Chapter 7: Spooky House and Heartbeat
Coulson and Melinda paused instinctively, exchanging a sharp glance, the depth of surprise on their faces was impossible to hide.
After their initial shock, both agents leaned forward, peering deeper into the room.
Suspended in mid-air, as though held aloft by invisible threads of magic or anti-gravity tech, was a cloak blacker than shadow.
Yes levitation. No doubt about it. Coulson and Melinda silently confirmed it with a nod.
There were no coat racks. No harnesses. No StarkTech suspensors or drone-based lifters in sight. The cloak was simply...floating.
"It seems Mr. Meiwes is far from what we initially assumed," Coulson murmured, stepping cautiously into the room.
If this was technology-based, it meant Meiwes had either cracked gravitational manipulation. something even Reed Richards and Hank Pym were still theorizing or had tapped into arcane forces. If it wasn't tech, then it might fall squarely into the mystical territory that SHIELD typically deferred to Doctor Strange or the WAND division for.
This wasn't some prototype helicarrier lift-core or vibranium-based tech. This was a standard cloak, no vibranium weave, no adamantium threading, no visible microprocessors. And yet, it defied every scientific principle.
Melinda silently agreed and followed him inside, her eyes never leaving the floating cloak.
As trained SHIELD field agents, they immediately swept the room with tactical precision, scanning every visible surface and corner for traps, data caches, or clues.
A single cot. A large wardrobe. A glass display case. A full-length mirror. A sturdy writing desk. These five pieces of furniture were the most obvious.
At first glance, all of it seemed like mundane, possibly IKEA-sourced furnishings. But the details, the subtle decorations and occult symbology sent a chill up both of their spines.
They swept through the wardrobe and under the cot. Nothing unusual.
Then they turned to the glass cabinet.
What they saw inside made their stomachs tighten.
Inside were dozens of glass jars, each filled with a viscous, amber-tinted fluid. Suspended in the fluid were unmistakably human organs.
Fresh ones.
Eyeballs. Brain matter. Hearts. Lungs. Kidneys. Livers. Even a spinal segment.
"Where the hell did he get these?" Melinda whispered, her voice low and tense.
"No idea," Coulson replied grimly. "But this definitely wasn't in the file."
Whatever secrets Patch Meiwes was keeping, they clearly extended far beyond vigilantism.
"Coulson. Over here. You need to see this."
Melinda had moved to the desk, where she was now pointing to an item with barely concealed fascination.
Coulson crossed the room and saw it, a worn, brown-yellow sheet of parchment, and beside it, a feather quill. Not a synthetic stylus, an actual feather, possibly from a mystical or extradimensional species.
The parchment was etched with precise, arcane-looking symbols. Circles within circles. Characters like ancient Enochian. Glyphs that glowed faintly when viewed from the side.
"Is this a language?" Coulson asked, wary.
Melinda pulled out a Stark-Rand hybrid device from her belt pouch part spectrum analyzer, part linguistic pattern reader.
After scanning, she frowned. "Negative. The device cross-references every known human dialect, including Atlantean, Wakandan, Kree Standard, and Kryptonian. This isn't a language ever documented on Earth or off-world."
"Some kind of magical sigil set? Maybe connected to Chaos Magic?" Coulson asked.
Melinda shrugged. "Could be. This thing won't register anything that hasn't been cataloged through SWORD or WAND."
"Let's bag it. At the very least, it's intel," Coulson said, eyes scanning the rest of the room. "Could be tied to one of Strange's unlisted grimoires or even a corrupted Mother Box code."
She rolled the parchment carefully and sealed it in a containment sleeve.
Coulson kept moving, eyes trailing across the room until something wedged beneath the desk caught his attention.
"If I hadn't been thorough, I would've missed this," he said, crouching to extract a small, oddly inscribed wooden box.
The box was etched with unfamiliar runes not Wakandan, not Themysciran, and not aligned with any sorcery markings from Kamar-Taj. The box felt almost...alive.
It was light as if made of hollow balsa wood yet there was a strange tension in the air when Coulson held it.
"No rattle. No shifting weight. Could be empty," Coulson muttered.
"Or it's lined with vibranium foam. Could be a stealth container," Melinda replied.
She took it from him, turning it over. "It's sealed."
Looking closer, they both noticed a dark adhesive binding the edges. Coulson tapped the floor with the box a few times nothing.
"No give," he said. "Let's try cracking it open."
Melinda pulled a mini-pry tool from her SHIELD kit.
She wedged it under the seam and pulled nothing.
They tried everything.
Sonic vibro-tools. Heat-based softening. Even firing a few rounds from a high-density ICER pistol.
The box remained intact. Not a scratch.
"I've seen Atlantean black coral survive point-blank detonation. This is stranger than that," Melinda muttered.
After ten minutes of failed attempts, she sighed, collecting her tools. "We'll have to bring it back to the Triskelion. Maybe Fitz or Zatanna can crack it open."
The sheer oddity of the room arcane symbols, human organs, an unbreakable container had worn on both of them. Melinda's instincts screamed that nothing about this place was normal.
"This isn't just advanced," she said quietly. "It's wrong. Wrong like Dark Dimension wrong."
Coulson nodded grimly.
But just as they began packing up, Coulson froze. His hand suddenly grabbed Melinda's shoulder.
"May. Be still. There might be a third person here."
Melinda tensed, her eyes narrowing.
"What do you mean?" she whispered.
Coulson didn't answer. Instead, he raised a finger. "Listen."
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Two heartbeats. Hers and Coulson's. The third?
Melinda's expression turned razor-sharp. She drew her weapon silently.
That third heartbeat was too steady to be an illusion.
And it was coming from inside the room.