"You were bluffing, about throwing the headphones into the ocean right?" Leo asked Coulson, him as they barricaded the dining hall.
"I don't know Fitz," he admitted, pushing a chair against the door. "If there's a chance of more people getting infected-"
"You can't just throw them away!" he interjected, shocked. "There are facilities for-"
"Look, I know it's a horrible thing to do," he cut him off. "to put waste like that into the environment and I'm not happy about it either but if more people can get infected with this we need to-"
"I don't care about the bloody fish!" Leo shouted, even though he did. He was furious, absolutely furious that his leader was not seeing what a mistake it would be to get rid of the headphones. "I care about Jemma! She's out there, sick, probably hurting and maybe scared out of her mind and you want to throw away something that might help her?! That might help all of them? What the hell is wrong with you."
It probably wasn't such a good idea, shouting at the leader of the organization he worked for, at his friend, but he didn't care. Jemma needed him and wasn't going to let anything stop him from ensuring everything humanely possible was done to get her better. So help anyone who stood against him.
"Keep your voice down," Coulson warned firmly, shifting his eyes to the crowd. "This isn't the time."
"Then when is the time?" he demanded angrily, shoving a table into the door with such force that it left a dent in the wood.
"Fitz you need to calm down," he commanded, his tone a mixture of anger and disappointment.
"No," he hissed at him. "No you need to- to calm up!" That made sense, bravo Leo. But he continued infuriated. "She's out there and she's sick and we can't just..." There were too many pieces of him missing and he broke down, losing control of himself. He turned away, embarrassed of Coulson seeing him weak, seeing his tears when he should be strong. "We can't throw away something that can save her. We h-have to s-save her... we have to... she's n-not gone," he remembered the woman's traitorous words. "Jemma isn't g-gone... she's scared and she n-needs me."
"Come over here," Coulson said, a gentleness entering his voice as he led him into a corner and hid him from view.
"W-why did I l-leave her?" he sobbed.
His friend placed his hands on his shoulders. "Look, we're going to try our best to keep the headphones OK? But you can't check out on us Fitz." he ordered. "You're right, Simmons needs you." Leo sniffed and nodded. It didn't matter how hard this was, how broken he felt, he had to keep going. "We all need you," Coulson pushed on and Leo let out another shaky sob before meeting his eyes. "You're on this team for a reason." He informed him.
He looked past his leader, to the room which was filled with people who were depending on him and his team. What would Jemma say if she knew he was letting them all down?
A young boy helped Oscar lift one of the tables onto the pile against the door and Leo remembered his name was Max and that his mother was among the infected. What a brave little guy, he was shaking and his eyes were wide, his face streaked with tears but he was still helping.
Leo swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment.
"What can I do?" he asked opening them.
"You can help me catch the sick people," he informed him. "Get them somewhere safe."
Leo straightened and wiped his face. "I can do that sir," he complied sturdily and they smiled at each other.
"Coulson could you come here for a moment," May called from the kitchen.
Leo followed his leader to where their teammate waited and found a man sitting on the floor, Trip pointing a gun at his face.
The back door to the kitchen, through which Leo guessed they had come in, was now boarded up as well.
"The tour salesman," Trip explained, glaring at him. "We caught him trying to escape on a life raft."
"Where did you think you were going?" Coulson demanded and the man laughed mockingly.
"Away from this hell hole," he spat at them.
"After you let all those infected people out," May shot at him, rare fury in her voice.
He shrugged as if they were praising him for some difficult task and he was being modest, "You tranquilize them for a few minutes while you untie the ropes, it wasn't so hard."
"You bastard they could get hurt! They could kill someone," Leo raged and Coulson held him back from, well he wasn't sure from what exactly but it wasn't going to be a fluffy hug.
"That was the point," the man taunted them and he felt fire in the pit of his stomach.
"How do we cure this thing?" Coulson demanded. "You had better give us an answer, none of us would really mind throwing you into ocean. I hear the waters here are pretty cold and I doubt anyone is going to throw you a life-preserver."
The man raised his hands defensively, looking almost scared.
Good. Leo hoped they would throw him into the ocean. More food for the fish.
He'd sold them to her, Leo recognized his face. This lowly worm had sold Jemma headphones that turned her into a raging mess of pain and fury and he hadn't given a second thought to the fact that she was a person who loved whales and Doctor Who and slime mold and not being a zombie. He didn't care that Oscar could lose his son or Max could lose his mother or that Leo could lose the person he loved with every part of his soul. This man was lowly, cowardly vermin and Leo wanted to throttle him.
He took a breath, trying to reign in his rage. It wouldn't do any good to let it overcome him now.
