THEY STARED AT the stormy sky, trying to figure out what had just happened.

"Did you see. . ." Burly trailed off, pointing towards the smoldering circle of grass not twenty yards away.

"Yes, Mack," the girl said matter-of-factly. "We saw."

If Percy wasn't so pissed off, he would have thought it was funny. "Excuse me? If you haven't noticed, my girlfriend is still not awake."

"Right inside." The Chinese woman directed him up the ramp, tearing her gaze off of the clouds.

There was more talking, maybe some talking to him, but Percy tuned it out, instead shifting Annabeth to get some feeling back into his arm and sizing up the interior of the plane. No trap doors, no slots in the walls or floor where spikes could come out, no spouts for releasing poison gas. He knew he was being a little unreasonable, but then again, he had no idea what real life spy planes were like. He did have the luck of noticing a tiny notch on the ceiling—the plane had a sprinkler system. It must have caught on fire a lot.

He didn't even worry about Zeus blasting him out of the sky, come liftoff. He figured it was about time the big guy upstairs cut him a break, since he had saved the world and the gods multiple times. Plus, it wasn't like it was voluntary. . .

"In here," a hesitant voice said right over his shoulder.

Percy whirled around.

"Woah!" the guy cried out, jumping back a little at the sudden movement. Percy took in short, curly reddish-brown hair, a sweater, denim jeans. He put his hands up. "Didn't mean to start. . .startle you." There was a slight lilt to his voice. Scottish, maybe?

Percy narrowed his eyes.

"Uh," said the guy, looking self-conscious. "Uh, I'll wake her up." He scratched the back of his head. "In the. . .the. . ." he stopped, snapping his fingers, unable to find the word he was looking for.

"The med bay," another voice spoke up, the owner appearing next to them as if from nowhere. She was wearing a lab coat over a simple blouse. Percy was a little unnerved that he didn't notice the woman at first, but he tacked it to his disoriented state of mind.

"Yes, yes, that," the guy affirmed. He looked uneasily at Percy and gestured to the woman in the lab coat. "That's Simmons. Biochem," he said, by way of introduction.

The woman jerked a thumb towards the guy. "Fitz, engineering."

"Percy." He nodded towards the unconscious girl in his arms impatiently. "Annabeth."

"In there. The lab," Simmons said, pointing towards a room with glass walls. It was definitely a laboratory, and a strange-looking one at that. He didn't know what half of it was for, but what really was tying his stomach in knots was the addition of a stretcher in one of the corners. He didn't even want to think about the type of experiments they carried out in there. His arms tightened involuntary around Annabeth. He hated how helpless he was right now. But there was nothing he could do—at least, not until Annabeth woke up. If Annabeth woke up.

He mentally chastised himself for that. She'd survived through too much to be taken down by an apparently not-poisoned non-bullet.

Percy blinked, realizing he was suddenly in the lab, standing next to the stretcher. He must have been following the two people while he'd been lost in thought. He gingerly lowered Annabeth onto the sheets and shooed Simmons away when she came over with an IV drip.

"No needles," he insisted.

"It'll take longer," she said, looking at him as if he were a strange bug she'd found on her windshield.

"That's okay." Percy's voice came out more harshly than he meant it to. "No needles." He figured they'd start bleeding at some point, but he really didn't need the whole demigod thing coming out as long as he could help it.

The woman nodded and walked away, no doubt going to find something else to wake her up.

The floor jolted. Percy grabbed the nearest solid thing to stabilize himself, which turned out to be a chair. Percy was seventy-five percent sure it hadn't been there before, but he sat in it anyways. The plane was lifting off. But not in the way that normal planes do. Helicopter style. He felt the blood drain out of his face with the realization that hey, we're not on the ground anymore. He wasn't exactly sure how the whole aeronautic physics thing worked, but he was almost certain that something shaped like a plane shouldn't lift off like a helicopter.

The lab was empty now. When did those people leave? Percy mentally smacked himself in the forehead. He had to pay more attention to what was going on around him, regardless of Annabeth's current state. He sat there, looking at her, for what seemed like forever, but was probably more around five minutes.

Someone cleared their throat behind him. He jumped, rising from the chair to face the threat behind him. His heart calmed down a little when he saw that it was just two of the people from before—Mack and the Chinese woman. He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, vaguely aware of how hard his nails were digging into his hands. "Yes?"

"We're moving you," Mack said simply.

"Why?"

