Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue: A Meeting in the Closet

He didn’t expect to be pulled into a room while walking around in Providence. But the sudden change of scenery sent his instincts into motion, and he lashed out with his fist. His knuckles connected with air, and he stumbled a little. As he turned to strike elsewhere, a sharp hit to his ribs sent him doubling over.

“So how’s Raina?”

Ward wasn’t as surprised at the question as he was by the person who asked it. “What are you talking about?”

She closed the door behind them. They appeared to be in a storage closet of some sort. He couldn’t hold back the memory of another closet, only he had been with Skye then.

“Don’t lie to me,” said Simmons, her voice low and dark. “I know you didn’t go drop off Garrett at the Fridge. I bet you were even one of those lucky few who got to raid it. I also know that Raina’s out. I’ve worked with her before, and I know that scent of perfume anywhere. It might have been faint when you arrived, but I was close enough to you to smell it. So cut the bull, Ward.”

Ward looked at her. This was a side of Jemma Simmons he didn’t know existed. “What do you know?”

She shrugged. “I know you are Hydra, and that you came into it under Agent Garrett. I know that you’re not here because of your loyalty to the remains of what was once called SHIELD, but because Garrett wants something. Whether it’s murdering everyone here or exposing this little haven to Hydra, I don’t know. But I know that it has something to do with Coulson’s team.”

Damn she was good. She had caught things that he had not expected. But something in the sentence that she just said sounded off. “You said Coulson’s team. Not my team.”

“You’re very observant Agent Ward.”

“You’re not SHIELD.”

She shook her head, smiling. “You’d be surprised at the number of people who are only loyal to SHIELD. It’s quite shocking to see how many of those ‘loyal’ agents have ulterior motives.”

Ward felt his breath catch. Did he have an ally in his midst? “Are you Hydra?” he asked hesitantly. Right now, she could say almost anything and surprise him.

Simmons scoffed, offended. Her lip curled in disgust. “No, I’m invested in something much more advanced and much less sloppy than Hydra. I’m part of something that’s built to last. Raina is too, even if her current objective lies within Hydra. Which is why I need you.”

Her eyes shone with pride and admiration as she spoke. Ward wished he could be that passionate about Hydra’s goals. But his first loyalty was Garrett. It had always been for the man who pulled him out of his hell.

“What do you want?” he asks flatly, swallowing a little.

Smiling sweetly, she reached into her pocket and produced a piece of paper. She handed it to him. Turning it over, Ward saw it was a photograph of someone he knew all too well. “This is-“

Her hand clapped over his mouth. “Hush now,” she scolded. “All I need you to do is give this to Raina as soon as you return to the Hydra base.”

He blinked. “But what does she want with this?” Unless Raina had some creepy obsession he was unaware of, he didn’t know how the photo would come of use to her.

“There’s someone who’s been looking for her for a long time, Agent Ward,” Simmons said casually. “They want to know what she can do. I’m just passing intel up to someone who is closer to the top than myself.”

Ward gripped the photograph. “You know, I can expose you to the team.”

Simmons laughed, but it was an icy laugh that almost made him shiver. “I can do the same thing, Grant,” she said, her words precise and cutting. “And somehow, I think they would be more inclined to believe me if I show the footage from the Fridge.”

She held up a flash drive he had never seen before. Ward felt nervous, but considered the possibility that she could be lying. But he couldn’t tell anymore. The warm, bubbly biochemist was gone, replaced instead by this cold woman who knew things that could destroy him. She was right though; he couldn’t just walk up and expose her. He didn’t even what or who she really worked for.

Ward slipped the photo into his pocket and made for the door. Before he could grab the handle, Simmons darted in front and stopped him. “Simmons, please,” he whispered pleadingly. He wanted to get out and get away from her. She actually scared him now.

“You say nothing of this,” she hissed. “You even give so much as hint of what I really am, and I swear whatever hell you’ve gone through with your parents or Garrett will be like heaven compared to what I could do to you. Are we clear?”

He nodded. Simmons smiled brightly as the mask of the cheery Brit slid back onto her features.

“Let’s go rejoin the team before they begin to wonder about us.” She opened the door, her face a picture of innocence. “Shall we?”

“Simmons wanted you to have this.”

Raina nodded in thanks at the specialist who had just handed her the photograph. Ward then left the room to go find Garrett or someone else. She didn’t care who. It wasn’t like she wanted to be doing this.

Looking at the photo made her stomach turn with fear. She remembered the last time she met Skye, when she had been torturing Coulson for information, the girl had punched her. But the memory of that incident wasn’t what made her so scared. It was knowing what she could be to her and what he might do to her that really scared Raina. It was for this reason that she hoped for once in her life that Jemma Simmons was actually wrong, and that Skye wasn’t who she thought she was.

But if she was, then she would have to keep her safe and away from that man who had destroyed both of their lives.

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: 4 Months Later

“I found your daughter.”

Raina watched him closely as he studied the photograph. His hands were covered in blood, and she shivered a little inside. His hands were always covered in blood, even when they were clean. No matter how hard he scrubbed, she still knew there was always going to be blood on his hands.

A smile crept across his face. “Who gave you this?”

“Simmons.” She kept her answer short, clear and precise. The sooner she was gone, the better she would feel.

He looked at her, and her stomach twisted in hate. “Jemma is rarely wrong.”

“Please let her be for once.” Raina thought silently. If it was true, if Skye was who he thought she was, then Raina would do whatever it took to protect her, and if she failed, then there would be more blood on her hands, more personal blood. “No one is perfect.”

“One day, we will all be perfect, Raina.”

The girl flinched. She hated that name, but he had demanded that she take it when she went to investigate the Clairvoyant. Her real name was something he only called her when things were serious.

“You know she’s more than just my daughter,” he continued, smiling at the photograph hungrily. “Especially to you.”

Raina bit her lip, holding back anger. She didn’t want to believe it. It would be the worst thing ever if it was true. It would condemn Skye to tests and experiments, a life she herself had been forced into by fear. Skye deserved happiness and freedom and blissful ignorance of this horror, and she would do whatever it took to ensure she stayed away from all of this.

“Well forgive me for losing my faith,” she snarled. “After all those other times we’ve been wrong before, I don’t know if this one’s the right one either.”

With that she left the room. She hated this thing. Every time he thought he’d found her before, he’d been wrong and another innocent had died. Raina didn’t want to believe that Skye was the one they’d searched so long for, but the little voice in the back of her head kept pointing out the possibilities.

“Please,” she thought silently. “Please don’t let her be Tian Kong.”

Four months later

Skye couldn’t help but chuckle as she hit the mat once more. It always made her laugh when she sparred with him. After four months of training with May, there weren’t a lot of people out there who could knock her down. However, the fact that she could sometimes befriend the floor when she sparred with one particular person just made her giggle.

“Why do you always do that?” Her partner asked, holding out a hand. Skye grasped it, and Leo Fitz pulled her up.

“Because four months ago, you are the last person who I thought could take me down,” laughed Skye. She walked over to the bench in the Playground’s gym and tossed him his water bottle.

It had been four months since they had landed at the Playground base and began their work to re-build SHIELD. During the first month they’d been there, Leo had been in a coma thanks to his trip to the bottom of the ocean. Then halfway in the second month, he’d miraculously woken up without any negative side effects from his coma. He had full control of his body, his motor skills were intact, and his memory was unscathed. It was as if he’d only slept ten hours instead of waking up from an almost two month coma.

After he’d awoken and had been cleared by Simmons, Leo had asked Tripp to train him. He wanted to know how to protect and defend himself. To go on the offensive instead of running away. So Tripp had taken him under his wing, and helped him. Over the course of two months filled with rigorous training, Leo Fitz had become quite capable of defending himself. He had also developed a fine set of abs and stronger muscle definition that his blue-gray exercise shirt displayed quite nicely. Not that Skye had ever been staring at him lately. Which she hadn’t.

In the month that he’d first started to work out, Leo and Simmons had kind of been dating since he had confessed having feelings for her before they escaped the med pod. Skye had been happy for Simmons when she had told her, but also a little sad and jealous. She wasn’t sure why, but attributed it to Ward and his betrayal. However, the romance had only lasted a month with them deciding they were better off as best friends and lab partners. Skye was surprised that both of them took the break-up very well. She couldn’t even tell who had broken up with whom. But Leo later confided after a joint-training session with her that he’d been the one who talked to her first about it, and she had agreed.

Joint-training sessions with Leo and Trip had become more common recently, and Skye liked them better than training alone with May. When she was alone with May, the older woman was quieter than usual, more reluctant. Almost, and Skye couldn’t believe she could ever associate the word with someone like May, scared. There was a sad look in her eyes sometimes too, like she was remembering something, but more often there would be moments where she almost hesitated when she sparred with Skye.

Her status as an 084 was mostly likely the blame of that, and the past four months of going through old files while helping Coulson had brought her no new leads on who (or what) she really was. Skye felt like a time bomb, slowly ticking down until her powers would reveal themselves and destroy everyone around her in some way. She’d told Leo this one night when she woke up screaming from a nightmare where her powers caused a massive explosion and killed everyone she ever cared about. To her surprise, he’d taken it incredibly well, and agreed to keep it a secret from Simmons, Tripp, and Billy Koenig.

“So what’s on the agenda today?” Leo asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Skye took a swig of her water bottle. “Well, Coulson’s got me going through those files we got from one of the Academies to find out what we can use in the new SHIELD,” she rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know why I have to look through Academy files on cadets who were there in the sixties. I mean, I get it, look for the ones we know are Hydra, find what they did later, blah blah blah. But there’s just so much stuff.”

“You’re all too capable of doing it Skye,” Leo said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Trust me, I know. You’re my best friend. It’ll go fine.”

Best friend. Skye blushed. “Best friend?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “What about your science twin, Leo?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his sweaty curls. “Simmons is…complicated.”

Skye sat down on the bench. “Complicated?”

 “Uh-huh,” Leo looked shyer all of the sudden. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s been with me since we both started at the Academy and we’re really close friends.”

“And you got together too,” Skye added, sounding a little harder than she intended. “Sorry, go on.”

“Yeah,” Leo fiddled with his water bottle. “But after I told her how I felt, something seemed different about her when I woke up. Like she was just being with me so I could be happy. She was trying really hard I could tell, but I didn’t want to be with someone who had to be another person to make me happy. Does that make any sense?”

Skye nodded. It made a lot of sense, and it brought back a lot of memories. Memories she didn’t like to think about.  “I get you,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “That’s why you split. Because you felt she was being the person you wanted her to be, and not herself.”

“Mm-hm,” he mumbled. “I told her this. She said she understood what I was saying. But she’s still not the same Simmons I gave that last burst of oxygen to. She’s changed. We still work great together and everything, but there’s something different about her. She’s quieter, more than usual. There’s times when she hides whatever she’s working on and when I ask her, she tells me what it is and I know she’s telling me the truth because she can’t lie to save her life, but it’s like she’s hiding things. Sometimes, I feel like she’s watching me, and I’m not-“

“Leo,” Skye placed her hand over his. It was warm and firm. “You and Simmons went through a traumatic experience, and that can change you. She probably isn’t the same person you were with at the bottom of the ocean, but you aren’t either. People change, and there’s not a lot that can be done about it. But we can get to know the new person they are, and maybe even bring back the old one too.”

He looked up and smiled at her. “You always know what to say,” he said, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

Skye almost melted in his warm embrace, but wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, Leo, you’re great and everything, but you really have to shower. You smell so bad.” She pulled away, plugging her nose and waving her hand in front of her. Leo laughed and walked off toward the door.

“Just give Simmons time, okay?” Skye said to him. “She was really worried about you when you were in the coma. She still worries.”

Leo nodded and left. When the door slammed shut, Skye set down her water bottle and began to put away the mats, thinking about what Leo said.

There was something off about Simmons these days, and it felt odd. After everything that had happened with Hydra and Garrett and Ward, it was understandable that she could be more closed off and worried. But it felt like there was something more forced about her attitude now. As if she was trying to play a role.

“I’m being paranoid,” Skye said aloud to herself, shaking her head. She knew Simmons; they all did. She couldn’t hide anything from them, it was just impossible for her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: A Debt to Pay

Three months ago

She sighed as she stared at the figure in the hospital bed. For over a month now, Fitz had been in a coma, and Jemma was getting worried more every day. She didn’t need to act in front of the team when this was concerned. Her frustration and fears were all too real to be hidden.

Jemma walked over to his bedside and took his limp hand in her own. “I’m going to fix you, Fitz,” she whispered to the comatose engineer. “You’re my best friend, and I don’t let debts go unpaid.”

With that she walked out of the room and back to the Playground’s lab. Sitting on a stool was her contact, who had come in with a group of loyal SHIELD agents taking in supplies to the base. SHIELD’s blatant naivety to anything traitorous going on behind their backs made her laugh sometimes. Coulson was hoping that the SHIELD he was rebuilding would be immune to that, but it was already too late.

“What do you have for me?” she asked coolly as she walked over to him.

The contact smiled. “Darwin received your gift and heard of your plight,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out a plastic case. He handed it to Jemma. Through the lid, she could see a syringe, filled with a blue-tinted liquid. “He thought that this would be proper payment.”

“What is this?” She was puzzled. “If this is for what I reported to you on Director Coulson, then I’m sorry to say that he already gave me help. There have been no more incidents in connection to the GH-325. The serum I made with the help of Darwin’s notes stopped the effects, and Darwin received copies of the writing that the director had been making.”

“This is for the engineer.” Her contact stated. “Darwin heard of what he did for you.”

Jemma pursed her lips as she remembered the last few minutes that she had spent down in the med-pod. Fitz had practically told her he loved her before pushing that button and leaving an enormous debt behind.

“Is this the serum?” She asked suspiciously.

Her contact shook his head. “They don’t know what it does to coma patients, and if it has a serious effect on them…”

His voice trailed off into uneasy silence. Jemma knew that Darwin’s serum could do wonderful things, but there was also the possibility that it could make you into a literal monster. She’d seen the latter effect plenty of times before, and shuddered at the thought of it happening to Fitz. “So what will it do?”

“It’s going to wake him up.” Her contact got to his feet. “Darwin had interest in him as an asset. He wants him to join us. You have power over him, and he believes you can convince him to join us in the making of the new age.”

Jemma’s lips pulled upward into a smile. She might only see Fitz as her best friend, but clearly he felt more for her. Those feelings could be milked to bring him closer to Darwin and his plans of a new age. If he was reluctant, she could cite that Darwin had helped save his life, and that he owed them that. But she knew Fitz was loyal to her, and would follow her to the ends of the earth if necessary.

“Tell him I said thank you,” Jemma told the man as he walked toward the lab doors. “Are you going back to him now?”

Her contact shook his head. “After I get back to a base with the rest of the bozos, I’m on my way to visit a prison. Darwin wants me to have a chat with the guy responsible for you almost dying.”

Ward. Jemma felt her fists clench. “Why would Darwin care about some low-level Hydra agent?”

The man merely chuckled. “He said that if someone tries to take out one of his operatives, then they need to learn a lesson about messing with us.”

With that, her contact slipped out the door to meet up with the rest of the supply crew.

Jemma walked back to the hospital wing and stared at Fitz’s almost still form. She opened the box with the syringe. After sterilizing the patch of skin, she injected the contents into him. Once it was done, she placed the syringe back in the box. She’d dispose of it as soon as she could later.

She smiled when a slowly growing spike appeared on the screen monitoring Fitz’s brain activity.

Present Day

Her phone began to buzz just as she took out Fitz’s file to update it. She’d been noting his behavior carefully each day ever since he woke up from the coma to see if any side effects from Darwin’s serum. Thankfully, nothing had occurred yet, unless the changes in his attitude toward physical training could be counted, but she highly doubted that. Still, Jemma preferred to be cautious, and watched him carefully whenever he was around her.

Sighing, she pulled out the phone. The caller ID read MUM AND DAD, and she looked about anxiously. When she was satisfied that no one was nearby, she pressed the answer button, smiling to herself. Everyone always thought that she was speaking with her parents whenever they saw the caller ID, but it never was. Her parents had been divorced for six years, and each had their own personal mobile number that they called her on. However, one of Darwin’s higher-ups had toyed with some files so it had appeared on her SHIELD documentation that her parents were still married.

“Hello.”

“Agent Simmons.”

Jemma stiffened at the recognition of the voice. “Yes.”

“Are you in a position to speak freely?”

She looked around her again, and pulled the phone away from her ear to listen for any approaching nose. “All clear.”

“Excellent.” She could practically hear him smiling. “I’ve got some news for you.”

 Jemma leaned against the lab table, listening closely.

“It’s time for you to bring in the girl. I think our reunion is long overdue, and I don’t wish to postpone it any longer. The engineer should be brought along as well.”

“Fitz?” Jemma was puzzled. “Why would you want him? He doesn’t have the serum running through his veins. What purpose do you have for him?”

“The formula that is responsible for his recovery…have you managed to get a sample yet?”

“No,” Jemma replied with a sigh. When Skye had been injected with the GH-325, it had been all too easy to get blood from her to send to Darwin’s base. Fitz, on the other hand, presented more of a problem. There was no way to take a blood sample from him without arising suspicion. She might be one of the best liars out there, but even she had limits.

“We want to run some more tests with it. There is the possibility that it can reverse some of the more negative outcomes of the serum and turn them into positive ones.”

She closed her eyes and smiled at the thought of Fitz helping her out in one of Darwin’s labs, working to reverse the nastier side effects of the serum. Raina would be there too, and Skye could drop by and visit them. They’d all be together as the new age dawned upon humanity.

“Are you sending in an extraction squad for just them,” she asked. “Or will I be the one taking them to you?”

A soft chuckle drifted into her ear. “A bit of both, Agent Simmons. I’ll keep you posted on updates, but I’m very sure that you’ll be back in one of our labs quite soon.”

The line went dead, and Jemma stuck the phone back in her pocket. She remembered how much she had enjoyed acting as a child. The process of slipping into another role, becoming a new person was utterly fascinating. It had been a passion that rivaled with science, but she balanced the two easily. In fact, she had planned a back-up career as an actress if her primary plans of becoming a biochemist fell through. Luckily for her, they didn’t. But fate had still allowed her to combine her two of her passions into one job.

Infiltrating SHIELD had been no easy feat, and the mask of cheerful Dr. Jemma Simmons who liked Doctor Who and pistachio ice cream and could not lie to save her life had been in place for a long time.  She’d been careful, but sometimes the mask would begin to fuse with her real self and she got too close to people. Fitz was the prime example of it. Luckily, she could only see him as a friend and nothing more. The fact that his feelings had once differed had led to a month-long role of masquerading as his girlfriend, and it hadn’t gone well. Thankfully, she still had his trust.

Muffled voices could be heard getting louder, and Jemma scurried to put away her notes on Fitz’s recovery. As Fitz and Skye entered the lab, asking her how her morning had gone, she pulled on a smile and answered their questions in a bubbly tone. To herself, she imagined a different scene, where they were all in another lab with another person.

“We’ll be together.” Jemma thought to herself as Skye asked her to speak in English about a new dentrotoxin. “It’ll be great. You might not see it now, but as soon as you open your eyes, you will see the wonders you’ve missed.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: There Was No Shot

“She’ll be safe.” The man in the white lab coat looked down at the small baby in the messily wrapped white bundle.

She swallowed. “Promise?”

He looked up at her, but it was Darwin’s face. In his arms, Tian Kong was gone, and replaced by Skye. The girl’s body was limp and lifeless with claw marks and blood covering her entirely.

“Of course,” he sneered as she began to scream.

Raina’s eyes snapped open. It was just a dream, but seeing Skye’s body like that made her shiver. She’d witnessed Darwin do that to people in person before, but it had been while she didn’t remember the other things. Now, she avoided it and him, at all costs.

Clutching her sheets, Raina tried to calm herself down by taking deep breathes. The moonlight streaming in from her window illuminated her small chest of drawers. On it, she had painted some of the flowers she remembered from the garden of one of her clearer memories. They had been times where things were happier, or at least she hoped they were.

“Please,” she thought. “Please don’t let them find her. Please let her be safe.”

“It’s time.” The gravelly voice filtering through the phone said. “You know what you must do.”

Jemma allowed herself a dark smile. “Of course.”

“Excellent.”

The call disconnected, and Jemma put the phone in her pocket. She grabbed the collapsible baton, red dye, and the wire cutters. Satisfied, she slipped out of her bunk, and walked toward Koenig’s office.

“This had better be worth my time, Leo,” Skye announced as she entered the rec room with a bowl of popcorn. “We’ve only got a few hours until Coulson, May, and Trip get back with the new people, and I really need to not slack off on finishing uploading the database for the Index.”

Leo snorted. “It’s worth it, trust me,” he assured her as he slid the disc into the DVD player. “You are going to fall in love with this.”

Skye raised her eyebrow. “You seem quite sure of yourself.”

He flopped on the couch beside her. “Of course I am,” he smiled at her as the swirling blue lights and police box appeared on the screen. “Doctor Who is a classic, Skye. It has everything in it! I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet.”

“Well, sorree.” She pitched a bit of popcorn at him, which he threw back. “Did you watch this with Simmons at the Academy?”

Leo sighed and nodded as the first episode began to play. He’d offered for Simmons to come and join him in educating Skye in great British television. She’s turned it down, explaining that she had work to do. During the conversation, she’d been very fidgety, as if she was waiting for something to happen.

The thing was, she had become even more distant recently, and it bugged Leo. He’d begun to notice it more in the past week, after his conversation about her with Skye. There was a colder tone to her voice when she spoke, and she was more secretive about the projects she was currently working on. She had also been taking a lot more calls from her parents recently. But Skye had only just managed to rebuild them again thanks to a back-up hard drive and Agent Hill finally managing to get SHIELD cleared of all charges filed against them. Simmons’s parents were probably just catching up with her after the four to five months spent off the grid.

Everything that seemed odd about Simmons could have an easy explanation, but Leo couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. He was being paranoid, he knew that. Still….

“Uh, Leo?”

Skye was clutching a pillow close to her chest as she watched Rose Tyler flee from the plastic mannequins of death. “This is kind of creepy. Shouldn’t Doctor Who come be with her?”

“It’s just the Doctor, Skye,” he reassured her, hiding his grin. “And be patient.”

The mannequins were about to grab Rose. Skye was holding her breath in anticipation, while Leo waited in glee to see how she would react to Christopher Eccelston.

Then the lights went out.

Jemma stood up and replaced the wire cutters back in her pocket. All of the Playground’s generators were completely useless, except for the one that she couldn’t completely ruin, so she set it on a timer. They had an hour to carry out their mission in the orange glow of the exit emergency lights.

She looked at the leader of the extraction squad. “Send two of your most expendable men after me thirty seconds after that door closes. The rest of you wait here until I call you.”

She pointed to the door leaving the generator room, then pulled the vial of red dye out of her pocket, uncapping it.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to send all of us?”

Jemma silently wished for more light so the idiot could see her rolling her eyes. “They may not seem so, but these two are tough. To take them out, they must be worn down first.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a back-up generator or something?” Skye asked nervously after clicking on the flashlight he had just handed her. “I mean, it’s a SHIELD base. They probably have a back-up. Why isn’t it working?”

“I don’t know,” Leo admitted honestly. Last month, he’d checked all of the generators out, and they’d been fine. “Something must have happened to all of them.”

“Like what?”

Leo was about to reply when the sound of distant running hit his ears. Signaling Skye to shut off her light, he flicked his off as well. The emergency lights in the hall bathed her face in a creepy shade of orange.

“No, no, no, no” a terrified voice pleaded. “SOMEBODY! HELP ME!”
Leo looked over in Skye’s general direction. “Simmons,” they said together.

 They managed to maneuver their way around toward the door without a problem. On his way past the pool table, he grabbed one of the sturdier cues. Trip had told him that just about anything could be used as a weapon. Leo already had a pocket knife, but preferred a bit of extra insurance. Odds were that the intruders had guns, the thing that Leo despised more than anything in the world. ICERs couldn’t kill, but guns…

A single shot. The limp form. Red, green, blue, grey, and copper.  He shook his head, ridding himself of the horrible memory.

Peering out into the hallway, they saw Simmons stumbling toward them, clutching her side. In the eerie orange glow, Leo could see her hands were stained with something dark. She’d been shot, but by who?

His answer came a moment later when two goons, carrying rifles rounded the corner, and advanced toward Simmons, who had fallen just inches from the doorframe, in the middle of the hallway.

He felt Skye move past him, and watched as she jumped out in the open. Her flashlight flew out of her hand and slammed just below the visor of one of the goons. He dropped his gun and fell on his knees, groaning. The other turned his attention to where Leo and Skye were now visible, and raised his rifle. Leo dove and pulled himself and Skye to the ground as a burst of gunfire passed overhead.

Getting up, Leo charged at the shooter, while Skye made her way over to the other goon who was now getting up. Spinning the cue, Leo knocked the gun out of the enemy’s hands, then swept his feet out from underneath him. Unfortunately, the cue snapped in two. Still, Leo was able to grab the gun, and slammed the butt of it against the helmet. The guy dropped like a stone, but he was still breathing.

Skye had dispatched the other goon a bit faster, and was now at Simmons’s side. As soon as he saw the blood, Leo turned away.

“I saw them,” Simmons was hysterical, and was keeping her hands over top her wound. “I heard noises from Koenig’s office, and when I went in, he was on the floor with them over top of him.  I screamed and ran, and then- then they shot me!”

“You’re okay now, Simmons,” Skye soothed, easing the hands away. “Let me look.”

Leo cringed a bit at the wall. He hated to see people bleed, especially those who he was close too.

Blue sky. Red barn. Birds chirping. Then the gunshot, shattering the peace. The total si- Wait a moment!

Leo tuned out Simmons’s whimpers and retreated into the library that was his brain. Simmons had been shot, that’s what she had told them. Bullets come from guns, and a gunshot is heard when the trigger is pulled and the gun is fired. Unless, of course, you happen to have a silencer.

The guns at his feet had no silencers.

Since the power went out, there had been not a single sound except for Simmons’s scream.

They should have heard a gunshot. They didn’t. That meant that Simmons….

A thud and the following groan brought him back to reality.

Leo turned around slowly, feeling his blood go colder by the second. Simmons was standing over Skye’s limp body, a collapsible baton in hand. Her hands, which once looked wet with blood, had now dried into something lighter, and he couldn’t see any more flowing. The way she held herself disturbed him. This woman before him was not the one who had befriended him at the Academy. She wasn’t the one who dragged him into making the best decision of his life.  She wasn’t the Simmons he’d given the last breath of air to. She wasn’t the Simmons he knew.

“Simmons,” he breathed, stepping back. “Why- what are you doing?”

The woman before him sighed and looked up at him with…..sympathy?!

“Oh, Fitz,” she sighed, as though preparing to lecture him. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

She advanced toward him.

“Stop this, you’re scaring me.”

She gave a chilling laugh. “Oh, I’ve missed being able to do that. It can get awful tiring, pretending to be nice and sweet all the time.”

Her smile dropped. “I’m sorry for this, Leo,” she whispered. “But you’ll soon understand.”

Something hit his temple, and he fell to the ground, right next to Skye as his world turned to darkness.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Things I have lost

Billy Koenig blinked his eyes open, wincing at the throbbing in the back of his head. It ached horribly and for some reason, he was on the floor. The last thing he remembered was turning at the sound of the door opening, and then something striking him in the back of his head. Shuddering, he thought about how lucky he’d been that the person who had hit him hadn’t killed him. If only Eric had been that lucky with that Ward guy.

Billy had been very private when it came to mourning his brother, which had come as an enormous shock to him. He’d thought that being in charge of Fury’s secret bases was pretty much a safety guarantee after Hydra rose up. Hearing that Eric was dead was one thing, but people thinking that he was him was another. Sure, they were identical twins who pretty much shared a brain (or at least, they had). Still, it hurt that they couldn’t see him past his brother.

Climbing back up to his feet, Billy frowned as he noticed the monitors that were supposed to be playing security footage now displayed static. He huffed in annoyance. It was probably the work of that hacker girl, Skye, and her friend Agent Fitz. The two were practically peas in a pod and full of mischief. Both of them loved to play practical jokes on him a lot, but he wasn’t falling for this one.

Billy reached into his desk drawer to grab his air horn that he had reserved just for them and walked out into the hall. As he strode down the halls, he noticed that some of the lights were only now just flickering on. Billy frowned. If those two had been playing with the lights…

“Agent Fitz? Agent Skye?” He called as he rounded the corner to the recreation room. The engineer and told him that he was going to show Skye Doctor Who. Apparently, the poor girl had never seen it before, and Agent Fitz was taking it upon himself to rectify that mistake. However, he couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the rec room, or even from the two younger agents.

Now he felt worried, but maybe they were down in the lab with that biochemist. Billy pulled his radio out. “Agent Simmons? Are you there?”

He was meet with static, and decided that it would probably be best if he went down and checked in on them. Just as he took a step forward though, his foot skidded over something. Catching his balance in enough time, Billy leaned down.

It was a pool cue-his pool cue!- broken in two jagged halves. Billy inhaled sharply and looked around him. A few steps from him was a flashlight with a crack running through the lens. It was lying next to a dry red splotch that he knew had not been there the last time he passed through the hallway.

Something was indeed off here, and he didn’t like it. Agents Fitz and Skye weren’t that patient enough to stay and let him fret for this long, and Agent Simmons was always punctual in responding. Swallowing, Billy pulled out his phone and pressed in the Director’s number.

“Hello?”

“Director Coulson,” Billy Koenig’s voice sounded tight with worry. “Where are you at right now?”

“Hold on a sec.”

Phil turned in the co-pilot’s seat to look at Melinda. “How far away-“

“An hour at the most from base,” she answered instantly before frowning. “Why?”

“Koenig, we’re an hour out,” Phil replied, pressing the speakerphone button. “Is everything fine at your end?”

There was a long pause. Phil looked over at Melinda. Her eyes filled with concern as the silence dragged on.

“Koenig?”

“Something happened here,” Koenig’s voice was quiet. “But you need to get back here as soon as you can. I’ll fill you in then.”

“What’s happened?” Melinda asked worriedly.

“Agents Fitz, Skye, and Simmons…they’re gone.”

The Bus jolted a bit as Melinda flinched at the mention of Skye’s name. Her face was now deathly white, and fear radiated off her in waves. It was a fear that Phil hadn’t seen her in since Bahrain.

“Melinda?” he asked as she began to take deep breathes. She’d done this before, after Bahrain had happened, to ward off panic attacks. “Melinda?!”

She relaxed and swallowed. “I’ll get us back as soon as possible,” she whispered. “Could you please leave?”

“Melinda, are you okay?”

“Just. Leave.” She flicked some switches and turned away from him, her eyes on the horizon.

Phil nodded and left the cockpit, knowing better than to press her for further information. He understood that Melinda cared for Skye like a daughter, and was quite protective of her since she’d begun to train her. She was doing so much for the hacker, and doing everything she could to prevent Skye from having her own Bahrain. But right now, after seeing Melinda react, Phil was concerned that she was about to walk into another.

What will I become?

Raina was lying on her back over her bed, staring up at the ceiling. She remembered asking Garrett the question, holding back the one she really wanted to ask. The one she wanted to know about most of all. The one she had needed to know about since the day she remembered.

Who am I?

For most of her life, she thought everything was perfect. It was just her and her father, moving from place to place around the world so he could perform his work, which he had told her was to make people better. Throughout her childhood, she’d seen the wonders he’d gifted to people through his work and marveled over them. There had been numerous times where she’d see water fly in spirals with a flick of someone’s wrist or a blur of a person shoot down a football field in less than five seconds. When she told her father about the ‘special people’, he would chuckle. “You’re like them too,” he would say.

“Nuh-uh,” she had told him. “I can’t do anything.”

“Maybe one day, you will.” That reply made her shudder now, knowing what he had done.

At seventeen, she had decided to study chemistry, and had found herself under the tutelage of a professor who worked closely with her father. After that, she moved into biology, anatomy, zoology. She soaked up scientific knowledge like a sponge, and soon found herself working on her father’s serums that he used to ‘heal’ people.

When she was eighteen and pursuing the zoology field, she met another girl around her age. She was the first person from the outside world who hadn’t been living in one of the facilities that her father managed. The girl, who her father called one of his finest pupils, helped her out in the labs often, and worked well with Raina.

Her name was Jemma Simmons.

Simmons was a great friend who had a passion for science that Raina understood. However, Simmons would only be there a few weeks at a time, disappear for months, and then return again. Her father told her that she had work elsewhere and was helping gather information for him. When she begged to go along with Simmons once so she could see the outside world, meet other people who loved science, her father turned down the request and ordered her to stay. While she meekly obeyed, the desire to go out in the world beyond her father’s domain was overwhelming.

The minute an opportunity to investigate the possibility of a clairvoyant, as well as a serum that could give people increased strength, came up, she pleaded to be the one to go in, and her father had agreed reluctantly. He told her to be careful and to not get in too deep. Raina agreed, but secretly planned to investigate the many questions she needed answers to.

Despite her seemingly perfect life, there were things that always bothered her. For example, she knew nothing about her mother. Her father had told her that she had left them while she was an infant, and died a while later. But the explanation never seemed right to her, and she constantly questioned if he was hiding something from her.

Then there were the odd gaps in her memory where it felt like white space, the largest ending at her fifth birthday. While the others occurred here and there, this one bugged her the most. It didn’t feel natural, as though she was forced to forget.

It was with Centipede that she discovered the truth. She’d played along with them, acting loyal on the surface while later hiding in closets trying not to cry over seeing the horrific loss of human life. Watching a person meltdown like that made her feel so glad that her father’s serums never turned people into monsters. Or at least, she had felt that way before she remembered.

It was because of the machine they used on Coulson that she remembered. The inventor had bragged about its capabilities, and Raina couldn’t resist herself in challenging them. At first, the inventor was reluctant, but eventually she was persuaded into testing it out to see if it could fill the blank spots in Raina’s memory. That was the last time Raina was truly innocent.

The machine had hurt, but what she saw in the places she had forgotten hurt her more. She saw that her father’s serum failed more often than the Centipede serum, more often that she had even thought possible. It could give people incredible skills, yes. But it also mutated people into horrific monsters. Those times had filled her with fear, and her father had wiped her memory with a machine so she would never doubt him. It made her sick to see all of it, but she had to get through it to see further into her past.

Unfortunately, the machine suddenly stopped when she hit a memory of her mother around the age of four. One memory of the woman who gave birth to her, and then there was no more. Shaking with fear, she got out and saw the woman who had made this life-changing device slumped over the control panel, crimson staining the controls from her slit throat. Horrified, Raina had run over to the trash can and vomited.

When Raina returned to her father’s base, everything around her was suddenly horrific and grotesque, but she put on a mask and pretended like everything was normal. She began to notice more, and searched for more answers. She confronted her father about erasing her memories, which he denied. But she knew he was lying to her, and decided to take matters into her own hands.

Two nights after she first arrived, she broke into the room of files and pulled out hers. Sitting on the floor at night, she read what wasn’t blacked out and learned that for her entire life, she had been nothing more than an experiment on human evolution. It was in that moment that she vowed that she was going to stop her father, if she could even call him anymore. In fact, she stopped calling him that in general and referred to him by the name he was known to his followers (or cult as she now called it).

If she had not seen two particular memories, then she would have left a long time ago. But it was because of something she’d confronted her father about for never telling her that she stayed. She stayed to stop that horrible man from achieving his goal. She stayed because her mother was most likely dead, and there was no one out there to keep her safe. She stayed to sabotage any effort Darwin made to find her.

She stayed because she had to protect her little sister, whoever she was…

“Mama?”

Her four year old self toddled outside and down the front steps. A wide smile crossed her face when she saw the figure that she knew was her mother bent over a bunch of bushes with flowers on them. Her little legs flew down the path toward her mother. “Mama!”

“Hua.”

Her mother’s arms tightened around her. “Where have you been at?”

“Jus’ playin’,” she answered. That’s what Daddy always told her to say when he gave her the ‘in-yec-tion’ as he called it.

Her little sharp eyes gazed out on the garden, which was full of blossoming flowers. “Do you like flowers, Mama?”

While her mother’s face was fuzzy from the memory wipe, her smile was still radiant. “Who doesn’t like flowers, Hua? After all, you’re my little fower.”

Smiling, she scooted closer to her mother. Something bumped against her cheek.

“Baby?” she asked, pointing to her mother’s round belly.

“Uh-huh,” her mother replied, rubbing it a little. “Your little sister is saying hello.”

She blinked, awestruck. “Sister?”

“Yes, Hua. You’re going to have a little sister soon,” her mother kissed the top of her head. “Do you want to hear her name?”

“Yeah.”

Her mother leaned over. “Tian Kong.”

“Shi-an Kon,” she whispered, delighted. “Hua and Shi-an Kon.”

Her mother laughed. “My little flower, and my precious sky,” she murmured softly.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: The Empty Bedroom

24 years ago

Something was off in the house, and it wasn’t just the lights. From where she stood at the front steps, her home looked unusually empty without any lights or sound. Normally, she would come home to see Hua pressed against the window or Tian Kong screaming in happiness or hunger. Even Edwin was usually up when she came home, no matter the hour, working.

Working in his lab.

Suddenly, she stopped. The groceries she’d picked up on her way home from base crashed to the sidewalk. Panic gripped her heart as she remembered what she had found the week before in her husband’s lab. Those plans, the charts, the equations. The two files showing what he had done to their two most precious, darling children. Had he found out she was planning to take Hua and Tian Kong and run?

Trembling hands forced the key into the lock, and she pushed the door open as soon as the tumblers clicked. Racing up the stairs, she flung open Hua’s door. The sight of the empty bed sent her screaming, and she stumbled out of the room, down the hall to Tian Kong’s nursery. Hua loved her baby sister, and she often had to drag her daughter from the room so her younger daughter could get some sleep.

The moment she saw the empty crib, she collapsed beside it, screaming and wailing until her voice was nothing.

Present Day

“Play it again.”

“You’ll find nothing new,” Melinda muttered. They’d been back at the base for a couple hours now, and they had found no leads “We’ve seen it over and over again. The squad just pulls up to the door nearest to the generators, and then everything goes dead. There’s nothing there, Phil.”

“She’s right,” Koenig told Coulson, who gave him a stony look. “Whoever did this was good, and quick.”

