The Avengers had fallen.
Romanoff and Barton had been taken by the cyborg army, and news later reached the public that the two assassins had been… well, assassinated. Rogers and Stark were both captured and turned over to Ultron, who had them turned into his own personal breed of elite robot soldiers that put Doctor Who's cybermen to shame. Dr. Banner was subjected to a perfected form of radiation torture, which slowly removed the gamma radiation from his body and replaced it with a deadlier form that weakened as opposed to strengthened him. The traitorous Hydra scientists could be thanked for that. As for Thor… it wasn't particularly hard to get him to surrender when Jane Foster was threatened with the same fate as Dr. Banner.
The world was now at the mercy of the thousands of cyborgs and elite robot soldiers, all under the command of one severely twisted and evolved AI.
Yet, they were still fighting. When all hope was lost and the only options seemed to be to submit to Ultron or join Hydra, there was one elite team who had refused to give in.
"I want an update. Now, Triplett."
"Stark is leading an army of cyborgs toward a rebel facility somewhere in France."
"Where in France?"
"Skye is working on it. They've managed to keep themselves under the radar, which is good for them, or, at least, it was, but very bad for us. They've got some sort of firewall with at least a thousand different codes in place. Stark was able to hack it in under five minutes."
"He's not Stark anymore," Coulson stated as he and Antoine walked briskly down one of the many dimly lit hallways of the Playground. There wasn't much left by way of secret bases but, with Skye constantly at work keeping them below the radar, they had managed to keep this one hidden. "He's a robot with Stark's brain. No emotional capacity whatsoever and, so far, there's no way of stopping him. He killed his own wife."
Punching in an access code, the director led the younger agent into their computer lab of sorts when the door opened with a metallic swish, and they both crossed the room to check in on the hacker's progress.
"How far are-?"
"Shh," Skye hushed Coulson somewhat anxiously, clearly on edge with her current project. She had the right to be, in truth; the lives of hundreds of French rebels were currently in her hands and if she didn't break the firewall before the cyborg army reached the base every single one of those people would be dead.
Had anyone else hushed him like that, Coulson likely would have blown a gasket at a time like this, but he had more patience when it came to Skye. He knew how she operated and if quiet was what she needed to get them where they needed to be, he would give it to her.
"I still have around two hundred lines of code to crack," she quipped, glancing at another screen and swallowing nervously, "and we've got about three hours to make it to that location and stop and entire army if we don't want another bloodbath."
She spoke of 'another' in reference to the German fiasco from about two weeks ago. They hadn't even been aware that there was a camp of rebels in Hamburg until their firewall was blown wide open by the Stark-bot, and every single person in their underground base was either slaughtered or turned into a robot soldier if they showed some sort of worth. That had placed a terrifyingly enormous amount of pressure on Skye's shoulders; she had to put ten times as much effort into keeping their own firewall secure, as well as breach as many others as possible to form alliances and send out warnings. It was no secret that their base would be priority number one if the location was discovered; they happened to have three people in their midst that Ultron specifically wanted.
#1: Melinda May. Through tapping into various private lines, it was discovered that the robot overlord had a plan in mind for her; she would be his most prized project yet. Evidently he'd used his origins in the Stark Industries computer system and his experience hacking SHIELD for Tony to gather up enough information on her to decide she was the one he wanted for his assassin-robot half-breed. Romanoff had been the first choice, but upon realizing it would send a strong message to the public if he kill two prized Avengers, the choice was rethought. Thus, Melinda May became the new prime target.
#2: Jemma Simmons. She was currently the most coveted scientist to perfect his half-breed idea. With her knowledge in biochemistry and experience with bioengineering thanks to her partnership with Fitz, Ultron was certain she could develop a way to install robot parts in her teammate and still keep the woman alive throughout the process. After that, he would certainly find further use for her.
#3: Leopold Fitz. AKA: SHIELD's secret weapon and Ultron's biggest threat. He wanted the engineer dead, sooner rather than later. He wasn't sure what his big plan was, thanks to Skye's firewalls, but he knew it would cause him an immense amount of problems.
"Work faster, then," Coulson said simply, and Skye frowned but didn't comment. After that, the director turned and headed for the door again.
"Where are you headed to now?" Triplett asked, frowning with confusion. "I would have thought you'd want to be here to-"
"You stay with Skye. Do whatever she asks of you. I need to check in with FitzSimmons."
He didn't give either of the agents the chance to respond before he was out the door and heading down the hall toward the lab, following the distinct sound of science babble mingled in with shrill accents. They were either in the middle of creating something amazing, having a heated argument, or both.
"You have no way of being positive that it would work!"
"We're running out of time for certainties! Director Coulson said-"
"-to try anything, yes! But not if that anything ends up not working and getting you killed in the process!
"And what about the thousands of other people who could be killed by those damn cyborg armies if I don't at least try, Jemma? Hmm? What about them? I've told you ten times now that if I calibrate the device properly and trigger it to go off after exactly twenty seconds-"
"Twenty seconds is too long, Fitz! If agents Romanoff and Barton, who were both the most highly acclaimed assassins SHIELD had, were taken down by Ultron with such ease, then how can you possibly expect to make it out of there alive?"
