"To anyone receiving this."
"..."
"Anyone at all..."
"..."
"We are out of our depths here."
"..." the static was like a death sentence, a roaring declaration that the mission was failing. He stared up at the falling object, grandiose and beautiful in all its destructive glory.
"I think I can assume that our backup is either gone or too late." he swallowed after uttering those words.
"..."
"And so are our allies."
"..."
"So I send this final message out to bid my farewell. This is Agent..." he coughed as he corrected himself. There was no need for a title anymore.
"This is Phillip J. Coulson, over and out."
The message died out in a pandemonium of noise depicting a scene of destruction, the crash of a newly acquired S.H.I.E.L.D helicopter that had but obliterated the radio the message was sent from, despite its durability meant to keep it intact in case of plane-crashes or fires. And speaking of fires, whatever had assisted this one, if it was jet fuel or something extraterrestrial, it had burned away all traces of the crew sent out check out the unidentified object in the desert of Nevada. Not a single piece of them remained, only shadows burnt into the ground, like pieces of coaled art.
"Are the shadows confirmed to be..." Nick Fury asked while walking between the remnants of this disaster.
"They are definitely human, sir." one of the recognisance scientists confirmed. What was her name again? While he knew that she grew up in Philadelphia, third child out of eight, a genius with an estimated IQ around 156, partial to steamed carrots over broccoli, he was a tad uncertain about her name. Anne? Annabelle? Amanda? Something beginning with A...
"Confirm their DNA-signatures to find out if this is indeed our people, and whoever, or whatever else they were fighting out here." Fury continued without letting her know about his line of thinking. Agent Coulson had risked his life to send this seemingly unimportant message of goodbye. By the look of things he had forfeited his life just to say something this scene should spell out perfectly clear. The whole thing reeked of uncertainty, and if there was something Nick Fury despised, it was not knowing what was really going on.
"Leave no stone unturned, no speck of dust unexamined. Our Agents were under attack, and unless we find out by whom we will be next on their list, and it won't be pretty!" he yelled to the accumulating masses of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents amassing around this crime-scene. How did he know this was an attack? For one, he knew there to have been six agents on this scene, but from what he could discern there were at least fifteen shadows. Even if by some coincidence every person made two shadows, that would not account for the three excess shadows that could be seen in the fray of the main blast, seemingly on their way towards the middle.
"This whole thing stinks." Agent May commented as she came walking up behind him, her arms crossed and a cold look of indifference plastered all over her face. Agent Melinda May, The Cavalry, one of the agents sent to assist Agent Coulson on his mission. She arrived too late, and her team was the one to first come across this scene.
"It sure does." Nick Fury concurred.
"It sure does..."
The desert stretched out far and wide around them, black cars spread out randomly and men in black busily setting up the field-camp needed to retrieve every speck of dust so that they with certainty could find out what transpired here.
ELSEWHERE
He opened his eyes with a start, would've sat up with equal hurry had it not been for his body being numb, unmovable against his every attempt. Was he dead? The lack of pain that should be there might suggest that. The lack of any general feeling, physical as well as psychological, might suggest the same. Even as he lay there, only being able to breathe, blink, and stare straight ahead, he felt strangely calm. Safe, even.
"I see that you have come to." a voice from somewhere commented. It was distinctly male, but other than that Agent Phillip J. Coulson was too delirious to even consider whether the voice was familiar, whether he'd heard the same voice before somewhere.
"Where are we?" another voice asked instead, female this time, calm and calculating, masking her fear with immaculate skill, though it clearly was there. She was much much more afraid than he was.
"A safe place. For now that is all you need to know." the first voice replied.
"Phil?" the female voice inquired. Phil? Wasn't..? Wasn't he sometimes called Phil? And wasn't her voice somewhat... familiar?
"Phil? Are you there?" the female asked again. She was probably in a similar state, unable to see more that a bluish white ceiling.
"I'm here." he replied. What was going on? This was not where he had been. There'd been an accident, hadn't there? Something involving a helicopter? And S.H.I.E.L.D. He was a shield agent. Of course he was. An agent on a mission where something had gone horribly wrong.
"Who else is here?" he continued asking. Somehow he realised, through the mist of his jumbled memories, that he likely was badly hurt. That he probably should be dead.
"Oh, there is only you, Mr Coulson. Only you and that faithful partner of yours, who refused to leave your side even as you were about to die. She is a very stubborn specimen indeed. My condolences for your teams, by the way." the male voice replied. He could sense the movement of the other, the sensation of fleeting body-heat grazing by.
"Now sleep, you will need your strength soon enough." the male continued, and the world was already starting to blur at the end of his sentence. There was a whimper, a last futile attempt of resistance coming from his roommate, the female he knew too well, the woman that always came to his rescue, even today. And he recalled her name just before sleep took over. Her name... Melinda May.