A/N: Hi! I know I'm continually crazy for starting another long-termer, but I've had this one in the works for awhile and I want to get the first part out there. This one might not be updated as often as the other four longer-termers, but will be updated regularly. Hopefully this will mean that I can give you longer chapters each time.

This story features a character I created for an SYOC story, "The Spec-Ops Team 2," but the arc she takes in each story will be different for various reasons.

I look forward to hearing what you think!

Enjoy!

On the night before everything changed, Allie snuck out of bed and padded out of the house, taking the short walk up the trail that led to the gates at the top of the hill, the one that overlooked the mountain. Though the torches were lit, the mountain was shrouded in darkness. Allie could still feel it – how could she not? It sang in her blood, like most of the world around her.

She sat down on her favorite rock, still warm from the day's sun, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Above her the stars were sprinkled across the ebony sky like glitter on black velvet. The world was so big, and she was so small. And tomorrow she would be someone else entirely. Would the stars still look the same? Would they still love her in the same way?

She heard the footsteps before her brother could even speak. "Go away, Patrick."

"What are you doing out of bed?"

"Same thing you are."

"Sneaking up on my bratty sister in the dark?"

"I'm not bratty, and you couldn't sneak up on me if you wanted to."

Patrick's face softened as he considered the stubborn little girl on the rock in front of him. "You should have woken me up. I would have come with you."

He didn't sit down next to her, knowing his sister preferred her space, but he stood close by. "Are you worried about tomorrow?"

Allie nodded.

"Plenty of people go through the Mist and they come out just fine. Perfect, or better."

"You didn't go through."

"That wasn't my decision, and you know that."

"But if you didn't go through, how come I get to go through?"

"Jiaying knows what she's doing."

Allie looked at him solemnly. "I don't want to do it, Patrick."

Now Patrick did sit down next to her. "It's something very important to Mom and Dad."

He wanted to hug her, kiss her, play with her long braid, but he knew she'd just push him away. Instead he said, "But you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Allie tilted her head. "Jiaying says I have to."

Suddenly desperate to be closer to him, she crawled into his lap and snuggled up against him. "I'm scared," she whispered, her breath hot against his neck. "I want you to go with me."

"You know I can't do that."

She slipped her thumb into her mouth, something she normally never did anymore (she was five years old, for crying out loud), and leaned against Patrick, hearing his heartbeat like a faraway series of drumbeats.

Patrick brought one hand up and gently brushed her hair off her forehead.

"If I don't go, Mom and Dad and Jiaying and Gordon, they'll all be mad at me. I don't want them to be mad at me."

"Nobody will be mad."

"Jiaying will be mad. She told me so," Allie said, her voice somewhat muffled by her thumb.

"I won't be mad," Patrick said softly. "I'm on your side, Lis, and I always will be."

She loved that he called her "Lis" – he was the only one who did. She was getting drowsy now, the stars twinkling above her as though dancing gently through the cosmos.

"Patrick?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you still love me even if I'm mean and horrible and I kill people?"

"Who told you you're going to be mean and horrible and kill people?"

"Nobody," Allie said, and there was a long, guilty pause. "Maybe somebody, but it doesn't matter."

"You're going to be wonderful and brilliant and you're going to help people," Patrick promised.

"Patrick?" Sleep was truly coming for her, her eyes growing heavy as she reached for his hand.

"Hmmm?"

"I love you, okay?"

"I love you too."

For the last words she'd ever speak to her brother, they were pretty good.

She didn't remember much of what happened after the Mist came to get her. She still thought of it that way, since it was nothing like the peaceful and gentle transition the Elders always talked about. It had been vicious, and it had hurt.

She remembered darkness, and then shattering rocks falling around her, and seeing the temple go dark in her vision. When she woke up things were even worse.

On the nights when the nightmares got too close for comfort, when she didn't want to wake Patrick up from his pallet next to her bed, she'd stare up at the skylight and catalogue all the things she could still do, counting them the way some people count sheep, until she was calm enough to fall back to sleep.

Breathe. Swallow (most of the time). Move my eyes. Move my pointer fingers.

