ZOOM! The team zipped across the ice with the speed and precision of the arrow their formation resembled.
Daisy felt her body humming with the bike, the rumbling of the ice in response, and the quivering heart beats of Lincoln and Joey a half dozen feet from her. Vibrations. Kind of her thing.
Joey felt the constant sting of the slivers of ice across the left side of his face as the wind roared over them from the east. It barely broke his concentration though, as he focused on the blades of the snowmobile, constantly changing them for the most efficiency. The feet of the vehicle melted in and out into various rectangular shapes, their tips changing ever so slightly by fractions of degrees.
Joey needed the practice. Between Daisy the master Inhuman S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Lincoln the seasoned Inhuman doctor he felt like the least experienced member of the team. He was the newest. At first he'd been excited about how much easier his construction job would be with his powers, then he'd stopped those bullets from hitting Daisy and he realized there was a lot more to the world than just building new things. Sometimes it was about protecting what was there from what shouldn't be.
"They're too close. If we fire now we'll blow ourselves up!" Fitz exclaimed through the cockpit intercom.
"I knew I'd regret the day I signed off on flying with heavier ammunition." May muttered, "if we needed the guns I would have asked for them."
Fitz swiveled to take in the 270 degree screen. His finger pulsed on the controls for Zephyr's air-to-air defenses. At least five of the Quinjets were hovering within a dozen feet of either wing, grounding the plane on course, unable to safely turn. A sixth dropped below out of his side camera views. Fitz switched views to the tail and caught a glimpse of the signature black and red paint as it moved to the more vulnerable engines. He watched in despair as the enemy aircraft unloaded hundreds of rounds a minute into the belly of his plane.
May groaned. Dozens of sensors flashed red in her cockpit. The noise was deafening.
"Oh dear," muttered Simmons, strapped into the seat behind her.
"Seal all the compartments we can. If the exterior is breached we can't risk the whole plane decompressing." Ordered May, tightening her grip on the controls.
The overhang was small compared to the few they had seen earlier. The only reason they'd found it was that it had come up on Zephyr One's scans as a different density than the snow and mountain above it. They had come to a smooth sliding stop, turning their snowmobiles to the side against the back wall.
The trip had been faster than they expected, but the temperature had decreased far more than it should have as they got closer to the blinking dot on Daisy's display. Far more. They parked their vehicles as deep as they could under the overhang to protect them and took out their supplies. Daisy set up her laptop again, concentrating more closely on its reports.
"-60 degrees Fahrenheit." She read out loud in disbelief.
"I know we're in Antarctica and all, but this doesn't seem..."
"We're close," Daisy muttered, hugging her free arm to her chest, the other holding setting up her laptop. The temperature is at least three times colder than average for the area, and it's not windchill. The overhang was protecting them for the moment, but the wind that did get in wasn't helping. Outside was a moving, pure white, curtain of shards. She looked over at Lincoln and Joey. Their eyelashes had taken on a ghostly white where their masks weren't covering. All of them were shivering. Their body temperatures had plummeted to just above hypothermic levels, and it was getting colder. They didn't have long before they dropped like the snow around them.
Lincoln had cleared the ground cover from a small area and worked fervently to set up a fire. He set down some of their extra blankets to separate the kindling from the frost. He kept sparking them with a touch of his fingers only to have it go out from drafts of wind.
Joey was unpacking everything off the snowmobiles. Lincoln and Daisy blinked quizzically, struggling to focus on what he was doing. Joey sighed, clouds emanating from his mouth, and took a deep shuddering breath, stretching out his hands and concentrating. The snowmobiles' external armor liquified into a puddle on the floor before rising up into a wall sealing the overhang off from the outside blizzard.
It went dark for a moment inside their camp site before she could see his face in the amber light radiating from the center of the space. Lincoln grinned, dropping an ember into the center of the wood pile. They had warmth. Daisy struggled closer and collapsed near the fire. Joey did the same.
Gideon Malick, former world council member, high government official, last head of HYDRA, and very, very afraid.
For the first time, Malick was unsure of HYDRA's supremacy. He was unsure of just how much the new S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about the extent of his operations. All he knew was that sitting here at this conference table, talking to some of the most powerful men in the world, he felt far more insignificant than he should have… After spending billions to formulate a plan and centuries of attempts, he thought the world could finally transcend into a new Age. And yet, he could have made his life a whole lot easier, his children's lives, and their children's lives by not forming an army. But he had to. For the sake of the safety of the world.
"Mr. Malick?"
The question broke into his thought process, of whether he could pursue the situation.
"Yes?"
"Should we close the North African offices as well?"
He snapped back into business mode, "Close them all."
"But sir..."
"Phil Coulson can never be allowed to find out what we have. Close the offices, and burn them to the ground."
"As you wish, sir."
Gideon would need the money he could gain from the insurance claim. He had a S.H.I.E.L.D. team to outpace.