Please Attend the Ceremony

"Still haven't found anything? I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. would be more efficient." In one of the rooms aboard the plane, Melinda was operating a laptop while Evenson stood nearby with his hands on his hips, pacing back and forth. Not only was he no help at all, he kept complaining nonstop.

Although they had learned from Hannah Hawkins that the backer behind the particle collider laboratory was named Dryer, finding out exactly who this person was and where he was hiding was beyond Evenson's abilities. He could only rely on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s intelligence network.

However, Evenson's use of computers was limited to watching movies and playing games, so he could only call Melinda over to help investigate. But from the looks of it, Melinda was not particularly skilled at this either. More than ten minutes had passed without any progress.

"Be patient. Their funds were routed through several offshore banks, making reverse tracing extremely difficult. And the only clue you gave me was a surname!"

Melinda's hands paused. She turned around and shot Evenson an annoyed look. "And those banks all take customer privacy very seriously. Without an official warrant or agents on-site, I can only hack into their backend and search slowly."

"They've upgraded their firewalls again. The hacking programs I have seem a little outdated." Melinda was not a technical agent, and computers and networks really were not her specialty. "You should have gone to Skye for this. She's scared stiff of you. If you asked her for help, she probably wouldn't dare refuse. Please, at least make her look useful."

Melinda cared deeply for junior agents, but that did not mean she indulged them. What was more, she had held reservations when Skye was brought into the Special Squad. If Coulson had not strongly pushed for it at the