"Alya!" Jemma called up the stairs. "Get down here! You need to have some breakfast before you go to school!"
Fitz laughed from his place at the table. "Jemma, she's been homeschooled in space for most of her life," He said, sipping from a warm cup of tea before him. "I'm pretty sure that having a day off of school here on Earth wouldn't hurt. Plus, she's maybe the smartest kid there, inside or outside her grade."
"Fitz, just because she doesn't have to doesn't mean that she should learn it's okay to skip school," She replied. "I'll not have her acting like us when we were teenagers."
"What would be so bad about that?" Fitz asked, and was met with an oh, please look from Jemma. He sighed, turning around in his chair so his voice would carry better. "Listen to your mother, Alya!" He instructed.
"Fiiiinee," Alya responded, tromping down the staircase with her hair sticking straight up. Jemma pulled the egg scramble she had been working on off the stove and grabbed a hot pad, proceeding over to the table. Fitz caught the delicious savory smell as they were set down and felt his mouth begin to water. Since they had come back to Earth, Jemma had become quite the exquisite chef. According to her, it was because they couldn't keep eating like they had during their adventures for S.H.I.E.L.D.. Fitz tended to agree. Especially when delicious home cooked food was involved.
"Mmm. Jemma, this looks delicious," He said, watching the spatula cut its way through the soft flesh.
"Well, I would hope so. I certainly don't plan on making this every day," She replied.
She doesn't have to make this every day, Fitz thought. These quiet mornings together are more than enough.
Not long after breakfast, Alya was walking out the drive to the school bus at the end of it. "Have a good day!" He called after her. She turned and waved happily as she stepped up the small stairwell. The large vehicle let out a belch of exhaust as it started off down the road, causing Fitz's engineering mind to cringe. Forget time traveling spaceships. The ultimate achievement would be a school bus that doesn't do that, he thought, watching the bus turn the corner at the end of their street. He smiled to himself, then closed the door and began walking back toward the kitchen. Now, what am I going to do with my Friday?
No sooner had he started up the stairs when there was a knock at the door. He stopped in his tracks, sighing. "She forgot her backpack again, didn't she?" He said to himself. Walking back to the entryway and swinging the door open. "Alright, Alya, where'd you leave it this… time?"
His question hesitated, as it was not Alya standing in the doorway, but a man, with thin blond hair and pale complexion wrapped in a brown trench coat, navy jeans, round glasses and a beret matching his coat. "Leopold Fitz?" He asked in a British accent.
Fitz blinked in confusion. "Yeah. Yeah, that's me," He responded. "Can… can I help you?"
"May I come in?" The man asked. On the one hand, the sudden appearance of this man requesting to come into his house set off several specific alarm bells in his head. The word L.M.D. came to mind. However, if someone was sending an L.M.D. after him, it would have been wearing a friendly face rather than that of a stranger. Besides, other than A.I.D.A. and Radcliffe, he and Jemma were the only ones that knew how to make convincing L.M.D.s, as far as he was aware. Whoever this was, they were no L.M.D..
He shook his head as he snapped back to reality, pushing the door open further and stepping aside to admit the man. "Sure, come in," He said, gesturing to the entry bench for the man to sit and remove his shoes. He nodded his thanks and proceeded through the door. Fitz, who was still skeptical, glanced around at the street outside, making sure that everything seemed normal. It was a little quiet. Then again, all the kids had just gone off to school. He shrugged off the feeling, and shut the door.
"Fitz, did I hear someone come in?" Jemma asked, appearing at the top of the stairs. Fitz watched her eyes land on the visitor as she answered her own question. "Oh. I see."
"Yeah," Fitz nodded, gesturing to the man. "This is… well, actually, I don't know who this is. Who are you?"
"That's what I'm here to figure out, Mr. Fitz," The man replied, taking off his coat and hanging it on the wall.
"So you don't know who you are?" Jemma asked, descending the stairwell. "Interesting. A form of amnesia, maybe?"
"Possibly, though if it was amnesia, I don't see why he sought us out. That wouldn't make sense," Fitz responded. Jemma frowned.
