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1
Fitz woke up and opened his eyes. His vision was blurred at first, followed by the observation window there was a faint glimmer of light amidst the dust. Icy chill pierced through the thin clothing and cracked into his bones. How long had he been lying there? His body was as stiff as a thousand-year-old mummy in a pyramid, each breath tugging at a dry, sore throat. Pressing the button to open the pod, there was a low, thick pipe-covered ceiling in front of him, and the air carried an ineffable, dusty scent that had settled over time.
Shards of memory came flooding back to his mind along with the smell of stale rust. He sat up with a jerk, vertigo gripping him instantly as his stomach turned over. He held onto the bulkhead and dry-heaved a few times, nothing coming out but burning weakness. The sight outside the hatch made his pupils constrict — instead of the neat storage room he remembered, it was a mess. Twisted and broken metal brackets hung down from the ceiling, and the walls were covered in scorch marks with blackened grease condensation on them. Light, dismal and stingy light, filtered in through some high, cracked skylight in the distance, illuminating the dust particles suspended and slowly fluttering in the air. Dead silence. An absolute, suffocating dead silence.
What of the plan? What about the wake-up call?
Panic wrapped around his heart like cold vines. He stumbled to the control panel of the hibernation chamber, his fingers was trembling as he wiped away the thick build-up of dust. The screen was black and unresponsive. He tapped it like a madman, the cold touch of metal spreading from his fingertips to his heart. It didn't work. He looked around, his eyes finally rested on a slightly darker rectangular area on the wall opposite the chamber — behind that was the emergency information storage unit. He used all his strength to gouge open the loose, warped metal cover, and there was indeed a dusty three-dimensional projector embedded inside. He pressed down.
The air seemed to freeze. The dust danced wildly in the dismal column of light coming from the projector, outlining an illusory, shimmering humanoid. Enoch. His image was twisting and tearing, his body mostly charred and black, his voice was breaking with a strong hiss of electricity and an inhuman, dying hollowness.
"Hello, Fitz... 7 days... hours and 42 minutes... until I have to wake you up. But I may... not be able to wake you up myself... "
Enoch's voice was speaking, speaking of Sybil bringing news of the destruction of the Chronicom's home planet, of the desperate probability of 100% that Chronicom's occupation of Earth in the timestream, of the horrific alliance of Chronicom and Kree, of extreme intellect and sheer force, and of the final moments of igniting his own batteries to vaporise a Chronicom hunter.
"... Please forgive me... I won't be able to keep my promise... My best friend... "
The current noise increased steeply, the image pulsed and elongated violently, like a dying struggle before the signal was about to disappear completely. In the noise was timelines that Enoch had traversed, fighting alongside Fitz.
"... Only this timeline which I didn't wake you up... can't be seen clearly... maximum alert... blockade... for fifty years... only Daisy can... hope they will know you're here... "
Enoch's figure distorted violently as the edges of the image began to crumble and dissipate into countless tiny points of light.
"As a Chronicom... I know that everything in the world is about mathematics... " the voice was going down faintly, with a sheer exhaustion and bewilderment that Fitz had never heard before. "But wish you good luck... my best friend. "
The point of light dissipated completely. The projector gave a short wail and went out completely. The cold darkness and choking dust embraced Fitz anew.
2
Fifty years.
Enoch died. He had guarded this room and died for fifty years.
Fitz's legs gave out and his knees hit the cold, hard floor hard. The massive impact smashed all his supports like an invisible hammer. Fifty years. What had happened out there? Where was Simmons? Where was Daisy? The others? Enoch's last words, "can't be seen clearly", wrapped around his heart like a treacherous snake, tightening. He huddled against the cold metal base of the hibernation chamber, with his forehead resting against the equally cold hull and his shoulders shrugging uncontrollably. There was no sound, only a suppressed to the extreme, tearing huffing sound. The strength in his body was drained in an instant, leaving him with nothing but infinite cold and a barren void.
He didn't know how long he had been curled up there. Time lost its meaning, and there was only the sound of his heart hitting his ribs heavily, one at a time, in his chest. Until a sharp, metallic scraping harsh sound came from outside, piercing through the dead silence and his numb despair.
Who?
Fitz jerked his head up, bloodshot eyes staring deadly ahead in the dimness in the direction of the source of the sound. The voice broke off with a tentative, cautious note, coming closer and closer. He struggled, using what was left of his strength to hold onto the bulkhead and stand up, his legs were still weak and trembling. He picked up a heavy, broken piece of metal nearby, and the cool touch cleared his confused mind for a moment. A weapon. He needed a weapon. He shuffled his heavy feet, his back against the cold metal wall, and moved bit by bit towards the heavy isolation door that had been blocked off by Enoch for fifty years.
The door shaft gave a toothsome groan, and a narrow gap was pushed open, flooding in with murky light. Fitz squinted.
Beyond the gap, a thin figure froze violently and let out a short, terrified scream. It was a child, about seven or eight years old, dressed in clothes pieced together from a variety of dirty fabric. Her face was dirty, only her eyes glazing over with extreme shock were exceptionally bright. She was clutching a piece of metal with sharp edges in her hand, which she was currently pointing at Fitz in horror.
