AN- So this is my new story. I started writing and I couldn't stop and then it turned into this. Hopefully it will make more sense as we go along but for now I like it being slightly cryptic and confusing. And although I am writing in third person, we will only learn what things are as Kate learns them because it gives me room to change my mind in the middle of it.

Please enjoy this story and please review with any suggestions or ideas.

It had been almost a year since SHIELD fell, Hydra was on the rise and nobody could tell which was which. Many agents had gone into the private sector or gone dark, whichever was the easiest to do. As for Specialist Agent Kate Reid, she went beyond dark. She moved every few days, pulled a couple of illegal jobs when she was short for cash and stayed invisible. At least as invisible as she could be.

One night, after a rather successful bank job, Kate returned to her van, stashing the money and driving as far ash she could from the city, driving to her weapons store. When she reached it, she changed out of her old SHIELD tac gear and pulled on a tank top and shorts. She jumped into the back of the van, proceeding to delete any evidence of what she had done.

Afterward she ran a scan, so see if anyone was following her. It had become a routine by now; she was never being followed and could quickly move on. But this time it was different. The alarms to the facility rang, notifying her that someone was trying to get through the door to her safe house (which could only be described as a cave that she modified a few years before SHIELD's fall. Kate moved quickly, grabbing all of the money and weapons and placing them in the shielded compartment of a less than inconspicuous vehicle. After picking up the bag with her gear in it and her laptop, she opened the back door, which led to a long tunnel system, and drove through as quickly as she could. Once she was out of the caves she hit the fail safe and brought the mountain down on whoever was coming after her.

Kate hadn't gotten a hundred feet before a man, covered in what looked to be scales, placed his hands on the hood of the car, stopping it in its tracks. Kate blinked, forcing the stars that she was seeing from her eyes. She could feel that she cracked at least two ribs and that she wasn't getting out of this one alive. The man pulled off the car door and carefully pulled Kate out.

"Can you just kill me already?" Kate asked, clinging to her side in pain.

"We have different plans for you." The man spoke before smashing what appeared to be a blue crystal.

Kate felt a thick cocoon growing around her body, trapping her where she was. She started to panic as the cocoon grew across her face, blocking off her airways. A heat seared through Kate's body, which quickly expelled outwards, forcing the cocoon to shatter into small smoldering pieces on the ground. The man who had pulled Kate out of the car lay on the ground, fire encasing his body. She didn't look back before taking her bag, as much of the money as she could fit amongst her clothing and several weapons and headed back toward the road.

She managed to reach a roadside diner within a few hours, which she was extremely glad was there, and soon had one of her old SHIELD contacts on the way to get her out of the country. While she waited, she sat, eating what could barely be classed as eggs, searching through the information she had gathered about the man that had attacked her and the crystal that he had. She'd found nothing, according to everything she had, it was a myth at best.

A woman sat in the chair across from her raising an eyebrow. "From bank heists to pleas for help." The woman commented, waiting for an explanation. "Why did it take you so long to call? I was getting a little worried."

"I didn't have the cleanest record before I joined SHIELD, I couldn't join the private sector like you did." Kate shrugged, looking up at the woman before her. "You recruited me after all Melinda."

"That I did." She nodded, handing Kate a set of keys. "The car you asked for is waiting outside, but I would like it if you came back with me. I have a group of people all trying to make sense of what happened last year, trying to protect people from Hydra. You should join us."

"I used to work for Hydra." Kate frowned, scared of admitting what she was going to have to say. "Before SHIELD took me in I did dozens of jobs for them. Of course I didn't know it was Hydra until I did some digging. I'm also the reason they killed Fury. I was the one who told him about the Lemurian Star and that digging got him killed. Trust me; your team is better off if I disappear." Kate picked up her things and headed out to the car only to see a dead man stood next to it.

"Kate, nice to see you're alive." The man smiled, walking over to her.

"Phil." She whispered, pulling the man into an embrace. "You're dead."

"I was dead. But that's a story for another time." Phil smiled, walking over to the car with Kate. "If you would put your blindfold on and allow me to drive we'll reach our base within the hour." Phil didn't give her another choice, but got into the front seat and waited for her to get into the car before driving.

Kate rolled her eyes but pulled on the blindfold, trusting that Phil knew what he was doing.

When the car finally stopped, Kate got out of the car, with Phil's help, and through a door into what she sensed was a large room. It was almost like she could feel the air around her, telling her that there was a plane at the far left of the area and that there were at least twelve people moving through the space.

Phil removed the mask and from Kate's first look at the space she seemed to be right about it. There were also a multitude of cars and two quinjets. It was almost a shock to know that she was right, and also a shock that she knew it in the first place.

