Chapter Text
Six qualified professionals.
That is what Agent Piper had been promised by Director Mackenzie.
Those had been his exact words.
Piper repeated the phrase in her head as she stood outside Briefing Room Three and listened to something crash inside.
A moment of silence followed, before a voice rose from inside, noticeably strained with the effort of trying to remain calm and professional.
“It was functioning fine before you got involved.” Another voice responded, “Then why did the wiring look so stupid?”
Another crash followed.
Piper opened up the door to find two of the recruits wrestling each other to the ground. A third was attempting to drag them apart. The remaining three were scattered on different sides of the table, all seated. One quiet woman watched the commotion from the far end of the table, arms folded and eyes narrowed at the scene. Across from her, the youngest-looking recruit had gathered aside the still-steaming coffee cups, out of the way of the chaos. A few seats to the right of her, a third woman was watching everything unfold with wide eyes and a seemingly neverending stream of commentary.
“He’s going to dislocate something if he keeps twisting like that, and if the taller one keeps putting pressure across his shoulder while the other one’s trying to roll out from under him, then there’s a fairly significant chance it won’t stop at a dislocation because the joint’s already being forced well past its natural range and–” the woman paused to drag in a breath as the scuffle continued, even after one man’s head knocked into one of the legs of the table with a dull thunk, “–and now there’s the risk of blunt-force trauma as well, which is probably the more immediate concern, actually.”
The man in the middle of the fight was the first to notice her. Recognition crossed his face, followed quickly by the weary resignation of someone who had hoped she might arrive five minutes later.
“Agent Piper,” he greeted, giving the two recruits a shove in opposite directions. Both men stopped bickering to turn their attention to their commanding officer’s arrival. The taller man’s face flushed with embarrassment, while the other gave an anxious chuckle.
Piper let the silence stretch as she surveyed the room. All three men returned to their seats, all six recruits now quiet and attempting varying degrees of innocence.
“Six qualified professionals,” she said at last. “That’s what I was promised.” The recruit who had given the anxious laugh opened his mouth, presumably to offer an explanation, but Piper raised a hand before he could even begin. “Save it.” Her gaze travelled between faces, lingering just long enough to make each of them sit a little straighter. “You can explain yourselves after I know which of you is which.”
The man who had broken up the fight stepped forward first, smoothing a hand over the front of his jacket as though that might restore a bit of dignity to the situation.
“Beau Jackson, ma’am,” he said, a thick Texan drawl in his tone, offering her his hand. “Operations. Your second-in-command.” Piper glanced once at the space where the other two men had been fighting, before accepting his hand.
“Off to a strong start, Jackson.”
The taller of the other two men stood, clearing his throat and hastily straightening his shirt.
“Charlie Fox. Engineering, and– I um.. I’m a mechanic. I also.. am qualified as a pilot.” He glanced towards the man behind him, “And, for the record, I was just trying to stop him from–”
“Finley Ford,” The other cut in, offering Piper an easy smile. “Applied physics. Ignore him, his wiring looked stupid.”
“If it works, then it isn’t stupid!”
“It can still look stupid!”
Thankfully, Beau spoke up before anything escalated a second time.
“You two. Quit it.” The command came firm, authoritative, and effectively silenced both recruits.
Piper sighed, unable to even dignify that little display with a response. She instead turned her attention to the silent woman to the far left of the table.
“Dakota Walker.” Piper acknowledged, “I’m familiar with your.. history.” Dakota gave nothing but a stone-faced nod in reply. Across the opposite side of the table sat the previously rather chatty woman, and the other who was still seemingly protecting the coffee.
“... I forgot whose coffee is whose…” the latter murmured, eyes focused down at the identical to-go cups with increasing confusion. Dakota rose from her seat and, without a word, redistributed each cup to its rightful owner. “Oh…” the younger woman looked up, and quickly noticed that the rest of the team was watching her rather expectantly. “What?” It took her a moment to realise the situation, before quickly addressing Piper, “Oh! Yeah, um.. Amber Dean, uh.. op- opt-.. um..”
“Operations.” Beau answered for her. Amber nodded quickly,
“Yeah. That.” Amber seemed, to be frank, like a nervous wreck.
