"Yes, ma'am," Meadows said, and hung up. Woods was one of his people, so it was his responsibility to find him and bring him in for a talk. Reprimand was more accurate, but under the circumstances, he hoped to keep it as low-key as possible.
"I'll be at the forge, Simmons," Meadows said. Agent Simmons looked up from her work and nodded, accepting the hand-off. That was one of the things Meadows liked about working for SHIELD. Everyone was professional enough to be a pleasure to work with. Even something as basic as handing off the office to another agent when he needed to be elsewhere was uncomplicated and reliable. Meadows made sure his badge holder was in place, his badge visible to anyone he passed, and made his way to the engineering section.
Faern'ya had taken over a corner of the motor pool and converted a barbecue grill one of the caretaker staff had left behind into a forge, and a length of I-beam into an anvil, and had set herself up a smithy. Luckily, for the sake of the dress she had been wearing before they had evacuated to this site, supply had been well stocked with uniforms and issue underwear. Apparently, someone had considered sports bras to be a more practical issue for SHIELD agents than the usual variety - a discovery that had produced a good amount of cheer among the female agents with field experience - and now Faern'ya spent whatever time she wasn't with the Commander at her forge, in BDU pants and sports bra, hammering steel. The area around her forge had become an unofficial gathering place, especially after she had repaired a couple agents' knives.
Meadows scanned the group around the forge, found Woods, and made his way to his side. Woods stood to attention, and Meadows shook his head. The stereo Faern'ya always had playing at the forge was currently blasting out R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It". Meadows opened his mouth to send Woods back to the office, then stopped, looking at the stereo.
"Faern'ya?" Meadows called. "Where'd you get the music you're playing?"
"Agent Meadows!" Faern'ya called back. "Hi! What do you think?" She lifted her project, a scythe with steel bands running down the sides of the shaft, a reinforced grip that folded against the shaft about half-way down, and a blade made of steel scraps he had watched her braid and hammer-weld into a pattern that looked a lot like the blade of a Viking sword. "It's finally ready for me to start enchanting."
"Nice," Meadows said, nodding at the scythe. "Faern'ya, where did you get the music you're playing?"
"That?" Faern'ya asked, and turned down the volume. "Agent Chadwick loaned me the stereo and showed me how to use something on one of the office computers to get music for it. It's called iTunes."
"Shit," Meadows hissed softly. "How long have you been using it?"
"Shit?" Faern'ya asked, "About three weeks, why?"
"Remember how the Commander took all of our electronics at the evacuation site?" Meadows asked.
"Of course," Faern'ya said. "She was worried they could broadcast our location, just like the radios."
"So can computers," Meadows said. "We don't know who's in control of the routers SHIELD used to control access to the internet."
"You mean the music I have didn't come from a library in the base?" Faern'ya asked, a horrified look on her face.
When Meadows shook his head, she ran to the wall behind her forge and slammed her hand into the alarm button mounted near the door that led back into the engineering section. The red alert alarm suddenly blared through the base.