There was the whole thing she could do in her head, with all the benefits of being a cyberpath, but since the Mist had given that to her, she didn't count it as hers. She'd repeat her four remaining abilities over and over in her head until they became a rhythmic lullaby entwined with Patrick's breathing, and she'd find that the simple harmony was enough to chase the monsters from her dreams.

"We need to talk about the Shinn girl," Jiaying said abruptly to Gordon.

The sandy-haired man had been in the middle of a conversation with a young man, but upon acknowledging Jiaying's presence he quickly finished his discussion and turned to Afterlife's leader. "Of course," he said. "Has she stabilized?"

Jiaying pursed her lips. "No."

"Something about her transformation went awry."

Jiaying nodded. "I have the medical team looking into her genetic makeup, to see if the issue was present before we sent her through. If they do not find anything, then…"

"Then she's the one in a million," Gordon concluded, speaking of the small percentage of Inhumans whose transition through the Mist caused them severe physical or mental damage.

For a moment Jiaying didn't speak. Then she said, "She told me she didn't want to go through. Begged and pleaded for me to let her go home."

Gordon considered this. "It was her time," he said. "This was her day."

Again Jiaying was silent.

"You're not second-guessing yourself?" Gordon rubbed his forehead. "The Elders agreed – it was to be her and not her brother."

"I know it will never be her brother," Jiaying retorted. "But a five-year-old?"

"One of the youngest we've transformed," Gordon allowed. "But no matter what happened to her, none of this was your fault, Jiaying."

"You don't think I know that?" she snapped. "But you go in there and tell Marianna that, because at the moment she's still waiting for her daughter to wake up, and we have no idea if that will even happen."

"She'll wake up." Gordon studied Jiaying. "You're not comparing her to someone else, are you, Jiaying?"

The scarred woman's face allowed a small smile. "Only as much as I compare every little girl with brown eyes to my Daisy," she informed him. "It broke me when she was taken from me, and I swore that I wouldn't let anyone else suffer in the ways I have."

"Aliselyn will wake up," Gordon repeated. "There are some things a person just knows."

The head of the medical team supervising Allie's care was an Inhuman named Grace, who gave Jiaying and Gordon a stern look when they entered the treatment pavilion.

"Still nothing?" Jiaying asked.

The doctor stepped towards them, holding out printouts of test results. "The Mist triggered something in her – something I've never seen before. When it transformed her DNA, it also caused all of the major cell groups in her muscle fibers to start deteriorating at a rapid rate. She's quickly losing strength and muscle tone. If I could compare it to anything, it would be spinal muscular atrophy – a genetic muscle-wasting disease."

"What's the long-term prognosis?" Gordon questioned.

Grace shook her head. "Most of the kids with the most severe type die before their second birthday, and sometimes that's even with extensive medical care and supervision. She's still breathing on her own, but at the rate her cells are deteriorating I'd say her growth will be stunted, her spine will bow and curve outwards, her limbs will eventually be frozen into one position, and she'll lose the ability to swallow."

It sounded horrible to Jiaying, who was trying very hard not to think of Daisy losing everything like that. "What can we do?"

"At the moment? Continue the transition. As far as long-term treatment, we need to put in a permanent feeding tube as soon as possible, and obtain some medical equipment that can assist in clearing her airway and preventing her limbs from contracting."

"Is she in pain?"

"No," Grace replied. "We've made sure of that."

Eleven years later Aliselyn Darianne Shinn lay in her most comfortable position – somewhat on her left side, pillows supporting the majority of her body. Her spine had shifted and bowed due to loss of muscle stability around it, and what on anyone else should have resembled a straight line instead seemed to make a tight, pinched C-shape with a twist at the top. Nothing on her body was in a line; her spinal deformity caused her torso to always be out of line with her hips, and her legs, weakened by years without standing or proper stretching, frogged up towards her body, splaying her hips and her knees out to the sides. Her toes pointed like a ballerina's, and no amount of physical therapy could fix that. Her arms were locked in towards her body as well, the backs of her pointer fingers just brushing her shoulders, palms facing somewhat outward.

She was a freak. A crippled weirdo, dependent on her brother for absolutely everything.

Well, except for one thing.