The last to introduce herself was, ironically, the chatty blonde.
“Carys Owain,” she began brightly. “Biochemistry, medicine, xenobiology, exobiology, astrobiology, basically all the biologies, but I might need to just simplify that down a bit otherwise they might get a little bit overwhelming, and a few of those kind of overlap anyways,” the longer she spoke, the faster the words came out, “but then again I suppose that science is meant to go into all the specifics on everything and the whole point of discovery is to understand the differences between them all, or I think so anyway, but um–”
“Please stop,” Piper interrupted. “I got it.”
“Alright,” Piper looked down at her tablet, “so, three of you are cleared for combat, correct?” she asked. Instinctively, Charlie and Finley turned to look at Beau and Dakota. Both nodded in confirmation. Amber paused,
“Three? What do you mean three?” she asked.
“Three,” came a cheerful chirp from Carys a few seats over, one hand raised.
The rest of the room fell into silence.
“You’re like five foot nothing,” Charlie eventually commented, visibly taken aback. Piper was quick to refer to Carys’ file and clarify that she was, in fact, five foot four.
“We can’t all be giants, Charlie.” Carys replied, efficiently embarrassing Charlie, all six foot three of him, into silence, as well as drawing a bark of laughter from Finley. Piper continued reading.
“Advanced field training, firearms clearance, close-quarters combat, tactical medical response…” Piper chuckled at another note, “nine years of judo.” She looked up at the three openly bewildered recruits. “Yes. Her.”
“Could she take Charlie?” Finley asked, eyes bright with amused curiosity. Charlie’s head spun to face him.
“What?!”
“Moving on!” Piper announced.
Their first mission sounded simple enough. They’d be headed to Oregon, following a report that something potentially alien had been found there. An elderly woman had contacted local authorities after her dog had returned from the woods carrying a piece of strange, unrecognisable technology, and dropped it into her backyard. Naturally, the situation was handed over to S.H.I.E.L.D.
Piper brought up an aerial map of the area, marking the woman’s property and the stretch of woodland behind it. The fragment itself had already been collected and sent for analysis, but there was no way of knowing whether it had broken from something larger, or how much more might be scattered through the trees. Their job was simply to search the area, document anything unusual, and recover what they could safely move. Anything beyond that would be left for a specialist team.
Piper divided the woodland into three sectors, pairing each of the combat-cleared agents with one of the others. Beau would take Charlie, Dakota would search alongside Finley, and Carys would accompany Amber. It was, Piper assured them, little more than a precaution; the area had shown no signs of danger, but alien technology had a habit of becoming dangerous precisely when somebody assumed otherwise.
“Trust me, this stuff can get weird,” Piper told them. “A friend of mine ate something from space once, and… he got really high.”
For several seconds, nobody seemed quite too sure how to respond. Finley appeared both curious and, unfortunately, tempted, while Carys appeared to be generating more questions by the second. The others only glanced between one another, with varying levels of confusion. Piper killed the screens before anyone could ask anything, “Wheels up in forty. Grab your everything, Hangar Two, and Jackson?” Beau’s back straightened at the sound of his name, “Make sure those two don’t kill each other.” she said, gesturing to Finley and Charlie.
With that, Piper turned and left. Only once the door was closed did Finley’s voice fill the silence.
“Well, she seems nice.”
Forty-five minutes later, the six recruits were scattered throughout the cabin of a compact S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, a mobile command station affectionately named the Rover, preparing for the short flight to Oregon. Piper had no clue where the director had been hiding the funds for it, nor did she have any idea why he’d give the crew such a thing in the first place, but who was she to look a gift plane in the mouth?
Charlie had claimed the pilot’s seat almost immediately and, for the first time since Piper had entered the briefing room, appeared entirely at ease. Almost. Finley was leaning over the back of the seat, offering unsolicited opinions on the arrangement of the controls. Carys had discovered the medical storage and was quietly becoming less quiet about everything she believed it lacked. Amber sat nearby with a fresh coffee secured between both hands, while Dakota had retreated to the bunks in silence. Beau had busied himself with thoroughly inspecting every inch of the aircraft’s interior, keeping an eye out for any potential hazards, while Piper sat a few feet away from Amber, tapping away at a tablet.
