Resurrection - Chapter 14
A new mission means new dangers, some emanating from the same old sources. It's back to work for the team on the bus, but for one it means facing the old dragons again.
Chapter 14
Everybody was waiting to hear what Phil had to say, and, in truth, they all hoped it had something to do with Fitz. It just didn’t feel right to be heading out into harm’s way without him.
“Skye, could you please bring us up to date on the situation in Bahrain.” His words were disappointing, but the group listened carefully as Skye began to break down the situation.
“At about 0800 local time, a group of somewhere between 4 and 8 people, all male, entered the offices of the Bank of India. They took the entire staff hostage and forced the resident manager to open the vault.”
“How much did they get away with?” Trip asked.
“That’s completely unknown. They did take several million in various currencies, but the real damage was done in the deposit boxes.”
“How?”
“They apparently had the ability to see through the individual box doors, and they broke into them using some sort of laser. No one was present while they were doing that, but the manager reported hearing a cyclical sound over and over again, always followed by a crash. From what he described...and apparently he is a pretty good listener, it sounds very much like they at a particle weapon similar to a Chitauri anti-proton blaster. In any case, they didn’t open every one, and the bank is scrambling to identify the depositors and then see if they can get an accurate listing of what was taken.”
“Is that all? Didn’t the message say multiple attacks?”
“Yes, it did. About an hour later the same program was used at a branch of the International Bank of Commerce. Around noon they hit the main branch of the Nova Scotia Business Bank.”
“Any idea what the total haul was?” Phil asked.
Skye shook her head. “Not yet. It may be impossible to know. Some of the depositors are likely very sensitive about saying anything about what they had there. There is one that really seems troubling though.”
“Who is that?” Melinda asked.
Skye anticipated she would be the one to ask, and she really didn’t look forward to responding. Nonetheless, she did. “Faraday Metals.” She saw Melinda frown. “They don’t store any cash or securities there. The box they emptied held the details of much of their research, including patent applications and some other trade secrets.”
Jemma spoke up for the first time. “Aren’t they...?”
Skye nodded. “They are working on analysis and replication of several artifacts recovered from New York. They’re currently compiling a list of what was there, but in short...it’s a complete witch’s brew of dangerous stuff. They told me that the diagrams for the control system for the Tesseract were there. They have also done some work with Stark, and they aren’t certain how much of his power source work was there.”
“Shit!” Trip muttered, mostly to himself.
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Phil said with a smile. “So...who is involved?”
Skye resumed, swiping her hand over the holocom glass to pull up several images. “These are from the security cameras at the Bank of India. Apparently they forgot to take them completely out of play, or just focused on the video feeds and ignored the still cameras. In any case, here you can see their initial entry.” The photo included 5 men who were dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and carrying automatic weapons. The last man was also carrying or dragging a duffel bag big enough to contain any number of weapons or machines.
“Not much to go on here, but this one,” she said, tapping to enlarge another frame, “caught them inside the vault, and at this point they had removed their masks. The one is clearly Edward Gross, and this sort of thing is right down his alley. Facial recognition says there’s an 83% chance this is Charles Bowmont.”
“This guy, wielding the blaster, is most likely one Gustav Hammerson, a small time hood from New Jersey who owns a seven page rap sheet with charges from darn near every county and state east of the Mississippi. He’s never played in the big leagues before, but a couple of reports I found suggest he made some new friends in the wake of New York. Only Gross came out of the fridge, but he appears to be gathering a private army of low-life individuals.”
“There’s one more,” she added, moving the photos around until another view from inside the vault was on top. “This,” she said, tapping a man who seemed to be holding some sort of scanning device, “is quite possibly Glen Davis, former agent of SHIELD, Level 6. He’s unaccounted for after the Hydra attack. His last known location was at the fridge doing something...it’s unclear just what, so he might be Hydra. The thing he’s holding appears to be Chitauri technology, but I couldn’t find any matching images in the files so I’m not sure what it does.”
She tapped the screen again and a map appeared, complete with some arrows and lines. “This is the best I could do from the sat feeds. Here’s the bank. Here’s their next stop, and here’s the last known target. If I found the right cars...I think there were two of them...then they headed over here. It’s impossible to see for certain, but I think they disappeared into this warehouse complex.”
“The last image I was able to extract put them right about...here! That building is currently leased to some Chinese company with an unpronounceable name. I’ve searched for them but there’s nothing. It’s almost as if they don’t exist. All I know is they pay the rent on time, and the utility bills are completely normal.”
“Okay,” Phil said, picking up the narrative. “We’re going to be going in pretty blind...unless they pull another caper before we arrive. We’ve got a little while, and there are a couple other things I want to discuss before we create a plan.” With that said, his expression changed and he looked around the room, his gaze stopping at Jemma.