Tripp nodded from his position against the desk in Coulson’s office. “They broke in, cut the power, knocked you out, and then made off with Skye, Fitz, and Simmons. Now Simmons, I could understand if it was just her. No offense to her, but she’d got little field experience and training. But Fitz and Skye….May, you’ve seen them spar with me before. They’re tough enough on their own, but together it would take something pretty powerful to overpower them.”

“Wait, Fitz? I know that name,” Agent Blake frowned and shook his head in bewilderment. They’d picked him up with a small group of mercenaries whose leader, Isabelle Hartley, was an old buddy of theirs. “Not that scrawny kid who lives in the lab, right?”

“Agent Fitz has changed his views on field work these days,” Coulson said defensively, glaring at Blake. “He’s quickly rising to become one of our best.”

“Must have taken something big. That kid was practically superglued to the lab,” Blake muttered under his breath. Tripp shot him a dirty look.

“Getting dropped to the bottom of the ocean and falling into a two month coma changes you,” Coulson shot back.

“Like getting shish-kebabed by an Asgardian nut case?”

“That’s something coming from the guy who got stomped on by-“

“ENOUGH!” Melinda screamed, jumping up. She was tired of hearing everyone banter uselessly. Skye was out there, probably in serious danger. “All of you, just stop it!”

Everyone fell silent, staring at her. Melinda could understand why. Her outburst was uncharacteristic for the normal stoic image they all held of her.

“Look,” she said tightly. “I know that this is not what we expected to come back to. I’ll tell you this though. If we want to find out where the hell they are, then we need to stop re-watching tapes and arguing because of personal grudges. We need to stop and just think this out.”

Melina swallowed thickly, holding back the searing pain that had ripped through her when they first got back to the Playground. “Does anybody have any idea how they got in?”

“Hydra.”

Everyone turned toward Tripp, who was looking at Coulson. He nodded at Fitz’s S.O., prompting him to continue.

“Look, Hydra’s our number one enemy, right?” Everyone nodded. “They’ve got SHIELD tech from the uprising, and there’s bound to be stuff that they can use to break into wherever they want to get to.”

“But the Playground’s enormous,” Billy exclaimed, spreading his hands out to imply the vastness of the base. “My first week here, I got so unbelievably lost! It took an hour to find my office once so I could find the map to this place. There’s no way a troop of that size could have gotten up here in that amount of time.”

“Unless they knew where they were going,” Tripp said, looking at her and Coulson. “We found our way around pretty quick. The layout here, it’s exactly like the Providence base. Hydra had a man who was at Providence. He also stayed here for a few days in a holding cell before he got transferred to a prison.”

“You’re not talking about who I think you are, are you?” Melinda whispered, feeling a wave of cold wash down her back.

“He has zero contact with anyone other than those who are authorized to be with him,” Coulson pointed out. “How could he even tell someone this?”

“He could have given it up before we got him,” Tripp suggested. “Or someone else from Hydra snuck in and got it from him.”

“And passed it onto that squad!” Koenig finished excitedly.

“So we have something, now what?” Blake looked over at Coulson.

Melinda met his eyes and nodded. Coulson sighed and turned back toward the rest of the group.

“I think we need to have a visit with an old enemy.”

“Did you succeed?”

Simmons nodded. “Of course, sir. They never saw it coming. Utterly clueless, the both of them.”

“And you made sure the message was left behind.”

“I did.”

“Do you think the others will suspect you?”

Simmons shook her head. “They trust me completely. Getting dropped into an ocean by a member of Hydra solidified their faith in me. Most likely they’ll blame Hydra for taking them.”

Darwin smiled. “Excellent work, Agent Simmons,” he said approvingly. “I knew you could get the job done.”

“So what happens to next?” his follower asked.

Darwin leaned back in his chair. It had been twenty four years for his desire to reach completion. Now, he could finally enact his solution with his daughter back. He could mold her to see things as he did, as those loyal to him did. He would succeed where he failed with the other one.

“I think,” he mused thoughtfully, rubbing at a bloodstain on his white coat. “It’s time to see my little girl again. Bring her up to meet me, Simmons.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: The Truth Hurts

Leo winced as he cracked his eyes open. There was a dull ache in the back of his head, but it was slowly fading away. Blinking his eyes fully open, he found himself staring up at a gray-green ceiling. To his knowledge, and he should know because he had been living in the place for four months, there was no room at the Playground that resembled this.  Frowning, Leo turned his body to the right and rolled to the ground from a cot that he had been on. His hands connected with a cool cement floor as he looked around, confused.

            He definitely was not in the Playground anymore, that much was certain. The room barely eight by eight feet for one, and then there was the heavy steel door. Leo got up and found it bore no handle to open. Sighing in frustration, he turned around to observe his surroundings behind him. Now he could see how sparsely furnished the room was. A barred, reinforced window was their only illumination, and aside from two buckets in two different corners (which, he was disappointed to learn, were bolted down), the only other items were two cots. There was the one he had rolled off of, and another that was occupied by Skye.

Skye!

Leo rushed to her side, cursing himself for not thinking or noticing her earlier. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw she was still breathing ‘She’s alive,’ he thought, glad that she was with him. Skye was one of two people he trusted to have his back, the other being…..

Simmons. Leo froze and covered his mouth, remembering what had happened before he had woken up. He felt his legs buckling, and sat down against the wall by Skye, trying not to throw up.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Oh, I’ve missed being able to do that. It can get awful tiring, pretending to be nice and sweet all the time.

I’m sorry for this, Leo, but you’ll soon understand.

She’d stood there like some terrible thing, bathed in those orange lights with a baton in hand and Skye at her feet. The cold gleam her eyes shone with as she came toward him. Her harsh laugh ripping away the image of the person who he had known her as. Leo knew Simmons had meant every word she uttered with malicious intentions. He thought she was sweet and innocent, absolutely incapable of doing anything this hideous. In reality, she was like a spider, weaving an invisible trap that he and Skye had helplessly fallen into.

When Hydra first reared its ugly head, Leo had been able to keep his world from falling apart to greatly because of Simmons and later Skye as well. Now, after seeing what he had, it felt as though a good chunk of it was crumbling to dust. He’d grown as a person thanks to his friendship with Simmons. Anything he’d ever known about her suddenly seemed flimsy, and Leo wondered if anything she ever told him was true. Her strange behavior in the last few days now made a lot more sense though. Her fidgetiness, the multiple calls, those small clever smiles that came out of nowhere for no reason, it all made sense now. Simmons had been plotting this for a while.

“Skye,” Leo turned and gave her shoulder a small shake. “Skye?”

She twitched and groaned. “Whu?”

“Skye,” Leo felt a bit of tension leave him when he heard her voice. “Wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open. “Leo?” Skye frowned, looking confused. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, only woke up a few minutes ago,” he replied as she sat up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘cept I’d like to know where we are. Also, and I know this isn’t a huge priority, where are my shoes?”

Leo cracked a grin as she stuck out her cat sock clad feet, and then down at his own socks. He hadn’t realized that his shoes were missing until now. His watch was also gone, and the buttons on his shirt had been ripped off, leaving it hanging open to expose his undershirt. Clearly, someone was doing what they could to take away anything that they could use as a weapon or way to escape.

“I…don’t know,” he confessed when he realized Skye was waiting for an answer. “I don’t know where we are, or what’s happening, but something is definitely going on.”

“Wait, Simmons!” Skye’s head whipped from side to side as she scanned the room. “Where’s Simmons? Leo, she was hurt, they shot her!”

Leo swallowed uncomfortably. Skye had no idea what Simmons had done, and he was going to have to tell her. “Skye…”

“Do you think she’s alive?” whispered Skye, tears building up in her eyes. “We can’t lose Simmons, Leo. She’s like a sister to me. I can’t lose my sister.”

Leo clenched his teeth at the last sentence, feeling the painfully memories stir up.

“I hate this. It’s all my fault, Mum. He wanted me to drive, but I didn’t feel like it and I told him I was tired.”

“It’s not your fault, Charlotte. You didn’t know about the other driver.”

“But it should have been me. I should have been the one. It’s my fault Dad’s gone!”

“Leo?” Skye was waving her hand in front of his face. “Are you okay? Come back to me.”

He met her eyes and gave her a nod. “Yeah,” he lied, shoving the memories back down. “Skye, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was trying to move Simmons’s other hand out of the way,” she said after thinking for a moment. “She’d gotten one of them out easy, but wouldn’t budge the other. It was almost out of the way when something hit me in the head, and then I blacked out. Next thing I know, you’re calling my name.”

 Leo took a deep breath to gather his courage. He had a terrible feeling that he was about to destroy Skye’s world. “I know who hit you,” he said, sitting beside her on the cot.

“It was one of those two guys who we took out, wasn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, that’s my best guess, although I thought they were unconscious. I know at least your guy was. Not sure about mine anymore.”

He shook his head solemnly and gave her hand a small squeeze of comfort. “You have no idea how much I wish it was one of them, but it wasn’t.”

“Leo, who did it? Was there another one?”

Saying the next three words was an incredible effort. “It was Simmons.”

Skye stared at him, rigid in disbelief. She looked like she was about to cry. “What?” she whispered hoarsely.

“When I was looking at the wall, because of…the blood,” Leo explained as a strong wave of guilt crashed over him. He hadn’t been looking, and only made it easier for Simmons to carry out her plan. It was his fault they were here. He continued with a heavy heart. “I thought about something. I realized that we should have heard a gunshot, but we didn’t, Skye. We just heard scream, and those guns, they didn’t have silencers. I noticed this and when I turned around, you were in the ground. Simmons was standing over you, holding a baton.”

“She knocked me out?” murmured Skye. Tears were beginning to appear in her eyes. “But she got shot!”

Leo shook his head. “I saw her side. There was no wound, it was just fake blood. I asked what was going on when she started to come closer to me. She wasn’t the Simmons I know, the one we know. She was dark, and sinister and creepy and it scared me. Not even Ward scared me as much as she did. She told me that I would understand one day just before she took me out. But the way she said it…., Skye I don’t think I want to know what it is.”

“No,” Skye cried, wiping her eyes angrily. “No no no, stop it! Leo, it can’t be true!”

All Leo wanted to do was turn away in shame. He had seen the darkness Simmons harbored himself, but Skye hadn’t. No matter how much he wanted things to not be this way, this was what they were, and there was nothing that could be done besides accepting them.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Skye,” he told her. “But it is. Simmons is-“

“DON’ SAY IT!” Skye screamed, jumping up from the cot, fist balled in anger. “SHE CAN’T BE, LEO. SHE JUST CAN’T!”

“Why not!” Leo shot back, standing up to face her eye to eye. “Why not, Skye? Give me a reason for it, any reason, but just tell me. Why. Not.”

“Because,” Skye faltered. “Because….”

She stopped and broke down in sobs. Leo wrapped his arms around her, feeling every wracking sob shake him. He lowered the two of them down together onto the floor, and permitted a few of his own tears to fall. He and Simmons had been through so much together, both good and bad, and he had trusted her with his life so many times. But right now, his faith in her was gone like breathe on a mirror. She was only a traitor in his eyes now.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Leo apologized after Skye had quieted down. His shoulder felt damp, but that was the least of his concerns.

“S’okay,” Skye’s voice was a little muffled in his shirt. “But Simmons, she can’t be-“

The heavy steel door clanged open and cut her off. The pair looked up and watched as two people entered in their cell. The first one, a man, was tall and muscular. His arms were peppered with thin little scars, but his right one was peculiar and caught Leo’s attention. The lower arm (and, Leo assumed, the gloved hand) was an unnatural shade of dark purple, and parts of the purple looked to be slowly snaking up his veins. The woman with him had dark skin that made her acidic green eyes stand out even more than they already did. Beside him, Skye gulped nervously.

Then a third person entered the room, and Leo’s world stilled.

Jemma Simmons strode in confidently as he ogled her, paralyzed in shock. She was dressed differently than usual, wearing a black sweater, a short red skirt, and high heels. The Simmons he knew never ever wore high heels, but she moved about in them with ease. She wore a white lab coat over the sweater, and it reassured Leo a tiny bit to see that there was no symbol for Hydra on it. Of all the things she’d ever told him, at least the one about her not being Hydra was true, or at least he hoped it was.

“Well,” Simmons said breezily, giving the two of them a small, dark smile. “It’s nice to see you up, Fitz. You too, Skye.”

“Simmons?” Skye’s voice was barely audible. “No, you can’t be. You’re an agent of SHIELD, not…not this.”

The biochemist chuckled. “Oh, Skye. Didn’t Fitz tell you? I know he saw me. I’m not loyal to SHIELD, never was. But I am loyal to the Doctor, and he wants to see you.”

“The Doctor?” Skye frowned, shifting forward. “Doctor Who?”

 “Just the Doctor, dear,” Simmons replied. “He has a few other names, but that’s one of his more professional titles.”

Leo wisely resisted the urge to snicker, and found it squashed completely when the man stepped forward and pulled Skye away from him. “Hey,” he shouted as the party began to exit. “Let her go!”

“Leo!” cried Skye as Jemma stepped between them and pulled out a gun. Leo stared at it in shock. It was like the early Night-Night Guns, except the frame was black and green glowed on the sides. Still, he climbed to his feet.

“You always have to be so aggravatingly stubborn, don’t you,” Simmons hissed. “I really thought you’d understand by now that I mean business.”

She pulled the trigger, and Skye screamed. Something struck him in the forehead, and Leo felt himself fall to the ground as the world once again went black.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Father

“Leo!” Skye shrieked as he crumpled to the floor.

She lunged wildly at Simmons, but the man with the gloves pulled her back and held her arms behind her back. The biochemist returned the gun back to the holster hidden by her lab coat. The party then turned the corner into long corridor.

“You killed him,” Skye whimpered. “Oh my god, you killed him.”

“I did no such thing.”

‘She’s got to be undercover or something, she must be,’ Skye thought. ‘She would never do this anyone, let alone Leo.’

“So what did you do to him?” Skye snarled angrily. “Because it doesn’t look like he’s just taking a nap, Simmons.”

Simmons stopped at a set of metal doors and pressed a code into a panel on the wall. Then she turned to face Skye, drawing her gun.

“This,” she told Skye, raising the gun so she could see it clearly. It was exactly like the early Night-Night guns, except it was black and green instead of silver and blue. “This is like those guns that I helped Fitz make for SHIELD. However, they have been modified to have better aim and accuracy, as well as being more lightweight. The dentrotoxin lasts ten to thirty minutes, depending on the genetics of the victims. So in way, Skye, he is taking a nap.”

The metal doors opened to reveal an elevator, and they all filed inside. The ride up was silent, and Skye tried to think of all the possibilities for Simmons’s behavior. She couldn’t decide whether she was undercover, or being controlled. The later seemed more likely, given the surprisingly cold behavior that had been shown to her.

When the doors opened, Skye looked up and gasped. As they came out of the elevator, she could see cloudy blue sky through the glass wall in front of her. Simmons nodded at the man who was restraining her. He released her with an order of no ‘funny business’ and she bolted toward the window, curious to see how high they were. A small squeak escaped her when she saw the tiny speck of ground below. It must have been hundreds of feet until there was earth.

“Almost four hundred feet.”

Skye whipped around at the sound of the voice. Simmons was standing nearby an open door in the wood paneled wall, and a new man stood in the doorframe. He looked to be in his early fifties with graying brown hair and brown suit that he wore a white lab coat over. With a kind smile, he walked over beside her. Skye noticed he was just a bit taller than her.

“We’re nested in the side of a mountain. One side of the building looks out and down on the earth below, the other faces into the mountain.  It took ages to find a spot that was both well-hidden and tall enough to permit a building of this size.”

“Cool,” Skye muttered sarcastically. “So do you want to tell me why I’m here? Or better still, who the hell you are?”

The man chuckled and shook his head. “You remind me of your mother. She always wanted to get straight to the point too.”

Skye blinked, confused. ‘What does my mother have to do with anything?’ she pondered as the man went over to Simmons and the two guards.

“Head down to the main lab,” he ordered Simmons. “Get things ready for the serum, and find a volunteer. It’s time for my daughter to see the miracle she’s a part of.”

“Wait, daughter?!” Skye cried out, staring at them in bewilderment. This man here, he wasn’t who she thought he was, was he?

“I might have just said that the Doctor wanted to see her,” Simmons admitted, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s fine, Agent Simmons,” he reassured her before turning back to Skye. “But yes, Tian Kong, you are my daughter.”

“You’re…you’re my dad?” She couldn’t believe this. Had she actually found one of her biological parents?

For her entire life, the one thing Skye had always wanted was to find her parents. She’d wished on stars, prayed with the nuns, and eventually learned to hack computers for this moment right here. She’d tried to imagine how she would feel, but anything she had ever expected was nothing like the reality of it all. Yes, she did feel happiness, a sense of completion. But there was also a sense of caution and wariness that filled her. Something about her father was unnerving to her and she couldn’t shake it.

“So where the hell have you been the past twenty four years of my damn life!” fell from her lips.

Her father, ‘the Doctor’ Simmons had called him, turned toward Simmons. “Leave us,” he said, dismissing her and the two others. He began to walk to the open door.

“Believe me when I tell you this, Tian Kong,” he told her, gesturing her to follow him in the doorway. “I have regretted every single moment that I missed out on your life. But I’m going to tell you the events that forced us apart for so long.”

“Over thirty years ago, I was scientist who was investigating ways to treat, cure, and even eradicate diseases,” Darwin explained as he watched his daughter settle onto the couch beside the armchair he sat in. A pot of tea and two cups that he’d prepared before Tian Kong arrived sat on the coffee table in front of them. “It was through my work that I met your mother. She worked for the government, and they sometimes called me in for analysis and consultation. We met on my first visit there, and I asked her out for coffee afterwards. She told me she didn’t like coffee, but she agreed to meet me. We started to date, and a year later, we were married.”

The girl smiled down at the cup of tea he had just passed to her. Darwin breathed a sigh of relief. Things were going well so far, but what he’d already told her was the truth. From here, he was going to have to deviate quite a distance from what actually happened.

“Now, a few months in our marriage,” he continued after a sip of tea. “I found out that I was ill, and dying. I loved my wife. I didn’t want to widow her, or leave the child she was expecting fatherless. So I worked to create a serum that would cure my disease.”

“I’m guessing it worked, ‘cause you’re still here,” The girl said timidly.

He nodded. “Indeed it did, but it didn’t just cure me. It enhanced my skills set. I was suddenly capable of so much more, both mentally and physically.”

“I never told your mother about any of this; I didn’t want to worry her. The last thing she needed during her first pregnancy was more stress. A few months after I was cured, we became parents to a beautiful baby girl, your elder sister Hua. She was a perfect blend of the two of us, but unfortunately, she had my disease. I was able to cure her using the same formula, although she also developed abilities. I monitored her carefully to make sure she was okay.”

“So what about me? Did I have it too?”

Darwin nodded, feeling relief that she had fallen for the ‘disease’ ruse. You could argue that the current state of humanity was a disease. “I’m afraid so. Four years after your sister, you came along and I treated you immediately. Unfortunately, your mother had discovered what I was doing by this point. While she didn’t say anything to me, I knew that she had found out, and she was not pleased with my work. I could tell she saw me differently by the way she always stayed close to you and your sister, how she’d flinch when I passed by. One day, I found out that she intended to run away, and take our daughters with her. She was going to turn you two over to her organization to be studied. I couldn’t let her do that to you, but your mother was set on it. We fought about it one night, and the next morning she was gone. Vanished without a trace.”

The reality was that there had been no fight. His wife had been suspicious and was going to run with the girls, but he had been the one to run with them first and vanish without a trace. He didn’t know if she was even going to turn them over to her agency, but the more he could get Tian Kong on his side, the better. Turning her against her mother would allow him to succeed with her where he’d failed with Hua.

“How old was I?”

“Two, three months I believe.” Darwin answered truthfully. “After she left, I moved to China with you and Hua so I could continue my research in a new department that specialized in genetics. They expressed great interest in the serum I had developed, and a group of scientists worked with me to find ways to improve it to extend to healing a wider range of people, even pre-determine the abilities that it gifted to them. You and your sister had impressed people greatly, but some did not share that view. I discovered this one morning when I awoke and found you and a lab assistant gone.”

Tian Kong’s eyes widened in shock, and Darwin knew that he was starting to get to her.

“A little digging into the assistant’s possessions shed some light on his true identity as an undercover agent of SHIELD. I believe that SHIELD had learned about me, and the assistant intended to take you back to one of their bases so they could lock you up and experiment on you. Your mother’s organization was all too similar to it, and it made sense to me. The assistant had taken a vehicle with a tracking device on it when he left, and I was able to activate it and track him down.”

“I arrived at a small village an hour away from the base I was at. When I got there, the people living there were defensive about me entering, and were prepared to kill me so that you could be protected. I was so angry that you had been taken, so furious for the betrayals that I had suffered, and I lost control. The next thing I knew, I was standing deep in the bodies of the villagers, covered in their blood. I couldn’t find you anywhere, and I assumed that you had died in my bloody crime. I returned to my lab and Hua with a heart full of grief. I changed my name to Darwin, and broke my ties with the company to travel the world. I wanted to learn more about my serum, and find ways to make it better.”

“Have you?” Tian Kong asked quietly. She looked incredibly anxious.

Darwin paused and thought about his answer. Yes, he had done a lot of work with it, but it was still incredibly unpredictable. You never could tell if a person who received it would be gifted with great powers, or mutate into a hideous beast. For now, he would leave out that last bit. “We have the occasionally difficulty, but it’s getting there.”

“All right,” his daughter leaned closer. “So what about Hua? Is she here? Can I meet her?”

He pressed his lips together firmly and clenched one of his fists. He would not tell her about Hua. She was too dangerous now, too much of a wildcard. Maybe if Tian Kong was fully on his side, he could permit them to see each other now and then. But allowing an impressionable mind like his youngest daughter’s to become clouded with the rebellious thoughts Hua had recently acquired would be much too dangerous.

“I lost her,” he told Tian Kong. It wasn’t a lie exactly, and it wasn’t the truth. “After losing you, I always made sure that she was safe and protected, even after she became an adult. One day, a few months ago, I let her go out too far beyond my protection, and I lost her.”

“Oh,” His daughter bit her lip, her face turning sorrowful.

He decided now would be a good time to take her down to the lab to see the miracle of the serum. “There’s more to this story though, Tian Kong-“

“Is that my name?” She interrupted. “Because you keep calling me that. Does it mean something?”

Darwin chuckled a little. “Yes, it is your name. In Chinese, tian kong is ‘sky’. Your mother chose it.”

“You’re kidding me!” Tian Kong laughed. “I’ve been going by Skye for years! It’s seriously my name in Chinese? That’s amazing!”

“Fate is a peculiar thing,” he admitted. “But as I was saying, after Hua and I left, I began to develop a new idea for the future of the world. Over the years, I have amassed a group of supporters who have helped me work toward the goal I have for saving society. A few years ago, we were almost ready, but then I learned that the village whose residents I had slaughtered had one survivor, a baby girl. I tried to track you down, but SHIELD stood in my way, and then I lost the trail completely. Finally, you popped back up on my radar a few months ago, and now the final plan can begin. A plan that you will be a part of.”

“What is it?” asked Tian Kong timidly.

Darwin smiled at her as he stood up. “Come with me, and I will show you.”

Raina pressed in the code to her own private lab. As soon as she entered, she screamed at the sight of someone bending over as they riffled through one of her cabinets.

“I’m so sorry,” Jemma Simmons apologized cheerily as she straightened up, a couple test tubes in hand. “Lab 4 is out of test tubes, and I’m going to need to draw some blood from someone later. I hope you don’t mind me getting in here. I already knew the code. After all these years, you still haven’t changed it.”

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here.” Raina clenched her fists, swallowing the lump of worry creeping up her throat. “You’re supposed to be with SHIELD, not here!”

“Oh, you didn’t hear the good news then,” Jemma chirped as she closed the cabinet and walked over to her. “The Doctor called me in. I’m back here for a while. Isn’t it wonderful! I get more free reign over projects now without Coulson or someone else shutting me down.”

“What about Skye? And that boy you work with?” Raina asked breathlessly, blocking Jemma from exiting. “Where are they?”

“Oh, they’ve come along with me,” Jemma sighed. “Fitz has proved himself to still be incredibly stubborn toward not listening to me. I’ve had to knock him out twice, and I think he’s still out in his cell. Skye, on the other hand, is with her father.”

Rain froze. “Her father?” she whispered. “No, tell me he’s not…”

“The Doctor?” Jemma smiled darkly at her. “Congratulations. You have a sister.”

She sauntered out the door, leaving Raina by all alone in the big empty space.

Once the door shut, Raina felt her legs wobble and grasped the counter for support. Tears began to fall down her face as she slid to the floor, breathing raggedly. Everything she’d ever done to protect her sister from the moment she handed Tian Kong to that assistant had failed. Tian Kong really was Skye, and their father was going to try to corrupt her to follow his twisted beliefs. This couldn’t happen to her little sister.

She had to get her sister out of here, and she had to do it soon.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Science Experiment

Melinda May entered the Bus’s cockpit and sat down in her chair. She took off the aviators she’d been wearing and sighed. There was no need for a mirror to tell her that her eyes were red and swollen from crying. The team didn’t know she was like this, and they never could. If they did, then they would get too curious and begin to question her or comfort her, and she would end up spilling her secret. The secret she’d been keeping for over three decades.

‘Snap out of it’ she scolded herself angrily as she started up the plane. There was no use wallowing in self-pity. It wouldn’t help Skye. What was going to help was Melinda flying herself, Phil, Izzy, and one of Izzy’s men, Hunter, to the prison where Ward was being held and getting answers regarding Hydra so they could figure out where Skye was being held.

“Melinda?”

Melinda jumped up and whirled around. Her fist was barely and inch from Phil’s face.

“Easy,” he said as she realized who she had almost just knocked flat. Phil frowned at her, and Melinda realized that he could see her eyes. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Fine,” she snapped briskly, turning away and sitting back down in her chair.

“Is this about FitzSimmons and Skye?”

She tried to block him out, but still flinched at Skye’s name.

“Mel,” Phil said softly, sitting down in the copilot’s chair. “We’re going to find them.”

“AND HOW CAN YOU BE SO SURE!” she shouted furiously, feeling all the emotions she’d been trying to suppress suddenly bubble up to the surface. “YOU REMEMBER WHAT HYDRA’S DONE TO PEOPLE BEFORE, PHIL! WE’VE READ IT IN THE SHIELD HISTORY BOOKS THEY GAVE US AT THE ACADEMY, AND THAT WAS ONLY DURING WORLD WAR II! IMAGINE WHAT THEY MIGHT DO WITH TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY! ARE YOU REALLY SURE THEY’RE OKAY?! ARE YOU SURE THAT WHEN WE FIND THEM, I WON’T BE STANDING OVER THE DEAD BODY OF MY D-MY ROOKIE!”

Melinda took a deep breath. Getting worked up was releasing a lot of anger, but it was also making her tongue loose. She had to calm down and regain control and not let her secrets slip.

“Look,” she continued. “All I want is to stop losing people. We’ve already lost so many already. That’s why this matters a lot to me, because I don’t know how many more people I can lose, Phil. All I want is Skye back safe and sound. Same with FitzSimmons.”

“We’ll find them,” Phil said as he stood up to leave. “Everything will work out in the end. We’re not going to lose them.”

She forced her lips up into a little smile that he returned.

“See you in the air,” Phil called out as he left the cockpit. Melinda slipped the aviators back on her face and gazed out on the horizon ahead of her, trying not to cry again.

She didn’t notice the sky blue origami flower sitting on the shelf behind her that had been there when she first entered.

Skye stood beside her father in the elevator as it shot downward to where he said they would be seeing the miracle he’d created. She remembered how Simmons had been sent down a while ago to prepare for it. While she was beginning to feel a little more trust towards her father, Skye still felt suspicious of what he was about to show her, and Simmons’s involvement in it. After Centipede and Garrett, any supposed ‘miracle’ serums were synonymous to psychotic, jack-up juice. It might be completely possible that her father might have achieved this, but there was still a chance that he could have glossed over the truth.

“Do you know anything about my mother?” Skye asked suddenly, thinking over the story she’d been told.

Her father (who also went by Darwin in addition to the Doctor) nodded and pursed his lips.

“After that night she left, I didn’t know where she had gone or what had happened to her. Five years after you were taken, the base Hua and I had established and were staying at was attacked. Your mother was among the people who attacked us. Afterwards, I found a report that indicated her as the one who was leading the charge. The base was lost, but everyone who was with me escaped safely, along with our research. All the provokers got out and retreated except for your mother. She tried to kill me, but I escaped just before the building collapsed. I watched as she was buried under the rubble, and then I left. She’s gone.”

“Oh,” slipped from Skye’s lips. She was still in shock that her mother had wanted to take her and her sister away to be studied. But knowing that she was dead felt different. Darwin had told her that her sister was gone, and now he told her that her mother was also dead. He was all she had left for family now.

The elevator doors open, and Skye exited them with her father. The floor they’d arrived on was different than the one they had left. She could still see the sky through the window, but the window was now much smaller. The surrounding walls were made of some cold steely metal that held a harsh glare from the lights. Even the potted plant by the elevator had an unwelcome feeling accompanying it. Simmons stood before them, a clipboard in hand and a smile on her face that made Skye shudder.

“Hello, sir,” she chirped brightly. “Good to see you as well, Skye.”

“Is everything ready, Agent Simmons?” Darwin questioned as he took a file folder from Simmons’s outstretched hand.

Skye watched suspiciously as Simmons nodded. Her faith in the girl was wavering between regaining trust or total loss of it all together. “What exactly are you guys talking about?”

Her father smiled. “Come with us and you’ll find out,” he said as he began to walk down a hallway with a gleeful Simmons close on his heels. Skye sighed and followed them. It was time to see what it was all about.

Leo blinked his eyes open. Memories of Skye screaming his name rung in his ears. The sneer of Simmons’s face as she pulled the trigger. Sitting up, he looked about wildly for Skye, only to realize he was all alone.

With this knowledge, Leo crawled over to the bucket and retched. Once he was done, he buried his head in his hands and began to cry. He cried for Charlotte and Skye and Agent Hand and Eric Koenig and all the other people out there he hadn’t been able to protect. He cried out of anger toward how he’d betrayed by those who were almost his siblings. He cried because all the fighting he had been doing now seemed to be in vain.

“This is Silas Brigman,” Skye’s father told her as they gazed through a window in the viewing booth they were in into a lab. Simmons and another scientist were strapping a man to something resembling a dentist’s chair and hooking him up to an IV. “Age thirty-five, from Ontario. He was a member of Hydra who was captured with two others about a month ago when a squad of Hydra agents attempted to take over this base. Agent Brigman has graciously volunteered to take the miracle serum today in order for you to witness the wonders it produces. The wonders that rest of the world shall soon play host too as well.”

This last part was said quieter, and the hairs on the back of Skye’s neck pricked up. The tone her father was telling this to her in sounded fanatic, almost borderline insane. It was like Garrett’s speech she’d heard when she rewatched the footage from his lunatic parade at Cybertek.

“Sir.” Simmons’s voice filled the room through speakers. “We’re ready.”

“Proceed.” Darwin smiled gleefully and leaned closer to the glass. Skye inched a few steps back from him and focused instead on the Hydra agent. She watched as the other scientist picked up a syringe filled with greenish-blue liquid in it. He injected it into Brigman and stepped back. Then he walked around by Simmons and entered the viewing room with her.

Skye frowned at their presence. “Shouldn’t you be out there making sure he’s going to be okay?”

The other scientist shook his head. “Not until it’s over,” he explained. “We don’t want to be caught in a mess if the transformation goes wrong.”

“Goes wrong?!” Skye stared at them all. “What do you mean, goes wrong?”

A sudden series of flashing lights and an agonizing scream answered her question. Pressing herself up against the glass, Skye watched the scene play out in shock. The gray prison shirt Brigman had been wearing was in tatters, burning away by little blue-flamed fires. His muscles were tense and bulging as he strained at the straps on his arms and chest. His gritted teeth separated in a primal yell while his head twisted from side to side. Skye might have hated anything related to Hydra after everything they had done to her, but all she could feel for this man right now was concern and fright as she saw the gleam of pure terror in his eyes. Eyes that had once been brown and were now changing into an icy white.

“You have to stop this!” Skye begged the three other people with her as tears began to grace her cheeks. “He’s in pain. He needs help!”

“He’s fine, Skye,” Simmons’s tone sounded exasperated. “It’s all part of the procedure. It won’t last much longer. Hopefully.”

Skye stared open-mouthed at the biochemist. All her trust for Jemma Simmons and her father evaporated on the spot. They had kidnapped her and Leo. How did she know that Brigman wasn’t also a victim of kidnapping? A sickening thought of Leo strapped into the chair screaming and writhing in agony, flashed before her eyes. She couldn’t let them do that to him, it couldn’t happen. Without a second thought, she bolted past her father and wrenched open the door connecting the viewing room to the lab.

The howling screams of Brigman increased in volume and agony once she was in the lab. Not wasting a second, Skye raced over to the chair and undid the straps on his chest and right arm. Darting over to the other side, she bent down beside the left arm strap. Her fingers fumbled with the buckles as the Hydra agent struggled to wrench the arm free. Finally it was loose, and he tumbled to the floor, writhing about as bands of blue electricity crackled up and down his body. After a few moments, they faded and he pushed himself up. He stared at Skye with icy white eyes. “You,” he breathed.

Skye gulped and nodded. “Hey.”

“You’re the girl they wanted us to kill four months ago,” he murmured, cocking his head at her. “You helped me now.”

“I did what I could,” Skye said. “I don’t know if I got to you in time.”

“They told us to kill you on sight, because you were with the enemy, with SHIELD.” He stepped toward her. The air smelled faintly of ozone as he neared her. “You knew what I am; I could see it in your eyes through that window. But you still came out to help me when they wouldn’t.” He looked her in the eye. “Thank you.”

In that instant, Skye could feel an understanding between herself and Brigman. There was no anger about their respective organizations. The only thing there was understanding, and gratefulness.

“How are you feeling, Agent Brigman?”

Simmons, Darwin, and the other scientist had emerged from the viewing room. Skye noticed that her father did not look pleased. She didn’t care. Brigman had been suffering, but her father hadn’t seemed to have minded it at all. He actually seemed more excited about it all, and it made Skye’s lip curl in disgust.

Brigman stepped in front of her protectively, his arm raised.

“You,” he hissed at the trio. “You…did this to me.”

A ball of crackling blue electricity formed in his open palm, growing greater in size the longer he held it. Skye gasped, but held her ground. Brigman hurled the ball, which was the size of a baseball, at Simmons, but she ducked out of the way in enough time. A cloud of dust rose up as the electricity struck the wall, eliminating Simmons and her father from Skye’s vision. The other scientist was on the ground, moaning and holding his forehead. Blood was trickling down the side of his face. Brigman raised his hand once more before collapsing. Skye looked up to see Simmons was standing by the chair he had been in. In her hands was the gun she had used on Leo.

Darwin appeared from behind a cart of supplies and hauled the fallen scientist to his feet. “Get to the med bay and patch yourself up,” he ordered. “And send up a unit to put him with the other rebellious ones.”

The scientist scampered off, and Darwin turned his gaze toward her. There was a deadly anger in his eyes.

“And you,” he snarled. “What were you thinking, running in there like that?”

“I was trying to save him!” spat Skye. “He was suffering, he was in pain. And you all just stood there like he was a science experiment!”

“In way, he was,” Jemma said coolly. “The serum helps us see which of us are destined for the next generation, and which ones are not. It’s like evolution in a way. Survival of the fittest.”

“THAT’S WHAT THIS IS!” Skye cried. “THAT’S SICK! HOW COULD YOU EVEN DO THAT TO SOMEONE?!”

“Reality is a hard thing to accept for you, isn’t it?” Darwin walked toward her, his arms outstretched as if he was holding something. “But Tian Kong, this is what I have told you about. This is what the serum does. It can make people better, let them reach their full potential. This is the future of the world.”

He reached for her hand, but Skye yanked it away. She looked at his animated face with revulsion.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, stepping back from him.

“Tian Kong,” he murmured.

“NO!” Skye shouted furiously. “THIS. IS. WRONG. YOU LIED TO ME ABOUT ALL THIS. YOU SAID THAT IT WAS WONDERFUL, BUT IT’S NOT. IT’S WRONG AND HORRIBLE AND INSANE. I DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU’VE TOLD ME ANYMORE. MY MOTHER WOULD HAVE NEVER TRIED TO FORCE ME IN A LAB, WOULD SHE? I BET SHE DIDN’T TRY TO LEAVE YOU, AT LEAST NOT WITHOUT ME AND MY SISTER. I THINK IT WAS YOU WHO LEFT FIRST AND TOOK US TO BE YOUR DAMN LAB RATS!”

His hand cracked across her face with blinding pain. Skye pressed a hand to her stinging skin. When she drew it away, it was spotted with blood. Her eyes traveled down to her father’s hand. A small whimper escaped her when she saw his fingertips shifting back to smooth human ones from ragged claws. His face was full of murderous rage.

“You never speak to me like that again,” he hissed at her. “I am your father.”

Skye shook her head, trying not to cry. “No,” she whispered thickly. “You’re not. A father cares about you. A father knows you. A father loves you. And a father would do anything to make sure that you are safe. My father is Phil Coulson, not you. You had to kidnap me so I could see you. You hurt people, and you’re okay with that. You’re nothing but a monster, and I HATE YOU!”

Skye turned to grab something to throw at him, but her hands were yanked behind her back and cuffed. All of Skye’s strength felt as though it had been sapped. Simmons stepped out from behind her. Skye hadn’t even seen her slip behind her and cuff her. That’s how angry she had been at this monster who called himself her father. Biologically, he probably was (that was the one thing she could see he was being truthful about), but Coulson had been the one who had felt most like a father. He had brought her in all those months ago, kept her on even when she helped Miles, and made her feel as though she really had a purpose.

“If this is how you see me, then so be it,” Darwin told her coldly. “I gave you the chance to join me, and you have denied it. Even more, you were disobedient, disrespectful, and unruly. I don’t tolerate that kind of behavior, and we’ll need to work on that someday. But for now, you’ll be treated as the rest are. You’ll be prepped for a new round of the serum. I’ve always been curious to see how two doses affect a person.”

