"You see that piece there, doesn't it look like a control panel?" Fitz inquired, tilting the top of the vehicle fragment towards the other engineer, agent Frye.
'Do your part, don't think about what's happening in New York, don't think about Simmons,' he instructed himself. 'Focus.'
"It does, but I can't read the text. Should we send it down to linguistics?" agent Frye wondered.
"As if they're going to know," he scoffed impatiently. "We don't need to read it, we can follow the wires, examine the machinery, science is a universal language."
Simmons would have know that, she wouldn't have been suggesting stupid things like 'sending it off to linguistics.' Fitz seriously doubted the writing was Greek or Korean. He wasn't a linguist but to him it seemed more complex than either of those. None of the symbols on the control panel seemed to ever repeat. That couldn't be normal.
Simmons. He hoped she was OK, not too frightened all by her lonesome.
'Focus,' he reminded himself.
"I'll just attach it to a battery, it looks like this is where it connects to the power source here," he was talking more to himself than the other engineer, who wasn't being very helpful at all. (Fitz didn't notice that that was mainly due to him brushing off his ideas). "Then we turn it on," he clicked the largest button and the device let out a faint hum, glowing pale blue between the other buttons and switches. "There we are, now we can see what it does," he announced smugly.
"Agent Fitz I'm not sure that's such a good-"
"I know, I know," he waved his hand impatiently. "The wires aren't attached to anything, but we can at least check how it sends signals."
"What if it's radioactive?" agent Frye pointed out.
"Do you really think those soldiers would be flying around on something radio-active?" He countered, frowning as he hooked the ends of the exposed wires to the decryption device, nicknamed DeeDee. It would give them a readout of the signals patterns and composition. Maybe then they could use the information to scramble them and knock a few of those grey demons out of the sky.
"We know nothing about their biology," agent Frye warned. "They could be tolerant to high levels of radiation."
'Which is why we should have Simmons in here,' he thought, missing her more and more. 'Or I should be with her.'
"Call downstairs if you're worried," he mumbled.
"They've been sending us information, nothing on radiation though," he informed him, pointing to the gigantic monitor covering the wall behind them.
Fitz swiveled around to look it over and noticed Simmons' name appeared several times beside new information. She'd made several discoveries about the alien's biology already, even figuring out a way to interfere with their natural camouflage.
'That's my girl,' he thought proudly. 'Well... not like that but...'
Focus.
The monitor fed them more than information on their colleague's progress, live streams of news coverage, explosions, havoc, destruction, played above a steadily rising casualty estimate.
"We don't have time to suit up for every single thing we do," Fitz decided, tearing his eyes from the footage. "You heard agent Brink, we need to find solutions now."
He sighed. "Alright."
With that, Fitz clicked the first button on the panel. And instantly regretted it.
A tiny, metal cylinder flipped up from in front of the part and began shooting tiny white-blue laser beams in a straight line, rocketing the control panel backwards and causing it to spin so the beams shot out in all directions around the room. The other scientists dropped to the floor and hid beneath the metal desks while Fitz, swearing and screaming loudly, scrambled forward to switch it off. A beam grazed his forearm and burned through his skin leaving a long, narrow gash which stung horribly but had at least been shallow and didn't bleed too much as he reached forward, hitting the button.
"Well, now we know what that does," agent Frye said optimistically as irritably muttering scientists reappeared from under desks, returning to work, and Fitz was grateful he didn't add an 'I told you so.' Perhaps the other agent wasn't so bad. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and winced sympathetically when he saw Fitz's arm. "Ouch, better get down to the infirmary."
"It isn't bleeding too badly," he protested but it was bleeding enough and suddenly he felt a little light headed.
"Go on, you can drop this off at linguistics on the way," he suggested, handing him the device. "I know you must be hurting but-"
"It's all hands on deck," Fitz finished, smiling understandingly at him.
Agent Frye smiled back and walked over to the first aid box to retrieve a long piece of gauze. "Wrap that up tight until you get there," he advised.
"Thanks," Fitz replied, doing just that. Simmons would have done a better job but it wasn't too bad and it made him feel better. Still, he missed his friend.
/-/-/
Simmons was examining the alien's skin tissue under a dissecting microscope, watching it change colour as she added the solution she'd prepared. She'd sorted out that they could change their skin colour by moving around the pigments in their cells using molecular motors running along microtubules. She could now stimulate several patterns in tissue samples with synthetic hormones.
