Chapter Two
Pacing the floor of the Bus labs, with her arms folded tightly across her chest, Skye listened to the argument playing out only feet away from her with an increasing sense of irritation.
On the opposite side of the room, Ward stood alone, checking diligently over the handguns that were laid out on the console in front of him even as he tried to ignore the occasional hiss of his name spilling from Simmons' lips.
"Sir, you can't possibly expect me to go down there with... with him," the scientist growled, casting a half glance in Ward's direction as if to punctuate her point.
Ward sighed, distracting himself with cleaning the barrel of the pistol he clutched in his hand. Jemma's words permeated his thoughts with the subtlety of a sledgehammer but he forced himself to focus on the feel of the metal beneath his fingertips.
"Agent Simmons, are you telling me you're going to disobey a direct order?"
Coulson shook his head, his tone indicating that he wasn't about to relent on his orders as he zipped up his hazmat suit and regarded the young scientist with an even expression laced with exasperation.
"No, sir," she managed to choke out, bristling at the very suggestion.
"Good. Wheels down in ten."
Without giving her pause to even contemplate a reply, Coulson placed his hand gently but firmly on Jemma's shoulder, his fingers squeezing comfortingly, before he made his way out of the lab in a purposeful stride.
Simmons watched him walk away with her mouth gaping.
"But, sir!" she called, her voice rising an octave. "Sir, I must protest..."
Skye heaved a dramatic sigh that did not go unnoticed by her friend, who grunted as she stormed off to brood in a more distant corner. Skye crossed the lab to stand next to Ward, gnawing her bottom lip with her front teeth as she noted his refusal to look up to meet her gaze. The last thing Grant needed was her pity, and he wondered in his heart of hearts - if the tables had been turned - would he still bear a grudge just as Fitz and Simmons did? He knew the answer to that particular question, and the implications it held for his place in Coulson's team.
"Ward?" Skye leant her elbows on the console, staring up at him in an attempt to intercept his gaze. When he seemed too distracted to even hear her calling his name, she placed her hand gently over his to still his movements, "Grant?"
Forcing a cool, controlled smile, Ward peered back at Skye, who pursed her lips as she immediately sensed his attempt at emotional deception. 'It's nothing more than I deserve,' his eyes seemed to say, and Skye drew away slightly with a sad shake of her head. The impulse to chide him for his self deprecating thoughts was almost overwhelming, but instead Skye brushed her thumb over the back of his hand, knowing that her words held little sway over him.
Instead, she uttered quietly, "You be careful down there, Ward."
"Always am," he countered, moving as though to lean forwards and brush a kiss against her forehead, then thinking better of the gesture at the last moment as he felt a pair of narrowed eyes trained upon him. Anger rolled off Simmons in waves and Ward had no desire to fuel it further by flaunting his relationship with Skye in front of the biochemist.
Sensing her boyfriend's hesitation, Skye closed the distance between them without a second thought and hoisted herself up onto her toes in order to initiate a fleeting but tender kiss.
She broke away from Grant with a small, mischievous smile in place as she stated, "Don't forget, you still owe me a pizza."
"Didn't think you'd let that one go any time soon," Ward replied, rolling his eyes with practised ease, although really his amusement far trumped his exasperation.
By the time Simmons, Coulson, Ward and Morse were assembled on the cargo ramp, each clad in a luminous yellow biohazard suit, the tense atmosphere had somewhat dissipated. Skye noted how the Director positioned himself discreetly between Ward and Jemma, his elbow brushing the latter's arm in a possible act of reassurance.
Skye crossed her arms around herself in a gesture half intended to bring her some comfort as she watched her friends approach the cargo ramp, and the sudden whir of hydraulics signified it had begun to drop. She wasn't certain what she was more concerned about - the team's safety whilst investigating the small South American town that appeared to have become the victim of some kind of deadly plague, or Simmons' reaction on the surface to being within two feet of Ward again. Skye found herself suddenly relieved that the scientist was armed only with an Icer, although that did little to soothe her frazzled nerves when she considered the very real damage Jemma was still capable of doing with her tongue alone. She could be acerbic, spiteful and blunt when she so desired, and Skye knew that the proverbial gloves had long ago been removed when it came to the subject of Ward. However, Grant had been making enormous progress since coming back aboard the Bus and, with the help of some pretty intensive therapy that he hated to acknowledge he was receiving, he had begun to recover not only from the years as a teenager that he had been exposed to Garret's abuse, but also from the type of childhood that would have secured lesser men an extended stay in a padded room. In short, Skye was concerned that Simmons could, either actively or unintentionally, manage to derail Ward's improvement with just a few sharp truths that she undoubtedly would feel justified in delivering.
