Recruitment Drive: Reaching an Accord
Chapter 4
Doctor House looked at the results of the tissue sample analysis. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.
"Gentlemen," He announced, "The source of our patient's problem is simple. His wound is infected. And the reason for that is because certain individuals, which I shall leave unnamed, didn't stop to think that a man who had a splinter the size of my arm stuck in him might have contaminants in his wound and thus forgot to put him on an antibiotic regimen after surgery."
"We did put the patient on antibiotics," One of the other doctors protested. "It hasn't done any good."
"If the analyzer is telling the truth, then this isn't even a particularly resistant strain of bacteria that's settling in. So either somebody failed to administer antibiotics or you're using bad drugs."
The doctors who had been attending to the wounded Agent Calderon continued to protest that they had been administering antibiotics, so House took a sample from the patient's IV bag and tested it. He found no trace of any medicine in the IV. The doctors then produced the bottle from which they had taken the medicine which they claimed to have put in the IV.
"I see some traces of medicine in the sample, but they're breaking down. This bottle of medicine has spoiled. Look at the expiration date before you use this stuff! This bottle expired…" House looked at the expiration label, and then suddenly had a double-take. "Six months from now?"
"It wasn't just that bottle, either." House said as the Coulson loyalists sat around a Scrabble board waiting for their food to be delivered. Looking at his tiles, he selected G, I, V, and E and placed them on the board. "Every single bottle of medicine in the base hospital has gone bad. And it's not because of poor storage, either – the refrigerator we use to keep things fresh is running really well. Just like everything else connected to cold around here."
"That's certainly troubling," May agreed. "It's a good thing we only have one seriously injured person on base. If that had happened after the battle for the Kree city, it would have been much worse." Then she glanced down on the board. "Simmons, names aren't acceptable words."
"What? I haven't moved yet." Simmons protested.
"But it's your move," Fitz pointed out. "If you didn't put GONZALES on the board, who did?"
At that point, a tile lifted itself out of Fitz's tray and placed itself on the board.
"How did that happen?" Simmons wondered. "It shouldn't be possible for tiles to just move like that."
Several more removed themselves from the four player's trays and the bag and arranged themselves to form a message.
C
GONZALES
I L
V D
ME E
R
O
N
"Gonzales… give me Calderon," May read. "It looks like the people who Calderon picked a fight with in Chicago are starting to make their displeasure known."
"Do you think they're also the reason why the furnace keeps icing up?" Simmons asked.
"With all the empowered and exotic individuals that they deal with over in Chicago, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them could do this. Remember, when I first met Murphy's people, their first guess as to what I was a Valkyrie," May's lip twitched up momentarily. "Sif thought that was rather amusing when I told her about it."
"I'll go through the files that Murphy sent us when she first joined SHIELD," Fitz offered. "They might have a clue on exactly who Calderon pissed off."
Just then the cook entered the room. "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but it appears that lunch will have to be delayed.
All the food in the refrigerator has spoiled."
"So, in addition to the Iliad being stalked by a decidedly unnatural snowstorm, which is causing NOAA to wonder what is causing such bizarre weather in the central Atlantic and might very well get our carrier located and seized by the US government, it appears that every single perishable that hasn't been frozen is now spoiled," Agent Weaver reported. "And thawing out the frozen supplies isn't an option."
Weaver lifted a pair of tongs to reveal a frozen chicken breast. She dropped the chicken to the table, where it promptly shattered like fine crystal. A few moments later, the frost coating the fragments melted into a strange ooze.
"It's all like that. We've been trying to analyze what that strange substance is, but it evaporates within a matter of minutes, no matter how we try to preserve it. All attempts to remove it from the frozen items has also resulted in the near total destruction of the items in question as well."
"What could be causing this?" Gonzales asked.
"We're not sure, but it appears to be connected to one of the operations that Agent Calderon was involved in before he was nearly killed trying to apprehend Agent Skye," Agent Oliver stated. "The message 'Give Me Calderon' has been appearing in letters of frost all over the base."
"We won't be doing that. Calderon is an Agent of SHIELD. Everything he was doing was perfectly justified."
"That mentality is why so many other intelligence agencies are so eagerly annexing of the SHIELD resources they can find," Agent Morse pointed out.
Gonzales brushed that aside. "Have we found anything about Theta Protocol in Coulson's computer?" He asked.
"Nothing in the files I've been able to access explains what it is in any detail," Agent Mackenzie said. "There is one file I found that Coulson apparently accessed at least once a day, but I only found it right before this meeting, so I'm not sure what it is."
"Open it now." Gonzales commanded.
Mackenzie plugged a thumb drive into the meeting room computer and accessed a file. An image of two men confronting each other appeared on the monitor.