"Don't come! " The child's voice was shrill and shaky, tinged with sobs, and as she cried out, she stumbled back, tripped over her own clothes and almost fall.
Fitz immediately loosened his grip on the metal stand and dropped it to the floor with a clunk. He slowly raised his hands, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. "Don't be afraid, " his voice was hoarse as sawdust, "I'm not going to hurt you. I just... just woke up. " He spat out the last few words with difficulty, his gaze crossing over the terrified child to the door.
The view opened up, but brought a deeper sense of suffocation.
The massive, solid interior of the lighthouse he once knew so well was now nothing more than a giant reinforced concrete skeleton. The huge dome was cracked at one corner, filled only with some glassy substance, like an eggshell about to be smashed by Hulk, revealing a haunting, eternal void outside. The dismal light source came from stars deep in the cosmos and a few rickety emergency lights hanging high above, the light cutting hard through the brightness and darkness of the twisted and broken giant beams of metal and the thick cables dangling down. Through those huge gaps, Fitz saw "out there".
It wasn't the sky.
There were floating, huge, hideously angular rocks. The remains of the Earth. They hovered noiselessly in the unfathomable blackness of the background, tumbling and moving slowly, separated from each other by desperate distances in the void. Twisted architectural structures remained on some of the broken pieces, like the jagged skeletons of giant beasts, speaking of silent destruction in the dead silence. The Lighthouse itself, nestled on the edge of a huge piece of debris.
Enoch had spoken to him about Robin's painting, that icy prophecy, and now it was present in the most visceral, brutal way possible. Fitz felt a wave of dizziness, his stomach churning again, and he had to hold onto a cold, twisted metal handrail next to him to steady himself. The air was filled with a mixture of rusting metal, dust, and a hint if any of rot and excrement.
3
"Who... who are you? " The child's voice was tinged with sobs, but seemed less frightened as she clutched the piece of metal tightly and stared warily at Fitz, "How did you get inside the sanctuary? "
Sanctuary? Fitz looked blankly at the child, and then back at the doorway area he had just crawled out of, half hidden by thick dust and rubble. This room, which had been sealed off for fifty years, had become what these survivors called a "sanctuary"?
"My name is Fitz. " He spoke with difficulty, his voice still hoarse, "Leopold Fitz. I have been... dormant in there for a long time. " He looked at the ragged "clothes" on the child, the patchwork striking, "What happened to the... Lighthouse here? Where are the others? "
The child blinked, as if trying to comprehend the word 'long'. A flicker of disbelief crossed her face, which was then replaced by a deeper awe, "Grandpa said there was a 'Shield' people sleeping in the sanctuary. " She pointed to the door behind Fitz, "But the door never opened. "
"What? " Fitz's heart skipped a beat.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.! " The child's voice rose a little, with a deathly, almost holy adoration, "The people who protect us! The ones who fight the bad guys! " Her dirty little hands gestured.
Just then, more cluttered footsteps and metallic shuffling came up. Several figures appeared in the shadows of the broken platform not far away, all adults, dressed in the same ragged and cobbled-together clothes, holding rudimentary tools — crowbars, sharpened rebar, even an antique-looking fire axe. Their faces were etched with the greyness of exhaustion, vigilance and chronic malnutrition, and their eyes were sharp as falcons, locking instantly on Fitz, an abrupt stranger.
"Nadia! Back off! " A middle-aged man with a thin build but fierce eyes growled lowly, pulled the child behind himself, as the crowbar in his hand pointing straight at Fitz. The others quickly spread out, forming a loose circle, their eyes gouged into Fitz like knives.
"Who are you? " That skinny man asked sternly, his voice coarsed, "How did you get out? No one has been able to open that door for fifty years! "
"I'm Fitz, " Fitz raised his hands again, trying to sound smooth and clear, "Leopold Fitz, Engineer, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. " An unspeakable sourness welled up in him as he gave the long-ago name.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.? " There was a suppressed commotion and the encircling crowd let out a gasp. Questioning, shocking, and incredulous gazes intertwined.
"Impossible! " Another woman with a huge scar on her face hissed, "Everyone from S.H.I.E.L.D. died a long time ago, along with Earth! They blown to bits with the Kree and those robot demons! That's what the Elders said!" Her voice was laced with intense grief.
The Kree? The robot demons? Blowing up the planet? Fitz's heart sank. The part Enoch hadn't said, the part where the truth was buried.
"He said he came from the Sanctuary! " The child named Nadia, hiding behind an adult, poked her head out and shouted eagerly.
"Sanctuary... " that skinny man deadpanned, his eyes shifting in complexity as he stared at Fitz, "Come with me. " He eventually put away the crowbar, but his guard was not relaxed, "Go see the Elders. If you are lying... " He didn't go on, but the look said it all.
Fitz was silent. He was caught in the middle, walking among these survivors. They walked through the massive ruins of the lighthouse, the path rough beneath their feet, littered with rubble and dangerous holes. Huge, twisted metal structures cast hideous shadows overhead, and in the distance was an eternal, floating void of dead debris.
