Work Text:
Silence…
Nate exhaled slowly, staring up at the stark white ceiling overhead, not daring to move until he was certain the babble of voices battering against his skull had stopped.
Where am I? It was the next logical question. He turned his head slightly to see what he could of the rest of the room. “Some kind of hospital,” he murmured, rolling onto his side and pushing himself into a sitting position. Logical again – the preceding handful of days had been one long nightmare of pain and confusion. The few flashes he could call to mind of the others only reinforced how much his condition must have terrified them.
A wave of unsteadiness broke over him. Nate buried his face in his hands, taking slow, measured breaths until he could be sure of himself again.
The sounds of a door sliding open brought his head up again. A young woman in a white lab coat stepped over the threshold. “Mr. Ford? My name's Bobbi. As in the name usually short for ‘Robert’, but in my case, "Barbara," which, to me, is worse.” She grinned at him – it was a pretty smile in a pretty face, but Nate had long ago passed the time in his life when something like that could affect him.
“Where am I?” he asked, getting to his feet. “What’s happened?”
Her expression was kind – almost sympathetic. “You’ve experienced something called a biomorphic event.”
“A biomorphic..?” Voices – so many voices, all overlapping, all vying for his attention. Even when it had just been he and Sophie he’d heard them. Before that nothing…cold, still blackness where he’d begun to believe he’d died. “Where am I? What hospital is this?”
‘Bobbi’ paused for a second, before sliding back into her patter. “This room is all yours, so feel free to make yourself at home.”
(Only sheer force of will kept Nate from telling her what she could do with that little platitude.)
“We’re going to want to run some tests, to pin down exactly what’s happened,” she went on – behaving as if she hadn’t noticed the change in his expression, even though Nate was fairly certain she had. “When you’re ready, we have some sweats for you to change into. Given the nature of this type of event, we will need to analyze your clothes and any personal belongings.” She gestured at a drawer face set in the smooth white wall. “After you change, put everything in here. The screen over there,” she gestured behind Nate and to his right, “will ask you to submit to a series of medical scans.” Her expression softened into something less shiny and more sympathetic. “Your file says that you have a strong dislike for hospitals, but I promise you this is all absolutely necessary.”
*****************************************
Fatigue was beginning to drag at her, but Sophie used her fear to hold it at bay. Every time the urge to curl up in one of the soft armchairs in a corner of the offices and forget about everything for a few hours, all she had to do was close her eyes and see the black clad government types breaking into the pub, fanning out through the back rooms, holding all of them at bay while a team went upstairs to get Nate.
“Run it, Hardison,” she said – her voice sounding dull and defeated to her ears. “Everything you’ve got.”
The hacker started to protest, but she fixed him with her most baleful glare. Bad enough Nate had been missing for three days, and they still didn’t know what had happened to make it so that he couldn’t be near any of them without screaming in pain. She wouldn’t stop until they knew where he’d been taken and why.
“Sophie.”
She flinched, realizing that Eliot had come up beside her without her realizing it. “We’re missing something. Something obvious Eliot – the answer is in the footage somewhere.” He’d kept Hardison and Parker from attacking the men who’d come for Nate, she recalled. Eliot had recognized the power they were up against, and done his job.
“We’re gonna find him,” the hitter said, his voice calm and reassuring. “It’s going to take time though – and if we push ourselves much further, we’re gonna start making mistakes.”
“Mistakes Nate can’t afford,” she added, nodding; realizing he was right. “Eliot, are you sure you didn’t recognize..?”
It was one of the only times she ever saw a crack in his armor. “I’m sorry. There’s been a big shakeup in the intelligence community in the past couple of years. Old agencies collapsing, new groups pulling together, trying to fill the void. Some of the patchwork on those guys looks like SHIELD issue, but the rifles are more army than private sector, and I’ve never seen the kind of hardware some of those kids were packing. The gauntlets on that one girl were definite next generation tech.”
Hardison cleared his throat. When he had their attention, the hacker said, “There were some anomalies kicked back by the facial recognition software. So, I started looking for what wasn’t there, instead of what was.” He was drawing breath to continue, when Parker elbowed him in the ribs. “At least half of our spaced invaders have had their identities scrubbed. No trace of them whatsoever.”
“That’s high level black ops stuff,” Eliot mused. “I can make some calls.”
