Chapter 2

After answering Skye, Noctus turned to observe Raina as he approached her. Her skin, once tanned and soft, had taken on a sickly white color while her hair had given way to thorns. Noctus's face twitched slightly as she looked up at him, revealing her face. The thorns actually covered her entire body, including her face, short thorns piercing through her jacket.

Raina stared at Noctus in despair. She felt and saw the thorns coming out, but also penetrating inside her body. It was not what she had been promised, the transformation was supposed to sublimate her, so why was she in so much pain? When Noctus came up to her level and crouched down, she muttered in a defeated voice.

"My grandmother told me that I would become an angel, that I would be dazzling. So why am I in so much pain?"

Noctus didn't say anything for a few seconds, just staring at her before sighing. "Humans are greedy. You wanted real power and so you played with the universe probabilities. I can't say you won, but you will survive."

"No ! I can't stay like this! I look monstrous and my whole body hurts, you must be able to do something, right? You used to live here, you must know something !"

"He lived here? But how ? The city was sealed according to Jemma and Fitz." Trip asked hearing Raina as Coulson checked on Skye.

"The city is not sealed, it is just closed and the Kree technology seems inert when it is inactive. This is one of their strengths, they can make gigantic star cruisers look like simple... asteroids..." Noctus stopped talking when he saw the faces of the other people present.

'Okay, maybe still a little early for discussions about the pros and cons of extraterrestrial tech.'

It was Coulson who broke the silence, deciding that they had to get out of here. "We have to go. I know we don't really have any leverage over people as powerful as you, we already tried with Asgardians, but I'd like to take Raina and have you come with us if you don't mind. ."

"Oh, Coulson right? You don't know anything about the Krees but you have interacted with Asgardians ?" Noctus asked, now looking particularly interested in Coulson.

Coulson answered slightly tensely. "The Shield has had several encounters with Asgardians. I had the 'privilege' of meeting Thor, when his father sent him to Earth without his powers to retrieve his hammer. I was even killed by Loki when he tried to conquer Earth with an army of Chitauris and we helped Lady Sif in her hunt for Medusa when she escaped from the prisons of Asgard. Our organization seeks to protect the innocent from the forces operating on Earth and I hope you can cooperate."

Noctus was now looking at Coulson with genuine curiosity mixed with admiration. "Killed by Loki? This explains the Kree blood in your system, it is a very good catalyst to keep the soul in the body and use its energy to heal fatal wounds."

He paused for a second seeming to weigh something in his head before continuing. "I was planning on following you anyway, I wasn't going to let an Inhuman as powerful as Miss Shaker here try to control her powers without any help. But now you have caught my curiosity. Meeting the two princes and Sif, you certainly lead an interesting life. You will have to tell me everything."

"We can exchange as much information as you want when we will be sure that you are not a treat. Right now, can you get us out of here?"

"Of course, follow me, we will go out by the north of the city." That said, Noctus grabbed Raina to lift her up and then began to exit the temple. The Shield agents looked at each other before following him.

After a few seconds Trip asked Coulson. "Director, we could have gotten out through the hole that Fitz and Simmons dug, why are we following him?"

"I want to know how much he controls this city, if he has taken control of it, we will need his permission to bring it down, otherwise we risk making ourselves a powerful enemy, which we really cannot afford right now ." As Coulson finished his sentence, they noticed that Noctus had stopped in front of a man who seemed to be trying to catch his breath.

"Is he with you?" Asked Noctus, turning back to the agents.

"Mack!" Skye shouted, rushing towards the man with the build of a wrestling player.

She passed Noctus and heard a "I guess that means yes" but didn't pay attention to him and crouched to check the state of the man on the ground. She let out a sigh of relief when he looked up at her and she could see that his eyes weren't black anymore. This proved that he was no longer controlled by the city.

"He was unlucky." Noctus said when Coulson came up to him. "The defense system is almost non-existent since the Kree abandoned the city. Controlling a human was its maximum. But at least he was freed when the temple used the remaining power."

"Is he going to recover?" Trip asked as Skye helped Mack up. Noctus nodded then continued forward with Raina following close behind.

The two men joined Skye and Mack and the latter asked while staring at Noctus who was walking away. "Who is it ?"

"We are not exactly sure but he has powers and he claims to have lived in the city." Skye replied after helping him.

Mack tensed upon hearing that he had lived in the city but said nothing more for the moment.

"We will be interviewing him more back at the Playground, for now we need to make sure everyone is okay." Coulson ended the conversation and moved forward, quickly followed by the others.

After about ten minutes, the group arrived at a dead end, in front of a wall on which were engraved symbols, clearly Kree what the agents knew about the aliens who had built this city.

Noctus walked to the right of the inscriptions. He pulled out some sort of pendant from his pocket and placed it in a notch in the wall causing the Kree symbols to light up as a control panel appeared before Noctus who pressed a symbol, causing the wall, which was actually a door, to shake and drop down.