“First, some good news.” Jemma stared at him, almost defying him to say what she was dreaming. “I’ve spoken to the doctors at the Hub. In a few weeks, maybe a bit less, they’re going to release Fitz.” He paused as the entire team let out various versions of hurrahs. “He’s begging to come back to the bus.” There were more smiles, grins, and shared looks of celebration.
“Now, we need to understand that when he arrives he may not be the same Fitz we knew. He’s been through some pretty rough times, and as some of us know only too well, confronting your own mortality can leave some lasting scars. I haven’t talked to him, at least not in any depth, and we might find that the wrong words or situation can trigger some pretty terrible memories for him. Think of it as PTSD, which, in truth, is exactly what it is.”
“We’re going to take it slow, and hopefully the mission load will allow that. I’m pretty much going to let him do whatever he wants, but I’ll know more about that after I have a chance to talk with him.”
“Now, there is another thing too. We are heading into the jungle again, and going up against some Chitauri technology isn’t going to be fun. We’re going to need the kind of help that Fitz would normally supply, but he’s not going to be here for this one. So...I looked around for a temporary replacement. We may need to improvise on the ground, and there few technical resources in Bahrain.”
“With that in mind we are stopping briefly at the sandbox to pick up a new team member. I want you to welcome him, and I suspect only Jemma knows him at all.” She looked at Phil, wondering who the mystery man might be but he revealed nothing.
“Between now and then...how long until we arrive, Melinda?”
She glanced at the clock display on the holocom. “About seven hours, give or take a few minutes.”
“Okay, in the next seven hours I want you to do something we’ve avoided doing. Now that you know it’s just temporary, I need you to box up Fitz’ things and make that space available for our visitor.” The looks he saw were mixed and conflicted.
“Can we give Fitz a new space?” Jemma asked, apparently unwilling to force her friend into a box.
“What do you have in mind?”
Before she could speak, Trip interrupted. “We could simply move his belongings into the spare med pod. It’s not doing anything right now, and we could leave the primary open…in case…in case we actually needed it.”
Phil glanced around at the faces. “I think that would be fine. Skip the boxes. Let’s just move Fitz into there for this trip.” Everyone seemed to breath a bit easier with that decision made.
“Oh, there’s one last thing. While I do not for a moment distrust our guest, we should remember that he is not a Level 10 operative, so we should probably limit our conversations to the mission at hand.” They all nodded. “However, our other informality still stands. First names here on the bus. We’ll find out what he prefers to be called when we pick him up.
Chapter 14
Everybody was waiting to hear what Phil had to say, and, in truth, they all hoped it had something to do with Fitz. It just didn’t feel right to be heading out into harm’s way without him.
“Skye, could you please bring us up to date on the situation in Bahrain.” His words were disappointing, but the group listened carefully as Skye began to break down the situation.
“At about 0800 local time, a group of somewhere between 4 and 8 people, all male, entered the offices of the Bank of India. They took the entire staff hostage and forced the resident manager to open the vault.”
“How much did they get away with?” Trip asked.
“That’s completely unknown. They did take several million in various currencies, but the real damage was done in the deposit boxes.”
“How?”
“They apparently had the ability to see through the individual box doors, and they broke into them using some sort of laser. No one was present while they were doing that, but the manager reported hearing a cyclical sound over and over again, always followed by a crash. From what he described...and apparently he is a pretty good listener, it sounds very much like they at a particle weapon similar to a Chitauri anti-proton blaster. In any case, they didn’t open every one, and the bank is scrambling to identify the depositors and then see if they can get an accurate listing of what was taken.”
“Is that all? Didn’t the message say multiple attacks?”
“Yes, it did. About an hour later the same program was used at a branch of the International Bank of Commerce. Around noon they hit the main branch of the Nova Scotia Business Bank.”
“Any idea what the total haul was?” Phil asked.
Skye shook her head. “Not yet. It may be impossible to know. Some of the depositors are likely very sensitive about saying anything about what they had there. There is one that really seems troubling though.”
“Who is that?” Melinda asked.
Skye anticipated she would be the one to ask, and she really didn’t look forward to responding. Nonetheless, she did. “Faraday Metals.” She saw Melinda frown. “They don’t store any cash or securities there. The box they emptied held the details of much of their research, including patent applications and some other trade secrets.”
Jemma spoke up for the first time. “Aren’t they...?”
Skye nodded. “They are working on analysis and replication of several artifacts recovered from New York. They’re currently compiling a list of what was there, but in short...it’s a complete witch’s brew of dangerous stuff. They told me that the diagrams for the control system for the Tesseract were there. They have also done some work with Stark, and they aren’t certain how much of his power source work was there.”
“Shit!” Trip muttered, mostly to himself.
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Phil said with a smile. “So...who is involved?”
