A/N: Hello lovely readers! Second Shield story. Shoutout to Annajadekin for allowing me to bring her story idea to life, hope you guys enjoy the ride. Brief explanation: Skye is a secret genius, watch how she keeps it a secret, learn about her mysterious past and how she uses her above average intelligence to her advantage.
Summary:Skye has a secret, one that no one else can ever know. As a child, people wanted to exploit her genius. As a teen, they took advantage of her mind. For two years, Skye had been free but, when she gets on Shield's radar, she has to tread carefully or else they might learn her secret and history will repeat itself.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter One: Skye
"I want to go."
These four words had made the child's new favorite phrase since she has said the same thing a dozen times in the last ten minutes. Ms Harris, the social worker for the five year old, had told the little girl that they needed to wait for her results. Last week, a teacher had commented on the little girl, Mary, that she wasn't paying attention in class.
At first it had seemed like a small matter since all children had small attention spans and could become bored very easily if not entertained. The teacher had taken it upon herself to give Mary a test, one all five year olds needed to take to see if they could move into first grade. The teacher wanted to show that the little girl was struggling and had expected Mary to do poorly on the test to prove her point, but the young girl had gotten a perfect score. Mary had said the test was easy, but it was also annoying because she didn't want to take it again.
The next day, the teacher gave Mary a test that a first grader would take to see if they could move onto the second grade level. Mary had passed the test with flying colors and did better than most first graders would have done. The teacher had even given Mary had a test for middle schoolers and still the five year old passed with an excellent score. Ms Harris had been contacted about the little girl and decided to bring her in for IQ test.
The test had taken Mary two hours to get through because she continued to get distracted by various things around the room. The test administer thought this could be a sign of her intelligence because most children with higher IQ's tend to get bored easily. Ms Harris wasn't so sure about that, but didn't comment.
"I know Mary," Ms Harris told the little girl, "But we still have a few more minutes."
Mary frowned at the older woman. Mary was sitting at a little table with a small pack of crayons and two coloring sheets that she had finished coloring minutes ago. With sad brown eyes, Mary stood from her seat and walked around the waiting room that was empty except for the two of them. She hated tests and didn't understand why the adults continued to make her take test started easy, but then got harder the further along she went with it.
Now Mary and Ms Harris were waiting for the results. The waiting room looked how most child doctors offices would look with silly posters on the walls, some chairs and a little table with various items to keep children occupied while they waited.
"I want to go," Mary groaned throwing her head back as she walked in a circle.
Ms Harris sighed, "Soon Mary. We can go soon."
Ms Harris hoped her words were true. She was tired of waiting in this place with the restless five year old. The door leading to the hallways and countless rooms opened revealing a young man with black hair and fair skin.
"Ms Harris, if you would follow me," the man said simply.
Ms Harris stood from her seat, stretched out her hand towards Mary, who ran over and took the woman's hand. The trio walked down the hallway and into the man's office.
"Allow me to introduce myself," the man said, "My name is Jack Parks."
"Ellen Harris and this is Mary Sue Poots," Ms Harris introduced herself and the little girl.
Mary frowned at the name, but made no remark as she took her seat in front of Mr Parks.
Mr Parks nodded, "Nice to meet you. Before I go over the technicalities, I would like you too look at this."
The young man handed Ms Harris a manila folder and inside we're Mary's results. Mary, although she didn't like the test, wanted to know what she got. She hoped if she did good on this test, then she wouldn't have to take anymore.
"This is her IQ score," Ms Harris said in surprise, "Are you certain?"
Mr Parks nodded, "She is quite the little genius."
Seventeen Years Later
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Everyone in this building was an idiot as far as the young girl with her hands bound in front of her was concerned. Getting through the agency's fire wall had been too easy and it wasn't until she made it to one of their headquarters did she understand why. Stupid. The young girl had practically walked through their front doors with her false ID, that their system hadn't been able to identify as a fake.
It was too easy, which had been her first tip off that maybe the agency she was trying to breach was smarter than she thought. However she had gotten ahead of herself again, reminding herself that not everyone was as smart as she was.
The young woman looked to the right ceiling corner of her cell which was actually an interrogation room. The walls had hexagon designs all over them, including on the floor and ceiling. It looked the same from all sides. By examining the walls closely, she knew they were made from an impenetrable type of metal that she decided would have been used to contain the Hulk. If she could touch the wall, she could would be able to tell exactly what type of metal it was. In the upper right hand corner, she could see the camera watching her.
The red light wasn't blinking and she knew right that they weren't recording her. Most likely they planned to record her interrogation, but judging by the camera's designs, she knew the audio wouldn't be clear. The little red light on the side of the camera turned on and the woman smiled, they were coming in. She faced forward with a smug expression.
The door opened on her left allowing two men in suits to come inside. The first man who walked in was much older than she was, his brown hair was thinning, he had clear blue eyes and peach skin. Judging by his stance, she could tell he was the boss. The second man to come inside looked closer to her age. He had pale olive skin, honey brown eyes and dark brown hair, she determined he was mostly of Italian descent.