She turned her gaze to the computer suspended above her. Like the girl herself, the laptop was supported by a variety of different methods, all of which enabled Allie to slide through cyberspace. On rough days Patrick had to prop her elbows so her pointer fingers could come in contact with the keyboard, but for the most part, Allie's cyberpathic connection to the world of electronics was capable of operating without touching – or even being in the same room.

Now she flicked her gaze to the computer screen, and as if by magic, words appeared on the screen. Seconds later, they were spoken aloud by a computerized voice, female, with a British accent. "Patrick, take me outside. It is time for the fireworks."

Her brother groaned, having just gotten comfortable on his pallet. "You are so needy," he groaned dramatically.

She rolled her eyes. "I want to see the fireworks."

"Everyone wants to see the fireworks, Lis."

"Patrick," she typed firmly.

"Fine, fine," he groused and rolled over, looking at her seriously. "You okay?"

Her body was generally always wracked with pain in some part, and she was so tired that she knew her facial muscles were spasming, but she forced it all away and flicked her eyes upwards, telling Patrick yes silently.

"Don't lie to me." Patrick stood and moved towards her. "Lis, it's okay to be in pain."

No, it's not, Allie thought, looking up at him. Everything Patrick had had, he'd given up to stay with her, to keep her safe, to take care of her. When they'd been forced out of the house they'd shared with their parents and taken to this dusty and unused temple, Patrick hadn't complained once. He'd set to work making it the brightest, cleanest, most organized dwelling in Afterlife. Now it felt more like home than any place Allie could remember. She wanted to be better for him.

He reached out, obviously getting ready to scoop her up and take her outside to see the fireworks for Chinese New Year, but she tensed and winced, sucking in a painful breath.

"Lis," Patrick said sternly.

"I don't want any more pain meds," Allie typed. "They make me fuzzy and nauseous and I can't think and I can't work."

Patrick leaned down and took one of her skinny, fragile arms in his hand, intently looking at the purple band strapped around her wrist. It was a pedometer, but since Allie never walked, Patrick had set it to record her heart rate and he used it to assess when she was in pain but claiming she wasn't, or when she was overloaded and needed to shut down but claiming she didn't. "One forty-five, hummingbird," he informed her. "That's the pain zone."

"I don't want the meds," she typed fiercely. "I want to see the fireworks."

Patrick's brown eyes, so like her own, regarded her seriously. "Fireworks, then shut down. You need to rest."

Allie didn't fight him on that. She was exhausted, and she knew from experience that it would get worse before it got better.

Patrick scooped up his sister, cradling her with one hand under her neck and the other under her knees. Allie had no head control and her deformities made it difficult for her to lay flat or sit upright, so her options usually were to lay on her bed or the floor, or to be carried in Patrick's arms.

He took her outside and Allie felt the night breeze brush her face. She could hear it twining around the wind-chimes hung from the corners of their home, singing their songs into the darkness.

Patrick sat down on a well-padded section of hillside and shifted her in his arms. "You okay?" he asked.

She flicked her eyes up.

For a few long moments they were together, silent, in the darkness. Allie could feel Patrick's strong arms under her, and he relished in the quick, short pants that were her breath. He was able to shift enough to see the pedometer. "Ninety-two. That's more like it."

Allie rolled her eyes, grateful for the almost-darkness.

When the fireworks burst across the sky like brightly-colored handprints, Allie remembered how much she adored them. Fireworks were so ephemeral and transient – they were and then they weren't, all at once.

It was like that five-year-old girl she'd been once upon a time. That girl no longer existed, and in her place was this twisted, helpless young woman who had never left Afterlife and yet left it every day, streaming herself around the world. She was, and then she wasn't, millions of times a day. She could dip her toes into India, spiral back to Poland, sneak up on Canada, and traipse through South Africa –

… but there was only one place she truly wanted to be.

Home, with Patrick, where she was safe.

I'm on your side, Lis, and I always will be.

Allie lost track of time after the first day or so. Patrick had just finished packing their things and readjusting her position when Gordon teleported into the room in a flash of blue light, grabbed Patrick, and disappeared again.

"Lis!" was the last thing she heard Patrick say.

Gordon didn't come back for her.

Allie hadn't been expecting him to come back anyway.

