Chapter 7 - Tick Tock
You were the one
I wanted most
to stay.
But time could not
be kept at bay.
The more it goes,
the more it's gone,
the more it stays away
-Lang Leav
"I won't say I told you so," May quipped, getting out of the car and heading over to the near freshly filled in grave.
"Big of you," Phil sassed, tossing a shovel to her. He caught the gleam of moonlight off the metal and looked to a clear sky. It's going to be a long night, he thought appraising the stars before looking back down to see May's cocky grin. At least it would be beautiful.
"You don't ask someone for their loved one's dead body after it's been buried. Even the famous Phil Coulson charm couldn't save you from that railing."
"I'm not sure if that was a compliment or a reprimand," he smirked, thrusting his own shovel into the dirt and getting to work. "Besides, lots of people are willing to donate their loved ones' bodies for scientific purposes."
"'Lots of people' does not equal the majority, Phil. You shouldn't have asked them at all, or at least you should have led with the demand instead of making them think they had a choice. That's why you got slapped."
His cheek tingled in memory of the incident.
"Yea well, we'll return it when we're done," he said, spearing the shovel in the dirt once more. "Are you going to help at all or just stand there and gloat?"
"Hm. I can multitask," she snarked, finally bending down to remove a shovel of dirt.
Phil sighed. It was definitely going to be a long night.
"Special delivery!" May called with a huff as she and Coulson wrangled the body bag into the lab.
"Oh! You got a sample!" Jemma breathed with excitement. "Here, put him here." She indicated the cleared spot on the metal table, and began immediately preparing for the autopsy, grabbing tools, gloves, and a mask.
"How long before you have anything?" Coulson asked.
"A few hours at least," she muffled. "Should have something by morning, sir."
Except that she didn't have anything in the morning. Despite her very thorough dissection, being careful to be as respectful as possible and extracting the most energy saturated parts of the brain–such as the amygdala, thalamus, medial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex, all areas that directly contributed to the formation of night terrors–and even with a very credible sample, she still couldn't pull enough of the strange energy off of the corpse to get an accurate reading. There was just too much time that had passed.
"Anything?" Fitz inquired as she finally pulled back from the microscope with a sigh.
"No, nothing. Nothing that we can use. It's all very clear that the cause of death was a combination of immense strain on the heart, owing to the abundance of stress hormones still present in the system, which obviously contributed to the following major stroke, and yet, it seems as if the residual energy from such a traumatic experience has continued to deteriorate. I can't get a read on anything."
"Here. Let me take a look at it." Fitz slid his chair next to hers and palmed one of their many surveyors. "While you've been cutting up dead bodies I've been dissecting the data from Stark's bots. I've tweaked this little guy to more discriminately register similar energy signals. Let's see what it picks up."
Jemma stood aside letting him work, running a hand through her hair and trying to figure out how plausible it would be to ask Coulson for a live sample. As if her thoughts summoned him, he came strutting through the door with May right behind him.
"Status," Coulson demanded as he entered the lab. It'd been several hours since they dropped off the dead body, and it was his understanding they were on borrowed time already. With Fitz still fiddling with the surveyor, Jemma had no choice but to deliver the bad news herself.
"Well, sir," she started and stopped. "You see–"
"Oh hell." At Fitz' explicative all eyes turned toward him.
"That doesn't sound good," Coulson muttered. "What did you find?"
"The energy signal… it's…"
"You got a read?" Jemma asked in surprise, coming to look over his shoulder at the data before adding an explicative of her own.
"Mind sharing with the class?" May sniped.
"The Darkhold," Fitz breathed, finally turning to face Coulson with an understandably worried expression. "The energy readings are similar to our former readings of The Darkhold and anyone who came into contact with it."
"Similar or the same?" Coulson asked feeling his gut tighten just thinking about the havoc the book had already caused. He was not pleased to hear it spoken of again so soon.
"Similar," Fitz said, standing to pull up the schematics of the containment module, brain three steps ahead of his mouth. "There are marked differences, of course. Based on Jemma's findings it seems to rely heavily on the power of illusion."
"It's possible it traps victims in a hallucination or maybe a memory," Jemma continued. "Or even a combination of both. Based on the heavy saturation of the amygdala it's clear that fear is at least part of it's goal. The problem is going to be extracting it from the host."
"I think I can create a disruptor of sorts to at least slow it down, or maybe if we can trap it..." Fitz mumbled off. "The module may be able to contain it if we could get it–"
"Fitz! Are you seeing this?!" Jemma interrupted gesturing toward a side screen that contained the live-stream data coming in from the Stark bots still inside the base.
"...there." Fitz trailed off. "Huh."
"Is that accurate?" she asked, making the rookie move of questioning Stark tech.