"About time someone showed up," the young woman said, "I've been in here forever."
"Apologies for the lack of finesse," the older one said, a smug smile on his face.
The young woman rolled her chocolate brown eyes in annoyance. This wasn't her first time dealing with agents, specifically SHIELD agents. Yet every time she became involved with them, it left a bad taste in her mouth.
"Look, this is going to to one of two ways," the second man said in a condescending tone.
The woman gave him a tight and fake smile as she replied, "Is one of them the easy way?"
"No," was the man's curt reply, "What's your name?"
The woman thought for a moment, she brushed a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear as she said, "Skye. Just Skye."
"The name's Agent Coulson and this is Agent Ward," the first man, Coulson said with a softer smile, "We just want to talk to you."
Skye said with a pleased grin, "You want to interrogate me in order to understand why I came to this base. You want to know why I hacked your database, what I was looking for. You want to know why i came here and why I let myself get caught."
Agent Coulson nodded in reply, "We want to know all of those things. You could have walked right out of this building and none of us would have been the wiser. You wanted to get caught."
Skye didn't reply. It was true, she had been trying to get SHIELD to catch for two months now until finally she had no more patience. Her plan was easy enough, leave a trail for SHIELD to follow, bring her in and hopefully she could gain access to one of their mainframes. All she needed was to get on the inside, but Shield had never caught her until now.
Not until she gave herself away twenty- thirty minutes ago in the employee lounge. Agent Coulson took a seat across from Skye. Judging by her facial structure and build, he guessed she was in her early- mid twenties. After she had been brought into this room, Shield had been trying to find out who this girl was, but had found nothing. It was almost as if she didn't exist.
"You work for the Rising Tide," Agent Coulson questioned, even though it was more of a statement.
Skye didn't deny it, "Yeah, wonder what gave me away."
"What were you looking for," Ward asked sharply, not really wanting to dance around the subject.
He and Coulson had a mission to finish. Question the girl on what she knew about the explosion last week and the man named Mike Peterson. Last week, Ward had joined the team that Agent Coulson had assembled. They were investigating an explosion and the act of a mystery man who saved someone from the fire. No one had seen him since. The only reason Shield had been able to identify the man was because one video they found on the internet had a view of his face.
Skye scoffed at Ward, but made no other reply.
"Do recognize this man," Coulson asked as he showed her a photo of Mike Peterson.
Skye didn't know him personally. She had met with him briefly after the lab explosion last week, after she had uploaded a video to the Rising Tide page. The only thing the two had talked about was about him running away because Shield would come and take him away. Mike knew it was true, so he took his son and disappeared. That was as much as Skye knew.
"What about him," Skye questioned indifferently.
"One of the videos posted on the Rising Tide has the same cryptographic signature that we found in our system," Coulson replied, still smug as ever.
Skye smirked, "Good eye detective."
"Did you cause the explosion on the secret lab last week to draw out Peterson," Ward asked darkly.
Skye glared at him, "Did you?"
"That's not our style," Coulson told her matter-of-factly.
"Yeah right, you would just cover it up. SHIELD covered New Mexico, Project Pegasus, Xerxes.. Of course you'd be covering up Centipede," Skye replied smartly, but when she saw their confused faces, she went on, "Holy no way. You have no idea what those are."
"You were looking to uncover Shield's secrets," Coulson questioned, avoiding her observation.
He had no idea what Xerxes or Centipede were, he knew about Pegasus and New Mexico, but the other two escaped his mind. He had never run across the names before in the database or from any operatives looking into underground power experiments.
Skye sighed, "That is kind of the point of the Rising Tide."
"But you could have gathered information from wherever you are stationed, but you came here," Ward said to her, "You were looking for something specific? Perhaps something to deal with powers."
Before she could answer, Coulson spoke, "Listen, we aren't the only people interested in powers. We do want to contain him, but the next guy will exploit him and the next guy might want to dissect him. We are just trying to help."
Skye forced herself not to glare at the agent before her. Shield didn't want to help anyone, it was full of liars and selfish people. All Skye knew about Shield was they were cowards, hiding the truth from the rest of the world in order to be in control. It was like the old saying goes, knowledge is power.
"What is Centipede," Ward asked her.
Skye scoffed, "All this money, equipment and resources, yet I beat you with a laptop I won when I was a teenager...Centipede is another super soldier project. That's all I know. I was hoping to find more information here only to realize you had never heard of it until me."
"Maybe you can help us," Coulson offered with a gentle grin, "Help us find out more about Centipede and we let you walk."
"Walk," Skye questioned, her brow slightly furrowed.
Coulson nodded, "You've hacked into our system, left a virus, breached our base and are withholding valuable information. We can put you in for that, unless you help us now."
"Why so interested in this now," Skye questioned, "What do you need me for?"