If she were honest, Skye was sick and tired of playing mediator. Whilst she could understand Fitzsimmons' residual anger toward Grant, she could not reconcile with their refusal to try to work past it, or at the very least to cultivate an air of civility. Being in a room for any length of time with the three former team members was a draining experience, and Skye wasn't sure how much longer she could bear it before her own temper frayed.
Peering up at the screen in the control room, Skye released the breath she had been holding as she watched the team step off the open ramp and onto the disturbed ground behind the village. As a precaution, May had set the Bus down in a clearing just outside the limits of the town and so the team would have only a short walk to their destination. The CDC would be meeting with them later in the day at the request of the President himself, although Skye doubted they would be hanging around in the area any longer than truly necessary. The mysterious plague had set everyone's nerves on edge, including those sitting in power in Washington, with very good reason Skye thought. It certainly wasn't every day that a population of almost 500 was wiped out within hours of the first reported case of a virus of unknown origin. It was truly a miracle that the media had yet to latch onto the story, although Skye assumed that it was only a matter of time.
Through the camera Jemma unsteadily held aloft, Skye, May and the rest of the agents followed their uneasy progress; Fitz especially seemed anxious as he watched Jemma trek toward the ghost town. The horrific photographs they had earlier been subjected to weighed heavily on Fitz's mind, and he found his right leg bouncing up and down uncontrollably as he leaned back against the wall. If anyone noticed they were too polite to say as much, and so Fitz kept his gaze trained to the screen and his dominant hand clamped over his knee in a bid to stop the trembling.
Ward walked a few paces ahead of the rest of the team, an automatic rifle in his hands poised to fire - although at what, he had no idea. Coulson and Simmons followed after him, and Morse brought up the rear, occasionally walking backwards in order to sweep her gaze around the undergrowth and the abandoned buildings that lined the dirt road.
Ward suddenly held up his hand and the team stumbled to a halt.
"What is it?" Coulson called, stepping forward to take the lead. Any further questions died on his lips, however, as Ward stared down grimly at the already decomposing bodies of three villagers, who all seemed to have been stricken far too suddenly. Their faces were contorted by pure terror, and their fingers had begun to curl and calcify, the tips already disintegrated away.
"My God..." Tripp breathed as he leaned over Skye's shoulder in order to peer at the monitor she was partially obscuring in her desperation to keep an eye on their friends.
"What the hell could have caused that?" Skye murmured, drawing her arms around her body as she was racked by an involuntary shudder.
"I've never seen anything like it," May conceded, her lip curled in disgust, although her tone remained as neutral as ever. She crossed her arms and cocked her head as they watched through the camera and Simmons bent down in order to closer examine the bodies.
Skye swallowed audibly as she noted the light brown article clutched in the hand of one of the corpses, realising that it was a teddy bear, worn and slightly moulting from age and the over enthusiastic loving of its young owner. She looked away quickly, blinking to dispel the tears that pooled in the corners of her eyes and threatened to betray the impressive mask she had slipped on ready for the mission at hand.
"How could anyone be so cruel?" Skye whispered, not trusting her voice to hold out. She glanced down as she felt Tripp's hand lock gently around her elbow in a comforting gesture, and the Specialist smiled down at her with innate sadness reflected in his eyes.
"We'll stop them," he assured her softly, "before they can do this again."
"Jemma, can you shed any light on the situation?" May prompted, raising her voice as she directed her question at the scientist, who had already begun to climb to her feet.
They waited several moments before the woman eventually found her voice, and as she bent down to gingerly hold a Geiger counter over the nearest corpse, a shaky breath escaped her.
"I've seen this before... when I was undercover at Hydra."
Peering at the hideously contorted face of the young woman she was kneeling beside, a wave of nausea washed over Jemma without warning and she stumbled as she attempted to stand. A firm hand gripped her bicep and Ward held her steady as he tried his best to offer her a reassuring smile from behind the tinted mask of his biohazard suit.
