Worlds Apart | Leo Fitz Book Five

Chapter TwentyNine

Coulson was barely out of the elevator when they lost the stream. Asia blinked twice, staring up at the screen as it fizzed out and went black. She turned back and glanced and Leo who shook his head.

"Now what?" Mack asked with a sigh, as he also turned to face Leo, the one who was in charge of this whole expedition.

"Unfortunately, all we can do now is wait," Leo said a with, staring at the screen in front of them. If the distance and the concrete between them had cut off the footage, then that was it. He couldn't get it back if it was a connectivity issue.

"No, no, we can't just wait around here," Daisy said, pacing back and forth and throwing her hands up in the air. Waiting wasn't good enough. Waiting wouldn't fix things. She needed to make sure that Coulson was okay down there.

"He expressly told us to do exactly that," May interjected. "We be patient, we wait, and we let Coulson do exactly what he was trained to do. He will be fine."

"And, no one else could go down there," Leo said, crossing his arms over his chest, biceps tugging slightly at the white of his dress shirt. "It would make things even more dangerous. He won't be able to tell what is a nightmare and what isn't, it would create an incredibly dangerous situation for everyone involved."

"Well that's not good enough for me. We can't just wait here. How could you not have a better plan?" Irritation flooded Daisy's voice, echoing through the room around them. She stalked towards Leo, standing in front of him, only a desk between them.

"One life is better than two lost Daisy, that's simple mathematics," Leo replied back evenly, looking her in the eyes.

"There are no acceptable losses," Daisy spat back, her eyes narrowed and hostile. "This isn't Hydra, Leopold."

Instantly, Asia slid forward, forcing Daisy to take a step backwards as she moved between her and Leo, only a breath between them, her eyes narrowed and heat boiling in the stormy pools. "Say it again, Daisy," she said evenly. "Call him that again. See what happens." She was as cold as ice, and Leo knew if her powers were working, the room would have dropped to frigid temperatures.

"Alright everyone calm down," May barked out the order. "We do what he said - we wait." The room fell into silence. Asia didn't take her eyes off of Daisy until the girl stepped back, letting her be the one to break eye contact. Intimidation tactics 101, she learned that her first semester at Ops school.

Suddenly, a red alarm started blaring overhead. Asia was already moving behind the table the second it went off, tapping at the computer to bring an image of the airspace around them. "It's an aircraft," She said, "But...it's not who we think it is. It's a Quinjet." She typed again and it opened an incoming transmission over the radio,

"Repeat- this is Shield 313. Shield 313 requesting permission to land," The man's voice echoed around them, almost overtaking the sound of the alarms.

Asia's ears perked up instantly and she looked at Leo, "Open the landing pad," She said, taking off out the door and running down the hall towards the area of the map she memorized. She knew exactly where to go to meet them. That was a voice she recognized. She knew it. She could faintly hear other footsteps behind her but she didn't stop or wait, or hear any warnings of caution being shouted at her. She knew that voice. And right beside her, was her Ward, keeping a casual pace as if this wasn't even hard for him, grinning at her as she jogged.

When she burst into the hangar area, the overhead had already been opened and a Quinjet was nearly touching down. The waterfall from the lake above was pouring down, the sound drowning out the engines as it crashed then drained rapidly. She could just pictured how much power something like this would fill her with, if she still had access to it. She jogged towards the Quinjet, anxiously waiting behind it where the ramp would drop down. May and Daisy jogged up beside her, pistols drawn, both slightly out of breath from trying to catch her, but she didn't care.