The Tales of a New S.H.I.E.L.D. | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [BOOK 1]

Chapter 3: Heavy is the Head

THE PLAYGROUND

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

The hangar roof opened, and the cloaked Quinjet landed inside the hangar, parking next to The Bus. The ramp opened and Monica, Skye, and Trip got off the plane.

Skye was worried about their new friends. "I still can't raise Hunter or Hartley on the comms."

"Not surprised," Monica said. "Radio silence on the op is protocol. Although, Hartley was in pretty bad shape when we left her. You think we'd have heard something by now."

They exited the hangar and entered into the compound walking in the hallways.

"No need to think the worst till it shakes your hand and says hello." Trip quoted.

Monica chuckled. "Is that another one of your grandma's sayings?"

He laughed. "Fortune cookie. I had some Kung Pao chicken the other night."

"Maybe Coulson's heard from them." Skye thought.

They stopped walking and saw Coulson speaking to a couple of agents. "I need a complete inventory by the time Agent Koenig returns, food, fuel, ammo, understood?"

They nodded and walked away as he turned to the three. "You got the Quinjet. Well done."

"Thank you, sir."

Skye asked, concerned. "Any word about Hartley?"

"Not now, "Coulson told her firmly. He looked at the other two. "Let Mack know the jet's here. I want him reverse-engineering that cloaking hardware right away. The sooner he does, sooner we get The Bus operational again."

"Roger that."

He glanced at Skye, implying that he wanted to talk to her. Alone. Skye file goes one way, Skye another.

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"So, what did the Boss Man say about the symbols on the 0-8-4?" Monica asked Skye on the way to the quinjet that they seized.

"He said, 'I have no idea, but good work.'" Skye sighed, annoyed. She had been working on deciphering a meaning for those symbols, spent a month of combing the planet for those damned things, and yet all she got was "Good work".

"'Good work'? Really?" She scoffed. "How about, "'Holy crap, Skye. We got to get on that?' We spent hours on the damned thing and yet all we got is 'Good work'!?"

"I know right?" Skye agreed with her friend. He said about right now we have more important problems. A five-alarm fire otherwise known as Lance Hunter."

Monica's eyes go wide. Of all people, he had to be the source of their problems. "Is he –"

"Captured. But if he talks, our entire operation's compromised. We'll have to burn the base and evacuate."

She shook her head worried. "Man, we just re-tiled the bathrooms."

"I know." Skye sighed.

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"So this is cloaking hardware." Trip stated. Inside the quinjet, Skye, Monica, Trip, and Mack examined a device that was supposedly cloaking hardware. Mack peeked at it and leaned over it, to start working on the cover. "Uh-huh. Let's take a peek under the hood."
He unlocked the cover, to reveal a couple of sections of a lighted area with chips plugged into it, along with all sorts of wires and other stuff.

"Fitz would be crushed if he saw this." Monica expressed. "He's been working on cloaking since before Simmons took off."

"Still can't believe she abandoned him like that."

"She abandoned all of us." Skye reminded. It was devastating for everyone that their brilliant biochemist friend had left them for good, but they couldn't mop over what was done. "But Fitz has been clinging to his work like a lifeline, and –"

"Maybe we shouldn't tell him." Trip suggested.

While they talked, Mack had taken out one of the chips and held it in some tweezers, examining it. "Coulson wants a retro version of this for The Bus. He said that no one knows the avionics on this thing like Fitz."

"Think he can handle it?"

Mack looked up past them and nodded. "I don't know, why don't you ask him?"

They turned around to see Fitz walking over towards them. Skye, Monica, and Trip gave him awkward smiles. No one wanted him to find it out this way.

"Hey, Fitz."

"Hey, what's up, man?"

"How are you?"

Fitz wasn't even listening to his friends. His gaze was fixed upon the cloaking machinery, the one he failed to recreate. "So, that's the, um...that's the..."

"Cloaking, in all its glory." Mack gave Fitz a smile that seemed more sincere, Fitz just stared at the device blankly, unsure of himself – very un-Fitz-like.

"You know, you weren't that far off," Mack assured, pointing at the device. "Check out the transmitter coil."

"Yeah, to negate the – the resonant – the..." Fitz got confused "The resonant? No, um...the, uh..."

They looked at him with sadness and compassion laced across their faces, dismayed with the tragic condition of their friend. "It's okay, just take your time, bud." Fitz glanced at Monica then turned away.

Mack filled in what Fitz was about to say. "What he's trying to say is there's an audio component to cloaking that inverts sound waves, too."

Fitz was dismayed, he removed himself from the others, his back to them, and had tears in his confused eyes.

"Like noise-cancelling headphones?" Trip guessed.

"Yeah, same concept."

Fitz shook his head as Mack looked over at his back. "Hey, you think you can give me a hand with this?" Mack gestured at the machine and Fitz turned around to look at them.

"Um, u-under the circumstances, " he stuttered. "um...well, the trick is you would...the trick – the trick would be in the mete-materials." He glimpsed up, to see everyone gazing with sympathy, which he obviously took as pity on him. He didn't want pity, he just wanted things to go back to the way it was.