More than forty-eight hours later (though she didn't really know it had been that long), night fell and Allie forced herself to keep breathing. Her chest was rattly and she was terrified – earlier she'd heard yelling outside and something that sounded like explosions. She was locked in position and everything ached, and the heart rate monitor around her wrist had gone off so often that the little house around her sounded like a time bomb.

She needed to be suctioned, needed her mouth clear, needed to be flipped and have her limbs untangled.

She needed Patrick.

She wanted to cry, but she knew it would make her breathing worse, so she bit her lips and forced herself to remain strong.

Someone will come for you.

Allie didn't know who, or when, but Patrick had promised someone was going to find her.

She flicked her eyes up to the ceiling, the sparkling mobiles dangling overhead catching her attention, and forced her tired, ragged body to send out another pulse of energy, searching for any piece of equipment she could worm into.

The energy rose up from her twisty body and she pushed it as far as she could. Though she couldn't see it – no one could – she had always imagined it as an indigo thread connecting her to the rest of the world, branching out into helixes and vines, tunneling out with the strength of a charging rhino, leaving her broken physical form behind.

Allie didn't have to wait long; the energy slammed into something and she gasped.

Big. It was big, whatever it was. And powerful.

Allie flooded it with all of her remaining strength, turning those indigo helixes into zeroes and ones, pulsing out her message in time with her rapid heartbeat.

Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can'tbreathe.

The message spooled out into the world, into whatever that big thing was – airplane? Feels like an airplane – and as it left her spastic frame Allie's arms jerked up, her hand hitting her face. It moved her head only an inch or two, but it was enough to compress her airway further. She gagged and choked.

Patrick, you promised.

Allie had one more pulse in her, weaker than the last one, and then she would surrender to the rasp in her throat and the pain throbbing through her. She would go into the darkness afraid but hopeful, just like the five-year-old girl she'd once been, facing down the Mist.

Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can'tbreathe.

Coulson slapped the side of the monitor, the sound echoing through the quinjet. "What the hell's all this?" he grumbled at it.

"Sir, perhaps physical force isn't the way to conquer technical issues," Simmons suggested. "I can take a look."

She stepped up next to him, staring at the jumbled letters cascading down the screen. "Is there a way to slow down the refresh rate?"

Coulson turned to her with a furrowed brow.

"Skye and I… well, we've traded tips," Simmons said modestly.

"I'll twist some knobs," Coulson replied. "That's all I can do."

As Simmons watched Coulson moving the controls on the monitor she tried to quell the sickening feeling she'd had in her stomach since she'd left Skye alone in Afterlife. She was trying so hard to push it down that she didn't realize the message had taken shape until Coulson muttered, "Oh, shit."

"What?" Simmons snapped herself out of self-hatred to read the message.

Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can'tbreathe.

"I know where that is," Simmons said before she could stop herself. "I saw it when… when Skye's mother…"

She shook her head. "We have to go in."

"We can't afford to do that," Coulson said. "It could be a trap."

"It's not," Simmons said.

"You don't know that."

"I know I'm a trained medical professional, and someone out there can't breathe," Simmons replied tartly. "You can come with me, or you can just wait for me to get back."

Coulson considered this. "We're still waiting for May," he said, and Simmons breathed a sigh of relief.

As she grabbed her kit she heard Coulson's voice: "You've got twenty minutes. I'm not staying here in the dark any longer. Too many people here want to shoot us."

Allie's vision was getting dim; the glittering mobile overhead remained the last thing she could see. It was the kind of situation where she wished she could twist her fingers together. It seemed like the kind of thing one should do in this kind of situation, but her arms were, as always, locked against her shoulders, her knuckles brushing the thin material of her dress. Her raspy breaths shook the paper pinned to her chest, and between the rasps and the fluttering paper and the beeping of the heart rate monitor it sounded like a party in the empty room.

She thought a lot about death, probably much more so than other sixteen-year-olds, probably because she was so close to it at any one time. There were many things about death that didn't scare Allie. She relished the thought of seeing people she loved who had gone on before her; though she wasn't really sure that her father was dead, her grandmother definitely was. She also wanted to know what it was like to walk, and run, because after eleven years trapped in her twisty, pained body held prisoner by her own mind, she had mostly forgotten what those were like. She wanted to be free from pain. She never wanted to have another nightmare.

