A New Day
The bunker was unusually quiet, though it had been for months now. Skye strolled through the empty halls, hand drifting along the metal walls, allowing her mind to wander, something she had found caused more trouble than good lately. She needed company, voices to fill these empty halls but everyone was preoccupied.
Fitzsimmons were in the lab with Mack now, still working on the Kree artifact. In the three months since the team had acquired it, they were no closer to discovering its powers, origins, or purpose than they were to achieving world peace, much to Jemma and Mack's general annoyance. Skye had been ordered to be kept away from it at all times, but she had still stolen glances at the strange metallic thing from time to time.
It remained virtually the same as it had been since they had recovered it, except for a few rare occasions when it would temporarily morph into strange shapes - a cube, a square... even something that looked suspiciously like a phallic symbol (though Skye wasn't about to mention that to Jemma, especially when she had that mad-scientist look in her eye).
May was down in the training room, beating the crap out of some poor punching bag. She had just returned from her extended non-honeymoon with her ex-husband/current boyfriend two weeks ago (honestly, Skye had no idea what those two were; she still had trouble believing Fitz when he had told her May had giggled), and despite everybody’s pressing, constant stream of questions as to her whereabouts, she was keeping mum (Skye and Mack had a running bet that she had been secretly undercover the whole time, but if Coulson or May asked, that was nothing more than gossip).
Bobbi and Lance were who-knows-where doing who-knows-what; Skye really had no idea. They had left as soon as Bobbi had recovered from her shooting, with no inclination as to where they were headed ("Tahiti", Hunter had joked). Skye was convinced they were on some sort of reconnaissance mission for Coulson, but if that were true, Coulson wasn't letting on.
Skye tugged at her gauntlets as she came upon a large hole in the wall that was still unrepaired, a remnant from her father's stampede through the facility, a reminder of just how much things had changed in just a few short months.
At some point, Skye's brain went on autopilot and she let her feet take control. She had done a lot of wandering lately -- to the kitchen, the lab, the training room, wherever she subconsciously wanted to go, although she never really felt like she had reached her destination. Joining S.H.I.E.L.D. had arguably been the best decision of her life, but she missed the freedom of her old life.... the secrecy, the anonymity. Sometimes she missed the good ol' days, her in her rusted up van, hacking companies and being a badass, even without her powers. Now, she couldn't even recall how long it'd been since she'd seen real sunlight, she'd been down here so long.
Skye looked up and found herself outside Coulson's office. On impulse more than courtesy, she knocked, heard the familiar and terse "Come in" and turned the metal knob.
Coulson was at his desk, eyes searching the holographic screen that glowed blue against the opposite wall, hands flying over the keyboard.
Or hand, as it were, Skye reminded herself quickly.
That was still something they all had to get used to, Coulson especially. He had healed months ago, but still insisted on wearing his cast, as if taking it off would mean facing the truth. Skye understood completely; she knew denial. And she also knew that telling somebody they were in denial only served to drive them further into it. Coulson would come to grips with his new reality eventually, and when he did, they would all be there for him.
Coulson looked up then, eyes softening when he saw who it was. “Skye. I’m glad you’re here,” he answered, swiping his hand to clear away some top-secret information on the screen. “I was just about to call everybody together. I just received a very interesting call from your friend Lincoln.”
“Lincoln?” Skye asked. “Lincoln Campbell? Why is he calling you now, after all this time?” She could scarcely recall the last time she had seen or heard from him. Everything after their showdown with Jiaying and the Inhumans was a blur, a rush of tears and sighs of relief and picking up the broken remains of their team. Lincoln had been there for it all, but once the dust had settled he had left for Chicago, mouth set in a hard line and eyes never looking back. Coulson had given them a number to call if he changed his mind, though the way Lincoln had looked at the members of S.H.I.E.L.D (Skye excluded) the last time they were together told them that number had been thrown away at the earliest convenience. It seemed as if he was out of their lives for good.
“He said he just got a call from an old acquaintance from Afterlife,” Coulson replied.
“Another Inhuman?”
“Yes, and apparently a very new one; Lincoln says she just underwent Terrigenesis.”
Skye furrowed her brow. “But we destroyed all the crystals, didn’t we? And Afterlife was abandoned. How could she have undergone Terrigenesis?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Coulson stood up and smoothed out the front of his suit with his hand. “Gather the team, we’re leaving in an hour.”
He stepped around her and proceeded down the hallway, shiny black loafers click-clacking on the hard floors and echoing down the corridors. Skye shook her head, still trying to digest all this new information, before jogging to catch up to Coulson, who was walking with the hurried yet calm stride that only came after years of responding to a multitude of crises.
“So we’re going to Chicago? Like outside? On a mission?” Skye asked him, trying unsuccessfully to mask the excitement in her voice. Her hands twitched and her body tingled with the untapped power within her, the limitless energy just waiting to be released.
It had been weeks since she had used her powers; field missions had been few and far between lately (at least for her; Coulson seemed determined to keep her within Playground’s walls), and testing her powers underground was ill-advised, to say the least. It wasn’t even the idea of fighting or using her powers that excited her -- just to go outside, breath in fresh air and feel the sunshine on her face, to venture into an actual city, into the normalcy and commonness that other people still had.
Coulson suppressed a smile at the small bounce in her steps as he turned a corner, headed to the lab to alert Mack and Fitzsimmons. “Yes, it’s a mission, but for now, it’s just simple reconnaissance. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, we wanna get all the facts.”
“Fine by me. I’ll go get May,” she offered, footsteps slowing as she waited. At his nod of assent, she turned on her heel and began jogging down the hall toward the training room, finally letting a smile spread across her face. She had no clue what this mission would entail, but it was a change, a break from the monotony, from the forced smiles and eggshells they walked on to cover up how messed up their world had become. No, she had no idea what would happen -- the feeling in her stomach was more fear than excitement -- but that didn’t stop her smile from enduring for the entirety of her walk to find May.
Today was a new day, and she had absolutely no idea what that meant.