January 1st, 2012 01:12 EST
The black SUV shot through the storm, its tires kicking up water and grit as it raced along the once well paved road, and rain pelted the windshield nearly as fast as the wipers could clear it.
As the automobile charged along at sixty miles an hour, two of the four occupants checked their phones nervously but never said a word to each other, while the other two in the front seats kept their eyes firmly on the road ahead and the rapidly approaching lights. Everything was soaked outside the confines of the reinforced metal box they rode in, caked with mud by the time vehicle closed on a mansion in the center of a rain-swept everglade.
Or what was left of it.
The vehicle decelerated quickly, skidding to a stop just twenty feet from where the front door once stood. The two men up front leapt out and took a few steps away, their eyes scanning for any threats as they firmly held their weapons – pointing down unless needed. The passengers waited a moment, surveying the scene outside before joining them.
Agent Phil Coulson had seen a lot of things over the years working with S.H.I.E.L.D., and this was far from his first burned out crime scene, but even he had to admit, "Well, this seems excessive."
"Really?," his companion for this road trip, Agent Jasper Sitwell, asked incredulously. "I thought the destruction of a multi-hundred million dollar residence would prompt a bigger reaction from you than that."
Phil shrugged it off. "It's been a long week. Destruction of private property, even on this scale, just doesn't seem all that interesting right now."
What was left unsaid where the reasons of the long week. Between seeing the living legend Agent Carter walking into the Triskelion looking just like some kind of Greek Goddess in a pantsuit, investigating a gang war in New York using Wakandan weaponry against a fire breathing demon, and the revelation that a honest to god dinosaur was running around the city, something as genial as a "mystery explosion" didn't really phase him right now.
The two men walked deeper into the ruins of the house, and Phil glanced around at the various agents on site going about their business. The whole property had been closed off within minutes of the first responders arriving, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken over the site a few minutes later when initial reports of a "monster" on site were pushed up the chain. Of course, it didn't take long for everyone to guess it was McCole – or Hyperion, as his code name had been designated – since Fury had dedicated one of the satellites to follow the man ever since the attack on Titan Solutions.
What had everyone confused was reports of the "monster" being dead. Fury wanted confirmation if it was true, and he especially wanted to know what could have possibly killed a man who had shrugged off heavy weapons fire like they were made from nerf darts.
Not much actually remained of the building itself, maybe the basement and a bit of the surrounding gardens, but what immediately got Phil's attention was the number of body bags littering the site. At first he thought they were just collecting evidence, weapons or some other items, and had just ran out of the usually clear bags. But after he pulled back on one of the zippers and saw the scorched and mangled body underneath, Coulson reevaluated.
Sitwell looked a little shaken as well, judging from the slightly green tint to his face. Or at least what could be seen from under the umbrella. Miami rains were frequent, but thankfully not usually heavy or long, and Phil could already see the sky starting to clear up.
A tech ran up to the two of them, face pale and solemn, but filled with a firm resolve that Phil didn't expect to see in someone so young. "Agent Coulson," she reached out with a tablet, and Phil took it, "I'm glad you're here. You are not going to believe what we have found so far."
Coulson's eyes skimmed the summary open on the tablet, "Let's hear it then."
"If you'll follow me, Sirs." The young woman turned and started to lead Phil and Sitwell thought the maze of caution tape, evidence flags and other agents on site who were swarming the place like ants. "When the initial team arrived they thought this might have been drug related, you know, like a meth lab or something blew up, but it only took all of five minutes to rule that out."
They stepped past a row of bodies. Phil could see a couple of smaller bags next to them, and realized they were just the right size for a head. It made him shiver slightly.
Continuing on, the agent added, "So as our techs arrived and began picking at the remains, we came up with an early estimate of more than a hundred corpses on site. Later we revised that to a hundred and twenty when we started to include the human-shaped ash piles and black scorch marks."
Sitwell spoke up, "So what did this? An explosion?"
The tech stopped in her tracks. "Honestly, sirs, you won't believe me until you see it."
Coulson and Stillwell shared a glance but then followed the young woman deeper into the ruins. She continued speaking, "The bodies were fewer here, but only because there was so little of them left. We've found several arms, a few legs, but nothing much larger than that. Most of them are clustered around where the entrance used to be."
"We saw a fair number of people outside on the drive and walk in." Phil added.
The tech shook her head, "We don't believe they died out there. We think they were thrown there by the blast."
"You know who they are?"
"We are running DNA, fingerprint and facial recognition on the few people we can, but so far it looks like two separate groups were involved."
"They blew each other up?" Phil asked, surprised.
The tech looked like she was about to smile, but then schooled her face. "No sir, we think that did it."
As the three of them crested a pile of debris, they found themselves looking down into a very expensive crater. Nothing was recognizable in the brick, wood and marble nest, but someone had managed to erect a protective tent over the fifty foot wide whole to keep the rain out of the crime scene.
Phil carefully schooled his face as he took in the site below, and tried his best not to leap to most obviously conclusions for what his eyes were seeing. Admittedly, he was having difficulty finding the words to describe it.
Sitwell did not. "Is that a fucking dragon?" he exclaimed.
Nodding, the tech clarified, "What is left of one."