4
The survivors' dwelling was clustered in a relatively solid corner, cobbling together barely sheltered shanties out of every kind of sheet metal, plank, canvas, and even spaceship wreckage they could find. The air was foul and the light dim. Numb, tired, and despairing faces looked up from the shadows, curious or hostile, as they surveyed Fitz, the out-of-place "outsider". The children hid behind the adults, their eyes timid with a primitive fear.
That skinny man led him to a relatively open area against a huge load-bearing wall. It had been cleaned up a little, and surprisingly there was a moderately bright emergency light hanging on the wall. In the light, an old man with white hair and a thin, almost disfigured face, wrapped in a tattered blanket, sat leaning against a pile of soft metal scraps. His eyes were cloudy, but a faint light seemed to flash when he saw Fitz.
"Elder Voss," that man whispered respectfully, "we found him at the entrance to the Sanctuary. He said his name was Fitz and he was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "
"Fitz... " the old man's cloudy eyes struggled to focus on Fitz's face, his voice hoarse and weak, like the wind blowing through rags, "Leopold... Fitz? Agent... Fitz? " His breathing became laboured.
"It's me. " Fitz stepped forward and crouched down so that he was level with the old man. The old man's face was etched with deep furrows, each one like the mark of despair.
The old man's withered hand snapped up and grabbed Fitz's arm with surprising strength. "Are you... you really... in there? " Tears welled up in his cloudy eyes, "Fifty... whole years! We guarded that door... knowing that inside was the hope... was you... " His voice choked with emotion.
"But it won't open... Daisy Johnson... the Quake... She didn't come... she couldn't come... "
Daisy's name stabbed into Fitz's heart like an ice pick. She couldn't come and open the door, what does that mean?
Fitz's voice took on an imperceptible tremor, "Tell me what happened? Enoch... Do you know Enoch? He only told me part of it. The rest of Earth... S.H.I.E.L.D.... the others... What happened? "
The old man's grip loosened a little, tears running down his furrowed cheeks and dripping onto the tattered blanket. "Died... all of them... " he murmured, each word was mourning as if he had exhausted his strength, "For us... they all died in the battle... "
He pointed shakily behind him to a small, rudimentary platform under the load-bearing wall, made of relatively flat metal plates and chunks of rubble. On the platform, in the ghastly white light of the emergency lights, there was several items lying.
Fitz's gaze was froze.
A hand stained with a large dark brown drying mark. The prosthetic arm Fitz had made for Coulson. The blood had long since soaked through the skin by now, and the joints were rusted.
The hilts of two broken knives, their gripping surfaces covered in deep impact dents and scratches. May's weapons. Fitz could almost imagine the wind they carried as they flipped in May's hands.
A shotgun axe, Mack's shotgun axe that Fitz had hidden in the wall of the lighthouse before he went dormant. The blade of the axe was mangled.
There was also a metal ID tag with burnt edges, whacked flat. The name engraved on it reflected ghostly in the light: ELENA RODRIGUEZ. Yoyo.
Fitz's breath stopped. One step at a time, he moved to the humble altar. The air seemed to freeze, squeezing his lungs. He reached out, his fingertips trembling uncontrollably, and gently brushed the skin of that hand, touched the deep indentations in the broken hilt, and, finally, rested on the mangled blade of the axe. The cold touch spread along his fingertips to his heart, bringing a sharp, real pain. Coulson's satisfaction when he opened the energy shield for the first time, May's stern eyes during training, Mack's figure that shielded him every time they encountered danger, Yoyo's wry smile after she returned in one heart beat... Broken images and the shattered relics in front of him overlapped, instantly drowned him. He violently closed his eyes, his teeth deadened his lower lip, tasted a hint of fishy sweet rusty flavour, and only then barely suppressed the whimper that churned in his throat.
"Director Coulson... " the Elder's faint voice sounded behind him, heavily nasal, "they said... he's too weak... even couldn't walk... Melinda May... the cavelry... They finally... back to back... fought to their last breath... " the old man's voice broke, painting images that Fitz hadn't witnessed but were enough to rip the heart, "Mack... that giant... he drank the devil's wine... turned into a real monster... killed the demon leader... but he lost his mind... and wounded Daisy, whom he wanted to protect most... and then... was killed by his own favourite girl... Elena... killed herself... " The old man couldn't go on, letting out a violent cough.
Fitz's body swayed, his hand braced on the edge of the cold altar to keep from collapsing. Yoyo killed Mack? And then killed herself? His stomach spasmed violently.
"The Quake... Daisy Johnson... " the Elder gasped, continuing to piece together that final catastrophe in broken words, "was captured... and taken to the devil's lair... she detonated... detonated something that could shatter the stars... "The old man's withered fingers pointed to the great, gaping hole in the void above his head, to the world of death that floated outside, "To... to blow up those devils... she... she exploded the earth... everything... everything was left on fire... "
Voss's voice trailed off, leaving only heavy gasps and suppressed sobs. Fitz stood rigid. The timeline of Enoch's last "can't be seen clearly" was brutally clear at the moment, connecting Daisy's final, universe-shattering sound with her complete annihilation. The Daisy who had always been vibrant and resilient had ended everything in such an extreme way. For victory? For revenge? Or utter despair? An almost absurd emptiness gripped him.
