2. Cellular Plans

. . .

May handed the tablet back to Coulson, the salient points of the case finding firm ground in her mind. "You sure about this arrangement?"

"Dropping the trainee leash? Yeah, I am. You gonna give me the usual spiels of warning and misgiving?"

He was only moderately surprised by her response. "No. I've watched you process him through the system, although my position requires that I remind you that he's skipped most of the physical stuff that we typically require of a new agent." She gave him one of her thin, wry smiles before crossing her arms tight against her jacket.

Phil tapped at the collar of his suit, atop where the once-fatal scar on his chest still lingered. "I don't think we'll learn anything from making him whale on a punching bag for an hour that we didn't already know."

"Granted."

"Not to mention everyone knows the second he starts waggling his fingers, the rules of what he can do tend to change."

"Also granted." She gestured at the tablet, now making its way to the top of the Director's desk. Her voice became all business. "If you're sending Simmons with me then I assume we've already got access to the morgues?"

"Yeah. The FBI guy that tipped me to the situation did me a solid on that. It'll be part of the wide briefing." She nodded as he continued. "So that'll be her role for you on this one, biological field tech. Standard, well inside her comfort zone. Everyone should get a light job once in a while. We've had enough weird galactic crap for a bit."

"And Loki?"

"He's your generalist support, put him to use however you need. Now, part of what I think might be valuable going forward is that none of us should ever totally forget he's an alien. He's not gonna think exactly the way we do, so that means you've got some easy out of the box vision with him. Watch how he reacts to people and what they're saying. He might not always realize or care what's so different about his viewpoint, but you'll pull it out of him if you ask." It was a tactic that worked well last year, at a tech conference back when the demigod was still devoted to the cause of general jackassery. He paused at the memory, realizing just how long ago that seemed now.

May considered that. "You're thinking of him as a possible profiler?"

"Sorta. It's one avenue, but why narrow it up too much? The guy's got like a thousand years worth of experience as an agent provocateur, basically, and knows ways of being a pain in the ass we've barely uncovered. Have fun. Make him someone else's pain if you need."

"This is still so weird," she muttered, mostly for herself.

"That's a day at the office," he said, looking up at the pair of shadows drawing close to his door. Right on time.

. . .

The Director took his place at his desk as Simmons and Loki filed in, the young woman primly taking a seat on the opposite side of him and the tall figure in black picking a clean space of wall to lean back against. His long and wild hair was now combed relatively neatly back, his major concession towards looking humanly professional. The suits and other paraphernalia of being an agent were no trouble for him. The hair? Hell with it. Phil knew perfectly well he could illusion up a different look when a situation called for it. Not worth a fight. There'd been enough little snags just getting him used to the place.

May took the first round of the brief. "We've got three bodies, each recently killed at a public location in different places along the east coast, taken to an unknown secondary location for a purpose we haven't yet fully ascertained, and then left to be found. In or close to the public location they were removed from, as it happens. No witnesses to the removal or to the return. FBI crime lab is unable to identify the fatal agent used to kill, although two of the three initial autopsies identified a needle mark in the same place on the neck. We're sure the third has the same."

Simmons reached forward to grab one of the files. "Is that what's bringing this to our door instead of leaving it a federal matter?" She looked at the top sheet overview and then up to the Director and the team lead in turn. "Unknown chemical agent, some new murder weapon?"

"It's a start," said Coulson.

"What else?" asked Loki, glancing quickly over Simmons' shoulder to skim the notes. "Won't send a trio of your handpicked out for the grim results of some crusty needle."

May and Coulson shared a look. Coulson tapped at the digital tablet, bringing it to life. "All three medical examiners are kinda weirded out about the state the corpses were found in. The FBI is no less weirded out, and an old friend in Quantico dropped a dime to me. I think they're pretty happy to have someone else wrangle it. Serial killers might be in their wheelhouse, but this went up a notch. Their psych profiles aren't coming up with anything they can hook into."

Agent Simmons made a soft noise at the coldly professional photos, looking at the zipper-like lines across the torso and what they revealed inside. "Good lord," she whispered. "They took everything out and put it right bloody back." She looked up at the Director. "And then left the body where they first took it, bold as you please."