"Well, it's got to be some form of encephalopathy, right? I can't think of much outside the brain that would affect memory function outside of some kind of technology, but even that still has to do with the brain," She reckoned. Fitz nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, there's not much else involving memory loss that I can think of. You're the Biochemist, not me," Fitz responded. Then a thought struck him, and he turned to the man, who was patiently waiting on the bench. "Tell me, have you ever been to Tahiti?"
The man shook his head. "No, I've not. Though I think you may be familiar with a saying there: 'It's a magical place'," The man quoted, rising from his seat.
Fitz made eye contact with Jemma for a split second, then in an instant they faced the man, drawing their concealed I.C.E.R.s from their hiding places. "Enough of this," Jemma demanded. "Who are you really, and how do you know about T.A.H.I.T.I.?"
"You know who I am," The man responded calmly, raising his hands. His outward appearance seemed to ripple, similar to the cloaking tech on the Zephyrs and the Theta. Then, from the head down, the appearance dissolved, revealing a completely white, gleaming body, with a triangular blue energy source embedded in his forehead.
Fitz let his guard relax slightly, but remained on edge. "You're the Vision," Fitz recalled, remembering a S.H.I.E.L.D. report file. "You're supposed to be dead."
"Indeed."
"Then how are you here," Jemma demanded. "And what do you want with us?"
"I sought you out for your help in answering that question," Vision explained, still holding his hands above his head. He hadn't moved any closer to them. "Please. I just need to find out what happened."
Jemma exchanged another quick glance with him. Why is it always us? His eyes tried to say. She lowered her pistol. Fitz did the same. "We might be able to help," Fitz said reluctantly, stowing his weapon.
"Thank you."
"Try anything," Jemma warned, "and the inside of this house is the last thing you'll ever see."
"I understand, Mrs. Fitz-Simmons, and I can assure you, I mean you no harm," Vision said, slowly lowering his hands to his sides.
"We'll see about that," Jemma said. "For now, let's get you to the lab."
Shortly after having purchased their house, Fitz, with the approval of Jemma of course, had requisitioned S.H.I.E.L.D. for the installation of an advanced lab tucked away somewhere in the house. Sure enough, only a few days later, the supplies he asked arrived on their doorstep in discrete packages. The two of them assembled it from scratch. Now, they had one of the most advanced laboratories in the world tucked away behind the stairwell that led to their room. Coulson must've rubbed off on me, Fitz had thought at the time. This is totally his style.
After the stairs parted sleekly to the side, the inside of the lab could not have been in more contrast to the rest of the house. Unlike the homey, somewhat rustic aesthetic that the rest of the house held, the lab's interior was a smooth white all around, illuminated by adjustable fluorescent lights in the ceiling, floors, and walls(inspired, in some part, from the time they spent in the Chronicom mental interface, where anything you could imagine was at your fingertips). Of course, this place was much less mental-prison like, as they could leave any time they wanted. On the other hand, the feeling like anything they needed was at their fingertips did persevere. The illuminated surfaces triple-functioned not only as lights but as displays and holoprojectors. Their individual workstations appeared out of the walls the moment they approached, and the floor and ceiling panels could rise up or descend to take on nearly any formation desired. Closets of lab equipment, materials, tools, creations, and even a top-of-the-line robotic fabricator were tucked away around the room. It was their own personal paradise, keeping their scientific minds stimulated so they could focus on Alya's needs when she was around.
Yet for the lab's greatness, it still didn't seem to have the capabilities for them to figure out what the problem with Vision's memory was.
"According to my diagnostics, everything seems to be functioning alright," Fitz explained. Vision looked at him, confused. "Nothing seems to be out of order."
"That cannot be," Vision insisted. "I know I have lived through more than what I can recall."
"Well, your synapses, I've never seen anything like it," Jemma added, studying her monitor. "Your artificial synapses not only exchange data, but grow, and they're wired in ways that don't even come close to how a human brain works."
"Hmm…" Fitz thought, walking up next to his wife. "Hey, does A.I.D.A.'s psychological profile function in a similar way.