Amber’s nails tapped against her coffee cup, then she tugged at her sleeve, and then she shifted her feet.
“So…” she began, continuing to fidget where she sat, “Do you like… stuff?” Piper’s gaze lifted up, and an amused smile couldn’t help but make an appearance across her face.
“I do, yeah,” Piper replied. “And I know all this stuff is.. new, and a lot, but trust me. It’s not that bad. You’ll do fine.”
Amber’s fidgeting slowed, though it didn’t stop entirely. Her gaze remained focused down at her drink, nails now lightly scratching against the cup.
“How do you know?”
Piper's expression softened, just slightly.
“Because Director Mackenzie wouldn’t have put you here if he didn’t think you could handle it.” She glanced towards the other sections of the plane where the rest of the team were out of sight. “Any of you.”
The hum of engines soon grew, and the aircraft began its ascent. In the cockpit, Charlie now appeared far more confident as he took the Rover airborne. Finley remained by his side, asking question after question about the controls, the fuel capacity, the lift, the drag. Charlie… actually didn’t mind it.
Once the Rover had levelled out and settled onto autopilot, Finley shifted in his seat.
“Wanna know something cool?” Finley asked. Charlie glanced at him curiously. “This is like the Bus.”
“The what?”
“The Bus. Phil Coulson’s plane.” Finley gestured vaguely around the cockpit. “Mobile command station, bunch of agents living together, Science and Operations working side-by-side. You know that’s where Quake started out. She was on the Bus team. She used to be just like us.” Finley sighed dreamily. “She’s so cool.”
Charlie scoffed.
“That’s not true. Quake is a superhero. There’s no way. And anyway, don’t you remember all those news articles a few years ago? About bank robberies and property destruction? Quake was like– a criminal. I heard that S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her to rehabilitate her and turn her into a hero. That’s why she’s cool, ‘cause she changed for the better.”
Finley looked almost offended.
“You are painfully incorrect, my friend. Moving on, Melinda May actually piloted the Bus.” Charlie opened his mouth to speak, only for Finley to cut him off, “Yes. That Melinda May. Coulson Academy Melinda May.” Charlie stared, utterly stunned. “And don’t even get me started on Agents Fitz and Simmons–”
“Fitz and Simmons?! Fitz and Simmons, as in– Leopold James Fitz and Jemma Anne Simmons?!”
Finley was absolutely delighted by the reaction, and nodded with a widening smirk.
“Yep. The exact ones. They started off on a plane like this, on a team like ours.”
Safe to say, Charlie was not handling this information well. In fact, he had gone rather pale. He had always thought of Fitz and Simmons as belonging to some distant class of people who had simply been born extraordinary. They had not become brilliant. They simply were. The idea that they had once been young, inexperienced scientists aboard a plane like this – anything remotely like him – was a lot to absorb.
Elsewhere aboard the Rover, Beau had finally reached the sleeping quarters.
Dakota was already there; one small bag rested on the bunk nearest the rear of the aircraft, though she had yet to unpack it. Instead, she stood studying the emergency evacuation diagram fixed to the wall. Beau leaned against the doorway.
“Comfortable?”
Dakota turned to him. For a moment, she seemed almost embarrassed to have been found.
“Getting there,” she replied, her voice just a little uneasy, her smile just a little apologetic, “I’m a bigger fan of having solid ground underneath me, to be honest.” Dakota let herself settle down onto the bed. “However… I feel like overcoming fears and hesitations is what this job is about, y’know? I can’t let them interfere with my responsibilities,” she reasoned.
Beau regarded her for a moment, before his attention shifted towards the evacuation diagram.
“Alright,” he said. “Brief me.” Dakota blinked.
“What?”
“You’ve been studyin’ that thing since I got here. What do I need to know?”
Dakota glanced back toward the diagram, caught slightly off guard by the request.
“There are two primary evacuation routes from the sleeping quarters. The nearest exit is through the equipment bay, but that could become obstructed if anything shifts during impact. The route through the common area is longer, but provides access to the medical bay and emergency communications.”
Beau’s eyes followed the routes along the diagram.
“Fire suppression?”
“Two units outside the door. Another beside the rear exit.”