"Three times, even," said Coulson.

"That we know of," added Loki, ever the obvious cynic.

"Yes. That we know of."

"So the unknown actors were looking for something in either the abdomen or the thoracic cavity, is my first observation." Simmons murmured, flicking through the rest of the series. While she'd gone an extra shade of pale at the condition of the bodies, her face was drawn tight into a clinical examination of what she could see. Missing nothing, looking for everything.

"Does look rather like someone rummaging through a bureau," added Loki, now leaning down over her shoulder to peer more closely. His expression was only musing; the studious look of a man with no fear or disgust left to give for death's more grotesque displays.

"Well, that's a visual. Not inaccurate, however. They were clean about it, but quick. You can tell by the haphazard rearrangement of the intestines." Simmons flickered her gaze up to Agent May. "I'm assuming you'd like me to run another examination of the bodies, see what may have been missed by civilian examiners."

May nodded, her finger tracing a line on a map laid on the desk. "We're going to start heading out to the most recent victim tonight. Closest business airport is in Columbia to the south, and the local public strip is beyond tiny, so we'll be driving. I don't want to take the Bus on this one anyway. The Director's already called ahead to advise the Newberry police that someone's coming in. We'll be presenting as federal authority, not SHIELD, obviously, and if they check the creds, they'll pass muster. They're going to be too rattled to look close at us anyway; that part of South Carolina doesn't get much in the way of bad news."

"Yes, this one." Simmons tapped the top file, the first one she'd examined. "Hans Stutgart, do I have that correct?" Coulson nodded. "Anything odd about him or the others?"

May answered her. "We'll be bringing the case files along for all of us to look over, but no. Stutgart was a grade school teacher, no record of any kind. Came to America when he was twelve, naturalized citizen. The most dangerous thing about him was probably his lunchbag in the teacher's rec room. He seems like he was an egg salad kinda guy."

"And the others?"

"One owned a gas station, the other was a nurse practitioner. All clean, no surface level connections to each other." May reached down to pull the strewn files into a neat pile, giving Phil a glance. "I think we're ready to start."

"Think so, too. Anything else, you can talk about it in the car." Phil nodded to the pair on the other side of the desk. Simmons stood up, collecting the straightened pile up into her arms and giving Loki a look of nervousness – not actually due to him, but owing to the start of any new investigation. He lifted an eyebrow in response, less concerned with any of that than the pointed look he was getting from the Director. "We're done, although if I could get a moment with you, Loki..."

. . .

The demigod resumed leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed loosely against his chest. One eyebrow arched, waiting for it.

"First official field outing under our watch. Rules won't be like Montana, you're going by our book now. You and Agent May going to have any problems?" The question was conversational, not tense. All this was implied in the agreements Loki made when Coulson brought him to the Playground a few months ago. Mostly he was looking for the style of the reaction.

The one he got was still mildly surprising in its offhandedness. "Why would I?" Loki studied the Director's prying face, zeroing in on the obvious and human concern. "Because I'm now to take orders from a woman instead of you directly?"

"I'm just double-checking. In our line of work, I'd love to say it's the sort of thing that's never happened. I can't. There's a little history there."

Loki snorted. "Unlike some amongst my Asgardian countrymen, I have few issues with obeying a lady when her command is duly earned. Particularly one who is known to be well capable in battle. One such as this was, in fact, my own teacher. Long ago." His tone drifted low for a moment before he waved it away. "Regardless even of that, I have no doubts that Agent May is forever capable of finding some fresh method of taking my head off my body and then retaining the skull to keep little trinkets in. She permits me because you ask it and to my own surprise has allowed herself to be practically cordial since. I'd be foolish to test that overmuch." He shrugged. "I said I'd abide by your rules, and I shall."

"Good answer." Phil gestured at him with a pen. "Any questions?"

"I've none I can find. If you had some other duty in mind alongside this one, you'd ask it, not request me to fumble around for it in awkward conversation."

"Not on this. May'll run you on your paces, not that I think you'll get winded." Another dry snort met that. "Good luck. Have fun. Do not play 'Are We There Yet' with May tonight." Phil grinned. "She hates that."

