Chapter Six

Just under three hours later, we landed in Costa Rica. Since we were in a SHIELD jet, we were able to land in a small clearing by the village, and we didn't have to deal with airports or cars or any other forms of transportation. Instead, Ward was able to set us down gently exactly where we needed to go.

Once we finished with all the landing procedures, Ward pushed a button to drop the cargo hatch so we could meet our contacts. He stood and walked out of the plane without a word to me, and I did my best to match his confident posture as I followed him.

A crowd of people were waiting for us as we stepped out of the plane. I could tell they were government personnel from the suits and guns they had, but the man in the lead still smiled as he walked forward to greet us.

"You must be the agents from SHIELD," he said, shaking Ward's hand and then turning to shake mine.

"That's us," answered Ward. "I'm Agent Ward."

"Agent Slater," I said. I couldn't keep a small smile off my face at the sound of agent in front of my name.

"I'm Agent Vargas. Thank you both for coming so quickly," he said.

"That's our job," Ward said, nodding once. "What can you tell us about this thing you've found?"

"I'm afraid we can't tell you much. We have no idea what it is. We know it's about ten miles into the rainforest, but we don't have a specific location. The energy pulses seem to show up randomly, although we've been trying to find some kind of pattern or logic to them."

"Any satellite images or other information that might give us an idea of what this thing is?" asked Ward.

"Nothing. No one's been able to get a visual on it. All of our electronics short out whenever we get close to the suspected area. After the first few teams failed and had tech breakdowns, we decided it was time to call in the big guns."

"You made the right call," said Ward with a nod. "We'll grab our gear off the jet, and then we'll head out."

"Excellent. Thank you."

Ward turned and headed back up into the Quinjet, and I glanced one more time at Agent Vargas before following him. Knowing the Costa Rican government hadn't been able to successfully go into their home turf and find this thing made me a lot more nervous about our chances, SHIELD agents or no.

I grabbed my pre-packed backpack with all my gear, then headed back out of the Quinjet. Ward was busy shutting things down in there, since we didn't know how long it would be before we were back, which left me standing outside with Agent Vargas and the rest of his team. I turned to Agent Vargas, deciding to make the most of my time.

"So, Agent Vargas, you definitely know this area better than we do. Got any rainforest survival tips for us?"

Agent Vargas smiled. "The best advice I can give you in the time we have before your partner returns is this: don't provoke the wildlife, avoid insects, and most importantly, don't die."

I let out a breathy laugh, unsure whether or not he was trying to make a joke. Either way, I'd definitely try to follow the advice, but I'd been hoping for something a little more specific than "don't die".

"Thanks, Agent Vargas," I said with a smile. "I'll do my best to follow that advice."

He nodded and smiled back, so whether or not he was kidding, I'd apparently made a good impression. I turned back to the Quinjet to check on Grant, who was still rustling around in the cargo hold. I decided to go see if I could help him.

"Hey," I called, coming to stand beside him as he worked with some switches near the cockpit. "Anything I can do?"

"Yeah. Hold this for a second," he answered, dumping his incredibly heavy backpack into my arms. I grunted as I fought it and almost fell over, but thankfully he didn't see that part.

"Aren't you supposed to pack light when you go hiking and camping and stuff?" I asked once I regained my balance. Thankfully the weight of his backpack was balanced out by the one I was already wearing, otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to keep myself from actually falling over.

"That is light," he said. Without another word, he pulled his pack out of my hands and strutted off the plane. I shook my head before following quickly, getting off the ramp just in time as it closed behind us.

"Here, you two will need this," said Agent Vargas, holding out a sat phone to Ward. "We have no guarantee that it will work once you get close to the object, but it should allow you to communicate with us until then, if you need it."

"Thank you," said Ward as he took the phone and tucked it into the pocket of his pack.

"Thank you. And good luck."

Ward nodded to Agent Vargas, then walked past him and towards the tree line. Vargas and I shared a smile, and then I hurried after Ward.

I knew we were heading into a potentially deadly rainforest in pursuit of someone unknown object that could be equally dangerous, but somehow, I couldn't bring myself to care.

My first real mission as an agent of SHIELD had just begun. Nothing could dampen the feeling of that high.

****************

Turns out, I was wrong about nothing being able to ruin my excitement. The mosquitos and insane humidity of the jungle had started to curb my excitement after the first half hour, and then my SO took it upon himself to finish off the rest of my good mood.