"Enough! You are, all of you are beneath me! I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by..."
*CRASH* *SMASH* *THUD*
"Puny god."
The video clip lingered on the image of Loki whimpering in pain as he lay embedded in the floor of what was once Tony Stark's living room before fading out.
Everyone in the room blinked.
"I think I can guess why Coulson likes watching this." Morse quipped.
"Moving on…" Gonzales said hastily. "Any progress on locating the Demonreach facility?"
"There are no islands or island facilities by that name," Morse reported. "However, when doing a historical search, I found an anomaly in the maps of Lake Michigan."
"Oh?" Agent Weaver inquired.
"If you look at some really old maps of the area, there's an island that doesn't appear on modern maps. I cross-referenced against satellite imagery, and the island is still there, it just doesn't get put on the maps."
"That must be where Demonreach is." Agent Oliver said.
"If it is, then Murphy wasn't kidding about the facility predating SHIELD. The island stopped being recorded on maps in 1907. That's a good thirty years before the founding of the SSR."
"What do you know about this island?" Gonzales asked.
"Given that it dropped off the books over a century ago, not much. It looks like there were a few attempts to establish a lighthouse and a small fishing and furring industry there at the end of the 19th century, but they all failed. It seems that everyone who tried to settle there died in accidents or ended up going mad for no apparent reason. Even people who just visited for a few days would have nightmares about the place for years. Eventually the survivors all returned to the mainland and checked themselves into mental hospitals, and society as a whole did its best to try to forget the place."
"Interesting security system. I wonder how they pulled it off." Agent Mackenzie mused.
"You'll find out when you get there," Gonzales said. "Bobbi, Mack, take a Quinjet and investigate this island."
The cloaked Quinjet soared over the waters of Lake Michigan. Murphy had implied that the island had a first rate sensor net installed on it, so she was using every possible trick to evade detection she knew. At the low altitude and speed she was travelling at, the Quinjet wouldn't show up on radar before she was right on top of it even if the cloak wasn't up.
"Sensors aren't picking up anything," Mack reported. "I can't even pick up any sign of a power grid. Maybe this isn't the right island."
"We still need to take a look. Islands don't get removed from the maps for no reason," Bobbi pointed out. "I'm going to make a pass over the island. Let me know if you see any place we can land."
The eleven decades between the last time man had settled on the island and their visit had erased virtually all traces of human habitation. The only thing that poked above the level of the trees was the ruins of the lighthouse, which had yet to fully collapse. It glowed eerily in the moonlight, probably from some kind of luminescent moss that by now was likely the only thing holding some of the bricks together.
After circling the entire island from a couple miles off the coast, Bobbi found a clearing large enough to land the Quinjet. Less than a minute after landing, a very tall man wearing a leather duster and carrying a staff walked into the clearing. He raised one hand in a clumsy attempt at the Vulcan salute.
"Ahoy the Warbird!" He called. "You can deactivate the cloaking device. I know you're there."
"That's the guy Coulson brought in to deliver that lecture on 084 handling." Mach said. "What's he doing here?"
"At a guess, I'd say he's the Warden." Bobbi replied. "I wonder how he knew we were coming?"
The man walked right up to where the Quinjet was landed and deliberately rapped his staff against the side.
"The two of you might as well come out and talk." He said.
"How does he know how many of us there are?" Bobbi wondered.
"This is getting freaky." Mack agreed.
They deactivated the apparently useless cloaking device and lowered the hatch.
"Welcome to Demonreach," Said the man cheerily, "I'm Harry Dresden, the Warden of this facility. What are you here for? In case you're planning to cause trouble, I suppose I should warn you that the island's feeling grouchy today."
The two agents exchanged a startled look. The island was grouchy? Bobbi had the sinking feeling that she should have spent far more time reading the available files on PENTAGRAM than she'd been able to.
"I'm Agent Morse, and this is Agent Mackenzie." Bobbi said. "Agent Murphy challenged us to see if we could make infiltrate your facility without being detected."
"You just lost," Dresden pointed out. "So Murph sent you? Let's head over to my place so we can sit down and talk."
The Warden lead the two agents through the brush to a stone path forming a rough staircase. The staircase lead to the half-collapsed lighthouse and a stone cottage. Upon seeing them up-close, Bobbi realized that the odd glow was not from luminescent moss. No plant would ever grow in patterns that looked like words in some obscure alphabet she couldn't recognize, nor would anyone take the time to shape them like that artificially. She tried to snap a few pictures with her phone, only to find that it had suddenly gone dead.