Skye resumed, swiping her hand over the holocom glass to pull up several images. “These are from the security cameras at the Bank of India. Apparently they forgot to take them completely out of play, or just focused on the video feeds and ignored the still cameras. In any case, here you can see their initial entry.” The photo included 5 men who were dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and carrying automatic weapons. The last man was also carrying or dragging a duffel bag big enough to contain any number of weapons or machines.
“Not much to go on here, but this one,” she said, tapping to enlarge another frame, “caught them inside the vault, and at this point they had removed their masks. The one is clearly Edward Gross, and this sort of thing is right down his alley. Facial recognition says there’s an 83% chance this is Charles Bowmont.”
“This guy, wielding the blaster, is most likely one Gustav Hammerson, a small time hood from New Jersey who owns a seven page rap sheet with charges from darn near every county and state east of the Mississippi. He’s never played in the big leagues before, but a couple of reports I found suggest he made some new friends in the wake of New York. Only Gross came out of the fridge, but he appears to be gathering a private army of low-life individuals.”
“There’s one more,” she added, moving the photos around until another view from inside the vault was on top. “This,” she said, tapping a man who seemed to be holding some sort of scanning device, “is quite possibly Glen Davis, former agent of SHIELD, Level 6. He’s unaccounted for after the Hydra attack. His last known location was at the fridge doing something...it’s unclear just what, so he might be Hydra. The thing he’s holding appears to be Chitauri technology, but I couldn’t find any matching images in the files so I’m not sure what it does.”
She tapped the screen again and a map appeared, complete with some arrows and lines. “This is the best I could do from the sat feeds. Here’s the bank. Here’s their next stop, and here’s the last known target. If I found the right cars...I think there were two of them...then they headed over here. It’s impossible to see for certain, but I think they disappeared into this warehouse complex.”
“The last image I was able to extract put them right about...here! That building is currently leased to some Chinese company with an unpronounceable name. I’ve searched for them but there’s nothing. It’s almost as if they don’t exist. All I know is they pay the rent on time, and the utility bills are completely normal.”
“Okay,” Phil said, picking up the narrative. “We’re going to be going in pretty blind...unless they pull another caper before we arrive. We’ve got a little while, and there are a couple other things I want to discuss before we create a plan.” With that said, his expression changed and he looked around the room, his gaze stopping at Jemma.
“First, some good news.” Jemma stared at him, almost defying him to say what she was dreaming. “I’ve spoken to the doctors at the Hub. In a few weeks, maybe a bit less, they’re going to release Fitz.” He paused as the entire team let out various versions of hurrahs. “He’s begging to come back to the bus.” There were more smiles, grins, and shared looks of celebration.
“Now, we need to understand that when he arrives he may not be the same Fitz we knew. He’s been through some pretty rough times, and as some of us know only too well, confronting your own mortality can leave some lasting scars. I haven’t talked to him, at least not in any depth, and we might find that the wrong words or situation can trigger some pretty terrible memories for him. Think of it as PTSD, which, in truth, is exactly what it is.”
“We’re going to take it slow, and hopefully the mission load will allow that. I’m pretty much going to let him do whatever he wants, but I’ll know more about that after I have a chance to talk with him.”
“Now, there is another thing too. We are heading into the jungle again, and going up against some Chitauri technology isn’t going to be fun. We’re going to need the kind of help that Fitz would normally supply, but he’s not going to be here for this one. So...I looked around for a temporary replacement. We may need to improvise on the ground, and there few technical resources in Bahrain.”
“With that in mind we are stopping briefly at the sandbox to pick up a new team member. I want you to welcome him, and I suspect only Jemma knows him at all.” She looked at Phil, wondering who the mystery man might be but he revealed nothing.
“Between now and then...how long until we arrive, Melinda?”
She glanced at the clock display on the holocom. “About seven hours, give or take a few minutes.”
“Okay, in the next seven hours I want you to do something we’ve avoided doing. Now that you know it’s just temporary, I need you to box up Fitz’ things and make that space available for our visitor.” The looks he saw were mixed and conflicted.
“Can we give Fitz a new space?” Jemma asked, apparently unwilling to force her friend into a box.
“What do you have in mind?”
Before she could speak, Trip interrupted. “We could simply move his belongings into the spare med pod. It’s not doing anything right now, and we could leave the primary open…in case…in case we actually needed it.”
Phil glanced around at the faces. “I think that would be fine. Skip the boxes. Let’s just move Fitz into there for this trip.” Everyone seemed to breath a bit easier with that decision made.
“Oh, there’s one last thing. While I do not for a moment distrust our guest, we should remember that he is not a Level 10 operative, so we should probably limit our conversations to the mission at hand.” They all nodded. “However, our other informality still stands. First names here on the bus. We’ll find out what he prefers to be called when we pick him up.