In a park on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, a long row of telescopes was set up in an open, grassy area, lenses pointing up toward the clear night sky. People moved from telescope to telescope, some in pairs, so they could view the sky from different angles and zooms. The group, a local high school astronomy club, had been there since just before sundown in order to prepare for an evening of stargazing. Everyone focused diligently on their notes and maps, talking quietly amongst each other to compare results. Everyone, that is, except for one.

Leo Fitz was having a hard time concentrating. His thoughts kept straying to the girl peering through the lens of the telescope next to him. This wasn't a new thing; he was almost always distracted by Jemma Simmons, but tonight it was worse than usual. One of their classmates was throwing a party the next weekend. Normally this wouldn't concern him, as he and Jemma typically weren't invited to anything involving the popular kids at school, but this time, Jemma had been invited. He hadn't. The thought of all the popular guys, the ones who always gave him a hard time for being too smart and too quiet, laughing and talking with Jemma, making her face light up, made his stomach churn. He didn't really want to think about why-Jemma was free to do as she pleased-but he was pretty sure he knew anyway. It had been creeping up on him all year.

He had a hopeless crush on his best friend.

They'd become inseparable almost immediately after first meeting each other. Fitz was new, having moved from Scotland to Virginia over the summer after his mother had accepted a teaching position at the University of Richmond. Jemma, whose parents were both research scientists at Virginia Commonwealth, had been living in the States for a few years already. He'd been amazed to find a fellow Brit on the first day of school, and once he realized that she was also every bit as smart as he was-once they both realized it-becoming best friends had felt like the natural evolution of things.

Fitz had always been a loner. His advanced intelligence had set him apart from his peers at a young age and his prickly social awkwardness hadn't helped. Finding Jemma had felt like nothing short of a miracle. For the first time in his fifteen years of life, he had someone who understood him on every level of his being, someone who could keep up with his rapid-fire thought processes (and surpass him, if he were being honest with himself), someone who didn't mind his rough edges, someone with whom he could have entire conversations through facial expressions alone. To him, Jemma was perfect in nearly every way: brilliant, funny, kind to others, and strikingly beautiful.

And therein lied the problem. He had a crush on her, but Fitz was sure he wasn't the only one who had noticed how wonderful Jemma was.

He wasn't stupid-he knew a lot of their classmates thought they were dating because they spent so much time together, but it wasn't like that. They were, very firmly, simply just friends. Maybe everyone's assumptions had a detrimental effect on any sort of romantic life Jemma might have wanted, but she didn't seem to mind the whispers. Still, he'd seen a few of the other guys in their year give her appreciative looks in the hall or the cafeteria. She seemed oblivious to it, but on the rare occasions she did show any sort of interest in a guy, it always seemed to be one of the athletic types. Fitz was well aware of how much he wasn't athletic, with his below-average height and weedy frame; it was the only way in which he felt woefully inadequate for Jemma. Sometimes he wished for a last, late growth spurt that would put him more on par with, say, Grant Ward, the star of the school football team. Maybe then she'd give him a second look and consider the possibility of being more than friends.

Speaking of Ward…

Fitz looked skeptically over at Jemma, who was bent with her eye to her telescope. "Grant Ward? Seriously?"

She didn't bother to look up at him. "It's just a party," she said calmly, twisting a focusing knob near the lens. "He asked if I wanted to go. He's...nice."

He huffed before turning back to squint through the lens of his own telescope. "To you, maybe. He's-I know you don't believe me, but I still think it was him who had Nick steal my clothes out of my locker during gym."

Jemma sighed and straightened up to give him an exasperated look. "You're right, I don't believe you. Why would Grant even want to do that? We aren't in the same grade as he is and you barely know him."

Because he thinks you're hot, Fitz thought, not without a little malice. And I'm in the way.

"Does he need a reason?" he said instead. "He's always like-" He paused before affecting his best attempt at an American accent. "I'm Grant Ward and I'm the captain of the football team, and I can throw a fifty-yard touchdown pass, blindfolded…" He stopped when he heard Jemma stifling a laugh. Grinning, he bent down and adjusted the angle on his telescope a bit. "So, yeah, he's like that and I'm-well, I'm the biggest nerd at school. We're natural enemies."

He saw Jemma click her flashlight on in his periphery, the red tint of the filter on it preserving their night vision. "Well, if you're the biggest nerd at school, you've got good company."

He couldn't stop himself from looking up at her then, hoping he didn't look too pleased. "Yeah?"

Jemma glanced at him as she jotted down some numbers in her notebook, then smiled as she turned her flashlight back off. It was the smile he'd only ever seen her give him, the one that made her eyes go all soft and warm. "Yeah." But before he could reply, her smile twisted into a smirk. "It was a bit funny, the whole gym thing, you have to admit," she added. "I'd never seen you in shorts before and when you came into Chemistry wearing them your legs just looked so pasty…"

Fitz huffed again, but this time it was in mock injury, because while Jemma was smothering another laugh behind one hand, her eyes were still bright and fond. It was hard to feel insulted when she looked at him like that. "Pasty," he repeated. "Right. Because you're so sunkissed-"

Footsteps crunched on the grass behind them, and they both turned hastily back to their telescopes. "Getting a lot of observing done over here?" a voice asked.

