10. Limbo
. . .
"Sir?" The young man popped his arms into proper, stiff formation at the shift of the master's head, the crispness of his uniform almost snapping in the cool air of the dark office. His accent was clean, almost but not quite the most formal form of an Englishman's received pronunciation, loaded with the heavy tones of clipped Dutch. "We are monitoring a problem."
The head didn't move. The words came from the dark alone, the accent thicker in the low voice but also more refined in its enunciation. "Explain it."
"There has been an interference logged at one of our satellite sites, sir. Specifically, we've lost contact with the biological lab in the western United States. A minor station, but nonetheless." The young man watched the sleek white hair catch a single gleam of light that was blazing its way in between the closed blinds as the master turned. Beyond them, he saw the green bushes waving in a pleasant breeze. It was a beautiful day in the village, blue sky and fine temperatures. He could find no joy in that at the moment, not in the presence of their overseer. The sharp profile seemed to haunt him. "As per protocol, their systems were dumped offline. System Control is awake and monitoring from the home site. There should be little that's recoverable onsite at the Arizona location, and nothing that leads here."
"Do we know precisely what occurred? Does Control?"
"Not yet. We are nonetheless working to purge all other remaining online connections between us and the satellite location. The procedure will be final soon." He paused, unsure if he should waste the master's time with what might have been an unimportant detail, or if he should leave the matter until he knew more. He bit his lip. Better to annoy now than fail later. The penalties for failure were far more severe. "Our men have used this as cause to scan once more what went out daily, ensure there were no irregularities."
"And if you are bringing this up to me, they found an irregularity."
"A… small one, sir. A possibility of a message or two piggybacked into the network." He swallowed, choosing his wording carefully both for his own sake and for the technicians. Shadows flashed, catching the wooden frames of the furniture, the gleam of old medals handed down by commanders long past. Somewhere among them, hidden but still present, was a signed plaque from their long-lost commander, Herr Schmidt. The master's great-grandfather had fought well as a young man in the Second Boer War, and became a good friend to Schmidt much later, in the crucible of the Reich. He had become one of the first great heads of Schmidt's Hydra in rapid time. The plaque was one of the Great Artifacts of the village, and yet it was frequently only for the master's almost imperial sight. "They are unsure, but if so, it is a certainty that these items would have not made it past our security measures. They would be unusable data."
"They think."
"Ja, they do, sir." The young man flushed at the informality seeping into his words, revealing his nervousness and possible impurity before the master. "Yes, sir."
The head swiveled away again, the sun's gleam flashing along his temple like lightning. With a rustle of fabric, the master leaned forward to snap open the blinds. A young child ran by outside followed by three others a moment later, white legs catching the sun. They were hurtling pellmell towards the smaller residences with their thatched roofs and clean Cape Dutch-style architecture along the west end of the village. The master snorted, pleased with what they had built slowly over the years. What came next seemed like a non sequitur. "Tell Control - do not purge the systems fully yet. And bring me the boy."
The young man paused, unsure what he felt about the command. His eyes flickered, looking as if at the invisible trail the children outside had left in the sun. It might have been pity, deep inside him. He buried it and clicked his heels. "Right away, sir."
. . .
Coulson stared at the gray felt ceiling of the car, beginning to understand its blandness on a spiritual level as a metaphor for limbo. Not even hold-music broke the silence that had been coming from his phone for most of the hour. He had to check occasionally to see if he was still connected. God help him, he was.
On the other side of his car window, scrub brush, asphalt, and stones whipped by at a cool ninety-odd miles an hour. And that was relatively slow for the moment. Loki had not only chosen to ignore the posted speed limit, but metaphorically exploded it out of, Coulson assumed, some private snit he had that the junk car was not secretly a more useful spaceship. Or something. In any case, the guy sure as hell had a lead foot.
Loki sounded mild enough, though, one hand lazily maintaining control of the wheel. It was probably a trap, that calmness. "That's, what, forty minutes now you're on hold?"
"It happens," said Coulson, trying to be politic.
"It happens rather a lot, lately." The car slalomed around a bend, pressing Coulson against the car door with surprising strength. He had a tingling full body image of the door falling off, and him with it. "Those utterly useful new security restrictions, I'm sure. They're probably trying to decide if the relevant files are under puce or teal."
If Loki got going on this again, he was going to start to hope for that door falling off on the next turn. Coulson went for the defuse. "I'm sure it's nothing like that. Paperwork is paperwork. It's always slow. They're not really in a position for immediacy."
"I'm sure there's great value in all the extra security lodged like a frog in amidst daily routine just to lump it all up a bit further, however. Wouldn't want an enemy agent to get to a field incident cover sheet too easily, get a glimpse of their secret logo. Heavens forfend it is discovered they use only blue pens, to make copies slightly more difficult." Phil saw teeth flash as Loki loaded and then shot the coup de gras of his annoyance with SHIELD of late. "And I wager they're still going to make you cover the roaming fees for the phone call out of pocket."
"Loki, I swear to-" He cut himself off as the phone sprang to life in his ear. "Yeah, hi, case file #42108?"
"Coulson."
Oh, God. It was the new Director himself taking over the line, not the paperwork gopher. Coulson found himself staring at the door handle, wondering how much it would hurt. The trick was to bundle up and hit the ground rolling. Wouldn't be the first time he'd done it, but at ninety mph, there was going to be some skid on his ass. No synthetic skin to protect him there, although maybe he should consider it. He tried to sound cheerful instead, digging himself into a mental bomb shelter. "Hey, Mace."