“Take her away,” he commanded Simmons.

The biochemist nodded and pressed her gun into Skye’s back, leading her out of the room. The walk back to the elevator and the ride down were silent. Once the elevator doors opened, Skye recognized the floor as the one that she’d been taken from first. “This is where you reveal yourself as undercover and save me and Leo from that psychopath, right?” she asked as they walked down a line of numbered doors.

At cell number 10, Simmons stopped and turned Skye to face her. She fished a key out her pocket. Skye’s heart began to soar as Simmons smiled at her. She knew it! Leo was wrong; Simmons really was okay!

Then Simmons’s smile turned to a sneer. “You actually think I’m going to let you go?”

The smile that had begun to form on Skye’s own face fell. “They’re controlling you, aren’t they?” she asked as Simmons drew another key out to unlock the cell door. “What is it? Eye camera? Incentives program? Bomb in your spinal cord?”

“Science,” Simmons answered cheerily. “Don’t try anything funny, Fitz. I’ve knocked you out plenty of times before. I won’t hesitate to do it again.”

She turned back to Skye. “I’ve known Darwin since I was a child,” she told Skye as she walked around her to unlock the handcuffs. “His ideas have had a lot of influence on me. He’s a brilliant man, not a monster. You need to see that, Skye.”

“Oh I’ve seen it, alright,” Skye said sarcastically as the cell door was opened.

The girl she’d once seen as a sister shook her head. “Not like I have.”

She opened the door and shoved her inside. The door slammed shut behind her.

Skye picked herself off from the floor. A slight odor of bile permeated the cell, as though someone had vomited. She turned and saw Leo sitting on his cot. He gazed up at her.

“You’re okay,” he sighed in relief, offering her a strained smile. His eyes were red and puffy, as if he’d been crying recently.

Without hesitation, Skye scrambled over him and hugged him ferociously before bursting into tears. In her heart, she knew she could trust him. He wasn’t like Ward, who had never let his walls down, or Simmons, who had tried to throw her off the trail when she asked too many questions. Leo was open and honest with her, and she was the same with him. He was all Skye felt that she had left in the world right now, and she swore she would do what she could to make sure Darwin and Simmons never made him into something like Brigman. They would have to go through her first.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Innocent Traitor

 2 months ago

The man in the stolen guard’s uniform slunk down the corridor toward his target. His hand fell to his side on the handle of his knife. With every door he walked by, he scanned the numbered plate beside it, looking for the right one.

This was part two of his mission from Darwin. The first step had been easy-slip in with a supply group to deliver a serum to help Agent Simmons’s comatose SHIELD associate. Now, part two required him to sneak into a maximum security prison to inflict serious harm on an inmate. ‘Make sure he is close to death, but does not succumb,’ were Darwin’s orders for him.

The command had made little sense to him until he read a report on Agent Simmons. The message made sense after that. You hurt one of us, we hurt one of you.

The correct plate finally came into view. With a smile, he unlocked the doors with the key ring he had swiped and stepped inside.

Present Day- 3 days after Skye, Fitz, and Simmons’s disappearance.

Grant Ward stared down at his wrist. It had been handcuffed to the bolted down table the minute he entered the interrogation room. On either side of him were two guards. They were far enough so he wasn’t uncomfortable, but close enough to stop him from attempting anything funny.

Grant knew that Coulson was coming, as they always put him in this room when he did. Coulson was his only visitor anyway. When he did come, he would sit down across from Grant and ask a few questions. Grant usually tuned them out and remained silent. His former boss would eventually leave after a half hour of silence, and he would go back to his cell. Sometimes he would hear other guards say that his silence was stubbornness, but it was far from the truth.

His larynx had originally silenced him, but once it had healed, guilt muted him. Guilt for the good people like Victoria Hand and Eric Koenig and the two men in the elevator at the Fridge and all the other good people out there who he’d killed in Garrett’s name. He felt guilt over allowing Garrett to shoot Skye and saying nothing as they worked to save her. There was guilt over how he’d betrayed Skye’s trust and then threatened her. But the worst guilt of all came from what he had done to Fitz. He hadn’t just dropped him from a plane in a metal death trap. No, he had dropped him from a plane in a metal death trap with Simmons.

Grant had gained a new fear of the biochemist after Raina had told him the story of Skye’s parents and how they were monsters, her father especially. Immediately after hearing this, he easily pieced together that Simmons was in cahoots with Raina, as well as Skye’s father. When she’d told Fitz that he didn’t care for the two of them anymore, Grant saw a murderous glare in her eyes for a moment that still haunted him today. When Coulson had told him that they survived, but Fitz ‘might never be the same again’, Grant immediately wondered what Simmons had done down there with him. Had she double-crossed him to escape? Had she exposed her dark side and driven him mad? Those were some of the questions he kept asking himself.

Two months after he had been locked away, his door opened in the middle of the night. He could only see a shadow of a man from the light in the hallway. For a few moments, Grant thought that it was a guard giving a random check. They did them often there, just to throw off the prisoners from their routines to make sure nothing was being plotted. He had thought that was what it was, right until the ‘guard’ approached him and Grant saw him draw something that looked like a knife from his side.

Despite his confines, Grant had still been working out. Still, he hadn’t expected this. For a while they struggled on equal ground, and then he felt the cold metal pierce his shoulder. He screamed as loud as he could to alert someone that he was in trouble, hoping that he could be heard. The knife was pulled out and then new pain blossomed in his abdomen. The weight of the blade inside his body vanished and he remembered falling to the ground. As he hit the floor, his thoughts flashed back to the basement in Italy, when Skye had been shot. This must be his payment for not speaking up about Garrett then.

“I bring you a message,” the shadowy figure said. Grant knew almost all the guards, but this one’s voice was unfamiliar. “Try to kill one of us, one of us shall try to kill you.”

“Who are you?” he rasped, trying to hold a hand to the wound on his front. “Who sent you?”

“I speak for the Doctor,” was the response he received as his assassinator left the room.

Grant slumped fully on the floor, his mind going hazy from blood loss. A shout came from down the corridor, and he heard footfalls running closer to his cell. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was a flashlight shining on his face, held by a real guard.

When he woke up, he was in the hospital wing in a bed beside the window. For a long time, he stared at the natural light permeating through the thick smoky glass. It had been months since he had last seen sunlight, and it had been one of the things he’d missed the most. His cell was windowless, and the paths the guards lead him on when he went to the interrogation room or the showers or the room where he had to meet a therapist once a day (he never talked to her either) bore no windows. Now, after so long, there was finally light in his life again.

During the time he spent in the hospital wing, Grant thought about a lot of things. Mainly, it was what the attacker had said to him that night. One terrible thing about him was that when he was going to kill someone, he usually succeeded. There was one instance when that had failed, and it was when he had dropped Fitz and Simmons (he could never think of them as FitzSimmons after Jemma had talked with him in the closet) in the ocean. Grant was betting that the man had been speaking about Simmons with the one he’d tried to kill. In that case, it was easy to determine that her allegiance, along with Raina’s, was to ‘The Doctor’.  In the closet, Simmons had said she was part of something more advanced that Hydra that was built to last. If her loyalties were with something worse than Hydra, then it posed a larger threat to his former team than Hydra ever could.

Grant knew at that moment that his silence needed to be broken, and that the team needed to know a greater, more dangerous threat was out there. However, he also worried that exposing what he knew on Simmons could very well lead to him getting attacked again, and this time he would be silenced in one way or another. That was the last thing he wanted to happen to him, so he needed to find another way. Eventually, he figured out that if he told Coulson about The Doctor, then the team could draw on that lead and find connections to weed out Simmons and her ulterior loyalty. All subversive organizations were connected to each other-the fall of SHIELD to Hydra was enough proof.

The door opened, and Coulson entered, followed by a woman he had never seen before. She was glowering at him, but Coulson’s face was neutral and unreadable. Despite their differences, Grant had always admired the man’s ability to remain calm in any situation. Considering what he had done to Coulson and the rest of his team, Grant had massive respect for him right now.

“Director,” he greeted, remembering to address him by his new title that he’d heard when Coulson first visited.

Coulson looked surprised. “Ward,” he said as he sat down across from him with the other woman. “This is Agent Hartley.”

“Ma’am,” he nodded politely to Hartley before turning back to Coulson to ask a question he’s held onto for four months. “Fitz, is he okay?”

“Save it,” snapped Hartley. “We’ve heard that you’ve decided to get chatty with your therapist in the past two months. Got a reason for it?”

Grant sighed, knowing that this question was going to come up when he first started to talk again. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things,” he confessed. “It’s taken me a while to realize the full extent of the consequences I’m facing for my actions, and now I want to do something right.”

“You should have thought about that before you followed Garrett and his twisted path like little lapdog!” Hartley spat.

He winced as the memory of his first meeting with Garrett came back to him. It had been very similar to the setting they were in now. “What I did back then-I was in a rough spot,” Grant told her. “I don’t regret going with him to leave the place I was in, but I do regret not doing anything to stop him.  It’s taken me too long to realize that he took me out of one hell only to throw me in an even worse one. He saw me as weaker, and he only made me weaker. I wish that I had done something to stop him, but I can’t change the past. I can, though, help the future of SHIELD, even if I’m in here the rest of my life.”

His two visitors were silent once Grant finished talking. Then Coulson looked him dead in the eye. “Do you really mean that?”

Grant nodded. Prison gave a man a lot of time to think about his actions, and what he could do to be a better person. At least that’s how he was taking it. “Yes sir.”

“And how do you feel about Skye?” Coulson’s voice grew harsher now. Grant remembered very well that Coulson and Skye had a father/daughter relationship. “Still holding a psychotic love for her?”

Thinking back on the things he’s said to his former rookie made Grant cringe. In the last days in Garrett’s control, he’d become obsessive over her, saying things that sounded romantic at the time, but now were twisted and possessive. His self-imposed silence after his arrival gave him some time to think about his feelings for her.

“Ward,” Coulson repeated. “How do you feel about her?”

“I care about Skye,” admitted Grant honestly. “But the way I felt for her a few months ago is very different than the way I see her now. Back then, I was a monster, obsessed with her to the point where I wasn’t myself anymore. In here, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I realize I don’t love her like I thought I did. My cover got too deep, and I spun out of control. I couldn’t distinguish my own feelings from the ones I was supposed to have. But even though I don’t love her, I still care about her. Skye was my first rookie, and that’s all she is now. I’m sorry for what I did to her. She’d already been through so much, and I only made it worse.”

“If something happened to her, what would you do?” Hartley asked bluntly.

Coulson flinched a little bit at the question, and Grant felt his gut twist in worry. His mind backtracked to Simmons giving him the photograph of Skye. Had she finally decided to act?

“Is she okay?” he asked.

The two agents said nothing, which only confirmed Ward’s fears. “What’s happened?” Grant looked back and forth at them. “Please tell me.”

Hartley and Coulson turned to each other. The former nodded at the latter. Coulson looked back at Grant.

“Three days ago,” he began. “I flew out along with May and Tripp to pick up Agent Harley and her group. On our return flight, we received a call from an agent who had stayed behind. A squad somehow broke in, and the agent was knocked unconscious. When he awoke, Skye, Fitz, and Simmons were gone. Security footage was wiped clean, and we found signs of a possible struggle.”

“Any suspects?” Grant had a feeling why they were now meeting with him after two months.

“Our current suspicions lie with Hydra,” Coulson informed him. “Specially the theory that you passed off the layout of the base where you stayed at for a week before coming here to a contact in this facility. But we’ve spoken with your guards, and I doubt that the visitor you had two months ago actually wanted information from you. There doesn’t seem to be any other way you could have leaked the information, unless there is something you aren’t telling us.”

Grant shook his head. Coulson’s suspicions were making him think back to Simmons again. Had she finally struck? Coulson said that she was missing along with Fitz and Skye, but it was entirely possible that she was the kidnapper herself. A brilliant strategy, if that was the case. Maybe it was time Coulson needed to know about The Doctor.

“There is something you should know,” he said to them. “When I was attacked, the person said something to me about almost killing one of theirs, so I would almost be killed as well. I asked who sent them. The reply I received was that he spoke for The Doctor.”

Hartley frowned. “We don’t know anybody by that name, at least not that we know of.”

“I don’t know who he is either, but before I was put in here, Raina told me something back in Cuba,” Grant revealed. “She told me a story about a baby found in a village in China, and how the baby’s parents destroyed the village in search of their child. Apparently, Skye is the baby. An 084, you could call her.”

“Where are you taking this?” asked Hartley. She seemed a bit surprised by the revelation, but Coulson looked as though he already knew.

Grant took a deep breath. He wanted to tell them about Simmons, but his fear of what she could do to him held him back. She’d already proved that she had connections that could get him killed if it was needed. Grant would have to use another reason if he wanted them to find out about her. “Garrett was responsible for Skye getting shot, and I was involved. The Doctor could be Skye’s father, and I hurt her a lot in the past four months. He could have found out and wanted me hurt but not dead, so that’s a reason for why I got stabbed. Once in the back, once in the stomach. I backstabbed her when I revealed that I was Hydra. She got shot in the stomach, so I did to for letting Garrett do that.”

“So you think that we’re dealing with Skye’s father here?” Coulson clarified.

Grant nodded. Coulson pursed his lips together. “You’ve done a lot for us today, Ward,” he told him. “You’ve come a long way in the last two months.”

“Therapy helps,” he answered. It really had done wonders for him.  “I understand how screwed up I was now.”

“Do you want to help us get them back?”

“What?!” He and Hartley cried, staring at Coulson. Was he actually serious?

“Phil, you can’t actually mean this,” Hartley was telling him. “He betrayed you!”

“You haven’t been here with him like I have, Izzy,” Coulson retorted before returning his attention to him. “Ward, I’m offering you a chance to redeem yourself outside of this place. You can help us get Skye and Fitz and Simmons back. You can work with us to help find out who this Doctor is, and if he’s behind all this.”

Grant felt a little bit of hope fill him, but waited for the catch.

“But if we’re going to let you out,” Coulson continued. “We will be keeping a tight watch on you. If you attempt any funny business, then you go straight back here, and you stay back here. So what’s it going to be?”

Skye’s furious glare the last time he’d seen her. Fitz screaming his name before disappeared out of the plane. They were his ghosts, haunting him for what he had done to them. Every minute of every day, they stayed with him, and Grant wanted to right his wrongs with them. “I’ll do it.”

“I had a feeling you’d agree,” Coulson smiled as he stood up. “Glad I already turned in your release forms. They need few days to process you through, and by then we’ll be back to pick you up. You’re going to have to wear a tracker, and someone’s always going to be nearby to keep an eye on you. Eventually, both will be removed when you gain enough trust back.”

A little more hope filled him now. “Thank you, sir,” Grant said gratefully. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Hartley rolled her eyes, but Coulson didn’t say anything to her. “I hope not,” he chuckled as he and Hartley moved to leave.

“Sir?” Coulson turned around. Grant swallowed his courage. “You never answered my question about Fitz. Is he okay?”

The director of SHIELD studied him. “You do deserve to know.”

Grant leaned toward him as far as he could. He needed closure on Fitz. He had to know what he was going to have to live with.

“He was in a coma, but he came out of it all right,” Coulson told him as a guard opened the door for him and Hartley. “He’s not the same person who you dropped out of a plane though.”

With that, they left the room. One of the guards moved the handcuff attached to the table back to his wrist and lead him back to his cell. He entered it and the door was shut behind him. Sitting back down on his cot, Grant ran a hand over the beard he had grown over his stay at the prison, wondering what Coulson meant exactly when he said Fitz wasn’t the same.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Was Everything a Lie?

1996

The hospital waiting room was quiet, but the noises of gurneys being wheeling past, nurses and doctors shouting, and the monotonous PA trickled in through the door. Leo Fitz swallowed and pulled out the monkey wind-up toy from his pocket. His small nimble fingers worked swiftly to dismantle the toy into its basic components, which he would then reassemble. Usually he would time himself. Today, he didn’t want to.

This morning, the headmaster had poked his head into the classroom and told him to come down to his office. For a while, he thought it was because they were going to bump him up another level. Then he saw his mother waiting in a chair by the headmaster’s desk, her eyes red. There’d been an accident, and they needed to get to the hospital right away. Mum had been excused from her nursing shift to come get him.

As Leo pushed in one of the last bits of his toy, the door swung open. He recognized the blue glasses instantly as Cathy, one of his mother’s coworkers and friends. She was funny, and a good friend to the Fitz family. But today, her expression was somber instead of cheery. Leo stood up after his mother and walked over to Cathy with her.

“Cathy, are they alright?” Leo was scared by the tone in her voice.

The Indian girl put a hand on Mum’s shoulder. “Maggie…”

“Are they okay?” Mum asked more sternly.

Cathy bit her lip. “It was a severe collision, and we had to get them to the OR immediately. Robert was the worse one of the two. Broken ribs, punctured lung, serious internal bleeding and trauma. The doctors did all they could, but it was just too much. He didn’t make it. I’m sorry Maggie, but he’s gone.”

Mum buried her face in her hands. Leo looked at Cathy. “Daddy?” whimpered the little boy.

Cathy bent down beside him. “I’m sorry, kiddo,” she told him. “He died.”

His little body felt overwhelmed with grief. Even though he was young, Leo was old enough to understand death. It meant that his father was never coming home again. He was never going to take Leo to his office or the museum, or swing him up in the air and call him Little Lion. Leo tried to be a big boy and not cry, but he couldn’t stop the tears.

“What about my daughter?”

Leo looked back up to Mum. She had taken her hands away from her face and taken a deep breath. “Robert was taking Charlotte back to school after a dental appointment. Is she still alive?”

Leo gazed down at the monkey toy in his hands. Charlotte had given it to him on his birthday last year. He didn’t want his older sister to be dead too. Charlotte was amazing and nice and good. She couldn’t be dead too.

“Charlotte Fitz did make it out of surgery and is resting at the moment,” Cathy told them, pushing up her glasses. “But her life is going to change…”

Present Day

The two goons led Leo up to an unmarked door, and he found himself questioning what lay on the other side. In the past few days, he had been taken from his cell and Skye numerous times for different reasons. He would then be brought to rooms and people would do all sorts of things. They’d basically tested all the functions of his body at various points, along with daily blood draws. They were doing the same thing to Skye when she was taken out, according to her.

When they first came for him and tried to make him run on a treadmill so his heart rate could be studied, Leo had stubbornly refused to complete the task. He did this for a few days, and it subsequently caused him numerous injuries inflicted by the guards, who appeared to be gifted individuals. The previous day, Skye saw the bruise on his cheek from a super strong guard and made him promise to stop fighting back. He agreed, but only if she stopped as well. Leo wasn’t blind to the red marks on her upper arm that looked like low level burns.

As the door was opened, Leo prayed it wasn’t going to be a polygraph test again. The Koenigs’ tests had been more on loyalty. These ones were on everything, and it was bringing back a lot of painful memories.

2 Days Ago

“Name of mother?”

Leo glowered angrily. The lady questioning him was almost normal, except her eyes were yellow and cat-like. “What’s it to you?”

Cat Eyes sighed. “In order to create a file for you for further reference, we’re going to need all information on you. Now answer the question.”

“Margaret Fitz,” he said tightly, clenching his fists.

“Please remain relaxed,” Cat Eyes drawled as she marked down the information. “Tensing up interferes with the machinery, and will only keep you here longer. What is your father’s name?”

Leo bit his lip, trying to hold back the memories. Usually he could suppress them, but since Simmons had betrayed him they’d been coming back more frequently and stronger. “He’s dead.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“Robert Fitz,” Leo told her. “Can we please move onto something else?”

Cat Eyes ignored him. “Year of death?”

“I’m not telling you.”

Cat Eyes nodded at the guard beside him, a man with icy white eyes and a glazed expression. The man gripped Leo’s wrist, and an electric shock coursed through him. It felt as though someone had stuck his body with a hot poker in various places. He couldn’t hold back screaming from the pain.

“When did your father die?” Cat Eyes shouted as the man took his hand off Leo.

“1996,” Leo groaned, trying to catch his breath.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

He tried hard not to think about Charlotte, but the memories of the hospital came back.

“Answer the question.”

“One sister, Charlotte. Older, born 1980.” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “She’s dead.”

“When?”

Leo swallowed, remembering the terrible day. “1997.”

Cat Eyes smiled. “Now we can move on.”

In the chair, he sighed in relief.

“You remember the design, don’t you?” Simmons said casually as she entered the room. Leo was already seated at a table with metal plate on it. His wrists were held together with a pair of handcuffs, except a bar connected the two wrists instead of a chain. The bar was now magnetically attached to the metal plate. “It was our first week at Sci-Ops when you made it. SHIELD had no use for it, so you put it aside. But I found another interested party who could use it. Don’t worry, I made sure they knew it was your design when I gave it to Darwin.”

Leo glowered at her. Skye had told him about her father, and what he had done to a person. Even though he had already seen her do so much, he still couldn’t believe Simmons was involved in this madness.

The woman who had once been the person he trusted with his life sat down across from him. “So how are you?”

“Peachy, considering you’re a traitor who kidnapped me and Skye and brought us to a mad man,” he thought to himself, but said nothing to her.

After a few moments of silence, Simmons sighed. “I hear you and Skye haven’t been the most cooperative with the guards.”

Leo clenched his jaw and remained silent.

Simmons sighed again. “Fitz,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I brought you here to talk. In four days, you’re due to undergo a treatment with the serum.”

A chill ran down his spine at her words, and he looked sharply at her.

“However,” Simmons continued. “If you swear loyalty to Darwin, then you won’t have to go.  You can work with me to help build a better future for the world. Skye can be with us too, if she apologizes to her father and swears loyalty to him too. Everything can work out then.”

The temptation to scream at her was overwhelming. She had to be crazy to think that he would willing follow her so blindly. Maybe he might have once, long ago when he still trusted her and believed that she was good. But that time was long gone and things had changed. SHIELD had fallen and was rebuilding. He had grown to become a field agent. She had betrayed him and Skye. For all he knew, Coulson and the rest of the team thought they left, like they had when Ward had taken Skye.

“Fitz?” Simmons was waiting for him to answer. “What is your choice?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “How long?” he asked as he opened them.

Simmons frowned. “What do you mean?”

“How long have you been with this?” Leo continued. “How long have you been lying to me?”

Her eyes shifted downward at her clasped hands. “I found Darwin when I was researching for a project back when I was thirteen. He agreed to meet with me at one of his bases, and there he showed me so much more than I expected. I learned a new level of thinking that made sense to me, and after I finished the project, I kept in contact with him. A few years later, I formally joined him after entering college. He’s been like a second father to me.”

Leo’s mouth felt dry. “So before the Academy?” he pressed. “Before me?”

She nodded. “I was sent to infiltrate SHIELD to seek out potential assets, both gifted and normal, for him. You were one of the names on the list, and coincidentally attending the same Academy that I had gotten into. So one day, I just ordered a large coffee and made sure I was in your path. You had your nose so deep in that book that you never noticed me and ran me over. After that, well, you know the story.”

A sick feeling came over him. He’d never known her. He was only her mission. “So our friendship, all those years, everything we’ve been through, is lie.”

“No, it isn’t,” Simmons shook her head. “I never counted on this lasting, but it has. You are my friend, Fitz. It’s not a lie.”

“Did you even love me?” whispered Leo, trying to keep his voice steady.

“No. I don’t, and I never have,” she answered. “Darwin told me to keep you close, so that’s what I did. He’s curious about you, Fitz. He wants you to become a part of this.”

“So you just pretended to be my girlfriend because he said so!” Leo cried furiously. “That is low, Simmons.”

Her expression was unreadable, and it only made Leo more furious. “How could you do that! Why would you do that! It wasn’t enough pretending to be my friend; you had to fake caring about me as well! And now you want me to just drop SHIELD and side with Darwin? What is so good about him that I should just do that? Why is it so important that I do that? Why should I even do that?!”

“Because if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be here right now!” Simmons stood up and yelled angrily. “You’d still be in a coma if it wasn’t for him.”

All the anger and rage in his body went numb.

“What?” Leo asked, feeling a little shaky. “What are you talking about?”

Simmons sat down, biting her lip. “When we were in the med pod at the bottom of the ocean, you could have just taken that damn oxygen for yourself and swum away and left me to die. You didn’t do that though. You gave it to me, and pushed that button so I could get out alive. I couldn’t leave you to die. I brought you to the surface, but you were unconscious. After they picked us up and let me see you, you were in a coma. The doctors told me that you would be severely impaired, mentally and physically, if you ever woke up. And let me tell you, they weren’t even sure you were going to.”

Leo fell against the back of his chair, mouth agape. He’d never heard this before from anyone, and it made him want to vomit. “What did you do to me?” he whispered hollowly.

The woman across from him had an expression that was way too relaxed for the seriousness of events. “I contacted Darwin, and told him everything. He was impressed that you saved me, and promised to help me. About two months into your coma, I got a delivery from him. It was a drug he had created with the purpose of not just waking you up, but also healing you again. I injected it into you, and you woke up a few days later, perfectly fine. He saved your life, Fitz. Do you trust him now?”

Leo’s eyes widened. He was still horrified by what had been done to him. For the past few months, he’d been grateful for every day he had. He’s believed it was a miracle that he woke up, and he thought he’d done it on his own. But now, it was no miracle that had brought him back. He shouldn’t have been here, walking and talking and perfectly healthy. He should have been in that coma still, or maybe even in the ground.

In the past few days, almost everything Leo knew kept crumbling away. Now an entire section of his life had fallen away and everything it held up was falling down on him, like a building toppling down once its structure can no longer hold it up. That’s what he felt like. Leo was a collapsed building, and Simmons had been the one who destroyed what held him up.

“What is wrong with you?” he exhaled raggedly. “What made you think that was okay to do? Did you even tell anyone on the team you were planning to this?”

“If I had, there would have been too many questions that I wouldn’t have been able to answer. I had to keep it a secret if I wanted to stay on the team,” his former friend muttered.

“BECAUSE I WAS YOUR BLOODY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!” Leo shouted, clenching his fists. “HOW DID YOU EVEN KNOW IT WAS GOING TO WORK?”

Simmons stiffened. “I have great faith in Darwin’s abilities.”

“SO YOU JUST WENT RIGHT AHEAD WITH YOUR FAITH AND PUT THAT IN ME!” Leo screamed. “WAS IT EVEN TESTED ON SOMEONE BEFORE ME? WHAT IF SOMETHING HAD GONE WRONG?”

“I know Darwin, and he never fails,” protested Simmons.

Leo gave a harsh laugh. “Yeah right,” he scoffed. “Because he is perfect, isn’t he. Your flawless idol. But he isn’t, Simmons. No one is perfect. You don’t think things ever go wrong? You don’t think I haven’t heard those screams from the other labs? Darwin is a monster, Simmons, and I’m starting to think you’re becoming one too.”

Simmons flinched at the last bit. His words were bitter and filled with hate, but Leo was furious. She had hurt him on so many levels that it had destroyed them forever. FitzSimmons was no more. It never could exist again.

“Leo…” she murmured.

“No,” he cut her off. “You don’t get to call me that. You don’t deserve to call me that.”

Her eyes flicked over to the gifteds that had brought him in. “Take him back.”

They put a new set of handcuffs on his wrists and pulled him up sharply. As they prepared to lead him out, Leo turned around to face the woman who had lied to him for almost a decade. He took a deep breath and looked her straight in her eyes.

“Every day since I woke up, I have thought at least once about the med pod. Some days, when I was frustrated or tired, I wondered why I gave you the air. Then I always remembered that it was because you were my friend, and it was my fault that we were down there in the first place. I pushed us into it and got us into that mess, and I thought you deserved the oxygen more than I did because of that. But now, after everything that’s happened in the past few days, I wish I had just let us die down there.”

Simmons’s gaze grew hard. The gifteds moved him out as he sent one last glare toward her. For so long, Leo had seen Simmons as his closest friend and confidant. But now, their friendship had been reduced to ashes. At least he still had Skye. She was the only reason that he hadn’t completely shattered. Skye was his one constant, the one he knew deep down that he could depend on.

When he was put back inside the cell, Skye was sitting on her cot. Her eyes were red and puffy, but there was a small trace of a smile on her lips. Leo made his way over to her and sat down beside her. “You okay?”

Skye nodded and wiped her eyes. “Yeah,” she nodded and turned to him.

“My sister’s alive, Leo.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: The Visit

“I never apologized,” Skye admitted as she gazed up at the dark ceiling. “For snapping at you.”

A squeak from across the room indicated that Leo had shifted toward her. She looked over at him. The moonlight seeping in the barred window glinted on the dark bruise on his cheek. He’d gotten it for attempting to stop her from being taken to one of the labs for tests earlier in the day. She made him promise to stop lashing out when they took her, but he agreed only if she would also stop. Reluctantly, Skye agreed, not because she wanted to stop fighting when they took her, but so he wouldn’t get hurt because of her. She had already hurt so many people. The person she was falling in love with did not deserve to be on that long list.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Leo said. “I didn’t know what the best way was to tell you about Simmons. I’m not even sure if there is a best way.”

“No, not that,” sighed Skye, shaking her head. “Well, yeah maybe. I meant earlier than that though. Back at the hotel, after May and Coulson got out of Cybertek, when I yelled at you for defending Ward’s actions. We were all hurting, and I just…I didn’t…I was just a total bitch to you and I’m sorry.”

Skye brushed away the tears forming in her eyes and sniffed. “Maybe if I’d been more understanding like you and heard you out, then things would be different and you have gone down in that stupid med-pod and-“

A hand rested on top of hers. Leo was kneeling beside her bed. Skye sat up and scooted over, allowing him to sit next to her.

“Skye, it’s not you who should be apologizing for that,” he whispered, sitting beside her. “The truth about Ward was there, and I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want to accept it because I hadn’t seen it like you had. I wish I’d been more like you, and been able to accept reality. I should have listened to you, but I was too stubborn. I don’t…I couldn’t bear the thought of losing someone else…”

He stopped for a moment and swallowed before continuing. “Don’t you even try to take the blame for the med-pod. I was the one who put myself and Simmons in there, not you. You had no part in it. It was all me, okay?”

“Yeah.” Skye nodded and curled her knees to her chest. “Leo?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Why did it have to be the people who we cared about a lot about? Why did they have to be the ones who hurt us the most?”

His fingers curled with hers. Peering over, Skye noticed he was crying.

“If I knew,” he murmured. “I would tell you. But whatever reason it is, it’s not fair.”

One day later

Skye repeated the steps she knew it took to hack into the CIA in her head for the third time since they’d taken Leo away. She hated when it happened because she always wondered if he was coming back. Right now, he was all she had. The hope that the team was coming for them was slowly shrinking, and Skye was beginning to think that her father would experiment on them first. He wanted to turn Leo and her into his science experiments, and the very thought of it made her sick to her stomach. If only she could find someone else who could help her…

The sound of the door getting unlocked jolted her from her thoughts. Skye turned wearily toward the door. There were two possibilities of people who could be coming through. It was going to be Leo coming back, or someone else, like Simmons, coming to take her away. Whoever it was, she was ready for them. At least that was what she thought.

Raina stood in the doorway. She was wearing one of her flower dresses, but her feet were bare and she looked as though she’d run down to the cell. There was a look in her eyes that held joy and relief and fear. Skye had never seen her this way.

“Oh my god,” the girl in the flower dress murmured as she stepped inside. “It’s really you.”

Skye stood up, feeling months of bitterness toward Raina fill her soul with anger. “Of course you’d be here,” she snarled. “If it’s messed up and sick, then you’re always here.”

“No no no no, it isn’t like that,” Raina begged, coming forward. “It has never been like that. I can explain everything-“

“Explain?!” Skye gave a harsh laugh. “Explain what? Why you lured people into Centipede? Why you tortured Coulson? Whatever role you play in this sick game? Because I think I understand quite clearly what they are.”

Raina flinched with every accusation as though they were physical blows. “I know I’ve done a lot of horrible things, but I’m telling you, I regret every single one of them. That’s not why I’m here though.”

“Then for what!” Skye shouted. “To gloat? To mock? C’mon, tell me!”

“Tian Kong, please,” Raina pleaded. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

Skye froze at the mention of her real name. The only other person who had called her that was Darwin. The way Raina said her name was full of worry and concern and care, and Skye could see that she genuinely meant all of those emotions. “What did you call me?” she whispered, her breath tight.

Raina swallowed. “Tian Kong,” she said quietly, but firmly. “It’s your name. It means ‘sky’ in Chinese. Our mother, she would call you her precious sky. I was her little flower, Hua.”

All the air left Skye’s lungs in an instant, and she forgot how to inhale for a moment. It felt like Darwin had slapped her across the face again with his clawed hand. She couldn’t believe it was true. Sure, there were similarities between them, but sisters? Skye wasn’t ready to fully believe Raina yet. “How do I know you’re not trying to trick me?”

“On the back of your left heel, there’s a birthmark that looks like a crescent moon,” Raina told her. “Mom would say there was a moon on her sky. It made me laugh, and you giggled a lot at it.”

What she said was true. There was a birthmark on the back of her left heel in the same shape that Raina had described. Skye felt her arms drop limply to her sides. “You’re…you’re really my sister?”

Raina nodded her head. There were tears visible in her eyes as she stepped closer to Skye. Tentatively, she reached out and hugged her. The embrace was familiar, and Skye couldn’t stop herself from returning it.

“I’ve missed you so much, little sister,” murmured Raina. “He hasn’t done anything to you, has he?”

“You mean our father?” Skye felt Raina’s head nod. “No, they’ve just been testing me. How are you here? And alive?”

“What do you mean, alive?” Raina stepped back and frowned, crossing her arms.

“Darwin told me that my sister was gone, and he said it in a way that meant you were dead,” Skye explained. “But you’re not. You’re here and alive. So why would he say that?”

Raina’s hands clenched into fists. “Because he’s dead to me, and I’m pretty much the same to him. I learned what he did to me so I wouldn’t be afraid of him.”

“What did he do?” Skye asked, sitting back down on the cot. “To you, and to me. I want to hear the full story. It doesn’t matter how long or short it is. I have time, and clearly I’m not going anywhere.”

Raina nodded and sat down beside her. “Where do you want to start?”

She paused for a moment, thinking about all her options. “The beginning,” Skye decided. “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she replied.

“What do you mean by that?” Skye asked with a frown.

Raina pressed her lips together. “For the longest time, I had these large blank spaces in my memory,” she explained. “A few months ago, Darwin asked for people to investigate a clairvoyant at Centipede because he wanted to get him or her on his side. I volunteered, but he didn’t want me to go. In the end, I did convince him, and he let me go with a warning to stay in close contact with him. After a few weeks there, I was shown a machine that could bring back buried memories. I was curious, and convinced the inventor to try it on me. It worked, and I saw Darwin had been erasing memories of times when I had been scared of him, all so I would stay loyal to him. I saw almost everything I had forgotten.”

“Almost everything?” Skye raised her eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Raina’s eyes shifted downward. “Right when I hit a memory of Mom, one before you were born, everything stopped. The operator was dead at the controls. I’m pretty sure Darwin had someone else there to keep an eye on me, and I guess they decided to stop what was going on. They were a little too late though. But since then, things have been coming back in patches. They’re not all there-I still can’t piece together who Mom was yet-but I can get a good idea of the story.”

“Okay then,” Skye shivered a bit at the mental image in her mind. “So start from where you best remember. What’s our story?”

Her sister (Skye still was amazed that she and Raina were related) brushed a curl behind her ear and took a deep breath.

“Our father injected me with a serum he created. I think he did it when I was a few months old. I’ve got hazy memories of other injections around my second birthday, but I don’t know what they were for. His serum can give people miraculous abilities, so I assume that the other shots were to suppress any abilities I received from the original serum. I don’t know for sure though. But I remember I was ordered to never ever tell Mom. I never did, because Darwin always got really scary when he said this to me and I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

“The serum you mentioned,” Skye thought back to her meeting with her father days ago. “Is this his miracle serum? The one that he gives to restrained people and makes them suffer so they get powers?”

Raina’s eyes widened as she nodded. “Did he show someone getting it?”

“Yeah, some Hydra guy they captured. Silas Brigman was what they said his name was,” Skye could still hear his screams and remembered the tortured look in his eyes. “It gave him these really weird electrical powers. Our dad made me watch it, and I went into the lab when he and Simmons wouldn’t. I got him out of the chair, but I couldn’t stop the stuff from affecting him.”

“That’s the one,” her sister confirmed. “But back to the story. I was four when you were born. I was pretty much in love with you as a baby. You were so adorable and cute. I remember that I was always sneaking out of my room at night and going into yours to see you.” A wistful smile crossed her features. “Sometimes I fell asleep in there, and woke up in my own bed. I think Mom was the one who found me in your room and took me back to my own.”

The smile faded as she moved onto the next part. “Around that time, there was a lot of yelling that went on between Mom and Darwin. I don’t know what it was about, probably because I was too young to really listen or understand. But when I heard them arguing, it made me scared.”

“He told me that we were born with a disease, and it’s why he gave the serum to both of us” Skye told her. “Apparently our mother didn’t know he’d given it to us until after I was born. There were a lot of fights between them and, according to him, she abandoned us. Then he got a job in China and we moved.”

Raina shook her head. “The disease thing is a lie. I don’t know anything about what my health was like when I was born, but I’m sure we didn’t have a disease. It was just an excuse for him to give you the serum to see what would happen with you. The fights thing is true, but Mom never abandoned us. The night we left is one of the more stronger memories that I got from the machine. I was coloring in my room before supper. Mom wasn’t home yet because she was working again and she often came home late. Darwin came into my room and told me to get a bag and put in three things. One was the coloring book, another was a stuffed horse, and the third was this.”

She rested a finger on her necklace. “I’d been peeking in Mom’s jewelry box earlier that day, and being a curious toddler, grabbed the necklace to play dress-up with. Once I had everything, he told me to go get in the car while he went to get you. We left the house and ended up on a plane flying to someplace. It wasn’t China though. Between leaving home and going to China, there were a lot of other places we visited. They were all facilities like this one, and I can only guess that he was starting them up or checking in on them. The people in those places, they did all these tests on us. It was like going to the doctor’s office, only worse. I wanted to go home, and I told Darwin that. His response was that we were home. As long as the three of us were together, he told me, we were always home.”

“So how did I get separated from you?” Skye knit her brows in puzzlement. “What happened exactly?”