“Emergency oxygen?
“Secured beneath the lower bunks.”
“Good place for it?”
“Accessible, protected, unlikely to be displaced.”
Beau couldn't help but let a small smile slip.
“Sounds like you approve,” he said. Dakota matched it with a small smile of her own,
“Mostly,” she answered. Her voice had steadied as she spoke. The uneasiness hadn't settled completely, but it had been pushed aside by something more familiar: procedure, assessment, responsibility.
Beau nodded to the diagram,
“Anything they got wrong?” he asked. Dakota considered it seriously, gaze moving from the diagram, to the halls, to nothing in particular as she thought back on what she had seen aboard the plane so far.
“The equipment bay should have illuminated floor markings. If the main power fails, visibility could become an issue,” she explained.
“Write it up.” Dakota’s gaze snapped back to Beau.
“You want me to submit a report?” she asked.
“Y’found a problem. Seems like the responsible thing to do,” he confirmed with a nod. Dakota studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod back, before she ever so slightly turned her face away, a hand coming up to pull her hair over one shoulder.
“I’ll mention it to Piper.”
In the medical bay, Carys had already mentioned several things to herself.
“No, that can’t go there, ‘cause then you'd have to reach over the sterile supplies, and that’s just askin’ for contamination, that is. Not that I’m expecting contamination, obviously, but nobody ever really does, do they? That’s kind of the problem with it. Ych a fi.” She moved a sealed container from one shelf to another, stepped back, and then immediately reconsidered. “Mm.. no. ‘Cause if there was turbulence–” Carys paused and glanced toward the ceiling as though waiting for someone to offer an opinion. “Good point.” She nodded to nobody, and moved the container to a third shelf. “We’ll put that there. Iawn. Lovely.”
Once the Rover had touched down in Oregon and was settled on solid ground, Piper gathered all six recruits into the lower bay with their equipment, though whether they were actually prepared for their first assignment remained debatable.
“Remember,” she said, standing before the lowered ramp, “we’re here to assess the area, recover anything safe to move, and document everything else. Be careful before you touch anything, let your designated science geek check it out with their gear first. Don’t push yourselves to carry stuff you can’t, or anything that might be too dangerous. Understood?”
The term “science geek” earned a small laugh from Carys, while the others simply offered a scattered collection of nods and verbal confirmations.
Piper then took a step down the ramp, preparing to take the team out into the field for the first time. She paused, and sighed, before she spoke again. “And for the love of God. Do not put anything in your mouth. Ford.”
“What?!” Finley yelled, “Why was that aimed at me?!”
“Because I saw your face when I mentioned Davis getting high.”
Once they arrived at the edge of the property where the tech had been found, an elderly woman stood waiting, one hand wrapped around the leash of a large, mud-covered golden retriever. The dog’s tail practically became a helicopter propeller upon spotting the collection of strangers. Carys gasped audibly, and every head turned to her.
“Sorry,” she whispered. Piper stared at her for a moment, before taking a step closer to the woman.
“Ms Brewster?” she asked. The woman lifted a hand to greet them.
“That’s me. And this is Tia. She’s the one responsible for dragging you all the way out here.” The woman gestured to the dog. “Little troublemaker,” she said fondly. Tia gave a very enthusiastic bark.
“Aw, you’re not, are you?” Carys murmured, already lowering herself into a crouch. “You’re just a baby.” She looked to Ms Brewster. “Am I okay to–”
“She’d be offended if you didn’t,” Ms Brewster interrupted.
That was all the permission Carys needed, and once Ms Brewster unclipped Tia’s leash, the dog went bounding through the gate and toward Carys, tail swishing wildly as Carys reached out to scratch behind her ears. Tia’s attention briefly shifted from Carys, tail still wagging as she wandered over towards Beau instead. Beau looked down at her, and the usual sternness in his expression softened almost immediately.
“Well, hey there, sweetheart.” he murmured, crouching just enough to scratch gently under her chin. Tia leaned happily into the affection, earning a quiet chuckle from him. “Yeah.. you’re a good girl, aren’t you?”
Apparently satisfied, Tia gave his hand one last enthusiastic nudge with her nose before trotting straight back over to Carys.