"Yes," Jemma said as Fitz nodded quickly, pretending like he'd been focused on the view through the lens the entire time.

"Hmm. Sounds like it." He looked up; it was Mrs. Weaver, one of the science teachers at school and the astronomy club sponsor. She was strict but fair, and very perceptive, and she didn't look convinced by them at all. She nodded at him. "Can you name that bright star, Mr. Fitz?" She pointed up at the night sky. "The one in the handle of the Big Dipper."

Fitz didn't even have to look through the telescope to identify it. "That's Mizar," he said confidently, then cut his eyes across at Jemma. She was looking through her telescope again. "It's a double star. With Alcor."

Mrs. Weaver nodded, satisfied. "Very good. And what's the star next to them?"

He squinted up at the stars overhead, then bent to put his eye to the telescope lens. "I, uh…" He frowned. He could clearly see the object that Mrs. Weaver was referring to, but it looked out of place to him. It was closer to Mizar and Alcor than anything he remembered seeing on the star charts he and Jemma had studied, and in addition to that, it looked almost fuzzy. He twisted the knobs on the lens a bit, trying to get it to come into focus, but he couldn't do it. After a moment he stood up straight and frowned again, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I-I, um, I don't know."

"It's Megrez," Jemma said quickly, looking up at them. There was a small smile on her face and Fitz could tell she'd been holding herself back from saying it, wanting to give him the chance first. He didn't think she was right, though. He shook his head.

"No, I don't think so," he said.

The smile fell from Jemma's face. "But-you just said you didn't know-"

"I know," Fitz countered. "But I do know it's not Megrez. It's too close, and look-" He came over to her telescope and, after making sure it was pointed in the right direction and focused correctly, gestured for her to look. "You're missing Alioth. It's in between Alcor and Megrez, remember? So whatever that is, it's not Megrez. It's just a little south, instead of east."

Jemma pursed her lips. "I still think it's Megrez."

"I promise, it's not."

Mrs. Weaver looked back and forth between the two of them with faint amusement. Jemma and Fitz often got into debates, even in the middle of class, the kind where each was convinced they were right and each refused to back down from their conclusion. "It may just be a satellite," she offered, making them both stop mid-sentence and look at her. "Why don't you take a picture of it, and I'll send it to Dr. Hall to have a look." Fitz nodded, and after smiling at them, Mrs. Weaver moved off to check on the other students.

"It's Megrez," Jemma said as Fitz checked to make sure the camera attached to his telescope was turned on.

He rolled his eyes. "Nope. Not Megrez."

"It is!"

He laughed shortly and shook his head, even though he knew she wasn't looking at him. "It's not!"

Silence fell between them as Jemma went back to her notes and Fitz took a picture of his telescope's view, but it didn't stay quiet for long. Jemma was far too used to having the last word in their debates. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper, but Fitz could hear the smile laced through it.

"It is."

-:-

Adrian Peak Observatory
Tucson, Arizona
One Week Later

It was well into the night far across the country from Richmond. Inside the dome of one of the larger optical telescopes, Dr. Franklin Hall was settling into his shift of keeping watch over the observatory's many powerful long-range optical and radio telescopes. He was the sole scientist on duty, which meant he could play his favorite opera-Verdi's La Traviata-as loud as he liked over the computer speakers and even hum along without getting ribbed by his coworkers.

After setting the master controls to close the dome he was currently in-a line of heavy thunderstorms was moving into the area-Dr. Hall ambled up onto the platform that held his computer workstation. He dropped into his chair with a sigh, the wheels skidding slightly, and reached to grab a slice of the pizza he'd had delivered earlier. Then he turned his attention to the mail he'd pulled from his inbox when he first clocked in.

At the top of the stack was a manila envelope with a Virginia return address. He took a bite of his pizza before setting it down to open the envelope, and pulled out several glossy 8x10" photographs. The first was a group photo: two rows of teenagers, one standing and the other kneeling, all smiling in front of a banner that read 'Lee High School Astronomy Club'. He smiled down at it, then flipped to the next photo. It was a telescope view shot, slipped into a plastic sheet. Two stars clearly more visible than the rest were circled on the plastic, with an indistinct object between them also circled and an arrow drawn to the words see next page.

Intrigued, Dr. Hall quickly flipped over. It was another photo in a plastic sheet, blown up to show more detail of the pertinent section of the previous photo. The two bright stars were circled again, listed as Mizar and Alcor-ah, Ursa Major then, he thought-and the object in between them was also circled, but this time it was simply labeled with a question mark.

So the students had found something they couldn't identify, and neither could their sponsor. Interesting. To him it was clearly a comet, given the fuzziness of the object and the visible tail it had; it was just a matter of finding out which one. Taking another bite of his pizza, Dr. Hall checked the back of the photo to see if they had provided specific coordinates of the photo-they had-and turned to his computer to enter the data into his star tracking database.

