A miracle? Jemma's teeth ground together and her muscles stiffened, tight with rage.

"You're going to need to explain," she heard Coulson say beside, far calmer than she was.

Neil looked between them, something strangely close to sorrow passing across his face when his gaze swept over her. "I am sorry for your pain," he told her earnestly. "I was only trying to prevent a greater pain. I wasn't lying to you when I said I had saved him."

Saved him? This man had nerve. None of this would have been happening if he had just left them alone.

"The body," she growled, unable to string anything more coherent together.

It didn't matter, he understood.

"It was his," he answered evenly, confirming her suspicions. "Until I removed him from it. Now it's a part of something else, as is he." His mouth lifted in a small smile. "We gave him new life."

Jemma shuddered at the familiarity of the phrase and, beside her, Coulson raised his eyebrows.

"What do you mean new life?" he asked.

"He means a new body," Jemma answered, crossing her arms across her chest.

She'd been right about the fluid, what it was. The stem cells, the hormones, they hadn't been put into it so that they could be absorbed, they'd been part of him, a growing body in a sac of liquid, flaking off debris as it developed. It was a wonder she hadn't recognized it for its composition earlier, that she hadn't known amniotic fluid when it was right in front of her.

"They grew him a new body, put his…" She frowned, not quite believing what she was about to say. "They put his soul into it, didn't they?" She seared him with a glare until he nodded, unscorched. "Why?" she seethed.

"I saved him-" he repeated, but she didn't want to hear that, not again.

"You let them experiment on him!" she shouted, shooting to her feet so that the legs of her chair scrapped behind here. "You killed him-"

"Painlessly," he assured her, remaining in his seat.

"Painlessly?" she cried, incredulous at the sheer nerve this man was displaying. "It wasn't painless. He was in pain for weeks when he came back. And I thought he was a gone! For a year and a half…"

Her mouth snapped shut and she pulled a long breath in through her nose, forcing herself to calm down.

This isn't what we came for. What's done is done, right now we need to find out where they took him. We can still make this right.

"August eighteenth," he mumbled, dropping his gaze down to his lap.

Jemma slid back into her chair, her anger left to simmer. "What?"

He couldn't seem to look at her, his expression far away, and he spoke as if he were reading from a list. "Leopold Fitz. August eighteenth, 2017. Shock brought on by severe pain and emotional trauma."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice lowering as a chill ran up her spine.

"Jemma Simmons," he continued, ignoring her confusion. "August eighteenth, 2017. Heart torn apart from a close range shot."

She shook her head. "That- that didn't happen…"

"Clara Oswald," he went on. "September twenty third, 2017. Leukemia. Sam Gilmour. April second, 2018. Strangulation with a metal wire. Addison Montgomery. May eleventh, 2018. Stroke while driving a tour bus. 38 dead-"

"You saw our deaths," Jemma realized with a start. The horror of what he was saying put her anger out like a cap on a candle.

That was what he had meant. Fitz, the others he'd taken, he was saying that they'd already been going to die. It made sense, too. Fitz had had a tail on him from the time his flight had been canceled, they'd found records of him being followed while investigating his death. Enemy agents who very well might have done to him what this man had described.

Shock brought on by severe pain…

The story unfolding itself in her head left her sick to her stomach and the world spun around her as she realized what had almost happened.

'It didn't happen though,' she told herself. 'Fitz is alive and he needs you.'

She wondered, briefly, why her name had been on his list, and how she was still alive if he hadn't done to her what he'd done to the others. However she pushed aside that thought too, focusing on the present instead.

Neil lifted his head, eyes bright. "I saw all of their deaths," he murmured. "That's why I chose them."

Jemma leaned forward, meeting his gaze with renewed composure. "Chose them for what?"

/-/-/

Fitz was out of the incubator. His fever had returned, but at least now his body was heating itself and his limbs ached far less than they had before.

The hallucination hadn't left yet. She sat on the edge of his bed, an invisible guardian while he wove in and out of sleep, though her voice was sounding further and further away each time she spoke.