During the walk, Bobbi and Mack tried to get Dresden to explain how he had detected the cloaked Quinjet, but were unable to get an explanation more detailed than "I know everything that happens on this island." After a number of failed attempts to figure out exactly what Dresden was guarding on the island and how it was secured, he had a question of his own.
"I don't suppose you brought any fresh food? I don't get the opportunity to leave the island to go grocery shopping all that often. Murph usually brings some whenever she visits."
Bobbi shook her head. "Sorry. We've had a hard enough time getting fresh food back at base. Everything keeps spoiling or freezing solid within a day."
"Really?" Dresden raised an eyebrow. "When did this start happening."
Bobbi and Mack started to describe the various strange events that had been happening at SHIELD ever since the incident in Chicago.
"Unnatural freezes, snowstorms out of nowhere, food spoilage… it sounds like you've attracted some unfriendly fae. What can you tell me about events before the incidents started?"
There was only one thing that Bobbi could think of that could have possibly caused fairies to be attacking SHIELD. Bobbi told the Warden about the incident with Calderon in the pub. Suddenly, she felt as if the air had spontaneously dropped to near freezing. It felt like something invisible was watching her – and was very, very angry.
"YOU HURT GRASSHOPPER?" A voice boomed from nowhere.
"What was that?" Mack asked.
"That was Demonreach," The Warden coldly stated, "I warned you the island was feeling grumpy, and he also likes Molly. So do I – she was once my apprentice. Her father named his youngest after me. And for what your people did to her, you're lucky that so far all she's done is make life difficult for you. She's fully capable and entitled to do far worse."
"What makes this girl so important, anyway?" Mack wondered.
"Molly Carpenter is Queen-To-Be of the Winter Fae," Dresden informed them, causing the two agents to pale. Of the all the people that Calderon had to injure in a stupid bar fight, it had to be a VIP. "On top of that, her father is a retired Knight of the Cross. Most people in the occult community give Michael the same kind of respect that you lot in SHIELD reserve for Captain America. If he decides to let the word out that SHIELD can't be trusted, it's unlikely that you'll be able to get anyone in the community to work with you any time in your lifetime."
"How are we supposed to fix of this mess?" Bobbi asked.
"I'd get in touch Murph and arrange for a meeting. At that meeting, apologize for your comrade's stupidity and offer to punish him however she sees fit, and offer wergild in compensation. And I'd hurry. The longer you delay, the more she's going to escalate, and sooner or later that wergild will have to be paid in blood. And as Knight of the Winter Court, I'm probably the person who'd be sent to collect it. Now I suggest you leave and convince your boss that it's time to start mending fences before someone sends a horde of trolls through the breach."
The apparently sentient island made its displeasure with the two agents quite clear on their way back to the Quinjet. The atmosphere reminded Bobbi of the first time she had ever been in a haunted house back when she was a kid – only far creepier, with a subtle undercurrent that unlike commercial haunted houses, the island was capable of harming them if it wanted to. By the time they made it back, she understood very clearly why virtually every who lived on the island ended up dead or insane.
One thing was for certain. They really needed to do something about the SHIELD/Fairy dispute before things started escalating further.
In an apartment in New York lived a woman known as Agatha Moore. It wasn't her real name, any more than Augusta King, Caroline Turing, or any of several dozen other names she had used over the years had been. In fact, in the past year it had been rare for her to keep the same identity going for more than a week. The name she thought of herself as was Root. At the moment, she appeared to be talking to nobody.
"I'm afraid I don't know how to do that, and can't pick it up in the amount of time you're talking about. Even if I start hitting the Whiskey I wouldn't be able to learn that skill that quickly.
There was a pause.
"You mean I don't be any good at it, I just have to be seen trying to do it at the right time? I can do that. I guess that means I'm going shopping, then."
A few moments later, she looked around, and spoke to herself instead of her unseen correspondent.
"So much for French Mary Poppins Barbie. Time for the next assignment."
A/N:
I'm sorry if the Scrabble message doesn't line up perfectly on anybody's screen. I tried, but some fonts don't give characters equal widths.
Yes, Dresden is a Star Wars fan and not a Star Trek fan. But Star Wars doesn't have a tradition of cloaking devices, and I figured that Harry would at least be familiar enough with the concept of cloaked Warbirds from Star Trek to make the reference.
I doubt Dresden himself knows everything that is locked up on the island, much less the mechanism behind the spells binding them there.
Root was revealed to have once been Whiskey from Dollhouse in the Recruitment Drive story Action Figures. So I decided to have her making references to Whiskey as a way of indirectly bringing up her Dollhouse-implanted skills. And asking for a shot of Whiskey while in the field is code for her requesting that her colleagues activate the 'three flowers in a vase' trigger to bring her Whiskey persona to the fore.