The creature in the circle was the color of ash, and looked to be just as brittle. Phil could see parts of the remains just flaking off, turning to dust before his eyes. The head looked like some kind of dragon or dinosaur, partly, but he could also see that half of it was vaguely shaped like a human skull. The right arm was human, at least in size if not in form – couldn't possibly be mistaken for one with hands shaped into a three-digit appendance complete with talons, but the other was at least twenty feet long and reminded him of a pterodactyl skeleton he once saw. The lower body was even worse, mangled and twisted as it was, the bones were too big for the body and shifted out of the way to make room for a very long tail. And the torso, was just gone. The head, arms and legs all lead up to where the body should have been, but all them just suddenly ended in a twisted mess that reminded Phil of play-dough.
"It was dead when we got here," the tech began without preamble, "but the body was still warm. It has since rapidly cooled. As it has done so, the skin changed from a bright red to the current ashy white. And like ash, it is falling away at the smallest provocation. We are trying to keep the thing undisturbed as we take photos and wait for a biological team to arrive to collect it."
Looking around, the tech added, "Sadly, there were no recoverable samples. Anything that might have once had DNA literally burned away."
"How do you know?"
The tech looked at him. "There is marble down there, melted marble. That requires a temperature of at least eight hundred Celsius. DNA is unrecoverable after reaching one hundred Celsius for a few minutes. Whatever this thing was, it was well and truly cooked."
There was no heat or patronizing in her words, so Phil accepted her words at face value. To try and change the subject, he asked, "What can you tell me about the bodies?"
"That is where things get weird, Sir."
"Weirder than a hole in the ground with a dragon corpse inside?" Sitwell asked, his voice strained but not yet breaking.
"Respectfully, yes."
The young agent led then back down and away from the hole, and Phil found he actually had to force his feet to move as he really wanted to stay and look at the fallen beast. But with a small effort he did and followed close behind even as he lifted the tablet and recovered some of the photos taken of the creature from earlier, before its skin had begun to fall away.
"This was our first clue that something was very weird here," the tech offered. She walked up to one of the body bags, and began to unzip it. The remains inside were very badly broken, arms and legs missing, but otherwise in decent shape compared to many of the others Phil had seen.
He also noticed how the figure was dressed. "Is that a ninja?"
"Yes, sir." The tech reached under the bag, and retrieved an evidence bag, handing it to him. "And here is his weapon."
Phil held the long, slightly curved blade in his hands, and felt like a kid all over again. He had to fight the smile that was threatening to break out on his face. "So, we got dragons, and ninjas. What else?"
"Funny you should ask."
Sitwell blinked. "You can't be serious, there's more?"
Nodding, the tech waved them to follow and started to walk to another body not far away. When the bag was opened, Phil tried to desperately school his features as he recognized the face of the half melted man inside.
The Tech didn't notice him growing still and proceeded to explain, "S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Derik Ovington. I recognized him as soon as I saw him; we went to the Academy together. Good at his job, kind of an asshole, but a good Agent."
Looking up at the two men, she continued, "When I saw a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent here, I started making the rounds of the bodies we could account for. I won't claim to recognize all agents on site, but I did see three others here that I remember from my time at Operations. I've got a rush on identifying any others and we are going to cross reference them with the database to see how many active or former agents were on site."
"But what really has me confused is that they shouldn't have been here."
Sitwell looked at her, his face a mask. "If they were here they were on mission."
"Respectfully, sir, you are wrong," the agent looked at Jasper, and then at Phil. "I grew up in Miami. It's my home. So I keep a close eye on any S.H.I.E.L.D. operations in the area. At fifteen-thirty hours yesterday, when I checked, there was nothing on the books planned in this area. But if you look now, it says that there was a mission on the books for the last week and was entered two days ago. That doesn't happen."
Phil's brow furrowed. It wasn't unheard of missions to be backlogged if they were covert; it was a security precaution against any possible spy activity or hacking, but that only happened when the operation was finished and everyone had gone home. Usually a week later the books would be updated. And if this has been a covert mission that had gone wrong Fury would have told him as such when he was ordered here to investigate. The tech was right.
Sitwell however nearly took the tech's poor head off when he barked at her, "If they were here, they were on mission and that is final! Now go do your damn job!"
The tech glanced at him, and Phil nodded with an apologetic smile as she turned to leave. He would make sure to talk to her later.
"Kids today." Jasper said, exhaustion seeping into his voice. "Well, this is going to be a hell of a mess to explain."
Phil grinned as he read through the notes the tech had left him. "According to our records this place was owned by A.I.M. It's supposed to be a private residence, but from the size of the basement I would guess that they were doing some R&D here as well. And I would guess that the dragon had something to do with it."
Jasper, nodding added, "I think I saw some of that Amber Armor on a few bodies. Think there is any connection to McCole?"
"Oh, I'm sure he was here. But I don't think he got here until after the fireworks started. From the preliminary report, it appears that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived on scene and engaged an as-yet unidentified hostile force that had seized A.I.M. employees. No way to tell what really happened after that. At some point a dragon appeared and seemed to have killed both sides indiscriminately, and then something – likely McCole – killed the dragon."
A long silence stretched out as both men let the events settle in their minds. There was a lot in that summary that neither man obviously liked, and a lot that raised questions that demanded answers.
"So, who is going to go arrest the freak?"
Phil looked over at his colleague, and felt the corners of his mouth quirk up. "For what exactly? Killing a mythological creature?"
He stretched his arm out and gestured towards the building, "I don't think Hyperion killed anything except that dragon, and I think that could either be considered self-defense, based on what it did to everyone else here, or mercy for the poor person that it once was."
Jasper opened his mouth, closed it, and then narrowed his eyes at Phil. "Did you actually use that ridiculous nickname?"
"Yeah, I did."
AN: If you wish to write an Interlude or Omake as well, feel free to submit them to me over pm's! =)