Retrograde

Chapter twelve: Fortification

As soon as they reached the playground, the people they had rescued were taken to the Shield on site hospital. Thankfully none of them had injuries that needed them to land closer for immediate medical attention, at least none that Simmons couldn't treat on board the jet.

Coulson watched the shield doctors swarm around their patients, wincing when he saw one of the women they had saved flinch from the sight of a needle that was seconds away from puncturing her arm. He knew they all likely had an aversion to needles now after what had happened in the Arctic.

Well, actually, he wasn't too sure what had happened to them in the Arctic and for the sake of his own mental health he wasn't going to think about it too much until the very second he had to.

He would eventually need to find the names of these people, where they lived, where they last remembered they were before being taken and so much more information that it made his head hurt but for now he had another headache inducing problem:

Grant Ward.

He hadn't had full access to the playground before now and Coulson couldn't very well ask him to take up residence in vault D again, not without leaving Skye with a lot of questions.

The topic of Skye's living quarters was also a problem. She obviously wouldn't remember moving in here, not something he couldn't bluff his way around, but he wasn't sure if there was anything in her room or around the building that could tip her off about her missed time.

She could have 'Ward is a traitor' posters hung up all around her room with knives in for all he knew.

He really hoped she didn't but honestly if she did it wouldn't even register on the scale of strange things he had been witness to.

She would definitely have her own laptop still in there and short of locking her up in the cell Ward had vacated there wasn't much he could do to stop her from using it.

Unless I just told her not to, the thought occurred to him.

He was her commanding officer. He had asked her not to do things in the past, and as much as she had hated it, she had to listen to him.

It wouldn't be that much of a stretch that he would ask her not to use the damn thing now.

Ok then, he decided. Ominous request not to use her laptop it is.

He found Skye hovering by the screens in the medical bay, looking lost. He supposed she was, considering she wouldn't remember ever being here before.

"Don't worry, I'll show you where your room is." He smiled at her.

"Yeah," she smiled but it didn't quite seem genuine, lacking any of the playfulness he had seen return to her expressions over the past two days. He wondered for a moment if her memory had returned along with the heavy weight she appeared to carry around because of it "Thanks AC, I was getting ready to camp out on the floor."

She did look tired, he realised, seeing the dark circles under her eyes and the slight hunch to her shoulders.

Putting her less than cheerful vibes down to lack of sleep he nodded "In that case I better take you to your room sooner rather than later."

She followed him down a badly lit corridor and she acknowledged how different the atmosphere of this place she had apparently moved into only a few days ago was compared to the Bus.

This place was...serious.

Not that they hadn't had a hell of a lot of serious moments on the Bus, she had almost died there for one thing, but despite everything that had happened there it had always felt like home. It was somehow different here.