"Reports of the aircraft that crashed in Midtown earlier today indicate it may have been a new type of military jet-"
Interesting, but not relevant. Moving on.
"-on Man was sighted fighting with the aliens, a battle which is still ongoing, from all reports-"
Nothing new there. Every news station or site Benji could find was focusing on Iron Man as the only point of recognizable news coverage. They'd started repeating themselves five minutes in. Next.
"-vernment advises everyone not in the midtown area to stay inside and away from all windows or doors. Find a sheltered area and stay tuned to-"
Argh, if people couldn't figure out not to head into the epicenter of an alien attack, there was really no hope for the human race and IMF had been wasting its time – and its agents' – for all these years. Benji really didn't want to think about that.
"-unconfirmed reports of a man dressed like Captain America-"
He was not interested in gossip and comic books, thank you very much. God, could people not put together costume and comic book character to get convention or themed party? It wasn't hard. That was practically Intelligence 101, right there…
"-speculation that the man and woman seen fighting the aliens on the streets are part of a governmental defense organization, though no names have been given as of yet-"
Benji sat up straighter. This station had managed to get a picture of the people they were talking about. The quality still wasn't the best, but he would know Will's features anywhere as long as he wasn't using a mask. Benji froze the feed and set an enhancement program running, trying to boost the quality to something a bit clearer. Then he restarted the feed.
"-but our reporter on the scene is keeping us updated on the events as they happen. Karen?"
Static, then a woman's voice, obviously scared and just as obviously burying it in professionalism, came through.
"It's still a bit hectic out here, James. Those aliens came out of nowhere, though there's been some speculation on the ground about a portal of some sort above Stark Tower. We've taken shelter in an office building that seems to be out of the direct line of attack for now, though the explosions and screams are still clear from our position."
"Can you tell us some more about the two that rescued you and the other bus passengers, Karen?"
"It was a man and a woman. None of us caught a name for either of them. I got a good look at them both, though. The woman is a redhead, wearing what can only be termed a cat suit. A couple of the aliens got on the ground by the bus, and she's obviously a master of hand-to-hand combat, James. Some of the moves she pulled off I wasn't aware were possible outside of Hollywood."
"I'd say it's a good thing she did, though, Karen! We'd hate to have lost someone there."
"I agree!" The hysteria briefly made a reappearance and Benji winced as James visibly scrambled for a way to calm his coworker down and keep the report going at the same time. It had to suck, dealing with these types of situations without any of the training that government agents got. He just hoped they'd fake technical problems if Karen really lost it over the phone.
"Uh, Karen! Karen, what about the man? The pictures you managed to get made most of the female portion of our staff swoon, you know. They're jealous you go to meet him in person!"
There was a watery laugh over the phone, then Karen's voice came back much calmer than it had been before. Benji mentally applauded James on his successful distraction.
"Too bad we didn't have time to exchange numbers, I suppose!"
"Tell us about him, then, Karen. That's the clearest picture we have from you, actually. The one where he's helping that kid out of the bus window. What was happening then? Why not get everyone out the door?"
"It was jammed, and the driver was unconscious, James," Karen returned, somber. "It got pretty chaotic in there, and then someone banged on the window from the outside. It started the woman who was sitting there, because she didn't see him coming up."
"Did he say anything?"
"Told us that we had to get out of the bus and inside a building, preferably in a basement. The woman told him we couldn't get out, we couldn't get the door open or any of the emergency exits and the windows were too small for most of us. That's about when we started thinking clearly again, James. There was only one kid on the bus, and he was just barely small enough to fit through the window when we got it down as far as it would go. Some of the men went to try to force the door open again, and myself and the boy's mother coordinated to get the boy through the window while the man waited on the other side to take him the rest of the way to the ground. After he sent the boy to safety, he helped open the front doors and we all got to safety, this office building we're sheltering in right now."
"You said in your initial report that the woman was using guns and hand-to-hand. How did the man fight? I hear it's quite a story!"
"I'll say! He had a couple of guns in holsters on his thighs, James, but his main weapon seems to have been a bow and arrows!"
"Was he any good?"
Benji paused the feed again as the clean-up program beeped at him and stared in frank disbelief at the results.
As James had said, it was a photo of the man that most of the media had taken to calling 'the Archer' for lack of a name, arms outstretched to receive a terrified looking boy of eleven or twelve while his mother got him through the window with sheer terrified desperation. The clean-up program had enhanced the photo enough that Benji could catch a glimpse of another woman behind the mother, equally terrified and equally determined, counterbalancing the woman so her son didn't end up flung out of the window or stuck uncomfortably half in and half out. That had to be Karen.
But what arrested Benji's attention the most was not the odd choice of weapons on the Archer. Nor the oddly familiar emblem on his uniform, though he set another program running to find a match for it. No, what arrested his attention was an instant recognition of the features of this mysterious man.
The tight set of the shoulders screamed Will when he knew they were running out of time. The furrowed brows were undeniably Chief Analyst Brandt when civilians got caught in the cross-fire of their missions. And the fierce concentration and slightly off glance that indicated the Archer had been looking around even as he guided the boy to the ground could be nothing other than Agent Brandt on full alert.
This was William Brandt. He didn't need a facial recognition match to tell him that, but he would run one anyway. He was a professional, after all.
"You've got something for me, Aaron?" Jane asked almost before she had thumbed her acceptance of the incoming call on her phone. There wasn't much she could do right now, not with Benji mining the media sights and governmental channels for information on the attack and the unidentified members of the small group fighting the aliens in New York and Ethan off trying to pry information about Will's latest assignment out of their superiors. She didn't have the clearance for a lot of the conversations Ethan was trying to have, and she didn't have the technical know-how that Benji did.