Raina bit her lip. “It was me…”

24 years ago, China

“Shush, you’re okay,” cooed Hua as she held her whimpering baby sister. She hadn’t been able to sleep in the room with all the empty beds that Daddy had called ‘the children’s ward’, so she had set out to find her little sister. It had been a while since she had seen Tian Kong, let alone played with her, and she really wanted to see her again. She’d found her way into a room with a lot of empty cribs. Tian Kong was in one of them, crying all alone. Hua had taken her out of the crib, holding her the way Mama had taught her, and sat down in the corner with her.

Tian Kong was still crying though, but at least it wasn’t as loud as before. Hua wasn’t sure what to do, so she started to sing the lullaby Mama sung to them at night. She wet her lips and began to sing. “Rest your head, sweet baby…Close your eyes, little darling…”

Tian Kong began to quiet down, and at the end of the song, she was making quiet happy noises. Hua smiled down at her little sister and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

A bright light suddenly shined over her. “What do we have here?”

Hua curled Tian Kong close to her chest, and looked away from the light. It wasn’t Daddy, so she probably wasn’t in trouble. Yet. But she shouldn’t have been down here.

The light lowered, and Hua peeked up. She could see a man in a white lab coat holding a flashlight. He had a kind face. “What’s your name?”

“Hua,” she whispered.

The man nodded and pointed to Tian Kong. “Is this your sister?”

“Her name is Tian Kong,” Hua said with a nod. “Please don’t tell Daddy I’m here.”

“Did your daddy bring you here?”

“Uh-huh,” she replied meekly, holding her sister, who was beginning to get sleepy, a little closer. “But I don’t like it here. The doctors always see me every day and they poke me with needles an’ it smells funny in there an’ I’m scared. I wanna go home. I wanna see Mama.”

Thinking about her mother made her feel sad. Hua began to sniffle a little, even though she was getting to be a big girl and big girls didn’t cry. But the man shuffled forward and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Do you want to go home?”

At the mention of home, Hua nodded vigorously.

The man smiled at her. “I know some nice people who can look after you for a while until some other people can come to take you home,” he told her gently. “If you come with me, I can take you away from here to meet them. I promise that they are good, and will look after you for a few days. Then I will come back with my other friends, and we will get you back home.”

Going home. Seeing Mama and hugging her and telling her how much she had missed her. Hua liked the sound of it. Lately, Daddy was scaring her, and she didn’t like to be scared. She wanted to go back home to her house, her room, her other stuffed animals, and everything else that she liked. Especially Mama…

‘Always look after your little sister Hua. You’re older than her, and she’s very young right now. If something happens, then you need to protect her, okay? Both of you need to look after each other.’

Mama had told her that when Tian Kong first came home. She told her to always be there for her little sister, and to make sure she was safe. Hua made sure that her little sister was okay-that’s why she was always running into her room at night. She wanted to make sure her sister was okay like Mama said. But Hua realized the man had said nothing about her baby sister.

“What about Tian Kong?” she whispered. “She’s gonna come with me, right?”

The man’s smile faded, and he looked sadder now. “I can’t take you both,” he explained. “I’m sorry, but it’s risky enough to take one of you out already. I can take you to the people now, and then bring your sister later.”

Always look after you sister.

If something happens, then you need to protect her.

Hua swallowed and made her decision.

“You hafta take her,” the little girl said. “I need to look after my little sister. She’s gotta be safe before me.”

He looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

Hua nodded, and looked down at her baby sister. Tian Kong seemed to be asleep now. She leaned forward and kissed the baby’s forehead. “Love you,” she murmured. “You’re gonna go home soon.”

“It’ll be okay,” the man reassured her, holding out his arms. “May I?”

Wordlessly, Hua passed Tian Kong into his arms and stared up at him. She took a deep breath. “She’ll be safe?”

“Yes,” he replied. “She will. She’ll get home, and so will you. Now go on back to bed and get some rest. I’ll come back for you in a few days.”

Hua nodded and scurried toward the door. She took one last look at the man and her sister before running back to the big empty room.

“He never came back though,” Raina continued, her voice a little bitter. “The next morning, Darwin was furious when he found you were missing. He didn’t know that I had given you to the man, and I’m glad he had no clue. But he was screaming about how there was a lab assistant missing and that he had kidnapped you. After that, he disappeared for a few days. When he came back, he was covered in blood, and I was scared. All he would say was that you were dead. I threw a fit, screaming that he was a liar, that it wasn’t true, that I hated him. That’s when he first erased my memories. Until I went to Centipede, I didn’t remember you or Mom or anything that had happened in the first four years of my life. I grew up believing that Darwin was the greatest man ever, and I let myself grow up in blind ignorance to what he was really doing.”

“That could have been me,” murmured Skye. Finding out Raina was her sister was one thing.  But to learn that she had grown up away from their sadistic father because of her was another thing. Her life in the foster system might have sucked, but it seemed preferable to growing up with Darwin. “You could have gone, but you let me go instead.”

“Mom told me to always look out for you,” her sister replied. “Although I’ve done a terrible job at it. But I’m going to fix that. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” Skye looked at her curiously. If there was one thing she knew about Raina, it was that she was prepared.

“Do you remember how I was busted out of the Fridge and ended up with Hydra for a while?” Raina asked her.

Skye bobbed her head in response, and Raina continued. “I still have a link to their communications network. A few weeks ago, a Hydra team got too close to this base, thinking it was a secret SHIELD facility. Darwin had them captured, and has been experimenting on them since them. One of them, Brigman, the one you mentioned earlier, is apparently a valuable member of Hydra. Over the communications, I’ve heard them blaming SHIELD because they don’t know about Darwin.”

“So that’s why Hydra’s been popping up more frequently during SHIELD ops,” Skye realized. “So what does the Hydra communications network have to do with getting out?”

“I can send a message to Hydra through on a channel that Brigman is being held here, along with the other Hydra agents,” Raina explained. “Hopefully, it’ll be enough to create a nearby mobilization to attack the base. Brigman’s an asset to them, and I’m sure they’ll have some firepower. With the chaos going on, you and I can get out of here.”

“Just you and me?” Skye shook her head. “No, we need to bring Leo.”

“Leo?” Raina raised her eyebrow.

“He was kidnapped with me by Simmons,” Skye told her. “He’s my friend, and I can’t leave him behind with Simmons or our father.”

“Okay, we can bring him then,” Raina agreed, although she sounded slightly reluctant. “Look, I don’t know how much time I have left, but I need to get out soon. No one can know that I’ve been here. Not even your friend. Just tell him to be ready in two days, okay?”

Skye murmured in agreement and stood up alongside Raina. She hugged her sister tight. “Please come back.”

Raina hugged her back. “I will, Tian Kong,” she promised as she stepped back toward the door. “Just hold on for two more days, okay?”

Skye nodded, and her sister left the room. As the door closed, she lowered herself back onto her cot. She rubbed her eyes, and was surprised when her hands came away wet. All her life, Skye had just thought the only family she had out in the world were her unknown parents. She’d never even dreamed of having a sister. Now, finding out that she had an older one, and that Raina had prevented her from growing up with her insane father, it felt amazing. And she was going to help her and Leo get out of this terrible place.

The door opened, and Leo tumbled in. He looked pale and horrified, as if he had just seen a ghost. But concern added to his features when he saw her. “Are you okay?”

Skye nodded, wiped her eyes, and smiled. She wanted to desperately tell Leo that Raina was Hua, that she was her older sister, that she was good, but she couldn’t break her promise. If she wanted to escape with Leo, and she did, then she couldn’t tell him everything.

“My sister’s alive.”

Leo’s jaw dropped.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Mobilization

“I hope you’re ready for a world of hurt,” Lance Hunter stated, grinning. “Because I’m not going to be going easy on you.”

His opponent on the other side of the table narrowed his eyes. “Bring it.”

“You sure you don’t want to just give up now.”

Idaho lowered his paddle. “For God’s sake Hunter, it’s just a game of ping pong, not an interrogation.”

“I’m a competitive person,” Lance replied with a shrug, serving the ball. On the sidelines, Mack’s eyes darted back and forth, following the ball and volley between the two mercenaries.

Finally, Idaho couldn’t move to the other side of the table fast enough, and the ball clattered off the table. “Dang it!”

“Game point to him,” Mack rumbled, jerking his head toward Lance. “Good job.”

“That’s the fourth straight game you’ve won,” Idaho grumbled, putting the paddle back down on the table. “I don’t get it.”

Mack shrugged. “You only lost by five points this time. The first round you scored once. I’d say you’re getting better.”

“Or perhaps you just suck at the game, and are destined to lose,” Lance gloated with a smug smile.

His companions glared at him. “Has anyone ever told you how much of an asshole you can be, Hunter?” Idaho asked.

Lance pretended to consider it for a moment. “Well, I can recall you calling me that. Izzy’s called me that, Mack’s told me that, my ex-wife, a bunch of other people too. But I don’t recall an ‘anyone’ calling me an asshole.”

Idaho groaned and covered his face with his hand. “Why do I even try?”

Mack opened his mouth to say something, but closed it as Trip entered the room. The three newcomers of the base all turned to look at him. Lance had only spent a few days here, but he got along with Trip fine. He seemed a little sad, although that was explainable. One was bound to be like that if their friends vanished with little clues about their disappearance.

“Hartley and Blake are in the med wing,” he announced. “We had a visitor come in.”

“Anyone we know?” Lance asked him.

Trip just gave him a sly smirk. “Hartley said not to tell you.”

Mack and Idaho looked at him for an explanations, but he shrugged. He was as clueless as them, and followed after Trip so he could find out.

When they arrived at the medical wing, Agents Blake and Koenig were standing off to the side of Izzy, talking quietly with her about something. As soon as the party entered, they trailed off and turned to them. Izzy was standing beside one of the table, half-facing toward them. She was pulling something from the shoulder of a blonde woman seated on the table. As she lowered the tweezers to a small dish, Lance spotted a fragment of a bullet and heard the clink of metal.

“You’re all good now,” Hartley said, putting the tweezers down.

“Thanks.” The blonde turned around as she said this, and Lance found his ex-wife looking at him with a smirk.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Trip had to try harder than he expected not to grin at Hunter’s shock. A look over at Idaho and Mack confirmed he wasn’t alone in this endeavor. Hartley wasn’t kidding when she said that keeping Bobbi Morse’s presence a secret would be rewarded through Hunter’s reaction.

Bobbi grinned. “Nice to see you too,” she replied cheekily. “Hey, Idaho and Mack are here too. How’s it going?”

“Not too bad,” Mack said as he and Idaho walked past Hunter toward her. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing mu-agh!” Idaho stepped back from the hug he had just given her. Bobbi grimaced. “Not the shoulder right now. Getting shot makes things hurt for a while. After SHIELD fell, I managed to find a nice little job spying on Hydra running security. Or at least I had one.”

“So you’ll answer him and not me?” Lance grumbled, crossing his arms.

“Well, he asked me a lot nicer than you did,” Bobbi fired back. “But before I went to Hydra, I’d been hanging around here for a few months. I got to know Coulson and his team, and spent a lot of time talking to them via encrypted video chats. Speaking of which, do you know where they are, Trip?”

All eyes turned to him, and Trip found himself staring down at Mack’s boots. Bobbi had gotten close to the three missing agents. He didn’t know how to tell her that May and Coulson had gone to free Grant Ward, or that Skye, Fitz, and Simmons had been kidnapped, possibly by Skye’s father.

“Trip?” Bobbi pressed, her eyes narrowing. “Hello?”

“Coulson and May should be back shortly, although you’re going to have to explain to them why your cover was blown,” Hartley cut in, winking at Trip. She seemed to understand the inner turmoil that he was facing.

“I expected I’d have too,” Bobbi admitted. “Although I’d love to know more details about it. What about the others?”

Trip took a deep breath and looked at Bobbi. “Something happened about a week ago.”

“Trip…” Bobbi’s gaze grew dark. “What. Happened.”

“We don’t know,” Trip told her, shaking his head. “Coulson, May, and I went out to bring them here,” He pointed to Hartley, Hunter, Mack, Idaho, and Blake. “Koenig called us on the way back. He’d been knocked out by someone, and when he came to, Skye, Fitz, and Simmons were gone.”

Bobbi blinked and stared down at her lap. She looked miserable now. An uncomfortable silence settled over the group until Idaho cleared his throat.

“You said your cover was blown. What happened?”

Bobbi sighed. “Everything was going fine up until two days ago. Every screen in Hydra just lit up with a picture of me holding a SHIELD file that Simmons dropped off for me a few weeks ago. It looked like it was taken from outside my apartment. I’m not entirely sure how they even got it. I checked the area after Simmons left before opening the file, and it was clear. But as soon as that picture hit the screens, everyone turned on me. With all the guns going off at me, I’m lucky I only got hit in the shoulder. The last two days were spent running and faking my death to get them off my trail. Once they thought I was dead, I contacted you guys and got here.”

“And we’re glad you did,” Coulson said as he entered the room. May followed behind him with Ward standing quietly at her side.

Grant Ward knew the moment that he left prison that his return to Coulson and SHIELD wouldn’t be smooth, and it would take a lot for him to even get close to redemption. This became even more evident when six guns were suddenly drawn out and pointed at him, and that was counting the blonde woman’s unsteady grip. Still, he raised his arms over his head.

“Stand down,” ordered Coulson. “He’s here to help us.”

“Help us?” A man with a British accent drawled. “This was the guy who you told us double-crossed your team. You put him in prison. Why is he here?”

“Because he can help, and he’s in this too. Someone working for the Doctor attacked him a few months ago,” Agent Hartley snapped. “Now put away your gun, Hunter. All of you, just put them away.”

The British man, Hunter, scowled, but put his gun away. The injured woman quickly set her gun on the table and clutched her shoulder with a wince. Two men who Grant had never seen before lowered theirs, but their eyes were full of distrust toward him. Agent Blake (who looked better than the last time Grant has seen him) and a man who looked exactly like Eric Koenig followed. A wave of guilt smothered Grant as the man who looked like Koenig gave him a murderous look, and he looked away, ashamed. Trip was in his new line of sight, leaning against the wall causally. Grant nodded at the other specialist. “Trip.”

The other specialist gave him a cold nod. He still held a lot against him still, and Grant didn’t blame him. If their roles were reversed, he would be acting the same way.

“Izzy, did you mention the Doctor?” the blonde woman asked, a concerned expression crossing her face.

Everyone turned to look Grant. Coulson gave him an expectant look.

“A few months after I was put in prison, I was attacked at night in my cell,” he explained to them. “The attacker stabbed me twice and pretty much left me for dead. But as they left, I asked them who sent them. The response I got was the Doctor.”

“Who may be Skye’s father,” Coulson added. “Does Hydra have anything on him, Bobbi?”

Bobbi. This had to be Bobbi Morse. Grant remembered hearing about her during his time undercover in SHIELD. She was up high on the list of agents to never piss off, right up there with May and Romanoff.

“Sort of,” Bobbi said. “We don’t know too much about him.”

“But what do you know?” Blake crossed his arms, waiting for her to answer.

“About a month ago, Hydra got a hold of satellite pictures of a building built into the side of the Altai Mountains in Mongolia. It was suspected to be a secret SHIELD facility. A team of six went out, led by Silas Brigman. Brigman’s a straight cut Hydra agent, big name for them. People pay attention to his movements, and when the entire team went missing less than a mile outside where the base was located. Originally, the theory was that SHIELD got them.”

“But there’s no one stationed in Mongolia, right?” Blake looked at Coulson for confirmation.

Coulson shook his head. “None that I’m aware of. SHIELD never even set up in Mongolia. Has there been anything to suggest someone else.”

“A body,” Bobbi answered shortly. “Last week, another team was sent out to investigate the missing party. Three miles away from the last reported location, they found the body of a Hydra agent who had been on the team. Layla Miller, combat specialist and linguist. She’d been dead for three hours. They didn’t find anyone else.”

“How do you get the Doctor out of this then?” Hunter asked her.

“I’m getting there,” she snapped, reaching for a jacket lying nearby. Hartley handed it to her, and Bobbi drew out a packet of papers. She passed them to Coulson, who began to flip through them. When he reached the second page, his eyes widened. “Someone did this to her?”

“Did what?” rumbled a tall African-American man who Grant didn’t know.

“Did this, Mack.”  Coulson held up a photograph in response. Everybody gasped at the image of a young woman with writing all over her skin. Grant shuddered at the grisly horror of it.

“That’s the interesting part about all this. She did it to herself,” Bobbi said. “It’s not tattooed on her skin or even written with a Sharpie. They did an autopsy on the body. Her blood was different from the records they had of her. It was still Layla Miller, but something chemical had gotten into her blood. It might have killed her, but it also changed her cells in a way that a message could be displayed on her skin naturally.”

“That’s freaky,” the man beside Hunter and Mack said, cringing a little as Coulson looked at the photograph a little closer

“The Doctor took us, the Doctor did this, the Doctor took…it’s the same thing over and over again,” Coulson murmured. “You say the body was found last week?”

Bobbi nodded. “Before I was compromised, Hydra was preparing a plan to mobilize an offensive to take the base. They want Brigman back, and figure that something secret’s being held there too, which they also want.”

“So if the Doctor you’re talking about and the one in his story-“ Trip jerked his head at Grant. “-are the same one, then Skye, Fitz, and Simmons are in Mongolia?”

“Then we’re going to have to get there before Hydra,” May said, speaking for the first time. There was something in her expression that was different, but Grant couldn’t place it. “FitzSimmons are assets, and they’ll try to use them. But I don’t know they’ll think of Skye though. If they try to brainwash her…”

May trailed off. Clearly, she’d grown quite protective of his former rookie. Grant made a mental note to keep an eye on her. Something wasn’t quite right. May was hiding something.

Coulson turned to her. “How soon can we get the Bus in the air?”

“Twenty minutes,” May responded and Coulson nodded, turning back to everyone else.

“Get enough gear ready and load onto the Bus,” he instructed. “Time’s ticking down on this one. Every minute we don’t move is only going to help Hydra.”

“So what are we going to do then?” Hunter asked, sounding a bit rude. He got an elbow from Hartley for it.

Coulson fixed him with a stony look. “We’re going to Mongolia, and we’re going get them out.”

Grant watched Hunter scramble off to get something, and looked back at Coulson. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, following the director out of the room.

“You’re coming too,” Coulson told him. “You said you wanted to help us find them.”

“I did.”

“So go find Trip and get on the Bus.”

As she entered the cockpit, Melinda May reached onto the shelf nearby her pilot’s chair to grab her aviators. She was secretly thrilled that they might have found Skye. When they got her and FitzSimmons back, Melinda planned to tell her everything. The secret had been kept for so long, and it was time Skye needed to know that truth about-

Something dropped to the floor when she pulled out the aviators. Frowning, Melinda bent down to examine it. A chill went down her back when she saw it was an origami flower, folded from sky blue paper. It was just a coincidence, but it still unnerved her and brought back old, painful memories.

There was something black on one tip of the flower. Closer examination revealed it to be a pen stroke of a letter. Undoing the creases and folds, Melinda worked rapidly, curious to see what was inside. Finally, she held a sheet of sky blue paper with fold marks with a message written in black ink.

Nothing escapes me, Melinda. Haven’t you learned that?

Melinda brought a trembling hand over her mouth as she read the message over and over again. She knew that handwriting. That flower was no coincidence. Bahrain suddenly came crashing back to her. She thought he was dead-she’d narrowly escaped after bringing the building down on both of them. For a long time, she believed that what went down in Bahrain had done nothing to avenge her daughters’ deaths. Now, the effort appeared to have been committed in vain this entire time, because the note meant one thing.

Edwin was back.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: The Escape Begins

“She’s here!” Skye whispered in excitement at the sound of keys jangling outside of their sell.

            Leo sat up on the cot, rubbing a hand over his eyes. For the past two days, they hadn’t been taken anywhere at all, which made him uneasy. He knew he was slated to be injected with the serum Skye had told him about, but Leo hadn’t told her this. Even though it had been two days since Simmons had revealed to him that he hadn’t woken up from the coma on his own, Leo was still reeling in shock from it. Since the day he’s woken up, he’d been proud that he had survived, but also grateful as well. Now it felt false and another thing he thought was stable in his life was crashing down. At this rate, he was going to be a broken man with nothing to live for in a matter of weeks.

“This is your sister, right?” he mumbled, swinging his legs over to the floor and standing up. Skye hadn’t said very much regarding her sister, but she had told him that she would explain it all later. What she had told him was that her sister was alive, and that she was going to get them out of here.

            The cell door opened up, and four people entered. One of them was Simmons, and the other three had clearly been injected with the serum. Leo recognized the lady with cat-eyes, who stood by a guy whose face and arms were covered in black spikes. He also remembered the third person, a tall, buff man with icy white eyes that had a glazed expression, as the one who had shocked him using his bare hands when he refused to answer Cat-Eyes’s question.

Skye gaped at the man with white eyes. “Brigman?”

Leo looked at her. “You know him?”

“He’s the one that I saw Simmons and Darwin give the serum to,” Skye explained, moving over to him. “Brigman!”

As she drew closer, Brigman turned and shoved her to the side. The force of this action made Skye slid over beside Leo. He bent down to help her up, but she’d already risen to her feet.

“Brigman, it’s me,” Skye pleaded the man. “Don’t you remember?”

“I’m afraid Agent Brigman isn’t going to pay any attention to you,” drawled Simmons. “And I know he won’t be helping you at all.”

“You…,” Skye hissed angrily. “What else did you do to him?”

“Brigman was uncooperative, and we simply made him cooperate with us,” Simmons told them, smiling loftily.

Leo sucked in a gasp as he understood the implication of her words. “You brainwashed him.”

“That’s another term for it,” Simmons replied. “But basically he obeys us now. All thoughts of resistance are gone. He’s the perfect soldier.”

“So that’s why you came down here with your little gang?” Skye snarled. “To show us how you brainwashed a man to serve Darwin, you, and all your other sick friends?”

Simmons shook her head. “That was an unexpected bonus, but not why we’ve come. See, we’re here for Fitz. You got moved up two days earlier.”

A shiver ran down Leo’s back as his eyes met hers. He knew what she was talking about. They were going to give him the serum. He was going to change. He was going to become…something else.

Cat-Eyes and the man with spikes yanked him to his feet as Skye’s eyes widened in understanding.

“No!” Skye cried out. “Let go of him.”

“Skye!” Leo lunged forward against the grip of the people holding him back. “Skye, you need to find a way out! There’s no hope for me. You need to listen-”

“No, you’re not going anywhere!”

Leo watched as Skye whirled toward Simmons. He knew what she was going to do by the murderous rage that was blazing in her eyes. She charged toward Simmons, preparing to attack the biochemist. Before she could strike, Brigman stepped in front and raised his hand. Leo’s eyes widened as he saw electricity crackling at the tips of his fingers. As Skye ran into him, he held onto her shoulder. A pained scream issued from her mouth as she fell to her knees. After a few seconds, Simmons gave him a nod, and Brigman kicked Skye across the floor.

“Noooo!”

Leo broke free of the two gifted holding him and ran over to Skye. A sigh of relief fell from his lips as he saw she was still conscious, although she looked worn out. He helped her sit up just as she grabbed his arm. “Leo…”

“Skye,” he murmured gently. “There’s no saving me from this. You have to let me go.”

She shook her head vigorously. “You can’t do this, Leo.”

 “I don’t want to, believe me, I don’t,” he admitted, brushed a strand of her hair to the side. “But no matter what, they’ll do this anyway. I need you to do something though.”

Skye gazed at him, tears streaking clean lines down her dirty face. Leo swallowed. “You have to get out of here. When the team comes, you get out of here. If they don’t come, you get out of here. Forget about me. You have a better chance of getting out of here as yourself than I do. But whatever happens, you tell the team. You tell them everything that has happened.”

Skye leaned forward and hugged him fiercely. Leo returned the embrace, well aware that this could be the last time he ever saw her.

“Alright, that’s enough for goodbyes,” Simmons’s voice cut in as Leo felt himself be pulled away from Skye.

            As he was taken out of the cell, he looked back one last time at Skye. She was crying silent tears, and seeing them felt like a punch to the chest. Then the door slammed shut, and Leo found himself staring at its cold steel. He closed his eyes, feeling something wet trickle from his eye down his cheek.

“Good-bye, Skye.”

“Everybody in position?” Blake’s voice crackled out over the comms.

Melinda looked over at Izzy, who nodded. “Unit one in position.”

“Unit two in position,” Phil called in.

“Unit three in position too,” reported Bobbi. “Looks like they brought the big guns.”

“How big we talking?” Trip, who was on Phil’s team, asked.

“Try a launcher with enough firepower to blow plenty of holes in the building to make it look like cheese.”

“You wanted to see me?” Jemma asked as she stepped into the surveillance room. Darwin was facing away from her and towards a monitor in the front.

“Agent Simmons,” Darwin said, turning and smiling at her. “Take a look at the screen, and tell me what you see.”

She nodded, and obeyed calmly. Her eyes widened.

“No!” Jemma muttered, her brow furrowing. “They shouldn’t be here!”

“I’m afraid they are,” lamented Darwin as Jemma continued to stare at the grainy feed of one of the tree-cams that showed Agent May with another woman in tactical gear. “There’s an entire SHIELD team lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike.”

“But I covered my tracks! I know I did! How are they here?!” Jemma shook her head in disbelief. This wasn’t supposed to happen at all! Had the rest of SHIELD found out that she wasn’t on their side?

“I know you did, Agent Simmons. And I don’t think they found this place because of you,” Darwin handed her a tablet with a picture of a blonde woman. “Meet Barbara Morse, agent of SHIELD, and former security manager of Hydra.”

Despite her current panic, Jemma had to smile. “Looks like Hydra received my little gift of the photo of her after all. I’m surprised she’s still alive. I thought they would have killed her on sight.”

“Morse’s time undercover at Hydra allowed her to access a lot of their cases, including,” Darwin paused. “The disappearance of Silas Brigman and his team.”

“Hydra’s here too, aren’t they?”

            Darwin nodded, tapping his own tablet. On the screen in front of them, a new series of feeds appeared, all showing Hydra agents decked out in full tactical gear. Jemma’s eyes fell on the bottom corner feed, and her smile fell at the sight of the rocket launcher. A set of calculations in her head determined that it could easily blow a hole in the side of the building and bring in a wave of invaders.

“You’re smart, Agent Simmons,” Darwin told her. “You can figure out that Hydra can take out a wall, get in, and ransack us. We were able to stop Brigman and his team. But this time, we’ll need to abandon the base and move to another. Start getting people prepared for evacuation.”

“Evacuation?” Jemma frowned as she continued to work out his cryptic speech. “Sir, surely we can stop them.”

“Oh, we could,” replied Darwin, his voice calm and collected. “But soon enough, SHIELD and Hydra are going to cross paths. Two powers who despise each other with a burning passion and feel a need to crush the other into obliteration. I’d rather our people get out and avoid the carnage that’s coming. Let them fight and battle and destroy each other.”

Jemma nodded slowly as a new worry creeped into her mind. If she was helping with evacuation, then the chance she would be spotted by the team increased. They were currently under the assumption that she had been kidnapped, and she wanted it to stay that way for as long as possible. “What happens if SHIELD somehow gets through and sees me?”

Darwin turned to her and smiled. “Prepare to go back undercover, Agent Simmons.”

“Where have you been?” Skye demanded as Raina entered her cell. “You said two days. I waited all day, and now it’s probably almost tomorrow.”

“I had to set some things up,” her sister explained, tossing her a backpack. “Get dressed as quick as you can. We need all the time we can get.”

            Skye nodded and unzipped it, pulling out a bundle of dark clothes. A tiny moan escaped her as she replaced her dirty, torn shirt with the clean one in the bag. Bathing hadn’t been offered at all, and even though she was in desperate need of a shower, clean clothes were still amazing. It was a refreshing change that she never realized how much she needed.

            Raina waited beside the door patiently, although she kept a constant lookout. For once, she was not wearing one of her flower dresses. Instead, her outfit consisted of dark jeans, sneakers, a black t-shirt, and a dark zip-up hoodie. Her hair was tied back from her face in a small, slightly bulky braid. There was a bag slung over her shoulder, and another was held in her hand. Skye hurried to put on her new clothes, which were darker and less likely to stand out than her grimy violet shirt. The new clothes were similar to Raina’s, except the shirt was more of an olive color.

“I thought you told me there was someone else with you,” Skye heard Raina ask. “Where are they?”

            Skye stopped midway through zipping up the hoodie. It had been maybe seven or so minutes since she’d last seen Leo. She knew that he had told her to leave him behind. While her brain told her to obey his request and just get the heck out, her heart urged her to think otherwise. Since he’d woken up, Leo had become closer to her. They’d trained together under their SOs, and she’d come to know him better. Leo was her best friend, her partner in the field and pranking. Maybe even something a little more than a friend, if she could work out her feelings.

“They took him,” Skye answered, turning to look at her sister. “They took Leo to the labs to give him that serum. Raina, we have to go get him out.”

“I don’t know if we could get to him in time,” Raina whispered. “We need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“No, we have to try,” Skye snapped, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. “What’s the plan you made to get us out of here?”

“We’re going to need a distraction to keep Hydra occupied so they don’t spot us as they go through here,” explained Raina as they left the cell and ran down the hall to the elevators. “You’re apparently on their kill list, and I am too.”

“So what do we do to prevent them from crossing us off?”

“We’re going to open up every cell and free everybody inside them.”

            Skye nodded as the doors to the elevator opened up. As she took a step forward, she was thrown forward by the base shaking. A loud, muffled boom made her swallow as the doors closed and the elevator began to rise.

“Hydra just fired on the base,” Coulson’s voice said over the comms. “They’re preparing to move in. All teams follow, go go go.”

            Grant looked up at Blake and Mack as Coulson’s message came through. He’d been ordered to stay on the Bus with them keeping an eye on him while everyone else was going in to raid the base. Neither of them had spoken a word to them when he tried to make conversation, unless he asked a question that was related to the mission. No one he’d been with since he had been released had even talked to him except for Coulson. Grant didn’t blame them for their silent treatment, and he understood their reasoning. Still, he felt lonely and useless.

            As he stared down at the map on the table in the mission room that showed the team’s trackers slowly converging toward the mysterious building, Grant hoped that they would find Skye and Fitz quickly. He also hoped that they would be able to see Simmons’s dark side in action. Until he saw the pictured of the dead woman with her thoughts written on her skin, Grant had believed Simmons’s organization to be just a bunch of power mad people. But now he could see that it was deeper and darker than his initial thoughts.

            When the explosion hit, Leo had just been strapped to the messed-up dentist’s chair. The force of it ripped the chair from its base and sent it tumbling to the side. A few chunks of the ceiling above him dropped to the floor, but they all missed him. He couldn’t hear any sign of the two scientists who had been preparing the serum to give to him. If they were still alive, then he needed to get out fast.

            Leo blinked his eyes a few times and studied his surroundings. Many scientific and medical instruments had fallen off the counter, and a cart had tipped over beside him. There was a scalpel close to his right hand, but he couldn’t reach it. He could barely brush his finger against it. If he wanted to get out, then a new plan was needed to break out of the restraints.

            An idea hit him as he thought back to a memory of May breaking out restraint so long ago, and he knew what he needed to do. Sucking in a breath, Leo jerked his wrist to the side as hard as he could. The awful noise, along with the intense pain that followed, made him scream and almost blackout. Regaining a little control over himself, he began to slowly wriggle his dislocated wrist from the restraint. It was one of his stupidest ideas, but it was working.

            The environment around him was a mess. He could see chunks of the ceiling that had cracked tiles on the floor and the clouds of dust that had risen up from them. In the distance, there were shouts of ‘attack’, ‘evacuation’, and ‘Hydra’. All of those, especially the last one, motivated him to move faster. He now had the chance to get out, to go back to Skye. Together, they could leave, run to SHIELD, and warn Coulson about Simmons. His former friend could not be permitted to escape unpunished. She had to be brought to justice for her actions.

            His wrist slipped free of the strap, and Leo quickly jerked it back into place using the floor. A gasp of relief fell out of his lips before he turned his attention to unbuckling the strap on his other arm and the one across his waist. Tumbling to the ground, Leo grabbed the scalpel and jumped to his feet, scanning the room to evaluate the rest of the damage. The wall of what must have been an observation room had fallen inward, and he could see an arm lying under the rubble. It was holding one of the 'evil Night-Night guns', as he’d come to call them. He tried not to vomit.

            Something buzzed behind him, and Leo whirled around, narrowly dodging the other scientist, who was armed with a Taser. Using a disarming move that Skye had once taught him, he relieved her of it and aimed it at her. One press of the button on the side, and the woman fell to the ground shrieking. After a few seconds, Leo took his fingers off it and examined her. She was unconscious, leaving nothing to stand in his way. Now he just needed to find Skye.

“Oh Fitz.”

            Stiffening, Leo turned around to see Simmons standing in the doorway. Her clothes were different from earlier, but the torn and dirty appearance of them set off alarm bells. Not to mention that her hair was unkempt and there were streaks of dirt across her face. Maybe she’d been caught in some nasty scuffle with Hydra, but knowing how she really was, there was a darker reason. He aimed the Taser at her, but it sputtered weakly. The last of its charge must have gone into the scientist he took down.

“You could have done so much for us,” Simmons murmured, pulling out a gun. “But you’re too dangerous now. I’ve got orders. Sorry Fitz, but you need to be…erased.”

As she raised the gun, Leo flung the scalpel at her, knocking the gun out of her hands. She stumbled back against the wall, and Leo threw another scalpel at her sleeve, pinning it to the wall. He was about to run when she swung her leg up and drove it into his chest. The kick sent him sprawling while giving her enough to time to wrench the blade out of her sleeve.

“You want a fight, huh?” she said, laughing a little. “Fine by me. Either way, it’s your funeral.”

“WHERE IS HE!” Skye demanded, slamming the guy with black spikes covering him against the wall and leaning in close. “Where did you take the guy who was with me?”

“Not. Telling.”

“If you don’t tell her right now,” Raina said slowly as she punched four numbers into a keypad close to them. “I will press this last number and release everyone who has been imprisoned in this hellhole. Darwin’s made a lot of enemies, you know. I’m sure many of them wouldn’t hesitate to tear one of his followers apart for what you’ve done to them.”

“Go ahead and do it then,” The guy taunted, smiling. Skye figured he couldn’t have been older than nineteen. It was sickening to think about how many people her father had twisted the thoughts of and turned into people with gifts. Now she wondered how young he was getting them at.

As she turned toward Raina to tell her to go and press it, her eyes settled on the keypad. Something surged through her as she looked at it, and a bad feeling came over her. The code Raina had keyed in was wrong. It had been the right code an hour ago, but the code had been changed since then.

“Don’t press it!” she cried out. “It’s the wrong code, it changed!”

“No, this is the code,” Raina protested. “I saw it earlier two hours ago, and it’s changed every week. There’s not supposed to be a new one for four more days!”

“Well they changed it earlier,” Skye told her sister. “It’s not 11295. It’s 13512!”

Raina cocked her head and frowned. “How do you know what it is now? How do you know they changed it?”

“I don’t know how I know it, but I know it’s changed because Spiky here isn’t breaking a sweat at the prisoners breaking out.” Skye gave the guy a shake. “Type it in. Now.”

Raina nodded quickly, her fingers moving to clear the old code and type in the new one.

1351-

“LAB SEVENTEEN!” Spiky shouted, now panicking. “He’s in Lab Seventeen! Don’t do it. Please, I’m begging you!”

-2

            All the steel doors swung open as Raina pressed the enter button. A moment later, people began to emerge from them. Some looked normal, and others had features that ranging from odd to borderline monsterous. Skye hauled Spiky off the wall and threw him down the hall. A small grinding noise came from his spikes grating against the floor as he slid out into the middle of the hallway. Raina grabbed her hand, and the two sisters ran back to the elevator as angry shouts went up and mixed with Spiky’s screams.

“We need to get to floor 91,” Raina told her, pressing the button and leaning back against the handrail as the doors closed. “How did you do that?”

“I just could tell something was up. He wasn’t even worried when you first typed in the code-”

“No, not that,” Raina shook her head. “The code. How did you know it?”

“I…I don’t know,” Skye murmured. “It just came to me when I looked at the keypad.”

            Before Raina could ask her anything else, the doors opened onto the ninety-first floor. Skye stepped out and felt the cool night air on her back. She turned around and gasped at the large space fifty feet from her that used to have a floor. Something orange glowed in the distance, growing closer toward them.

Skye’s eye widened, and she pushed Raina back. “GET DOWN!”

            They ran away from the hole and dove to the ground moments before the missile struck. Skye felt the entire floor shake, and covered her head to protect herself from falling debris. She peered out around her through the cracks in her fingers. The hole was now larger, and dangerously close to the elevator. Small fires were burning all around them, and the entire scene felt more nightmarish.

A hand grasped hers, and Raina hauled her to her feet.

“We need to leave now!” She shouted as explosions and gunshots sounded out below them. “I’m sorry, Tian Kong. We can’t get to your friend. We have to go.”

“No, I can’t,” Skye said, shaking her head vigorously. “I can’t leave Leo. I won’t do it. You go ahead, and we’ll catch up. We’ll find another way to get out.”

“I lost you for twenty-four years,” cried Raina angrily. “I am not leaving without you!”

“And I’m not leaving with Leo!” Skye yelled back. She turned and ran down the hall, dead set on finding Lab Seventeen and Leo.

Leo kicked Simmons off of him and sat up. He grabbed the evil Night-Night gun from the dead man in the rubble. Both he and Simmons had been at each other’s throats for a while now, fighting ferociously. Gone were the two scientists who had failed their field assessments terribly. Leo knew that training with Trip had distanced him very far from those days, but he was surprised at Simmons and how evenly matched she was with him. She’d dealt him a nasty slice on his upper arm, and his chest was probably going to be black and clue tomorrow if he got out of this alive. But she hadn’t escaped unscathed, evidenced by her bleeding nose and the cut on her cheek that reminded Leo of Ward’s when the traitor had arrived at Providence.

Raising the pistol, he clicked the safety off and pointed it at her. Simmons had barely risen to her feet and now raised her arms over her head. Leo backed her against the door, breathing heavily in exhaustion and anger.

