It had been almost two weeks. Thirteen days and eleven hours since the old Roxxon Plant went Chernobyl and swallowed Phil Coulson, Leo Fitz and Robbie Reyes in a blast of quantum energy. Two weeks of dead ends, mounting pressure, and looks from her colleagues that bordered dangerously close to pity. Melinda May was about to crack.

After an hour spent combing every inch of the facility, she finally let herself accept the conclusion that Mack had reached almost immediately: her teammates were gone.

Not dead, she reassured herself. Just not here.

Mack could not meet her eyes when she emerged from the subterranean stairwell, covered in dust and sweat. That was fine. She didn't need him to. She did not do comfort. This wasn't the time for consolation anyway. There was work to be done.

"Morrow," she announced.

"What?" Mack asked.

May grimaced. She might as well have woken a sleep-walker. He hadn't looked this lost since Bobbi and Hunter retired.

"Eli Morrow," she clarified. "He's the one that's responsible for this."

Mack's eyes narrowed as grim determination set in.

"So we find him," Mack concluded. "And make him pay."

"He can pay after he's told us what he did to Coulson and Fitz," May corrected.

"And Robbie," Mack added.

May rolled her eyes, but did not bother to contradict him. The Ghost Rider was what started this whole mess. If she never saw him again, she wouldn't lose any sleep.

"What about the Director?" Mack asked.

"What about him?" May said, walking past him toward the quinjet. "He's not here. We've got a quinjet with enough fuel to take us to Rio and back. And I doubt Morrow's made it that far."

Mack followed her up the ramp and closed it behind him.

"He's gonna be pissed that we took his plane without reporting in," Mack muttered.

"Let him be," May spat.

She had the engines fired up and the wheels off the ground before Mack could make another attempt to change her mind.

The Director was annoyed when May, Mack and their tactical team reported back to base five days later, but it was May who was pissed. Five days and as many dead ends meant all of their leads on Eli Morrow had gone cold. He hadn't been in contact with Gabe or anyone at the prison. He had not been back to his old home or the Momentum Energy Facility. SHIELD's facial recognition software did not yield a single hit on security footage or any form of social media.

Morrow was another goddamned ghost.

"He's a scientist," Mack had pointed out when all their ideas were exhausted. "He thinks strategically. That's what makes him such a formidable adversary."

May had shot him a look hearing the defeat in his tone. He was losing his edge. Fitz's disappearance had been a hard blow to him; that much was obvious. She clamped her jaw shut to stop herself from snapping at him. They had to keep it together. They weren't going to find anyone by moping.

In the end, she had conceded that he was right. Morrow was a scientist. They needed to think like him to figure out his next move.

They needed Simmons.

So it was with that resignation that they had returned to the base.

After the perfunctory ass-chewing from their esteemed leader, May had exited the Director's office with a head full of steam, marching toward the lab at a near-sprint. Simmons was slouched over a metal stool at her work station, barely holding her head up.

"Agent May!" Simmons greeted her.

The poor woman looked up from her desktop with red-rimmed eyes and May felt a debilitating stab of pity. She hadn't spoken with Simmons directly since the incident. Mack had graciously offered to break the news of her partner's disappearance as soon as she was back within cell-range. Simmons looked like she hadn't slept since.

"Simmons," May nodded.

She stifled the instinct to ask about her well-being or to simply march her to her bunk and stare at her until she succumbed to exhaustion. She would be alright. She could sleep when their team was whole again. They all could.

"Any progress?" She asked instead.

"Oh," Simmons rolled her eyes. "Of course not. I knew there wouldn't be. There's no possible way to reverse Terrigenesis on a non-Inhuman. You can't bring someone back to life who has been transmogrified into a block of carbon, but the Director insists—

"What are you talking about?" May asked. "What does that have to do with finding Morrow?"

"Morrow?" Simmons repeated. She blinked a few times, trying to refocus. "Oh! Nothing, sorry… Didn't Daisy give you my report?"

"I haven't talked to Daisy," she said.

For a number of reasons.

She had called a few times over the past five days, but May let the calls go to voicemail. She had enough on her plate without delving into the rabbit-hole that was her former-protégé's current mental state. Daisy was on-base. She was safe. That was all she could ask for at the moment.

"Well," Simmons began hesitantly. "I don't—I haven't had any more luck locating Dr. Morrow than you or Mack. Daisy and I have been working on some new methods of targeting unusual bursts of quantum energy, but it's slow-going. In the end, we're not even sure if it will work, assuming Dr. Morrow's experiment was a success."

May frowned.

"Okay, so what's our next step?"

"That's just it, Agent May," Simmons's voice began to waver. "I don't really know. Fitz was the one who understood the engineering and physics side of things. So much of what we know about quantum physics is theoretical and my knowledge barely scratches the surface. If Fitz were here…"

"But he's not," May said firmly. "You are. Whatever you need, Jemma, we can get it for you. Just tell me what you need to fix this."

Simmons's eyes spilled over and she wiped her cheek with the sleeve of her stained lab coat.

"I don't know where to start," she admitted. Something like a strangled laugh bubbled up from her throat as she fought the stream of tears.

"Jemma…"

"A wave of energy like that could have theoretically sent them into any point in time or space, or dimension. Or they might still exist on this plane, but just in an intangible state," Simmons explained between sniffs. "But I think we are ignoring the much simpler explanation. Whatever kind of energy it was they were exposed to, it was massive. Even without their—their bodies, it's much more likely that they are—

"Don't."

Simmons's head jerked up at the quiet interruption.

"May," she began. "I'm sorry, but I think we may have to accept this."

The older agent stared at her for so long that Simmons recoiled a few inches as if preparing herself for an attack. It was a testament to her state of mind that May felt a small swell of satisfaction from her reaction. Maybe she had a reason to be afraid. It took every ounce of May's self-control to keep her hands from shaking.

How dare she give up so easily? How dare she tell her to "accept" this?

If she had any idea what she was asking, she would have kept her mouth shut.

"If the situation were reversed," May said at last. "Fitz would never have written you off so easily. You should know better, Jemma. You owe him that much."

Simmons could not have looked more stricken if May had slapped her.

"I—I," she stuttered.

"You will figure it out," May continued. "And I will be there to help you when you do."

Apparently robbed of her capacity of speech, Simmons only nodded, looking down at her hands.

Again, that pull of pity threatened to overtake her. With a few words, May had reduced the competent young woman Simmons had become into that shy, uncertain girl that had boarded the Bus four years ago. She had to leave before she lost her composure. Simmons was an agent. She would recover and she would fight to get their team back.

It's what they did.

In her haste to evacuate the lab, she almost ran into Mack's chest.

"Hey," he said, looking over her head to where Simmons sat staring blindly into space at her desk.

"What's up with Simmons?" He demanded. "Did you say something?"

May scowled.

"Nothing that she didn't need to hear," she answered. "She's exhausted. Probably hasn't eaten recently. Would you…?"

"I'll take care of it," Mack cut her off, breezing past her.

"May?" He called after her. "Take it easy on her okay? We need to keep the team we've got left."

May stalked off without looking back.

They could all take it easy once Coulson and Fitz were home.