"I already tried that, and unfortunately, no. A.I.D.A. was a simple android at first, then her quantum energy brain was modeled to be human. Her's was a near perfect human model," Jemma said, pulling up compared images of the cranial structure. She was right. Vision's was decades more advanced than A.I.D.A.'s. "That does give me an idea though," She said, turning to look at the vibranium man sitting behind them. "When did you start to have these… flashbacks?"
"There was an… alternate version of myself," Vision recalled, closing his eyes and focusing hard on that moment. "S.W.O.R.D. wanted me to kill him. But he stopped me before I could, and pressed two fingers to my forehead, right here." He indicated the glowing blue point in his forehead. "I got a sudden rush of memories, familiar, but foreign, and I was liberated from S.W.O.R.D.'s directive. Then, I left, in search of answers."
"This… alternate you," Jemma began, "how was he there?"
"He was… created…" Vision struggled to recall. "Created… created by Wanda Maximoff. A recreation of Vision… me…, before I-"
"Before you died," Jemma finished for him. "Were there any differences between the two of you?"
"Yes," Vision responded instantly. "His skin was colored, a bright red and silver. And in his head was…" He stopped, his hand going to the strange blue object and covering it protectively. "A yellow stone. My stone."
"The Mind Stone," Fitz realized. "That's why Thanos killed you. You had the Mind Stone where that… thing is now."
"This thing is an Arc reactor," Vision clarified. "It's the source of my power."
"Yeah, it is now. But it wasn't before," Fitz said triumphantly. He strode across the room to his workspace, revealing itself upon his approach, and opened a drawer to pull out a small flash drive. It had been a housewarming gift from their old hacker friend, one that had come in very useful for the past few years. "Thank you, Daisy Johnson," He said, plugging it in.
"I think I know where you're going with this," Jemma commented from across the room. "Check the UN databases. They might have collected any records of the Avengers medical reports and stored them on their servers."
"One moment… aaannd…" Fitz said as he entered the search keywords. Then, Daisy's ridiculously complex hacking program dove into the world of code, easily through the firewall of the UN, and sifted through the information without ever so much as alerting an anti-malware program. It softly dinged as it came up with a file, opening up all kinds of images, including a holographic model of Vision's brain function just post Sokovia accords. "Got it!" Fitz declared. He made a grabbing motion in front of the monitor, plucking the brain model from the screen and projecting it into the room. The lights dimmed as he enlarged it to around a quarter of the room. "Jemma-"
"Way ahead of you," She responded, dragging a model of Vision's current brain function out and next to the old one. The two of them exhaled a sigh, marveling at the drastic differences between the two. Vision came up between them, studying the diagrams.
"Well, I guess that explains it then," Fitz said, somewhat bewildered by what he was seeing. Jemma nodded in agreement
"But I don't understand," Vision insisted, confused. "My databases tell me that all memory information is stored in the hippocampus."
"It would be, yes, but your mind doesn't have a hippocampus," Jemma explained, studying the diagrams. "Your memories are stored all throughout your mind, because it's made up of such different pieces. J.A.R.V.I.S., Ultron, and more. You can't remember these things because-"
"Because my mind is missing a piece," Vision finished. He pointed to where the prefrontal cortex would be on a human. But instead, it seemed as though all cognitive activity had been rerouted to avoid that particular spot. Whereas in the just post-Accords model, that one spot had practically been the center of cognitive function. "The Mind Stone was just as much a part of me as Ultron."
"So how would an… apparition of yourself cause a temporary resurgence in memories?" Fitz asked. "The amount of energy that would be needed to simulate the presence of an Infinity Stone is…" He trailed off, gesturing to the dead area. "Well, it's unprecedented. Those things contain more energy than a good part of the universe, even on their own."
"Yes, but… weren't Wanda Maximoff's abilities created by the Mind Stone?" Jemma recalled. "If her powers were what created this other version of yourself, which in order to do so, they must've been extremely concentrated, a brief exposure of that part of your mind to that energy-"
"-may have stimulated the neurons enough to trick my mind into thinking the Stone was there," Vision finished. Fitz looked at the advanced android, who was intently focused on the old diagram of his mind, when it had still had an Infinity Stone connected to it. "Of course. The temporary exposure to a high concentration of a similar energy signature caused a sudden pulse of power to run through the synapses."
