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Her voice wasn't loud, but it instantly drew everyone's attention.
Coulson whipped around.
"You know?"
Hermione nodded. "More or less."
She looked up at him, her tone flat.
"The day you were revived, I was actually right there."
"What!"
Coulson exclaimed, not expecting this at all.
"Then GH.325 — what exactly is it?"
Hermione set down her snack.
"Nothing worth hiding. Only Fury treats it like some kind of miracle. It's just a serum refined from Kree blood. It repairs biological damage. That's it."
"Kree," Coulson said, his voice unsteady. "Does that mean..."
Hermione glanced at him. "Yes. Aliens."
Aliens.
The word slammed into everyone like a sledgehammer.
Coulson stood frozen, as if struck by lightning.
He had imagined countless explanations. Never once had he considered that his own resurrection would involve aliens.
No wonder Fury had been so tight-lipped. No wonder everything about Project T.A.H.I.T.I. was buried under the highest classification.
After a long pause, he finally spoke again, a trace of bitterness in his voice.
"No wonder Fury kept it from me. Injecting alien blood into a human body... that's not exactly something people take well."
...
Garrett and Tripp disappeared through the cabin door.
The others filtered out. Coulson found Hermione alone.
"Hermione. Thank you — genuinely."
His voice was sincere. "If you hadn't arrived in time, Skye might have ended up like me. Injected with alien blood."
He said it without resentment. He knew Fury had done it to save him. That was simply the kind of man he was, loyal to a fault, unable to hold a grudge even when he probably should.
Fury's debt to him could never be fully repaid.
Still, since Fury hadn't used the substance on a larger scale, there had to be some kind of adverse effect lurking in it.
"Oh, that."
As if reading his concern, Hermione said lightly, "You don't need to worry. Even if Skye had actually been given GH.325, she wouldn't have had any side effects."
Coulson blinked.
"Why?"
He pressed. He couldn't understand how she could be that certain.
"Nothing special." Hermione said, unhurried. "While I was treating her, I happened to notice something."
Coulson's chest tightened.
"What?"
Hermione's gaze settled on him. Calm. The kind of calm that had already seen through everything.
"Skye... isn't from Earth."
She paused.
"Or rather — not entirely."
"What did you just say?!"
Coulson's voice cracked upward, sharp with disbelief.
Skye is an alien? That's impossible.
"She looks completely human!" he said before he could stop himself.
"She has alien genes," Hermione said. "Kree genes."
Coulson stood silent. He didn't want to accept it. But this was Hermione saying it, which meant it was true.
"Does she know?" he asked.
Hermione shook her head.
A faint sound came from the doorway.
Both of them turned.
Skye stood at the threshold. Her face had gone white as paper. Her body trembled, barely perceptible. Her eyes were wide, filled with something between terror and total disbelief.
She had heard every word.
"...Well," Hermione said, spreading her hands. "Now she does."
Coulson:...
"Hermione. Coulson."
Skye could barely hold herself upright.
"What were you two talking about? It's a joke. Right? Tell me it's a joke."
Coulson's heart lurched. He wanted to say something. He had nothing.
Hermione looked at Skye, her expression unchanged.
"I'm not joking. To be precise, you're an Inhuman."
Skye stood very still for a moment. Then, slowly, the shock settled into something quieter. She took a breath.
"Inhuman?"
Hermione explained.
"A very long time ago, the Kree came to Earth. They experimented on the humans here, implanting their own genes into human DNA. They wanted to engineer powerful warriors."
"At some point, for reasons no one seems to know, they abandoned the project and left. But the humans they'd modified kept living. Their descendants kept being born."
"Those descendants are the Inhumans."
"Outwardly, they're indistinguishable from anyone else. But under the right conditions, they awaken, and gain abilities. Different ones, depending on the individual."
Skye listened as if she were hearing a fairy tale.
If it was true...
She looked up sharply. Something lit in her eyes as the real implication clicked into place.
"Wait. If Inhumans pass it down through bloodlines, then my parents,"
Hermione nodded.
"Yes."
"At least one of them is an Inhuman too."
The light in Skye's eyes blazed. A kind of hunger that had never quite had anywhere to go.
Years of searching. Years of dead ends. Even S.H.I.E.L.D. had nothing on her parents but a file with every name blacked out. And now, here, in the most unexpected moment she could have imagined, a lead.
Hermione watched the hope ignite across Skye's face and felt, quietly, something close to resignation.
Poor Skye. She had no idea what kind of "surprise" was waiting for her.
Her life, in summary:
A father who went insane. A mother who became a monster. A boyfriend who was a spy all along. And Skye, left in pieces.
A family tragedy, front to back.
Passed from orphanage to orphanage since she was a baby. Her mother dismembered and studied by HYDRA, then crudely stitched back together by her father, kept alive by her own powers, but entirely changed by it, her mind bent toward something twisted, willing to cut down even her own daughter if it came to that. Her father, who had once been a reasonably ordinary doctor, spent years searching for his lost wife and child and became a killer somewhere along the way. And Ward, the one person Skye had finally, slowly let herself trust, HYDRA. A mole. Someone who had been lying to her face the whole time.
Tragic didn't even begin to cover it.
Skye drew several long, slow breaths. Forced herself to settle. Then she looked at Hermione, something earnest and careful in her eyes.
"Inhumans, where do they usually live? Is there a way to find them? To find my parents?"
Hermione watched her quiet, hopeful expression and shook her head slightly.
"I don't have much on that. Inhumans tend to keep to themselves, deliberately out of ordinary people's sight. And they're not a magical species, so I don't usually track that kind of information."
Skye was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled. "Thank you."
Hermione shrugged.
A beat of silence passed. Then, as if something had just occurred to her, she asked:
"Do you want superpowers?"
...
After prying S.H.I.E.L.D.'s one and only Obelisk away from the one-eyed hard-boiled egg, Hermione successfully triggered Skye's awakening.
Her power: vibration waves.
Skye evolved. Whitebeard Skye had entered the building.
The Tremor-Tremor Fruit's destructive potential left the assembled agents speechless. The raw, bone-deep force of it apparently convinced Skye she could take on a witch, because she looked right at Hermione and gave her a come-and-get-me look.
Then Hermione dropped her into the Mirror Dimension for half an hour of uninterrupted free fall.
She came back a changed woman. The usual Skye returned at light speed.
Crisis resolved.
Once Skye had basic control over her ability, Hermione didn't linger. She returned directly to Hogwarts.
She had barely made it through the classroom door when Snape appeared, under Lupin's long-suffering gaze, and pulled her away again.
The reason:
Someone from the Daily Prophet had arrived. They wanted an exclusive interview with Hermione.
Interviewer: Rita Skeeter.
➤ Next: The "Frank" Hermione
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
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