Piper continued asking Ms Brewster about the discovery: how long Tia had been gone, which direction she had disappeared in, whether or not she had noticed anything else out of the ordinary nearby. Ms Brewster answered as best she could, occasionally pausing whenever Carys’ voice drifted over from beside the gate.
“Oh my God, look at her paws.”
Tia had apparently vanished into the woods for around twenty minutes before returning muddy and carrying the strange piece of technology in her mouth. Ms Brewster hadn’t heard anything unusual, nor had she seen anyone else nearby.
“You’re so fluffy.. yes, you are.”
She pointed out the rough direction Tia had come back from, toward a narrow stretch of woodland beyond the rear of the property. Piper followed the gesture, mentally mapping out where they would begin their search.
“Who’s a gorgeous girl?”
Piper glanced back, and Carys was now sitting cross-legged in the grass, Tia practically folded into her lap. Piper sighed.
At least one of them was enjoying the assignment.
“Owain. We have a mission.” Piper reminded her. “As much as I hate to drag you away from your new best friend.” Carys reluctantly pushed herself to her feet and returned to the group. She apologised with a sheepish smile as she wiped grass from the knees of her jeans, face lightly flushed with embarrassment when she realised she had perhaps gotten a little too distracted by the dog. Ms Brewster once again pointed them toward the section of woodland Tia had emerged from, and Piper quickly divided the team into their assigned pairs. Beau and Charlie would sweep west, Dakota and Finley east, while Carys and Amber took the northern stretch. Piper would remain between the three routes, monitoring their positions and moving between them as needed.
With their routes decided, the group crossed the tree line together before gradually splitting off in their respective directions.
Beau and Charlie had made decent progress through the western section of the woods without finding much beyond mud, tree roots, and several objects that Charlie had briefly hoped were alien technology, only to discover that they were, respectively, a bottle cap, part of an old flashlight, and something he refused to identify as anything more than “gross.”
Charlie crouched beside another patch of disturbed earth, slowly moving his scanner over it. Beau stood a few feet behind him, keeping an eye on the surrounding tree line.
“So,” he began, “you and Ford.. how long’ve you two been friends?” Charlie glanced over his shoulder,
“We’re not.”
Beau looked at him, while Charlie returned his attention to the scanner.
“How long have you known each other?” Beau asked. Charlie stopped and glanced back again,
“Since yesterday.”
“... Yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
Beau stared at him for a moment, visibly attempting to reconcile that answer with the image of Charlie and Finley wrestling on the briefing room floor earlier that morning.
“You’ve known each other for a day.”
Charlie returned his attention to the scanner, as though there was nothing particularly unusual about this information. Beau let out a laugh of disbelief, causing Charlie to glance back a third time.
“What?”
“Nothin’. Just figured you two had history.”
“We do not.” Charlie straightened, stepping carefully around a thick root that had pushed its way through the earth. “I met him yesterday in one of the engineering labs.”
The story came out in pieces as they continued through the trees. Charlie had been working on one of his smaller robotics projects when Finley wandered into the lab, spotted it sitting open on the workbench, and apparently decided that that was permission enough to start fiddling with it. Charlie’s expression tightened as he recounted it, before grumbling,
“It was working just fine before he touched it, but nooo, my wiring is “stupid” according to him.”
Beau smiled, which had Charlie looking almost personally offended. However, once Charlie started explaining what the robot actually did, the irritation faded remarkably quickly. It was a small reconnaissance and retrieval unit, fitted with a camera and an articulated arm precise enough (or eventually would be precise enough, Charlie corrected) to perform delicate work in environments that would be too unsafe for an agent. Beau listened while Charlie spoke, occasionally glancing away to check the surrounding woods, but never seeming to lose track of the explanation.
“Wonder how Walker’s farin’ with Ford.” Beau murmured.
Dakota had been faring reasonably well with Finley. For perhaps six minutes.
For the first few minutes, Dakota had been content to let him chatter. He commented on his scanner readings, complained about a branch catching on his jacket, and spent an impressive amount of time wondering aloud whether Piper had deliberately paired them together or simply drawn names from a hat. Dakota listened with the occasional hum of acknowledgement, attention primarily focused on the ground ahead.
