'Remember, this is an extraction,' the Commanding Officer, Agent Levich told them, standing at the top of the cargo ramp as the flew to their next location. 'The priority is to get Ms Bradley to safety. The danger is unknown, therefore this is a stealth mission - do not, under any circumstances, enter the hot zone.'

'If Ms Bradley is located within the hot zone, we must to extract her externally,' he continued, each agent sitting up and down the quinjet listening intently. 'If Ms Bradley has been affected by the 0-8-4, we will assess the situation onsite. Any questions? Good. Move out.' 

They did just that, filing out in two lines, taking their positions at the points that had been discussed previously. John nodded to Laura as they headed inside with the smaller team. The huge building was a wreck, rubble cast over the floor, walls half-caved in, and the ceiling not far from collapsing. 

They lowered their night vision goggles as they moved further through the rooms, the light fading the deeper into the building they went. They cleared the rooms one by one, working in a circling pattern around the outer edges, slowly moving closer to the epicentre of the building. 

Silently, cautiously, they reached the edge of the hot zone. 'This is it,' Agent Levich told them. 'She'll be here somewhere. Agent Wilson,' he said looking to John. 'Scan for heat signatures. Agent Wilson,' he said, looking to Laura, a playful smile on his lips as they brushed over the same joke that was always made on their missions together. 'Send in the drones.' 

He gave the other agents their roles, each getting to work to search the area for the missing woman. 'Got her,' John and Laura said in unison, each finding the woman with their own devices. 

'My God,' Laura muttered, the feed from the drones distorted, but the video clear enough to see what appeared to be the woman drenched head-to-toe in a deep, red blood. 

'Something's wrong,' John scowled at his device. 'Her heat signature's of the charts.'

'You sure you're reading that right?' Agent Jenkins asked him before leaning over his shoulder to see the same thing. 'Holy shit, you are right.'

'I think I've used this thing enough times to know that myself,' John smirked, jesting with the other man. 'How's this possible?'

'It's that thing,' Levich sneered. 'Must've gotten to her.' He cursed, the angry man having to hold himself back from striking out at the tech laid out around him. 

'What do we do?' John asked.

Levich looked down at the feed shown, his jaw tightening as he did. 'We eliminate the carrier.'

'But, Sir, she's-'

'You think I don't know that, Agent Wilson?' He glared at Laura. 'They'll both be dead by now.' 

'Sir,' she lowered her head as a way of apology. 

'Move out,' he instructed. 'We need to launch the missiles before the contagion leaves the hot zone.'

John and Laura shared a look. 'What if he's wrong?' Laura asked John when the other Agents were out of earshot. They both shared the same concern - all of the agents did. 

John looked over from packing up the heat signature detector with sorrow tugging his brow together. 'We can't-'

He was cut off by screams of agony echoing around the hallways, ricocheting off the remaining walls. 'Contact!' A crackling voice came through the comms. 'Contact southwest of the hot zone!'

'Southwest?' John repeated, moving to the drone feed that hadn't yet been disabled. 'Shit,' he swore. 'Where the hell is she?' 

Laura grabbed the controls, rushing to direct the drone into the southwest hallways. She almost dropped the controls at the sight; a massacre, though it looked years old. 'They're decayed,' John said aloud, unable to peel his eyes from macabre scene. Agents they knew - Agents they had seen but moments ago - lay dead. Long-dead. 'How's that possible?'

'I don't know,' Laura shook her head in disbelief. There was so much they didn't know about this entire mission. It was stupid for them to be sent here, no one had gathered enough intel to even fathom what they were up against. 'And I don't think we ever will.'

They watched a little longer, a sickness gripping their stomachs as they saw Agent Jenkins discharging his weapon into Ms Bradley's form. The woman reached out, a flare of red bounding towards the agent, and he was thrown from his feet to a place out of view from the drone.

'Come on, forget the damn tech. S.H.I.E.L.D. can get it all new,' John said, grabbing Laura by the hand and pulling her to the door. 