"Yes, obviously, I'm just not sure… how."
"Maybe it didn't have enough energy before? Maybe the more it feeds, the more defined it becomes."
"Yes well that doesn't bode well for them." He gestured to the five prone figures.
"Yes but it makes it much easier to hit."
"True."
"Perhaps if we tinker with–"
"Yes, of course, adapt it to pull it–"
"Inside of itself, yes!"
"Hey!" Coulson asked, reminding them that he was still present and would like to be privy to their apparent breakthrough. "What are we looking at?"
"The energy reading, sir." Jemma explained. "It's changed."
"Solidifying," Fitz supplied, pulling up a different schematic of a very dangerous weapon that Simmons had created and discarded years ago, though not for its lack of effectiveness. As it turned out, disintegration was distinctly disconcerting to watch.
"Sort of," Jemma further explained. "It's now semi-corporal. A state that's much easier to deal with."
"So you're saying you've got something that can stop this thing?" May asked.
"Probably?" Jemma said, moving around Fitz to begin cataloging the movement patterns that she could see more clearly now.
"I need better than probably," Coulson demanded.
"Chances of success would increase drastically if we had a sample," Jemma said softly, already tensed for the indignant sigh she knew would come with that statement. "A live one," she added quickly with a wince at May's raised brow.
"The only live sample is in that room," Coulson muttered. "We know from the footage this thing is fast. We'd need someone fast enough to get in and get out without getting caught."
"Yo-Yo," May and Coulson both said in unison. That was a problem, as Yo-Yo was on leave with Mac for the next two weeks and nowhere near India.
"On it." Phil clipped, turning and hurrying out the room, phone to his ear. They'd have to move fast.
May moved to follow him but wasn't quite quick enough.
"Oh Agent May, I'll have the body ready for transport in just a few moments," Jemma muttered, fluttering back to the autopsy table to quickly finish sewing up the holes she'd made.
May just barely refrained from cursing out loud. The very last thing she wanted to do was to make the trek back out to the gravesite she so recently left, this time without help.
"Hey guys," came a voice from behind, and May's brow rose wickedly before she turned to see Daisy enter the lab with a questioning gaze.
"Just saw Coulson breeze past me trying to bribe Yo-yo out of an early vacation. Did we find something?"
"Sure did," May clipped, cutting off FitzSimmons reply before they could speak. "I'll tell you all about it on our way back."
"Back?" Daisy questioned uneasily. "Back where?"
The unsettling smirk on May's face never boded well.
The plane landed smoothly enough, the displaced sand flying through the air proving to be more of a hazard than the wind. He smiled at the agent whose vacation he'd just cut short as she strolled off the plane with a smirk of her own.
"Coulson."
"Yo-Yo. Glad you could make it," he greeted, before turning to escort her into the Zephyr.
"Well, not sure I could resist the temptation of having a hand in saving the renowned Avengers. So not going to let Steve live this down."
"That's what got you? Not my offer of an all expenses paid trip to Thailand?" Coulson asked with mock hurt.
"Nah. Don't need any more vacation than what I got," she smirked. "Itchy feet."
They entered the lab a few moments later, and Coulson chose not to question the dirt in Daisy's hair or the satisfied and slightly disturbing glint in May's eye as she pointedly ignored the dirt covered agent.
"FitzSimmons," he addressed the duo, "I've got your runner. You want to get her up to speed."
"Yes," Jemma said fiddling with a container while Fitz approached the inhuman with a brief smile before attaching a rather chunky, but surprisingly light belt around her waist.
"You're going to get a sample," Jemma continued her fiddling, approaching Yo-Yo with a container about the size of a car battery. "Simply collect some of the energy inside of this container and bring it back. You activate it by pressing this. Once it's sufficiently filled it'll close automatically."
"This," Fitz said taking over and putting a small trigger in her hand, "is a deterrent of sorts. You press this button here and it should put some space between you and it. Of course, we're not sure how much space it'll provide, or for how long. Best not to dally."
"Great," Yo-Yo deadpanned. "So I'm just supposed to run down there, fill this thing up, and get out? Sounds simple enough."
"Should be," Jemma said with a strained smile. "Just, whatever you do, don't let it touch you. That's the most important thing."
"Right," Yo-Yo smirked. "I think I'm ready, sir," she stated, turning back to Coulson.
"Good," he clipped, eyeing the small screen detailing the Avenger's read-outs and not looking happy at what he was seeing. While the others stayed on the safe side of yellow, Tony's vitals had crossed over into red during the seven hour wait and were steadily making their way towards the fatal area marked by the end of the graph.
"Let's get you in position. Daisy, May, I want you ready with a containment field should things get out of hand."
"You got it boss," Daisy half saluted. "Go get 'em, speedy."