"Which would have traveled through that section of your mind, communicating information with the other areas," Fitz continued, plucking a strand of data from the old hologram and projecting it onto the new one, simulating the event that Vision had described, "and storing that information elsewhere in your mind," He concluded. "So, it could be reasonably assumed that if such an event were to occur again for a more extended period of time, your memories would be gradually restored."
"Without the Mind Stone, or Wanda Maximoff, it is impossible to generate an energy signature close enough to match," Vision said factually. Fitz turned to him, confused. "I've run the numbers. Nothing else in the universe comes close."
"Nothing else in the universe," Fitz repeated. He looked back to the old hologram, biting his lower lip. "Nothing else in this universe, maybe."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Fitz. This universe?" Vision said.
Fitz turned to their new android patient. "There's a plentiful supply of alternate timelines in existence, two of which we've seen with our own eyes, and one in which, through some absolute time travel havoc..." He explained, parting the two brain holograms and walking swiftly to the back of the room. The wall panel slid aside, revealing a strange, tunnel-shaped machine embedded into the foundation. "...our grandson from the first alternate timeline we visited had to stay behind in the second one, became the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and if we send a message to him following his version of the battle of New York, theoretically, we could borrow that version of the Mind Stone, which would still be in Loki's scepter, and use its psychic energies to restore your memories." Fitz sighed. I can't believe that something as remote as this is making us turn to Deke for a solution. Again.
"Thank you. Both of you. I really can't express how much this means to-" Vision stopped mid-sentence, turning to face the wall behind him. "We aren't alone."
The moment he said it, the entire house shook, causing the lights to flicker. "What the hell was that?" Fitz said, confused. Then he looked at Vision. "Was that you?"
"No, I don't know what that was." Vision said, inclining his head as if listening for some kind of imperceptible sound.
"Umm… Fitz?" Jemma said from her workstation. Fitz looked in her direction as she threw a display of the rest of the house onto the walls. In their living room, a massive hole in the roof had appeared, and coming inside from the hole were soldiers. Not military soldiers, but dark armored, faceless warriors, each bearing a hexagonal, yellow emblem on their shoulder. And in the center of their chests, protected by a layer of armor, was an unmistakable item. Centipede. Fitz realized. "I swear, it never ends," He lamented. "What could these guys possibly want?"
"I think we both know. We've been to different universes, traveled across time, and know more about the science behind superheroes than virtually anyone," Jemma responded. She entered a short set of commands on her computer, opening a panel next to her station to reveal two sets of Quantum insulation armor they had designed. Fitz then knew what command she had entered. 'Supernova'. The house will be going into lockdown mode about… now, He thought, and right on queue, the lights in the lab turned red, and an energy force field went up around their house. Behind him, the quantum tunnel whirred to life, casting bright, glowing orange and blue energy out from its center. Jemma stepped into the jumpsuit and tucked her helmet under her arm, grabbing a gun and several other gadgets from the shelves behind where the suits hung. As she marched past Fitz and Vision towards the bridge, she calibrated a navigational device on her wrist. "S.H.I.E.L.D. can protect us from the Centipede soldiers, so we need to get to them. Do they still have the quantum beacon in the lab?"
"Yeah, it should still be there. I can't think of any reason it wouldn't be." Fitz responded, shaking his head as another loud boom came from somewhere outside. He strode over to the equipment locker and began to suit himself up. "I'll home in on its signature to give you a direct temporal-spatial lock on the Theta's position. You're going to get Alya?"
"Why do you think I've already got this on?" She said, indicating the suit. Then she smiled lovingly. "I'll see you there." And at that, she pressed her helmet down over her head, pressurized it, and ran into the portal.
Fitz turned back to her computer after he had his equipment on, entering a much longer series of commands that caused the tunnel to pulse bright white. Then he grabbed his own helmet, stuffing it on and calibrating his own navigation device. "Mr. Fitz, what was that?" Vision asked from behind him. Fitz busied himself strapping on a pair of protective gloves as he responded.