5
In another corner of that platform, there was one more thing. It wasn't a weapon, or an identity badge. It was a pamphlet bound in rough rags, a thick stack of worn edges and yellowed, brittle paper. It was carefully placed in a relatively clean metal box. There were no words on the cover.
Fitz's eyes fell upon it, and an almost instinctive sense of foreboding made his heart skip a beat. He reached out and touched the rough cover. A subtle, familiar bumpy sensation came over him. He turned to the first page.
What met his eyes was dense handwriting, elegant, neat, with a rational rigour. It was Simmons' handwriting. He could recognise it.
The pages recorded complex formulas next to scribbled calculations about climate modelling, about attenuation of atmospheric composition, about how to preserve plant seeds in radiation and cold temperatures. The words were filled with cold terms and symbols. But occasionally, in the gaps between formulas, at the edges of the page, there would be that one or two small lines, written in a penmanship so exhausted that it seemed ready to break off at any moment:
"Day 23, Noah searched the other Earth fragments and brought the living here. The lighthouse's supplies should be able to sustain so many people for sixty years, but atmosphere, radiation, and cold temperatures are still problems. If nothing is done, the pressure will be completely out of balance in five years, so replacement sealing materials must be found... Fitz, if it were you, what would you use? " A small, crooked crying face was drawn next to it.
"Day 281, the third batch of radiation-resistant lichen finally survived. Noah says it tastes like tyres, but at least it's edible... I saw a very small bug today, crawling in a crack in the pipe. Like the kind we first found in the Academy lab. ... Missing you. "
"Day 1097, the cracks in the lighthouse are finally all plugged up, and I found the recipe for the bonding gel you designed earlier. The stars can still be faintly seen outside through the glue, just like when I was a kid... Flipped over to the silly birthday card you wrote me before in. 'To Jemma the Genius'... So cold. "
"Day can't remember. Fitz, the door still won't open. That room is so perfectly blocked that I'm afraid only Hulk can open the door... But I'll be watching over you, at least this time I know you're nearby. "
"The body is getting out of control... In fact, I've envisioned more than once that we'd buy a little cottage in the country, a vanity mirror, a breakfast table, and in your case probably prefer the city, where we could live wherever we wanted. It's been forty years, maybe forty-one, so unfair that you get to see my old face as soon as you get out. "
"The lighthouse survived a couple of impacts, but bigger debris was next... I calculated a few options, Noah left behind information on how to make thrusters for short space jumps using the monolith, hopefully in time... Mentions Noah, he said that he never received a signal from other Chronicoms after the explosion, and that his batteries were damaged in the pulses created by the explosion, he probably won't live much longer... I would love to see the sun once more if possible, a glass of wine would be better. "
The handwriting became extremely weak and shaky by this point, almost illegible. On the last page, there were only a few short letters, and the ink was so faint that it almost disappeared, as if it had used up its last strength:
"Fitz".
Fitz's fingers pinched the edges of the yellowing, brittle page, knuckles white from the effort. The formulas, the data, the struggle to survive in the cold desperation of the environment, and her call and wait caught between the lines. She guarded outside this unopenable door, using her brain, using the last of her strength, to guard these survivors, to guard a hope that she didn't know if he would ever wake up again, until the very end of her life.
"Where is she... " Fitz's voice sounded like it had been filed and broken, "where is Jemma Simmons? "
Tears welled up again in Voss's cloudy eyes, and he raised his withered arm shakily, pointing a short distance behind the platform, in the shadow of the corner of the huge load-bearing wall.
Fitz stumbled over to it. There, against the cold metal wall, was only one metal plate simply erected as a tombstone. There was no name on it, only a crooked phrase chiselled deeply with a sharp tool.
"No energy in the universe is created, none is destroyed. " The first law of thermodynamics.
Fitz remembered. It was in the chamber at the bottom of the ocean, the same cold and despair.
A thick layer of dust accumulated on the floor in front of the tombstone. Next to it, a small, cylindrical, greyish-white stone lay.
"That day," Voss's voice sounded like a sigh, behind Fitz, "after she told us that sentence... she went and got this... "
Slowly, slowly, Fitz crouched down. The moment his knees touched the cold ground, it was as if all support was lost. He reached out his hand, his fingertips trembling, and gently brushed over those cold engravings on the tombstone, as if he could touch the temperature and despair of the fingertips of the person who carved them. Finally, his fingers stopped on the grey stone in front of the tombstone. Coldness, roughness. The monolith. A sample of the monolith Fitz had taken with him when he returned from Maveth. The ominous object that had brought him, and the squad, endless disaster in the past, now strangely suppressed the mourning in his chest that was almost tearing him apart.
He maintained this posture, not moving a muscle. Time seemed to freeze, with only the faint hissing of electricity from the emergency lights overhead and the suppressed sobs coming from the survivor colony in the distance. The immensity of his grief was like a cold, heavy ocean floor, and waves of suffocation engulfed him. The vivid faces of Coulson, Daisy, May, Mack, Yoyo... shattered and dissipated in his mind. And then there was Simmons, the Simmons who had guarded a door that could never be opened, who had consumed her life and was alone at the end of it.
