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For all that it housed the world’s foremost spy agency, the SHIELD headquarters building looked distinctly unimpressive to Darcy Lewis when she arrived at its threshold. She had expected something that looked more glitzy and high tech, rather than the run-of-the-mill New York office building that confronted her hungover gaze. This was the kind of place that housed boring people like bankers or lawyers, not super-spies. And the men and women streaming steadily in and out of its doors definitely looked boring, all dressed in varying shades of black. It was a letdown of epic proportions.
Darcy hesitated before the tinted glass doors and glanced at the email again on her iPhone. This was the place, all right. She shook off her disappointment and walked through the automatic door.
She got no more than three steps inside the entrance before alarms blared.
As Darcy glanced around for the source of the commotion, she collided literally head-on with a solid wall of glass. That had definitely not been there when she walked through the door. She bounced back from the barrier rubbing her forehead and slammed into another transparent wall two feet behind her, well away from the door she had walked through. Stretching out her arms to the sides she felt smooth glass there, as well. Sudden panic welled up inside Darcy’s chest as she realized that she was now in a 3’ x 3’ transparent cage. Surprisingly (or maybe not) the people walking in and out around her carried on as if nothing untoward was happening.
“Hey, could I get some help here, please?” Darcy called out to an Armani-clad man passing by to her left. He ignored her, eyes glued to the little transparent tablet in his hand.
“Um, excuse me!” she yelled at a smartly-dressed woman, only to be ignored again. Maybe they couldn’t hear her through the thick glass.
“You are not authorized to proceed beyond this point,” a stern male voice announced, echoing through Darcy’s little prison. She jumped, startled. “State your name and reason for entry.”
“Uh, my name is Darcy Lewis and I’m here to see Agent Coulson,” she replied anxiously, hoping that would satisfy her invisible interrogator.
“Do you have an appointment?” the voice asked.
“Yeah, I have an appointment at 9 o’clock.” Instantly the glass in front of Darcy displayed the current time in blue numerals: 9:37 AM. She fidgeted uneasily. “Traffic was really bad this morning,” she said apologetically.
“Maintain your position while your authorization to access the facility is verified,” the invisible man ordered curtly.
Darcy rolled her eyes. It wasn’t like she could go anywhere when they had her penned up like this. Nonetheless, she turned about in her cramped cell and pushed her hands futilely against the side facing the way she had come. Maybe she ought to just quit while she was ahead.
“Hey, you guys,” Darcy ventured, glancing up as if she’d suddenly find her unseen captors above her. “Look, maybe I should just go. I don’t wanna take up any more of your time –“
“Good morning, Ms. Lewis.”
Agent Coulson’s voice startled Darcy so badly that she jumped with a squawk and slammed her nose into the glass barrier again. The man had suddenly popped up behind her as she looked back towards the exit. Part of being a super-spy must be having the ability to sneak up on people and scare the bejeesus out of them.
“Uh, hi,” Darcy said lamely, trying to push her heart back down her throat. “I’m here for my appointment about signing up with SHIELD—“
“Yes.” Coulson’s cool blue gaze swept over her and she suddenly realized that maybe old jeans and a New Mexico hoodie weren’t the best outfit for the occasion. “I was expecting you at 9 o’clock.”
“Well, you know how it is,” Darcy said, flapping a hand. “Traffic’s terrible this time of the morning and I had a hard time getting a cab.” And I was out clubbing until 5, she thought. There was no way she was going to let such a great opportunity to sample New York nightlife go to waste.
Coulson didn’t look the least bit mollified by her excuse. She decided a little more brown-nosing was in order.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. I really appreciate it because I know what a busy man you are,” she gushed.
“Thor Odinson personally requested that I meet with you,” Coulson replied.
Darcy grinned at him. “Jane said she’d ask Thor to put in a good word for me. I guess it pays to have a boss whose boyfriend is the god of Thunder.” She giggled. Coulson merely stared impassively at her.
“Let’s go to my office,” he said finally, after letting Darcy chortle alone for an awkward minute.
“You need to let me out of this little glass booth first,” Darcy said. Coulson glanced sideways at her, amusement shining from his eyes.
“The force field is down now,” he said.
“Force field?” Clearly SHIELD HQ was a lot more high-tech than Darcy had realized.