"We're first going to take you to see Agent Koenig; we need to know if we can trust you." Phil explained, escorting her through the halls to a large room with what looked like a torture chair in the middle.

"My name is Billy Koenig." A short man smiled, sticking out his hand for Kate to shake. "We're going to be asking you a few questions while you are linked up to Fury's best lie detector. It measures galvanic skin response, oxygen consumption, micro expressions, biofeedback, brainwaves, pupil dilation, voice biometrics. In total there are ninety-six ways for this thing to tell me if you're lying."

Kate smiled shyly before sitting in the chair and allowing Billy to attach all of the cables to her.

"Director Coulson, Agent May, I would ask that you leave the room until the end of the test." Billy smiled, opening the door.

"Director." Kate smiled, laughing slightly. "You'll have to tell me about that one later." She winked to Coulson who simply waved and followed Melinda out of the room.

"Only if you pass." Billy reprimanded, closing the door on May and Coulson.

"Even if I don't, this is a story that I have to hear." Kate smiled before taking a deep breath.

"Let's start with a baseline." Billy smiled, tapping on several screens. "Can I have your full name?"

"Katherine Olivia Reid, but I changed it to Kate when I joined SHIELD." She answered, keeping a straight face.

"Eye colour?"

"One's blue, one's red." Kate answered, getting a raised eyebrow from Koenig. "I wear contacts." She smiled, removing the lens with her one free hand, quickly placing it back in.

"Have you ever been married?"

"No." Kate hesitated to answer the next part. "But I have been engaged. He was another specialist, it didn't end well. I haven't seen him for almost two years."

"What was his name?" Billy asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Grant Ward." She replied, noting the stony look that momentarily flashed through Billy's expression. "Is there something I should be worried about?" She asked.

"I think some of the other agents would be better explaining it to you." He answered; his voice stoic. "Please list your immediate family."

"My mom, two brothers and a step-father."

"What about your biological father?" Koenig pushed, needing a heightened response for the machine.

"He left me and my mother, took all of our money and tried to burn down the house while we were in it." Kate gritted her teeth. "I was seven, my brothers were only four."

"Would you say that was your defining moment?"

"Yes. One of many." Kate answered, biting her tongue in an attempt to calm herself down.

"What is the difference between a rock and an egg?"

"One can carry life, the other one supports it."

"Very poetic." Billy smiled, glancing up from his sheet of questions. "Have you ever heard of Project Insight?"

"Yes."

"Would you care to expand?"

"It was mentioned in a document I intercepted between some old friends of mine. It was because of that Fury got killed, I put him on the trail of Hydra." Kate explained, looking down at the floor.

"Have you had any contact with Alexander Pierce?" Billy narrowed his eyes at Kate again, unsure if he would like her answer.

"Yes." Kate immediately started explaining. "After Agent May finished my training I was called to his office. Until the fall of SHIELD I would frequently be sent on missions off book by both Alexander Pierce and Director Fury. Missions that they knew they couldn't send Barton or Romanoff on. I was the more expendable version of them."

"Did you ever aid in any Hydra operations during that time?" Billy asked, glancing down at the revolver under the desk.

"I don't know." Kate tried to think back to all of the missions she carried out. "Probably, but not knowingly. I did a lot of things for that man that were never mentioned outside of his office so for all I know I was a Hydra puppet. I did before though, with the red room. I'm sure you know about it after Agent Romanoff."

"At least you're not lying about that." Billy sighed, still tensed. "You wash up on a desert island. On the sand is a box, what is in that box?"

"Swiss army knife. Can't beat a classic." Kate shrugged, amused by Billy's reaction to her answer.

"SHIELD is gone. It has been for a while. Why reach out to your former SO now?" Billy asked, looking Kate directly in the eye. "You've spent a year hiding, why choose to show yourself now?"

"Because I was attacked by a gifted individual." Kate explained, recounting to Billy what happened in the desert. "He was strong, covered in scales and shattered some creepy looking crystal that evaporated into smoke. I was scared, for the first time in years I was scared. I reached out to the woman who taught me how to control that fear. I felt like I needed that again."

"Congratulations Agent Reid." Billy smiled, satisfied with her answers. "Here is your lanyard. We'll need to take you down to medical for an evaluation but other than that everything should be fine." Billy smiled, handing her a lanyard and walking out of the door with her. Kate knew something was wrong, but she followed the man anyway.

When they reached what appeared to be a makeshift lab Kate immediately noticed another agent sealed in a glass room. That was when she saw the look in the woman's eyes. This agent had gone through the same thing she had, but whether the rest of the agents knew that was a mystery.

"Please take a blood sample from Agent Reid and place her in quarantine." Billy asked a large built man.