He had failed them all.
The chill of despair soaked through his bones. He curled up next to the cold headstone, his forehead resting against the equally cold metal headstone. He seemed to have had a dream, in which he and Enoch were fixing engines in an airship, exchanging rings with Simmons in the forest, feasting on gourmet food at lavish banquets, and being carried by Mack on his back walking across the base... He could no longer tell whether everything was true or false, and let the visions fill his mind so.
6
Fitz didn't know how long it took, but a suppressed, childish sob sounded not far away. Fitz snapped his head up, his tear-stained face tinged with bewilderment. It was the child called Nadia. She was hiding behind a couple of twisted metal panels, revealing only a pair of large, frightened and sad eyes, looking at Fitz and also at Simmons' tombstone. Beside the child stood several other equally skinny figures, all dressed in tattered patchwork clothes, their faces dirty, their eyes full of fear of the world and cluelessness about the crumbling adult in front of them.
These children. These children born on broken graves, in the void of eternity.
Fitz's gaze slowly swept over the humble survivor colony. A face numb, tired, and deep in despair. The last faint glimmer of light in Elder Voss's cloudy eyes. The dry and thin man clutched the crowbar but couldn't hide his helplessness. And these children... they don t even know what the real sun looks like.
Enoch lit himself up. Coulson and May fought to the bitter end. Mack drank the Odium. Yoyo kills the love of her life. Daisy died with enemies. Simmons... Simmons guarded Fitz to the end of her life.
What were they all for?
Not for the sake of letting humans languish like worms on this cramped fragment of the grave, waiting for the final extinction.
A faint but unmistakable strength, like a warm current quietly surging beneath the ice, rose from Fitz's hand that clutched the boulder sample and flowed down his veins and throughout his body, dispelling some of the bone-chilling cold. He inhaled deeply, with a heavy snort, and the air, mixed with dust and despair, choked him into a coughing fit. He wiped the tear tracks from his face hard with the back of his hand, leaving a few dirty marks.
Holding onto the cold metal wall, he supported his weak body and slowly stood up. Eyes were no longer lax, but turned to the Elder.
"Voss, " his voice was still hoarse, but it took on a trace of unquestionable calmness, "Noah... that Chronicom, and Simmons, did they leave anything else behind? Tools or data? " He paused and added, "Like coordinates or speakers or something? "
Fitz's words seemed to touch some dusty corner deep in Voss's memory. He pondered laboriously, his dry fingers nervously tapping the tattered blanket on his knees, "Coordinates... don't seem to be any... as for speakers... also no impression... Ms Simmons thought... someone in the Sanctuary... might know. "He shook his head, "but... the only person who came out... was you... "The old man's voice was full of powerlessness.
The only other person in the room besides Fitz was Enoch, could that have been prepared by Enoch once? That Chronicom who had always silently observed the human race for tens of thousands of years, if he learnt that the human race was facing an extinction level crisis, what would he do? Fitz turned around, his gaze going to the room he had just walked out of, known as the Sanctuary. "I need to go back to look for something we need. "
Fitz stepped deeper and deeper back into the room that had been dusty for fifty years. After Enoch's fight with the hunter during his lifetime, it would not be an exaggeration to call it a "ruin". Originally, this place should be a laboratory, and there were files and metal fragments scattered around the lab bench, so it looked like Enoch had once worked on something here. Next to the projector, which had been completely extinguished, the pried-open cover of the wall was still open. Fitz probed his hand inside the storage unit, running his fingertips across the cold surface, and at a spot near the corner, the touch changed — the soft package seemed to contain some kind of hard bar.
Fitz carefully removed it, and it was cold to the touch, a tuning fork with the six letters engraved on it, M-A-V-E-T-H. Fitz understood. Maveth, meaning death in Hebrew, was also the name for that nightmarish planet, but it might be what Enoch thought was the hope for humanity. Fitz remembered Will saying that once there had been plenty there, too, until the Hive had corrupted the planet.
He sighed.
7
For the next few days, Fitz dove headfirst into the warehouse deep in the lighthouse that had been used to store the dormant silos. It was in equally bad shape, but the walls were still intact. A single tuning fork would not be enough to cause the monolith to resonate completely, he needed a room small enough and enclosed enough to build a system to sustain and amplify the sound. Fortunately, Enoch's tuning fork solved the most difficult problem of finding the resonance frequency, and now all he needed was time.
The survivors at first just watched from afar, with suspicion and numbness. But when Fitz cleared an area with a few people, when the cold backup energy source was forcefully activated under Fitz's manipulation, emitting a low hum that lit up a few long-lost, steady lights, a faint light, for the first time, lit up in those desperate eyes.
Hope. The word was like a stone thrown into stagnant water, stirring a faint ripple.
Fitz became the absolute centre. He hardly rested. Sleep was a luxury, and food was just fuel to keep his body manipulated. A crust of grease mixed with sweat quickly covered his face, his eyes bloodshot and deep-set from the extreme lack of sleep, his cheekbones high and raised. But he was in command, his voice hoarse but clear, each command pinpointing a key point in the design. He disassembles, welds, calibrates, writes rudimentary alternative control programmes, and scavenges through piles of rubble to find parts that can still be used. His hands were soon covered in new cuts and burns, old wounds piled on top of new ones.
