Caroline Stark

Chapter 24

"Michael peterson, married one kid." says Coulson. "Get's injured, get's laid off, wife jumps ship. Good guy, bad breaks. Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again. Make him super."

"Who has the tech to do that?" asks May. "And why would they want to?"

"Fitz, what do we have from the security footage? Before the blast?" asks Coulson. Fitz types some things on his tablet. An image pops up on the screen behind him. 

"What are we seeing?" asks May. 

"Well, it looks like the man is angry with the other man." I say, gesturing to the photo. 

It's silent for a minute. 

"The data is very corrupt." says Simmons, to my defense. 

Fitz scoffs. "Yeah. like Cold War Russia corrupt. I can't sync the timecode without-" 

"What if you had the audio?" asks Skye. We all turn to look at her. "I was running surveillance on the lab. I had my shotgun mic pointed right at the window before the blast. The digital file's in my van, there's too much background noise for me, but you could probably-"

"You could clean that up, couldn't you?" Simmons asks Fitz an I. 

"Yeah" he says. 

"No problem." I say. 

"Your van is here, but you were right. We couldn't decrypt the files." says Coulson. 

"It's location based, isn't it? You need to show me how to do that." I say to Skye. 

"Yeah, it is. Get my van back to that alley and I'm back in business." she replies. 

"Agent May will escort you." Coulson tells Skye. "And on your way out, wake up Ward." he says to May. 

~

"Alright, ear comms in" says Fitz to himself. 

Skye's voice pops in in my ear.

"All righ, audio file's coming through. It's not compressed so it might take a minute."

I reach up to tune the "net" in which we'll catch the file. Fitz's computer beeps. "Uh, yeah, yeah, we got it." he says. "So, uh, when you get back, I'll show you my thing." he says excitedly. 

I rais emy eyebrows in his direction. 

"No!" he yells. "It's not- it's my hardware." he says. 

I continue my face. 

"My equipment!' he says anxiously. "God, Caroline! Don't look at me like that. Let's hang up." he rips the ear comm out and I burst into laughter. 

"So the alien metal wasn't the explosive?" I hear Coulson asks Simmons. 

"Well, I assumed, from the break pattern and dispertion that it was, but it's just dripping with Gamma radiation" she says. "Oh! Now it's actually dripping! Fun!" she giggles. I pull out my evidence bags and set up. I take the swab that I used on the dents outside the building and run them through the mass spectrometer to see if I can figure out what shoes Mike Peterson was wearing, which could lead to a possible store, and a possible friend of Mike's. The next thing I do is test the DNA I got on the side of the building. The machine that I use takes a while, so I grab a few samples from insie the lab, and start working. 

"So what did that get us?" asks Ward, strolling casually into the room. 

"Skye's sending us the rest of her decrypted files on centipede." says Fitz, rushing past Ward. "But we have her audio, I'm loading it up now, Caroline please help me." he says quickly, putting up some light transmitters. An early version of the holograms Tony and I use in the workshop. He has me adjust the transmitters while he sets it up on his computer. "Now, using motion estimation, bayesian inference, a beam splitter, and a little diffraction theory, our mystery man appears."

An image pops up between my four transmitters. It's extremely glitchy, and all glows a faint yellow-orange. 

"It's like magic." I say. 

"But it's not." clears Fitz. "It's science."

"Explosives in the case?" asks Ward. 

Fitz plays the scene. A man who looks like a doctor is talking to another man. "Please calm down. Just let me check your vitals." 

"I feel fine" says the man in a strained voice. "I want to feel more!"

"Were they dealing drugs?" I ask Ward, who turns to glare at me. 

"Where's the doctor. Where is she?" yells the crazy man. 

"I-If you d-don't settle down, I-I'll have you seated" stutters the scientist. 

"Where is she?" asks the crazy man, picking up a chair and throwing it onto the floor. 

"Wait" says Fitz. 

"Did you see that?" I ask. "On his arm."

The video rewinds, and the man picks up the chair again. 

"What does that look like to you?" asks Coulson.

Ward walks over to get a good look at it. "A centipede."

"It's an intravenous filter for his blood." says SImmons, walking up. "This goo, sir, is very similar to the serum Dr. Erskine formulated in the 40's for the-"

"Super soldiers" says Coulson. 

"I'm reading alien metal, gamma radiation, the serum, every known source of super power thrown in a blender." says Simmons worriedly. 

Something was nagging at me. "I-I think I know where the blast came from." I say. 

Everyone turns to me. "Could you rewind the tape a little please?" i ask Fitz. He does so, and I see it. A glimmer of orange, under his skin. "The man" I conclude. "The man is the bomb."

"No he's not." scoffs Ward. Fitz plays the video again. 

"I bet the temperature of the blast was three thousand degrees." I say as it plays. 

There's a bright explosion. 

"Yeah, it was." says Fitz, rewinding the video slowly. Just as promised, the man slowly resolidifies as we reverse the video. 

"Extremis" I say. 

"Everyone turns to me. 

"It's fairly new." I explain.