Finley stepped over a fallen branch,
“How old does a tree have to be before it becomes wood?” he asked. Dakota glanced towards him.
“What?”
“A tree.” Finley gestured vaguely towards one beside them. “How old does it have to be before it becomes wood?”
Dakota glanced sideways at him, but kept walking. This did not seem to deter him.
At first, she had answered him sincerely, explaining that a tree was, in fact, already made of wood regardless of age. Finley had accepted this with a thoughtful nod that suggested the matter had been genuinely troubling him.
A few minutes later, he had wondered aloud whether bears knew what kind of bear they were, or if they simply knew they were bears and that was that. Dakota had declined to speculate. She was beginning to suspect that this had been a mistake.
The eastern stretch of woodland was denser than the area they had entered through, forcing them into a narrower route between the trees. Dakota moved carefully, paying more attention to the ground than to Finley, occasionally crouching to inspect broken stems or patches of disturbed earth. Finley followed a few steps behind, scanner in hand.
“If a path only exists because people walked there, how did the first person know where the path was?”
Dakota stopped, and looked over her shoulder. Finley’s expression was perfectly serious. Dakota was starting to question the choices she had made in life that had led her to this moment.
“They didn’t,” she said. “They made it.”
Dakota tried her best to ignore Finley as the two continued searching, not finding much in the way of alien technology, but finding plenty of grass, dirt, stones, rocks, more dirt. Finley crouched beside a scattering of stones near the base of a tree, picking one up and tossing it a short way into the air, before catching it.
“Are rocks born big, or do they start off as small stones?” he asked.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” she replied quickly.
Finley grinned,
“Doing what?”
Dakota stared at him long enough for the grin on his face to confirm everything she needed to know. She turned away without giving him the satisfaction of another answer. This did little to stop him. Over the next several minutes, Finley wondered aloud whether fallen trees technically became very long bushes, among several other questions Dakota made a conscious decision not to acknowledge, for fear it would only encourage him further. It wasn’t until she heard a particular phrase that she paused, when Finley, American Finley, mentioned “my mate Paul.”
Dakota pursed her lips for a moment, before sighing with what could have been both realisation as well as resignation, and then continued walking.
“You’re doing the Philomena Cunk thing, aren’t you?”
Whatever response Finley had prepared died when Dakota suddenly stopped again. Her attention had shifted past him, towards a stretch of undergrowth several feet from the path. Several stems had been snapped low to the ground, all bent in roughly the same direction, while a shallow score cut through the damp earth. Dakota crouched beside it, her expression shifting from… one type of confusion to… another type of confusion.
Finley noticed the change and, for once, stopped talking.
The damage was too narrow and consistent to have been caused by an animal moving normally through the brush. Whatever had passed through had been heavy enough to disturb the soil, with the scoring’s depth only increasing the further it went, more like impact and momentum than an intentional movement, Finley recognised.
Finley swept his scanner across the ground and his readings began to climb.
“Okay,” he murmured. “That’s actually something.” Dakota followed the line of crushed vegetation deeper into the woods, while Finley followed, now beside her, half-engrossed in the new readings.
“You spend a lot of time tracking things through forests?” Finley asked absentmindedly. Dakota paused, before offering a simple shrug.
“Not that I’m aware.”
Satisfied with the answer, Finley, very mercifully, decided against asking any more questions.
On the northern stretch of woodland, Amber had not been afforded the same mercy. Carys had been talking almost continuously since they split from the others. Most of it concerned the surrounding plant life, possible biological contamination from the object they were searching for, and several increasingly specific observations about the local ecosystem. Amber understood… perhaps two-thirds of it all, which seemed to be enough encouragement for Carys to continue.
Amber didn't really seem to mind the chatter, though. If anything, having someone else fill the silence meant she didn’t have to. Kind of a relief, actually.
“And there’ll be deer through here somewhere, probably, and squirrels, loads of birds, might even be coyotes a bit further out, a bit further from the areas where actual people would live around, and hopefully not close enough to have actually picked up anything because I really don’t fancy explaining to Piper that an alien component has been eaten by a coyote.”