“Anything you want to say for yourself?” he growled, taunting her. “Anything else you want to hurt me with? Well, guess what? It’s not happening, not anymore. I’m going to show people who you really are, Simmons. Then you’re gonna have a nice little cell next to Ward for it.”

Simmons opened her mouth like she was about to say something. Leo placed his finger on the trigger.

Suddenly, the door burst open and Skye stopped short after entering. She was right next to Simmons, and the biochemist lashed out.

“No!” Leo cried, but it was too late. In an instant, she grabbed Skye, pinning her arms behind her back with one arm. With the other, her hand snatched up a scalpel and pressed it to Skye’s throat. The other girl gasped and tried to get out, but Simmons held her firmly.

“Drop the gun right now, Fitz,” hissed Simmons, a twisted smile on her face. “Or she dies right here, right now.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: Kill the Three

“Clear!” Bobbi yelled out as she rounded the corner, her battle staves at the ready for any unexpected surprises.

            Idaho followed after her, keeping his gun raised up and at the ready. It had been a while since he had done a rescue op, but it was coming back to him slowly. Although the sooner this was done and they were out of here, the better he would feel. There were already enough Hydra agents crawling around here, and it was unknown if the Doctor had any force that he could set on them. Plus, the place was giving him the creeps, especially with all the open prison cells. If he had any money (a rare occasion, since Hunter almost always cleaned him out during poker), Idaho was willing to bet that the man with violet skin who he’d seen run down a corridor earlier had been in one of those cells.

            A sniffle drew his attention back from the purple man and shifted it to a girl huddled against the wall a few yards from them. Her face was buried in her hands, and her shoulder shuddered as she cried. Bobbi lowered her staves and approached the girl with caution. Idaho followed her, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they wouldn’t get ambushed.

As they drew closer, he got a better look at the girl.  She was probably in her teens, at least eleven for sure. Idaho felt sick to his stomach when he thought of how young she had to be. What the heck was a minor even doing in this place? How sick was this Doctor?

“Hey,” Bobbi knelt down beside the girl, a gentle smile on her face. “What’s your name?”

“A-a-alice,” the girl wept. She took her hands away from her face, but kept her head down. “My name is Alice.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Idaho replied, bending down beside Bobbi. “I’m Idaho, and that’s Bobbi.”

Alice lifted her head a bit more, but they still couldn’t see her face. “You’re named after a state?”

“Well, yeah, although I kind of chose my own name. The one I grew up with at the orphanage was-“

“Idaho!” Bobbi hissed, shooting him a glare that told him to shut his trap. She then returned her attention to Alice. “We’ve come to rescue some people here. Do you need to get out too?”

“Yeah, I do,” Alice’s hand wiped a tear away from her eye. “But you need to do something first, ‘kay?”

“What’s that?” Idaho was beginning to feel more jumpy the longer he spent here. A part of him wanted to pick the girl up and just run out of this place, but Alice might have a clue to where the missing agents were.

            Alice giggled as she raised her head to look at them. Her heart-shaped face had a heavy dusting of freckles across her nose, and she looked completely ordinary. However, her green eyes began to glow brighter, almost like neon. Idaho tried to turn away, but her gaze pulled him back. It both beckoned and pulled him into it. All other thoughts in his head began to fade out, become less important. Three faces flashed in his head-one man and two women.

“Kill the three,” Alice ordered, standing up. “Find and kill the three.”

He and Bobbi nodded and began to head back the way they came.

They had a new objective.

            The blade of the scalpel was pressed flat against her throat, and Skye could feel her heartbeat accelerate as Simmons threatened to kill her. Her neck arched back out of reflex to try and avoid the knife, even though it was still against her throat. Simmons had her arm hooked around both of Skye’s to stop her from struggling. A thought crossed her panicking mind to step on the other girl’s feet or kick her shin, but she didn’t know how Simmons would react. She could jerk forward and send the scalpel plunging through Skye’s throat, or not react at all and slice her throat anyway for trying to escape.

“Drop the gun and kick it over,” her ex-friend ordered Leo, who was holding the black and green Night Night gun. “I’ll let her go as soon as you do it.”

            Skye could see Leo’s arm visibly trembling as a conflicted look crossed over his face. His arm shifted the gun so it aimed more at Simmons’s forehead. But she also noticed, and laughed coldly. “I can cut her throat before that bullet hits me.”

            She was right, and both of them knew it. Skye desperately wanted Leo to ignore the biochemist, but his eyes locked onto hers. He knelt down and set the gun on the floor. Skye watched as he kicked it over to Simmons and her. The cold pressure of the blade lifted from her throat before Simmons roughly shoved her away. Skye stumbled over to Leo, who caught her arm to stop her from going any further. Straightening up, she turned around and saw Simmons now holding the gun Leo had just kicked over to her.

“You two are too dangerous to be allowed to live,” she said softly as Skye took a step back beside Leo. “I’ll be nice about this to you though, since you two were my friends. You’ll just get knocked out, and then I can kill you then. You won’t even know it. Perhaps that will work better that way.”

“Why are you doing this?” spat Skye, swallowing nervously.

“Because before this base falls, Darwin has ordered the deaths of three individuals who all pose a threat to him,” Simmons said, clicking off the safety. “And I’m sorry, but the two of you are on-”

Something red flashed from behind and slammed into the back of Simmons’s head. The biochemist collapsed to the floor, the bad Night Night gun falling from her hand. Skye stared down at the unconscious woman before allowing her eyes to travel upward. Raina was standing by where Simmons had been standing. She had a fire extinguisher raised slightly, looking down at the body. Her eyes met Skye’s and she could see panic in them.

“Did she hurt you?”

            Skye shook her head, running forward and throwing her arms around the other girl.

“I’m okay,” she murmured as Raina dropped the fire extinguisher and hugged her back. “You?”

Raina stepped back, nodded. There was a gash on her forehead still oozing blood, but other than that she seemed fine. She peered over Skye’s shoulder. “Is that your friend?”

            Skye turned around, remembering Leo was in the room with them. He was staring at them open-mouthed. It must have looked extremely strange for Leo to see her hugging Raina. As far as he knew, Raina wasn’t a friend, let alone her sister.

“What’s going on here?” Leo asked, staring at them with suspicion. “Why is she here?”

“Because she’s my sister.”

“Her?” Leo’s expression grew even more surprised. He looked at the two of them in disbelief. “Her?”

“Yes, Leo, her,” Skye snapped impatiently. “And can we discuss this later, because she’s got a way out for us and I would love to take it so we’re free of this crazy hole.”

Raina nodded. “We need to get out of here now. I set up a bomb on the other side of this building. It’ll cause a major collapse over there, but it’s better to get out if the rest of the building gets hit by Hydra.”

She took the extra bag off her shoulder and passed it to Skye. Nodding, Skye passed it over to Leo, who caught it. Their eyes locked on each other, and she could see he was confused, angry, even a bit scared.  Stepping over Simmons, she hurried over to him and clasped his hand.

“We can trust her,” she reassured him. “She’s going to get us out of here, Leo. And as soon as we’re out of here, then we can all go to SHIELD and tell Coulson everything, okay?”

He nodded after a moment, slipping the straps of the bag onto his shoulders. “The let’s go.”

            The base shook once again, making Lance stumble a little. He managed to catch himself before he could fall on the ground. Hydra had some serious firepower after all.

            Ahead of him, Trip and Coulson were looking back at him.  Lance nodded to signal that he was okay, and ran a little faster to catch up with them. So far there’d been no sign of Skye, Fitz, or Simmons. The only people they had seen had been of all ages, races, genders, and appearances running around. And when he said of all appearances, he meant literally all appearances, like the woman he’d seen with long silver hair and pink skin. Some just wanted to get away. Others, scientists and some relatively normal looking people, proved hostile, ready to fight them. There were also the Hydra squadrons lurking around shooting at them. Everything was pretty much an enormous mess that brought out every single survival instinct in him.

            Just as he was about to round the corner, Lance felt someone grab the back of his jacket and yank him back. Opening his mouth to unleash a stream of obscenities, he saw Trip beside him, a hand raised slightly from releasing his jacket. He put a finger to his lips and pointed around the corner. Lance peered around Coulson, his eyes widening when he saw six Hydra agents with their guns lowered. They were facing away from them, talking to a man in a black shirt and dirty gray pants.

“Agent Brigman!” The one in front called out to him. She was clearly the leader of the squadron. Lance remembered Bobbi had told him the leading agent of the Hydra group that had gone missing was named Brigman. “Good to see you. Hail Hydra.”

Brigman remained rigid and silent. Lance noticed that he looked too…empty. The guy had a glazed expression on his face.

“Agent Brigman, we’re here to rescue you,” the leader said, sounding a bit offended. “We need to know about this Doctor who killed Agent Miller.”

“I serve the Doctor,” Brigman spoke now in a monotonous voice. “You are invaders. My orders are to kill invaders.”

“So I guess we’ll being doing this by force then.” The woman lifted her gun and clicked off the safety.

            If he hadn’t been there in person witnessing it with his own eyes, Lance would have never believed what happened next. Brigman lunged forward, clamping one hand around the leader’s neck and the other on her wrist. Bands of what seemed to be electricity crackled around where his hands met the Hydra agent’s skin. Lance watched, horrified, as the restrained woman began to jerk and convulse while the electricity crackled up and down her body. A scream erupted from her lungs, and he was sure he could see the woman’s skeleton flash out once or twice. Brigman released her after a few seconds, and she crumpled to the ground, dead.

            The other Hydra agents raised their weapons and opened fire on the rogue agent, but an electrical force field materialized around Brigman.  Bullets clattered to the floor as soon as they hit it. Brigman yelled suddenly, and the force field shot outward at the Hydra agents. As soon as it touched them, they jerked twice and fell to the floor. Coulson motioned them to head back, and Lance immediately followed him. He didn’t want to end up like the Hydra squad. And wherever those missing agents were, he hoped they weren’t like this Brigman fellow.

            On the roof, a helicopter was taking off amidst the destruction below. Darwin gazed out down at it with a superior smile. SHIELD and Hydra were so focused on each other now that they didn’t notice his exit. That was just how he wanted it too.

“Shame we have to let this one burn,” he murmured in disappointment as another Hydra missile struck the mountainside base. “It was so wonderfully hidden.”

The girl on the seat across from him, Alice, nodded. She was one of his few most trusted and loyal followers, and that was even before the serum had been given to her.  Once it had, she had been able to get inside of people’s heads almost hypnotically to place in suggestions and commands. It was because of Alice that he was able to control all the ungrateful and unruly survivors, and it put her in a high, trusted position with him. She couldn’t ever use her ability on him (he had a sort of immunity to mind-control or anything that involved probing into his mind), but she was too loyal to him to ever try anything foolish. Her gift and its value guaranteed her safe passage with him in the event that they needed to evacuate a base. As for the others who were given gifts from the serum, teleportation was common enough among his followers, and there were safe houses nearby for them to relocate until further instructions were given.

“This might set back our plans,” Darwin continued, grimacing as he thought of the further delay that was now slapped on them. “We might be able to make up some progress at the Russian base. SHIELD will be chasing down empty leads with the help of Agent Simmons, and Hydra won’t be much better.”

“Provided they’re not all dead first,” Alice reminded him as they flew out of the mountain range. “One of our agents on Hydra planted an explosive device in their launcher, as well as their weapons. If we don’t kill them before the bomb goes off, of course.”

Darwin smiled at her. “The deaths of the Hydra and SHIELD invaders aren’t as important as the ones of my daughters and the one potential candidate who rejected us.”

“I’ve given the orders to kill them to every Hydra or SHIELD agent I met on my way out,” Alice said proudly. “You’re really prepared to kill your own children?”

Did she dare question him and his decisions? Darwin fixed her with an angry glare.

“I gave my daughters, both of them, a chance to stand by my side as we bring the new, greater age of man into existence. Hua and Tian Kong chose to deny me though. They call me a monster when I try to help the common man evolve to his full potential. Agent Simmons tells me that Tian Kong’s friend is no better-absolutely brainwashed by SHIELD’s ideology. Letting those three live would be even more detrimental to our plans. Eliminating them takes them out of the equation entirely. In addition, all three of those deaths will be absolutely devastating to SHIELD.”

 “Hurry!” Raina cried out.

            Skye sped up, hustling down another set of stairs. After they’d gotten out of the lab, part of the ceiling had collapsed down in front of them as a flaming mess that prevented them from reaching the elevator. Leo had almost been buried beneath it, but Skye had pulled him back in enough time. Raina then told them about a staircase they could get to at the end of the building. If they took it down a few levels, then they could reach a service elevator and head down to the garage to snag a vehicle.

“How many more flights left?” Skye called out, running past a door with the number 81 carved into the mountain stone. She remembered how her father told her that the building was built into the side of a mountain. Judging by the stone walls and the roughness of the stone stairs, they were definitely on the mountain side of the building.

“Two more!” her sister shouted back to Skye.

            Leo vaulted down over a railing and landed beside her. He was holding a scalpel from the lab, gripping it tightly. Her close encounter with Simmons had him on edge, and no doubt the revelation that Raina was her sister probably had him thrown too. Skye just wished that they could be out of here so she could explain everything, provided they got out safe first.

            Finally Raina threw open a door for them to go through. The building shook again with the strike of another missile, although the tremor wasn’t as violent as the previous ones had been.  Scanning the hallway they’d entered, Skye noticed that it was similar to the floor they had left behind, although there weren’t as many fires burning or anywhere close to the amount of rubble that had been up on the floor they’d rescued Leo from.

“Follow me,” Raina ordered, breaking into a run down the hallway.

            Skye didn’t hesitate for a second in following after her, but Leo did before he joined them. As they navigated the hallways, Skye took in the layout of it all. It appeared to be for housing, although she only was able to glimpse around her. Eventually, a set of elevator doors came into view as she caught up to Raina. Skye breathed a sigh of relief as she locked her gaze on it. The machinery was working, the circuits were all in order. It was slowly coming up to their floor now. 74…75…76…

Skye stopped abruptly, staring at the doors in confusion. She barely registered Leo swerving around her as she blinked in confusion. 77…

“Tian Kong?” Raina had stopped and had turned back to see if she was okay.

Skye flicked her eyes upward at the elevator doors. There was no panel above them that labeled the floors, and the buttons on the side to call the elevator were not illuminated. Absolutely nothing to prove a reason for how she knew where the elevator was at, or even an explanation for what she had known about the elevator. But it was like the keypad downstairs, when she knew what the combination was, and what the past ones had been. Somehow, she knew how everything worked.

“Tian Kong?” Raina repeated, sounding more concerned. “What is it?”

78…

“Someone’s coming,” she whispered as she sensed the elevator coming to a stop on the seventy-ninth floor, their floor. “Get back from the doors.”

“Wait, what’s happening?” Leo asked as the doors started to slide open. “Skye, what’s going…”

            He trailed off as the two passengers inside the elevator were revealed. One of them was a man who looked vaguely familiar to Skye, although she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before. The other, a tall blonde woman with battle staves in her hands, was someone she did know. Both of them stood rigidly inside the elevator, their weapons held at their sides.

“Bobbi?” Skye uttered, taking a step forward in front of Raina and Leo to the woman. “What are you doing here?”

Suddenly, Skye heard Raina gasp. Looking more closely at Bobbi, she noticed something odd about her and the other man. As she looked directly at her, Raina, and Leo, Skye saw that both Bobbi and the other man’s eyes were shining with a strange greenish light. Skye sucked in a breath and stepped back as Bobbi raised her staves and the man pulled out a gun.

“Kill the three,” the two said monotonously before lunging at them.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: Into the Pit

            As soon as Bobbi lunged at him, Leo dived to the side and rolled out of her path. She wasn’t a force to be messed with ever, and if she was trying to kill them, then they needed to run. The other man, he wasn’t so sure about. Leo recognized him as one of the people Coulson, May, and Trip had gone to pick up a week ago, Indiana or Iowa or something. It started with an I, he remembered that much.

            Illionis swiveled toward him to shoot. Leo jumped to his feet, letting the scalpel drop to the floor in his haste. He didn’t pay attention to it, and proceeded to kick the gun out of the other man’s hands before punching him in the face. Iowa stumbled back, as though he was going to drop, but he steadied himself. Leo whipped his head to the side to see Bobbi and Skye trading blows with each other while Raina was getting up off the ground. His brief loss of attention from his opponent was rewarded with him barely able to get his fists up to block a punch from hitting him in the face. Indiana threw a blow at his chest, and Leo doubled over, allowing another fist to hit him in the cheek. Now it was his turn to stumble back. The backpack Skye had given him didn’t help him regain his balance easily.

The backpack!

            Leo slipped an arm out of the strap as I-whatever reached for his gun on the floor. He swung the bag at the other man’s head, sending him falling back. As he tried to rise, Leo stood over him and punched him in the face. The man fell back down, unconscious.

“Get to the elevator!” screamed Raina.

            Leo hesitated, turning back to her. Skye was making a break for the elevator with the other girl. He followed after them, knowing that he would be better off with Skye rather than just Raina. Why she was letting the crazy woman break them out was beyond him. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to let himself and Skye miss the chance to get out. They could always ditch her later.

“Leo!”

            He raced toward the elevator doors, looking behind him to make sure I-whoever was still out. He still was, but Bobbi had gotten up from the ground and was closing in on him. She was holding her battle staves, murder in her eyes. This was not good.

“Get IN!” Skye’s voice was shriller, more terrified. “Oh my god, Leo, get in here now!”

            She didn’t need to tell him twice. Leo barreled into the elevator box, slamming against the back of it. Turning around, he watched Skye place a hand to the panel. The doors slid shut faster than he’d even seen elevator doors shut before, closing inches in front of the attacking agent. Leo sighed in relief, leaning against the back wall. The elevator started to descend as Skye fell backwards with a small gasp. He caught her at the same time as Raina, both of them holding her up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she murmured getting back to her feet.

Leo nodded, but reminded himself to ask Skye about it later. “Where are we going?”

“Motor pool,” Raina responded. It was strange to see her in a hoodie and jeans instead of one of her flower dresses. “There’s a fleet of motorcycles, jeeps, sedans, vans, big-rigs…”

She trailed off, her eyes going wide. “Oh no.”

“Raina?” Skye put a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

“When I put in the combination to unlock those cells, it unlocked all the cells in the building. On every floor,” Raina said, crossing her arms.

Skye nodded. “Yeah, that’s what we wanted to do.”

“I didn’t count on us taking the service elevator though,” Raina continued, her voice hollow. “if we want to get to the motor pool now, then we have to go through the Pit.”

Leo raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “The Pit?”

“Yes,” Raina nodded her head. “You’re aware of how the serum can give people abilities, considering you were about to undergo the procedure. But the unlucky ones…they change. They become mutated, distorted, practically monstrous. Any semblance of human thought or nature is just…gone. Animal instinct is all they seem to rely on. The Pit is how Darwin contains them, because if they get out, they just go on a rampage and destroy or kill everything in sight. It’s like those cells we saw upstairs, only more re-enforced.

“And we need to get around that.” Skye sighed. “So what do we need to do?”

“Run,” was the other girl’s response. “Run as fast as you can.”

            Melinda ran around the corner, her eyes open searching for anyone who might try to attack her. Edwin had clearly been doing a lot since she’d last seen him, the twisted psychotic bastard. As the base shook again, Melinda suddenly was transported back to Bahrain.

“Where are they, Edwin?!”

“Dead, Melinda! I killed them- both of them!”

Melinda felt herself go numb in the hell she was in. Her ex-husband was barely visible behind the dust and dirt falling from the ceiling above as one of the bombs she’d placed went off. “You’re lying!”

“Am I, Melinda?”

The second bomb went off as she opened her mouth, and she looked up at the ceiling as it cracked into pieces and fell down on them.

She shook her head, pushing the memories aside. Looking around her, she scanned the room for any signs of hostiles or brainwashed followers. A movement out of her eye called her attention to an individual crawling out of a smoking room with a broken door in front of it. He wore a white lab coat, and had ginger hair. Clenching her fists, Melinda darted toward the man and picked him up by his lab coat.

“Where is he?!” she snarled menacingly.

“Wh-who?”

Melinda gritted her teeth and slammed him against the wall.

“Edwin Prescott, where is he?” she repeated, putting her face close to his. “Tell me now!”

“I-I-I don’t know any Edwin,” stammered the man.

“That’s right, he doesn’t like to go by that name these days. He likes the other one. What was it? Darwin? Or has he changed over to the Doctor now?”

Recognition flashed in the man’s eyes as she mentioned Darwin. Melinda felt relief that she was finally getting somewhere. “That was it, wasn’t it? Darwin. He liked that name. Charles Darwin, known as the father of evolution. He thought he’s take it up too.”

The man looked at her with wide fascinated eyes. “You know of him? How?”

“I’ve had personal experience with him,” Melinda growled. “Now, tell me where he is!”

“I don’t know.”

He was lying. Melinda punched him angrily before holding him back against the wall.

“Let’s try that again,” she hissed as the man’s nose leaked blood onto his lips “Where. Is. He.”

“Gone.”

“Where?” She gave him a shake. “Tell me now!”

“Even if I did, then you’ll never tell anyone.”

Melinda was done with his half answers. She punched him again, and this time let him fall to the floor. His body was limp, and Melinda wasn’t sure if he was dead or just knocked out. Either way, she didn’t care. The conversation had brought her no closer to Skye, or killing Edwin.

“What the hell was that?!”

Izzy was running toward her. Melinda felt her tense muscles relax as she turned toward her friend. She thought that she’d been able to lose her earlier so she could sneak away and find Edwin and kill him. Suddenly, Melinda began to wonder how much she had heard.

“Melinda, what’s going on?” Izzy said slowly, coming closer to her. “Do you know something about the Doctor?”

“This is none of your business, Izzy.”

“No, what were you saying?” her friend retorted as another blast hit the base. “Who’s-”

She stopped short. Melinda heard a small buzzing noise in her comm, indicating someone was about to say something.

“All agents evacuate immediately. Repeat, evacuate immediately,” Phil’s voice ordered.

            Evacuate? They couldn’t do that! Skye was still missing, so were FitzSimmons. Melinda pressed the comm in her ear. “Phil, what the hell is going on?”

“We found a bomb in one of the labs,” Phil replied. “It’s counting down to detonatation four minutes from now.”

“You can’t disarm it?”

“It’s got a trigger release for other bombs in other spots on the building. Disarming them would trigger the oth-”

A series of gunshots cut him off.

“Phil!” Melinda shouted, panic hitting her square in the chest. She’d already lost her daughters to Edwin. She wasn’t going to lose Phil too.

“I’m okay.” Melinda sighed as she heard his voice. “Something’s off with Idaho and Bobbi. They just attacked us, but we’ve got them iced.”

“We’re bringing the Bus in to get you.” Blake was now in the conversation. “Find the nearest open spot outside that you can get to. We’ll pick you up from there.”

“Down the hall, there’s some sort of outdoor Zen garden or something,” Izzy said. “We’ll meet you there.”

She looked over at Melinda. “I’m not finished talking with you, but let’s get out of here first.”

            Later was better than now. Later could be anytime in the future, and it could even be forgotten. Melinda nodded in agreement before sprinting down the hall with Izzy in the direction of the doors to the garden. Pushing the door open, the familiar rumble of the Bus’s engines preceded a rope ladder tumbling down in front of her. Holstering her ICER, Melinda grabbed the stiff material and began to climb up, Izzy following behind her. Eventually, her hand reached up and landed on the metal of the cargo ramp. Pulling herself up, she saw Mack approach her, a hand outstretched to help her up. Waving him off, Melinda crawled over to the seats on the side wall as Izzy hoisted herself up. Blake stood at the bottom of the staircase, waiting for them.

“You two okay?” he asked as she and Izzy got to their feet.

Melinda nodded and sat down in one of the seats. She rested her head against the back of it. “Do the others have Skye and FitzSimmons?”

Blake shook his head as the plane rose up into the air.  “No sign of them according to Coulson, and Agent Morse and the merc’s comms went dead a while ago.”

Melinda felt her heart sink. They’d failed the mission. Skye was still gone. Edwin had slipped through her finger again. She couldn’t let this happen again. It shouldn’t have ever even happened in the first place. The next time she saw hi, she was going to face him herself, and make sure once and for all that he was dead.

            A hand appeared over the side of the ramp, and Phil pulled himself up. Melinda got out of her seat and helped get aboard safely. Trip and Hunter were right behind him. The former had Idaho strapped to him, while Hunter had his ex-wife. She waited for Skye or Fitz or Simmons to come up next, but there was no sign of them.

“Everyone okay?” Mack asked as the ramp began to rise up to close.

All of them nodded. Mack pulled out a radio. “Land us back up on the strip, okay?”

Izzy went over to help unhitch Idaho and Bobbi from Trip and Hunter. Phil frowned, looking around at all of them. “We’re all here.”

“I think that’s obvious,” Blake replied rudely. Izzy shot a dirty look at him as she got Idaho off of Trip.

“So how is the Bus flying?”

Mack and Blake looked at each other uncomfortably. Melinda looked around the cargo bay, and noticed someone was missing. Her eyes narrowed. “Blake, you didn’t.”

“He has piloting experience; we needed to get you out of there!”

Disgusted, Melinda shoved past him and ran up the staircase. She sprinted down to the door to the cockpit, fists clenched, swearing at Blake under her breath. How stupid was he? Maybe Mike Peterson had rattled his brains when he stomped on him back in Georgia. Sure, she remembered pulling some really stupid stunts with him and Phil and their other friends back at the academy, but this one took the cake.

            She could feel the Bus descending down as she threw open the door to the cockpit and strode in. As suspected, Ward was at the controls, easing the plane down. Despite her anger at Blake for letting him in the cockpit (unsupervised, no less), she had to grudgingly admit that he was doing a decent job. As the plane touched ground, he noticed her. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to give an excuse.

That was when she punched his lights out.

The Pit was a frightening place to be in when the barriers containing the insane, mutated people were active. Now that they were down and open, every single occupant was running loose in some way or another. Raina hurried with her sister and Fitz as fast as she could. All she wanted was to get out of here with Tian Kong and Fitz, to get away from Darwin. Running through the Pit was unplanned, but they had to get through here if they wanted to get out.

A small object rolled in front of her and Fitz. She barely had a chance to scream out a warning before a bright flash emitted from it. She was momentarily blinded, but her vision soon began to return slowly, swimming with silvery bits. Raina felt herself stumble forward, not fully able to determine where she was going. Tian Kong shouted her name out from somewhere, her real name. A small thrill filled her, but quickly dissipated as a hand grabbed her arm and a gun was pressed to her cheek. Her recovering vision caught sight of a burly arm and a red octopus crest on the sleeve. Hydra.

“How about that? Caught me a fugitive,” the Hydra agent sneered as Raina tried to wrestle her arm out his tight grip. She managed to get it out, but fell down after taking a few steps. “Been hoping that I’d get a pay raise soon. But maybe the reward you’ll fetch me might just give me-”

            He never got to finish his sentence. A long, spindly hand with three claws swiped him to the side. The agent crashed into a wall as a mutated victim crawled from the shadows. Raina assumed that the victim was a she by the length of her dirty and tangled black hair obscuring the face. Green-gray skin was stretched taught over the hunched, twisted body that was grossly elongated. She was about six feet tall, bent at the back as she crept forward. Then, the victim whipped to face her, the hair flying aside to reveal a mouthful of fangs and bloodshot eyes.  But a memory hit Raina at that moment- one of the erased ones she’d barely gotten back. Long black hair, curled at the ends just above the pocket of her lap coat. A serum injection that was going  fine before taking a turn for the worse.

“Christine?” she whispered, stepping forward.

            She got a small nod and a head jerk toward the motor pool before a demonic look appeared in Christine’s eyes and she lunged at the Hydra agent. Raina stood there, paralyzed in shock as she watched Christine savage the man.  Something tugged her wrist, and her legs began to move in the direction of the motor pool. An ear-splitting scream followed a nasty ripping sound. Raina shivered, not wanting to look back and see what had happened. Another victim, a large alligator-like creature roared at her, but she ran faster.

Her little sister was beside her now, and Raina realized she had been the one tugging on her wrist. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Raina lied, her thoughts still on Christine. “Are you?”

“I just want to get out of here now.” There was desperation in Tian Kong’s voice. “Leo ran ahead to the motor pool to get a vehicle. What happened back there?”

“Tell you later,” she responded quickly, yanking open the motor pool’s door. “We’ve got a minute and a half to get out before the bomb goes off.”

A screech of tires preceded a jeep swinging up to a stop in front of them. Fitz sat in the driver’s seat. “Get in.”

Tian Kong practically leapt into the backseat, but Raina ran around to the driver’s side of the jeep. “Move over.”

“And let you drive us out into a trap?” Fitz snorted. “No way!”

“Leo!” Tian Kong scolded.

He didn’t trust her. Raina could see it in his eyes. He still hated her for all the things she had done over the past year. But she wasn’t going to sit here and argue with him while they battle a bomb.

“I have a safe house where we can go and plan out the next move,” she said firmly. “You don’t know where it is, I do. I’m not pulling any stunts or traps. I would never do anything to hurt my little sister. So get over to the other side, and let me drive.”

Fitz caught Tian Kong giving him a dirty look, and scooted over with a huff. Raina got in and pressed the gas pedal down. As they passed by the other vehicles and entered the tunnel, she noticed he was watching her intently, as though she was going to crash them into a wall in a suicidal wreck. She might have been able to win this argument with him, but there were no doubt going to be many more stand-offs between them.

Cool mountain air rushed past them as they exited the tunnel. They were all alone on the stretch of dirt road, the moon shining overhead. Behind her, Tian Kong sighed in content. Raina kept her foot against the gas, determined to get as far away as they could.

BOOM!

Her bombs had gone off. Raina took her foot off the gas and looked back at the explosion. As the jeep slowed down, she watched half of the base crumble down with part of the mountain in a cloud of dust, smoke, and rubble. Their path through the tunnel had gotten them far enough away from it, but she saw a fireball that hinted the launcher from Hydra hadn’t been so lucky. Turning away, she focused on increasing the distance from the base.

“We did it,” Tian Kong laughed, leaning forward and hugging her, then Fitz. Raina caught her sister’s friend blushing as he returned the hug. She didn’t say anything about it, but reminded herself to have a talk with him at some point about it. “Oh my god, we’re free!”

Free. Raina smiled at the word. For twenty-four years, she’d been stuck under Darwin’s thumb, and now she was free. He was most likely still out there as he tended to leave early in a helicopter during evacuations, but she was free.

“I’m free,” she whispered happily as she drove down the moonlit road.

Melinda watched the base crumble down, her body dead inside. They’d been lucky to get out while they did. Hydra didn’t appear to be so lucky. Their launcher, their vehicles- all of it went up in a fireball. Maybe she should thank Ward once he woke up. He got them out after all. But at the same time, she didn’t want to forgive him, not for what he’s done to her, for breaking Skye’s heart.

            Now Skye was most likely buried in the rubble, along with Fitz and Simmons and countless other victims. Edwin escaped, and was probably continuing his sadistic work in another part of the world. But what his final plan was going to be was uncertain. She knew he wanted to give people powers, but why was he doing it.

Touching the blue origami flower in her pocket, Melinda made a promise to Skye. She was going to find out Edwin’s plan and stop it, so she could stop the madness that had cost her so much.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16: Aftermath

            It was going to take around an hour to reach the safe house, according to Raina. Skye had stretched out in the backseat of the jeep, still feeling the after effects of the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body over the past hour. She’d gotten out a cell she’d been in for a week, taken down plenty of Darwin’s minions, had a knife pressed to her throat by someone she had once been friends with, been attacked by a friend and someone else who might have been her friend had she and Leo not been kidnapped, and run through a pit full of mutated people. Now she was out of that hellhole and on her way to a safe house with her older sister and her best friend. A smile crossed her face as Skye looked up at the stars, her heavy eyes starting to close.

            The next thing she knew, someone was picking her up. She must have fallen asleep during the ride. Blinking her eyes open, Skye saw Leo’s scruffy face and the stars moving as he carried her forward. Groaning, she squirmed in his arms. “Le’ me down.”

His head dipped down to look at her. “Just sleep, Skye. You’ve had a long day, been through a lot.”

“So have you, what with Simmons trying to give you the super juice, and you’re still up,” she argued. “Where’s my sister?”

“I’m here, Tian Kong.” Raina came into view. “We’re still in Mongolia, but we’re at the safe house now.”

“Good,” Skye said, now feeling more awake and alert. “Now let me down, Leo.”

“All right,” her friend sighed, bending down and releasing her legs. Her feet hit the ground in front of the door of the safe house gently and she stood up as he shook his head. “God, you’re stubborn. I try to let you sleep, and this is the thanks I get.”

Skye laughed and swatted his arm before turning toward the safe house. She could only see the outline of it in the moonlight, but it appeared to be small and cozy. Raina reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a key, wincing as she unlocked the door. Skye frowned as she noticed the action. As they entered, Raina leaned against the wall, flicking on the light switch.

“There’s also a bathroom and a bedroom too,” she said hoarsely as Skye took in the new surroundings. The room had a kitchenette, a couch, and a table with four chairs. It was cozy for sure, and a lot nicer than where she’d been holed up for the past week. “I can take the floor. You and Fitz can decide who gets the bed and who gets the couch.”

Her sister’s shoulder looked wet with something dark. Skye felt her eyebrows go up. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s fine, I’ll be okay,” Raina replied as she sat down in one of the chairs at the table. “I can stitch it up on my own if I have to.”

“Wait, stitch it up?” Alarm shot through her. “Jacket off. Now. I’m not going to say it twice.”

            Her sister opened her mouth to reply, but Skye crossed her arms and gave her a warning look. She was not in the mood to argue with her sister, especially if she was injured. In fact, Skye was certain she knew how Raina had gotten injured in the first place. When they’d gotten up to the level to release the cells, they’d crossed paths with some of Darwin’s lackeys, who had been armed. Raina had pulled her around a corner, ducking in front of her to get her around. They’d headed toward a different control panel after that. It seemed that when Raina had gotten in front of her to shield her from the bullet, she might have actually taken one.

“Tell me there’s a first aid kit here?”

Raina nodded as she began to gingerly unzip her jacket. “Cabinet under the sink. It’s a field one. I swiped it from the base a few months ago. Wasn’t sure if I was going to need it.”

            Skye retrieved the kit. Returning to her sister, she caught sight of Leo leaning against the back of the couch, watching Raina closely. It was evident that there was tension between him and her sister. Skye had seen it firsthand in the motor pool. Hopefully, it could be defused later when they figured out their next move.

“Leo, you might want to go clean up,” she suggested gently, opening up the box and snapping on a pair of latex gloves. “We were in that cell a week with no running water.”

Leo opened his mouth to say something to her, but Skye was ready. “I can handle this on my own. I’ll be fine.”

He closed his mouth and nodded before exiting the room.  Returning her attention to Raina, who now had the jacket off, Skye pulled up another chair to sit down in. Her sister’s shoulder was indeed bloody, but the injury was on the back of her shoulder. A bullet had hit her up high on the shoulder blade. Skye could see the metal of it, and knew she could pull it out.

“Yeah, this would have been hard to stitch up,” she muttered. “Any tweezers in there?”

Raina nodded, and Skye dug them, along with some other things she’d need to clean and stitch the wound, out of the kit. As she did this, she saw her sister tense up a little bit, preparing for what was to come.

“Have you ever had stitches?” she asked curiously.

Raina shook her head. Skye bit her lip and sucked a small breath of air. Previous experience with patching up injuries in the field had told her that distracting a nervous patient was often a good technique. It had worked with Leo, so maybe it would work with her sister too.

“Okay, I’m going to need to you to listen to me. Don’t focus on your shoulder, just my story,” Skye said, picking up the tweezers and positioning herself so she could see what she was doing in the light of the lamp behind her.

“Two months ago, Leo started field training. He had gotten out of his coma, Simmons had given him a clean bill of health, and then as soon as he heard this, he went to go find Trip. I was sparring with him when Leo entered the gym. He asked Trip if he would train him to become a field agent so he could defend himself if he was ever in danger again. If I remember correctly, he said he wanted to ‘not hide in the corner, but face his enemy head on’ or something like that. Anyway, a month goes by, and Leo’s made incredible progress. We had been training side by side at that point, so I knew personally that he was highly capable. Trip and May, who became my SO after Ward…well, you know what happened to him. Anyway, they decided that we were ready to go out into the field to get some experience.”

Skye got the last of the bullet fragments out and dabbed the wound with a gauze pad. Raina had flinched once, but that was it.

“Anyway, the op was in Seoul. We were keeping our eyes on a buy going on between some low-life ex-SHIELD agent- who had been true SHIELD-, and a Hydra buyer. Our job was to come in and snag the merchandise from the Hydra party after it had gone down. It all went well, we got the thing, but none of us counted on there being back-up. Leo actually saved my life by diverting the attention one of the goons who was about to stab me while I was grabbing the briefcase the merchandise came in. We all got out alive, but all of us had our scrapes and bruises.”

She set down the gauze and threaded the needle.

“As we flew back, Simmons…she was patching up Trip, who took a bullet in pretty much the same spot you did, as well as a spot on his rib cage. I didn’t know this until he told me, but Leo had actually been hit by the guy with the knife. He had a nasty gash on his forearm, and Simmons didn’t have time for him since she was busy with Trip. But May and Trip had given me medical training. Leo was still pretty squeamish about the blood, but it was a lot better than him passing out like he did once. He’s still uneasy around stuff like that, but he can patch people up too now. Anyway, I had to get him to stop tensing up, so I told him a story about how I’d gotten stuck in a tree trying to get a cat down when I was ten. It distracted him for long enough that I could stitch up the gash, and then it was all good.”

Raina chuckled. “You got stuck in a tree?”

“Yes,” Skye laughed, snipping the thread from where she’d tied off the last stitch. “And you’re good now.”

“I barely noticed you were working,” her sister murmured in disbelief. “Thank you, Tian Kong.”

“You’re welcome,” Skye stripped of the gloves. “And you know, it’s okay to call me Skye. It pretty much is the same thing as Tian Kong, meaning-wise. Also, I’m more used to Skye.”

Raina nodded, ducking her head and blushing a bit. “You can call me Hua if you want to too. Raina’s just the name I had to take going undercover in Centipede and Hydra.”

“Fair deal, Hua,” Skye admitted, putting the kit back before coming to sit down back at the table across from her. “So I need to ask you, what happened in the Pit with you?”