At the same time Allie only wanted to live. She wanted to fight to see Patrick and her mother again. To find her father. To finally control her powers to the point where over-use didn't threaten to give her a stroke or pinch off blood flow to her brain and cause her to drop unconscious. To find a cure – if there was one – for her muscle wasting, one that might let her sit upright or eat by mouth again.

She closed her eyes. She was so tired.

Coulson and Simmons waited until they'd slid down the side of the hill before turning on their lights. Coulson swore and stumbled further, but Simmons switched on her headlamp and hurried ahead of him, trusting he'd regain his footing and continue to cover her back.

Simmons moved quickly towards the bright turquoise building at the very edge of Afterlife. She didn't hear anything, or see anyone ahead of her, but someone sending out a message about not being able to breathe might not be able to move or make noise any longer.

The door was slightly ajar, so Simmons waited for Coulson to move through the opening first before she followed carefully.

Coulson turned towards her as she shut the door carefully behind her and put a hand to his lips. He scouted ahead a few yards, his flashlight scanning the room swiftly.

From the outside the turquoise temple had seemed to be like all of the other buildings in Afterlife – a multi-roomed edifice. Now Simmons could plainly see that it was only one room, but fastidiously neat. It seemed to function just like a studio apartment; it was furnished with a dresser, an armchair, a small eating area, a bed and a small futon, and…

"Jesus," Coulson whispered. "Holy… holy shit."

Simmons realized she'd fallen several steps behind him and hurried to catch up. She stopped short as she realized what had caused Coulson such anguish.

There was a human figure – sort of – on the bed. It was a horrifying sight, a girl child of an indeterminate age, no more than a series of skinny twig-like limbs and a hideously deformed torso. Her spine was gruesomely twisted and arched, her legs were frogged up towards her body, and her arms were locked in position against her body.

"Is she alive?" Coulson whispered.

Simmons took a few steps forward and nearly tripped over a set of luggage that was in the middle of the floor. "Oof."

She drew closer to the misshapen girl and noticed a small red light blinking on the girl's painfully skinny wrist. "Her heart's still beating."

"How do you…?"

Simmons tentatively grasped the girl's wrist and ever-so-gently rolled her towards Coulson. "She's wearing a heart monitor."

"What's that?" Coulson asked, nodding at what seemed like a piece of paper stuck to the girl's dress.

Simmons set her kit on the floor and pulled the paper until it came free. "To whomever finds my beloved sister: I'm Patrick Shinn and this is my little sister Aliselyn. I call her Lis. Others call her Allie. She's sixteen and though she doesn't look like it, she's extremely powerful. She is an Inhuman. I am not. It's a long story, and there's more information on it in her care book in the blue rucksack, but all you need to know is that my mother and I are being taken out of here so Jiaying can ensure Lis' death. I'm hoping you'll find her before that happens. Please take good care of her until I can fight my way back to her. Yours most gratefully, Patrick Shinn."

Simmons handed the note to Coulson and bent down. As she leaned in she could hear the girl – Lis, or Allie – breathing, albeit raggedly.

"She needs her airway suctioned," Simmons said, her voice loud in the room as she pulled out supplies. "We can figure the rest out when we get her back to the plane."

"We can't take her with us," Coulson said, looking up at Simmons with alarm. "It says she's powerful. She could bring down the jet."

Simmons moved in with the suction tube, moving it around in the girl's mouth and throat. As she finished the girl opened her eyes and made a feeble cry. It sounded like a lost kitten.

When Simmons turned back to Coulson she wasn't surprised to see his expression had softened. "She comes with us," he said.

Allie woke with a mask over her face pushing air into her, and the first thing she realized was that she wasn't in pain. It was interesting and terrifying all at once. How was she was supposed to know if she was real?

Had she died in their little turquoise house?

She let out a whimper and fought off tears. Patrick! You promised!

"Hey, hey, it's all right," a calm voice said. "You're safe now."

Allie tried to turn her head but couldn't; she had to settle for waiting until the speaker moved into her line of sight. She saw a lovely woman with long brown hair and dark brown eyes, and Allie wondered if that was what she could have looked like, had her body not been warped by the Mist.