Darcy ambled along behind Coulson as he swiftly crossed the brightly-lit lobby. Men and women flowed past them, most of them clad in black and all of them looking purposeful and horribly efficient. Darcy felt more under-dressed and under-qualified by the second.
Coulson stopped before a bank of elevators with shiny bronze doors. He pressed his thumb into an indentation in the wall and then pushed a series of buttons. The doors of one of the elevators slid open instantly and Darcy followed him in.
“So, uh, worked here long?” she asked. Small talk seemed like a good way to break the ice.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“A long time.”
“What, like twenty, thirty years?”
“Hmm.”
“Do you guys get good benefits? I heard that government jobs have sweet bennies.”
“SHIELD is actually not a government agency,” Coulson replied, giving her a sidewise glance. “However, it does offer standard medical, dental and vision coverage, along with a pension, life insurance and survivors’ benefits.”
“Survivors’ benefits?”
“Yes. Funeral expenses are also covered if an agent dies on active duty, unless he or she dies of natural causes. But that doesn’t happen often.”
“Agents dying?”
“No, agents dying of natural causes.”
“Oh.”
The elevator smoothly stopped at the 35th Floor and its doors slid open to reveal a large room. The curving, glass-like wall separating it from the elevators shimmered a little, hinting that it was another force field. There was no door that Darcy could see, not even a touchpad like the one on the elevator bank.
As she wondered how they would get in, Coulson walked up to the force field and stared straight ahead. A beam of light from the barrier mapped his face and the name “Coulson, Philip J.” briefly flashed on the transparent barrier, along with his picture. Then a door-sized opening simply appeared before him. Darcy could tell where the opening was simply by the lack of shimmer. Coulson stepped through and Darcy hastened to follow. As soon as she was inside she spun swiftly on her heel, hoping to see how the entry closed. She had no such luck. As far as she could tell, the force field sealed itself like magic. When she turned to ask Coulson what had happened, his back was already rapidly retreating. Darcy hastened to catch up to him.
The huge room they were in held about two dozen work stations, each manned by an agent wearing either dark business attire or a sleek, black catsuit. The catsuits were so tight that they left little to the imagination, and even less room for underwear. Probably not even a thong. Darcy instantly decided that she wouldn’t mind rocking one of those numbers, especially if she got to hang with Agent Barton.
As they passed the workstations, Darcy could see clear, wafer thin display screens suspended around the busy agents. She would have lingered to gawk at the see-though touchscreens had Coulson not been striding so swiftly away.
Beyond the mission ops room was a long corridor, at the end of which was another solid force field. Another quick scan saw Coulson striding through the barrier and Darcy running the last few feet to catch up in fear that it would seal with her on the wrong side of it.
An attractive woman in a sharp black suit greeted them from her seat at an elaborate workstation. Her stylish red scarf was a welcome splash of intense color after all of the monochrome garments Darcy had seen.
“Good morning, Agent Coulson,” the woman said pleasantly.
“Morning, Agent Bailey,” Coulson replied, still unsmiling but with warmth in his eyes. “Have there been any explosions this morning?”
“No, sir,” Bailey said, “but Mr. Stark has emailed three times already.”
“I suppose Captain Rogers hurt his feelings again,” sighed Coulson. Bailey nodded gravely, but there was a ghost of a smile on her face. “Tell him to settle it privately or I’ll be forced to give them both a timeout. I’ll be with Ms. Lewis for the next fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Bailey turned back to her multiplicity of clear screens while Coulson led the way into an inner office.
Fifteen minutes was not a lot of time for an interview. Darcy pushed aside her annoyance and decided to make the best of what she had.
Coulson’s office was surprisingly large and unexpectedly bright. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered two full walls, with the New York skyline visible through them. The room was dominated by a large glass and steel desk that was situated in front of one of the window-walls, again with clear monitors suspended around it.
Across from the desk were two comfortable looking armchairs upholstered in dark blue. A large sofa in the same fabric sat against the wall by the door. The second windowed wall had an oval glass conference table in front of it, surrounded by four smaller blue chairs. The place was all clean lines and clear glass, with smoky blue-grey paint finishing off the sleek look.
Darcy was impressed. This was definitely not the cramped, windowless back room she had expected to be escorted to. Coulson must be a little higher up on the food chain than she had thought, she decided.
