“You did? He never mentioned anything but next time I see him, I’ll have to ask,” Talia giggled.
Talia strolled into the office. It was spacious and well decorated. “How lucky am I? I mean not everyone can say they were allowed into Skye’s office.”
“No. Don’t,” Skye breathed out, a pained expression on her face. “So lucky. You and everyone else who’s come to ask about homework today. So, like, about five people. Cream of the crop.”
Closing the door behind her, she lazily threw her jacket over the armrest of the couch as to mark her spot and, once comfortably sat, turned to the girl again. “How’s your day been? Other than the panic and feeling of imminent death.”
“That’s a great idea! I didn’t think of it,” Talia agreed. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. She shot her friends a quick text telling them not to worry and everything was fine. Talia hardly remembered what she was so worried about in the first place. “I already know who you are. Not in a creepy way or anything, I’ve just heard about you before. I’m Talia and any kind of smashing is my kind of thing.”
“Oh,” she froze at Talia’s words, keycard in hand. “Just to clarify, I did cosplay once. I’m not a groupie. Don’t believe anything Ward has told you.”
The door to her office opened with a click, and she pulled it open for the girl, beaming at the chance to finally get caffeinated. “You shall pass.”
“You seem to have put some thought into it too. I really just miss my children and wife Andrea,” Talia chuckled. Before now, Talia hadn’t realized how much company could calm the nerves. Especially when it was a professor who gave her reassuring words. “Yeah I am.” Talia had never thought of her friends being worried. It made her feel selfish only thinking of her own safety. That wasn’t what teamwork was about. “Oh well I can probably just text them. I’m not really sure where they are at the moment.”
“If you do, add a thumbs up or a flower emoji or something. That should be reassuring,” she suggested. There seemed to be no chance of a storm on the horizon, but Skye still found herself unusually alert to the phone in her pocket, expecting things to turn bad any minute. If anything, she needed a distraction in the form of a conversation. “So, I feel like an introduction is in order. I’m Skye and strategic keyboard smashing is kinda my thing.”
“From what I know about shield, that seems like something they’d do.” Talia was finally starting to believe it wasn’t that big of a deal. “I’d love to. Sounds like a good idea. We could pretend to be a homesick German man.”
“How specific. Seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought. So, my question is, do you long for the Rhine?” she laughed, continuing along the hallway as she’d originally intended. In contrast to having averted a crisis and seemingly reassured the girl with her careless exterior, Skye found herself wondering how her team was for perhaps the third time in the span of ten minutes. She’d always been more afraid for them than herself, and she realised the true extent of it when she snapped out of her thoughts several seconds later, turning to address Talia. “You’re in operations, right? Is there anyone you’d want to check on? To tell them not to worry about this, I mean.”
“It does? I thought the S stood for strategic and the L stood for logistics. …Oh you weren’t being literal, were you? You’re right. It’s probably not really that big of a deal and they don’t want us to worry.” I’m just paranoid. They are probably just overreacting and they don’t want to worry us Talia tried to convince herself. She thought if she said them enough times, it would make them true.
“It isn’t. They’re probably trying to get you guys to behave in a really dramatic way,” she muttered, giving her phone a quick look. No new messages. “I’m actually headed to my office because you’d think a 25-year-old S.H.I.E.L.D. agent would be allowed outside, but no. Wanna come with? We can be lockdown buddies. I could hack the NSA twitter and you could give tweet suggestions.”
“You’re probably right. Do you know why they wouldn’t just tell us beforehand?” Talia was a little skeptical. It seemed like a lot for just a chemical weapon. But who was she to question a professor?
“Because the S in S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for secrets, and, fun fact, the L stands for ‘LOL’, which is them laughing at everyone they’re hiding information from. Government agencies were basically made for pulling shit like this. Level 7 access and all,” Skye explained. It was the reason she’d fought against the organisation in the first place - in her mind, everyone was equal and deserved to be treated as such, not as numbers on some level system. This time, however, she understood the direness of the situation. This time, they couldn’t know.
“Hey um excuse me? Do you know what this lock down is for?”
Skye stopped dead in her tracks at the sound of a voice, laptop tucked under her arm and phone in her hand. Of course she knew, but she’d been waiting for an official and legitimate-sounding excuse to keep everyone sane. Much to her misfortune, the students beat the heads of the Academy to it. She turned around with an easygoing, but slightly confused smile crowning her features. “Probably something stupid, like sciences inventing a new chemical weapon and accidentally releasing it. We might die, but it’s nothing to worry about.”