"Hi," the woman said. "I'm Skye. And you're Allie. You're safe. Did I say that already?"

She leaned in closer to Allie. "Do you speak English? I'm not, like, fluent in Chinese or anything, but May is and I can go get her if you…"

Allie sent out a rush of invisible indigo helixes so quickly that the monitor she'd aimed them towards let out a shower of sparks.

"Okay, okay," Skye said, holding her hands up. "You understand."

"MASK OFF," Allie forced the computer to say.

"I'll have to check with Simmons…"

"MASK OFF," the computer barked again.

"Okay," Skye said, and carefully she removed the mask.

Allie gasped as she readjusted to breathing on her own. It was an amazing, exhilarating feeling.

"You're not going to hurt anyone, are you?" Skye asked gently.

Why would I hurt anyone? Allie thought.

"Or yourself?"

She furrowed her brow at Skye, and then pulsed energy over towards the computer in the corner. "Lady, I can't even swallow on my own. How in the hell am I going to hurt myself or anyone else?"

Skye laughed at that. "Anyone ever tell you that you're pretty angry for a little kid?"

Allie raised her eyebrow, though the movement shot pain back through her head and neck and the saliva pooling in her mouth choked her. "I'm not a little kid," the computer informed Skye. "I'm sixteen."

She wheezed and gasped. "Suction. SUCTION," the computer ordered.

Skye calmly reached up above Allie's head and brought a thin flexible tube down, carefully clearing the tiny girl's mouth and throat.

"Thank you," the computer said when Skye had finished.

For a few beats Skye just stared at Allie.

"So you're wondering why I look like a skeleton," Allie said through the computer. "Me too."

At that Skye cracked a hint of a smile. "I was actually wondering how you got so good with computers."

Allie frowned. Suddenly she didn't want to talk anymore, despite all of her questions. She squirmed just a bit and sent another question to the computer. "Where are we?"

"A secure base called the Playground."

"Operated by whom?"

"SHIELD."

SHIELD. The very word sent a jolt of electricity through Allie's veins and she whimpered, her fingers flicking furiously against her shoulders.

The computer began speaking completely against her will. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no."

Fear flooded Allie's veins and she started to sob.

"Go home. Oh no. Go home," the computer continued as Allie's fragile body shook. The girl herself had completely forgotten that there was no home for her to go back to.

"Oh, sweetheart," Skye murmured, and she slipped onto the bed with Allie, scooping up the tiny girl. Allie was surprised to find that Skye knew exactly how to hold her – one careful arm supporting her neck, the other under her legs, entwining the two in an odd but somehow comforting embrace.

"I don't know what you've been told about SHIELD," Skye said carefully once Allie's sobbing had slowed. "I know there was a lot of confusing information being spread around Afterlife."

How do you know? Allie wondered.

"My mother… she wanted to hurt people, and she very nearly succeeded."

"Your mother was at Afterlife?" the computer asked.

Skye nodded.

"What was her name?"

"Jiaying."

Allie froze.

"It's all right," Skye said. "She can't hurt you anymore."

The tears came back and Allie started to shake again.

"Slow down," Skye said. "Type for me what's wrong, internet in a bottle."

The nickname, so close to Patrick's "girl-shaped internet," calmed Allie, and she sent out another pulse. "She's already hurt me. It's a long story, but she took my father. Then my mother. And now my brother. They're gone. It's just me."

Skye was quiet for a moment. "If they're still out there, we'll find them."

Allie felt pain creeping back in around the edges of her fuzzy disconnection, and she knew her pulse was increasing thanks to the beeping heart rate monitor still strapped around her wrist. She could feel a shut-down coming on.

"I'm going to shut down and it's frightening and I'm so sorry and I wish I could stay awake and …"

Skye stroked Allie's hair. "It's all right. Whatever happens, you're safe here. We're on your side."

Again, it perfectly mirrored something Patrick had said, and as Allie's heart sped beyond all reckoning and her teeth chattered and her spine arched and her hands went blue, she went into the darkness not in fear, but in relative calm.

We're on your side –

I'm on your side, Lis –

- you're safe here.

- and I always will be.