Rai-Hua’s small smile fell and she crossed her arms over the table the best she could with stitches in one shoulder.

“That was someone I used to work with in the labs,” she said, her eyes sorrowful. “Her name was Christine. She worked in the same lab as me during the months that Simmons wasn’t there. Four years ago, she agreed on her own volition to undergo an injection with the serum at the base we just destroyed, and I decided to be present because, well, she was actually a friend. The memory of what happened was one of the ones they erased, and it came back after I went in the machine. At the time, they told me there were complications, and she had died. Looking back now, I wish that had been the case. In reality, things were going smoothly until she started seizing up. Christine started mutating before my eyes, and she killed one of the scientists overseeing the procedure. They managed to sedate her, and took her to the Pit. As for me, Darwin dragged me off to erase my memory of the incident, since I was pretty much ready to escape and bring him down.

“I’m sorry,” was all Skye could say. It didn’t feel like enough. “That really sucks.”

Hua nodded, looking down at the table. “I wish the serum had a cure, but I’ve never been able to find one. If I ever did, she’d be one of the first people I would have used it on.”

Skye murmured in agreement, biting her lip. “Not to get off track here, but I really need to know something. What do we do next?”

She wanted the question out there because she had no idea. The adrenaline that had gone through her in the base told her the logical thing to do after they got out was to contact SHIELD. But now she remembered that Hua had a difficult history with SHIELD, specifically their team.

“I’m…not sure,” her sister confessed. “The plan was to just get you out. That’s as far as I got. Probably should have thought of doing more.”

“What you did was more enough,” Skye said, taking Hua’s hand and giving it a comforting squeeze. “You saved us. Thanks to you, Leo’s not like one of those gifted, or a mutant in the Pit. But we need to decide the next step.”

“I want to find Mom.”

Skye blinked at the sudden response. Hua sighed and looked down at the wood of the table. “I don’t know who she is, or if she’s still even alive, but I want to find out who she is, or was. All Darwin’s ever done whenever I asked about her is lie to me. Actually, that’s all he’s even done- lie. But he’s out of my life right now as far as I’m concerned, and I can finally search for the answers to my questions.”

“So where would said answers be?” Skye asked, curious. “Because I would love to find some too. I know who our dad is now, so that just leaves our mother. And before you suggest them, SHIELD hasn’t been very helpful beyond one file telling me I’m an object of unknown origin. The only thing they have on you is a file of all the run-ins we’ve had, and they know squat about your origins.”

“I wasn’t thinking about SHIELD. In all honesty, they would probably arrest me on sight,” Hua mumbled as Skye opened her mouth to protest before stopping and shrugging weakly. “I was thinking about the places we went to when Darwin first took us away. There are records in every single base he has set up. I looked up mine back there after I first remembered, but any information before China has been redacted. There’s no date of birth, former address, or anything I can use on it.”

“So if it’s been redacted, then how do you find this out?”

“Darwin has two bases in Asia. One here in Mongolia, which has just been destroyed,” Hua replied. “The other is located in the Hunan Province.”

“Where you gave me to the assistant who got me out,” Skye remembered.

Hua nodded. “But after that happened, the base was shut down, and left to rot away. The files were updated and sent to the other bases he’s set up. However, the old ones were left behind.”

Skye realized what her sister was saying. “You want to go to the base where we were separated, don’t you?”

“Exactly.”

Smiling at her sister, Skye looked back at the doorway where Leo had gone through to clean up. “Let’s do it. If our mother is out there, then we will find her.”

            Trip had never seen anything like it. The bombs had ripped away one half of the building while the other side still was standing. It was a total disaster zone around the area. Over a dozen people, both gifted and average, had survived and were to be transported to the Playground. Even more bodies were being discovered in the wreckage, some of them distorted and mutated.

“I don’t think you’re gonna find anyone on this floor, mate,” Hunter complained as they stepped out of the one functioning elevator as Trip scanned the rooms they passed by with a thermal camera in search of any signs of life.

“You got a friend who was tracked down here? Someone you’ve been training for months that’s like a little brother to you?” he snapped, lowering the camera and throwing a glare at Hunter.

The British mercenary shook his head, and Trip turned his attention back to the thermal camera and scanning the rooms.

“Look, I’m sorry. I know your friends were here,” Hunter said almost kindly. “But the fact is they’re not here. No one we’ve pulled out of the rubble resembles them, this is the last floor left to check, and-”

“Wait!”

Trip smiled as he saw a red body appear on the screen. “We’ve got a survivor here.”

Hunter peeked his head inside the room, and looked around it with a frown. “In what might have been a lab or a doctor’s office?”

“Never mind that, just help me get this out of the way,” Trip gestured to a slab that had fallen against a lab table. “I can’t see anyone from this side. We have to move it if we’re gonna pull whoever’s under here out.”

Hunter shrugged and obliged. As soon as they managed to shove it away, they caught sight of an overturned chair. Trip picked it up and eased it out of the way. When he saw the person who had sheltered under it, his jaw dropped.

“Call in Coulson now,” he ordered as he knelt down to pick his friend up. “Tell him we found Simmons.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: What They Became

            Something was beeping. It was quite annoying to listen to. Jemma groaned and fluttered her eyes open, feeling her senses return as she became more awake and alert.  Something was on one of her fingers, and another something was taped to her chest. Blinking her eyes open fully, a bright light shone down on her face. Wincing, she shut her eyes and opened them slower to adjust herself to the light. Once she was, Jemma began to take in her surroundings. There was a monitor on her finger, and an IV on her arm. The thing taped to her chest was a heart monitor. She realized that she was in a hospital bed. Turning her head to the side, she saw a glass window looking out into a hallway. On the glass was a white emblem of SHIELD.

            As her brain registered the symbol, Jemma bolted upright in bed, panic racing through her veins. She was back at SHIELD, but she didn’t know about Skye or Fitz. Darwin had instructed for them, along with Raina, to be killed. If Skye and Fitz had survived or were even here, then she was in serious trouble. Coulson’s team could learn of her true loyalties, and that would mean the end of her time spying on SHIELD. She couldn’t allow it to end, she just couldn’t.

            Reaching up to the collar of her hospital gown, Jemma ripped the tape off the heart monitor and took it off. A machine on her bedside began to beep obnoxiously as she pulled the IV out of her arm. Jemma ignored it, desperately wanting to get out of the room. But then she froze as the sound of footsteps grew louder and closer together. A part of her brain reminded her that she was might be the only one here. If so, then she was going to need to make sure Coulson’s team was convinced that she had been kidnapped alongside Skye and Fitz.

            As she saw some of the members of the team she had gone undercover in, Jemma crawled out of bed and over to a table with a tray of medical instruments. Grabbing a pair of surgical scissors, she put on a terrified face and held them up as if to defend herself. When Coulson entered the room, he immediately stopped when he saw her holding the potential weapon. May was next, stopping next to the SHIELD director. Following her were Trip, two men and a woman she didn’t recognize, and Bobbi Morse. This last one surprised Jemma, although she made sure it didn’t show too much. After she leaked that photo she had taken of Bobbi reading the SHIELD file to Hydra, she been almost certain that they had killed her.

“Simmons,” Coulson said easily, holding up his hand in a calming gesture. “You’re safe. You can put those down. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Jemma slowed her breathing down, which she had accelerated slightly when they first entered to sell her act. They seemed to be buying it, if her observations were anything to go by, which they usually were. “What?”

“We found you in a lab in the remains of a collapsed building in Mongolia,” Trip told her. “You were kidnapped over a week ago.”

“A week?” Jemma murmured in disbelief, even though she knew the time she had been gone for, and had been savoring it. “Fitz? Where is her? And where’s Skye? What happened to them? Where are they? Are they okay? Are they themselves?”

Coulson’s face fell into sadness midway through her bombardment of questions. Triumph surged through her, but Jemma didn’t let it show. All the faces around her showed some degree of mourning. May’s looked the most broken, and Jemma knew why. Darwin had told her the reason when Jemma first notified him of the members of Coulson’s team.

“We didn’t find any other bodies, let alone any trace of them,” Coulson explained. “We’re assuming they’re with the Doctor.”

Jemma frowned, feigning confusion. “The Doctor?”

“That’s what the man who kidnapped you and the other two calls himself,” May’s voice was cold and full of bitter anger. “We believe that he’s Skye’s father, and that he still has Skye and Fitz.”

Jemma let her shoulders fall, and released the scissors. They fell to the floor with a clatter as she sat back down on the bed. “They’re…they’re not here?”

“No,” Coulson shook his head as Bobbi walked over and began to reapply the attachments Jemma had taken off. “I’m so sorry, Jemma.”

“What did you mean when you asked if they were themselves?” one of the new men asked her. “Were they being controlled?”

“Maybe by a girl with weird green eyes?” Bobbi asked as she taped the heart monitor to her chest.

So Bobbi and the other man had encountered Alice. Jemma felt relieved that she now had a way to convince Coulson and the others even more so that she was a victim.

She nodded rapidly, permitting her eyes to tear up. “I woke up in a cell with Skye. The girl with the green eyes, she came in and took Skye. I didn’t see her again for three, maybe four more days,” she lied, continuing to cry. “When I did, she and Fitz were together, along with a man. They took me up and began to run tests on me, drawing my blood and stuff like that. Fitz was running a lot of it, and I begged him to stop, but it was like he didn’t even hear me.”

“Were his eyes glowing sort of greenish?” The second man said. He had a British accent and was flashing a concerned glance at Bobbi.

“Yes, actually, they were,” Jemma sniffled. “Skye’s were too.”

“Must have been that girl,” the first man said, looking at the others beside him.

Coulson nodded solemnly. “Can you tell us anything else?”

Jemma bit her lip and wiped her eyes. Bobbi came forward and eased her back into the bed. She began to put on the monitors back on Jemma.

“One day, two people took me out of my cell and dragged me up to a lab. They looked like they were gifted or something,” Jemma continued. “Fitz and Skye and that man were in the lab, and they tried to strap me down. But then everything shook, like something had hit the building. Everyone was caught off-balance, and the chair I was strapped to got blown over. They had only half-strapped me down to it, so I was able to get out of it. But when I did, Fitz started attacking me. I tried to hold him off, but he was too strong. He knocked me out, and the next thing I knew I was-”

            She froze as she caught sight of a familiar face in the hallway, making her way toward her room. It didn’t seem possible, but it was. Grant Ward was actually here, and had just entered her room. Their eyes met, and she could see the fear she had instilled in him in his eyes. But as far as Coulson and the others were concerned, they didn’t know of her dealing in the closet with him. So she chose instead to open her mouth and scream in terror.

“Jemma, you’re okay,” Bobbi said, trying to keep her voice soothing to calm her. Turning back to the rest of the people, she narrowed her eyes at Ward.

“Get him out,” the legendary agent spat, venom in her voice.

Trip stepped toward the newest arrival. “I got this.”

He took Ward by the arm and dragged a stunned-looking Ward from the room. Jemma watched them go, feeling even more confident that she had convinced the team that she was innocent and helpless.

            Grant swallowed nervously as he looked back at the hospital room where the rest of the team was assembled, and where Jemma was playing them. He’d come out of the bathroom to find the group missing from where they had been when he left in the first place.  They hadn’t said much to him when they first came back. The only thing they had told him was that Bobbi and Idaho had been compromised mid-operation, and that they had civilians who had been found inside the facility. No one had said anything to him about Jemma.

            He had considered telling Coulson and May and everyone else about Jemma and who she really was. But there were so many complications involved in telling them. For one, they still didn’t trust him due to his complicated past with being undercover for Hydra inside of SHIELD. Another reason was that they were clearly being drawn in to believing Jemma’s story. Grant didn’t believe a word of what he had heard of it. If anything, he was willing to bet that it had been Skye or Fitz who had been strapped down in the chair instead of her, and that one of them had knocked her out.

            The reason he was most scared to tell her about the circumstances of the involvement between him and Jemma. Even before he had been stabbed in his cell, Grant had known in the closet that she wasn’t a force to be messed with. She could seem innocent and frightened all she wanted and fool the team, but he knew the real her was anything but that. Telling Coulson or May or Trip or anyone about who she was would surely guarantee him a death sentence by her hand. And even though it sounded petty, he wasn’t ready to die with so many sins. He wanted to wipe as many of them away first before letting the reaper take him.

“You want to tell me what you thought you were doing back there?” Trip said as they walked into the living room. “Why you just strolled in there like it was nothing?”

Grant turned to face the man who had become an agent under Garrett, and not a monster. “I needed to know if she was okay,” he mumbled.

Trip raised his eyebrow. “Okay? And why did you need to know that?”

“Because no one’s told me what happened to her and Fitz and I need to know,” Grant confessed. It had been driving him absolutely mad, not knowing it. But Coulson seemed pretty determined not to spill very much. The only response he’d gotten when he’d asked was that Fitz ‘had changed’ and ‘is different than you remember now’.

“So you want to know what happened to them?”

Grant nodded. “I need to know how much damage I’ve done.”

Trip snorted a little. “Wait here.”

            He left the room, and Grant sat down on the couch. He knew that running off somewhere was useless, since the team knew where he would go thanks to the tracking anklet he had on. Besides, he didn’t want to keep running from his mistakes. It was time to confront them head on and stop being a coward.

“You wanted to know what you caused,” Trip returned, setting two files down on the table in front of him. “You’ve seen Jemma. Now you’ll see what Fitz and Skye became.”

Grant looked down at the two files before him. He could see the names of the people he had hurt probably the worst of all. Reaching down, Grant picked up the file with Fitz’s name on the tab. Flicking it open, he stared at the first page, a numb horror creeping up over him. The photo of the engineer glowered back at him, as though he could sense that Grant was reading his file and needed to feel his anger. But the thing that attracted his attention was the mission history listed on the file. There were more listings after South Ossetia, two of them in incredibly high-risk, dangerous areas. His weapons expertise file had expanded. The medical chart was marked with various injury reports, all field-related.

“What the hell happened to him?” Grant couldn’t believe that he’d dumped this man into the ocean. If he had been shown the file without the photo when he was undercover at SHIELD, he would have labeled the person it was about as a high level agent, a specialist even.

“He was in a coma for almost two months,” Trip said, stepping forward and sitting down on the couch across from him. Grant realized he had spoken aloud. “Simmons was determined that he was going to wake up. Skye sat at his bedside every day after her training, reading from a book or article or just talking to him. Then one day, he just woke up. We weren’t sure how he would be, physically or mentally. But he was fine all the way, even wanted to get out of bed.”

“So, he wasn’t hurt too badly?” Grant asked, still expecting the hammer to drop on him.

“No, but you changed him,” Trip’s voice was low, deadly-sounding. “The boy who you dropped into the sea was not the man who came out of the coma. He came to me barely a week later after he woke up, and he told me that he wanted me to train him. He wanted to become a field agent.”

Grant’s eyes widened, and he stared at the other man in astonishment. “So he’s a field agent.”

“Yeah, and he still does a lot of work in the lab too. But it’s not the same. The dynamic he and Simmons had, you destroyed it. He’s not the same with her anymore. Heck, he and Skye tend to spend more time together these days since they’re usually running missions together.”

Nodding slowly, Grant closed Fitz’s file and set it on the table. “Skye’s file…”

“Says the same thing pretty much as Fitz’s,” Trip replied casually. “If you’re gonna look at it, then I’d do it now. The others don’t know I’m showing you these, and I’d like to get them both back before they find out.”

Grant gazed at Skye’s file, thinking about opening it. But after he’d seen what Fitz had become because of him, it was enough closure. Opening Skye’s file would only give him the same cold gaze, the lengthy missions report, and injury list. Seeing Fitz’s had made Grant realize what he had done. He had taken two people, two innocent, people who were not scarred from the world, and had torn them apart with his actions. They had had to stitch themselves back together, and Trip’s tone implied that there was a bond between them now. Honestly, it didn’t surprise him one bit. Grant hadn’t been blind to Fitz’s obvious crush on Skye when she first joined the team, although the engineer’s feelings for Jemma had allowed that crush to fall back.

He wondered if Fitz had seen Jemma betray him with his own eyes. If so, then it seemed that he and Jemma had something in common about hurting the people who cared about them.

“Ward.”

He looked over at Trip, and nodded. “I’m done. I just wanted to see Fitz’s…for closure.”

Trip stood up and picked up the files. Before he left, he turned and looked back at Grant. “You have a good idea of what you did now?”

“Yeah,” Grant bowed his head. “Do you think we’ll find them?”

“I hope so, but we’ve got no leads now,” the agent responded. “But if we do, then don’t be surprised if Fitz punches you in the face. He used to pretend the punching bag was you.”

With that, Trip left the room, leaving Grant by himself to think about what his actions had caused.

“So you’re telling me that you want to figure out what Darwin’s plan is?”

Leo nodded, and looked back at Skye. “I know we got out of there and everything, but I can’t get it out of my head that there’s got to be more.”

It was true. In Leo’s eyes, there was pretty much a reason for anything. It might have been the scientist in him, but there was a loose end to the entire debacle.

“What’s more than the fact that he’s out of his mind?” Raina said, handing an ice pack to him. He took it gingerly, and examined it for anything she might have put on it.

“It’s just an ice pack, not a bomb,” Skye assured him, although there was an edge to her voice.

Leo nodded, and placed it against one of the spots where Simmons had kicked him. He wondered if she had steel toes in her shoes. It hurt like crazy.

“But seriously, you think he’s got something else going?” Skye leaned forward against the table in anticipation. “Any idea what?”

“Possibly,” Leo was thankful that he had a good memory, although it made him feel sick that Simmons had injected him with something to insure it. There was a part of him that feared he was going to start carving on walls like Skye had told him Coulson had been doing during Leo’s first month in the coma. “Two days ago, I was taken into a room. Simmons came in there and offered me a place in the labs if I swore loyalty to Darwin. I wasn’t doing that at all- she kidnapped us, and Skye told me all about her father when she first got back down from meeting him. But she mentioned something about building a better future for the world. And when I fought her tonight, she screamed something about why I couldn’t just accept the serum and join the new age. I know we should probably tell SHIELD about us and where we are, but I don’t know if I can trust them anymore after Simmons, and Bobbi and Idaho. What if the rest of the team is being controlled too?”

Both girls looked at each other and murmured in agreement. Leo sighed. “I guess what I’m getting at is that I want to find out what Darwin’s master plan is, and what kind of future, or new age or whatever Simmons was talking, is being planned out.”

Raina’s eyebrows knit, and he turned to her. “You know anything about this?”

“Afraid not,” she said in a quiet voice. “But you might be right. He’s not experimenting on people for his own personal pleasure-”

“He enjoys watching them suffer through it though,” Skye mumbled before realizing she’d interrupted. “Sorry, keep going.”

Raina nodded. “He’s not experimenting on people for his own personal pleasure. I know he’s gone off the deep end, but something doesn’t add up there.”

“Well, maybe there will be something in China that can tell us about what he’s planning?” Skye suggested, leaning back in her chair.

Leo began to nod, but then stopped. Why was she talking about China? “What’s in China?”

Raina and Skye exchanged a look.

“There’s an old base there that Hua says was abandoned a few years back. Something might be there that can tell us who our mother is,” Skye explained.

“And she doesn’t remember?” Leo pointed at Raina, who was also apparently called Hua.

“Hua had her memory erased until Centipede brought back pieces of it, but she didn’t get to anything on our mother,” Skye told him. “This facility still has hard copy files, as well as a history of all the other ones Darwin took us.”

“Wait,” Leo stood up. “There’s more than just the China one and this one in…?”

“Mongolia,” Raina answered. “And yes, there are. Darwin made a lot of money before all this, and since then he’s gotten a lot of investors under him to furnish, and in the case here, build the bases where he conducts research in. Some of those people aren’t ever heard from again too.”

“I can imagine. Does he send them down to be fed to the monsters in the Pit?” Leo challenged, thinking about the cuff-links in his pocket that he had found down there.

“They’re not monsters, they’re victims,” Raina hissed, standing up. “And believe it or not, he does. Trust me, it’s something you don’t want to see. He made me watch the most recent person get thrown down there, and even though the bastard deserved it, I still heard his screams.”

“Have you ever thrown someone down there?” Leo crossed his arms. “Because I can see you doing that after everything you did-”

“Stop it, both of you!” Skye stood up now, and moved in between to separate them. “Look, I know it’s been a long day of running and fighting and having your ex-friends threaten your life and get attacked by more friends and more running through what was like a jailbreak of hell, but just stop. We’re all tired, but can we agree that tomorrow, we’ll start to find a way to get to China so me and Hua can try to find out who our mother is and what Darwin is planning?”

Leo still didn’t trust Raina, but he always had faith and trust in Skye. So he nodded in agreement. Raina nodded too.

“Great, glad that’s settled,” Skye said, with a relieved sigh. “Now let’s get some rest, and deal with this in the morning.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: The Horse

It was late at night, and almost everyone had turned in for the day. As far as Melinda was concerned, she was the only still up. She was sitting on one of the stools in the kitchen, a mug of tea resting on the counter in front of her. It had stopped steaming ages ago, but it was barely in her thoughts. Melinda knew she needed her rest, but she didn't know if she wanted to sleep after everything that happened in the past few days. Skye was gone, and Edwin had returned into her life.

"Thought you'd be around here."

Melinda looked up to see Izzy approaching the counter where she sat at. The other woman had a determined looking expression on her face. "I'd like to continue our conversation from a few days ago."

Melinda sat up and dumped the mug down the sink. She knew what her friend was talking about, and it was something she didn't want to discuss.

"Nothing to continue," she said curtly as she started to leave.

"I beg to differ," Izzy caught her arm. "I've got questions for you."

Melinda wrenched her arm away, glowering at Izzy. "This is not your business."

She continued to walk. Remembering the past was not something she was in the mood for. She did enough of it on a daily basis.

"When you had that kid up against the wall, you mentioned the Doctor. But you called him Darwin before that, and Edwin Prescott before that," Izzy called after her. Melinda stopped and turned around. "They're all the same person, just different names, right? And I took a look at your file too. Says you were married once, although the name's been redacted. This past week, you've been so shaken up, nothing like I've ever seen before."

"What are you trying to say?"

Izzy crossed her arms and leaned against the kitchen counter. "This Prescott, the Doctor, Darwin, whatever he's calling himself. He was your husband, wasn't he?"

Melinda's brain raced through the possible outcomes. This piece of her past could only be buried. She wasn't able to lie about it. It was the one thing she was never able to lie about to anyone. If she said no, then Izzy would tell she was lying. If she walked away, it would be the same as saying yes. There was no way out for her.

"You don't tell anyone," she lowered her eyes, avoiding Izzy's gaze.

"Not my secret to share," Izzy replied, shrugging. "But you need to talk to Coulson about this. If it can help us figure out where to find the Doctor or Fitz and Skye, then you need to tell him. Holding it back won't help anyone."

"He'll know when I tell him," Melinda promised quietly. "But this conversation stays between us."

"Like I said, it's not my secret to share."

Nodding, Melinda left the kitchen and returned to her room. She closed the door and rested her head against it with a sigh. All the walls she'd built up to prevent herself from getting hurt again were crumbling down on her. After Bahrain, she thought she had lost everything she cared about. Then Phil brought her onto the team and Skye had come into the fold and things changed.

Abandoning the door, Melinda walked over to her bed and knelt down. She pulled out a box from her bedside table and took off the top. Inside were two photo albums, some files, and other things. Reaching in, Melinda drew out a stuffed animal. It was a horse with parts of its coat worn down in places. She had discovered it in an abandoned room in the base in Bahrain, and she'd carried it out with her when she escaped the remains of the building. That was where her nickname partially came from, along with the damage she'd caused being equivalent to that of a SHIELD team known by the same moniker. The stuffed animal was also the reason she hated the nickname they'd given her for the ordeal.

Holding the horse close to her, Melinda allowed a few tears to fall. She could still remember the day she'd given it to her daughter.

25 Years Ago

"Mama, Mama, Mama!"

Melinda had barely made it through the door before her daughter came running into the hall. Hua hugged her legs and looked up at her with a big grin. Melinda laughed and picked the three year old, holding her against her hip.

"Hey, sweetheart," she said warmly, kissing the top of Hua's head. "Did you miss me?"

Her daughter's eyes went big and she nodded. "Uh-huh. Bu' now you're home, Mama!"

She gave Melina another tight hug as Edwin entered the hallway. Smiling at her husband, Melinda walked forward and kissed him. "How's she been the last few days?"

"Like an angel," he replied as their daughter began to wiggle. Melinda set her down, along with the duffle bag. "This is going to be the last mission for a while, right?"

She nodded, her hand coming to rest on her stomach. "Just boring desk work and no missions. Not until after she's born."

"Or he," Edwin reminded her as he kissed her again. "And that boring desk work is what kept Hua safe too."

"Did you bring me anything?"

Melinda smiled and looked down at her little girl. Hua was staring back up at her eagerly, bouncing up and down on her toes.

"Actually, I do," Melinda told her, unzipping the duffle. Going on missions for SHIELD didn't exactly leave her with a whole lot of time to shop for souvenirs, but there were always gift shops at the airport.

Reaching in, she pulled out the horse stuffed animal that she had gotten. Melinda handed it to her daughter, smiling. "I've got a new friend for you."

Hua's eyes lit up and she instantly grabbed the animal, hugging it tightly. "Thank you, Mama!"

"You're welcome, baby," she murmured as Hua hugged her again.

Phil sighed as he flipped through the papers on the people they'd found in the wreckage of the building in Mongolia. He had been talking to the survivors to see if he could get any information on the Doctor while family members were contacted. Simmons, recently cleared from the infirmary, had joined him in talking to them, since she too had been imprisoned in the base. Many of the survivors had told them that they had little to no recollection of the incident. Bobbi and Idaho had told him the same thing when he'd asked them about what had happened when they attacked him, Trip, and Hunter. The last concrete recollection that anyone had had was a girl with green eyes, and that was it.

A knock made him stop and look up. Sneaking a glance over at his computer, Phil saw that Ward's tracker was located outside of his office. Reaching into his drawer, Phil wrapped his hand around the gun he had hidden in there. "Come in."

Ward entered the room. Phil saw that he was unarmed. "Ward," he said evenly, in case the man was still plotting something. "Something you need."

"Sir," Ward swallowed nervously. "I need to talk to you about something."

Phil felt his interest shoot up, and leaned forward. "Take a seat, and tell me."

Ward made his way across the room and sat down. He pointed to a notepad and mouthed May I?. Phil nodded, and Ward took it, along with a pen lying nearby.

"Sir, I need to talk to you about something."

Jemma's eyes widened, and she began to pay more attention. When they'd arrived at the Playground all those months ago, she's immediately bugged Director's office. A few minutes ago, she'd noticed Ward going toward the direction of it, and ran to her room immediately and grabbed her iPod. While it did function as that, it included the added bonus of connecting to the bug to allow her to listen to whatever conversation was going on inside the office, or anywhere else she had placed bugs around the base.

Her pulse accelerated as Coulson told Ward to take a seat. If he told him about her true intentions, then she would have to bug out. She had full confidence her ability to get out of the base, although she would likely leave behind one or two casualties. Ward would at least be one of the bodies she would leave behind though, but that was if Coulson chose to believe him. Still, he was a danger to have around the base.

"I wanted to ask about my guard dog. Is it really necessary for Trip to follow me around all day?"

Jemma heaved a relieved sigh as the two men discussed Ward's privileges now that he was back with SHIELD. She still needed to keep an eye on the man who had once been a member of Coulson's team. Yes, she had instilled fear in him, but one could never be too careful. After all, Ward did have a history of hiding his true intentions.

Across the world, three individuals boarded a bus heading to Beijing. Their passports said different names than their real ones, but they were good enough fakes to fool the authorities. Their tickets were for a ride to Beijing, followed by a transfer to another bus headed for a depot in the Hunan Province. They looked like they were simply backpackers, which they were in a way. In truth, they were on their way to find answers about their pressing questions.

They didn't realize the danger that they were heading directly into.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Trust Me

“Let me see those.” Skye held out her hand and beckoned for the radios that Fitz was fiddling with. “I can fix them.”

            Hua watched as her sister’s friend sighed and handed her them over to her. Skye looked over at her and grinned. It had been a week since they escaped Darwin’s base. Since then, they’d discovered what Skye’s abilities were. After the thing that happened with the control panel and then with the elevator, all of them had had a lot of questions. It took getting bus tickets for them to all realize that Skye could control anything with electronics when she managed to adjust the price on the machine to give them a reduced rate. But as they’d seen in the elevator when she’d almost passed out, Skye had her limits. According to her, doing too much at once was like “running a freaking triathlon”.

            Skye frowned down at the radios and closed her eyes. A moment later, the screens lit up and static filled the air. Hua grinned as her sister looked up and gave a little laugh of happiness. Fitz smiled approvingly at Skye, but the smile faded when Hua met his eyes. He still had trust issues with her, and that made things uncomfortable. They’d butted heads at various times over the week, usually beginning when he made a comment towards something she’d done for Centipede or Hydra or Darwin. Even though she’d explained that she had done those things to try find out about her missing memories and later Skye, Fitz still treated her like something that had gotten stuck on his shoe.

Hua rose to her feet, Fitz’s hostile glare following her. “I’m going to go and get some more wood for the fire.”

            Skye nodded, giving the fire another poke with the stick. They were camping out a few miles off from the facility Darwin had abandoned. In the morning, they planned to hike out to it and hopefully find answers to their questions. During the night, they all planned to take shifts on watch duty. Even though they were out of Darwin’s direct control, Hua knew he had other loyal followers out there, or at least connected to him in some way. He had moles in SHIELD, Hydra, in almost every intelligence organization.

            After Hua left, Skye looked over at Leo. Her friend was watching her sister go with a suspicious look. Skye sighed and set the repaired radios on the ground. She was still amazed by her ability, although it wasn’t as surprising when she thought more about it. For as long as she could remember, she had always been really good with computers or anything relating to electronics.

“I’m going to go help her out,” Leo mumbled, rising to his feet and heading off in the same direction as Hua had. “You okay here by yourself?”

Skye nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine.”

She watched him go before turning back to the fire. Truth was she was a little worried about him. Since Simmons’s betrayal and getting kidnapped and everything, he had been a lot quieter than he usually was. Skye knew that they both had been the equivalent of rats in a lab with all the tests the scientists had done on them. Neither of them had been given anything, although Leo had come pretty close

Heaving a sigh, Skye looked up at the stars. Tomorrow, she would go to an abandoned building with her sister and her best friend in search of answers. Hopefully, she would find out who her mother was then. Once she knew, she and Hua would track her down, and tell her they were still alive.

Hua made her way a quarter mile from the campsite they had made, and started to collect some twigs and sticks lying on the ground. Something rustled behind her. Turning around quickly, she sighed when she saw it was Fitz, leaning against a tree.

“I can handle getting wood by myself, you know,” she huffed.

“Prefer to make sure you’re doing what you say you are,” he muttered, his face visible only with the light of the moon. “And not anything else.”

Hua gritted her teeth. “Is this your way of saying you still don’t trust me?”

“I’ve got no reason to trust you.”

She had started to walk past him, but stopped when he said that. She looked back at him, infuriated. “I’m sorry, I guess saving your life doesn’t account for anything.”

“I could have gotten out of there on my own with Skye just fine. We didn’t need your help.”

“Interesting, because I have a very clear memory of having to knock out Simmons with a fire extinguisher to save you and my sister from getting killed by her,” Hua shot back. “You know, the only reason that you’re even here right now is because of Skye. We could have gotten out on our own and not had to hurry to beat the clock, but she wouldn’t leave without you. Skye ran off to save you. It’s because of her that you’re with us now.”

“Then I owe Skye, not you,” Fitz snapped, crossing his arms.

“Is that why you’re staying? For Skye?” Hua pressed, stepping forward. She wasn’t afraid to challenge him. “Just because she saved your life?”

“I want to find out what Simmons and Darwin and all your other twisted friends are planning,” he replied. “And Skye’s my best friend. She wants to find out what their final objective too, as well as her mum. I’m not letting her do this alone, especially if you’re around.”

The way he said her sister’s name. How he was always looking out for her. The smiles he gave Skye when she wasn’t looking. It all made sense to Hua now. She shook her head as a ‘ha’ slipped out of her mouth. “You love her, don’t you?”

He stiffened, which only confirmed her theory. “That’s none of your business.”

“I’m not the bad guy here,” she shouted. “Just come out and say what we both know is going on.”

“You want me to say it?” Fitz straightened and abandoned the tree. “I. Don’t. Trust. You.”

“What do I have to do to prove that I’m on your side here?” Hua yelled angrily. “Jump in front of a train with a bomb strapped to my chest? Drown myself as a distraction so you and Skye can get away? Is that what you want me to do? Is that what will make you trust me? Because if my little sister is involved, then I will do that or whatever it takes to keep her safe!”

Fitz glared at her. “You think I should trust you so easily?”

Hua pressed her lips together.

“I have every right to be careful with my trust,” he said in a cold voice, his accent getting thicker as he kept going. “I put trust in Ward. He betrayed me, and I got sent down in a metal death cage and then into a coma. I trusted Simmons for even longer than him. Now I find out she’s been lying to me since day one, giving Darwin information, plotting in the shadows, even injecting me with some serum he made up so I would get out of that damn coma without any problems. And recently, two people, one of whom I know is- or was- a loyal SHIELD agent, tried to kill me and Skye, along with you. I can’t even trust SHIELD anymore, what with one agent trying to kill me and another who lied and gave me something that I don’t know the properties of or anything!”

Hua stared at him in silence. Now that she thought about it, his trust issues made a lot more sense. Fitz had been stabbed in the back so many times that she considered it lucky for him to still be able to use the term metaphorically.

“So unless you do something that shows me you’re really with us and only us, then I can’t trust you,” he finished as he walked away from her and back toward the campsite.

1997

“Does it hurt?”

Leo shouldn’t be asking questions like that and he knew it. Mum had told him that Charlotte was still struggling with what had happened that day. Sometimes he would walk by his older sister’s room and heard her crying. Another time, she had been shouting at Mum that it was her fault Dad was dead. Leo hadn’t said anything, but he wanted to barge in and hug her and tell her it was the other driver’s fault.

Charlotte looked back at him from the couch and Leo ducked his head down, ashamed. But she gave him a sad wistful smile.

“Not much anymore,” she sighed, reaching over and grabbing the monkey patterned blanket, spreading it over herself. The car accident had cost her the lower part of her leg, and she was still adjusting to her life with it. They’d given her a prosthetic leg, but she was still having trouble adjusting to it after all the months. Now they were waiting for a new one to come that would be a little more permanent that the one she had currently. “Sometimes, I still feel like it’s still there, but then I remember it’s gone.”

 “I’m sorry,” mumbled Leo, staring down at his feet.

“Hey,” Charlotte called, making him turn to face her. “None of this is your fault, Leo. You weren’t there that day. You didn’t have an appointment with the dentist. You didn’t want drive back to school. You’re not”

She stopped and leaned her head back against the armrest of the couch. “I’m the one who’s sorry, okay?”

He didn’t know what else to do aside from nod. His hands began to fiddle with the wind-up toy, dismantling and reassembling it again.

“Hey, Leo?” Charlotte began to get up, sitting upright on the couch. “Can you get the wheelchair for me, take me outside?”

“Leo!”

            Leo bolted upright, his eyes snapping open as he jumped to his feet. Whipping his head to the side, he saw Skye backing away from him, holding herself in a fighting stance as though something was about to come at them. Raina was sleeping against a tree, her fists clenched as though she was in the middle of a bad dream. Turning back to Skye, he relaxed, rubbing his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she murmured, dropping her fists and sitting down on the ground. “Just woke you up for your turn on watch.”

“Oh.” Now he remembered.  Skye had taken the middle shift, and he had the last one. “Sorry.”

“You’re alright,” Skye reassured, bunching up her jacket into a makeshift pillow and resting her head on it. “Hey, everything’s okay, right?”

Leo put on a smile, hoping to reassure her. She had enough on her plate already. Last thing he wanted to do was trouble her with his own struggles.

“Just great,” he lied. “Night, Skye.”

“It’s two-thirty in the morning, you goof.”

“Good morning then,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Now get some rest.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 20: Breaking In

            It was sometime around midday when the little trio reached the old base, although Skye’s watch said it was pretty much midnight. However, it was still set in the same time zone as the Playground’s location. Before they had escaped Darwin’s base, Hua had managed to raid the area where personal belongings were held until the fates of the owners had been decided upon. That meant that both Skye and Leo had been able to get back pretty much everything that had been taken from their pockets and anywhere else when they were first taken in. Skye had been especially pleased to get back her butterfly knife that May had given to her when she first started training. It meant a lot to her, and reminded her a bit of the woman who she sometimes was able to look at as a mother figure.

“So that’s it?” she asked, turning to Hua.

            The structure ahead of them was tall and imposing, but also had a decrepit appearance. Vines grew thickly along the outer walls of it, and part of the wall on one wing had crumbled away. It was nowhere near the height of the building in Mongolia, but it made up for it in length.

“This was one of the early bases he used. Mostly, testing went on in here,” Hua murmured, stepping beside her. “It used to be an off-chart Hydra base. SHIELD has no idea it exists. Somehow, one way or another, Darwin managed to get his hands on it. I don’t know how he did, and I’m not sure I want to know. But the answers we want are inside there.”

“If we want them, then we better hurry,” Leo pointed out at the dark clouds gathering in the not-so-faraway distance. “A storm’s coming in.”

“Well, we can always take shelter in there,” Skye suggested, shrugging. The idea of staying in a place where she had been held as a baby gave her chills. But it was abandoned and had a roof, which would be an asset if the storm did come their way.

“We better split up if we’re planning on finding those files,” she continued, opening her backpack and rifling through it. After pushing aside a first aid kit, her half full water bottle, and a box of energy bars, Skye managed to find the radios she’d repaired with her powers. “We’ll be able to cover more ground that way. Leo, you want to head one way, and me and Hua will take the other?”

She extended one of the radios out to him. Leo raised his eyebrow at Hua suspiciously. Skye huffed and rolled her eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, I will carry the other one, and I will always pick up, okay?”

“Alright.” Leo took the radio. “Let’s just get this over with. This place is giving me the creeps.”

            Skye nodded in agreement, and led the group to the fortress. When they reached it, she heard the sound of water rushing closer by. She frowned a little and looked over at Hua while they searched for a way inside.