He'd likely had some sort of retort prepared for that exact statement, but it fell dead on his tongue when Coulson walked into the room, a frown creasing his brow as he looked at both of the riled up scientists. Jemma, who had been pacing frantically in her lab coat while waving her hands for emphasis, stopped moving as soon as the director entered the lab, and Leo, who had been watching her with his arms crossed over his chest and a deep frown, goggles perched on his nose, let his arms drop when he noticed him as well.
"Sir?" he asked, and Coulson took a few steps closer to them both, shaking his head.
"What the hell are you two shouting about now? And give me the brief explanation in the simplest terms you can manage, because I've got Skye hacking a French rebel camp's firewall, May prepping the Bus, and around two hours and fifty minutes to stop an entire army of cyborgs lead by the Stark-bot from killing hundreds of people. Go."
At his word, both of the scientists began talking frantically at the same time, gesturing heatedly at each other, and Coulson was only able to catch snippets of their statements.
"He is planning to go on a suicide mission-"
"-device that could potentially destroy the hardware inside the cyborgs and save thousands of lives-"
"-thinking that Ultron won't try to kill him on sight, which we know he wants to-"
"-won't stop worrying for five damn seconds so I can get a word in edgewise about the device-"
"-might not even work-!"
"Alright!" Coulson shouted, causing both of them to jump and Jemma to do so again when he pointed a finger at her. "One at a time, before you make my head explode. Simmons. Go first."
Taking a breath, Jemma did her best to calmly explain her side of the situation to the director, despite the fact that her frustration continued to attempt creeping back into her tone.
"Fitz has decided that he wants to develop a device, with Skye's help, that could hack into the computer system that's sending the cyborg armies their orders and scramble them enough that they will virtually self-destruct. But, it has to be installed manually! So he thinks it would be up to him to waltz into Ultron's base, plug the device into the system, and set the hack into motion. Yet he isn't even considering that Ultron sees and hears everything outside of our own base, and that he could potentially be killed and the device destroyed before he could put any sort of plan into motion. Or, even worse, he could make it to the computer and have the device not work at all! There would be no way of running tests to see if it would be successful, because that would require having subjects to test on, which we don't! It could even backfire and breech our own firewall, making our location known to the enemy!"
At this point, she was facing her partner again instead of the director, and both were frowning deeply at each other. To anyone without knowledge of their friendship, they would likely think the two hated each other when it was completely the other way around.
"Fitz. Go."
Looking away from Jemma when the director gave him the go ahead to take his turn, Leo wasted no time explaining his idea.
"Sir, if I can perfect this device, it could save thousands of lives. It could even, with the right applied bioscience, prevent the civilians being used for the cyborg armies from being killed when the hardware destructs-"
"-and I suppose you want me to apply my knowledge to your suicide plan," Jemma ground out, clutching one of the polished lab tables, and Leo turned to face her at her tone, clutching the other side of the table.
"Yes! I do! But you won't even consider lending me a hand like you used to, because you're too caught up in your own little world-"
"My own little world?! I've been working just as tirelessly since this all began as you have! Just because-!"
"Enough! Both of you!" Coulson snapped again, and the scientists didn't jump this time. They simply continued to glare at each other from across the table, both likely ready to spring back into their argument the second he gave them the chance. "I have had it with both of you. This constant arguing has got to stop, or you'll both be terminated."
At that, FitzSimmons turned to face him with wide eyes, quickly trying to protest to which Coulson held up a hand for silence.
"You used to be a dream team. I don't know what the hell went down in that pod, and it's really none of my business, but you had best put it behind you; preferably before it gets us all killed. This is war, not high school."
He walked out with that, leaving them both shocked in his wake. It took a few moments for the two to recover, and it was Jemma who first shot Leo a rather sheepish expression. They had never really fought before; not often, at least. When they did, it was more a squabble over creative differences than full blown screaming matches. The only other time they had genuinely fought before Ultron was when Jemma contracted the Chitauri virus.
"There has to be another way to stop this," she tried more quietly, turning to face him again, and she saw him swallow the lump in his throat before turning to face her as well, still clutching the table.
"We're running out of time to figure one out," Leo stated simply, and she swallowed just as roughly as he had. She felt as if tears were prickling in her eyes, but that had become such a casual occurrence that she could have been imagining it.
"What if it doesn't work? Have you even thought of what could happen then? You would have died for nothing, and without you… we wouldn't have any hope of fixing this."
Frowning faintly, he turned away from her and walked across the lab to continue with the project he'd been working on before they started fighting, pushing his safety glasses up to the top of his nose again.
"Maybe we can't."
Frowning, her knuckles turning white from clutching the counter so tightly, Jemma stared intently at Leo's back.
"Maybe we can't what…?"
"Fix this," he stated plainly over the dull sound of his compact drill. "Maybe this is the one thing that we really can't fix."