Special Agent Cullen Rutherford wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but that didn't mean much these days. He'd spent far too much time going over and over the Benington case, and those last moments. He remembered the press of something trying to push into his head. The glazed look his partner Jason Rylen had, like something out of a zombie apocalypse film. The stench of decay rising from the bodies of several workers from the New York sanitation department, and the two NYPD detectives who'd been unlucky enough to encounter Gregory Benington first. Cullen remembered the maimed face of Alicia Myers, Benington's first victim. She'd screamed like damned thing when Cullen put two bullets in the bastard's brain.
No one knew when Myers had first been taken that her abductor was a gifted or enhanced or whatever they were calling people with weird powers these days. To anyone who knew him, Greg Benington was just another sanitation worker. A sanitation worker who'd stalked Myers until a restraining order was issued. It was after two detectives from the NYPD disappeared while investigating that the Bureau was called in.
Stop dwelling on it, he told himself, as he looked over at the man sitting at the console.
He'd introduced himself as Agent Koenig, and he'd been very polite, but there was something odd about him. Something a bit too cheerful, especially for an FBI agent. Something that wasn't quite right. None of this was quite right. He was supposed to be on administrative leave until a board could convene to consider his actions. It was a formality in a lot of ways, since there was a clear and present danger, but there were still regulations. He was also supposed to be attending mandatory counselling, another Bureau regulation.
What he wasn't supposed to be doing is attending yet another debrief on the case, but you don't argue with an Assistant Director in these kind of things. So now he was here, in this odd room, looking at an odd chair, with the very odd Agent Koenig sitting behind a console.
The door opened and two people walked in. The first was a man, mid-forties maybe. He dressed like some midlevel bureaucrat. If they'd been at the office, Cullen probably wouldn't have looked at him twice. Or maybe he would. Thinning hair, decent looking, but he carried himself well. And there were other things that Cullen shouldn't be able to see. The centeredness of the man. A calm confidence and easy authority. There was curiosity as well, and some calculation, but he wasn't a threat. Not yet at any rate.
The woman behind him was a different story. Attractive, and of Eastern Asian descent, she was the dangerous one. There was a core of rage buried deep, locked down by duty and cold competence. Those locks were under terrible strain from trauma, however. Another hit and they might just crack.
This isn't possible! He told himself, fighting to keep calm.
What? It isn't possible that you're profiling them as if you had their dossiers? Another voice retorted. This isn't even the first time. Remember the first Benington debrief?
"Special Agent Rutherford?" the man said, breaking him out of his internal debate. "Why don't you take a seat."
"With respect, I'd like to know who I'm dealing with," Cullen returned, with maybe a hint of insincerity. "You aren't Bureau."
Cullen felt a pressure bear down on him as he met the woman's eyes, and he knew she was millimeters away from tagging him as threat. He took the seat, but his eyes narrowed as they tracked from the woman to the man.
"I've done as you've asked, so who are you, and why am I here?"
The man walked over to lean his hip on the console as he picked up a manila file folder. "Allow me to introduce you to Agent Melinda May," he said, gesturing at the woman, whose eyes had never left Cullen's face. "You've already met Agent Koenig, and I'm Phil Coulson, Director of SHIELD."
Cullen fought to keep seated. Phil Coulson had been on the most wanted list with a number of other SHIED agents after the Triskelion incident and HYDRA's reemergence. Cullen had followed the case due to personal interest, and had noticed that Coulson had been quietly eased off the list. However, SHIELD had been disbanded, everyone knew that.
Everyone except for Phil Coulson it seemed.
"We're here to talk about the Bennington case. Your AD didn't lie about that, but our interest isn't in the criminal investigation," Coulson continued. "We have the body, and techs are running an analysis to determine exactly how he did what he did. We also have the reports you and Agent Rylen filed, and pretty much every other piece of paper on Benington." It was then the man smiled, and Cullen could feel the curiosity sharped, though it was tinged with amusement. "In fact, this shouldn't have even crossed my desk, even with Bureau involvement. But the reason it landed there was you, Agent Rutherford."
"Me?" he replied, trying desperately to keep a calm façade.
"You," Coulson repeated as he opened the folder and studied its contents. "Suma Cum Laude from Oxford. Advanced degrees in psychology. Your case closure record with MI 5 is impressive, and you have a knack for psychological profiling. But four years ago you left MI 5, moved here, and joined the Bureau. Why?"