"Duly noted," said the demigod, before slipping quietly out the door.

. . .

Loki took a bundled equipment bag from a pile Simmons tugged into the bay and tossed it lightly, deftly, into the back of the freshly washed black SUV. The weight of the bag made the vehicle creak when it landed, though the demigod never so much as swayed under what he regarded as a meager load. The occasional little daily reminder of what the 'new' agent really was.

"Be gentler with that next one, please. I've got the slide cases strapped in firmly, I think, but you never know." As requested, the next duffel found its place more smoothly. "Thank you," finished Simmons, noticing movement out of the corner of her eye and turning towards it. "Skye?"

"Hey," she said, her hands shoved in her pockets. "Ran down to give Loki his new phone." The sound of his name brought the sleek black-haired head out of the back of the van to look at her. "Standard issue; full spread of wireless, GPS, all the Gs, LTE, you got it. Phil hates unnecessary long distance calls, blah blah, I programmed in a list of all the pizza places I could find on the East Coast because that's just a necessity. When you get back I can push in the rest of the US regions."

Simmons giggled and moved out of the way so Skye could approach. She tugged the new phone – a smoothly modified Starkphone - out of her pocket to toss it to Loki, knowing he'd snap it out of midair easily. "I also preloaded a few albums onto it," she said, grinning even though she couldn't read his blank expression.

Loki tapped the screen out of curiosity and swept down to find the music folder, his eyes narrowing at the pale blue album cover, sprinkled with bright white snowflakes. The sharp green-grey gaze drifted up to Skye's face where it narrowed further, the sarcastic response unspoken but clear – Really?

Skye stepped back, the grin getting bigger at her own joke and at the knowledge that she was going to get away with it. "The cold never bothered me anywayyy," she sang, only a little off-key, dropping a wink as his expression become one of amused but genuine annoyance.

"You're going to pay for that someday," Loki muttered, shoving the phone into the pocket of his hoodie with a crisp gesture of irritation. The knowledge that he was perhaps not technically Asgardian was long since out among the core team by some insistent necessity of paperwork and forward planning; a routine of blood tests and genetic work to ensure that if something happened even to him in the field, they might be able to help. Not that the requirement went over well at the time.

It bought his human companions some leeway on what he regarded as a tense and combative topic that their response really was, in line with Coulson's insistence, who cares? He was 'Asgardian,' their bizarre but promised ally, and that was that. The unwelcome word monster was simply not in their collective lexicon.

Privately, that attitude actually bought the humans a great deal of leeway since his arrival.

Skye was ever fated to be the boundary pusher, however. "No, I'm not," she chirped, now still grinning at a movie night memory of his black silhouette hunched in a oversized chair as a little blue Disney alien cried for a real family of his own. Loki spent the short film drinking a rather astonishing number of beers and holding his vocal opinion of the ugly duckling fable tightly to himself. He said almost nothing when the alien on the screen happily accepted his place on Earth, only excusing himself for the night when the credits and their joyful snapshot epilogue were done.

But he'd kept the plush Stitch toy Skye gave him as a housewarming gift. That said a few things.

He sighed at her. "And how do you figure that miracle?"

"I also put on those Queen albums you don't seem to give up on. And yes, Princes of the Universe is in there. What's the deal with that, anyway?"

"It's nothing," he snapped, no malice in it. He still pulled the phone out to check, mollified by the expanded track listing. Then he went back to sorting the cargo in the SUV.

Skye shot the puzzled Simmons a look. "All I know is, I actually caught him watching Highlander in the rec room a few weeks ago when most of the crew was asleep. I think he thought it was a comedy."

"It wasn't?" came the scornful voice from the depths of the car.

"Hell, maybe these days it is." She shrugged. "Just please don't tell me you think that's the height of human cinema."

"I don't think much of it in general," came the weary mutter. "Anything else?"

"May doesn't stop for potty or snack breaks unless you beg and plead, so finish up anything you gotta do before she pulls out of the driveway."

"Noted. Gods."

Skye and Simmons shared a silent giggle at the muted exasperation.