“There’s a river that runs through the facility that Hydra built around,” her sister explained. “Darwin used hydroelectricity to power the base.  Brilliant use really, even though it all went toward a horrible purpose.”

            A few minutes later, Leo managed to find a broken window. The trio had to break a few more of the panes of glass to get in safely, but they succeeded. After they were inside, Hua took two of the sticks they’d used to break the glass and laid them in an ‘X’ in the light that shined through the opening. Once that had been completed, Skye dug out her flashlight, and turned it on. Two more beams appeared beside hers a moment later as Hua and Leo turned theirs on as well. They agreed to meet back at the spot in an hour, and radio the other if they caught sight of anything regarding Skye and Hua’s files or Darwin’s master plan.

None of the three had the faintest idea of what was waiting for them in the base, and how everything would change because of it.

            Jemma grabbed her switchblade and slid it into the pocket of her pants as she finished preforming one last check of her bunk. She’d thought she could be safe if she resumed her old identity within SHIELD, but they’d recovered a lot more evidence than she expected from Mongolia. There was only so much that could be destroyed without arousing suspicion. At least they’d never be able to work out what all of it meant after she left. Jemma had plans to burn or destroy every piece of evidence there was in the lab from Darwin’s Mongolian base. The lab equipment, the scraps of files she and other scientists had been burning when Hydra started their attack, and even the remains of the mutated rejects. All of it would be erased from existence, and she would return to Darwin. She’d already sent a message ahead informing her of her, and he had understood.

            Finishing her final sweep of the room, Jemma determined that she had everything she needed. She stepped out into the hallway soundlessly, gently closing the door behind her. It was the middle of the night, and everyone was asleep. Perhaps they would wonder where she had disappeared to in the morning, but one day they’d know the truth, along with everybody else. Everyone would know when the new age came, when she would rise up with Darwin and the rest of his followers.

            Grant was lying awake in his bunk, fully awake and alert as he waited. He heard a small creaking sound, like a door being opened. He sat up and listened, intently to the soft footsteps tiptoeing past his door. Swinging his legs over to plant his feet onto the floor, Grant grabbed a t-shirt, pulling it on as he snuck outside. Walking as quietly as he could, Grant made his way toward the lab. Knowing Simmons, it was mostly likely her destination. He could tell that she had been itching to run. As someone who had once been deep undercover, Grant could recognize all the signs. If she did what he had a feeling she was about to and then ran, there would be way to track her down again, or this Doctor guy. He knew how to disappear off a map with ease. Simmons was twice as smart as him, and there was darkness inside her more sinister than his own had ever been.

If he was going to expose her, then it had to be now.

            Melinda crept toward the door of Phil’s office, feeling more and more aware of what she was about to do with every step she took. What she was about to tell Phil was a secret she had been holding onto for nearly three decades. Even after she learned who Skye really was to her, Melinda had constantly thrown away opportunities to tell her the truth. Now, with Skye trapped by Edwin, she needed to get her back and away from the monster that her ex-husband had become. She needed to let someone in on her secret now, someone who could keep it quiet and help her without making it a big deal.

            Reaching her hand out, she knocked on the door. To her surprise, it creaked open slightly. Melinda didn’t make a move forward out of precaution. After the disappearance of Skye and FitzSimmons, she was unsure about the safety of the base.

“Who’s there?” Phil’s voice drifted out into the hallway.

“Melinda,” she answered, biting her lip. “I need to talk to you about something.”

A few moments passed, and Melinda noticed the silence in the air after she had spoken. Then the door opened, fully revealing Phil standing there. He stepped to the side, allowing her to enter.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, closing the door once she was inside.

“Do you remember when we cured you from the writing? The first night we spent together?”

Phil nodded, smiling at her. “I always remember everything about you,” he told her, walking back to his desk, leaning against it to face her. “We agreed no more secrets. Nothing that would come back to hurt us.”

“You never asked about Bahrain that night,” Melinda murmured, every word bringing her closer to telling him the secret. “Why?”

“I know you don’t like to talk about it,” Phil replied. “That was a bad day for you.”

“I thought everything about that day was an end to the hell I’d been in,” Melinda couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “But it was only a break.”

Phil’s brow creased. “Melinda, what are you trying to tell me?”

She took a deep breath. “I know who the Doctor is.”

“How?”

“Because I was married to him once,” she confessed, feeling a piece of the weight on her chest lessen. “And he just kidnapped our youngest daughter two weeks ago.”

Phil’s eyes widened. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Skye is my daughter.”

“Skye, are you there?”

Hua looked over at her sister, who stopped and grabbed the radio from her pocket. It had been over half an hour since they first separated, and so far they’d had nothing on their end. The only thing that Hua had gotten so far was a lot of memories of the night she let Skye go.

“Everything okay over there, Leo?” Skye asked, a touch of concern in her voice.

“I think I might have found the files,” Fitz’s voice replied. “Meet me back where we came in and I’ll show you.”

“See you there.”

            Hua watched as Skye turned and gave her a hopeful smile as she put the radio back in her pocket. She returned the smile, a bubble of hope beginning to rise within her. After all this time, she might finally find out the truth. She was potentially about to learn who her mother was. Each step Hua took on the way back to the ‘X’ felt like it was filling with hope.

            Fitz was waiting for them when they arrived, and led them in the direction he had taken when exploring on his own. His section of the facility was no nicer than theirs, exhibiting the same mossy cracks in the floor, puddle of dirty water collecting on the side, and a disgusting smell of decay in the air. Skye shrieked a little when she stepped on a rotting carcass of some bird. As she jumped around yelling, Hua thought she heard something creak and swung around with her flashlight. But the beam showed the decrepit hallway behind them. She sighed, telling herself that she was just anxious back here.

Fitz managed to calm Skye down, and soon the two were walking side by side while Hua assigned herself to the back of the group, keeping herself at the ready in the event that something was still lurking in here. When they at last reached the file room, Hua ran forward toward the one file cabinet with the dirty label with a barely readable ‘Patients’ written on it. As she grabbed the top handle and pulled outward, Skye froze suddenly. “Hua?”

She lifted her head up to look at her little sister. “What is it?”

Skye swallowed and bit her lip. “What’s out last name?”

            Hua felt her arms fall down to her side as her little sister’s question registered. She’s been so focused on finding her sister, finding her mother, finding her past that she had never thought about it. She had never once asked herself what her last name was. After finding out what her father had done to her, she had pulled away from him, calling him Darwin or the Doctor rather than ‘dad’ or ‘father’. She didn’t even know his real name, let alone his last name.

“I don’t know,” she confessed, feeling like a fool for letting herself forget such an important detail. “I never thought about it. I was so caught up in finding you and who Mom was that I…”

She stopped, realizing she was beginning to cry. Skye stepped forward and flung her arms around her.

“It’s fine, Hua,” her sister said kindly. “We’ll just have to search through all the files until we find the ones with Hua and Tian Kong on them. You said Darwin was just starting out, so there probably won’t be a load of people.”

Hua nodded as they pulled away. “We better start searching then.”

            Fitz, standing off to the side, gave her a respectful nod and shined his light on the files. Hua began to flip through them, keeping her eyes open for her name or her sister’s. She went through the first seven or so, and ended up hitting several false alarms as she scanned through the H section of the next drawer.

“Hey!”

Hua lifted her head sharply as Skye swung the beam around the room. “Who’s there?” her sister yelled.

Silence was the only answer she received. Hua was beginning to get an uneasy feeling now. She couldn’t help but wonder if they were really alone here. When she resumed her search, she picked up the pace, trying to go as fast as she could so they could get out of this place.

“Stop!” Fitz barked. Hua’s fingers froze, mid-flip. “Go back one.”

She complied, and they found themselves looking at file marked Prescott, Tian Kong. Hua sighed and shook her head, thankful for having a second person watch her as she went through the files, even if he did have a tendency to rude to her. Pulling it out, she saw Prescott, Hua just in front of it, and grabbed it too.

“I found them,” she announced, feeling somewhere between nervous and relieved as she held her file in her hand.

Skye was at her side in an instant, and Hua handed her the other file.

“Huh,” her sister smiled, brushing a finger over her real name. “This is it.”

She pulled off her backpack and shoved it inside. Hua frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Look, I can’t stand the suspense, but I really want to read it somewhere else,” Skye explained, zipping her bag shut. “Something doesn’t feel right here.”

“You’re not too far off on that,” an unfamiliar voice announced. “But I’m afraid you won’t be reading your file anywhere else.”

            Hua had been about to complete the same action as her sister, but stopped in mid-zip. She whipped her head toward the sound of the voice, and suddenly the room was illuminated by a few old, flickering lights. There were three people standing at the door, two men and a woman. Hua shot to her feet, and Skye followed, reaching into her pocket. Fitz moved beside Skye, clicking his flashlight off.

The woman at the front suddenly gave them a wicked smile. She appeared normal, but Hua had a feeling that she, as well as her companions, had been exposed to the serum.

“Sorry to ruin your plans, honey,” the woman drawled slowly, pulling a glove off one of her hands. “But I’m afraid we’ve got our orders, and you aren’t leaving this base.”

“You sure about that?” Fitz growled, pulling out a knife. Beside him, Skye flicked open what appeared to be a butterfly knife. Hua just took a deep breath and tried to keep her face from showing how worried she suddenly was.

“Oh,” the woman replied with a laugh, reaching over to the file cabinet closest to her and picking up what seemed to be a paperclip. As soon as her fingers touched it, the metal began to take a purplish tone.

“Run!” Skye yelled as the woman suddenly flicked it toward them.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21: Floodwaters

            As soon as the lights flicked on, Skye cursed herself for not looking for one when they first came in. She hadn’t thought that there would still be power in the abandoned base. Maybe it was the hydroelectricity that Hua had mentioned, if that was even still functional. Skye had no idea if it was, it wasn’t her expertise. But once the room was illuminated, she started to survey her surroundings, looking for a way out. A quick glance behind her let her see a door with a lab just visible through the grimy glass. The second the woman touched the paper clip and it began to glow, Skye had a bad feeling about it.

“Run!” she screamed as the woman flicked the paper clip at them, grabbing the backs of her companions’ jackets.

            Leo’s head turned around as soon as she grabbed his jacket, and a look of understanding flashed in his eyes. Hua caught on half a second later. Skye sprinted to the door as fast as she could, shoving it open the instant her hands connected with the door. She made it inside to the lab first, with Hua and Leo on her tail. Her older sister was barely halfway through before there was a boom, a cloud of dust, and Hua and Leo went flying into the lab. Skye stumbled a little as a shockwave hit her, falling against a lab table.

“Leo?” she coughed, straightening up. “Hua?”

A groan came from her sister, who was rising up from the ground. Skye breathed a sigh of relief and helped her up. “Where’s Leo?”

“Here,” her best friend gasped, rising shakily to his feet. Skye sucked in a breath when she saw the back of his leg stained with something dark. He’d gotten hurt.

“It’s okay,” he told her, noticing her staring at him. “I’ll be-”

            Something clattered behind them. Skye whirled around, her eyes widening at the twisted piece of metal glowing purple. She yanked Leo and Hua down behind one of the lab tables, waiting to see what would happen. Another explosion broke out, confirming Skye’s theory that the woman who had touched the paper clip had the ability to turn objects into explosives. The brief burst of light caused by the explosion allowed her to catch a glimpse of another door. Peering her head around the corner and seeing no sign of their surprise company yet, Skye led their little group out of them room. She started to run down the hall on her left, barely making it four strides before one of the men, the burlier one of the two, suddenly burst through the left wall into the hallway like it was made of paper. Chunks of concrete flew out as he made his appearance, and Skye threw up her arms to protect herself.

“Going somewhere?” he sneered menacingly.

            Skye gulped and took a step back. She didn’t want to tangle with this guy at all. He had to be at least six feet, and looked as though he had either been hitting the gym or taking some major steroids, although Darwin’s serum might be the culprit for his build.

            Something whooshed by her, and a chunk of concrete nailed the main right in the jugular. He fell to his knees, alternating between coughing and roaring in pain. Skye turned around to see Leo straightening up, as though he had just thrown something. Hua was pushing open a door when Skye ran over to her.

“Just get inside,” her older sister said breathlessly. “I’ve got an idea.”

            She didn’t have to say it twice. Skye ran inside, finding herself to be inside some kind of enormous supply closet. Clicking on her flashlight as Hua slammed the door shut behind Leo and herself, Skye gazed about at the rows of shelves stretching down to another door at the end of the room. The shelves were filled with all kinds of supplies for all purposes. It was probably more accurately described as a storeroom.

“What are we doing in here?” Leo hissed as Hua grabbed a rod off one of the nearby shelves that was stocked with science equipment and jamming it under the door to prevent it from being opened by anyone on the outside.

“I’m getting us out of here,” Hua explained, turning her flashlight on and leading them down the room, shining the flashlight down each of the aisles as they went past them. “I remember that this building flooded once or twice. That was why Darwin abandoned it. When it rained, the river would rise and this level would flood. He told me never to try to go down on this level, I remember being afraid because his voice got darker and angry. When I was still in Mongolia, I found the plans for this. There were storm drains underneath this that Darwin also made into cells for those who didn’t react so well to the serum. After the first flooding, Darwin had people install grates on the lower level that drained the water down into the storm drains.”

“So we escape through the drains?” Leo asked cautiously.

“Exactly,” Hua replied, shining the light down one of the rows, revealing a grate near the back end of it. If they managed to get it off, then they could easily slip down the hole that led to the drains.

            Suddenly, the door at the other end of the hallway was kicked open. Hua pulled her and Leo in toward the row before clicking off her flashlight. Skye held her breath as she looked behind her and saw another flashlight beam click on.

            Marlene stepped inside the supply room and reached over to flip on the light switch with her gloved hand. Nothing happened though, and she figured that this was just one of the areas that was still cut off from the rest of the power. Lots of places in the base had this problem. It was why she carried a flashlight around with her.

“I don’t see why you’re running away,” she called out, shining the bright beam down the aisles. She could hear scraping sounds in the distance. “I know Darwin. He’s a good man with good intentions for the world and the new age that is coming.”

Something shuffled, followed by more scraping. Marlene kept scanning the rows, searching intently for them.

Maybe she needed to use another method to draw them out. Provoking, perhaps?

“See, Skye, I don’t get why you’re so desperate in this crusade to find your mother,” she sneered. Darwin had told her, Kurt, and Tyler about the sisters. The older one was determined to find her mother, and had roped in her younger sister to join her quest. “Your father never told you this, but your mother never wanted a second child. She had a dangerous job that she loved, but you kept her from it.”

There was a funny noise, and Marlene paused a moment before continuing.

“Hua,” she chuckled. “Oh, Hua. You think that Daddy is the bad guy because he took your memories, don’t you? Don’t you know that he only wanted to protect you from yourself? See, you do have powers, just like us and your little sis. Thing is, yours are dangerous, threatening to people’s safety. You can’t control them. Your father only took your memories so you wouldn’t know about your powers, so you wouldn’t hurt people.”

“And Leopold, don’t you think you should tell Skye how you really woke up from that-”

Marlene stopped short as her flashlight illuminated a grate cover lying beside a hole in the floor.

“-coma,” the enhanced woman sighed, her shoulders sagging. Tyler and Kurt came up beside her a few seconds later.

“They got away,” she huffed. “Probably going to try and escape through the drains or something.”

“But those feed down to the river, and are barred,” Kurt reminded her. “They can’t get out that way. They’ll have to find another way.”

“Or none at all,” Marlene whispered, an idea occurring to her. “Kurt, you can control and manipulate weather stuff, right?”

“Yeah,” the man nodded. “How come?”

“Think you can flood the tunnels and drown these rats?”

“Little late to be down in the lab, isn’t it?”

            Jemma lifted her head up abruptly and looked behind her. Her lip curled as she saw that Grant Ward was standing in the entrance to the lab, unable to prevent a sigh of irritation. After she’d found out that Ward was back, Jemma had been treading carefully, even more so than usual. He knew her secret after she’d gotten him to deliver that photo of Skye. While she’d hoped that his near-death experience would prove to him that Darwin and those with him were not to be messed with, it was evident that Ward was a risk-taker.

“I could say the very same thing about you,” Jemma replied coolly. “And yet here you are.”

Ward chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ve been here in the shadows for a while. That’s a lot of evidence that you’ve destroyed.”

“Sounds like Hydra behavior, lurking in the shadows. But then again, a leopard can’t change his spots.”

“You’re planning on making a break for it, aren’t you?” He smiled, and Jemma tensed up. “I’m familiar with feeling, what with being in this kind of situation before. You feel they’re on to you, right? If you stay here any second longer, then you’ll be made and thrown into a cell with no way out.”

Jemma didn’t allow her emotions to crawl to the surface. She couldn’t give him any indication that he was on the right track. Ward was a good spy, and she had admired that in him.

“Something’s been on my mind since I first saw you here,” Jemma murmured, tilting her head slightly as she took a step toward him.

Ward leaned back against a lab table casually. “Go on.”

“Why are you here?” Jemma asked, deathly curious. “Trip told me that the only reason you were even released was to find me, Skye, and Fitz. I don’t know how much you gave them, but clearly it wasn’t enough that you told everyone about my little secret. But no matter how much you did give, they haven’t been treating you any different because of it, have they?”

Ward’s mouth tightened. Jemma smiled.

“I thought so,” she continued. “And they won’t treat you like they used to when they still thought you were a true SHIELD agent. There’s no going back to that time. After what you did to me and Fitz, they don’t trust you anymore. They never will again.  To them, you’re just something that they used to try to find me and Fitz and Skye. You’re letting them do this too. I mean, you used to be a high and mighty specialist, and now you let them tag you like a dog and try to stay on their good sides. Quite the fall you’ve had.”

Doubt was now clouding his eyes. Jemma felt a surge of confidence. His loyalty to SHIELD was weak. She could break him right here, right now.

But an idea was coming to her. Darwin was always on the lookout for new agents, and Ward fit the type that he needed.

“But I can give you purpose,” she said gently, outstretching hand to him. “Real purpose. Nothing like what you were doing with Garrett. I told you once I was part of something built to last. You can be a part of it too, Grant. Just come with me, and I can show you what Darwin will do for the world.”

Ward surveyed her hand cautiously. Jemma waited a moment. “I can’t stay around here all night, so make your choice.”

“You’ve given me one option.”

She shook her head. “I thought the second one was implied. Come with me, or I kill you here right now. I can’t leave you here to spill my secrets. After all, you did tell them that the man who attacked you mentioned the Doctor.”

Ward remained silent, but Jemma could tell that he was thinking hard about his choice. “Thirty seconds to come with me and change the world, or die on this floor as someone who hid secrets from SHIELD.”

“Here!”

            Skye ran up to where her flashlight beam had caught another grate. The tunnels underneath the base that served as storm drains were too winding and maze-like, and their only other option was to pop up in another part of the base and escape that way. Finding the cover above them was what they needed. There was a shallow inch of water pooling in the tunnels, and water was leaking in through cracks in the walls.

            Before she’d come down here, the creepiest place Skye had ever set foot in went to the Pit. It had been dark and dank and hellish with all sorts of creatures running around and causing chaos while she tried to escape with her sister and Leo. But down here, there was a narrow path separating the cages on either side of her. Swallowing, she tried not think about this place flooding and the occupants inside drowning. They might have become monsters, but they didn’t deserve that. Her father must have been incredibly sadistic at the time when he created that.

“We need to get that grate off if we want to get out,” Leo stated, coming up beside her and pointing his flashlight up to expand her view of the grate.

Skye nodded, knowing he was right. “Think I can reach it if you give me a boost.”

Leo bent down, and Skye put her flashlight in her pocket before hoisted herself up onto his shoulders. Hua shined her flashlight steady at the grate as Leo straightened up, bringing Skye closer to the top of the tunnel. Reaching her hands up, her palms flattened against the metal of the grate. Skye gritted her teeth and directed her strength upward. The cover above her moved upward steadily, and eventually she managed to scoot it over enough so she could see the hall above them.

Skye turned her gaze back down to her friend. “Can you get me up higher, Leo?”

“Try to stand on my shoulders,” he suggested.

            A rumble of thunder echoed in the tunnels as Skye braced her hands against the sides of the tunnel where the grate had been and shakily got her feet up onto Leo’s shoulders. Her hands managed grasp the edge of the floor above her. Gritting her teeth, Skye began to pull herself up from the tunnel. She remembered once how Ward had told her that she might find herself thankful for doing pull-ups one day when she was hanging off a cliff or a building or whatever, and snorted to herself. Usually, she was more thankful toward May and Trip for helping train her, but for once she felt a small twinge of gratitude toward the backstabbing snake.

Once she was up on the floor, a gasp of relief slipped from her lips as she sat up. “I’m up.”

“Good,” Hua said from below. “Fitz, head up next.”

“Why do you want me to go?”

“I’m sorry, am I not allowed to help you?”

“Stop it, you two!” Skye snapped. “Rock, paper, scissors if you can’t make up your minds.”

There was the sound of fists hitting palms. Skye waited to see what the outcome would be.

“Fitz won,” Hua called up. “Skye, get ready to get-”

There was a clunk, and her sister suddenly stopped short. Skye poked her head down, pulling out her flashlight and shining it down on her two companions. Her eyes widened as she realized that the water in the tunnel was now covering their feet almost entirely.

“A couple of bricks came loose. There’s water pouring in here now,” Hua explained, a hint of worry in her voice. Leo looked pale as he looked down at the water, his hands curling into tight fists. “We need to hurry.”

Skye nodded, flattening herself on the ground and her arms down into the hole. She held her flashlight in her mouth. Leo got onto Hua’s back and reached his arms up. Skye grabbed his hands and lifted him up as fast as she could. As soon as his hands came over the edge, he pulled himself up like she had. Skye took the flashlight out of her mouth and looked down in the hole again as Leo shined his beam down.

“I’m going to try to jump,” Hua said. The water was starting to climb up her ankles now. “Can you catch me?”

“I will,” Skye promised, leaning over into the hole again with her arm out. “Just grab my hand, and I’ll get you up.”

Her sister nodded and took a few steps back. The first attempt had Hua splashing forward and jumping upward, missing Skye’s hand by quite a distance. There was too much of a height difference without any help. Skye swallowed as she realized this, and a rumble shook the entire base. It didn’t sound like it was from the storm.

“There’s a bench in one of those cells,” Hua shouted. “I’m going to get it and try to jump off it.”

            She disappeared from sight, but not without a sound of heavy splashing noises. Skye could feel her heart hammering against her chest. Controlling technology and electronics was cool, but it wasn’t going to save her. She looked over at Leo, whose eyes were widened with concern. It surprised her, since he hadn’t shown any sign of caring about her older sister at all.

“Here we go again,” Hua called up, reappeared with a wooden bench that she was dragging through the water. “Ready?”

“Go!” shouted Skye, hoping her palms weren’t too sweaty to let her sister literally slip through her fingers.

Hua leaped up. She was closer this time, but Skye couldn’t grab her hand in enough time.

“I’m sorry!” she apologized desperately, as Hua climbed back up on the bench. “I couldn’t get it.”

“We can do it,” the other girl encouraged. Skye gulped as she saw the water beginning to lap the edges of the bench. “Third time’s the charm?”

“Yes, it-”

Something boomed loudly in the tunnels and on the upper level. Skye almost fell forward into the tunnel as the ground shook from it, but Leo grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her back enough so that her arm was still in the tunnel. The sound of rushing water echoed down below, and Skye caught her sister’s widened eyes.

“NOW!” Skye shrieked as the noise started increasing.

            As her sister’s feet pushed off of the bench, time seemed to go slower for Skye. Her ears were pounding with every beat of her heart. Skye leaned forward, holding out her arm as far as she could. Hua’s arm outstretched as she climbed higher in the air from her jump. Her palm grew closer to Skye’s, and she prepared to close her hand around it.

            Just as she was about to close her hand over her sisters, the noise of rushing water became a roar and time became returned to regular speed. The tunnel suddenly was flooded with a tidal wave of water that slammed into Hua. Her sister screamed as the water slammed into her, enveloping her entirely and sweeping her away from Skye.

“NOOO!” Skye wailed, screaming as water rushed over her outstretched hand. “HUA!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 22: Boom

            Idaho cracked his eye open groggily. Someone was pounding on his door. Rising out of bed, he stumbled over to the door and opened it. Hartley, May, and Director Coulson were standing in front of him. Immediately, he felt himself become more alert, as well as aware of the fact that he was only in his boxers. Snatching up a shirt that was lying on the ground, he pulled it on as fast as he could.

“What’s going on?” he asked, wondering what they were here for.

“Ward’s ankle monitor,” the director replied, and alarm shot through his body. “The silent alarm on it just triggered. Something’s jamming the second alarm though, but it means that he’s gotten it off.”

“We pinged the location, found it down in the labs,” Hartley added. “Cameras are dead down there, but we caught Simmons entering before they did.”

Idaho swallowed. “So it’s time?”

Director Coulson and Hartley nodded. “You’re still up to this?” the former asked.

“Yeah,” Idaho replied, sighing. “I really hope we’re not wrong here, or you’re going to need to order me a coffin.”

Her sister was gone.

            Skye was vaguely aware that she was screaming her sister’s name as Leo tried to pull her away from the hole. The scene still was raw and fresh in her mind. Hua’s hand had been so close to hers, and she hadn’t grabbed it in time. She said she was going to catch her, but she’d failed. She had let her sister down. It was her fault Hua had been caught by the water.

“Skye!”

            She didn’t even notice that she was pitching forward until Leo cried out her name. Arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her further away. Skye tried to squirm out of his grasp, but her arms felt heavy, like lead. She needed to get to the tunnels again. Maybe Hua was still down there, hanging onto some of the cell bars. Maybe she was still alive. Skye had to find her. After everything that Hua had sacrificed for her, she couldn’t leave without finding her sister.

“Let me go!” she wailed. “I need to find her!”

“We can’t!” Leo turned her to face him. “I’m sorry, Skye, but she’s gone!”

“NO!” Skye shouted, pushing him away and running back to the hole. There had to be some way to get down. Hua had to be alive.

“Skye!”

            Leo’s voice sounded more like a warning to her. She turned, and narrowly avoided getting hit by a piece of rock that glowed purple. It blew up as she started to scramble back. Skye felt herself slam into a wall from the force of it, her shoulder connecting with the concrete. A gasp slipped from her lips and her eyes closed out of reflex with the sudden pain. She counted to ten before opening them.

They widened as she saw the woman from earlier in the file room holding Leo down with a gloved hand on his throat.

“Guess we only lost one rat down there,” she was saying to him. Skye’s stomach tightened with anger. “I was hoping that it would have been all three of you. Kurt died flooding the tunnels. All that effort to bring the water in here from the river was just too much for him. But an eye for an eye, I guess.”

Skye pushed herself up gingerly. Reaching to her side, she gripped the knife that Hua had put in her pack. It was longer than her butterfly knife, which Skye didn’t feel was worth this woman’s time.

“She’s tough,” Leo retorted. “She could still be alive.”

“Not likely,” the woman chuckled. “She’s probably drowned. Water could have pushed her to the ground, made her hit her head. If she could even swim, it would have been incredibly hard. And if she was lucky enough to keep her head above water, she’d only get torn to pieces by the bars at the end of the tunnel. Can’t slip through those babies.”

A cold fist closed over Skye’s heart as she rose to her feet. They were saying Hua was dead. She didn’t want to believe it, but she couldn’t think of any other way her sister could have survived.

“That was my friend’s sister,” spat Leo. “You killed her! Right in front of Skye.”

“Kinda like your own sis, huh?” the woman taunted. “Lucky us got to see your file when we came here. Darwin knew his daughters would most likely go to the last place they were together if they got out. Facial recognition caught your little trio at a bus station, and that’s when we got the go ahead to read your files. Real shame about your sister though. You were so close to her, and then she was gone.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her!” Leo’s voice was venomous and filled with hatred. Skye bit her lip. She never knew that he had had a sister.

The woman laughed and removed a glove from her free hand. “It’s a shame to kill such potential. The serum could do marvelous things for you, but I have my orders. You were given a chanced, but you rejected it. We can’t have you running around with Darwin’s secrets now, can we? Plus, I’ve always wondered what a human bomb would be like?”

            Skye sucked in a breath as she realized what this woman was talking about. She was going to make Leo a bomb. He was going to be a walking weapon that would explode with enough power to bring down this section of the building, or maybe even all of it. Bitter rage filled Skye as she locked eyes with the back of the woman’s head. She had already lost her sister, and there was no way that she was going to permit Leo to be taken from her as well. In that moment, she knew what she was going to do.

            Sprinting toward the woman, Skye pulled out the knife and drove it into the would-be killer’s back, right where her heart would be (if she even had a heart). The woman’s back arched and a cry of pain came from her. Breathing heavily, Skye held the knife in for a few seconds before pulling it out, watching the dying woman drop the floor.

            Leo, rubbing his neck, stared at her in shock. Skye felt all the rage in her body suddenly drain out. She had just killed a woman with a knife. Looking down, Skye felt sick to see that her trembling hands were bloody from her crime. She must have thought it was going to avenge her sister, but the pain of watching Hua getting swept away to death was still there. The death of this woman wouldn’t bring her back. Skye realized that it had only made her a murderer.

“Skye?” Leo’s questioning voice called to her, and she gazed up at him.

“She… she didn’t touch you?” she whispered hoarsely as the tears she’d been holding back for later began to fall down her face.

“Almost,” Leo replied. His eyes were full of hurt and pain. “Skye, I’m…I’m sorry.”

The knife clattered to the ground, and Skye fisted her hands tightly. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

“I can’t think of a way that Hua could have escaped,” Leo murmured mournfully. “But we need to run.”

“Why?” Skye was confused by the sudden urgency in his voice.

            Leo pointed to the dead woman’s body. Skye sucked in a breath as she stared at the woman she had just killed. Her chest was still, but part of her body was beginning to take on a purple shimmer. It started at her wound, and was expanding past her chest to her head and limbs. Forget Leo becoming a bomb. This woman was about to be one herself.

“Come on,” Leo called, taking her bloody hand and pulling her along the passageway.

She was able to run on her own after a few more yards, but Skye couldn’t stop herself from crying as she ran ahead of her best friend.

            Alarms blared loudly as Jemma ran down the hall with Ward. They’d started to go off a few minutes after she’d pulled the ankle bracelet off of him. The delay was probably due to the jammer she’d put in the bracelet. It had only given them a two minute head start. She’d been hoping to have a clean escape, but now things were complicated. True, she was leaving with someone she had a feeling would turn out to be a good ally, but they still needed to get out first.

“Wish that I had brought a spare gun for you,” she muttered under her breath as they ran around a corner. “But I wasn’t sure what you were going to choose.”

“You’re lucky that I have quick fingers.”

            Jemma slapped a hand to where she had strapped her gun, sighing in relief when she realized it was still there. Whirling around quickly, she saw that Ward was pulling a gun out that he had stashed in the back of his pants. She had to give him a nod of approval. He was good, but she already knew that. Ward had a tendency to look out for himself, and that had shown through with his choice. If Jemma was certain of anything, it was that he was a survivor, although he would need to understand the concept of loyalty if he wanted to make it to the new age.

“So whose gun is that?” she asked, deathly curious to know who on the team was the least unaware. She was also secretly impressed that he had managed to snag a gun. Quick fingers indeed.

Ward chuckled. “My guard dog. Trip never even noticed a thing. And I snagged a magazine from that new kid, Idaho.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Jemma mumbled, studying where they were. “Okay, we’re almost there.”

“Where are we even going?”

Jemma turned back to him. “The garage. I was thinking we could make a quick getaway with some motorcycles.”

Ward nodded approvingly. “Then let’s get going.”

“Stop where you are!” a voice suddenly shouted. “Take another step and I’ll blow your brains out.”

The click of a gun did halt Jemma in her tracks. Ward slowed to a stop beside her. Turning around slowly, Jemma’s eyebrows went up as she saw Idaho, clad in a black t-shirt and boxers, aiming a gun at them. She huffed in annoyance. When she’d planned this out, she expected to have been escaping on one of the motorcycles, leaving Coulson’s team in the dust. Having to take off that ankle bracelet of her companion had slowed her progress down considerably.

“Let her come back to me,” Idaho commanded, stepping toward them. “Do it now, Ward.”

Jemma rolled her eyes. They really thought that Ward was the mastermind behind this? Yes she knew her cover was pretty much going to be blown, but she was incredibly offended. Ward could never pull off anything like this.

“Actually,” she said. “He’s with me.”

Idaho’s brows knit in confusion. “I don’t…I don’t understand. Simmons, what’s going on?”

Ward sighed and pulled out his stolen gun. “I think it’s obvious. We’re both on our way out, and you’re in our way. I’d say I’m sorry, but I won’t because guess what? I’m not.”

With that, he pointed the gun at Idaho and fired it off five times. The man went down, five bloody holes in his chest, three around his heart.

Ward looked over at her and smiled. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to kill him?”

She shrugged. “He was in our way. Now let’s move.”

            By the time they reached the garage, they heard someone scream out Idaho’s name from the hallway. Jemma quickly keyed in the code to open the doors for them to ride to the rendezvous point for a pick-up. Ward tossed her a helmet, which she caught and put on.

“Make sure you follow me,” she told him as she hopped onto a motorcycle and started it up. “And keep up too.”

“STOP!” May’s voice echoed throughout the garage, and Jemma didn’t hesitate in speeding toward the open door of the garage. But at the same time, she couldn’t resist sneaking a peek behind her. May was a slowly shrinking figure to her, but a very angry looking one at that.

As she shot out on her bike and into the cool night air, Jemma kept her speed going until she and Ward were at least two miles from the facility. At that point, she slowed down a little, smiling inside of her helmet. Her cover was blown for sure, but she had still managed to get out with a new recruit and some extra SHIELD secrets. Darwin would at least be pleased to have someone new.

But even if Ward wasn’t fully ready to adopt Darwin’s dream, then she could always introduce him to Alice. That girl had a talent for helping people make up their minds.

            When the water slammed into her, it had felt like someone had kicked her in the chest. Hua had opened her mouth and screamed, but it had only resulted in her getting a mouthful of water. Fear was setting into her body as the current began to carry her swiftly down the tunnel while she struggled to get to the surface. She had learned to swim, but she wasn’t as strong a swimmer as she would have liked to be.

            The moment her head broke the surface, she gasped for air and coughed up water. Treading water as the current carried her, Hua felt relieved that there was at least enough between the water level and the tunnel ceiling so that she could keep her head above the water and breathe. But there was nothing for her to grab onto so she could give herself time to figure out an escape. She was at the mercy of the current and the tunnels.

“Don’t panic,” she told herself, closing her eyes and trying to keep her breathing under control. “Do not panic.”

            Panicking was all she felt like doing right now though. It felt like someone was trying to shove her into a smaller space, even though there was no change in the size of the tunnel. Hua had felt scared before, but now she was especially frightened. She only hoped that Skye and Fitz were safe. If she got lucky enough and got out of this, she would have to try and find them later.

            Turning herself forward to the best of her ability, Hua gasped when she saw a set of closely placed bars coming closer and closer to her. There was no way she could squeeze through them. With the rate the current was going, she was going to get seriously hurt slamming into them. Her panic started to grow, and her breathing was speeding up. The whole world felt like it was pushing in on her, preparing to crush her at any second. She was going to die. She could feel the phrase repeating over and over in her head, increasing her panic.

            Suddenly, Hua gripped her fists tightly, and something inside of her tingled. It felt like the world was closing in tightly around her, and something in her felt like it could fight back. Closing her eyes, she felt herself push outward with her mind.

Then everything changed dramatically.

            All the water suddenly pushed out all around her and struck the surfaces of things around her. Opening her eyes, Hua gasped as she saw the bars fly outward, carried by the water. The bricks of the tunnel broke apart from each other. It was as though an explosion had occurred, and she was at the center of it. Hua’s heart hammered against her chest, and the current suddenly shot her out.

Flying through the air with a strangled scream, Hua splashed down in the river that now carried her away from the facility. An enormous boom sounded from behind her.  Exhaustion hit her hard, and it became a struggle to keep herself afloat. Hua did her best to swim toward shore, an easier task with the current being significantly less than it had been in the tunnels.

            As soon as her knees touched mud, Hua began to crawl to shore. She felt dizzy and exhausted, as though she had just run for miles and miles. As soon as she was out of the water, she collapsed onto the earth, a deep sigh falling from her. Slowly, Hua turned her head toward the direction she’d come from. Her eyes widened as she saw the facility was now burning and spewing smoke into the sky. Had she caused that?

            In the back of her mind, Hua remembered how before she’d gotten into the tunnel, she’d heard the woman searching for them talk about her powers. She had called them dangerous, and said they were a threat to people. Hua had thought that she had only been trying to scare her, but now she wondered if she had been telling the truth. If these were her powers, then she was scared. She wondered if Skye had felt anything like this when she found out about hers…

Her sister and Fitz couldn’t have possibly gotten out of there in time.

            Hua couldn’t stop the wail coming from her as she gazed sideways at the burning facility, hot tears stinging her face. It was pain unimaginable as she grasped that she had just killed not just anyone, but her sister and her sister’s friend. All her life she had tried to uphold the promise she had made to keep her sister safe, and she had done just the opposite of what she wanted. She had killed her sister, and it made her feel like a monster.

            Exhaustion overtook her body a few minutes later, but Hua still cried , her muscles aching and tired from the destructive power she had just unleashed from inside of her with her mind.

            Leo felt his lungs gasping for air as he and Skye sprinted away from the facility. The dark clouds were now over them, and rain was pelting his face. His head was still trying to get a grip on everything that had just happened to them. They’d been made by three powered individuals and crawled down a hole to escape them. He’d been in a tunnel that started to fill up with water and bring back terrible memories of being stuck in a box in the ocean. Skye’s sister had been swept away because he had gone up before her, an action that was now piling extreme guilt upon him. Skye herself had killed a woman who had attempted to turn him into a human bomb, although said woman was most likely going to blow up any sec-

            An explosive boom made him dive forward and cover his head, even though they had probably made it a safe distance from the facility up on the hilltop now. Looking behind him, Leo gaped at the now flaming wreck of the base. He couldn’t believe that one woman could cause so much destruction.