Coulson grinned at her, "You've got skills, we need you to use them and help us catch this guy before he gets hurt or hurts someone else."
Part of Skye wanted to refuse, but she remembered meeting Mike and his son, Ace. After they disappeared, Skye had been idly searching to see if they were okay, but never found anything. Skye smiled, stage one of her plan was finished. All she needed to do now was help them with what they wanted and once she proved her worth, they would keep her. After that she would finally find out what happened to her as an infant. It was the question she didn't have an answer too, but she would find it.
"Get me to my van and I can give you all the information I have and possible locations of other labs," Skye said, a pleased grin on her face.
Skye hopped out of the GMC SUV with a slightly happy smile as she approached her van. It was an extremely old model, but it was home to the woman just the same. Even though she wanted to paint it another color instead of the faded baby blue, she still loves the van. A woman, who Skye had learned was called Agent May, had escorted her here. The two hadn't done much talking, but Skye didn't mind. Her thoughts had been focused on other, more pressing matters than small talk with a person she had just met.
"This the right place," Agent May asked, her voice coated with suspicion and confusion.
Skye grinned smartly with one hand on the side door as she said, "Definitely. Might not look like much, but it's home."
Skye slid the door opened and stepped inside her home. Agent May looked inside, her brown eyes taking in the interior of the van. There was a desk with a bunch of computer equipment on the right while in the back was a bed, lights on the wall and a mini fridge. It turned out the young woman wasn't kidding when she had said this place was home.
Skye bent over her computer and began to type rapidly. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, the sound of constant tapping bringing a ghost smile to her face. Once Skye had found all the documents and information she had on Centipede, she began to download it into a chip Fitz had given her. Skye had tie fly met two other people before her arrival here. A young man who was engineer had given her the chip to use.
Skye would have refused, but given her current situation, she decided it would be best to just follow along with what they wanted. Next she had met a young woman, her name was Simmons. From what she could tell, she was the scientist while Fitz was the technology expert. Skye knew the chip was designed to take more information from her computer than she wanted. Luckily she had created another code that would protect all her files from being downloaded into the chip.
"How long do you suppose this will take," Agent May questioned, her brown eyes studying Skye.
The young woman leaned back in her chair, "Not long. I'd say another minute or two."
The Agent gave her curt nod before walking a few steps away. Skye could tell the Agent was searching for something out of the ordinary, anything that might show signs of danger. This didn't seem to bother Skye, but she definitely understood the feeling of always having to keep a sharp eye. While May was out of sight, Skye grabbed one of her own computer chips and slipped it into bra. One of the only foster sisters she ever liked had told her it was the best place to hide things. Only perverts would think to look there to see if someone was hiding something.
Once all the files were downloaded, Skye pulled the chip out of her system and looked to the Agent.
"That should do it," Skye told her.
Agent May nodded, "Alright, let's get back to the Bus."
"With all due respect, I don't think we should allow her onto this team," Ward said to his superior.
Skye had held up to her word and gave them all the information she had on Centipede, most of it had turned out to be quite useful. Now some of SHIELD's best were working on the case, but Coulson's team would be the one doing most of the research. However, Coulson knew he would need Skye's skill in order to do this. Currently said hacker was downstairs with Agents Fitz and Simmons while May and Ward were in his office.
May didn't trust the girl and neither did Ward and it was all for the right reasons. After all they had found her breaking into SHIELD systems, not to mention she worked for the Rising Tide which was a hacker organization whose entire purpose was to reveal confidential information. There was no telling the damage this girl could do from the inside.
"I agree with Ward on this one," May added, "We don't know anything about her."
Coulson smiled in reply, "How often does that happen? When we don't know anything about someone else. This girl is practically a ghost."
"That doesn't mean she should be allowed on this team," May pointed out, her brown eyes scrutinizing her friend.
Coulson nodded and told her, "She wouldn't be on the team per say. She would be a consultant, SHIELD does it all the time. Technically Tony Stark is a consultant."
Ward still did not like the idea, "Technically Skye is a member of the Rising Tide. Not to mention she hacked into HQ:16, left a virus in their systems."
"Yeah, she did all that with her laptop," Coulson said, an impressed grin on his face, "Imagine what she could do with all this."
"I am and that is why I strongly advise against this," Ward said persistently.
Coulson looked at May. He wasn't asking her backup, that much she could gather. He just wanted to know what her issues were on the subject matter, even though he already had a good idea about what she would say.
May spoke, "She's a risk. Not to mention there are two children on this Bus not cleared for combat and you want to add a third."
"At least Fitzsimmons are trained scientist from Shield," Ward pointed out to her.
"I'm still waiting on an objection I haven't anticipated," Coulson told them, "I'm making this call. Your lack of trust is noted, however we need her skills and knowledge in order to learn more about Project Centipede and Deathlok and whatever else we might come in contact with, not to mention any other underground programs we don't know about. She's the one who can do this job, she's our girl."