The northern route was less densely wooded than the eastern stretch, leaving wider patches of open ground between the trees. Carys periodically broke away from whatever she was yapping about to inspect something with her scanner, while Amber kept her attention on the ground ahead, photographing anything that looked even vaguely out of the ordinary.
It was Amber who spotted the first piece.
At first glance, it barely looked worth mentioning: a thin sliver of dark metal, half-hidden beneath a patch of dead leaves, no larger than two of her fingers. She stopped and crouched beside it, careful not to touch.
“Uh… Carys?”
Carys stopped mid-sentence, and quickly came over to help investigate.
By the third fragment they had found, Amber had stopped looking at what they were finding, and started looking at where they were finding it. She glanced back the way they had come, mentally retracing each step. The first piece had been almost hidden beneath the leaves. The second had been several metres further ahead, caught between two roots. The third had been another few metres and then some in the direction they were heading.
“I think they’re getting further apart.” Amber murmured, following the direction of the fragments, and just as predicted, a few metres away lay another piece, the distance increased again by just a bit.
Amber relayed over comms that they had found... something, and Piper instructed the other pairs to start moving towards their position.
“Y’all find somethin’ useful?” Beau asked over the comms, before Charlie’s voice quickly followed.
“Please say yes. All we’ve found is a bottle cap.”
Finley’s voice was next to come through the comms, explaining that they had found a shallow score through the earth and several patches of crushed vegetation, all suggesting that something heavy had struck the ground and continued moving north. Dakota confirmed the direction, while Finley added that his scanner readings had been steadily increasing the further they followed it.
Carys glanced back towards the fragments she and Amber had found, then towards the direction ahead. The two discoveries seemed to line up far too neatly to be coincidence. Piper instructed everyone to keep moving north and began making her way towards them, while Amber marked the fragment locations on the shared map, watching the widening trail stretch out in the same direction as Dakota and Finley’s path. Whatever had come down in these woods, they were no longer searching blindly for it.
It didn’t take long for the others to begin filtering into the northern stretch. Piper arrived first, tablet already in hand as she approached Amber and Carys, followed several minutes later by Dakota and Finley emerging through the trees from the east. Beau and Charlie were last, having considerably more ground to cover from the western route. Charlie looked mildly offended by the entire forest by the time they reached the others.
“Nothing,” he announced, before anyone could even ask. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Bottle cap,” Beau reminded him with a clap against Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie gave him a… less-than-thrilled look.
Piper, meanwhile, barely glanced up from her tablet, though there was a slight yet undeniable smirk on her face.
“Thrilling work, Fox.”
Once all six were gathered, the scattered pieces of information began to form something more useful. Amber sent the locations and photographs of the fragments that she and Carys had found to Piper’s tablet, while Dakota indicated the direction of the shallow score she and Finley had been following. Finley added his scanner readings alongside it, the residual energy gradually strengthening as their route had turned north.
Carys crouched beside the most recent fragment once more, running her own scanner over its surface while the others compared what they had found.
“Same material as the others,” she confirmed. “Same residue, as well, roughly. A bit stronger, actually, but that might just be because this one’s bigger, or hasn’t–”
“Later,” Piper said.
Carys immediately nodded. “Yep.”
Charlie moved closer to Finley, looking over his shoulder at the readings displayed on his scanner. Whatever lingering irritation existed between them was apparently suspended in the presence of something genuinely interesting; within seconds, the two were comparing measurements and talking quietly between themselves.
Piper expanded the map. The western section remained largely empty. Dakota and Finley’s route cut north-east through the woods in a long, shallow line, while the three fragments Amber had marked continued further north, each one slightly farther from the last.
“If the spaces between the pieces get bigger in this direction,” Amber murmured, pointing to the trail of fragments, “wouldn’t it make sense that whatever it was came apart from the opposite way?” she asked, turning herself until she was facing with her back towards the straight line of tech pieces. “So… somewhere between here and maybe where you two found your thing.” she pointed towards Dakota and Finley. When Amber noticed everyone paying attention to her now, she shook her head, eyes dropping to the ground, “I think.. I- um.. I don’t know,” she muttered.
Dakota looked back toward the route she and Finley had followed.
“The scoring got deeper the further north we went… but I can’t see any around here,” she said. Finley checked the readings logged on his scanner.