"That…" He began, "was an S.O.S., sent to my grandson, who will receive it whenever he gets his hands on quantum decryption technology. After that, all he has to do is build his own bridge, lock onto our temporal-spatial location, and then walk through. Hopefully, we won't need him to, but you never know." He explained. Then, as he approached the portal, he looked the white android in the eye. "I also told him to bring Loki's scepter, if possible, but there's no way of knowing if he'll get it or not. You're welcome to come along, but I understand if you don't want to."
Vision studied his hands for a moment. Bright white, with not one scratch on them, Fitz noticed. His green eyes closed as he thought. Fitz could see the emotions coursing through his face. Confusion. Pain. Anger. But also, empathy. Fitz knew that look well. He had worn it many times himself.
The android's hands balled into fists, and he opened his eyes. "You have helped me to understand my past. That is a gratitude I cannot possibly repay in equal. You are a friend, Leopold Fitz. I shall join you," He said firmly. Fitz smiled under his mask.
"Right. Good. Okay then," He said, turning towards the vortex. "Clone the quantum protective properties of my suit and emulate them with your vibranium skin, and follow me."
"Alright, what was out there?" Mack asked as he led them through the Theta to one of the briefing rooms.
"Just as I theorized, A.I.M. is alive and well. Once our prisoners wake up and we start getting some answers, we can find out how deep they run and where. For now though, we downloaded everything we could from the ship's computer on this drive," Coulson-bot replied. Bucky watched as he passed a thumb drive to the Director, eyeing it suspiciously. First the fact he was a robot. Then Peterson, the Centipede soldier. Bucky couldn't help but wonder what else they weren't being told.
"Do we really trust these guys?" Rhodey whispered to him. The suit of armor he wore forced him to crane his neck down awkwardly, the result being his subtle whisper not being very subtle.
"The best thing I can think of to describe it is 'situational'," Sam said, catching on to the conversation. "In which case, the better term might be 'forced'."
"So that's a no?"
"Pretty much," Bucky said.
"That may be unwise," A new voice advised. Peterson, Bucky thought. For a cyborg super soldier, not much unlike himself, that man was very good at spycraft. "You need to be able to trust in others to help you, especially when you're in the line of fire."
"Are you the leading authority on trust around here?" Sam jabbed.
"No," Mike immediately replied. "But your friend Bucky may as well be. He and I are one in the same, did you forget?"
"How could I?" Sam replied as they entered the briefing room. Bucky took a seat at the corner furthest from the door, ensuring that he had a clear field of view to everything around him. Sam placed himself to his left, followed by Rhodey. Meanwhile, the two powered S.H.I.E.L.D. agents took up seats at the other end of the room. Coulson loyally remained standing by Mack's side, who was in the process of opening the drive's contents on the holoprojector.
Soon enough, the projector sprang to life, throwing images of its contents through the air. Bucky leaned back slightly to take it all in. "Coulson, what are we looking at?" Mack asked.
"From what I can gather," Coulson-bot said as he roamed through the images, plucking one from the assortment to examine closer, "a lot of this is a log of what was on board that ship. While it's useful, it's probably not the most interesting thing here."
Bucky's eye caught on a holographic cube in the corner, it's surface a shifting current of ones and zeroes. "What's that?" He said, pointing at the strange object. All the others shifted their attention to where he was pointing.
"I- I have no idea," Coulson-bot responded, dropping what he had been examining to walk over to where the cube was floating. Rhodey lowered his helmet's faceplate and a brief whirring noise emanated out.
"It's encrypted code," He explained from within his suit. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you figure it out?"
"Huh. Stark gave you F.R.I.D.A.Y., too," Mack commented.
"Yes, but it's his personal version. Not whichever one he gave you," Rhodes responded. Then he let out a disconnected sigh, and his helmet folded itself back into his chestpiece. "Well, she might be able to solve it, but not any time soon."
"Wonderful," Mike said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Bucky suppressed a laugh. Maybe he is more like me than I realized, he thought, looking back at the strange cube. Unnervingly, Coulson-bot hadn't shifted his gaze from the projection. Instead, his eyes raced across the surface faster than any human could taking in whatever the cube was saying.
