"Director? Ma'am?"

Homeland Security Director Diane McPherson shook her head reflexively. "Oh? Sorry...where are we on the SHIELD situation?"

"The Talbott ruse worked like a charm," replied Network Director Mark Fallon. "Our people were able to get out before the formal agencies took over and buried what's left of the place in red tape."

"And where are your people now?" asked Diane.

"En route," Fallon replied. "We lost track of them when they got out of the Hub, but we were just able to correct that..."

Diane nodded, her focus wandering away from the conversation. "Uh huh..."

Fallon was finding it impossible not to notice his boss' distraction. "We found them in the middle of Central Park buried neck-deep in horse dung."

"Good thing you found them, then," Diane agreed.

"Diane?" Fallon asked directly, hoping that the use of his boss' first name would finally grab and hold her attention. "What's going on?"

The Director sighed. "I'm going to a friend's retirement party this weekend. He and his partner are getting ready to leave the force after a long and distinguished career."

"Good for them," added Fallon.

"There's something about my friends, though, that's starting to bother me, Mark." Diane shifted her position in her chair until she was fully engaged in the conversation for the first time, leaning forward to take up more of the camera frame. "You see, according to their chief, my friends are the picture of the perfect police partnership. Even though they're just about to retire, my friends are still considered to be the best team in the entire department."

Fallon was starting to have a sinking feeling about where this conversation was headed. "That...that's a great credit to your friends, ma'am. And a high compliment."

"I thought so, too, at first," Diane agreed. "But then the chief said something that struck me as odd."

Fallon swallowed hard, possessed by a sudden case of nerves. "What was that, ma'am?"

"Well," Diane replied, "according to the chief, my friends are also considered to be the poster children for health and fitness among the department rank and file. He said, and I quote, 'Ellison and Sandburg look like they haven't aged a day in at least the past five years, maybe longer.' Now, you wouldn't happen to have any ideas as to why my friends have been able to stay as young-looking as they have, would you?"

Fallon shook his head, hoping his lie would come across as convincing. "No, ma'am. Perhaps it's just the healthiness of their lifestyle..."

Diane seemed to eye Fallon warily. "Of course," she declared, her tone revealing that even she didn't believe what she was saying. "That must be it."

"Must be," agreed Fallon, his voice showing that he didn't believe his words either.

"I just hate the idea that people I thought I could trust could be keeping secrets from me," Diane warned.

The warning wasn't lost on Fallon. "Duly noted, ma'am.'" The instant sound of conversation alerted Fallon to the arrival of his guests. "If you'll excuse me," he suggested to Diane, "I believe our guests have just arrived."

"Then I'll leave you to it," said Diane.

"Thank you," Fallon agreed...until he realized how close to his office the group was. "Unless you would like to meet them as well? Might do them some good to know that not everyone in the government's against them."

Diane nodded. "I'll stay on the line."

"Thank you," said Fallon.

A knock at the door interrupted the conversation. "Mark?" asked Coulson. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Of course not," Fallon replied with a smile.

"Thanks for the heads up earlier," said Coulson after the two men separated from their embrace. "That was an awful mustache, though. Couldn't the Yīzhī have made you a better disguise?"

"I wanted you to be sure who you were really talking to," Fallon countered, matching Coulson's teasing tone. "Would you have run if you hadn't recognized me?"

Coulson considered the idea for a minute. "Maybe," he declared. "Maybe not. Either way, it's definitely good to be back."

"Good to have you back," Fallon agreed. The sound of a woman gently clearing her throat reminded Fallon that there was someone waiting to join the conversation. He turned the monitor to face Coulson. "Phil, I'd like to introduce you to my boss, Homeland Security Director Diane McPherson."

Coulson jumped to a higher level of attention when he recognized the face on the screen. "Ma'am."

"As you were, Agent Coulson," Diane insisted, waving off the formality. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. My people speak very highly of you, as did some of the few people I trusted at SHIELD."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Coulson.

Diane decided to take advantage of the opportunity. "Any news on Director Fury?"

Coulson shook his head. "I'm sorry, Director, but no one's heard from him or from Captain America since the battle at the Triskelion." The knowing look that passed between Fallon and Director McPherson was not lost on Coulson, and he immediately made the missing connection. "Cap's here, isn't he?"

"Recovering and regrouping since the battle," Fallon replied.

Coulson let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. "Nice to get some good news for a change," he sighed with relief.

"What about your team, Mr. Coulson?" asked Diane. "How are they?"

Coulson's face fell. "My team's intact, technically," he replied. "Although we've recently discovered that one of my men is a HYDRA agent."

Fallon's expression matched that of his spirit-brother. "Sorry to hear that, Phil. I know how much you care about your people."

