"What do you think?" the Director asked.

Phil knew better than to imagine the Director did not already have an explanation - possibly the explanation. However, looking at the corpses slumped all over the lab, he had a feeling that he did not want to know the answer.

"They triggered the Omega intruder Defense" Tony pointed out - even the normally unflappable lunatic was silenced by the sheer scope of the disaster before them. Not a quip from him since the moment of entering the lab. "Nerve gas. All dead within a couple of minutes or less."

"They triggered it" Steve echoed, looking around the carnage disbelievingly "Why? What could have been... It can't have been mind control - the labs are well insulated against it."

The Director nodded "They did this of their own will."

Steve and Tony glanced at each other. "Project Alpha" Steve said with an air of finality. It was not a question. The Director had no intention of denying it. After all, this was the entire reason he had summoned the team here.

The time for secrets was over. He now knew what Project Alpha had discovered. He now knew how it all worked. That kind of knowledge was not the type one man could bear alone - not even a man like the Director.

"They figured it out?" Tony frowned - this is not really his area of specialty. "That crackpot theory of Richards'..."

"They figured it out" the Director confirmed, his tone heavy. "And they decided they could not live with it."

"And we are here because?" Natasha asked.

The Director met her eyes calmly "To see whether we can live with it."

"Do we get a choice?" Bruce asked "You know, regarding we get told or not?"

"You can walk out that door" the Director shrugged "Go right ahead, if you wish.."

No one made a move. The Director smiled. He knew his people.

"The Hero's Journey" he could almost hear the air quotes in his own words.

It sounded pretty pretentious, when you put it like that. But the fact of the matter is, that was what they were - heroes.

Screwed up, of course, occasionally emotionally constipated, almost always with the survival instincts of a squirrel on crack cocaine. Yet...heroes.

People who got back up every time they were knocked down. People who stood in the dark to hold it at bay. Scarred people, crazy people, dangerous people.

People who did what had to be done. People who held the monsters at bay. Their defense against darkness and whatever dwelt within.

Heroes. Stories of a specific pattern, repeated throughout the ages. One in a million chances. Freak accidents. Mutations. Chances. They came up, one way or the other. Always following a pattern. And now...now they knew why.

"You - or rather, they - found the Guide." Steve said.

The Director nodded "In a manner of speaking, yes."

"And..."

"We are not human."

A stunned silence greeted the pronouncement. Not even Tony laughed. They knew, instinctively, that this was no trick, no joke.

The Director gestured around the place "This is not earth."

"Then?"

"We are the Immune System."

"Excuse me?"

"Humanity's immune system. Earth - earth as they know it - is one plane among many, one plane amidst a sea of chaos. A sea from which things creep out, again and again and again. Reaching out for earth. For humanity. Infections. Things that would devour humanity, body mind and soul."

"And we...we are..."

"The defense. Formed of their collective subconscious. Formed to be their defense. Formed between them and the madness out there. The Knight. The Atoner. The Spy. We are here, buffers against the things that crawl out of the dark."

Locked in eternal battle. there will never be a time when earth as they know it will be safe. There will always be one crisis or another. There will always be things to fight, things out of the true humanity's vast nightmares. Things they will have to battle here, hold at bay, forever and forever.

They, the archetypes, the heroes, the guardians carved out of humanity's dreams. The last line of defense for a world that stranded them in eternal strife.

The first discoverers had been unable to bear that weight - they had chosen to die, instead. Perhaps some of his team will choose the same, the Director supposed, noting how pale, how still, they had gone.

But that wouldn't matter. They would not be allowed to stay dead. Not for long. Not for real. There will be a miracle recovery. A deal made. Time Travel. Somehow, the dead will not be allowed to rest.

They are the archetypes. They are the dreams. They will never be allowed to die. They will return. Again and again and again.