"I don't know," he was saying quickly, "Really I don't! It's a prototype, they were testing it. That's why it doesn't spread. It's not fertile, you don't make a reproducing prototype."
"You don't make it all," Trip snarled at him.
There was savage screaming from the hall and the worm-man whimpered.
"Don't let those things get me," he begged and Leo was disgusted.
"Those things?" he asked dangerously. "Those things are people you waste of a body! They're people who didn't ask for you to do this to them and one of them is someone I love very much. So you better tell us everything you know because if she dies I swear I'll kill you and you'll wish they'd done it."
The others were silent and he wondered if they thought he meant it. Did he mean it?
He felt Jemma inside of him, in his heart where she always was and he knew he didn't. It would make her sad to see him become the kind of person who did things like that, it would take away a part of the man she loved. And he didn't want to become that person but this idiot didn't need to know that so he continued to glare at him menacingly.
More screaming, closer now.
"I don't know!" the man squeaked pathetically. "Damn it they aren't paying me enough for this." He pressed his hand to his forehead, thinking. "There's a way... they told me they had a way to get them out in case they needed to...but they didn't tell me what it was. I just work for them. Please, please don't kill me I just do as I'm told and they pay me."
"You kill people for money." May said, unsympathetically.
"No! No I don't! I just sell the headphones, and then let those th-," Leo shot venom at him with his eyes."Let the infected people out," he continued, nervously. "Please don't kill me."
"We aren't going to kill you," Coulson told him coldly. "We're the good guys. You're the murderer." He glanced at Leo who nodded to show he agreed with him. "May, see what else you can get out of him." he instructed. "Fitz, Triplett, come with me."
May held a gun to the worm-man's head as the other two followed Coulson out.
"What's the plan?" Trip asked because Leo was still too livid to speak. He only sold the headphones? Only let them out? How dare he. But they needed to focus. Save Jemma, save everyone.
Coulson called Skye over from helping the passengers and they gathered around him as he lay out the plan.
"We're going to trap them," he explained. "But we may need someone to act as bait."
Leo volunteered instantly. He'd do anything to protect his friends, to protect Jemma.
His teammate's eyes all drifted to his wound.
"Fitz you're hurt. I can-" Skye offered but he shook his head.
"This is nothing, it's barely bothering me." he assured her. That was a lie, it was throbbing painfully.
She sighed unhappily but nodded as Coulson went on with their plan.
/-/-/
About an hour later Leo peered around the corner of the door at the small group of infected people. One of them wore a purple tuxedo. That was... interesting... hadn't they had time to change when they were sick?
'Focus,' he told himself. 'We can think about people's clothing choices later.'
A small group, why had he thought small? There five of them! Could the others even shoot that many before he was bitten again?
He was exhausted, soaked in sweat and his arm still bled where another bite had broken his skin. Not so deep this time but painful none-the-less. Skye had forced him to let her take a turn after that had happened but now he'd talked her back into being a sniper.
"You have better aim than I do," he'd told her, which was true because his hacker friend was also in training to be a field officer like May, Coulson and Triplett and he'd had minimal practice actually shooting weapons. Making them sure, easy, fun even but shooting them not so much. He wasn't going to let the fact that they cared about him make them less efficient.
Anyone could run away, not everyone could aim.
They'd gotten 14 of the infected with their trap (Jemma not among them). This group would put them at 19 and he decided that it was worth the risk he was taking for that. He just hoped the others would be ready. He had to lead the group to the bow of the boat where they could have a clear shot with their ICERs from the jogging track but there had never been more infected than shooters.
When had he become so fearless? When had the snap of human teeth inches from his throat ceased to be something that deterred him from running back at a crowd of rabid people again?
It didn't matter when, he knew why. Jemma needed him, his team needed him and the innocent people on the boat needed him so he was doing it.
He took a breath and sprung out from the sleeping-room door he'd been hiding behind and called to the infected people.
"Hey! Hey you zombies come here!" he shouted. "You... smelly... er sorry." Maybe they understood him, they were still people after all. "Follow me!"
He banged on the side of the door and they ran at him. He bolted up the stairs and onto the top deck, racing to the bow of the ship. He didn't need to look behind him, their screams and snarls told him they were there.
"OK shoot! Shoot!" he shouted as he reached the open deck at the bow.
A rain of rounds fell on them and they collapsed one by one but not before one of them tackled him to the ground. It was quickly shot too and fell on top of him.
He was breathing heavily, heart beating like a trapped rabbit but he wasn't hurt.
"Fitz!" Skye shouted down.
