Sophia Holmes and the Inexplicable Matchbox (Sherlock/Marvel Fanfic) *Completed*

Chapter Five

Hill drops us off in a large hangar she calls 'the Playground' a few hours later. Much like Sebastian Moran, it would appear S.H.I.E.L.D have taken 'underground' quite literally and built their base underneath Los Angeles. I suppose needs must when you're an enemy of the state. 

The doors of the hanger opens, and a group of seven agents walk forward to greet us. I scan my eyes over each of them. All of them are unfamiliar to me except...

"Coulson?" I say in stunned surprise as I see the S.H.I.E.L.D agent who was stabbed by Loki. "I thought you died on the helicarrier!"

The agents around him smirk in amusement as Coulson shifts awkwardly. "Yeah, sorry about that. Miss Holmes, it's a pleasure to see you again..."

"You faked your death?" I demand, not letting it go. His death was the reason we all put our lives at risk in New York. Now I realise it was probably a ploy of Fury's to give us the necessary motivation to pull our team together and take down Loki and the Chitauri. "Am I the only one who doesn't do that?! You let me - no, you let all of us believe you were dead."

"I can assure you my death was very real," Coulson replies, and I frown, caught out. "I'll explain everything in due course. First of all, I'd like you to meet my team." He points them out as he introduces them. "Agents May, Fitz, Simmons, Morse, Hunter, Mackensie and Skye. Team, this is Sophia Holmes - she fought alongside the Avengers in the battle of New York - and her father and friend, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson."

Dad stands statue-still as he looks over everyone and I realise he must be feeling a bit out his depth. While he was gone, I went out and met a vast array of people and my people-skills improved. I don't think I really noticed that until now.

"Shall we see what you've got then?" Coulson asks after we've exchanged introductions, and I nod and follow him out of the hangar.

"Does Stark know you're alive?" I ask him as we start walking up. "You realise losing you almost broke him, don't you?"

"I haven't told him," he admits. "I'm still dead, by all accounts - very few people within S.H.I.E.L.D know about it."

"So what happened? How did you...?"

"How did I survive being impaled by a alien sceptre wielded by power-hungry God?" He asks. Well that's one - not entirely accurate - way of putting it. I nod. "I was dead for several days, until project T.A.H.I.T.I injected me with alien blood and resurrected me." He frowns. "I wouldn't recommend it." We reach the labs and Coulson stops. "I'll leave you in the capable hands of Fitz-Simmons."

The agents begin to peel away, and dad and John follow 'Fiz-Simmons' inside the lab. I go to follow them, but Agent Morse grabs me by the shoulder, turning me around.

"Your file said you were an associate of Sam Winchester," she says to me in a low voice.

"Yeah," I reply, then frown as I read her expression. They were close. "Do you know him?"

"He was my boyfriend at college," she replies, with a sad smile. "He thinks I'm dead. Coulson isn't the only ghost here."

"What happened?"

"A demon burnt me alive on the ceiling of our bedroom while he went out looking for his dad."

My eyes widen. "A demon possessed my father. Sam and Dean helped me save him."

"Sam and Dean left me to burn," she replies bitterly. "S.H.I.E.L.D rescued me and patched me up, then trained me to fight. I check up on him from time to time, but I never get close. Everyone who gets close to Sam Winchester dies."

She walks off, following the other agents, but I stand outside the lab for a moment longer, contemplating what she just said. It's quite obvious that being around the Winchesters isn't exactly the safest place in the world - it stands to reason that someone would get hurt every once in a while. But it also seems everyone who gets close to Sam also comes back to life again. Why would she still be mad with Sam about something that was out of his control? Frowning, I open the door of the lab and head inside, arriving just as dad is showing them the worm inside the matchbox.

"That's extraordinary!" Simmons exclaims. "And you said it can project its mind into another living being?"

"It would appear that way," dad agrees. "There's a mutation in the DNA that we found which may have caused it, but we don't know what caused the mutation."

"Could it be terrigenesis?" Fitz suggests to Simmons. "We know that causes a mutation." He turns to us to elaborate. "There's an element called the 'divider' which, when touched, can give certain people special abilities. I've only seen it done on humans, though."

"Could be one of Strucker's experiments," Simmons says thoughtfully. "If he's using Loki's sceptre and the divider together, that could have caused the mutation." She slides the box into a machine, and almost immediately it brings up a strand of the worm's DNA. I continue to be envious over the standard of their equipment. "Yeah," Simmons says after a moment of studying the DNA, "the chromosomes are consistent with the ones we've seen in Inhumans - those who have undergone terigenesis. This is some kind of ... In-annelid."

"If Strucker has passed the test stage for this experiment, this could be a very dangerous weapon," Fitz says.

"You're telling me!" Simmons replies. "If Strucker's found a way to control what powers the Inhumans are given, who knows what could happen?"

"Where do these dividers come from?" Dad asks.

"We don't know," she admits.

"There seems to be a lot of that," John says, and Simmons smiles.

"I can track back where Strucker got his from," I suggest. "Shouldn't be too difficult."

"No, Skye's tried that already," Fitz replies. "Nothing came up."

"We'll see about that," I reply, and dad smirks proudly as I hop over to the computer and begin to type. "Strucker's last known location?"

"Sokovia," Fitz replies, coming around to see what I'm doing.

I triangulate the area around Sokovia and cross reference it with the accounts with the most money passing through it. As an under-funded European country, the sums of money being transferred are mostly minimal. Except from one.

"Found him," I say. "The account is under the name of a Robert Wylde, but there's a significant amount of money going to anonymous sources." I go into the details of the sender and check their IP addresses. "No, not sources - source. Different locations, but the same device." I do a search for the locations. The only result coming up for the same list of towns and cities I typed in is for Tiboldt Circus. I smirk. "Looks like smuggling gangs doubling as circuses are a common thing. They have a show in Bangkok in a day."

Dad nods. "Then let's go pay them a visit."