"Why would anyone want to live here?" I asked as I surveyed our surroundings.  "I mean, sure, it's isolated, but if I wanted to be isolated I would live in a forest or something, where there's actually more colors that brown and yellow."

   Lincoln shrugged.

"No idea. I guess he just thought it would be the best place," he said.

    We continued to walk until we came to a crude wood sign on a barbed wire fence which read "No Trespassing: Violators will be shot."

   "He sounds like such a fun guy," I remarked drily.

   "I hope you know how to deal with this guy, because I'm thinking... crazy town was a pretty spot-on assessment," Daisy said .

     "We'll be okay, but we shouldn't use our powers. He's cranky enough as it is," Lincoln said.

   We passed several other signs along the same lines, and then came to a gate.

    We pushed it open and stepped inside.

     As we stepped inside, a man holding a rifle came out of his house, which looked like a shack.

      "Fair warning, pretty boy. You take one more step... you're gonna regret it," He said in an Australian accent.

    "James, we only want to talk," Lincoln said.

   Daisy took another step forwards, but suddenly she stopped. I looked down and realized she had stepped on something.

   "What is that?" Daisy said, looking at Lincoln.

   "Don't move," he said, looking at what her foot was on.

       "Wha-" She began.

  "You're standing on a landmine," Lincoln said.

    "I did say, 'one more step,'"  James remarked casually.

   I looked up and glared at him.

   I suddenly felt immense anger. It was like a protective instinct. Because of this man, my sister could get hurt, thus I hated him. I couldn't help it.

      "Seriously? What kind of lunatic puts land mines in their front yard?" Daisy exclaimed.

    "A lunatic like him," I growled.

   "James! We're not here to fight," Lincoln shouted

  "Oh, that's rich, coming from you. I've been waiting a long time for this day, for Jiaying to send out one of her little lapdogs to come after me. To be honest, I thought it'd be that no-eyed boot licker, Gordon. Kind of shocked that she trusted you with anything, really," James spat back.

   "Wow. You really undersold Mr. Personality," Daisy said.

   "Can you hold it down?" Lincoln asked her.

   "Or I'll blow off my leg," she replied.

      I glared at James again.

    I looked down as Daisy used her powers to hold the land mine down.

   I held my breath as we backed up.

  When we were a safe distance away, Daisy stopped holding it down, and it exploded, knocking us back.

    I hit the ground and winced as pain shot up my broken arm. 

  I sat up and looked over at Daisy and Lincoln, seeing if they were OK.

   They both got up and I did the same.

   "Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo ! Look at you. Girl power. Nice move. Well, I hope you got the message," James said.

   "What, the message about how you're a stupid lunatic? Yeah, we got that one loud and clear," I hissed.

  
Dasiy ran forward and slammed her hand down to the ground.

  "Daisy, wait!" Lincoln said, running over to her.

   She ignored him, and proceeded to make all of the mines explode with her powers.

   The grin on James' face quickly went away and he reached for his gun, but as he did, Lincoln and I simultaneously hit him with our powers.

    Needless to say, he fell unconscious.

  Daisy stood back up and turned to us.

 "I think that was overkill, guys," She said.

   "Yeah. I just hope that he's not dead now," Lincoln replied.

  "He deserved it," I muttered.

   Suddenly I was astonished at how much anger I felt towards this man, just because he had almost hurt my sister. It felt so strange. I had never felt so much anger towards someone in my life.

    Well, maybe with the exception of Grant Ward. I had never met the man, yet I hated him immensely. He had hurt so many people, including my sister. It just made me hate him.

"Cori? Are you OK?" a voice broke into my thoughts.

  I blinked a couple times and saw Lincoln standing in front of me.

   "Wha- oh, yeah. I'm fine. Just lost in thought."

  He nodded and went inside, and I followed him.

    I saw that they had laid James on his couch, and Daisy was sitting on a chair, waiting for him to wake up.

   I sat down and once again began to stare off into space.

    After a little while, I heard a groan coming from the couch.

   Daisy stood up, holding his gun.

  "No quick moves, tough guy," she said.

   "Hand it over, unless you want to wrestle for it," James said and sat up, motioning to the gun.

   "I can see you're not afraid of a little scrape."

     I rolled my eyes.

This guy is a Class A idiot, I thought.

   "We only need information about that ancient Inhuman you used to talk about and anything you stole before being thrown out of Af-" Lincoln began, but James cut him off.

   "I'm sorry. I just can't get over the irony of this whole situation. Jiaying elected to give you powers?" He said. "Oh, Lincoln. Man, you're a mess."

   "You don't know what you're talking-"

  "Makes me wonder what you've been giving her, huh? Something a little extra on the side after hours?"

   The three of us glared at him.

  "What? Well, the woman's crazy, but she's not bad for a senior citizen. And what's with the kid? Are they granting powers to little kiddies now? Jiaying must really be desperate."

    "Yeah? Well this 'kid' is getting really close to shutting your smart mouth up for good," I growled.

   "We're not here on her behalf. We're with SHIELD," Lincoln cut in hastily before James could respond.

   Daisy glanced at me.

 She had never seen me angry like that before, and frankly, neither had I. At least not very often.

   "SHIELD? Even I know the band broke up, brother. Why don't you leave me out of whatever little plan you and Jiaying-" James began.

  "Jiaying's dead, and Afterlife is a pile of ashes," Daisy cut in.  

   "Well... hallelujah!" James said.

  That was one thing we agreed on.

  "You see? We're on the same side. So why don't you tell us what you found?" Daisy asked.

  "Why? I don't really do things out of the kindness of my own heart. Haven't really understood that behavior, to be honest."

