Part One: Great Expectations
Chapter Five: Recovery
Fury is unimpressed by the objects his agents had recovered from the Falling Man.
They lie spread out in front of him, looking impressively unassuming on the stainless-steel bench. Agent Kevendar (known for her slight lean towards the obsessive compulsive) has lined them out carefully for the Director, each one evenly spaced from the other. The clothes he had been wearing- or at least, what had been salvaged of them- sit folded on another bench. The thing that many had confused with a cape is in fact a cloak (and really, Fury doesn't think there's any difference between the two, though Kevendar insists there is). It's thick, woollen and black as ink, littered with what may or may not be burn marks and rips and tears.
"This was all they found?" Agent Hill asks beside him, sounding just as uninspired. He'd met her on the way here. Kevendar nods. Her hand strays to a long, thin piece of wood as if half tempted to caress it. It's stained a dark, almost ruby red and the bottom third of the tapered stick is wrapped in thin strips of well-worn leather, obviously meant to be held.
"We scanned everything. There were some residual energy readings from the stick, but not enough to be concerned about. Nothing else showed anything."
"What was in this?" Fury asks, pointing to an ugly looking pouch tied to a leather cord long enough to slip over the head.
The agent suddenly looks uncomfortable.
"We don't know." She accedes.
"Don't know? How could you not know? Did you open it?"
"We tried to. It wouldn't open, at all. We tried scanning it but it showed nothing. Clairvos-" she sends a dark look over her shoulder to her partner, "-had the bright idea of trying to cut it open but that didn't work either."
Fury eyes the pouch with renewed interest, "Are you saying that this was impenetrable?" the agents nod reluctantly.
"How is that possible?" asks a sceptical Agent Hill. Kevendar purses her lips unhappily.
"We don't know. On all accounts it's just looks a regular pouch; the fabric feels similar to moleskin, and you can tell that there's something inside. The scans show much the same- for all intents and purposes that is just some regular moleskin fabric that weighs about what you'd expect it to with a small object in it. But we can't open it, or cut it or see what's inside."
Fury hates mysteries, hates them with an unbridled passion. Today just isn't his lucky day. First the thermostat, then the Falling Man, his apparently mystical survival and finally the objects in his possession. Nothing today is making terribly much sense and Fury is half tempted to just shoot the man, send his belongings to the Sandbox and be done with it.
He somehow thinks his superiors would disagree.
He sighs in resignation and looks back at the spread. Most of it really isn't anything special- a knife, no bigger than his hand, an old-looking gold ring they'd managed to pry off a broken finger before the swelling would have made it impossible and a silver necklace with a small triangle-shaped pendant being the most noteworthy of his possessions. Not that there was much else to compare it to, but he supposed possible torture victims weren't exactly in a position to keep personal items.
"Was there anything to identify him with?" he asks, already knowing the answer.
"No." confirms Kevendar, "Nothing at all. The ring's likely to be a signet ring, but there was no match for its coat of arms with any of our databases."
"Very well. Any more progress on his appearance?" The agents share a discomforting glance and Fury gets the impression that he is not going to like what is about to come next.
"We found some residual energy readings that were reminiscent of tesseract portal activation." Agent Clairvos' voice is soft and gravelly, courtesy of a research mission in Russia gone wrong.
Well fuck. Today just gets better and better.
"I was under the impression that the Asgardian's were in possession of the Tesseract."
"I think they still might be… there were also some readings similar to Jane Foster's data on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge." Fury draws the conclusion quickly enough.
"You think the Asgardian's sent him here on a tesseract-powered Bifrost?"
Clairvos gives him something that seems halfway between a nervous tic and a nod, "It's possible, but we don't know enough about either to draw any conclusions."
Fury sighs heavily. It's looking more and more likely that the Falling Man is possibly Asgardian. He just thanks the Gods above that Thor was currently on Earth after that mess with the Dark Elves. Hopefully the Asgardian prince can shed some more light on this situation than his Agents can.
"Keep working on that pouch. And try and get something more concrete from his appearance." He orders the two agents. They nod in unison. Fury turns about face and strides out of the room, Agent Hill following behind him.
"Orders sir?" she asks, almost reading his mind. It's gotten to the point where he's not even weirded out by it anymore.
"Get Thor and Stark up here... and Banner and Foster… in fact just be done with it and summon the whole team." Hill looks unsurprised.
"What about John Doe, sir?"
"Set two guards on his room and make sure someone's always watching his footage. I don't want him going anywhere."
"Yes sir." Hill stops and raises her hand to address her earpiece. Fury continues on, intent now on seeing to his most pressing matter; the mystery of the broken air-conditioning. A thought occurs to him and he turns back around.
"Hill." He calls down the hall. She turns, face expectant, "Get him scanned too. I want to know what he is and why he's here." And, more to the point, why the fuck he's still alive.
He fervently hopes that nothing else will turn up to ruin what remains of the rest of his day.
Pain. Agony. Torment.
Above all, pure, unadulterated pain.
It eats through his insides, carves out his brain, shatters his limbs and sets the world on fire. It seizes at his vocal chords and he screams and screams and screams. Something gives and tears at his throat, but he carries on because there is nothing else but this, there will never be anything but this and he screams and sobs and curses because there is nothing else he can do, nothing else that he can think to do.
He is pain and pain is him and this agony will never end as long as he exists.
A curse. Frantic words and cluttering sounds and then then something is pulling him down. He doesn't want to go because it's dark down there in the abyss, but to stay is to exist in torment and he finds little choice.
He chases frantically after the escape and lets the darkness envelop him even as the screams still echo in his throat and stumble through his bones.
So there you go- your first taste of the Falling Man. Watcha think? Do I really need to act all coy about who this is? No? I didn't think so :P
Also, I made mention of the Sandbox- for those that haven't seen Agents of Shield, it's easy enough to check it out ( thanks to the glory of the internet). Basically, it's SHIELD's version of the incinerator.