The others present watched in amazement as the door opened, revealing a circular room whith a ceiling so high it was invisible.

Seeing the agents staring at him quizzically at the fact that it wasn't an outing, Noctus sighed as he rubbed his eyebrows, pointing toward the room. "An elevator." He looked up, looking at them like they were a bunch of idiots. "We are underground so we have to take an elevator to get out." Hearing his explanation, everyone nodded and entered the room, which began to rise rapidly as the agents could now see some light filtering from the ceiling as it opened.

Noctus had a smile on his face as he looked around. It seemed that things were going to be interesting in the near future, barely awake he had already came across events with potentially planetary consequences. He was eager to find out what humanity had come up while he was meditating. Every time he had returned to Earth in recent centuries, science seemed to have advanced by bounds and this time didn't seem to be an exception.

'Now that I'm so close to my goal, let's see how the world has evolved without me.' Said Noctus to himself with a smile.

_________________________

May had quickly gathered everyone after Coulson descended into the city after Skye and she had been waiting for news for several dozen minutes now. She was anxious although, as usual, her face didn't show it.

She knew she should have tried to stop Coulson but in the end she couldn't. The man had been haunted by dreams of this city since his passage through the Tahiti project and in his place she would have done the same.

The problem was that it meant four of their best people, including Trip and Mack, were currently stuck inside the city without contact for almost an hour now.

"Still no contact?" May turned around shaking her head, facing Bobbi, the other fighter in the group and the only person in Shield who could give her a good fight. Her blond hair were disheveled from the last fight against Hydra but she got away with just some bruises as usual.

"Not yet. How are the others?"

"Nobody's really hurt but we're all waiting for news. The team is ready to go down if we don't get something soon." May looked at the rest of the group as she listened to Bobbi's report. Fitz, their inventor with short blond hair and a serious look, was chatting with his lifelong partner Jemma the group's biochemist, both looking at a tablet. They were probably looking for safe ways to detect what was happening in the city while Hunter, a former mercenary and hothead of the group, was looking at them in confusion.

Suddenly, Fitz rose from his seat. "I have something !" He approached the briefing table May was leaning on and displayed a map showing San Juan, the city built above the alien city, with the superimposed plans of the Kree city while a red dot a few hundred meters from the coast flashed, attracting the attention of everyone while Fitz explained. "We have just detected a large movement of water just at one end of the city and it looks like a large object about to emerge. I think it could be them. I'll put live satellite images."

Fitz displayed the satellite images. The team of agents breathed a sigh of relief when they saw a platform emerge from the water with a group of humans on it.

Barely a second later, they finally received a communication from Coulson. "May, can you hear me? We've left the city but we're in the middle of the sea, you'll have to come get us."

Coulson seemed fine at the sound of his voice so the mission had to be a success.

"We're coming, Fitz had already detected your exit. Any injuries?" May asked as the rest of the team began to move, Bobbi going to take control of the plane with Hunter while Fitz sent the coordinates to the onboard computer.

"We managed to recover Mack who is injured but I don't think it's too serious. However, we were all exposed to an unknown substance which had effects on Skye and Raina so we will have to do a full check-up. We also met a stranger. He knew about the Obelisk and seem to have a relation with the Asgardians. Apparently he has lived in the city for at least two centuries. He assured us that the substance is not dangerous nor contagious but you never know." Fitz and Simmons looked at each other upon hearing Coulson's report before Simmons rushed off to get the medical teams ready after a quick "I'm on it."

"You have Raina? Well… A stranger you say? He mustn't be human to have lived that long right?" May asked with a sigh. She was really nostalgic for her early days, when threats only came from meta-humans at worst. At least they were still human, they could be understood.

"I…" He seemed to think for a second before asking someone. "You didn't tell us Noctus but are you human?" A laugh was heard before a definitely male voice that May didn't know answered him.

"I was born human, Coulson and I still consider myself human. However it's only my mind, my body has long been altered beside the point of being considered human in a biological sense. So you can consider me as a powerful entity. I mean, Odin would have never sent Thor on earth without my consent if he knew I was here" Hearing this, May felt slightly shaky in spite of herself.

Such a powerful human was definitely too much for the Shield to handle right now. If they were lucky they might get his help, and that was surely Coulson's intention, but if not? They wouldn't be able to do anything aside calling the Avengers.

"Okay, whatever, we'll see all of that when we get back to Playground. We'll be waiting for you May." Coulson finally cut the call and May looked up at Fitz.

The young man looked at her for a few seconds before pointing to the cargo bay, stuttering an excuse to go help Simmons.

The combat specialist sighed as she watched him go. They had barely averted a crisis and Whitehall, that mad scientist from Hydra, was finally dead but he was only one of many heads of the organization. She really hoped that this newcomer would be good news.