“And the residual energy peaked on our way here, but the closer we got to this point, it started to sink a little.”
Amber glanced between their route and the widening trail of fragments.
“So… all four of us have been moving farther away from the central point of the.. weird.. spiky readings and.. residue,” Amber murmured, sounding uncertain about whether or not she was even using the correct words. “Grand,” she grumbled.
“Alright,” Piper announced, “Backtrack. Everybody together.”
They didn’t have to go far. Less than ten minutes later, Dakota picked up some shallow scoring in the earth again, deepening the further back they headed towards Dakota and Finley’s sector. The central point hadn’t been quite so far into the northern area nor the eastern, but at some point in between. Finley and Charlie’s scanners began reacting almost immediately, and several metres beyond that, half-buried beneath torn roots and damp soil, something dark and metallic caught the light.
Beau stopped.
“Think that’s our guy.”
The object was roughly the size of a suitcase, battered from impact and surrounded by smaller shards of the same strange material. For the first time all afternoon, every scanner in the group agreed on something.
They had found it.
The three scientists gathered around the object at a cautious distance, each approaching it from a different angle. Carys checked for anything potentially biological or contaminating the surrounding soil, while Charlie studied the damaged casing, and Finley focused on the faint residual energy still pulsing somewhere inside.
Between them, they were able to establish a few things fairly quickly. The object was almost certainly technological with little to no biological matter, built from a layered material designed to withstand significant impact, and whatever internal system it contained was still holding some kind of charge. Exactly what it had been designed to do remained unclear.
Finley ran his scanner over an exposed seam once more. The reading jumped sharply, and his expression changed.
“Okay… this might be volatile.”
That was enough for Piper.
“Then nobody touches it.”
Charlie immediately withdrew the hand he had been considering moving closer with. Piper looked over the site, then towards the rest of the team. “Photographs, measurements, coordinates, scanner logs. Everything we can record without disturbing it.” She gestured toward the half-buried core. “Our job was to find it, assess it, and decide whether it was safe to recover. It isn’t. So we document what we’ve got, mark the location, and let a team with better equipment deal with transportation.”
There were no arguments.
For the next several minutes, the six of them worked around the site without approaching the object any further. Amber photographed the debris radius and surrounding damage, Dakota marked the safest route back through the woodland, Charlie and Finley saved their scanner data, while Carys documented the condition of the surrounding plant life and soil.
Once Piper was satisfied they had enough, she sent the recovery request through to headquarters. More seasoned professionals would be sent to the location to extract the materials, where they could then be investigated and studied.
“I hope it turns out to be a laser..” Finley murmured. “That would be so cool.”
Their first assignment was, officially, complete.
By the time the Rover was back in the air, the atmosphere aboard it felt considerably lighter than it had that morning. Equipment had been packed away, jackets had been abandoned over the backs of seats, and most of the team had gathered in the common area with whatever drinks and snacks they had managed to find. Even Dakota had remained with the others this time, settled into one of the seats with a mug in both hands rather than disappearing back into the sleeping quarters.
Piper stood near the centre of the room and lifted her drink in something vaguely resembling a toast.
“Alright. First mission officially complete. Nobody got shot, nobody got punched, nothing exploded, and we didn’t have to fight a single alien. I’d call that a success.”
There was a brief silence before Finley slowly lowered the snack in his hands.
“Were those all serious possibilities?” He asked. Piper looked at him.
“Oh, absolutely.” she nodded. Charlie seemed rather startled by this information.
“For a retrieval mission?”
“You’d be surprised,” Piper replied.
Amber glanced between them, visibly unsure whether Piper was joking.
“How often did things explode on your old missions?”
Piper paused to consider it, taking a second to reminisce over the oh-so-utterly-blissful memories of space, infiltration, attack, aliens, many instances that felt like certain doom…
“More than they should've," she answered. “Agent Johnson did usually have a part to play in that.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Agent Johnson?” Finley asked, eyes wide with a sneaking suspicion. Piper smirked at that look.
“Agent Daisy Johnson.” she nodded. “Or you might know her as Quake.”
A startled chorus of the same simple word echoed through the Rover:
“What?!”