"Personal reasons…sir," Cullen replied, his eyes flat. He wasn't going to talk about Solona, or the rainy night part of him died. May shifted slightly, moving him closer to the threat category, but Cullen refused to be swayed. His eyes flickered to hers, holding her gaze. "I don't give much of a damn about your threats."
Coulson glanced back at May, shaking his head, then returned his attention to Cullen. He flipped the folder open and glanced at the contents once before continuing.
"Your service with the Bureau has been admirable, Agent Rutherford, including the commendation you received for actions taking during the Battle of New York."
The last five words were said in the same polite tones as everything else, but Cullen felt the poorly healed pain underneath.
"I was simply doing my duty," Cullen muttered into the silence.
"You and your partner saved the lives of sixty-three civilians, and held a subway station against the Chitauri, until the National Guard could pull you out."
Put that way, I feel like some vain-glory idiot, he thought, but out loud he said, "It was a bottleneck coming down the subway stairs, and the Chitauri weren't interested in targets they couldn't see. We had a few stragglers, but it wasn't as if we were in the epicenter of the event."
"Maybe not," Coulson replied, "it still doesn't detract from the courage you showed, or the competence in keeping sixty-three terrified people together in the middle of an alien invasion."
"With all due respect, Director Coulson," Cullen said to him in an attempt to reign in his frustration, "you said it yourself. You have the reports from Benington, you obviously have my file. You even have the bloody cadaver. What do you need me for?"
"I need you for what's not in the reports, or your file, Agent Rutherford. Alicia Myers is a broken wreck. Whatever Greg Benington did to her, destroyed her mind," Coulson said as Cullen tried to hide a flinch at the memory of her screams.
"By the time we got to her, she was completely dependent on him, like a drug." The observation came out calm, professional, but did nothing to help the sick feeling that welled up at the thought.
Coulson nodded, handing his file over to Koenig, and continued, "Your partner? Jason Rylen? He's been complaining of migraines since the incident, and we've managed to verify that all Benington's other victims suffered some kind of organic damage to the brain. And yet, you managed to resist him," Coulson observed, still leaning against the console. "Oh, and before you answer, I should probably tell you that this device is a lie detector."
The only thing that kept Cullen from surging out of the chair at that point was Agent May's mental state. Coulson seemed to recognize his impulse, however, and his voice was serious. "I promise, this isn't some sadistic whim on my part, Agent Rutherford, and as I said, I wouldn't be here if I thought it wasn't important. But it is, so I'm going to ask: how did you manage to resist Greg Benington?"
"I don't know," Cullen replied, his voice harsh. Coulson looked over at Koenig, who nodded.
"Have you suffered any side effects since?'
There wasn't any point in prevarication so Cullen looked at May and said, "You've suffered serious emotional trauma recently, Agent May. Either a parent or a spouse, I'm guessing. And it's all feeding back on older anger and guilt." His eyes tracked back to Coulson. "If I were you, I'd seriously consider taking her off of active duty, Director Coulson."
The silence that filled the room was viciously satisfying.
"A cold reading," Coulson observed calmly, but Cullen could feel how shaken he was. "And you weren't able to do this before Benington?"
"I had… hunches, just flashes every so often, but after Benington," Cullen stopped then went all in. "When we confronted him, it felt like fingers trying to pry a piece of me away. I fought back, and since then I haven't been able to stop 'profiling'."
"And that is why we brought you here. We suspected you might have had some ability that allowed you to resist," Coulson told him, pushing himself off the console, "but honestly, that's only part of it. I'm betting your training is what's letting you interpret what you're reading. SHIELD needs that kind of skill."
Cullen's jaw dropped as Phil Coulson finally showed his hand. "The world was always strange, but it's getting stranger by the day. And a lot of people are getting caught up in the gears, especially with players like HYDRA and this new Advanced Threat Containment Unit. There are going to be a lot of scared people out there, people with powers who deserve better than to end up as somebody's lab rat." The Director of SHIELD gave him a piercing look. "Look, I know the Bureau needs all the skilled agents it can get its hands on, but this brave new world is something the FBI really isn't equipped to handle. SHIELD is, with your help."
Cullen sat there stunned. Years ago, a much younger, less jaded Cullen Rutherford had thought of no finer calling than to protect those in need. And Coulson was right. If the Bureau had been prepared, maybe Benington could have been stopped earlier. Maybe Alicia Myers would still be a whole person. And maybe, this was where he was meant to be.
"When do I start?" he asked.
"Right now."