Chapter Text
When she opened her eyes, it was dark. Darkness at this point was a friend, it was the sign of safety.
The lights were only on when the man in white was in the room, and bad things happen when the man in white was in the room.
The floor felt cold under her, which meant they were done for the day. She carefully sniffed the air, but couldn’t smell the coppery scent of blood. She must have passed out before they got to making her bleed. She had a feeling that that wasn’t as good of a thing as it seemed.
When she first arrived it took losing a lot of blood to make her pass out, and now she had been lights out after a few questions. Well, to be fair she was pretty sure she was going to die soon anyway, so that might explain the weakness.
One of the wounds in her leg was badly infected, pushing puss and smelling like her upcoming death. She thought that that was going to be the thing that kills her, but she had figured that out pretty much the moment she heard the bone snap and felt it push through her skin. Before that she had thought it would be one of the broken ribs that would eventually puncture her lungs. Before that she thought it would be the blood loss from where she used to have fingers. Before that she thought it would be from the head injury. Before that she thought it would be from old age at 90.
Dying kinda really sucked. Especially this dying slow from an infection thing. But, to be fair, it was still better than living like this. When she had finally realized that she was going to die there, it was almost a relief. Hope seemed to cause more and more pain, so when it was finally gone the first time they left her on the floor of the cement room naked and bleeding, she had finally given up hope. No-one was coming. She would die.
So when the leg started to get infected she hid it. Dying slowly sucked, but finally getting to die was going to be awesome.
She wanted to move to the corner where her small makeshift bed was, but knew she had no hope of getting there. She was tired and in pain and would only be more tired and more in pain if she tried to move. There was no point anyway. They wouldn’t be back for more questions until after 2 guard changes, and she was sure she would be dead as a doornail by then.
She had prepared for this 6 questionings ago, before the leg. She had written a small note with an oily black liquid that had been left on the floor by one of the guard’s boots. She wrote it on the back of a Starbucks receipt that she had had in her pocket when they took her, and hid the note behind a loose piece of cement under her bed of ripped clothes and cardboard.
She had left evidence that she had been there any way she could. She smeared her blood in the dark corners and left small drops on things they wouldn’t been noticeable on only with the naked eye. She bit off her remaining fingernails and jammed them in the small cracks of the cement. She crabbed fistfuls of her now short hair and yanked them from her head and spread them everywhere. She had watched enough of CSI to know that the more evidence, the better.
So now the only thing left was to die. Which, as stated before, sucked.
For a moment she felt her head spinning again and closed her eyes. She opened them a moment later, but knew that it had been much longer. She was no longer in so much pain. Not in a fun “Yay I have been cured” kinda way, more like in the “I’m numb and can no longer feel anything” kinda way. She was shivering though, violently. A fever was making its way through her body, the infection taking over.
She was happy. She knew her immune system was weak, so when the fever burned through her fragile body, it would take her with it. No more than a day until it would claim her. In terms of consciousness maybe an hour or two. Finally.
She took small shallow breaths and thought about her life before this. She thought of the cold Chicago mornings of her childhood, she thought of the hot days in the Arizona sun as a student, and she thought of the rainy afternoons of London. She felt sad as tiredness started to take over, knowing that this sleep was going to be her final one. Her life had been short, but she had seen so much. She had been stupid to think that after seeing all of those things she could just go and live like everyone else. She had been so stupid.
And that was the final thought in Darcy Lewis’ her mind as she drifted off to unconsciousness.
“Team Red has reached the inner door, permission to proceed?”
A crackling voice came through the intercom into the operations centre of the helicarrier.
“Fucking finally”, Maria Hill grunter. She stood up from the table and walked to the main screen showing live areal footage of the area. She had had a bad feeling for hours now, from pretty much the moment first boots hit the ground. She pressed the communications button on her headset to answer.
“Granted. Red one, frequent updates required.”
“Understood Wolf one, reports will continue.”
On the monitors Hill could see one of the ground cameras shake as the underground explosion was set off.
“Team Red is on the main floor, proceeding with the sweep.”
Hill remained quiet, as did the rest of the room. Only three other people occupied the large space, all of them on their computers. This was her operation, so she was the only high lever agent needed.
“Team Red has located the technology.”
Hill couldn’t hold in a sigh. If this intel hadn’t turned out to be accurate, her career would have been done.
“Good job Red one. Bring back the disc and neutralize everything else.”
“Understood Wolf one. Should my guys sweep the rest of the area before heading to the meeting point?”
Hill thought about it for a moment. If she had just indeed recovered what she thought she had, she would be the talk of SHIELD for years to come. She knew the men were still running into occasional armed resistance, so proceeding now could have seriously consequences. She should tell them to evacuate right now.
“Sweep the rest of the area team Red.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what made her say that. She had always hated people who went on and on about trusting their gut, but right now her gut was telling her to proceed.
The coms went quiet for a solid 2 minutes.
“Wolf one, Red six.”
“Go ahead Red six.”
“We have an area that has apparently been used as a containment area.”
Hill grabbed the edge of the table. This wasn’t good. Fuck her gut, she could feel it in her very bones. Something bad was going on in there.
“Sweep the area for survivors, report immediately.”
It was quiet again for a good moment and Hill felt the adrenaline pumping through her.
“Negative on the survivors, we have two that have been dead for a while and one that-“
The sound was suddenly cut off. Hill had just pressed her finger to the headset to bark orders when a voice came through the line.
“Correction, we have a live one.”