"Ward! Stop doing that!" I yelled as he snapped a tree branch back into my face for the third time in an hour. He'd push past a branch in our path for himself, and then immediately let it go so it would fling back and hit me without so much as a warning!

"Stop doing what?" he asked, clearly playing dumb. I didn't believe for a second he didn't know what he was doing.

"Stop snapping the branches back into my face!" I exclaimed. "You know, besides it being incredibly annoying, I'm pretty sure the guy is supposed to hold them aside for the lady to pass."

"Well, by all means," he said, stopping in his tracks to pull a branch out of the path and stepping back to let me go first.

I froze, giving him a confused look. No way my words actually had that effect on him, right? He just looked right back, then made a gesture with his hand for me to go ahead. I squinted at him, but started walking forward. I did not trust this, whatever it was, but I decided to play along anyway.

SNAP!

As expected, before I could get past the branch he let go, dropping it just in time for it to smack me in the back. I jumped, then whirled around to face him.

"Ward!" I yelled, punching him in the arm as soon as he was in range. It wasn't a hard punch, but it was enough to get my feelings across.

"Hey!"

"The SO is not supposed to be a jerk like that!" I yelled.

"I'm supposed to make you tough. So let's go. Toughen up."

He pushed past me without another word, and the light air I'd been feeling suddenly disappeared. I'd been trying to joke with him, like my other Specialist friends and I had done at the Academy. With any of them, the whole tree-branch-arm-punch thing would've sparked a prank war to the death for "training purposes".

For some reason, Ward seemed to have another layer of crankiness on top of whatever all the other Specialists had.

I had to jog a little to catch up to Ward, and I debated saying something to try and fix whatever had happened earlier, or at least to get back some of the lightness we'd had, but in the end I decided not to risk it. I didn't know him well enough to know how to fix whatever changed, and the middle of a mission in a potentially deadly rainforest was not the place to start working through our relationship.

The two of us continued in silence until the sun started to set. My legs were starting to ache, but I did my best to ignore it as we kept walking. After another few minutes, Ward stopped dead in his tracks and started looking around. I froze too, trying to listen for whatever had made him stop.

"What is it?" I asked, keeping my voice to a whisper. "Do you see something?"

"Yup. A good place to camp for the night," he said, dropping his backpack to the ground and pulling out our tent.

I didn't move right away. I couldn't help but pause at the idea of camping in the middle of the rainforest, with all kinds of strange and dangerous animals around us, but I knew we didn't have another choice. We couldn't keep walking forever, and it would probably be worse to continue in the dark than it would be to pause here for the night.

Even though I thought I'd managed to keep my expression neutral, Ward had apparently noticed my initial reaction.

"Is there going to be a problem?" he asked, pausing to look at me in the middle of setting up the tent.

"Nope. No problem here," I said brightly, smiling and moving to help with the tent. Ward just looked at me for another minute, but he moved on once he realized I wasn't going to complain about the camping.

"You finish this," he said, standing from the tent and turning to start hanging our food.

"Aren't there monkeys in the rainforest?" I mused as the two of us worked.

"Yeah. What's your point?" he asked.

"Won't the monkeys be able to get the food up in the tree like that? Since they live in trees?"

"Better than a hungry animal coming to our camp looking for it."

"Fair enough."

We finished setting up camp in silence. Grant had enough experience as an agent that he usually had a good answer whenever I asked a question, which made it incredibly hard to prove that I knew what I was doing too. No one was always right, but he was certainly close, at least as far as I'd known him.

Damn experience.

Ward and I worked together to make a fire, then ate dinner before setting up our sleeping bags in the tent. I wasn't exactly thrilled about sharing a tent with Ward, but Specialists were trained to do what we needed to do, especially in survival situations. Besides, it was just a tent. We weren't sharing a bed or a sleeping bag, or anything like that.

I crawled into my sleeping bag and faced the tent wall, already feeling myself start to drift off to sleep. I thought it would've been harder to get comfortable, knowing all kinds of animals could be lurking just outside the tent, but it had been such a long day that my exhaustion was finally catching up with me.

"Goodnight Ward," I mumbled, only really half awake as I said it. I heard his sleeping bag rustle and a muffled "Night" just before I drifted all the way off to sleep.

I guess the tin man had a heart after all, buried beneath all the grumbling and snippy comments.