"I'm going away soon," she murmured, her hand resting atop of his. Her touch was nothing more than the ghost of a feeling now.

He nodded, twisting his hand to rub his thumb across the side of hers anyway. "I know."

"That's a good thing," she reminded him. She smiled fondly, using her free hand to pass over the short locks of hair stuck to his forehead before leaving a gentle kiss on the warm skin. His eyes closed and he sighed at the faded sensation. "Do you remember what you need to do?" she asked.

Returning her smile, he managed a weak chuckle. "Get the hell out of here."

"Exactly." She patted his cheek approvingly. "Don't forget that. And don't be afraid, you aren't alone."

/-/-/

Jemma and Skye packed side by side, slipping weapons and tactical gear into their twin black packs.

"Resurrection?" Skye marveled, shoving a first aid kit into her bag before turning to Jemma, eyebrows raised. "You're telling me these guys invented a way to bring people back from the dead?"

Jemma shook her head, slipping her arm through the straps of her own bag and shifting her shoulders to take on the extra weight. "Not exactly. No one actually died, not by their definition anyhow. Their goal is to extend life, not bring it back. They simply provided a new body for their…" She frowned, trailing off because she still wasn't entirely clear on how to comprehend the technology.

"For their soul," Skye supplied, her amazement showing through in her expression. She slipped her own pack on and they started together towards the hangar.

"I'm sure there's a more technical term for it," Jemma objected. "It must be some imprint of electrical impulses, or… or an energy we can't detect yet, or…"

"Jemma," Skye cut her off, grinning in amusement. "It's a soul. They found a way to capture souls. Like those vacuums from Ghostbusters."

"Sort of," she conceded. "Only they use nanobots, suspended in the toxin we found. They call them soul magnets. When they're set to remove the soul, they kill the body. Everything shuts off all at once. Neil said he doesn't quite understand it… it's beyond our current knowledge of the universe. He had no explanation, but that doesn't mean there isn't one."

Neil. How close had she been to murdering him? How long had he been locked up for a crime he'd only halfway committed? If she believed what he had told her, which, to her surprise, she found she did, he'd only been trying to protect them. And the Olos had tricked him. There was no eternal life for him… or the others. They were simply the initial stages of a trial, never meant to be kept alive. The moment the Asgardians had begun tracking them the Olos had flash forwarded the final phase of the experiment: termination.

They needed proof that their subjects were viable first though, to know that the bodies could hold the souls, and that was what gave her just the smallest scrap of hope. Because Fitz was sick, there was something wrong with him and until they figured out what it was they needed to keep him alive or risk losing him as a data point. And from the information she'd acquired from Neil, they didn't have many data points to loose.

He said the process was imperfect, many were lost in the initial stages and a previous trial had failed entirely. He thought that maybe that trial was the reason they'd released the new subjects back on earth, allowing them to go home, but neither he nor Jemma could understand why they'd take such an enormous risk. Why risk losing one among Earth's massive population?

"Well, soul, cosmic energy, whatever it is, it gave us back Fitz." Skye shrugged. "That's good enough for me."

Jemma puffed out a sigh, unable to feel much relief at the moment. "We don't have him back yet," she mumbled.

"But we will," Skye assured her.

"Yes. We will," Jemma agreed fiercely, her resolve like a stone against the white rapids of her fear. Determination, that she could allow herself to feel in its entirety. "Now that we know where they are, we're getting him out of there."

/-/-/

His alien hosts seemed much happier now that he was properly awake. The last scan results had set off a chorus of pleased humming and approving nods throughout the small team of teal, copper and silver aliens that had been monitoring him.

They were relieved that he was alright, happy even, but he had a suspicion that it wasn't because they felt anything warm or fuzzy towards him personally. Something had been accomplished. There was a tang of sweet success in the air, celebration, though of course they wouldn't tell him what any of it was about.

It seemed that he was little more than a subject to them, a means to an end. Nothing to pay too much attention to. That had been their mistake, the big colourful whatever-they-weres underestimating the not-so-dumb human.

