A/N: Here we go at last – the SHIELD chapter! Apologies if it's a little short, I'm currently on my phone, on the bus, on a long drive to the airport with limited internet access and no word counter, but this is the first chance I've had to write anything since finals finished, so I was just desperate to post an update of some sort.

Chapter Three – Concealment

24 miles north of Rovaniemi, Finland

Snow crunched beneath the tyres as the SUVs crawled over the frozen terrain, the drive rough and uneven as they approached the flat plane of arctic tundra ahead. Several other vehicles had already arrived at the scene, where black, sinister-looking tents and cordons had been erected as SHIELD set up base.

Inside one SUV, Skye rubbed her hands together through her mittens, feeling the chill of the Lappish air as her breath misted in front of her face. "Couldn't we have parked the Bus a little closer?" she said as she reached for the dial to turn up the heating. "You know, instead of driving all this way in the cold."

Ward, sat beside her in the driver's seat, reached to turn it down again. "Closest place to safely land a plane was Rovaniemi Airport. Twenty miles away is the best we could get," he replied, before offering an explanation for keeping the car unheated in the Arctic temperatures. "And you'll want to get used to the cold now, because it'll be even worse when you step outside."

Skye shot him a disgruntled scowl. "Jeez, Ward, I just want a bit of warmth in here, that's all. If I wanted to freeze my ass off I would have hiked."

"Well, you might still get chance to do that," he noted just as the car went over a particularly rough patch of ground, jolting the passengers abruptly before the tyres landed in a ditch. There was a flurry of snow from the wheel spin before the vehicle managed to drag itself forward again.

In the back of the car, Fitzsimmons were still trying to assemble their tech equipment, which was proving difficult when they both were wearing chunky woollen gloves. "You've got to keep the temperature low so we can recalibrate the instruments," Fitz said, further dismissing Skye's attempts to warm the car up, "Which would be easier if we could actually get them to turn on in the first place." He added the last part in aggravation as the touch screen interface refused to respond to his repeated tapping with the evidently faulty touch pads on his gloves.

Exasperated, Simmons snatched it off him. "Use the stylus, Fitz," she said, before doing just that to switch them on and then thrust the controls back at him. He accepted that and the stylus with a slightly embarassed "Well of course that was obvious" sort of look.

"Well, you might want to hurry up with that, since we're here," Ward said, allowing the SUV to roll to a steady stop alongside the other SHIELD vehicles already parked up.

The four of them got out, each of them wrapped in many layers of thick coats and thermal clothing, although they still felt the bitter chill of the outside air sting their faces. Beside them, another SUV pulled to a stop, from which May and Coulson exited.

"Alright, what have we found so far?" Coulson asked to the team of techs and agents surrounding him.

One of the technicians who'd been already present at the scene answered. "We've done a survey of the area for electromagnetic anomalies, and a team from the university detected abnormalities in the electron scatter from the aurora borealis," she explained, "But we still haven't been able to pin down exactly what it is. One of the scientists who detected the phenomenon is on site, if you wanted to question her."

Coulson nodded. "Alright, we can start with that. Fitzsimmons, could you do a secondary scan for anything the university may have missed?"

"Um, we're right on that," Fitz replied.

"But could we maybe just have two more minutes?" Simmons finished. They still weren't fully calibrated.

While the two scientists worked on that, and Coulson and May went to find the other scientist mentioned, Skye looked out at the empty field of snow in front of them, feeling somewhat puzzled. "Um, this was supposed to be an 084, right?" she muttered tentatively to Ward.

"Yes, it is," he answered plainly.

"So where is it?"

Ward followed her gaze in staring out across the blank plane, before reaching down to pick up a handful of snow and compacting it into a ball. "It's somewhere out there..." he said as he straightened up again, and then flung the snowball out into the emptyspace before them.

Skye wasn't sure what she'd been expecting - probably just for the cluster of snow to land harmlessly among all the other snow out there - but instead it seemed to impact something mid-air, shattering and exploding apart as if it had hit a pane of glass. Simultaneously, as the snowball disintegrated a ripple seemed to form in the air, a strange optical distortion radiating out from the point of impact. It also triggered a momentary hum to sound out across the tundra, like the buzzing of large electronic equipment.

Briefly, everyone on the SHIELD team turned to watch the peculiar phenomenon for an instant, and then looked at Ward who had triggered it, who looked sheepishly back. There was a pause before Simmons chastised, "Ward, leave the probing of unknown objects to us, thank you," and then she and Fitz finally unleashed their miniature swarm of hover bots to scan whatever it was that was out there.