They rushed from the room, running down hallways away from the sight. After no more than a minute sprinting, they skidded to a stop. 'Any ideas on how we can't get round that?' John asked.  

Laura swallowed anxiously, the woman they had previously thought was drenched in blood, was glowing a bright red, the colour burnt into her skin, a strange energy coming off her in wisps. 'Ms Bradley? Clara, we're here to help.'

Laura's heart sank as she looked at the bump under the woman's tattered t-shirt, the baby she was carrying likely having not survived, just as the woman herself hadn't. 

She- It- Whatever it was, screamed a terrifying scream, the voice no longer human. 'Yeah, okay, plan - Run!' 

Never of them ran though, rooted to the spot with fear because no matter how rigorous their training, nothing could have prepared them for this. As the woman in red stepped closer, the colour burned brighter, spreading further to a point were they thought the whole building would go up in flames. 'Yeah, we should definitely run.'

'Too late,' Laura told him, seeing the woman's skin cracking, pure red energy bursting out. 'Get down!' 

She pounced on top of John, both tumbling to the ground as the loudest of explosions ripped past them. Their ears rang as they lay still, the dust falling around them, hearing nothing but the shrill sound for moments that stretched over entire lifetimes. Never ending, the dust taking decades to settle, and the two agents holding onto each other for dear life as if letting go meant certain death. 

Finally risking a movement, they pulled each other closer, only moving apart to check the other for injuries. Somehow, they both walked away from the explosion unscathed - apart from a few superficial scratches, and bruises beginning to bloom over their skin. They both spoke, but it sounded like they were underwater, their words muffled to one another.

They stayed holding onto each other for a while longer, until the words were clear to them. 'Are we okay?' John asked Laura, gripping her hands tight. 

'I think so,' Laura nodded, looking over the hallway. All around them the building a crumbled, and they could see the stars in the sky above them. They didn't need the missiles after all, the 0-8-4 had carried out all the destruction to be done. 'I know I said we might never understand, but... how did we survive?'

'Same answer; no clue,' he said, rising on unsteady legs, and holding out a hand for Laura to take. 

She didn't take it, staying down in the circle that was clear of any dust at all, as she desperately searched for the source of a sound. 'Do you hear that?'

John did hear that. He too looked around, and with the higher view, he saw what it was creating the sound - a crying sound. 'Is that...?' Laura trailed off, following John's line of sight to the small new-born baby. 'The baby survived.'

'No, that's impossible.'

They cautiously stepped towards the baby girl, the infant lying in a similar clear circle as they had been, as if something had covered the space around them as the woman disintegrated. Laura knelt down again beside her, small arms reaching up as her crying subsided. 

'Wait,' John said as his wife reached for the girl. 'What if-'

'She's just a little girl, John,' Laura told him, scooping her into her arms. She looked down at the innocent face, smiling as the tiny fingers wrapped around one of hers. Even as the baby cooed and made distractions, Laura kept looking to the two circles amidst the rubble. 'I think she protected us. I don't know how, but I can't think of how else we survived.'

Many thoughts moved through her mind as John knelt in front of her. If S.H.I.E.L.D. discovered the baby, what would they do? Take her away? Run endless amounts of tests on her? Force her to live out her life in a laboratory? She would be just another 0-8-4 to them, a thing to use to find out the secrets of the universe. 

'What do we do?' Laura asked John. She already knew what it was she was going to do, she just needed to know he was thinking them same. 

'We go home,' he told her. 'We tell S.H.I.E.L.D. to send the missiles. We take her with us.' 

'And then?'

'And then we raise her as our daughter, and we tell no one about what happened here. Not ever,' John said. 'We were lucky; we got out before the building collapsed, we sent the missiles to make sure the entity was destroyed. 

'We'll take an extended leave of absence,' Laura added. 'We've saved enough to move around. We'll join another S.H.I.E.L.D. faction.'

'We'll keep moving,' John told her. 'If she's got abilities like you think, they'll put her on the Index. We'll keep moving. We won't let them find her.' 

Laura smiled as the baby giggled, a sweet sound that almost made her forget the devastation surrounding them. 'What do we call her?'

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