After a second, a window popped up showing the last photo the observatory had taken of that section of the sky. The watermark listed it as only being two weeks old, so it was still good for comparison. He brought up the high resolution zoom and clicked a few times, focusing in on Mizar and Alcor. It proved him correct-the object was most definitely a comet. But which one?

"Huh," he muttered, then zoomed in one more time. "Which one are you, now?"

To his considerable knowledge, Dr. Hall couldn't think of any known comets scheduled to make a pass close by anytime soon. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, entered a few numbers into the program, and hit enter. Another window popped up, labeling Mizar and Alcor, but the comet came up as C - 000 uncharted.

He raised his eyebrows, his pizza forgotten. "Uncharted," he said to himself. "Now this is interesting. Let's see where you're headed, shall we?"

He clicked a few more times to bring up the Kast spectrograph, then put in the data he had from both the photograph and the tracking database. Hitting enter again with a flourish, he sat back and waited for the results to come up.

When they did, he frowned. Then he leaned forward, squinting. A second later, his face drained of all color.

The orbital interpolation graph had put the comet's trajectory on a direct collision course with Earth.

Swearing beneath his breath, he frantically clicked around to save copies and screenshots of the data before opening his email, quickly typing out a message to one of his colleagues in the Department of Planetary Sciences at the university in the city. He hit 'send' and was about to turn away to open his desk drawer when he noticed that the cursor was just sitting there, churning, not sending the email. He leaned in to look at the network icon on the desktop tray, and swore again when he saw that it was blinking red.

One of the many quirks of life at the observatory that they had yet to figure out was why their cable internet would sometimes go out during rainstorms. Dr. Hall looked up, where the sound of heavy rain drumming against the dome was now audible, and grimaced. He pulled out his phone and tried to put a call through, only to find that his signal reception was spotty, too. There was nothing else for it-he would have to drive into the city. Dr. Vaughn wouldn't appreciate him banging on his door so close to midnight, but given the circumstances, Dr. Hall thought he would understand. This wasn't the sort of information that needed to wait until morning.

Fumbling in his haste, he jammed a thumb drive into the USB port on the front of his computer and loaded all of the data and screenshots he'd compiled onto it. Then he opened his file drawer and tried to grab a fresh manila envelope. His adrenaline was running so high that it took him three tries to properly grasp it; when he finally pulled one out, he tossed it on his desk and then grabbed the two photos from the high school and flipped the one with the coordinates over to double-check the back.

The photograph was credited to one Leo Fitz. Dr. Hall grabbed a marker from his pencil cup next to the computer monitor and quickly wrote 'Fitz-Hall' on the back of the photograph. Then he slipped both of them into the manila envelope along with the USB drive, scribbled 'Attn: Dr. Phillip Vaughn' on the front of it just in case, grabbed his jacket and car keys, and ran for the door.

Outside, the rain was lashing hard against the side of the building, and Dr. Hall used his jacket to cover his head and protect the envelope as he sprinted for his Jeep. His legs were quickly soaked through, and he grumbled as he wrenched open the driver's side door and threw himself inside. It was uncomfortable, but he would deal with it. The planet was at stake; he didn't need to worry about soggy trousers. He turned the keys in the ignition, threw the gear into drive, and peeled out of the parking lot.

He tried to go as fast as he could, but the torrential downpour made it difficult to see the road, even with his high-beams on and the windshield wipers going full tilt. He groaned in frustration, leaning forward to look over the steering wheel-as if that would help visibility-and reached blindly into his pocket, pulling his phone back out and swiping his thumb across the screen. Glancing at it in quick spurts, trying to keep his eyes on both the road and what he was doing, he hit the speed-dial button to Dr. Vaughn.

The call still refused to go through, the phone screen blinking NO SERVICE at him as if in mockery of his predicament. "Damn it!" he cried, and dropped the phone into his lap so he could grip the steering wheel with both hands.

He gave it another mile before trying again, with the same result. Sighing, he resigned himself to never getting a signal, and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat on top of the manila envelope. Then he slowed the Jeep down as he prepared to take a hairpin turn.

Desperate as he was to reach the city, he still took the curve a little too fast, and the wheels skidded as he punched the gas coming out of it. The Jeep started fishtailing, and Dr. Hall swore as he spun the steering wheel, trying not to overcorrect. Just when he thought he had the car back under control, it hit a slick spot on the pavement and hydroplaned. His stomach dropped as he felt the tires lose friction, the steering wheel going loose under his hands. He could do nothing but shut his eyes and hope for the best.

A second later, the Jeep slammed hard into the guardrail on the front corner of the driver's side, then spun before flipping into a roll. The world was a spinning vortex of deploying airbags, shattering glass, and crunching metal, and Dr. Hall felt a rush of water against his face and chest before the car suddenly went weightless. His stomach lurched.

He had one second to realize that he'd flipped over the guardrail and into the ravine below before there was another bone-wrenching crash, and everything went black.