"Thanks," Jemma said quietly, her lips drawing into a line as she glanced up at him in begrudging gratitude.
Coulson nodded toward a tiny white washed church, and the team fanned out behind him in response to the unspoken order. As they picked their way across the ground, they remained mindful of the numerous corpses, both human and animal, that littered the streets, trying their best not to disturb the makeshift mass grave any more than was truly necessary.
Ward grimaced as he came upon the body of a man and a small child, and he noted with both curiosity and revulsion how the flies that had settled on the corpses also seemed to have succumbed to the same fate. Dead insects lay on the necks and open eyeballs of the victims, creating an even more horrific image than the Specialist would have thought possible. Ward found an unfamiliar tightness weighing on his chest as he relied on his training just to force his feet to carry him toward the church.
He already knew what lay inside the building and had half come to terms with it already; so when he and Bobbi pulled open the doors, the gruesome scene that met them was no surprise to him at all.
"Oh, my God," Skye swallowed down the bile that had risen in the back of her throat, and her eyes slammed shut in an effort to block out the scene. She turned from the screen, truly revolted by the carnage her colleagues had happened upon. For once, she was glad to be sitting a field mission out, truly thankful that she had no really relevant skills to the situation.
May closed her eyes, certain that that image would be burned forever onto her subconscious. From behind her, the tell-tale sound of retching alerted her to Fitz, emptying the contents of his stomach into a trash can.
"We need to take some samples... then can we please get as far away from here as humanly possible?" Jemma said quietly, trying to summon the 'stiff upper lip' that her countrymen were famed for.
"Where are we meeting our guy from the CDC?" Bobbi interjected, her gaze sweeping the church for any slight signs of a still present threat as Jemma began to inch her way across the floor. She walked on the tiptoes of her boots, arms extended to aid her balance.
Masses of bodies littered the ground, hands outstretched to each other and eyes frozen open wide in horror and agony. Parents curled around children and lovers clung to each other, suspended eternally in their final embraces. In the centre of the aisle, the priest lay face down, still clad in his robes and with a less than serene expression pulling his features taut.
Jemma only barely managed to suppress the wave of emotion that threatened to drown her, reminding herself that if she fell apart they would have no hope of getting to the bottom of whatever had swept through the town so rapidly and left it desolate.
"The next town over, about twenty miles from here," Coulson finally replied, his tone low and uncharacteristically sombre, "we'll carry out our investigation here, gather the samples, and then head back to the Bus."
"Then it's chemical showers for all," Bobbi enthused with feigned cheerfulness, wrinkling her nose at the bridge as she watched Jemma bend down and begin to scrape fragments of skin cells from the fingers of a nearby corpse.
Simmons' hand shook as she edged the scalpel blade toward the stump that had once been the young woman's finger, and she turned her head hurriedly away from the body of the infant who rested beside her.
Ward watched closely, and though he wanted to help, he was unsure of the reaction his offer might provoke. However, after watching Jemma struggle for several seconds, and hearing the distinctive sound of sniffles and quiet sobs coming from inside the hood of her biohazard suit, Ward dropped down into a crouching position at her side.
Manoeuvring his gun across his knee, Ward reached out and placed his gloved hand over hers. "Here... Let me."
Jemma looked up sharply, yet instead of the irritated reply Ward had anticipated, she nodded her head and passed the scalpel into his much steadier hand.
She blinked through teary eyes as Ward carefully deposited a chunk of the apparently mineralised flesh into a plastic specimen container, before handing it to the scientist for labelling.
Quickly coming to her senses and trying to shake off any further tears, Agent Simmons inhaled slowly and turned on her heel, leaving the Specialist to once again pick up his gun and joining his colleagues at the front of their expedition.
"Agent Ward?"
He paused at hearing his own name, then turned to regard his commanding officer who had apparently watched the exchange between the two agents.
Coulson nodded toward Jemma and allowed his watchful gaze to linger on her for a moment.
"Give it time," he advised, earning nothing but a silent nod from the younger man.
Ward cast a further, strained gaze over the church and its deceased occupants, feeling a lump rise in his throat, which he managed to choke back down with some effort. Time was something that was perhaps now in short supply.