People came here in droves to see if there was anywhere they could lend a hand. They dug, searched, carried, and cleaned up in the area Fitz had circled, bringing water and food. The children were no longer hiding far away either, they were allowed to be a safe distance away, helping to pass small tools or clearing relatively safe areas. That child called Nadia, always with wide eyes, followed not far behind Fitz, like a tiny shadow.
The work was desperately hard. The power output of the backup energy source was extremely unstable and could go out at any time. Precision devices were needed to achieve sound amplification as well as to sustaining it while avoiding distortion, and all parts needed to be finely machined. The pipework of the life support system has too many rupture points, and the sealing material has long since deteriorated and failed. Deadliest of all was time. Every fluctuation in backup energy, every unexpected short-circuit spark, brought Fitz's heart to his throat. He had to finish before the energy ran out completely, or the piece suffered an unavoidable collision.
The project moved forward in a mix of desperation and faint hope. As Fitz finished checking the rigour of the sound system's feedback logic one last time and gently inserted the boulder sample into the gaping hole in the middle of the room, a breathless silence fell over the entire hatch. Everyone who could participate was gathered here, men, women, children, and Voss was assisted to sit on the sidelines. Nervousness, anticipation, and a deep-seated fear was written on every face — a fear that this last bit of shimmering light would go out as well.
Fitz took a deep breath, and his oil-covered fingers pressed the activation button on the controls.
Whirr —
A low, steady hum came from the tuning forks, growing stronger through the feedback loop, and the entire floor of the hangar shook slightly. Inside the room, right in the centre, the monolith sample dissolved into a puddle of water. The source of Fitz's nightmare was now in front of him again, yet now it was his only hope. There was a gasp from the survivors, which was quickly silenced for fear of disturbing the stability of the portal.
On the console screen, complex parameters began to pulsate, the coordinates corresponding to Maveth were now displayed. The indicator light of the maintenance system steadily lit up green. Most crucially, the puddle of portals that rippled slightly from the humming sound was currently waiting for people to enter.
"Stable for now, I need two men to scout the way. " Fitz's voice was hoarse from excitement and exhaustion, but it clearly carried throughout the warehouse.
After a short period of dead silence, Worth ordered two relatively strong people, who jumped into the portal one after another with cables tied around their waists and torches and steel bars in their hands. A moment later, two strong and one weak pull came from the cable. --This was the agreed-upon signal of safety. Loud, mingled cries of ecstasy, weeping and relief erupted. People embraced each other, pounding each other's shoulders, tears washing the dirt from their faces. Elder Worth was in tears, his dry hands gripping the blanket tightly as he muttered, "We are alive... "
"Everyone bring supplies and gather at the portal with what you can carry. " Fitz's voice travelled through the improvised communicator to every corner of the lighthouse wreckage, "Elders and children go first, those who still have the strength stay and carry the supplies, as fast as you can. "
8
Fitz stepped onto the surface of Maveth once again. The dead planet, with its furrowed surface and no visible vegetation or water, only endless barren rock and gravel. There was no green, no blue, just a dead grey.
The light of hope dimmed in the eyes of many, replaced by disappointment and deeper bewilderment. Is this the land of hope?
Fitz's voice rang out through the communicator, calm, with unquestionable certainty: "Confirmed atmosphere is breathable and similar to Earth's atmosphere; gravity approximately 1.1 times standard Earth gravity; large temperature difference between day and night on the surface, but there is a modifiable underground space and a suitable temperature zone. No sign of large-scale life signals, no signs of intelligent civilisation. Consistent with expectations. " He paused, "There are tools left here from before, no enemies, no aliens, we have plenty of time and opportunity to rebuild. "
For the first time, these Earth immigrants set foot on this strange land. Underfoot was loose, grey-white gravel, and the air was so dry it seemed to suck the last bit of moisture from their lungs. The wind whistled like a whimper as it blew across the exposed rocks. Desolation. Bone-chilling desolation.
With the materials they'd brought from the lighthouse, they'd begun to build the first semi-subterranean settlement that could withstand the temperature differentials and the wind and sand. Fitz guided them in modifying the rudimentary equipment Simmons had left behind, attempting to analyse the soil composition, finding possible sources of groundwater, cultivating those radiation-resistant lichens and seeds. Each tiny advance — like the drilling equipment hitting a bit of murky but purifiable water, or the first lichen plant struggling to sprout a hint of green — elicits a small cheer.
Fitz is the absolute heart of the technology, the "Engineer" of all. But he's always been a ghost on the fringes. He lived by himself in Will's cave in the ground, which was filled with disassembled instrument parts and metal plates filled with formulas. He seldom participated in the specific physical labour of the settlement, and more often than not, he buried himself in those cold devices and data, solving one survival problem after another. People brought him water and food on time, but he hardly interacted with them. There were few expressions on his face, and his eyes always had a tiredness and silence that penetrated the scene in front of him and looked into the distant void.