Everyone returned to their business, and then Skye turned back to Ward again, looking both a little incredulous and excited. "So you're telling me it's invisible?"

"So it would seem," he remarked drily, evidently not sharing Skye's excitement about that fact.

On the far side of SHIELD's camp, Coulson and May were meeting with the scientist who had indirectly detected the strange object in the first place. "Dr. Jaana Kovannen, University of Rovaniemi, Department of Physics and Astronomy," she introduced herself. "I was in the lab last night when I made some strange observations."

"Pleasure to meet you, Dr Kovannen. I'm Agent Coulson, this is Agent May," Coulson introduced the both of them. "If you don't mind, we may have a few questions to ask you about what you discovered."

"Of course," she answered, maintaining her air of politeness but her eyes narrowing slightly. "I'll tell you what I can. I was studing the aurora when I noticed some unusual distortions in the electron paths, almost as if the atmosphere had been breached and something was coming down from the sky. I'll be happy to help you in any way I can, although I must say I wasn't expecting the government to show up over something like this. Especially not the American government."

"SHIELD is an international taskforce," Coulson corrected her. "You'll find we have employees from all over the globe. Would you mind waiting in one of the tents? We'd like to survey the area and then ask you about your findings."

She nodded again, although she was still looking at them suspiciously. "Of course..." she said, before going back inside to where her equipment was set up, although as she left it sounded like she muttered "Amerikkalainen..." under her breath.

Coulson turned back to May. "Why is always astrophysicists who stumble across these things?" he remarked as the headed over to where the large invisible object seemed to be.

"Because no-one else thinks to go looking for them," she answered him. "So do we think it's Asgardian?"

"Seems unlikely. I've never known them have the ability to make things invisible before."

"But it probably did come from outer space."

"Yes."

"Which means there's something else out there that's found us."

Her tone sounded ominous, and Coulson understood why, but he wasn't the kind to blow things out of proportion. "Possibly, but let's confirm what it is first. It could just be a harmless asteroid that happens to originate from somewhere in space where everything is invisible."

"That's a very optimistic attitude to take, sir," May said as they came to stand just in front of where the object was supposed to be. An indent in the snow indicated the presence of something on top of it. "Do we have an estimate for how big it is?"

"Based on the pattern in the snow..." Coulson said, looking out over the field, "You could park three trucks in there, easily."

"What about how high?" May asked, reaching forward to place a hand on where the object ought to be. There was a humming again, softer than before, as her hand made contact. Encouraged by that, May brought her other hand to rest on the surface too, feeling its shape and texture as best she could through her gloves. Seeking out ridges and indents, protrusions and lacunas, she brought up one foot to hook into a gap near the ground and then began to climb.

It was an odd sight, seeing her ascend through what appeared to be thin air, with the occasional shimmer in the background every time she hit a new point on the surface. Coulson bit his tongue as she climbed higher, resisting the urge to tell her to be careful. If there was one person on Earth he didn't need to say that to in any situation it was Melinda May, and he knew she wouldn't appreciate it.

Once May was about ten feet above the ground, the near vertical surface she'd been ascending seemed to plateau, and she pulled herself up to stand on what seemed to be a level plane. Coulson looked up at her, floating in mid-air, and she looked back down at him. "This could be the top, or there could be higher parts. I'll have to find out, sir" she said as she took a steady, but confident step forward, feeling for a solid surface beneath her feet before shifting her weight onto it. There was a solid sounding footstep as her snowboot landed on whatever material was beneath her.

As he watched, Coulson felt a drop of icy moisture land on his face, followed by another, and he blinked once or twice as he realised it was beginning to snow. "That could work for us," he muttered to himself as he realised that the object would be much easier to see if it was covered in snow.

It probably also made it more dangerous for May to be up there, but that thought was interrupted by Fitz."Sir!" the engineer was approaching him with tech tablet in hand, looking pleased, "We've got a pretty detailed scan of the object from multiple angles. That should be enough data to let us create a 3D rendering of it."

Pleased with the rapid progress, Coulson smiled. "Good, that should be quicker than waiting for it to snow."

A moment later, however, something happened that took them all by surprise. There was a metallic clanging sound followed by a pneumatic hiss, and then everyone turned to stare at where May was stood on top of the object. At her feet a hatch appeated to have sprung open, a small square of opaqueness against the bulk of transparency, triggered by something she'd stepped on.

"And that should be even quicker," May stated as she stared down the hatch into the depths of whatever they'd unearthed.