The Promise
Four Years Earlier
May had trudged into Director Fury’s office with tangled hair and whiskey on her breath. Fury had not blinked as he took in her dishevelled appearance and did not pause before he launched into the truth behind her ex-partner’s death and resurrection. She seethed with anger at his audacity in keeping her in the dark, and for torturing Coulson back to life even as he begged to die.
But she kept silent.
Any attack on his character would have been the basest form of hypocrisy.
As much as she hated Fury in that moment, she hated herself more.
She hated herself for every time she rejected Coulson’s invitations to come back out on assignment. She hated that she let his call go to voicemail the day before the Battle of New York. But most of all, she hated herself because she would have done it all again: stood numbly by as his casket was lowered into the ground, drank herself to sleep every night, listened to his recorded pleas for death, she would have done all of it—if she could have him back in her life.
Everyone else had given up on her after Bahrain.
Her mother scolded her for not picking herself up by her bootstraps and not getting back into the field “where her talents wouldn’t go to waste.” Her father’s pleading voice mails asking her to return his calls had stopped. Andrew signed the divorce papers and respected her wishes not to contact her.
Phil Coulson was the only one who ignored her repeated brush-offs and her vehement attempts to push him away. The occasional text, the odd phone-call, the unexpected visits to her apartment when he was between assignments; only when she heard of his death did she realize how much these small gestures had been tying her to reality.
He had saved her from herself and she had not been there when he needed her the most.
She left Fury’s office with her word that she’d have her recommendations for Coulson’s team on his desk the following morning. In the relative privacy of her car in the Triskelion Parking Deck, she leafed through the file he had handed her.
A black-and-white photo of her former partner’s face greeted her, lifeless and still on a metal table in the morgue.
She put her palm over the image, but it was already locked in her memory, a permanent reminder her refusal to help had cost him.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Phil. You’ll never know how sorry I am,” she whispered. “But I won’t let this happen ever again. I’ll always have your back, whatever it takes. I promise.”
It did not matter that he was not there to hear her. If there was any way to get him back, she would take the risk.
***
Present Day
Everyone in the lab jumped as May dropped the leather-bound manuscript onto the table.
“Take it easy,” she chided. “Simmons, are you sure you want to do this?”
Jemma Simmons eyed the book and pressed her lips together.
“I’m sure,” she said. “I told you, if there was any way to get them back…”
“Hey, I want them all back too,” Mack agreed. “I really do. But, I’ve seen people that have been affected by this thing. It has not worked out well for them. That’s why it’s important that you understand the risk. There’s no pressure if you want to back out.”
Simmons raised an eyebrow and scoffed lightly.
“The hell there’s not,” she murmured.
“There’s not, Jemma,” Daisy assured her. “None of us wants to you lose your sanity to get our team back. We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Simmons argued. “We’ve all been over this from every angle. It’s this or nothing. I’ll do it. Fitz would do the same.”
May flushed, feeling the weight of her earlier accusation hang in the air.
“Well, that’s why May and I have gone over some ‘security protocol,’” Daisy said. “You take a look, try to find what you need to reverse Morrow’s experiment, and write down whatever you need.”
“Then, one of us will take the book and lock it away for good,” May said.
“Away from me, you mean,” Simmons prompted.
May confirmed her suspicions with a nod.
“I don’t like this,” Mack said in a low growl. “What if keeping her away from the book isn’t enough? What if she goes crazy trying to find this thing again like Morrow?”
“Please, Mack, don’t sugar-coat it for me,” Simmons said tightly.
“If what we’ve managed to piece together from Morrow’s experience at Momentum Labs is true, then he was in contact with the book and the experiment for months,” Daisy said. “SHIELD records of the Darkhold indicate that its power grows with prolonged exposure to a specific individual.”
“Lovely,” Simmons remarked.
“So, the less time you spend with it, the better,” Daisy concluded.
May’s touch on Simmons’s shoulder was barely perceptible, but it commanded her full attention.
“If I think that it’s affecting you, we’ll shut it down,” she told her. “But there are no guarantees, Jemma. If you want to back out, it’s alright. It’s your decision.”
Simmons managed a weak smile and nodded.
“Alright,” she said, facing the Darkhold. “My first time with sorcery. I guess I get to be Hermione after all.”
The others watched as she lifted the binding and flipped through the first few blank pages of the book.
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing… oh…”
Out of the corner of her eye, May saw a blank page fill with spidery calligraphy, charts and diagrams. She looked away before she could read a word.
“Oh my God,” Simmons gasped. “It’s—this is amazing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s a great read,” Mack quipped. “Does it say anything about Morrow’s experiment? Something that needs a reactor like the one at Roxxon?”
“Yes,” Jemma whispered. “I think this is… yes! This is it. Pen! I need a pen! And paper!”
