Donnie Gill looked at the three videos paused on the wall screen and said, "If I remember right, Skye said she was heading to New York when she left."
Ward's jaw tightened. "I said we shouldn't have let her walk."
"It may not be her," Coulson said. He kept his voice level and his eyes on the documents. "Rising Tide has significant membership, and New York has had more major events in the last two weeks than most cities see in a decade. Their people would be there regardless." He paused. "That said — she's a member, she has the technical capability, and she was in Los Angeles doing exactly this kind of work when we met her. She's the primary lead."
Ward nodded. "We start with her. Even if she's not the source, she's a thread into the network."
Donnie added, "And if she's not responsible, finding her first is still protection for her. Whatever she's stepped into is bigger than she understands."
Fitz and Simmons exchanged a look and said nothing, deferring to Coulson.
Coulson set the documents down. "New York. We go now — May picks us up once the Bus is back online." He looked at Ward. "We need her functional, not scared off. Don't hurt her."
Ward gave a small nod and was the last one out the door.
Coulson lingered a moment. He'd run Skye's background through every available channel during the 0-8-4 mission — every S.H.I.E.L.D. database he could access with his clearance level, every external registry, every cross-reference he could construct. The result had been nothing. Not thin records, not a scrubbed file — nothing. No origin. No family. No paper trail before a certain point. Just a person who existed in the present tense without a past attached to it.
The strangest part wasn't the absence of records. It was that an ordinary person — no enhanced biology, no special classification, nothing to explain the gap — had left no trace at all.
He'd need to go deeper when he was back at a full S.H.I.E.L.D. facility with his highest-tier access. There was something there. He was certain of it.
He picked up the files and walked out.
New York's crime rate had continued to drop.
The Paragons handled most of it — their coverage had expanded beyond Manhattan, following notable criminal operations wherever they ran. The Afterlife team's three members had added meaningful capacity, particularly in situations that called for precision. The city's general condition had improved enough that Eddie Brock's media team was spending noticeably more time on promotional content and solo projects than on incident response.
Smith watched this with quiet satisfaction for approximately ninety seconds, then turned his attention to Jiaying.
He'd been putting the visit off — not from reluctance, but from sequence. Other things had needed handling first. Now the queue was clear, and the Afterlife situation was the thread that most needed direct attention.
The Terrigen problem was straightforward in its logic and catastrophic in its scale. The Terrigen Crystals that gave Inhumans their abilities through the mist exposure were, for non-Inhumans, lethal without exception. Petrification, death. No recovery. In the source timeline, Jiaying's trajectory had eventually led to a plan involving mass exposure — a decision made from trauma and isolation and the particular kind of desperation that came from leading a community that had been systematically hunted. He understood the psychology. The outcome was still unacceptable.
Better to make contact early. Before the trajectory hardened.
Smith closed his eyes and extended his ki sense outward — a slow, methodical scan across the globe's inhabited regions. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s academy training ground registered clearly, as did several military installations and the Eternals' current position in New York. A handful of individuals stood out at scattered points: practitioners, enhanced individuals, people whose ki signatures had a distinctiveness that set them apart from background noise.
Kunlun and Kamar-Taj were dark — shielded, barriers in place that absorbed the scan. Expected.
But the Afterlife base had no barrier. It had never needed one, because no one with ki sensitivity had come looking. The concentration of energy there was dense and distinctive — dozens of enhanced individuals in close proximity, the specific signature of Inhuman biology after Terrigenesis, all of it sitting in the scan like a lit window in an otherwise dark building.
Smith fixed the location and opened his eyes.
He left the Brotherhood compound flying at speed, cutting across the landscape without announcing himself, following the ki thread directly to its source.
The Afterlife base was built into terrain that made it defensible and difficult to stumble across — mountain geography, controlled access points, the kind of location that took deliberate planning to find. It had served its purpose for years. The Inhumans had lived there without intrusion.
Smith came in from above.
He didn't hide his approach. There was no point — any attempt at concealment would read as hostile intent, which was the opposite of what he needed. He simply flew, visible, his ki signature at normal levels, and let the base's lookouts do what lookout positions existed to do.
The alarm went through the community fast. Within ninety seconds, Jiaying was moving toward the landing area, Gordon at her shoulder, her face composed in the particular way of someone who had just been given bad news and had decided to walk toward it instead of away from it.
She looked up at the figure descending through the sky. Her read of the situation was immediate and accurate: someone had found them, and that someone was Smith Doyle, who held a senior position in S.H.I.E.L.D. and had power that sat in a category she had no real framework for. The three Inhumans she'd sent out publicly didn't even know where the base was — they came in through Gordon each time specifically to prevent this kind of exposure.
It hadn't been enough.
Gordon leaned toward her slightly. "Say the word and I get you out. Immediately."
Jiaying's mouth pulled at one corner — not quite a smile. "And go where, Gordon? If they've found us, the community stays here. I'm not leaving them." She straightened. "And if he wanted to destroy us, we'd already be having a different conversation."
She raised her voice before Smith had fully landed. "Mr. Smith. Please come down. I apologize for not welcoming you properly — I wasn't aware of your visit."
Her voice was steady. The scarring along one side of her face caught the light as she held her chin level. There was no warmth in the greeting, but there was no retreat in it either.
Smith dropped the last few meters and touched down in front of her. He looked at Jiaying and Gordon — read the controlled tension in both of them, the specific quality of people who had dealt with S.H.I.E.L.D. before and had not come out of it whole.
"Hello." He kept his tone straightforward. "I'm Smith Doyle. I've been meaning to come by."
Jiaying took his hand and shook it. Her grip was firm, her smile practiced. "Jiaying. I lead this community." She searched his face. "You're welcome here, Mr. Smith."
He'd noted what he needed to note. She knew who he was — not just the public identity, but the institutional one. S.H.I.E.L.D. Inspector General. The connection that, from where she stood, meant threat.
"Show me around," he said. "We can talk after."
The directness of it — no agenda announced, no demand made, just a request to see the place — landed differently than she'd prepared for. The tension in her shoulders shifted by a fraction.
"Of course," she said, and turned to lead the way.