Up

“Hey!” Grant greeted Skye with a smile as she walked into their room, accompanied by a Chinese woman. He was lying on the double bed against the middle of the back wall reading an old book from the shelves to his right, but got up as soon as he saw them, striding over to give Skye a hug. “Who’s this?” he asked her.

“I am Jiaying.” The woman answered him just as Skye opened her mouth. “I am the leader of the Inhumans at Afterlife.”

“Grant.” He introduced himself, holding out his hand. Jiaying smiled politely as she shook it.

“I hope you feel comfortable.” She focused on Skye. “Look for myself or Gordon if you need any help.”

“Sure.” Skye nodded, and Jiaying left.

“How’d it go?” Grant asked her, sliding his arms around her waist to draw her closer. “She withhold any information?” he teased.

“I think so.” She murmured as she interlocked her fingers at the back of Grant’s neck. “I’m not sure, but it seemed like she was overly invested in what I was doing before coming here.”

“Well, maybe she feels protective of every gifted that comes through here.” He suggested, then snickered. “She’s like the ultimate mom.”

“It’s not actually that many people.” Skye corrected him. “They have a strict process to make sure that anyone who receives their gift is able to handle it, or won’t use it for selfish reasons. And the less people there are to take care of in regards to this, the easier it is to keep us secret.”

Grant narrowed his eyes at her mostly blank expression. “You think that they see you as a potential threat.” He stated in a low tone. She didn’t deny it.

“Jiaying said that I wasn’t, but I can’t help thinking that she just said it to make me feel comfortable here.” She still wasn’t looking at him.

“And maybe it’s both of those reasons.” He ducked his head to get her to make eye contact. “You’ve already had your powers for three months, and you’ve only struggled with controlling them, not losing your mind.” Grant felt triumphant when she chuckled.

Tilting her head from side to side, she exaggerated her consideration. “You may have a point.” She conceded.

Grant grinned cheekily. “Anything else you can tell a spy?”

Skye snorted. “Well, now that you mention it…” she trailed off in the same jovial tone. Then she dropped the smile. “I can tell you a little bit, seeing as you’re already here.”

“Okay.” He nodded.

“Um,” Skye released her grip around Grant’s neck, grabbing hold of one of his hands to pull him to the bed. “You know when I told you about Vin Tak?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong about the experiments. I hoped that they changed the early Inhumans because it worked on other planets, one at least, but we were a last attempt to recreate a gifted army for their war.”

“But that was shut down.” Grant sat down, leaning back into the pillows as Skye cuddled up next to him.

“Not soon enough. The one’s who were experimented on and survived banded together and built this place.”

Grant did the typical thing of looking round at the building they were in. “So how old is this place?”

“Several centuries, if what Jiaying told me was accurate.” She wrapped her arm around his waist. “She showed me the transition room where Raina is, and the one that I’ll go in later.”

“Transition?”

“To help me control my powers. The needles are developed from acupuncture, and they help Inhuman bodies adjust to the evolution.”

Grant turned his head to look at her. “Are you happier about having your powers now?”

She looked back up at him, nodding. “Yeah, I am. Their agenda is to help me, not some cause.” She adjusted her position against him. “Was Cal alright?”

“Yeah, he was fine.” He smiled. “He wouldn’t tell me who Jiaying was, only that it was your choice to say anything.”

“Jiaying’s the leader. Why would he leave that to me to say?” Skye pinched her brows together, confused. Grant, however, was putting the pieces together.

“You can’t think of any reason why Cal, who is obviously close to Jiaying, would want you to tell me who she is?” he tested her, and eyebrow raised.

“No…?” she trailed off, the pitch of her voice rising as she became more concerned. “Why, should I?”

Grant sighed. “Two people who are very close, or once were, who also hold a lot of concern for you and your wellbeing.” He prompted. She still seemed to not get it, but there was a flash of hopeful disbelief in her eyes. “You’ve got it.”

“She can’t be…” she whispered. “My mother died because of Whitehall…”

“She’s Inhuman.” He said. “Cal’s not. You are.” He shrugged. “Maybe her gift allowed her to survive.”

“But-but he tore her apart! Stuffed her organs into jars…how could anyone survive that?” Skye was shaking her head as she sat up, not allowing herself to hope that it was true.

“Remember what Whitehall said about her.” Grant copied her movements, leaning close to her to cup her face in his right hand. “She didn’t age. Her cells would have had to be regenerative.”

“So she didn’t die?”

“Well, perhaps not. Cal’s a doctor, so maybe he helped put her back together.”

Skye shuddered. “Ugh. She sounds like Humpty Dumpty.”

“Phil.” May announced as she walked into his office, interrupting the meeting he was having with Weaver. She didn’t say another word as Coulson glanced back at her, and quickly ended the discussion with the other woman. Weaver nodded at both of them and signed off from the video chat, leaving Coulson to face the demands of his Deputy.

“If you’re asking for news on Skye and Ward, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any.” He said resignedly, moving to sit in the chair behind his desk.

“I’m not asking.” She countered bluntly as she dropped a file in front of him. Coulson glanced up at her tiredly, as though he would rather do this in the morning. Inwardly sighing, he picked up the file, opening it as he glanced at the clock on the desk.

0046. He groaned.

“Do I have to look at this now, Melinda?”

“If I said ‘no’, and you waited until eight o’clock to look at it, you’d be asking me why I didn’t insist on you reading it now.” She replied with an unimpressed expression. She drifted over to the sofa Coulson had placed in the room and dropped gracefully down into it.

Coulson wisely kept his grumblings to himself as he finally dropped his gaze to the report in his hands. His posture straightened as he took in the details, his mouth hanging open a little and he tore his eyes from the paper to May. She just smiled, a mere twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“Sir?” a sleepy voice came from the open doorway. Both senior agents looked up to see Fitz, one hand rubbing his right eye as he yawned.

“You should sleep, Fitz.” May softly said.

“I just wanted to, uh…” he fumbled for the word. “Check that you don’t need anything else for that.”

“So far it’s good, Fitz.” Coulson assured him in the same tone as May. “If I need anything, I’ll let you know in the morning. Go rest.”

Stifling another yawn, Fitz nodded and wandered back down the hall. Coulson turned back to May, no longer as tired as he was two minutes ago.

“I don’t know where they went since then.” May started, leaning against the back of the sofa. “The last trace I have of them is when they checked out of the hotel. CCTV shows them leaving the building and heading to the right, but when we got hold of the footage from the next camera over, they didn’t show up.”

“But Cal showed up right before they checked out.” Coulson pointed out, going over the report again.

“And he never left.”

Coulson frowned. “They don’t have cameras inside the hotel rooms, do they?”

“No.” May replied sternly. “We don’t even know which room they were in, so there would be no point.”

“Right.” Coulson murmured, nodding tiredly. “Could they be with others who have powers? I doubt Skye’s the only one.”

“And her mother. There’s probably a whole race with a specific genome that develops into the extra macromolecules that Simmons found in both Skye and Raina’s blood.”

Coulson looked back up at her with an amused expression. “How much time have you been spending in the lab recently?”

May gave him an unimpressed look. “Anything else you want to go over before you go to bed?”

Still chuckling to himself, he glanced back down. “They were in China, right?”

“Mhm.”

“So they’re still there.”

“Likely.” May stood up and walked over to him. “Get some sleep before you overload on the obvious.” Taking the file from him, she shut the folder and left the office with it in hand. Coulson was left sitting at his desk, his hands still in the same position.

He sighed and got up, swaying a little before stumbling out of the office himself, the lights dimming as he crossed the threshold.