Hardison shook his head. “No need. There was a non-standard signature on the work. Basically by looking for what wasn’t there, I traced it to a hacktivist organization that went bust a couple years back. ‘Rising Tide’ – turns out their leader was taking money from the very people they were supposed to be working against.”
“You think somebody from the Rising Tide..?” Sophie asked. Eliot was more succinct.
“I still think the black ops angle is a better one.”
Hardison waved them both to silence. “You’re not hearing me. Or not letting me finish. Anyway, there was talk on the dark net about a member of the Rising Tide infiltrating SHIELD a few years back. She was never heard from again – chatter says she was probably killed when SHIELD blew up, but the kind of identity scrub I saw was well within her rumored capabilities.”
Sophie drew strength from the hacker’s information. It was the best lead they had. “Eliot, make your calls. Hardison, see if you can track this hacker’s work back to a source.”
***************************************
It had gone against every instinct he had, but in the end Nate had complied. Nothing they’d asked was unreasonable or even moderately invasive, and the one undeniable truth at the heart of this madness was that something had happened to him – something entirely out of his range of knowledge or experience.
Two meal periods had passed – by his best estimation approximately twelve hours. Thoughts of the team tugged deeply on his emotions. He’d put them through hell with his disappearance and whatever had happened to him on his return. He could still see Sophie’s face behind his eyes – a study in fear and pain.
The sound of the door to his room opening brought him to his feet. Another young woman entered – this one smaller and darker of features than the first one. Her expression was somehow more genuine though – and when she spoke, Nate didn’t have the sense that he was listening to a pre-recorded script. “Mr. Ford?” she asked, hesitating in the doorway almost as if she was expecting his permission to enter. When he nodded, she visibly brightened and stepped forward. “Hi. I’m Daisy. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come see you sooner, but your situation is somewhat complicated.”
That forced a smile from him. “Your gift for understatement is impressive.”
He’d startled her. “What? Oh – believe it or not, I mean complicated by my standards. We haven’t run into a full bore telepath yet.” She gestured at the door she’d used to enter. “Medical’s killing themselves trying to find a way to protect you outside this room.” She laughed self-consciously. “They’ll get there – I promise you – but it’s going to take time.”
Telepathy. Stunned into silence, Nate had sunk back down into the nearest chair. Daisy seemed to sense how overwhelmed he was; she inched closer, her voice even more sympathetic. “Our best people are on this, Mr. Ford. They’re frankly amazed that you survived without some sort of traumatic brain injury.”
“All those voices…” Nate shuddered, remembering the incomprehensible babble of conversations that had overwhelmed him in the end. Realizing he wasn’t alone, he looked up and met Daisy’s eyes.
She nodded. “Our techs figure you were taking in thoughts from as far as a mile away.”
Suddenly the insanity was starting to make a perverse sort of sense. Nate took in his surroundings with a new eye. “Something about this room blocks my…ability?” He wondered briefly about how easy it was for him to accept the idea that he was somehow able to read people’s thoughts, but if Occam’s Razor had ever applied anywhere in his life, he supposed it applied here.
Daisy nodded. “We made this chamber out of a material that blocks all inhuman abilities. Yours nearly destroyed you, but some of them are capable of doing damage on a city wide scale.” Nate imagined he saw another flash of self-consciousness in her expression.
“You?” he asked.
She nodded again. “I can manipulate naturally occurring frequencies,” she said. “Vibrations. I brought down part of a mountain once.”
It was a lot to take in, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary Nate was beginning to believe that his best chance of beating whatever it was that had happened to him was with these people. Which meant… “My family,” he said, after a long moment of silence. “I need to tell them what’s happened – where I am.”
Daisy looked abruptly hesitant. “Unfortunately, we’re talking about trying to contain something on a global scale here. If words spreads about what’s been happening, well…” She exhaled sharply. “People can get panicky in the face of something like this. Innocent victims could be hurt.”
Nate shook his head. “You don’t understand. My family is very determined when it comes to something they want. It’s going to be much easier if…” He broke off as the door slid open, revealing a very familiar face in a similar medical uniform and lab coat to the one he’d seen earlier.
“Agent Johnson,” Sophie said, paying him absolutely no visible attention whatsoever, “Director Coulson needs to see you at once.”
He was certain in that moment that he’d never loved her more.