"Coulson, you good?" He asked. The robotic agent nodded slowly.
"I think it's… some kind of transmission log," He replied, still transfixed on the object. Right. Of course he can figure that out, he's a walking computer.
"Wait, did I miss something? Does have like… super-brains?" Rhodey asked, confused. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. is the fastest there is."
"No, he doesn't. He's…" Bucky hesitated as Mack shot him a look across the table. "He's not fully human… anymore."
"Cyborg. Got it."
"Coulson, can you figure out what it's saying?" Mack asked.
"Well, I can read one thing off of it, because I've seen it in this type of code before," Coulson-bot said. "A location. Somewhere in southern Scotland-" He stopped mid sentence, looking away from the cube and at his S.H.I.E.L.D. friends. Bucky knew that shift in attitude all too well. "Guys, tell me that doesn't mean what I think it means."
Then an alarm suddenly started blaring.
Red lights began flashing in the dark of the briefing room and the heavy falls of boots on metal could be heard going by outside the door. "Okay, what the hell is that?" Rhodey asked.
"That's our security breach alarm," Mack said, looking at the light for a second. "There's no way someone found their way to this thing without going through the guns and patrols."
The door to the room suddenly opened, revealing a young man's face, his hair combed back and his face clean shaven. He seemed to have hastily thrown on a combat vest and gear before running here. "Sir!" He shouted in Mack's direction.
"Davis! What's going on? Why are the security alarms going off?" Mack demanded.
"That's the thing, sir. We're not sure," Davis relayed. "The lab was ordered to evacuate. The quantum field charger that was on Zephyr One turned on."
"How? We disabled it after we got back from…" Mack trailed off. Then he looked at Rodriguez. "Yo-Yo, get in there. Now."
The Commander nodded, and shot out the doorway in a blur. Then, he turned to all the others. "The rest of you, we need to get up there as fast as we can. Follow me. Now," He ordered, marching out of the doorway. Mike, Coulson, and Rhodey immediately followed, then Sam, and lastly Bucky.
"What's happening?" Sam interrogated the director.
"A device that provides a bridge between worlds has activated of its own accord, which means something is coming through. We need to secure the room so that whatever it is has to go through us first," Mack explained hastily, pushing open the door that led to the stairwell Bucky had found earlier.
"I thought it was only the Tesseract that could do that," Bucky said.
"At least one of you here should be familiar with what a Quantum Bridge is."
Rhodey jumped in. "So whoever this is, they're from a different time?"
"Different place, different time, different timeline," Mack listed. "Any number of things. Could be friendly, could be not. I think it's best if we assume otherwise until we see a face."
"For once, we agree on something," Sam responded. "Where do you want us?"
"You're asking me? You guys are the Avengers here. Put yourself where you know you'll work best." Mack opened a door at the top of the flight of stairs, giving way to a few evacuating science workers before proceeding inside. The rest of them poured in quickly afterward, spreading out around the all but empty lab. On a table in the corner of the room sat an egg-shaped object with rapidly shifting lights on four sides. That thing looks like it was built in the 80's, Bucky thought, How on Earth does it allow for interdimensional travel?
Yo-Yo suddenly appeared by Mack's side. "The rest of the deck has been cleared. There's nobody left but us, and that," She informed.
"Good. Rhodes?" Mack asked, turning to the man in the metal suit. "What's F.R.I.D.A.Y. picking up?"
"All sorts of energy levels are spiking. Whatever's coming, it's gonna be here in the next few seconds," He relayed.
"Everybody ready!" Sam called, holding his shield before him. "Whatever you're gonna do, think it through now!"
Just in front of the corner of the room, the world looked like it started to play tricks on Bucky's eyes. The space around the large egg-like object seemed to bend inwards and stretch out at the same time, sending currents of orange and purple energy spraying out from the center. From the few science fiction books he had read since being freed from the Winter Soldier programming, he guessed that this is what it looked like when people started screwing with reality. A bright white light appeared in the center of the distortion, followed by waves of orange energy radiating out from it. Bucky firmly grasped the handle of his I.C.E.R. in his main hand, and squeezed his left into a fist. Whatever was coming through, it wasn't going to get past him.