It was fascinating and she would have almost been enjoying herself if she wasn't so worried about her friends Jack and Sam out in the field and about Fitz all alone upstairs.
Hopefully a good dose of her new solution would at least help them stop the terrifying soldiers from hiding through blending themselves into their surroundings. A few of the technicians were working on producing mass quantities of it as she finished cleaning up the skin sample to move on to the next task.
It wasn't so bad when she focused on her job, became a cog in the machine of steadily working agents. A million ants working together to move mountains, or at least mountains of sand (the ants not them, they were helping stop an alien invasion).
They were incredibly organized and that organization, Simmons realized, was what had seperated her and Fitz. Everyone had been divided first by speciality then by skill level and experience. Fitz and herself had different areas of specialization and so had been sent to different areas. The system wasn't entirely inflexible however, a few biologists had already been sent to other areas and they had two people from communications searching the databases for a match on the alien's species. Simmons was holding out hope something in her partner's field of expertise would make its way into the lab so Fitz could be transfered there.
She spotted a group of biologists gathered around one of the alien's arms. Metal and wiring embedded in the arm suggested a merging of biological and mechanical material and she edged over to join them, hopeful.
"We need an engineer up here," one of them, agent Yang, commented. Everyone had an ID badge clipped to their lab coats.
"Fitz," she called out instantly, then blushed, embarrassed by her lack of professionalism as several pairs of eyes shot their gaze at her like laser beams. Everyone was incredibly tense at the moment and suddenly shouting out names out of context was not helpful. "Agent Fitz would be a good choice," she explained, quieter now that she had everyone's attention. He has a lot of experience working with both mechanical and organic materials. He's in room 546."
"I'll send for him," agent Karev called, dashing to the phone and she watched him, silently urging Fitz not to be too occupied with another project to be sent down.
"Yes, uh huh," he was saying, expression darkening. "I understand, can I have the number? Thanks." He hung up, ready to redial. "He was hit with one of the weapons they were examining," he explained casually.
Simmons froze, wide eyed and sick to her stomach. "What do you mean?" she demanded rigidly.
"Oh, he's fine," the other agent assured her quickly. "He's getting patched up in the infirmary though so- uh huh," Simmons guessed whoever was on the other end had picked up. "Hello, I need agent Fitz to report to room 023, uh huh, uh huh, still bleeding?" She resisted the urge to hold out her hand for the phone (or ask him politely to please stop saying uh huh, it was beginning to tap on her nerves) and instead buzzed anxiously around him, trying to hear what the person on the othe end was saying but having little success. "Can you send him down anyway? Uh huh, thanks." He hung up. "He's on his way."
Simmons felt the stone that had caked onto her limbs crumble away in relief, he couldn't have been hurt too badly if they were still sending him down.
"And he's alright?" she insured, hovering around him for an answer.
"Yeah, the nurse said he's good to go," he rolled told her. "Apparently he was testing a control panel from one of the vehicles which no one knew had a hidden weapon," he rolled his eyes. "Engineers, they always want to press buttons before they can read what they do, can't help but power things up and take 'em for a test run."
"We are short on time," Simmons defended. Fitz could be rash sometimes, impatient, but they were all under a lot of stress and he certainly hadn't escaped unscathed from his blunder. He didn't need people rolling their eyes at him behind his back.
She must have come off confrontational because he raised his eyebrows questioningly at her before returning to work. She hadn't meant to, she'd only meant to stick up for her friend, and they needed to be working together.
"At least engineers don't come over for dinner smelling like cow liver," she kidded, attempting to alleviate some of the tension with one of Fitz's jokes but by the aghast looks the other biologists sent her she surmised the joke hadn't gone over well. "Haha, or... never mind," she mumbled.
Simmons was frightened, stressed and it felt as if there were soaked, heavy cotton balls in her stomach. She really needed a familiar face and was glad Fitz was on his way, because she already missed her rash, impatient partner.
/-/-/
The Fringe reference in this chapter is the non-repeating symbols. While trying to interpret the Observer's writing, Astrid comments that it is difficult because the symbols never repeat
The way Simmons describes the Chitauri change colour is similar to the way some animals (including octopus) change colour. I think the motor proteins can also run along microfiliments in some cases.
I made people's names appear beside things they'd found because I figured the data would be sourced in case people reading it wanted to ask questions.
Agents Yang and Karev are named for Cristina and Alex from Grey's Anatomy. If another of the group is named they will be Grey after Meredith and Lexi. Agent Frye is named after Kaylee from Firefly.