Only Nadia, that child, didn't seem to feel the invisible shell of ice on Fitz. She always liked to run over to Fitz when he wasn't busy with his work (in fact, Fitz was never really "not busy"), holding some parts she found and asking, "Mr Fitz, what is this? " "Mr Fitz, Grandpa said there used to be something called a 'tree' on Earth that was taller than a lighthouse, is that true? " Fitz usually just answered briefly, or pointed her to the analogue image on the screen. But the sheer curiosity in the child's eyes occasionally loosened the corners of Fitz's taut mouth in a barely perceptible curve.
Time passed slowly across this grey desert. The first crude settlement was named "New Lighthouse". More semi-subterranean structures were excavated. In a small, artificially-lit oasis covered with transparent material, lichen spread tenaciously, and even a few plant seeds brought from Earth and preserved for decades sprouted with great care. The numbness and despair on the faces of the immigrants was gradually replaced by a sense of exhaustion and concentration in the struggle for survival.
On one of Maveth's "nights", two huge moons still hung in the sky, similar to the first time the settlers had visited the planet, colouring the barren landscape an wearing yellow. Fitz stood alone in front of the porthole of the New Lighthouse, staring out at the dead world outside, his hand, unconsciously rubbing. Once upon a time he had seen such a vast and depressing scene at the bottom of the ocean, only this time, he had it all to himself.
Lagging footsteps came from behind, stopping beside Fitz. "Everyone is... sort of settled down... " Voss's voice trailed off as he too looked out. He was silent for a moment, as if weighing his words, "Mr Fitz... What's next for... "
Fitz's gaze remained fixed on the distant skyline, the eternal void dotted with unfamiliar stars. After a long time, so long that Voss thought he wouldn't answer, Fitz spoke slowly, his voice so calm that there wasn't a ripple.
"My mission is complete, Elder Voss. "
In the dim light, the side of Fitz's face looked like a cold, hard rock.
"Enoch sealed me in the door to preserve a glimmer of hope. " Fitz continued, as if stating a formula that had been already calculated long ago, "My team fought to the death for the hope of mankind, Simmons... " His fingers were rubbing against each other, "... consumed her life for that same hope. " He paused, his gaze finally retracting from the void and landing on Voss's face, and in those deep-set eyes was a calm and relief that Voss had never seen before, a calm and relief that was nearly draining.
"Hope takes root here now. " Fitz's voice was soft, but carried an unmistakable note of finality, "I've got all the equipment you need, so it's your turn to carry on to live. May you all live a new life, a good one. "
Voss opened his mouth to say something, but in the end it only turned into a heavy sigh. He looked at Fitz, the man who had brought the remnants of humanity from the grave to this barren land, the man who had been forced to come to the future by his own past, the man who seemed to have burned himself out, and finally just nodded. He understood that there were some hurts and farewells that could not be held back, he couldn't ask Fitz to do more for them.
A few days later, Fitz ascended the hill from which he came alone with a simple backpack containing only a few tools. Before going through the portal he had set it up so that it would open again at the same place a year later. Now it was time to go home.
There was no grand farewell. Only a few who knew he was leaving stood at the foot of the hill, watching in silence. Nadia broke away from the adults and ran to Fitz's feet, tilting her head, her eyes full of disbelief and sadness.
"Mr Fitz, " she whispered, "where are you going? Will you be coming back? "
Fitz looked down at the child. He knelt down so that he was at eye level with Nadia. Reaching out a hand, he hesitated, and finally placed it gently on top of Nadia's head, rubbing her dirty hair.
"Take care of Grandpa, Nadia. " Fitz's voice was soft, with a gentleness that a child might not understand, "This is your new home, and I'm going back to my home. " He didn't answer the question about coming back.
He stood up and took one last look at everyone. Elder Maurice's cloudy eyes looked up at him, and his lips moved as if he wanted to say something blessed, but in the end he just nodded slightly.
A circle appeared behind Fitz at some point, and he turned, stepped in without hesitatation for a moment as he crossed the intersection of the two worlds. The portal then closed as if it had never existed.
9
Fitz seemed to be having a dream. In the dream, Jemma had been captured by the Kree, and he had blended into the Kree's banquet to rescue her, and had never been separated since; in the dream, Coulson had officiated at his and Jemma's wedding, and friends had sent their blessings; in the dream, all the team members were sitting around the tavern, and they were talking about how they had been doing recently; and in the dream, he and Jemma had also had a daughter the like Nadia, and named her Aria, and he didn't know why he had called it this name, only thought this name was of justification.
Fitz woke up. He went back to the lighthouse ruins, greeted only by debris. Apparently the debris had taken another hit during their absence. Fitz had a plan in mind for what he was going to do next, it just didn't leave him much time. For the humans, he had already made arrangements, the rest of the time belonged to him alone.
Simmons's notes mentioned that Noah had left behind a blueprint for a short-range jumping device which relied on the monolith as an energy source for propulsion, capable of achieving emergency avoidance. He didn't need to achieve a space jump, being able to have propulsion was enough. With an energy source, it was entirely possible to drive an asteroid-class object for orbital relocation. A bold plan had already taken shape in his brain of engineer, as clear as if it had been rehearsed a million times. There was no excitement, no fear, just calmness.