            A bolt of lightning struck a tree not too far away, and the crack of thunder followed barely two seconds later. The rain turned into an angry downpour. Leo clamored to his feet and squinted through the rain to find Skye. At first, he couldn’t find her, but then caught sight of something standing up and ran toward it. The figure turned, and it relieved him to see that it was indeed Skye.

“Leo?” she cried out as he came closer.

“Yeah,” he said, hurrying over to her. “Are you hurt?”

Skye shook her head quickly and looked down at the wreckage where they’d been barely a few minutes ago. Her eyes looked red through the haze of rain. Leo looked up at the sky, seeing another bolt of lightning in the distance. Thunder was rumbling all around them. It felt like everything was grieving for Hua.

“We need to find shelter,” Skye murmured hollowly a moment. “I don’t know when this will stop.”

Leo nodded in agreement, and together they ran into the forest they had come from earlier that day. The greenery around them lessened the amount of rain that hit them, but the memory of Hua getting swept away and the facility exploding was still crystal clear in both of their minds.

Chapter Text

Chapter 23: Not What You Think

            Melinda lowered her gun as Simmons and Ward speed out of sight. A small, selfish part of her was pissed because the bike Ward was one belonged to her. However, there were other things that had greater importance. Edwin was back, and it seemed that he had expanded his connections since the last time she had faced him in Bahrain. It was still shocking that Simmons was his mole inside their team, but at least they knew. Melinda would have preferred to have her in a prison cell, but letting her crawl back to Edwin with Ward was what they needed right now.

            As she shut the garage doors and started to walk back to the door, Melinda couldn’t help but think about the original team that had existed long ago. Of the six, half, including herself, had been operating on separate agendas. She reported to Fury, Ward’s loyalty had been to Garrett and Hydra, and now Simmons was under Edwin’s thumb. Melinda wondered if Skye or Fitz had learned about Simmons’s true allegiance, and were kidnapped for that very reason. That, or Edwin had found out about Skye and decided to have a reunion by force. Either way, Melinda had plans to get answers on her daughter’s whereabouts the next time she crossed paths with the biochemist.

            Phil and Izzy were coming down from one of the other hallways as she exited the garage. By now, the blaring alarm had shut down, so the only sounds in the halls were of their footsteps. Idaho was lying on the ground, a trickle of red dried on his jaw. Melinda gazed down on him before lifting her head to look over toward Phil and Izzy.

“Did they get away?” Phil asked.

“Yes, although I could have stopped them,” she grumbled. “They took the motorcycles. Ward’s on mine.”

“Maybe we’ll find it?”

Melinda snorted quietly and shook her head. Phil and his damn optimism.

“Least they didn’t fly out,” Izzy sighed. “If they had happened, we would have lost-”

Someone was running down the hallway, and Izzy stopped mid-sentence. Lance Hunter appeared from around the corner, gun in hand.

“So is this where all the action has been going down?” he asked, frowning at them. “Thank you very much for the heads-up, guys. I don’t know how much of this base I’ve been running around before I came here. Please, can someone explain to me why-”

            Hunter went abruptly silent as his eyes landed on Idaho. The question on his lips died with a shaky exhale as he stared at his friend. There was a fury in his eyes when he looked back at them.

“Who killed him?” he growled, clenching his fists.

Melinda pressed her lips together. Izzy looked over at her. “How long since they passed through?”

“A couple minutes. I don’t think he’s moved since then.”

Hunter looked at them like they’d just said the sky was made of pudding. “Of course he hasn’t moved. Can’t you see that someone shot him dead?!”

“Calm down, Hunter,” Izzy sighed, prodding Idaho with her boot. “Okay, drama queen. Show’s over. You can get up now.”

“Are you insane?!” exclaimed Hunter, stepping toward her. “Our friend is dead and this is how you treat him?!”

            Suddenly, Idaho’s hand shot out, grabbing Hunter’s ankle. The other man screamed loudly, jumping high into the air out of Idaho’s grasp and backing against a wall, muttering curses under his breath. Idaho chuckled and sat up, wiping away the red from his mouth.

“Jesus…” Hunter uttered, staring at him.

“Nope, but I’ve been told there’s a resemblance,” Idaho replied with a cheeky grin, pulling off his shirt. Underneath was a bulletproof vest with a network of small, red filled tubes running across it like veins and arteries. Some were oozing a red liquid. “Also, it’s good to wear one of these, even if the bullets are only going to puncture these and nothing else.”

Melinda cracked a smile at the pissed look on Hunter’s face. But she had to admit, she would be as furious as him if something like that had happened to Phil.

“So,” Idaho continued, climbing to his feet. “Ward’s off with the traitor?”

“Traitor?” Hunter asked, baffled.

Bobbi and Koenig came running down the hall toward them at that exact moment. Both looked confused by the situation, but then Bobbi saw Idaho wearing the vest leaking fake blood. Suddenly, she and Koenig were firing off questions about what the hell was going on while Hunter shouted out questions about who the traitor was and such. Melinda looked over at Phil, who shrugged. There were way too many questions coming at him at once for him to answer them all.

“Stop!” he shouted, holding up a hand. The questions ceased immediately. “Wake up whoever isn’t already up and meet in the lab in ten minutes. I will explain everything then. Everyone clear?”

            Bobbi, Koenig, and Hunter all nodded and departed to go wake up whoever wasn’t already awake. Idaho muttered something about wanting to get on a clean shirt and headed in the direction toward his room. Melinda looked at her two remaining companions.

“We’re not telling them about Skye,” she said. As much as Melinda cared about her daughter’s safety, she wasn’t prepared to broadcast their relation to the rest of the team.

Phil nodded. “I wasn’t planning on sharing that.”

He started to walk off. After he was out of sight, Izzy turned to Melinda. “Not to be rude or anything, but did you want to shoot them when you had the chance.”

“No,” Melinda shook her head. “Simmons is a pawn. I want to shoot the person whose moving the pieces.”

            Trip leaned back against the lab table, half awake. He’d been in the middle of a pretty good night’s sleep when the alarms had gone off and woken him up. After stumbling out into the hall in his pajamas and a sock on one foot, he’d been searching the halls of the Playground, trying to find a source of the commotion. Just when he’d been about to go to the other side of the base, Idaho had rounded the corner, wearing a bullet-proof vest with tubes leaking something that looked like blood. Before Trip had been able to make a comment, the other man told him to go over to the labs and wait for Coulson and everyone else.

            After Mack entered the lab, Coulson rose to his feet and walked over to the Holotable. There was an uncomfortable silence over the group, which was now made up of a group of people who Trip hadn’t known very long, with the exceptions of Coulson and May. Along with them, he was all that remained of their little team that had come together after Hydra emerged. Fitz and Skye were gone, and now Simmons and Ward seemed to be absent as well. Trip remembered the sinking feeling that he had gotten in his heart when he entered Ward’s empty room, and then Simmons’s.

“So I guess you’ve noticed by now that we’re missing two more people now,” Coulson announced solemnly. “And there’s a good reason for that. Agent Simmons isn’t who we thought she was.”

Trip watched everyone react to the news, except for himself, Coulson, May, Hartley, and Idaho. Everyone who had been in the dark seemed genuinely and truly shocked.

“We believe that she was directly involved in kidnapping Skye and Fitz,” Coulson continued. “And we know for sure that she’s working for the Doctor.”

Trip noticed that May was clenching her fists at the mention of the Doctor. He wondered if she had seen him in the facility that they raided. She hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, but everyone had their secrets. Secrets could be harmless or dangerous, and Trip had feeling that May was holding one that pertained to the latter category.

“And how do we know this?” Blake asked as everyone looked over at him. “Did she confess this to you?”

“No,” Coulson shook his head and moved over to a screen that was nearby him. “But she did to Grant Ward.”

A video started to play on the screen, showing Coulson’s office with the man and Ward in it. Trip had already seen it when Coulson had first brought him in on the plan, so he already knew what was going to happen.

“I want to ask about my guard dog,” Ward said as he wrote down something on a pad of paper. “Is it really necessary for Trip to follow me around all day?”

He held up the pad of paper. It read ‘Don’t say anything. Simmons is listening. She is not who you think she is’.

Coulson let the video run long enough for the group to watch the two men onscreen to communicate through the paper to set up a time to talk verbally. Trip remembered Coulson coming to him early the next morning and telling him to meet in the room where the lie detector was later on. May and Hartley had been there with Coulson and Ward too, and they’d interrogated Ward in the chair. Ward had told them everything that he knew or had figured out on his own about Simmons and the Doctor.

After all the information had been exposed to their small group, they decided they needed to know more about Simmons and the Doctor, as well as stop whatever they were planning. Simply holding her in a cell wouldn’t help them find out anything. Simmons wouldn’t say anything to them if they tried to grill her for information. They had to find an alternative.

Then Ward suggested that he go undercover and try to break down the operation from the inside. He knew how the mind of sleeper agent worked, and he had told them that Simmons was getting edgy, ready to run.  Ward was the base outcast, and he could potentially run with her. He had plans to corner her when she was going to run, and would let her make the next move. That was the riskiest, as she could either offer him a place with her or kill him on the spot.

Everyone else in the room would set up a siege if the former option proved true. If that was the case, then Ward would have to remove his ankle bracelet. Everyone would be triggered into action, and try to ‘stop them’. They brought in Idaho at that point to serve as a dummy kill for Ward in order to solidify Simmons’s trust in him. Trip gave him a gun loaded full of special bullets Fitz had once developed for target practice, and they’d rigged a bulletproof vest with tubes to simulate arteries and veins in the body. When the special bullets hit Idaho, they would only rupture the tubes. Ward had done two sessions of target practice with them in secret to make sure he hit the tubes right on.

            Coulson explained this all to the group now. Hunter gave Idaho a dirty look when it was mentioned that he was the dummy kill.

“So now we need to just have faith in this Hydra agent?” Mack muttered as Coulson finished his story.

“He’s not Hydra,” Coulson replied. “Not anymore. Believe it or not, Ward wants to stop Agent Simmons as much as the rest of us.”

“And if he finds Skye or Fitz in the process, then what happens?” Blake cut in. “Didn’t Simmons mention that they were with the Doctor?”

“Anything we’ve heard from Agent Simmons regarding Skye or Fitz can’t be trusted anymore,” Hartley explained. “She’s lied about so many other things that we can’t trust her anymore. We’re lucky that Ward came to Coulson and told him the truth. Otherwise we would have lost evidence on the Doctor, and had no idea why she ran.”

Blake nodded in understanding.

May cleared her throat. “The Doctor is not a force to be messed with. We’ve seen the pictures of what he did to that Hydra agent, and we found things in the rubble of that base that tell me he’s been doing this for a long time. He needs to be stopped before he hurts anyone else.”

“Ward will be doing what he can on his end,” Coulson added. “And there might come a time when he’ll need us to help finish the job. We’ve lost two agents already, and we might lose more for all we know. But this man is posing a threat to people and we have to stop him before he hurts anyone else. I need to know that we’re all committed to this.”

            Everyone in the room nodded and murmured that they were. Trip knew he was wholeheartedly committed to the cause. All of them had a reason to hold a vendetta against the Doctor, whether it was missing teammates, Simmons’s betrayal, controlled against their will, or the sadistic things they had found of his in the rubble. For him, it was all of the above, except the mind control thing.

            After the impromptu meeting, Trip went back to his room and tried to get some sleep. But his thoughts were filled of horrible possibilities of the fates of Skye and Fitz. Unfortunately, those thoughts seemed to transfer over into his dreams as well. He dreamed that the Playground had been reduced to near rubble, and he was the only one alive. As he walked through the destruction, searching for signs of life, the only discoveries he made were gruesome ones. May, Coulson, Hunter, Idaho, Hartley, Mack, Bobbi, Blake, Koenig, even Ward. They were all dead, and he was alone.

            Passing by Mack’s mauled, lifeless form, Trip entered what used to be the hanger for the Bus, only now he could see the sky above him now. A pile of large concrete slabs was in the center of the room, where the Bus should have been. Lying on the crimson-soaked top slab was Skye, her still body almost completely covered in blood. There was another body on the slab below her. Trip froze for a moment before running over to it.

“Fitz!” he shouted, kneeling down beside his friend, rolling him over so his face would be visible.

            The emptiness of Fitz’s eyes and the bullet hole in the center of his forehead made him want to vomit. Somehow, the way Skye’s arm hung over the edge, her hand almost brushing Fitz’s face, made it all worse. Trip stood up and put his hands over his head, feeling sick inside. Who had done this?

“They put up a good fight,” a familiar voice drawled behind him.

            Trip clenched his fists and turned around to see Simmons smiling as she exited the shadows. She wore her normal clothes, but they were covered with stains and streaks of scarlet. There was something insane in her smile, a bit like Garrett’s had been. It was chilling and unnatural, but it also felt like he was seeing the real Simmons.

“You should have known better than to try and trick me,” she snarled as she approached him. “Naturally, everyone who was in on the plan has to pay the price.”

Simmons produced a knife from behind her back. Trip swallowed as he saw the blood coating it, wondering how many of his friends had been killed with it.

            Before his adversary could take another step, something strange happened. Ripples began to form in the air to his right, steadily increasing in diameter and frequency. Then, at the center of the oddity, a dark hand reached out. The hand was followed by an arm, then a face, and part of a torso. The face was that of a woman, and her eyes scanned around the room. They widened at the sight of Simmons, and a gasp emitted from her when she saw Skye and Fitz. Trip watched her with interest as she turned toward him.

“Who are you?” he asked her. He honestly had no idea who she was.

“I can explain that if you come with me,” the woman told him. She held her hand toward him. “Take my hand.”

Trip cast a glance back toward Simmons, who was gaining. Even though she wasn’t real, he still didn’t want to die in a dream. He wasn’t sure if it was even possible to die in a dream, but he wasn’t in the mood to take a chance. Stepping forward, he clasped the woman’s hand. She looked him in the eye and started to recede into the ripples. Trip felt himself being pulled along into whatever it was, and closed his eyes as his head went in.

As his head passed through something that felt almost like water, warmth shined down on him. Opening his eyes, Trip was stunned to find that he was no longer in the dark hanger. Instead, he was now stepping into a beautiful green field. The sun was shining down on him, and a breeze pressed gently against his clothes. Little flowers were growing in scattered patches in the field.

“Where…?” he started to ask.

“It’s my dream. I think,” the woman explained. “It feels like kind of a main base of operations. Also, you can let go of my hand now.”

Trip had barely noticed that he was still holding her hand. He released it slowly, letting his own fall down by his side. The woman smiled at him, and he studied her for a moment. She was very pretty, with dark curly hair and large dark eyes. Her clothes looked slightly damp, as though she had gotten them soaked and they were still drying out. But the thing that he really noticed was her expression. It was a mixture of sadness and fear, as though she had just lost somebody.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked after a moment.

She seemed to be sizing him up, but her eyes seemed to be frozen on his shirt sleeve. Looking down, Trip remembered the shirt he was currently sleeping in had the SHIELD emblem on the sleeve. As he turned back toward the woman, he saw her step back.

“Hey, it’s cool,” he assured her, holding up his hands. “I’m not Hydra. I’m true SHIELD.”

She nodded slowly, but she still looked frightened. “Then you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you, Agent…”

“Antoine. Antoine Triplett. But most people just call me Trip,” he said. “And you are?”

The woman looked him in the eye. “My name is Hua, and I need to you to listen to what I have to tell you.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 24: Guilt

The funny thing about life was how quickly it could change. In the blink of an eye, insane could become normal. Once dangerous tasks were safe in comparison to new challenges. People entered and exited sometimes the latter happening too quickly for one to say good-bye.

And it hurt.

Every cell in Skye's body ached with grief. She'd only just gotten to know who Hua really was, and now she was dead. It still didn't seem believable that her sister was actually gone. Skye half-expecting was expecting for her any second to just come up and sit down beside her to ask if she was okay. But then she would look down and see the blood stained on her hands and underneath her fingernails from the woman she had killed, and received a reminder of the horrible truth.

Perhaps it was guilt that weighed heavily on her in addition to the grief. Guilt that came from never doing anything for someone who gave up so much for her. Hua had given up a chance of freedom to keep her safe from their father, and now she had given up her life for Skye to get up from the tunnels. Skye had done nothing in return for her older sister, and it was killing her from the inside. She'd been so selfish back at the facility. If she could turn back time, Hua would have been the one to go up first, then Leo, then her. Or she could have reached further out to her sister, or actually have caught Hua's hand the second time she jumped. All the things she could have done, should have done, and it was destroying her.

Pushing herself up from the ground, Skye trekked glumly back to the remains of the house she and Leo were staying in. When they had first run through the forest together, shelter had been taken in a cramped cave until the downpour faded into a misty drizzle. After that, they had hiked through the forest in search of a place to spend the night. They happened upon an abandoned village that was in ruins once they were out of the woods. Skye didn't tell Leo, but she knew deep down that this was the village the assistant had taken her once Hua gave her to him, the one SHIELD had found her in after Darwin had massacred the entire population.

A quick peek over her shoulder down the hill confirmed that Leo was still washing up in the river below, so she wouldn't be disturbed by him anytime soon. Reaching into her backpack, Skye withdrew the file she had taken from the base. A lump rose up in her throat as she thought of how Hua was supposed to be with her, looking at their files together to unravel the mystery of their past. Skye dragged the back of her hand across her face to wipe away her tears that had been falling since the explosion of the base and opened the file.

A small picture of baby her was paper-clipped to the top of the first page. Skye brushed her finger over it before moving her eyes down to study the rest of the page. Her heart clenched when she saw that every box where information about her should have been was blacked out, save for two. One box held the name of her father, Edwin Prescott. The other had her full name written in the provided space. Tian Kong Amelia Prescott.

She never knew she even had a middle name.

But knowing her middle name did nothing to diffuse the frustration building up inside of her. All the hope she'd had after finding her sister had only brought her to another dead end. With the number she'd run into during the search for her parents, she should be used to it by now. But somehow, there was more pain in it this time. Skye had never lost so much searching until now. Learning her middle name shouldn't have cost her sister's life.

Her fingers were numb and heavy as she flipped to the next page. Before she could begin to read the information that it held, Leo entered the house. His hair was still wet and dripping water on his face. Skye shut the file quickly and switched her attention to him. "Hey."

"Hey," he responded, standing slightly awkwardly at the door. Skye could feel his eyes on the file. "How are you doing?"

Skye bit her lip as guilt crashed into her again. "I've been better."

"Yeah, me too."

His eyes were dark and clouded with remorse. Skye stood up and stepped over to him. "Do you want to talk?"

Leo's jaw clenched and he made his way further inside before sitting on the ground. She followed him, plopping down beside him and wrapping her hand around his. They stayed that way for a few minutes before he sighed and squeezed her hand.

"I was a jerk," he mumbled shamefully. "I treated Hua terribly. After Simmons turned on us and brought us to that place, I felt like my world was crumbling down around me. That whole time we spent there, everything I had ever believed in was being ripped away from me or falling apart except for one thing- you. You were the only person I was able to trust, and you kept me together. All those things that happened, almost getting turned into a monster, seeing Simmons threaten me with your life, it just tore me apart inside. I'd never felt so…broken."

"Then your sister came along and got us out, but I couldn't see past the things she'd done. She was still Raina, the crazy psycho flower bitch who tortured Coulson and worked for Centipede. I didn't see her as someone who risked her life to get to you, to save you and me."

Skye didn't have the heart to tell him that Hua had done those things to closer to the Clairvoyant in order to find out about their mother. Instead, she simply brushed her thumb over his finger comfortingly.

"She took us to the facility where you two were separated, and I didn't want to say this then, but I wanted stay together. I still couldn't trust her because I still saw her as the person who tried to hurt us. When we got cornered, I thought she had set the whole thing up to get us back to your father. But then we ended up in the tunnels and I went up that hole before her. After that tunnel flooded, I realized that it could have been me who didn't make it up. Hua could have been the person I thought she was, the selfish, manipulative witch who cared only about herself. But she let me go ahead."

"I thought you two played rock, paper, scissors," Skye protested. "She said you won."

Leo shook his head. "We tied. But she called out that I won. When she looked back at me, she gave me this look that told me to go. I jumped at the chance, wanted to get out, I guess. Now I think back and how it could have been me, but it wasn't because of Hua. There's no way I can repay her for saving me like that, or even apologize for the way I treated her. I feel like I'm the reason you lost your sister, Skye."

Skye shook her head. "No, don't say that. Don't you dare blame yourself."

"It's true though," he sighed. "If I hadn't been there, she'd still be alive. I feel like I'm responsible that she's gone."

"Stop it," Skye hissed softly, trying not to cry. "It is not your fault, Leo. None of this is on you. I'm the one to blame for Hua's death. I went up that hole first. I didn't even gave you or her a chance to get up. I should have let her go up first. She got me out of Darwin's clutches when I was a baby, and she found a way to get us out of the base in Mongolia. And I have done nothing in return! I couldn't even catch her hand when she jumped. If I had just been able to grab it, then Hua would be with us. She wouldn't be dead. But I didn't. I failed."

Her lower lip was quivering now, the memory of her sister being swept away screaming slamming back into her mind. All Skye wanted to do was cry. Guilt weighed so heavily down on her, and any second it was as though it and the grief she felt for her sister would crush her like a bug. She was so close to breaking, and had no idea how much longer she'd be able to hold herself together for.

Leo scooted closer, shifting his hand from her grasp to put his arm around her shoulder to pull her close. The simple action made Skye's strength finally break. She began to sob against her best friend's chest. Every event of the past two weeks, from Simmons's betrayal to meeting her father to finding and then losing her sister, had been bottled up, but she couldn't hold it in any longer. Leo, being the kind, wonderful person he always was, rubbed circles on her back and murmured words of comfort to her. They stayed like that for a while until her sobs died down.

"Skye," he uttered once she had calmed down a little. "I'm going to tell you something important, and I want to you listen to it.

"Okay," she nodded, pulling back a little so she could face him.

"No matter what you think, this is not your fault. In every scenario, you would have gone up first. That would have been the one thing Hua and I'd have agreed on. Yes, your sister did do a lot for you. But you did something for her to. You got to live a normal life away from all the madness of your father. She wanted that for you, Skye. Trust me, older sisters care a lot about their younger siblings."

"You know something about that?"

Leo nodded, sadness creeping back into his eyes. "I had an older sister too. Always there for me when other kids made fun of me, never treated me badly. She was the best."

"So what happened to her?"

Leo's voice was filled with pain, and barely even a whisper. "She died when I was ten."

Ten years old. Skye couldn't even imagine the pain and grief Leo had felt then. Losing someone he'd known since he was born had to hurt worse than her losing her sister that she'd known about for two weeks. "You know what I'm going through?"

"I understand it."

Skye sniffled a little. "Does the pain…does it ever go away?"

Leo paused at that. "It fades a little over time, but it never completely goes away. Some days there are days when it just hits me all over again at full force, and I feel like I can barely breathe. But I try to remember the person she was, and how Charlotte would have wanted me to be happy and live my life to the fullest. She said that to me a lot. To just be happy and enjoy every moment of my life. Hua would have wanted the same for you."

She closed her eyes and sighed, remembering the few moments she'd shared with her sister. "I miss her."

"I know. I do too. She was a hero. I just wish I could have seen her for that sooner."

She was a monster.

That was the sole thought running on repeat inside of Hua's head as she wandered in the remains of the base she had brought down. When she'd been struggling to keep her head above water in the tunnels, she'd only thought she'd been pushing out against the tunnel. Hua very clearly recollected water and bricks flying out away from her, but it seemed to have gone beyond the tunnel. The base looked like it had been hit by a massive bomb.

She couldn't believe what she'd done. Skye was dead. Three people who her father had transferred and brainwashed were dead. Even Fitz was dead. All of the people were gone because she couldn't control her powers. She was a force of destruction with this power.

Hua sank down onto a slab of concrete and let out a scream. She'd promised to always keep her little sister safe, and she'd failed. If only she'd managed to jump a little higher, or quicker, then none of this wouldn't have happened. Tian Kong would still be alive. But there was no going back and changing the past. She was going to have to live with what she'd done for the rest of her life.

Slipping her backpack off, she pulled out the file she had taken and opened it. The papers inside were still damp and the ink was smeared a little, but there was nothing on the page that could help her in her search. Any helpful information was blacked out. Hua threw down the papers, frustrated at hitting another dead end. She buried her head in her hands and screamed.

Lifting her head up, she gazed down at the papers of her file when something caught her eye. Sliding off the slab, she picked up one of the pieces of paper. It was a list of all the places she'd been with Darwin. Some of them were familiar, but others she didn't remember. Odds were that there were a file on her in every one of these locations. Maybe some of them weren't redacted yet.

A new purpose settled on her now. There was a way to find out who her mother was, and even finding her. Hua was going to find her not just for herself, but also for Skye. She felt she owed her sister to finish the journey they'd started.

And if she took down a few of Darwin's bases in the process, then that would be even better.

Chapter Text

Chapter 25: End of the Beginning

            Melinda gazed at the photo frame in her hands. Inside the frame was a picture from the day that Tian Kong was born. Hua had been brought to the hospital by Edwin to visit and met her new baby sister. Her eldest daughter was on the bed beside her while her youngest was cradled in her arms. Both her younger self and Hua had been smiling brightly at the camera, which had been held by Edwin. She remembered how happy she had been that day with her family.

She also remembered how devastated she had been two months later, and then again after Bahrain.

            There were too many days that she wished she had acted sooner. If she had just done it, her daughters would have been okay. Tian Kong- Skye would have grown up with her mother. Hua would still be alive. There would be no Bahrain, no hearing from her ex that he had killed their children.

            Someone rapped on her door. Melinda rose to her feet and set the picture back in the box next to Hua’s stuffed horse. Once it was back in the box, she walked over to the door and opened it. It didn’t surprise her to see Phil standing in front of her. If anything, she had practically expecting him to drop by at some point.

“How are you holding up?” he asked once she let him in and closed the door behind them.

“Fine. How about you?”

Phil shrugged. “It’s been a lot to take in. Simmons being a mole, the Doctor, you being Skye’s mother.”

Melinda sighed and sat back down on the bed. Her fingers traced the edge of the box absentmindedly.

“We only planned for one child,” she murmured aloud, not sure why she was telling him this. “I wasn’t sure I wanted a second when I found out I was pregnant again. But as time went on, I started to look forward the new baby. Maybe it was Hua drawing all those pictures of us and the new baby. She covered her whole room with them.”

Phil chuckled beside her, and Melinda found herself smiling at the memory.

“And when the day finally came where she was born, I couldn’t remember why I had been so scared about having a second baby. Skye, although she was Tian Kong then, was so perfect, just like her sister. I swore that I was always going to protect her and Hua no matter what. But I failed there.”

“You told me Edwin took the girls. It was not your fault, Melinda. You didn’t know he was going to disappear with them.”

“I thought they were dead,” whispered Melinda in a tight voice. She pulled out Hua’s horse, remembering how she had found it in the rubble of the base she had blown up in Bahrain. “I spent years clinging to the hope that they were still alive. I looked for clues everywhere, but I couldn’t find anything. I finally managed to track Edwin to Bahrain. He was the one controlling people, although technically he had a girl he had enhanced doing the controlling. But I knew he was behind it. I had to go after him, to stop him and find out what had happened to Hua and Tian Kong.”

“That’s why you went in alone,” Phil muttered as realization dawned in his eyes. “The civilian girl, did you think…”

“I was hoping she would be Hua or Tian Kong,” Melinda sighed. “But it wasn’t. Still, I couldn’t just sit by and let Darwin destroy more lives!”

“So you brought the whole place down? With him inside?”

“I thought it was the only solution, the only way to stop him and get out a final confession about my daughters,” she spat. “And he told me they were dead. The worst part was that I believed him.”

Her freed hand clenched the duvet cover angrily. Phil put his own hand over it, and she looked up.

“We’re going to find Skye,” he told her. “And we’re going to find out what happened to Hua and where she is if she is still alive. I promise you, we will do everything we can to find them.”

“And we’re stopping Edwin too,” she reminded him.

“Absolutely. We’ll figure this out, Melinda. I swear to you, I will not let you down.”

“So, Grant Ward.”

Grant straightened up in the chair, keeping his silence. Across the desk, the man who called himself Darwin in addition to the Doctor leaned back in his seat. Grant could feel the other man studying him carefully. The action was mutual though.

“Agent Simmons tells me that you’re interested in joining us,” Darwin said, nodding over to where Simmons stood over by the door. “And I must say, you’ve had an impressive resume. Hydra sleeper inside SHIELD who was thrown into prison. Now you’re here. Why?”

            Grant knew this had been coming. Coulson had warned him that he might have to go through multiple tests to prove he was interested in the Doctor’s cause. He’d already been through this sort of thing before too, when he had first gone into SHIELD. The skills he used then were going to need to come back into play now.

“Purpose,” he answered.

Darwin raised an eyebrow. “Go on?”

“I’m willing to bet that Simmons was the one who told you about my history,” Grant said evenly, earning a nod from Darwin. “You know I worked for Hydra within SHIELD. I had a purpose then- helping my SO. When he died, I lost purpose. I didn’t have anything to work towards, nothing to fight for. SHIELD tried to see if they could get me back on their side by letting me out so I could give them information on Hydra and the person who attacked me in my cell. But they’ve been using me for that purpose and nothing else. Simmons said she could give me a new purpose if I came with her. For someone who has been in the darkness for so long, I will gladly walk towards any light a friend can give to me.”

“Did she tell you our purpose exactly?”

Grant shook his head.

Darwin smiled. “We’re going to bring about a new age of man. We are creating a whole new world. A better one. Tell me, is that something you’d like to be part of? A legacy that shall be remembered for generations to come?”

Grant nodded. Internally, he couldn’t believe Simmons thought this nutcase was a genius. He clearly wasn’t the first person to want this dream, but something about him gave Grant the feeling that Darwin was willing to do anything to get to his goal. “That is exactly what I am looking for.”

Darwin stood up and held his hand out to Grant.  “Then welcome, Agent Ward.”

“Thank you, sir,” Grant replied, standing up and shaking the man’s hand.

            He was now in the belly of the beast, and it had accepted him. Now everything from here on out was crucial. Grant would have to make sure he kept his cover, but also needed to do whatever he could to weaken this man. And he couldn’t let his cover spin out of control like it had in SHIELD. He would learn from his mistakes, and no one would know who he really was.

            Idaho stumbled down the corridor of the Playground to the kitchen sleepily. Last night’s events had been insane, what with pretending to die so a former traitor could prove himself and escape with another traitor so the first traitor could spy on this one’s boss. It had taken him ages to sleep when the whole deal was done. Right now, he just wanted to grab some breakfast and some peace and quiet before the next crazy thing hit them.

“Ah, just who we’ve been looking for!” someone announced when he entered the kitchen.

            Idaho raised his head groggily in the direction of the voice. It had come from Hunter, who was turned around in his seat with a mug of something in his hand. Mack was over by the coffee machine, and Bobbi had just grabbed a banana. All of them seemed to have their full attention on Idaho. It was beginning to feel a little unnerving.

“Hey,” he greeted with a weak chuckle. “Crazy night last night, huh?”

Hunter stood up from the table. Mack and Bobbi came to stand on either side of him, their arms crossed. Hunter reached around his back. When his hand reappeared, there was a gun in it. He raised it so the barrel was pointed at Idaho’s chest.

“Hunter, what are you doing?!”

His friend pulled the trigger.

Idaho shouted as something hit him in the chest, stinging him a little bit.

Gaping at his friend, he looked down at his chest. There was a bright purple splatter of paint on his undershirt.

Hunter had just shot him with a paintball gun.

“Don’t ever scare us like that again, pretending to die and all,” Hunter warned, coming in close and giving him a hug. “I thought you were a goner.”

“You weren’t trying to kill me,” Idaho sighed in relief. “Oh, thank god.”

“You scared us all,” Bobbi told him, giving him a light punch in the shoulder. “I get it, it was top secret and classified and all that good stuff. But we still thought you were gone.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry, because I am going nowhere except to the showers and then my room,” he grumbled, grabbing an apple on his way out.

“So what’s our next play?”

Skye looked up from her empty plate at Leo. After another day in the ruined village, the two had decided to hike back to find civilization again. They’d made it to a small town the previous evening, camping out in the forest on the edge for the night before entering the town and getting a ride to the city where they’d arrived almost a week previously with Hua. Now they were grabbing lunch for what Skye believed would be the last time for them for a long while.

She traced her utensil over one of the flowers painted on the plate. Another subtle reminder of her sister. It had been a few days, and her grief had only lessened slightly after her talk with Leo. She still couldn’t help feeling guilty. They’d gone back to the wreckage after leaving the village at her insistence to see if they could find a body to bury, but nothing had turned up, and the tunnels were too dangerous to even attempt to explore now. Skye had eventually come to the assumption that her sister had drowned, and her body had been washed downstream in the opposite direction they were going.

“Skye?” Leo’s voice was gentle, but it called her back to reality.

“Yeah, just fine,” she replied, putting on a smile the best she could. “You were asking about what to do next?”

“Uh-huh.”

            Skye bit her lip and pulled her backpack up onto her lap. Unzipping it, she withdrew her file that they had recovered from the last base, flipping it open to the page she had discovered the previous night. Leo had been asleep, and after she had found it, she half contemplated leaving him with the other half of her money that was in her bag along with a note. But it wouldn’t have been fair to him. Skye couldn’t allow herself to leave her best friend like that.

“This is a records sheet,” she explained, turning it so Leo could read it. “Every base that I was ever taken to before SHIELD found me in that village is listed on this sheet.”

“Do you think the other bases will have your files there too? Maybe even some that haven’t had all their information redacted?”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Skye replied, putting the papers back in the file and then back into her backpack.

“Great,” Leo grinned as they stood up and returned their plates at the back, heading for the door. “So where do we want to go first?”

            They had just stepped outside when he said this. Skye froze when he said the word ‘we’. That’s what the two of them had been since he had woken up from his coma. They trained together, went on missions together, and even pranked together. Both of them had been captured together, escaped with Hua together, and survived the nightmare of the last base together while her sister didn’t. It had been ‘we’ for months, and soon she wouldn’t have him.

“Skye?”

Reaching into her pocket, Skye handed him the half of her money.  Leo frowned and looked down at it. “What’s all this?”

“There’s a bus leaving for Beijing in twenty minutes,” she explained, wrapping his hand around the money. “This should be enough for you to buy a ticket and get there. Once you do, find a disposable cell, find a safe place, and call the number for Coulson’s emergency phone. Once you have him, tell him that you need a lift out. When you get that, tell him everything that has happened. Tell him about Simmons and make sure she gets put in a prison cell like we did with Ward. Tell him about my father and his experiments. And you make sure you tell him about Hua. Make sure Coulson and May and Trip know who she really was and why she did what she had to do, and that she died saving us. Can you do that for me?”

“You’re saying this like you’re not coming along with me.”

Skye chewed her lip. She couldn’t look at him right now.

“You’re not coming with me,” he realized. “You’re going to go after the files by yourself, aren’t you?”

She nodded as they started walking again. “Yep.”

“You don’t have to,” Leo told her. “We can go together to Beijing, get SHIELD to help out with this.”

“No,” Skye shook her head. “All I could ever find on myself from SHIELD was that I’m an 084. This file and everything my sister ever told me was the most I’ve ever had on my past.”

“Maybe SHIELD can build up on what you know. You have new information, maybe you can find new connections.”

“And put the people I care about into danger?” Skye snapped. “I can’t do that to them. I’ve already lost Hua to this. I can’t lose Coulson or May or Trip either. And I could never ever forgive myself if you stayed with me and…”

She stopped, looking up at the sky before back at Leo. “There was nothing that was ever taken from you or done to you that involved Darwin, Leo. You don’t have anything you need to know from him. You can go back to SHIELD, go back to what constituted our regular lives.”

Leo went pale, his eyes clouding over. “You’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

He couldn’t met her eyes. Skye put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. Just tell me what happened.”

“There’s something I need to tell you, Skye,” Leo inhaled shakily. “And I should have told you this when I first found out.”

Something was wrong. Skye could see it in his eyes, and it scared her. Leo was all she had right now, and the potential things he could say made her worry.

“I didn’t wake up from the coma on my own,” he confessed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I thought I did, I believed that I did. But Simmons-”

“What did she do?” Skye demanded, her fists curling up at the mention of the woman who had betrayed them.

Leo sighed heavily. “She got a drug from Darwin. It was what woke me up. She injected something into me because he told her it would wake me up. I found out during the week we were imprisoned. She brought me up to offer me a chance to join her, and I found out when we were arguing. And ever since she told me that, I’ve been scared.”

“Why?”

“You told me about Coulson and the writing thing that happened when I was in the coma,” he continued. “I’m afraid something like that might happen to me one day. I know there haven’t been any side effects that I’ve noticed, but what if they’re coming? What if I become like one of those monsters we saw in the pit?”

Skye grasped his hand loosely. Leo didn’t respond in any way. This was serious stuff he had been holding in, and it had clearly been taking a toll on him. His eyes looked so broken, and a tear was falling down his cheek.

“Because of Simmons, I’ve become involved in this,” Leo said after a long minute. “We’ve both become involved in this. I’m coming with you, Skye, for two reasons. The second is because I want to see if there’s anything this drug could do to me at any time.”

Skye frowned. “So the first reason is?”

“You,” Leo replied, cracking a weak smile. “You’re my best friend, Skye, and you must be crazy to think that I’m going to let you do this alone.”

“But you could die!” Skye protested.

“So could you. But you won’t if you have someone to have your back.”

Skye snorted. “You’re aren’t going to take no for an answer, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Leo chuckled, shaking his head. “Not for this. You don’t have to be alone, Skye.”

Skye leaned forward and gave him a hug, trying not to cry. Over a year ago, she had been almost completely alone. Now, she had met people who cared about her, and one who was willing to pass up safety so he could help her. She never thought she would have this much, and after losing Hua, she was going to make sure nothing bad happened to the other people she cared about.

“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” she whispered, hugging him a little tighter.

“Skye, I am exactly what you deserve,” he told her as they broke apart. “You’ve gone through so many horrible things. No one should ever have to go through that much. And if you are doubting that I would willingly go back to SHIELD without you, then you’re wrong.”

“So you really are okay going with me?”

“Definitely,” Leo nodded.

Skye smiled weakly and pulled her bag off of her shoulder to pull out the file. “Where do you want to start then?”