For a moment, the car slowed to the legal speed limit. Then, realizing they probably hadn't retasked a satellite for this or were doing much more than monitoring the tracking GPS installed in their phones, the car resumed its assault on the sound barrier. Otherwise, thankfully, Loki kept his mouth shut.
"How's New Mexico?"
"Kinda hot. We're just passing through, really." He looked up at the grey felt again, now trying to use it as a source of balance. "Probably gonna be hot where we're going, too." He tried to not think about the obvious grim joke lying under that.
"So, I guess the property fire out in Arizona wasn't because it got kind of chilly last night."
"Ah, no. No, that was a separate thing."
"It made local news this morning, you know. Must be a slow day. Motorcycle club was meeting up according to the report, minding their own business at an old parking lot outside a defunct medical lab. Then someone set a van on fire and started a fight."
"Well-"
"A big fight. The club says they got hit in the dark by a rival gang, had to be like twenty guys just boiling out of nowhere according to the story. But the other gang wasn't armed, which I thought was a very interesting detail, Phil. Just twenty big ol' dudes in the dark, throwing these harmless as a kitten one-percenters around like they were discs at the Greek Olympics. Very random. I saw a couple of videos online, these guys got hammered. One had the frozen bag of peas on his dislocated shoulder right there while he was being interviewed. Weird, right?"
The car was slowing again. Coulson stayed conversational. "Oh, very. You know these biker clubs, though. It's possible some beef sprang up. Happened in Texas just a few months back, they were sorting out that brawl for weeks."
"I'm thinking it's likelier that you threw your buddy at 'em like a grenade with the pin out. Considering we owned the property from a while back, I can put a few theories together as to why. Let's say I tied some knots together from a few threads left around. I guess my only question right now is, did you use an aim-and-flame on the van with a little gasoline to start, or did you set him up to do that, too?"
The stupidest response in all the world flickered neon-bright into his mind, and then it came barreling out of his mouth. "He's driving. You want to talk to him?"
Mace's voice was dripping pure, unfiltered sarcasm. "You can put the phone on speaker if you want, Phil."
The pale hand filled his view and gently plucked the phone from him. Then, in fact, Loki switched it to speaker mode and stuck it to the flimsy plastic holder on the dash. "Distracted driving is very dangerous, sir," came the smoothly sardonic response. Phil realized he was staring dead ahead at the road, too dumbfounded by what he'd started to even feel horror. "I see it in all the American advertisements. I'm terribly shocked you'd even suggest it."
"You sound like it."
"I sublimate my more extreme emotions. It frightens humans less." Phil looked at Loki. He was talking through his teeth, lips pulled back. The effect was decidedly not a smile.
Oh, God, thought Phil.
"You want to give some input on what actually happened?"
The boxy rental car swung around a sharp curve with the improbable elegance of a Viper. Phil heard something metallic and probably structurally vital creak in the undercarriage of the vehicle, and he began to sweat. Meanwhile, Loki's drawl remained smooth as butter. "As previously filed, we're on the road doing nothing more than clearing out some old loose ends of yon villainous Hydra. And as such things go since the beginning of time immemorial, sometimes those loose ends hit back. Coulson has been waiting patiently on the phone to file his final incidence reports on the matter currently in question, and of course the bits about the van are included in the package. All within protocol, especially as per the rules laid out within the field actions manual, subsections 49.3 through 52.4. And, I note, all the other actors in the incident, save one, and that one logged under separate incident header 993.71, already in the system, are alive."
Coulson snapped his head around to stare at the side of Loki's face. He got the briefest of glances back, along with a clear expression that said Settle yourself. Of course I have all your nonsense memorized. Then he resumed watching the road, just as calm as before.
"And going forward?" Mace sounded cautious, suddenly faced with the reminder that he was on the phone with a thousand year old agent that spoke the arcane language of bureaucracy just as fluently as he could.
"Second verse same as the first. I'm sure there'll hardly be any major incidents waiting for us. We are nothing if not circumspect." The blatant lie wafted through the air-conditioned car like a silken thread. Phil suddenly realized the air conditioning was not actually turned on, the vehicle simply felt that way out of sheer magical will. Or due to being in the car with an irritated Jotun. He wasn't sure which, but he was damn sure he wasn't going to ask. "Paperwork will be lodged routinely and as necessary, as well as travel particulars, but there's hardly been anything of real note thus far." His tone turned cheeky. "That said, I've a lovely recommendation for a sub chain. I understand it's national and not merely regional."
"I'll skip it for now. Stay within the protocols, guys. It's not just for our protection, it's for public trust."
"Absolutely!" The teeth stayed bared as the line went dead. Then Loki tore the phone off the dash and chucked it unceremoniously into the back seat, where it lodged itself into the butt of a seat cushion right down to the last centimeter.
Coulson stared at it, knowing his arm wasn't long enough to retrieve it without either wiggling halfway back like a nerd or asking Loki to stop the car so he could get out and do it properly. "You know that was my phone."
"And you have a protective case on it, a good one. Allow me some catharsis. It keeps me from entering his office at night and leaving traps of a particularly petty and mayhap dangerous kind."
"I lost my position on the phone hold." There was no point in trying to keep the peevishness out of his voice.
"That wasn't my fault, that was your good friend and leader Mace. He hung up first. Likely forgot all about his own mad maze of creation and your small place trapped within it." Loki hit the gas pedal again. "Submit that rubbish through the online entry portal they set up last month, supposedly to cut that very matter of phone congestion you're dealing with."
"It isn't working!"
Loki grinned like the massive bastard he could be, the car reaching the unlikely speed of 110 and starting to wheeze. "You don't say."