What she did have, though, were connections and favors ready to be called in. Aaron Blackwell had been part of the training class ahead of her, but they had been paired on several missions before they'd both been cut loose to try their wings in the lead. Aaron had ended up finding his niche in the organizational aspects of leading and been transferred to the administrative end of IMF, while Jane had found herself hand-picked to be on Ethan Hunt's team. The easy friendship they'd formed in the field had lasted through every reassignment they'd been handed though, and they regularly met outside of work for drinks and occasional movie nights. Aaron had been her other choice of new apartment hunting partner after Will.
"I have no idea what your analyst is up to, Jane, but he's gotten himself involved in some deep shit."
Jane felt her heart sink. "Oh? How deep?"
"Okay, well…you know the IMF works with other government organizations. Sharing information and threat levels and the like. Ever heard of SHIELD?"
Jane frowned, searching her memory. "Maybe once or twice. I think Ethan mentioned them the last mission we had. Something about recognizing one of their agents? He wasn't very forthcoming about details, but we left the area pretty quickly and our target was shifted by headquarters after Ethan called in."
Which had been beyond odd, but Jane hadn't said anything against it. Ethan and Will had both been acting oddly after that sighting and it hadn't been hard to figure out that it was something she and Benji didn't have the clearance to know about yet.
She could not wait for her next review. It would be so much easier in the field when she was allowed access to the same information that set Ethan and Will on edge on missions like that.
"I'm not surprised. They're a covert organization on a level that makes IMF look like the CIA on a really bad day. On the surface, it looks like they do the same things we do, but they deal in the weird cases in actuality."
"Our missions aren't normally weird?" Jane returned sardonically. She could think of quite a few examples of weird without even trying hard.
"I'm talking weird as in sci-fi, Jane. Or super advanced tech, whatever you want to call it. The sort of cases that would get you thrown in a psychiatric ward if you talked about them. I've got it on good authority SHIELD is part of the reason Iron Man hasn't been arrested for gross endangerment and treason."
"Treason?!" Jane yelped. Tony Stark was an obnoxious genius who bordered on the patronizing in nearly every setting, but Jane never would have accused the man of treason.
"Do you know how powerful that suit actually is, Jane? And he refused to let the government anywhere near it, just after he announced he was stopping all weapons manufacture of Stark Industries. Most of our weapons came from SI, Jane. He was held captive in Afghanistan for three months by a terrorist cell. It looked bad when he got back. It was put down to PTSD at first, but when he didn't retract it…well. I'm sure you saw the footage of the hearing."
Swallowing nervously, Jane hmm-ed an affirmative down the line. She'd never really thought about that. Tony Stark wasn't her concern and his tech didn't interest her unless she had to use it. The idea of a Tony Stark successfully brainwashed or blackmailed into being an enemy of the United States, though…that was terrifying.
"So," she cleared her throat and plowed forward. Stark's almost arrest for suspected treason could be nightmare fodder later. Will needed her focused right now. Everyone needed her focused right now. "SHIELD's…what? Riding herd on Tony Stark? Or just keeping an eye on him?"
"As far as I can tell, it's a mix of both. Like I said, SHIELD is the ultimate covert organization. It's hard to get anything more than rumor on them. I only know as much as I do because I handle some of the information sharing IMF and SHIELD do."
Jane caught his unspoken warning and grinned.
"Consider this three favors used up, then, Aaron. I'll consider it more than worth it if it gets me closer to Will."
"You better," Aaron snorted, and then sobered. "Like I said, he seems to be involved deep with SHIELD. That new installation you said he was setting up? It's not one of ours. We have a record that it exists and is a research facility of some sort for SHIELD, but nothing else I can access. There might not be anything more. Brandt is listed as a liaison for whatever the project is. And get this Jane, there's a note in his file that puts a priority on his liaising with SHIELD over IMF missions."
Jane blinked, trying to make that work in her head.
"That…how does that work? He's an IMF agent, Aaron. Not one of SHIELD's."
"You got me there, but that's all I have."
"I appreciate this, Aaron. You have no idea how much."
"Think I can guess. And…Jane, I assume you've seen the footage out of New York already, and it's why you called me, but…"
There was something off in Aaron's voice. Jane unconsciously shifted her stance until she was balanced on the balls of her feet, ready for anything. "What, Aaron?"
"That installation? It was in the New Mexican desert."
Jane lifted her eyebrows, attention caught. "Was?"
"Yeah…Jane, I double checked the satellite footage. It's a crater at least a mile wide now. I thought you needed to know that too. I sent the footage to your email. Whatever's going on, SHIELD is in it thick, and I think Brandt got sucked into it along with them."
Jane didn't remember her goodbye to Aaron, though she knew she gave him one. The phone was off now, after all. She had to have said goodbye. But Jane was far more worried about just what Will had gotten himself involved in to be so solidly in the middle of what seemed to be SHIELD's mess. Her eyes drifted over to the TV playing the footage out of New York just in time to see the news station play another hastily captured cell phone video of screaming civilians, attacking aliens, and, not quite out of the camera line, a man she would swear even under torture was William Brandt, stabbing one of the aliens with an arrow before he whirled to shoot the same arrow into another trying to sneak up on him.
He looked like her teammate, sure, but he wasn't fighting like her teammate. There was something wrong, whether in the information she had, or in the footage itself.
But so much footage that showed the same man over and over couldn't be faked easily. And Benji hadn't found any hint that the chaos in New York was anything other than what it seemed.
Jane was uncomfortably reminded of a dusty apartment in Dubai, of adrenaline and failure three times over and the utter certainty that someone was holding information back when they needed all the assets they could get right then.
She didn't want to doubt Will again, but with so much evidence contradicting itself, she didn't know what to think or who to believe.