   "Yeah, that's why I brought a little incentive... I know all you've ever wanted is to be like us, so I thought I'd put that offer on the table," Lincoln said, pulling a box out of his pocket. He opened it, and I realized what it was. A terrigen crystal.

   Both Daisy and I looked at him uncertainly. I could tell both of us were unsure if this was a good idea.

    James sat up eagerly.

    "You should've opened with that," He said and stood up.

   He walked over to his kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out a small box.

   "Well, most of what I stole was junk...but this was interesting," He said and took out a strange spherical thing from the box.

     "I give you the alien thingymajig and you give me the crystal."

  "That's Kree," Daisy said as she stared intently at the artifact.

   "Looks like you're the muscles and the brains, huh? He's just the haircut," James said.

   "And what am I?" I asked.

Daisy shot me a warning look.

  James thought for a moment.

  "The useless backup."

    I started to angrily lift my hand but Lincoln put a hand on my shoulder.

   "What does it do?" he asked.

   "Well, if I could figure that out, I would be doing that instead of this. But from what I can gather, it was snatched up by this ancient that you're badgering me about...after the Kree were killed or driven out or whatever," James replied.

    "When the Inhumans revolted against them," Daisy said.

   "That was your man that led the charge. They called him Alveus. It was Latin or something."

   "One of the first Inhumans," Lincoln said.

   "Original blend. Powerful. Designed by the Kree to command the Inhuman army for them. That idea really bit him in the ass, didn't it?"   

  "Powerful how?" Daisy asked.

   "I'm not sure, but the archive said the Inhumans started to fear him, and they had to band together with regular humans to banish him. Look, those records ... they say that all of us at Afterlife descended from the first group of Inhumans. That was our history. She had no right to keep it from us!"

"She was probably scared someone would try to bring him back," Daisy said.

   "Maybe," James replied. Wait. You guys aren't trying to bring him back, are ya?"

    "Of course not," Lincoln said.

   "Never," Daisy said at the same time.

  "Good. Well, this priceless artifact is yours. If you want it, just give me the crystal," James said.

   Lincoln took a step forward, grabbed the artifact, and handed it to Daisy, but pulled the crysta away, making electricity with his other hand to make sure James didn't try to get it.

   "You liar," James said angrily.

  "See, Jiaying was right about some things. Not everyone deserves powers," Lincoln said.

   "And you do? Now that you got electricity running through your veins, you might actually kill someone."

   "Let's get out of here," Lincoln said to us.

    "Oh, boyfriend of the year didn't tell you how his last relationship ended. He nearly murdered the poor girl. But I can see by your face that you're familiar with that side of him."

   Daisy and I looked at him.

   I had no idea what he was talking about.

   "Daisy. Cori. Come on."

    We turned and walked out.

   "You may think you can change him, sweetheart, but you're wrong. Men like him don't change!" We heard James yell from his door.

  I looked at Lincoln. 

 "What was he-"

   "Not now, Cori," Lincoln said.

  I sighed and lapsed into silence.

  No one said a word until we boarded the Quinjet.

    Finally Daisy couldn't hold it in any longer.

   "He said you almost killed your girlfriend. What the hell was he talking about? Who was she? Why haven't you said anything about this before?"

   "Because I never wanted you to see that side of me," he replied.

   "I don't really care what you want right now, Lincoln. You can't...you can't just show me Mr. Perfect all the time and keep all the ugly parts hidden away. That's not how this works. I need the truth, or whatever we are ends now."

   The two of them glanced at me.

  I threw up my hands.

   "Fine! I can tell when I'm not wanted. I'll be outside while you two work out your relationship problems!" I exclaimed.

    I sighed and walked out of the Quinjet. Yeah, I had already known they were in a relationship of some kind. How could I not? They were pretty obvious about it, I just hadn't said anything.

   I hated moments like this. I got that it was private, but I thought Lincoln and I were close too!

     Well, him and Daisy were closer. They're in love, while Lincoln is basically my brother. I understood why they didn't want me there, but I didn't really like the reason.

   I shot off some dark energy to blow off steam. 

     I continued to shoot dark energy while I waited for them to finish talking, and I thought over what James had told us.

    "Huh. An Inhuman so powerful even the other Inhumans were afraid of him. Wow. Well, I guess that was the history lesson for the day," I muttered to my self.

       I was so lost in thought that I was hardly paying any attention to the things around me.

   "Cori? We're done."

   The voice startled me badly, and I whirled around, dark energy shooting from my fingertips.

   I stopped it centimeters from Daisy's face.

    "Sorry!" I said and made it disappear. "You startled me."

   "It's fine," She said and smiled.

   I walked towards the Quinjet.

   "So how did your little chat go?" I asked.

  She shrugged.

  "Fine, I guess."

"Daisy! Cori! Come here!" Lincoln suddenly shouted from inside the Quinjet.

   We ran inside.

  "What is it?" I asked.

    He didn't respond and pushed a button on the control console, and a transmission played.

     "Daisy, come in. Giyera's taken control of the plane. We need-" May's voice said before it was suddenly cut off.

   I gasped.

   "May? May?...May?" Daisy said, trying to contact her.She sighed.

   "Line's dead. Everyone from our team is on that plane."

     "Not everyone...You put together the Secret Warriors Initiative for a reason," Lincoln told her.

   "No, Lincoln, what... what if..." She trailed off.

You can't be afraid of that. We all know we've got to do something," Lincoln responded.

   I nodded.

  "They're our team. We have to do whatever it takes," I said.

   Daisy sighed, and nodded.

   "Let's call them in."