"I'm fine," he called up shakily, pushing him off. "Come get them, I'll go look for more."
"Maybe a smaller group," Coulson suggested.
"Do you want me to have a turn at luring them," Trip offered.
"Do you want me to be the one shooting them?" Leo shot back and his friend seemed troubled, even from a distance, but didn't argue.
"Just be careful," May warned and he gave them a thumbs up as he went back in search of infected on the loose.
Ow, now his back hurt too. Stupid bio-weapons makers selling headphones filled with zombie parasites to innocent people. Who did that?
May had gotten more out of the worm-man. They knew that they were indeed parasites, there was a way to kill them, and they would burrow out the nose when you did it (trying to escape whatever it was). Additionally the device blocking their communications was under the boat. Worm-man had turned it on remotely once people began getting bitten (namely Leo himself, still the only one with any bites) and they were going to find a way to turn it off once they had everyone safely tied up again. Good thing they had so much rope.
The worm-man was now locked in a cabinet, guarded by one of the passengers who they'd given an ICER to. A few of the other passengers were armed with weapons the team had brought, guarding the boarded up doors of the dining hall.
Leo searched the side of the deck, hidden from the track by a roof to keep rain out, for any infected not below. As he rounded a corner he almost collided with Max.
"What the- what are you doing up here?!" he demanded. Oh no, oh no, this was not good.
"I want to help," he told him bravely. "You haven't found my mom yet, have you?"
"How did you get out?" Leo demanded, trying to remain calm. Only 4 left out there, that wasn't so many. He could just lead the kid back down to the dining room and-
He spotted Jemma coming up from one of the stairwells which led below deck. It didn't look like her at first, her posture was all wrong, but he recognized her sweater and her hair and the shape of her because they were as familiar as his own reflection.
Quickly he pulled Max around the corner and carefully peered out at her. She hadn't seen them but she was stumbling towards them. Her gait sloppy and uneven because the parasite affected her motor skills. It hurt seeing her like that, her eyes glazed over and her sweater torn where she'd clawed at it, but he forced himself to focus because he needed to protect Max.
She was about as far from the bow as she could get, being at the back of the boat and he needed to get Max to safety.
"You want to help?" he whispered, leaning down and placing a hand on his shoulder and the boy nodded. "Go down and tell the others there are four left. We have your mom," he assured him because it was true. "She's safe and so are the rest of them. You need to tell the others that for me OK? Tell them everything is going to be fine. We need them to stay calm. That's very important do you understand?"
Max nodded again, looking terrified and Leo guessed he'd caught a glimpse of Jemma before being pulled around the corner.
"That's it, good job. Very quiet high five," he held out his hand and the boy tapped it lightly.
Jemma screamed, a horrible sound that ripped into him and Max looked up at him with big scared eyes.
"It's OK," he assured him in a whisper, taking a breath before he did what he knew he needed to. "I'm going to need you to run though. When I tell you just run as fast as you can and get back to the others. Do you remember where they are?"
There was another stairwell in the other direction which the boy could go down safely. He hated the idea of leaving him alone but he had to distract Jemma so he could get away.
The little boy nodded once again and he smiled at him. "Good. Are you ready?"
Hesitation, then another slow nod.
"Don't follow me," he instructed firmly. "Now I'm going to count to three and then you run that way, I'll be going in the opposite direction."
He seemed incredibly frightened, poor kid, but it was clear that he understood so Leo began to count quietly.
"One, two, three, go."
Max ran away from him, sprinting towards the stairs to the lower deck and he hoped desperately he would reach the safe point before some other infected person found him. But he didn't have time to think about that right now as he darted past Jemma, calling her name and she snarled at him before taking up the chase.
/-/-/
Thanks for all the likes, follows, reviews and reads! You are all super snipers of reading fanfiction.
The next chapter should be up late tonight because I am leaving tomorrow to my grandma's house and will have limited wi-fi for a while.
The Fringe reference is the purple tuxedo. In The Bishop Revival Walter offers Peter his old tuxedo to wear when he gets married someday (Walter is pushing that it be Olivia haha,). Peter says that tuxedoes don't stay in style long to which Walter replies that purple never goes out of style.
The idea of not making a reproducing prototype is from Orphan Black. It's was the from the minds of the show's brilliant creators, not mine haha.
A huge thanks to notapepper for helping me puzzle through the headphones with her vast knowledge of Shield. I felt bad about throwing them in the ocean and hurting the imaginary sea creatures and she helped we go through some alternatives (like how Shield would want to keep them for research and a cure) and suggested the conversation between Coulson and Fitz. :).
Look, Fitz got along with a child. yay.