He changed into a spacesuit, secured himself to the steel bars of the lighthouse with a cable, and carefully avoided the sharp rocks and twisted metal floating around the periphery of the debris as he drilled into the interior of the massive fragment. Searchlights cut through the darkness of the interior, illuminating the twisted and fractured rock formations, the torrent of solidified metal. Eventually, he landed on a relatively flat, platform formed by the massive fractured rock formations and operated according to the plans.
He climbed inside the wreckage of this planet like a little monkey. The job now was the most dangerous one, the most precise one, and the loneliest one of Fitz's life. He was racing against the dangers of collision and the tenuousness of time in the debris of this dying planet. Using sound amplification devices as well as salvaged metal, he rebuilds engines and lays energy transfer lines.
Time lost its meaning. Only the readings pulsing on the screens and the progress of the engine arrays are real. The lining of the spacesuit had long since been soaked with sweat and oil and clung to his body, cold and sticky. His hands were numb and shaking from the long hours of operation and radiation burns.
After plenties of days, when the last of the thick, temporarily reinforced conduits had been successfully plugged into the engine's main connector, and when the red shutdown symbol on the screen that signalled engine start-up had finally switched from lockdown to a standby green light, Fitz leaned back against the cold engine casing and slid his body uncontrollably into a seated position on the dust-covered floor. It was done. He saw his own blurry, distorted face reflected in the shattered visor, the deep-set eyes reflecting the shadowy light of the monolith. No expression, but an almost mocking calm.
He removed his badly broken helmet, its visor riddled with cracks, and tossed it aside. The thin, cold air inside the shard wrapped around him instantly, carrying with it a heavy smell of metal and ionised ozone that stung his lungs. But he didn't care. He gasped for air, each breath like inhaling an icy blade, his vision blackening in bursts from exhaustion and radiation damage.
He struggled to crawl to the engine's console. On the screen, complex parameters were pulsing wildly. The curve representing the Monolith's energy input fluctuated like a raging python, undulating violently with frighteningly high values. And the status indicator of the gravity engine array was flashing frantically, sounding a sharp alarm, indicating that the core was on the verge of overload.
Fitz's bloodshot eyes were fixed dead on the screen. He reached out with trembling, cut and burned fingers and tapped on the dusty console. Lines and lines of complex commands were being fed in. He was modifying the engine's final target parameters. Not for orbital adjustment, not for interstellar migration. There was only one goal: maximum output, direction: the Sun.
10
It would take about a hundred days to travel from Earth to the Sun, even at maximum speed. On the way, though, it was probably only halfway to Venus when the temperature here was going to be one hundred degrees Celsius. The surface temperature of Venus was close to five hundred degrees Celsius, Fitz thought. But no matter what, from now on, these dozens of days were time that belonged entirely to Fitz himself. He no longer had to worry about the future of mankind, or finish any unfinished business, or care about anything.
Fitz had always considered the Slingshot Project to be incredibly romantic, though he'd learnt that it was a sham later. S.H.I.E.L.D. would launch those 084s assessed as harmful into the sun, allowing it to destroy everything equally and mercilessly, and everything contained in those 084s would join the next cycle of matter, becoming wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, and all things great.
"I like to think about the first law of thermodynamics, that no energy in the universe is created, none is destroyed. That means that every bit of energy inside us, every particle, will go on to be a part of something else, maybe live as a dragonfisd, a microbe, maybe burn in a supernova 10 billion years from now. And every part of us now was once a part of some other thing. A moon, a strom cloud, a mammoth, a monkey. Thousands and thousands of other beautiful things that were just as terrified to die as we are. We gave them new life, a good one, I hope. "
While thinking about this, Fitz went to the previous platform to retrieve the relics of the team members. Coulson's prosthetic hand, May's knives, the shotgun axe — so heavy that Fitz could bearly hold it now — and Yoyo's badge, and of course Simmons' notebook and Enoch's tuning fork, both of which he had long since put away. It was a shame that Daisy hadn't left anything behind. The device that opened the portal was inspired by her, though.
Humming, Fitz returned to the room where he had slept for one hundred and twenty-four years. The room had been largely unscathed by the last impact, living up to its reputation as the highest security room in the lighthouse. "Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme... " He leaned the shotgun axe against the side of the hibernation chamber, after this, he put everything else into it, and then lay himself down in it.
He thought again of Radcliffe, that scientist dragged into madness by his own paranoid. When the framework collapsed, he stayed inside alone, accepting his peaceful death. Simmons never admired Radcliffe, Fitz thought, but I kinda like him, probably because I'm more like him in some aspects, he wouldn't want to live alone in a world without Agnes, so do I. As for his personality, he would be sitting on the beach and drinking wine to witness the end of the world. Still, death in the frame should be painless, that would be really nicer. Fitz thought back to himself again. A person's core body temperature will rose as the temperature rose, causing organs to fail, inhalation of hot air could lead to pulmonary oedema or asphyxiation, and skin tissues could rapidly necrose, though Fitz wasn't sure what he'd go through first, and he didn't think he'd be able to make it through each of those. "Whatever, it's Simmons' business to think about that, get some sleep first! "
"I'm back. " Fitz closed his eyes.