A bright blue flash suddenly came from the center of the vortex, forcing them all to blink. When they opened their eyes, there was a newcomer to the room standing there in a tightly wrapped jacket, and wearing a helmet that looked something like Rhodey's if it had blue eyes instead of red. He had a bag over his shoulder, and a gun in his free hand. Bucky clicked the safety off.
The figure suddenly looked around at the scene and dropped his gun. "Woah woah woah woah woah! Can we please put the large assortment of firearms and other various forms of deadly weaponry away?!" He said in a panicked Scottish accent. At least he has some common sense, Bucky thought.
"Hold your fire! He's a friendly!" Mack ordered as the newcomer removed his helmet to reveal a swath of curly red hair and a well-trimmed beard. Bucky read his grey eyes in an instant, and his profiling instincts verified what the Director had stated.
The man leaned on his knees exhaling hard. "Bloody hell, Mack. Who were you expecting? Ward?"
Everybody powered down their weapons. Mack stepped out towards the man. "You know, if you were planning to come aboard the Theta, you could have just called for a jet," He said. The redhead gave him a tired look of annoyance, bringing a smile to Mack's face, followed by a quick embrace. "It's good to see you, Turbo."
"Yeah, you too," The Scot replied. Turbo? Bucky thought. Mack hadn't mentioned a 'Turbo'. "Where's Jemma and Alya? And the other guy?"
"Wait, what? Simmons is with you?" Mack asked.
"Yeah, they went in before I did…," The redhead trailed off, spinning around and looking at the still active quantum rift behind him. He put his hands up on his head, lacing his fingers together. "Don't tell me they got lost in there," He said.
"Guys, we've got two more energy signatures coming through!" Rhodey announced, charging his repulsors.
"No, wait! WAIT!" The Scot shouted, backpedaling from the vortex and retrieving his gun. Another white light grew in the center of it, then a flash of blue. Two more figures were standing there, with similarly designed helmets. One was about Rodriguez's height, the other about thigh-high on the first. The taller one removed her helmet, and a length of tucked brunette hair fell out onto her shoulders. The redhead clutched his chest and breathed out again. "Jemma. Thank God."
The woman tightly embraced the redhead, giving her own sigh of relief. "I guess our tenacity for close calls is still with us, Fitz."
The redhead is Fitz! Bucky realized. Which would make the woman, 'Jemma', Simmons. The two scientists. But who's the little one?
The small one tried to remove the helmet, to no avail, then looked up at Simmons. "Mom, help," The child demanded. Alya, Bucky suddenly recalled.
Simmons plucked the metal encasement from the little girl, tucking it under her arm and leading her out away from the quantum vortex, which Bucky realized was still standing open. He raised his I.C.E.R. once more. "If everybody's here, why is that thing still open?" He demanded.
Simmons turned to look into the vortex. "Well, we expecting someone else, but it's possible he decided to stay behind-"
As she spoke, the vortex flashed one more time, depositing a stark white figure in the room, facing away from them. The portal immediately stitched to a close and the egg-item stopped flashing. "Turn around!" Bucky instructed the figure. They obeyed.
"Sergeant Barnes, I mean you no harm," The final person said as he turned to face them. All three Avengers dropped their weapons in shock.
"Vision," Rhodey breathed. It was true. Before them stood the Vision, stark white from head to toe and with what appeared to be an Arc Reactor where the Mind Stone had previously resided. His eyes, however, were still green, as they had once been.
"Yes, it is I," The vibranium android responded. "It's good to see you all again."
"Vision, how are you here?" Sam asked.
"And why?" Mack added, indicating the Fitz-Simmonses.
"I am equally mystified as to how I am here, Captain Wilson. An explanation for another time. However, why I'm here is a bit more explicable, and relevant," Vision said. "The Fitz-Simmonses helped me. I thought it was only fair that I try to return the favor.
"Meaning?" Coulson asked curiously.
"I'm here to help you stop Centipede."