"Because," the Chinese woman answered, "if she doesn't have an IV, she wakes up the conventional way. Somewhere else." Her voice was hard. She sounded like Mulan.

Percy felt anger rise again, just behind his diaphragm. "You mean she could have woken up the normal way? As in, I didn't have to get on this plane?"

Silence was the answer he got. He clenched his teeth and nodded curtly. He lifted his girlfriend off of the stretcher. His voice shook. "All right. Where are we being taken, again?"

"Follow me," the woman ordered. She turned abruptly and glided out of the glass doors. She walked like a soldier, Percy noted. She didn't favor either side. She was powerful.

Up a spiral staircase. Past a meeting room with glass walls, a bar. Right to an unmarked door.

"What's in there?" Percy demanded.

"Nothing, really," the guy behind him said. "A bed, a table."

The woman opened the door without a word, revealing a room that was entirely gray, covered in hexagons—floor, walls, ceiling. He was pretty sure it was made of reinforced steel or something. There was a cot-like bed on one wall, and a table with two chairs.

Percy whistled sarcastically. "Wow. Nice place. Love the décor." He stepped inside, headed for the cot to set Annabeth down.

"Interrogation starts when she wakes up." With that, the woman shut the door. A small click told him she'd locked it.

"And now we wait," he whispered to himself. "Fun."

♆

          Coulson and the team stood around the holo-table in the meeting room, waiting for FitzSimmons to start explaining something they described as "urgent" and "highly strange". Fitz tapped and motioned with his hands to find whatever it was he was looking for. Coulson wondered how he could do it. The last time he tried working the holo-table, Grant Ward had been there, and neither of them could figure it out.

His abdomen clenched at the thought of the ex-team member, but he shook it off and turned his attention to Fitz.

"—that dagger you gave us to analyze, sir," Fitz was saying. "There's been a. . .development. For lack of a better term." He pulled up a 3D model of the weapon.

Mack whistled appreciatively. "That's a badass-looking knife if I ever saw one."

          Fitz continued, pointedly ignoring Mack. "The metal. There's no match. None that I can find, anyways."

          May didn't miss a beat. "What are you telling me?"

          "This dagger is Asgardian. At best."

          "At best?" Daisy repeated. "The hell does that mean?"

          Simmons enlarged the holographic weapon. "The metal doesn't match any Asgardian metals that we have on index, although there are many that we don't know."

          "The design isn't Asgardian. At all." Fitz looked extremely frustrated. "But computer analysis dated the dagger to around the year 600."

          "Six hundred?" Mack asked. "Just to clarify."

          Fitz blinked. "B.C."

          Coulson rubbed his face tiredly. "If it's that old, and not Asgardian, then what the hell is it?"

          "There's something else," Fitz said hesitantly. He switched off the holo-table and undid the latches on the briefcase that contained the weapon, placing it carefully on the bare tabletop. "We had a little mishap and. . .well, we should just show you. Simmons?"

          Simmons obediently picked it up by the handle, brandishing it without expertise. She raised up the dagger and plunged it into her arm.

          There was a moment or two filled with confused shouting, but it quieted as the others realized that Simmons was completely unharmed.

          "Simmons, what the hell?" Coulson yelled his question. He couldn't help it.

          In answer, Simmons pierced her hand on the tip of the blade, sliding it up to the hilt, then removing it. There was no hole. No blood.

          "It passes right through," she said quietly, staring at her uninjured palm.

          Coulson held out his hand, and wordlessly Jemma handed it to him. The dagger seemed heavier than when he'd held it before, but it was probably just his imagination. The metal was impossibly shiny. The whole thing looked freshly forged. Which wasn't the case, apparently. Curious, he touched a finger to the tip of the razor-sharp blade.

          A small drop of blood slid down his skin. Coulson knit his eyebrows—some part of his brain was trying to tell him that this wasn't supposed to happen, another reprimanded him, saying that only an idiot would touch the blade of a knife on purpose.

          Fitz unfroze and took out a wad of gauze, pressing it to Coulson's finger to soak up the blood. It didn't take long, as the cut was tiny. Silence hung in the air.

          "Well, then," May started, "Looks like we have to find out who else the knife deems worthy."

★

hey all! 👋🏻
next update will be slow because i have finals, but hopefully this filler will have to do for now! what do you think is going to happen?
q: fav bffs? i love pipabeth (and tbh i wouldn't mind it romantically either 😉).
please comment, vote, share! thank you lovelies!
'til next time,
cajoling