"Where is this man now?" asked Diane.

"He's here," Coulson replied. When Fallon and Diane both jumped to a heightened state of concern, Coulson reassured them, "but he's currently blind and deaf with a very limited level of mobility. I doubt he has a clue which country he's in, let alone of anything else."

"Shadow?" asked Fallon.

Coulson nodded. "She's getting more comfortable and skilled with her gift every day. It's a little scary, sometimes."

"You've lost me, gentlemen," Diane chimed in. "Who's this Shadow person?"

"A member of Coulson's team," Fallon explained. "Maybe the most powerful projector we've ever come across. Shadow has the power to permanently affect the mind, bypassing free will and survival instincts if necessary."

Diane's eyes widened. "So your prisoner...?" she asked Coulson.

"Was the picture of health this morning," Coulson replied. "But he also had the misfortune of being Shadow's S.O. when we found out he was HYDRA. She might have gotten a little...overzealous...in making sure he was secure."

"Sounds like it," Fallon chimed in.

"I'm hoping Master Xiānzhī can help us find out what he knows and what HYDRA's planning," said Coulson.

Diane nodded. "He certainly is capable of doing such a job." She turned to Fallon. "Has Master Xiānzhī agreed to this yet?"

"This is the first I'm hearing of this," Fallon replied. "I have yet to talk to Master Xiānzhī about it."

"Then I will let you two go and get the Guardians up to speed," declared Diane. "Agent Coulson, I know that SHIELD has been declared a terrorist organization. There was very little I could do about that, considering the massive security breach and the very public incident at the Triskelion. However, I am no fool. Eliminating the HYDRA threat is far more important than wiping egg off of the government's face. As far as I'm concerned, you and your people are under the protection of the Guardians. I will do whatever I can to help keep other interested parties off your scent."

"Thank you," Coulson sighed, grateful for the official offer of help.

The Homeland Security director straightened up and leaned in to try and look as imposing as she could over a video conference feed. "I'm not finished, Agent Coulson," she insisted. "My loyalty is not to you or your team. It is to the Guardians and my team. And you've already admitted to having one traitor among you. If you or your team do anything to jeopardize the security of my people, the bus that I will throw you under will be so big and so fast that not even Master Sìfāng will be able to rescue you from it. Do you understand?"

Coulson nodded, the message coming through loud and clear. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good," Diane declared. "Please keep me posted on HYDRA and the situation with the Kree. Good day, gentlemen."

"Yes, ma'am," Fallon and Coulson murmured quietly as the screen went black.

Coulson let out a low whistle, deeply impressed with the woman he had just met. "And I thought Fury was a tough boss..." A thought occurred to him. "She doesn't have..."

Fallon shook his head. "Nope. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the tiger spirit took one look at her and figured she didn't need his help."

#

Melinda May looked around her at the stark, unfamiliar, bustling warehouse, trying and failing to get her bearings. After having been teleported there. By a pseudo-celebrity pulp fiction crime novelist.

When she was much younger, May had always believed that she could adapt to any situation. It was the trait that SHIELD had recruited her for: her adaptability...

SHIELD. Not only did the SHIELD as she knew it no longer exist, it never really existed in the first place. SHIELD was based in lies and built on lies. And she had bought into those lies hook, line and sinker. Thinking that those lies were truth. That she was protecting the 'greater good'. That she was protecting the people she cared about more than anything else in the world.

Those lies were a house of cards. That house, and her world, had collapsed in less than a week.

Worse...she had betrayed her best friend. Thinking that she was protecting him. And instead of rejecting her outright, he had entrusted her with his biggest secrets. Putting both his and Skye's lives in her hands. Because, according to him, they had no place else to go. And he was probably right.

So here she was. In a situation that was rapidly fraying her nerves and her sanity. But while part of her wanted to just abandon everything, burn her identity and start over somewhere tropical...she couldn't. The girl who grew up to be Melinda May, Agent of SHIELD had never run away from anything in her life and she sure as hell wasn't going to start now. "What is this place?" she asked Skye, who seemed to be the only one who was comfortable in their new location.

"It's called the Network," replied Skye.

"The 'Network'?" asked May. "That's a pretty non-specific name..."

"What does this 'Network' do?" asked Simmons.

Skye looked around, watching the people buzz by them, moving with purpose and dogged determination...somewhere. It briefly reminded her of the Hub, which reminded her of SHIELD...forcing the melancholy thoughts out of her mind, Skye focused on Simmons' question...and soon discovered, to her surprise, that she didn't have an answer. "I don't really know, to be honest," she admitted. "All I know is that they helped me learn who I am, what I can do, who my parents are...I owe them everything, really."