Coulson waved Darcy to one of the armchairs and sat behind his desk. He opened a folder that Darcy assumed contained her résumé and references.
The résumé was one sheet of paper and the references consisted of Jane, Mrs. Crenshaw from Le Patisserie and one au pair job. (It was really just babysitting but au pair sounded better.) She hoped that Mrs. Crenshaw had forgotten about that time she ruined the morning’s batch of croissants because she forgot to add the yeast when mixing the batter. And the time she knocked over a rack with ten cakes on it. And when she had spilled an entire carafe of coffee and flooded the register.
On second thought, giving Mrs. Crenshaw as a reference might not have been a good idea.
“What brings you here this morning?” Coulson asked as soon as they had settled in.
The question startled Darcy.
“I’m here about a job,” she replied, baffled.
“Yes, but why?” Coulson eyed her keenly, causing her to squirm a little under his gaze. “Why SHIELD? And why now? You already have a job with Dr. Foster.”
Darcy made a little face and twisted her hands in her lap.
“I do have a job as Jane’s assistant, but that’s about to end,” she confessed. “See, before Jane proved her theories, she had a hard time getting grant money and attracting grad students to work with her. Now that she’s moving more into hardcore research, with all kinds of technical gizmos and stuff, she needs assistants who are actual physicists. She’s got people coming over from Cambridge and MIT and CERN, for fuck’s sake. I don’t even know enough about quantum theory and Einstein-Rosen Bridges to type up her notes, much less work with her.”
Coulson looked nonplussed. “When I found out that you were Dr. Foster’s research assistant, I assumed that you were a graduate student in physics.”
“Well, no,” Darcy grinned weakly. “Right now I’m an undergraduate PoliSci major.”
Coulson glanced down at the resume again. Darcy wondered if he had even bothered to read it before she arrived.
“You’re twenty-five years old.” There was a question in his voice that Darcy did not want to answer. “Did you enter college late?”
“No, I was eighteen, like normal,” she replied quickly. “But I had a few glitches in my first freshman year, so I had to retake some classes and –“
“Your first freshman year?” Coulson interrupted. The tiny quirk of his lips was the first sign of emotion Darcy had ever seen on his face. “Most people only have one”.
“Uh, you’ve heard of ‘redshirt freshmen,’ right? Well, that’s kind of what I was.”
“Redshirting refers to college athletes, Ms. Lewis. It also doesn’t explain the other extra years you’ve spent in college.”
Darcy fidgeted under that unwavering gaze.
“Like I said, I did retake some courses a few times. And my parents thought maybe some time off would help me get my shit together, so I did the whole European hostel thing for about a year.”
“Do you know any languages?” The way Coulson said that made her suspect he was including English in the question.
“I know a little Spanish.”
“How did you manage to communicate with people while you were doing your ‘hostel thing’?” She could practically hear the air quotes.
“Oh, that was easy,” Darcy laughed. “People speak English everywhere. There are always college students from all over the world in hostels. I just hooked up with the coolest ones and hung out. They always knew where to score the best weed.”
“I imagine they would.”
Coulson closed the folder.
“Do you have any specialized skills that would make you a good candidate for the SHIELD Academy?”
Darcy stared at him, bewildered.
“You have an academy?” she asked. “I thought that people just applied and if they were good enough they got hired.”
That’s not how it works, Ms. Lewis,” Coulson informed her. ”SHIELD doesn’t hire people off the street. We’re only interested in applicants with certain skills.”
“What kind of skills are we talking about?”
“SHIELD draws most of its recruits from the military, federal law enforcement and various scientific fields.”
“Which field do you come from?” she asked brightly.
“The military,” Coulson replied tersely.
“Really?” Darcy’s eyebrows tried to meet her hairline. “I totally would not have guessed that. You look more like an accountant or a math teacher or something.”
The temperature in the office seemed to drop drastically. Coulson’s jaw muscles tightened.
“I think it’s safe to assume that you have no military, law enforcement or scientific expertise,” he continued after a long moment.
“Poli Sci is a science,” she burbled.
“We’re more interested in the hard sciences. And you don’t have a degree.”
“I’m a senior now,” Darcy was quick to point out.