"I need to use the toilet," he announced, raising his voice to be heard over wall of their indifference towards him. "Hey! Isn't there anywhere for a successful experiment like myself to… er… relieve himself on this bloody ship?"

"Ship?" the teal one, clearly confused. "Relieve what?"

"I think he needs to empty his bladder," the silver one supplied helpfully. He smiled at the others. "That's good, that means his kidneys are working."

"He clearly has no idea where we are," the first one fretted. "Do you think that's a sign of potential damage to his brain?"

"He was unconscious for a long time," her copper colleague explained. "Maybe he thinks we brought him into orbit?"

"It isn't as if we've given him much information," the silver one agreed. "I'm sure he's functioning normally."

For half a second, Fitz found himself distracted by what exactly the meant as normal. Normal for him or for every other human? Surely they must have known about his old wounds, seen the long dead tissue in his brain. Was that still there in this new body? He didn't feel any different, but perhaps he'd been designed to be oblivious to any changes they'd made.

It didn't matter though. Not right then. He had much more pressing matters to attend to (which actually had nothing at all to do with a full bladder).

"Yeah, my head and my kidneys are working just fine thank you," Fitz put in testily over their chatter, attempting to remind them that he was still in the room. "So could you…? I mean you must have some place where I can… you know. It's getting a bit uncomfortable."

"Grumbly thing isn't he?" the teal one complained.

Fitz bit back a snide retort, letting out an irritable huff instead and sliding off the bed onto unsteady feet.

"Ohh he's walking," the copper alien cheered. "How wonderful."

"I've been doing it for a while now," Fitz muttered under his breath, allowing him to take his arm when his knees wobbled beneath him.

He let his free hand to fall to his side, grazing over the fabric of his plain grey garments and feeling the faint outline of the parts he'd stolen right from under their noses, pieces of his life support system, the spare power source from his monitor, vaguely familiar pieces of technology.

'I'm going to be doing a little more than walking in a few minutes,' he thought, hoping desperately that his half-formed plan was going to be enough to get him out of there.

After that… well after that he was going to have to hope that Jemma and the others really were looking for him.

/-/-/

The quinjet was set to land in less than twenty minutes, but it still felt like too long. The waiting was the worst part, sitting strapped into her seat with nothing to do. It made her feel helpless and it reminded her of the last time they'd gone to get Fitz, of not knowing what they were going to find when they reached their destination.

"I still can't believe he's alive," Mack muttered beside her, half in relief, half what could have been fear or anxiousness. "You sure it's him? It's not some sort of-"

"He isn't a copy," she cut him off tersely. "It's him. I know it's him."

Mack frowned at her tone, but he nodded, accepting her answer. "OK."

They were silent for a couple of minutes, watching the seats across from them as Lincoln amused Skye by playing with the static in her hair and another of their last-minute rescue team levitated a trio of dice a few inches above his palm. The woman on his left had made her entire body invisible, and her chair along with it, testing out her abilities before the mission.

"I guess I really can't write much off as impossible anymore," he commented, bringing the tiniest of smiles to her face.

"I suppose you can't," she agreed.

"Do you think he'll be disappointed that I left SHIELD?" her friend wondered, an edge of uncertainty to his tone.

Jemma shook her head. "We all handle grief differently," she said kindly. "I think he'll just be happy to see you." She paused, chewing nervously on her lip before adding. "Do you think he'll be angry with me? That I didn't tell him the truth about what he was the moment I knew?"

Mack placed a hand on her shoulder, his expression gentle. "I think he's just going to be happy to see you."

/-/-/

Thanks to notapepper for all your help with this chapter :D

All of the people mentioned by Neil in this Chapter are from other shows. Clara Oswald is from Doctor Who, Sam Gilmour was a character on Fringe who was Murdered, Addison Montgomery is from Grey's Anatomy. The tour bus crash is a reference to the beginning of The Returned (which is what originally sparked the idea for this story, though I've only seen the first episode).

Soul Magnets are also from Fringe. William Bell uses them to come back from the dead. (After giving them to an unsuspecting Olivia in a cup of tea so he 'borrow' he