Daisy grabbed a ream of paper out of the closest printer and handed her a pen. Simmons began scribbling furiously, muttering to herself.
“Yes… and then… if we could bypass the override… then…”
Mack and May shared a look over her head. Daisy paced in front of the desk, arms crossed, casting worried glances in Simmons’s direction.
“I think… that’s about it…”
May placed her hand on the corner of the manuscript.
“Simmons?” She asked. “Are you finished?”
“Almost…”
Daisy looked up at May and shook her head.
“Jemma, I’m going to close the book now,” May said firmly.
“Okay… I think… I think that’s it.”
May snapped the book closed and handed it to Daisy without another word. Daisy sprinted from the lab like a relay racer with a baton.
A mournful gasp came from Simmons’s lips and she collapsed in the chair behind her.
May crouched down until she was at the young scientist’s eye-level.
“Simmons?” She asked. “Jemma? Agent Simmons, look at me.”
The unfocused glaze of her eyes disappeared and Simmons jerked to see May so close to her.
“Simmons?” May asked again. “Are you with us?”
She nodded and smiled unreservedly.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m here. I know now. I know... We’ve got to get back to Roxxon. I know how to bring them back.”
***
May glanced once more at her watch and groaned.
Twenty-two hours.
She had been waiting for twenty-two hours while Simmons, Daisy and Mack rebuilt, reconfigured, and recalibrated the equipment at the Roxxon Facility to reverse Eli Morrow’s experiment. It had taken her less than ten minutes to see that her extremely limited experience with electrical engineering was more of a liability than help. She had retired to the cockpit of the quinjet to wait until she could be of use.
So far, the only thing she had done was pick up and pass out sandwiches and pizza.
She was close to nodding off when Daisy came bounding up the ramp, rattling metal grating and startling May fully awake.
“Need another coffee run?” She called over her shoulder.
“No,” Daisy announced. “We’re ready.”
May found herself jogging to keep up with Daisy’s manic pace on the way back to the facility.
“So Simmons seems to think that Coulson, Fitz and Robbie were transported by the blast to another dimension, a world right beside ours, but not visible,” Daisy explained.
“I know what ‘another dimension’ means, Daisy,” May said tiredly. “I do work for SHIELD.”
“Right, well—hold on,” Daisy stopped abruptly, holding her hand out to break May’s stride. “We shouldn’t go any closer. Simmons and Mack are setting up a remote device so we can trigger the reactor from here. They’re almost done.”
May sighed and crossed her arms. She was getting impatient. All of this waiting made every doubt and fear she had about this whole scenario grow and multiply. She wanted it done. One way or the other, she needed this to be over.
“The book made a lot of references to a place called The Dark Dimension,” Daisy said.
“Sounds charming,” May said.
“Yeah, well, Simmons thinks Morrow tapped into this dimension because it’s the source of some super-strong quantum energy, something called ‘Dark Force’ or—
“‘Zero Matter,’” May finished with her.
“You know about it?” Daisy asked.
“Heard about it,” May murmured. “Stories from senior agents, back from before my time.”
“What did you hear?”
“Nothing good,” May said simply. “So, Simmons thinks our team was sent to this Dark Dimension when Morrow used its power in the experiment?”
Daisy nodded.
Seconds ticked by as the women waited in the dark for Simmons and Mack to emerge from the compound.
“Those stories you heard, about Zero Matter, they talked about where it came from, didn’t they?” Daisy asked.
May glanced at her out of the corner of her eye and nodded.
“And the agents? Did they ever send anyone there?”
Another nod.
“Did anyone ever come back?”
“One man came back,” she answered.
“What happened to him?” Daisy prodded.
May sighed. There was no answer to that question that wouldn’t scare her.
“They were just stories, Daisy.”
The pounding of boots echoed up from the concrete innards of the Roxxon facility and Simmons and Mack emerged, shaking with nervous energy.
“We’re ready!” Simmons cried, holding a remote detonator aloft.
“Okay,” Mack said, crouching down in the grass. “The energy we are dealing with is very volatile, so we only get one shot at this.”
Simmons, May and Daisy knelt beside them.
“There will be a shockwave,” Simmons explained. “And then, if everything was calibrated correctly, Fitz, Coulson and Robbie will be sent back to exactly where they were when the initial blast occurred.”
“Any idea what kind of shape they will be in?” Mack asked.
Simmons frowned and shook her head.
Mack sighed.
“Okay, Simmons, you do the honors.”
Simmons bit her lower lip and flipped the switch on the detonator.
Night turned to day as the plant erupted in a cloud of blinding, white light. Then, like a dying star collapsing in on itself, the blast of energy seemed to implode, leaving the four agents blinking in the dark.