"From what people keep telling me," a voice chimed in behind them, "that's pretty much the Network in a nutshell. Although I'm supposedly part of the eye of this storm so what the hell do I know..."

Skye recognized the owner of the voice immediately. She wheeled around and flung her arms around Ryan's neck, embracing him in an enthusiastic hug. "Hi, teach!" Skye exclaimed.

"Grasshopper," Ryan greeted her back, returning the embrace. "It's so good to see you. After everything that happened with Cap we were all so worried..."

Skye fixated on the first part of Ryan's comment as she pulled away from Ryan's greeting. "Is Cap okay?! We hadn't heard..."

"He's fine," Ryan replied. "Crusher got him here a couple of hours after everything that happened in DC." He leaned in, bringing his voice down to a semi-conspiratorial whisper. "He's been driving Phoenix crazy down here ever since."

Skye chuckled, appreciating the moment. "I'll bet," she agreed.

"Skye?" Simmons asked hesitantly, feeling awkward about interrupting the conversation. "Who's your friend?"

Ryan frowned, confused by the question...until he remembered who he was talking to. "Grasshopper, did you..."

"What?" Skye countered defensively. "It made sense at the time! I was protecting you guys from SHIELD!"

Simmons found that she didn't like where this conversation was headed. "Agen...May was right, wasn't she? You have 'hacked' all of us before!"

"She did," Coulson agreed with Simmons' statement.

"When?!" May demanded, turning to include the two men into the conversation.

"When we went after the Clairvoyant," Skye admitted quietly. "The Guardians were a major part of that raid..."

May frowned as the name sounded familiar and unfamiliar to her at the same time. "The 'Guardians'?"

Ryan sighed, turning to his 'student' with an expression of patient disappointment. "Do we really have to go through that whole explanation again?"

"No," Skye relented with a petulant sigh. She waved her hand as a physical sign of the mental exercise she was performing.

Four pairs of eyes widened in shock at the same time. "I remember everything now!" Simmons exclaimed. "But it's like I have two sets of memories in my head: the ones that involve the Guardians and the ones where we defeated Quinn on our own."

"Now you know how I feel," Coulson grumbled.

May stared at Coulson in awe as the last pieces of the puzzle of his abilities fell into place. "I remember a tiger on the bus," she announced, looking to Coulson for confirmation. When he nodded, May continued, "you called it your 'spirit animal', and the tiger...the tiger was happy that you had finally accepted him into your life. He has something to do with this, doesn't he?" Coulson nodded again. "There was an...an army that supported us going into the raid on Quinn's compound," May added, accessing her 'alternate', true memory of the event. "The army made Centipede's super-soldiers look like a bunch of girls coming after us in a pillow fight. Because...because they moved like you!"

"The tiger spirit possesses the army temporarily when the Guardians need their help," Fallon explained. "But Phil, here, has earned a rare honor: the ability to call on the tiger spirit to help him whenever he needs it."

"That's what happened when you went after Ward, isn't it?" May exclaimed in a breathless gasp. "You were working with the tiger spirit?"

Coulson nodded. "I guess you could technically say the tiger spirit is the 084, not me."

"I wouldn't say that," May muttered under her breath. Out loud, she asked the only question that was going through her mind. "Are you the only one who has earned this...honor?"

"He isn't," Fallon replied.

The ring of orange light that flashed in Fallon's eyes caused May to gasp as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "You...you and Coulson...you're like him?"

Fallon nodded, extending his hand to May in greeting. "Mark Fallon. I'm the director of the Network."

When May shook Fallon's hand, a different, more recent memory rose to the front of her mind. "Are you, by any chance, related to a Glenn Talbott, Director? He's an Air Force Colonel..." The last thing May expected to hear in response to that question was a hearty chuckle from both Fallon and Coulson. "What am I missing here, gentlemen?"

Fallon suppressed his chuckling long enough to adopt a mask of deathly sincerity. "Mr. Coulson," he announced, "it's a real mess your boys have gotten us into..."

May caught on quickly. "That was you, Director Fallon?"

Fallon nodded again. "We're...a top secret branch of the Department of Homeland Security, answering directly to the President and Director McPherson. As such, we were able to hear about the terrorism declaration before it was made public. Colonel Talbott's little video conference was a coded warning to Phil to get you guys out of there before you could be arrested."

"Thank you," May commented quietly. The matter settled, her mind went back to her original set of questions. "So...this is all about some mystical 'tiger spirit', then? You weren't treated at the Guest House?"

Fallon stared at May, quizzically confused. "The Guest House?"

"Guess it's time to get down to business," announced Coulson.