Kate didn't argue, she simply followed the agent to the glass room and allowed herself to be locked inside with the very on edge agent.

"I'm Kate." She smiled, sitting down next to the woman. "Just got here."

"I'm Skye." The woman smiled shyly. "I'm fairly new. Got my SHIELD badge the day SHIELD fell. Thought it was pretty poetic."

"In what way?" Kate asked intrigued.

"I spent years of my life trying to take down SHIELD because the only file I had on my real parents was redacted by them. And the day that I joined the people that helped me, the day that I joined officially, was the day that I got it all taken away." Skye frowned, biting her thumbnail. "What's your story?" She asked changing the subject. "How did you end up getting recruited by Coulson?"

"I was recruited by Agent May actually." Kate smiled, deciding not to mention the sudden deflection Skye used. "It was just before she left the field. The day she and Agent Coulson went on the mission to Bahrain was my first mission as a SHIELD agent. I was seventeen, naïve, very unprepared for how different SHIELD would be to my past.

"I spent my adolescence training, stealing, killing anyone who got in my way. Similar to Agent Romanoff. I was seventeen when I was made a SHIELD agent, I'd already done a lot of bad things and Agent May showed me how to get past that. After that I did a lot of private missions for Fury and the World Council. I went dark after the whole Hydra thing." Kate stopped her story there, wanting to tell Skye about what had happened in the desert when there were less people around. It didn't take long though, soon most of the lab had cleared out and it was just them and another scientist.

"Why are you in quarantine?" Skye asked, having sensed that Kate was holding something back.

"For the same reason you are." Kate watched Skye's expression flash with panic. "But I don't think the circumstances were the same. For me I was attacked in the middle of the desert by some lizard guy and he shattered a crystal. After that I was surrounded in some sort of cocoon and just after I stopped breathing it broke apart, completely surrounded by flame." Kate remembered the sight around her, the man that she left burning to death. "Now that I think about it I had two cracked ribs before that and now I'm fine."

"You're right. Mine was very different." Skye began to describe the temple, and how Raina managed to coax her down. "She had this obelisk and when she let go of it, it landed on this plinth and the casing disappeared to reveal these crystals. This smoke filled the room and the cocoon started to grow across myself and Raina. Tripp kicked it, hoping that if he broke it, whatever was happening would stop. In stead he just turned to stone in front of me. When the cocoon broke, I knew it was me that did it. I caused this earthquake that broke it open, but it also shattered Tripp's body." Skye was talking at a million miles an hour, as if she was scared that someone might overhear. "I haven't told any of my team about that. They'll freak out when they hear about it."

"Most likely." Kate agreed. "Are you scared? Of what you can do?"

"Of course I am." Skye whispered. "I'm terrified."

"I am too." Kate admitted. "That's why I called Agent May. She was the closest thing I had to a mother after I was recruited by Hydra's red room division. She still is."

Before either of them could say any more, the scientist in the room ran over to the door, his tablet beeping.

"Skye." He whispered, visibly shaking. "You're blood results. They came back… different." He opened the door and showed Skye the image. "What happened down there?" He whispered.

Kate noticed Skye start to shake, as did some of the objects around them, and pulled the scientist back.

"Skye, your heart rate was way higher than it is scientifically possible." He continued, having apparently not noticed. "It was inhuman."

The shaking suddenly intensified and the large light in the corner of the room shattered as Skye grabbed onto her head. She wasn't just shaking now, tears were streaming down her face and the look in her eyes was one of terror.

"Oh my god. Skye." The scientist whispered, walking back over to her.

Kate immediately began cleaning up the glass, cutting her hand in the process. After picking up the last of the glass and placing it in a bowl in the lab, she looked down at her hand to see the cut was completely gone. She rubbed it slightly, wiping away the blood that was still there, frantically searching for where she had been injured.

"Fitz, we can't tell anyone." Skye begged, still shaking. "They can't know, especially not Simmons. You heard how she was talking about Raina."

"Okay." Fitz fumbled with the tablet for a few seconds. "I can change the lab results, make them say that everything is normal."

"No you can't." Kate interjected. "They're running my blood too. And you don't exactly have an old sample to swap it with. They're going to start asking the wrong questions and then it will come back to you when they realize that the crystals were the same."

"She's right." Skye sighed, finally starting to calm down. "We have to tell Coulson. Everything."

"But Jemma…" Fitz started.

"You can handle Jemma." Skye smiled, it was clearly fake. "Now, please. Go get Coulson and May."

"Are you going to be okay?" Kate asked Skye once Fits left the lab.

"I'd better be." Skye sighed before sitting back on the bed, biting her thumbnail.