hair could only go so far. She spotted a bowl of wrapped mints by the exit and took a few. It wasn’t a toothbrush, but it was better than nothing.
She assumed Carol would volunteer to come back with Fitz and Jemma to the hospital with her things, and she was right. She had also assumed Carol, having had the opportunity to sleep in her own bed, would have looked more well-rested than she did, but when Daisy saw her, Carol’s dark circles said otherwise.
“Hey,” Daisy greeted Carol as she walked into the hospital waiting room.
“Hey.” Carol smiled weakly. “FitzSimmons are parking the car. All the close spots were taken, but they are coming in to say hi and visit your mom. They just dropped me off first so I could give you this.” Carol handed over Daisy’s duffle bag from the bus.
“Thanks. Are you okay?”
Carol blinked in surprise at the question, but Daisy waited for an answer with concern. “I… I am in a hospital but I’m not sick or injured, so I’m doing really well, comparatively speaking.” She tried to joke, but Daisy wasn’t laughing, so she tried a diversion instead. “Have you even slept at all? You were here all night. And your mom?”
“My mom’s fine. Or she will be. We’ll go see her in a sec.” Daisy tilted her head in observation and suspicion. “You didn’t really answer my question. Did yousleep?”
Carol looked away and then back at Daisy and sighed. “I slept. Some. I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head.” She lowered her voice and her gaze until she was staring at the ground. “I kept hearing the alarm you triggered on the base, but it was here in the hospital. We had to get everyone out, but I couldn’t find you.” She met Daisy’s eyes again with a haunted expression, clearly recalling the emotion of the nightmare even as she stood so close.
“I’m here.” Daisy dropped her bag and wrapped Carol in a hug. “I’m right here.”
Carol held Daisy close. “Me too.”
The moment didn’t last, as the sound of a frustrated young Scotsman and an English girl could be heard explaining to the nurse at the reception desk that they were trying to find a Daisy Johnson, and no, she wasn’t a patient here, just a visitor like themselves.
“Guys!” Daisy called and waved. “Over here.”
The couple sighed in relief in perfect synchronicity as they saw her.
Daisy picked up her bag and led them all down a hallway to her mom’s room. Somehow the hospital didn’t seem so bleak and miserable with them by her side.
They filed into Melinda’s room and stood around her bed as Daisy shared the news her parents had broken earlier: John Garrett had been captured and was no longer a danger to Shield.
“Intel leads to quick results at Shield,” Phil said with a little pride in his tone. “Especially to root out a mole.”
“Pantheon isn’t gone forever,” Melinda cautioned. “Don’t be surprised if we see more of them in the future. These organizations have an annoying way of resurrecting themselves after they lose a head.”
“But for today,” Daisy attempted to lighten the tone again, “it’s a win. One you were all part of making.”
Carol stood tall. Daisy had the sense that if they had had champagne glasses, she would have called for a toast.
“Our team,” Carol stated. “Together.”
“Together,” Fitz echoed and looked to Jemma.
“Together.” She smiled back at him.
Daisy swallowed and looked to Carol, who returned the intensity of her wordless expression. Daisy said it last, loud and clear:
“Together.”
Then after a few minutes, as FitzSimmons moved closer to Phil and Melinda to talk, and Daisy and Carol hung back, Daisy said it once more to her alone, quieter, as a vow:
“Together.”
Carol didn’t respond except to take Daisy’s hand in her own and rub her thumb across the back. It was the magic spell to calm the storm of Daisy’s anxieties. With her friends by her side, they could weather whatever may come next.
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.