“A redshirt senior?”
Despite Coulson’s impassive expression, Darcy was sure he was laughing at her.
“Oh, come on!” she blurted out. “Everybody here can’t be Rambo or a rocket scientist.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Well, but you do a lot of paperwork,” she pointed out, “so you can’t be using your military training all that much.”
“Actually, I don’t do paperwork,” Coulson replied coolly. “I have people for that.”
“So your ‘people’ are all military, too, even if they do nothing but file?”
“Basically, yes. SHIELD is a paramilitary organization. Every employee from top to bottom has to be prepared for combat situations.”
“Right down to the clerks?” Darcy was incredulous.
“Right down to the maintenance staff.”
Darcy sat back in Coulson’s remarkably plush guest chair and pushed a hand through her hair. It had already fought its way free from the prim headband she had tied around it, so there was no harm done.
“There have to be other skills that could get me in.”
Coulson stared at her for a moment, considering.
“How’s your marksmanship?”
“I tased Thor once.”
“Do you know any martial arts?”
“Like?”
“Do you know kung fu?”
“No.”
“Judo?”
“No.”
“Jiu-jitsu?”
“No.”
“Aikido?”
“No.”
“Tae kwan do?”
“No.”
“Tai Bo?”
“No.”
“Are you a swimmer? A runner? Shot-putter? Play field hockey? How about table tennis?”
“I don’t do any of that stuff. It’s boring.”
“You do strike me as a beer pong kind of gal,” Coulson remarked. “Without any relevant skills it’s impossible for you to be considered as a candidate for the SHIELD Academy.”
“So that’s it? I’m shit out of luck?”
“Afraid so. Sorry about that.” Coulson definitely did not sound sorry.
“I so wanted this job,” Darcy whined. “When I saw you guys in action you looked so cool.”
“We are cool,” Coulson agreed.
“I mean, look at all the high tech shit you’ve got here. Force fields, floating monitors, scanners at all the doors… it’s like James Bond-type stuff.”
“But SHIELD is way cooler than Bond,” said Coulson.
“Yeah, you are,” Darcy conceded. “I thought to myself, ‘I bet I could do that!’”
“Not many people can.”
“And you get to hang out with superheroes, and fight aliens, and fly around in a Quinjet, and meet hot looking gods… I mean, Thor is cut but Loki? Damn!”
“Asgardians are very attractive humanoids,” Coulson agreed.
“Yeah, and those catsuits SHIELD agents wear are so freakin’ hot.”
“They are. But you have to watch your diet if you want to wear one. Gain an ounce and it’s over.”
“Is that why you don’t wear one?”
Coulson actually smiled.
“There’s only so much hotness SHIELD can take.” He stood and moved towards the door. With a resigned sigh, Darcy rose and followed him.
“It was nice talking to you, Ms. Lewis,” Coulson said, opening the door for her. “Good luck in your job search. Agent Bailey will see to it that you’re escorted out of the building.”
“Well, thanks,” Darcy said halfheartedly.
Walking through the door, she nearly ran into the back of a catsuited agent. A catsuited male agent. One with blond hair, broad shoulders and an ass so tight that Darcy thought she could bounce a quarter off it and get back change. She was so mesmerized by the agent’s leather-clad derrière that she almost missed it when Coulson greeted the man.
“Good morning, Agent Quartermain,” Coulson said, and the man turned around. His face was every bit as hot as his body.
“Hey, Coulson,” Quartermain shot back. “I was just checking in with your lovely assistant. Have those plasma rifles been delivered yet?”
“No, sorry,” Coulson said, this time actually sounding regretful. “But since you’re here, could you do me a favor and walk Ms. Lewis back down to the lobby? We don’t want her getting caught in any more force fields along the way.”
Darcy managed to drag her wandering eyes back up to Quartermain’s face, only to find herself staring at a smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial.
“It would be my pleasure,” Quartermain replied, his grinning as he returned Darcy’s appreciative gaze.
“Thanks,” Darcy said brightly, her disappointing interview with Coulson swiftly forgotten in the glow of Quartermain’s megawatt smile. The SHIELD agent placed a broad hand on her back to guide her out of Coulson’s office.
“So, worked here long?” she asked, completely oblivious to the fact that Coulson was smirking behind her.