At Coulson's words, everyone turned to Jemma. It was so immediate and synchronized that if Coulson't hadn't taken her breath away by saying those few simple words, she would have laughed at how comical it was. They all knew how much she insisted on it. Even Trip who didn't know her for very long had heard of her famous best friend Fitz and knew how much he meant to her. She didn't even bother to try and hide the relief that fell over her. She actually had to hold on to the table for a second for fear that her legs were going to betray her.

"I volunteer" She said once she had managed to regain her calm.

"Yeah I kinda figured ..." Coulson started but he was interrupted.

"Me too" May said without an ounce of hesitation.

"Me too" Skye added almost immediately and she was followed by Trip and Mack. Jemma's heart melted a little at the way her friends volunteered without even knowing what awaited them.

"Count me in" Said Hunter and everyone turned to him. "Wow, that synchronized thing you guys are doing looks amazing. Do they teach you that at SHIELD academy?" When they all kept looking at him without saying a thing, he added: "What? Because I'm a mercenary, I can't be a hero too? I like you guys but we really need more Brits in here and I'm placing a lot of hope in this Fitz guy I heard about. He's Scottish right? I might finally get a decent drinking buddy. No offense Mack" He said, turning to Mack with a teasing smile.

"None taken. Most people don't take pride in being a raging alcoholic" The tall man said and everyone, even May, laughed a little at that. Hunter had joined them only a week ago when Coulson got the "keys" to the Playground base. He was a British mercenary but he was apparently recommended to Coulson by a trusted agent and SHIELD needed every help they could get. He could be annoying and irritating but he also had a rather charming side and he actually had a good heart. Jemma ended up talking to him one night when they came across each other in the same British pub just outside of base. Apparently, they were both home sick and once he let go of the whole mercenary heartless guy attitude, he was actually easy to talk to and it didn't surprise her that much that he was willing to volunteer for such a mission.

"Okay so I'm glad we have everyone on board but we still need a plan of attack and we have very little information. I have an infiltrated agent on the inside who told me that a small group of scientists managed to lock themselves with a lot of dangerous and valuable technologies inside a small area of Sci-ops and so far they managed to stay alive." He said and Jemma's eyes lit up at that but he spoke before she had the time to ask the question.

"She didn't have any name to give me. Our contact was limited but whoever is in there, we're gonna get them back." He said and Jemma gave him a small nervous smile. "Our primary objective will be to get as many people out as possible. Apart from the small rebel alliance in the basement, there are still some scientists in there that are loyal to SHIELD. They had to declare their "loyalty" to Hydra to stay alive but they've been slowing things down as much as they could in the hope that we would come and we will not disappoint them." Coulson said with passion in his voice. Jemma always thought he had the aura of a leader and at this moment, when everyone nodded in approval, it was obvious that he was the right choice to be the new director of SHIELD.

"So how are we going to do that?" Skye asked, saying what everyone was thinking.

"We'll come at them from the inside!" He said with a triumphant smile.

"The building has a secret entrance that dates back to the SSR. We'll have to use an abandoned subway tunnel that leads to the basement. The entrance is apparently not known by anyone from Hydra so our infiltrated agent will meet us there and we'll have to improvise from this point." He said and when he saw May's discreet but knowing smile, he added: "Told you my knowledge of SHIELD history and passion for secret doors would be helpful someday!" and they all couldn't help but smile. "Anyway, all suggestions are welcome to help us put all the chances on our side!"

"Numbers won't be in our favor so we'll need to act quickly, silently and knock as many people out as we can at the same time to stop them from alerting everyone else." May said.

"We have plenty of flash grenades and Mack and I have been working on a mechanism to disperse my dendrotoxine in a big area. I think it will be a good time to test it on the field." Jemma said and they all agreed.

"Yes, that's good. Also, the sooner we can communicate with the people locked in, the better. They have technologies that could probably help us get Hydra down quicker and I bet that after three weeks in there fighting those assholes, they'll be more than enthusiastic to do it!" He said.

"Well if Fitz's in there and he's got his phone, I'll be able to send him a message once I'm close enough. He put a special device in both our phones a long time ago so we could still communicate even when there was no reception at all, as long as we were less than hundred meters away." She said and they all looked at her with amused or confused looks.

"What for?" Skye asked.

"There was no reception in the classroom of our SHIELD history class and it could get a little ... boring ... so since the room was always dead silent, that way we could at least communicate by text messages!" She said a little sheepishly and a delighted smile made its way on Skye's face.

"So someone actually convinced you to get into some bad girl shenanigans. I can't wait to meet that guy!" She said with a terrible english accent and Jemma felt her heart clench a little. As relieved as she was that Coulson finally agreed to go rescue him, there was still no assurance that he was still alive and that Skye would actually meet him someday. But she was also grateful for the young woman's positiveness and she tried to hang on to that as badly as she could.

"But, it's been three weeks, even if he still has his phone, he'll be long dead by now." Coulson said.

"Oh no, it has one of Fitz's modified batteries, just like mine. See, I haven't charged it for three weeks and it still has 60% battery left." She said holding up her phone for everyone to see and they all nodded appreciatively.

"I'm kind of jealous. Why don't all have this? " Coulson asked.

"Still haven't been approved yet. You know how slow those processes are ... well were ... but it's perfectly safe, I can assure you!" She said smiling.

"Now I really want to meet this guy." Skye said and Jemma couldn't help feeling a little proud of her best friend. He wasn't there and he had already impressed them.

"I'm sure he'll be able to make you one once he gets here." Jemma said with a soft smile.

"Okay well that sounds good. Mack, Simmons, prepare all the tech that might prove helpful. Everyone else, get some sleep if you can. I'm gonna brief the rest of the base to see how many volunteers we can get and I want us ready to attack first thing in the morning. Any questions?" Coulson said.

"Yeah, who's our contact? We'll need to be able to recognize her." Trip asked.

"Well some of you know her already. Her name's Bobbie Morse." He said with a playful smile while looking at Hunter.

"What? ... You've got to be kidding me ... Is it too late to unvolunteer?" Hunter said, sighing.

"Yeah, no backsies." Coulson said, smiling even wider. "Everyone dismissed, you know what to do!" He said before leaving the room. Trip, Skye and Jemma exchanged a confused look before noticing that Mack and May were actually looking quite amused.

"Did Hunter ever tell you about his Hellbeast of an ex-wife?" May said with what she probably considered as a full grin.

"Yeah ..." Trip said and then realization dawned on him. "Oh damn ..."

-0-0-0-

After getting every possible piece of useful technology ready and packing an insane amount of medical material in case there were injuries, Jemma tried to get a bit of sleep before the mission. But of course, sleep evaded her as it's been doing for the past few weeks. She tried to concentrate on every detail of the mission to keep her mind from thinking about what terrified her the most: the fact that they might not find Fitz there or worse find him dead.

The next morning, she was up and ready way before sunrise. It would be a short trip from the base to Boston where the Sci-ops building was but they wanted to attack very early to catch them by surprise and because that was the moment where there were the less Hydra agents. Jemma was one of the first persons to board the quinjet. It had been heartwarming to learn that so many people volunteered to go on the mission, even knowing how uncertain and dangerous it might be, to the point where Coulson had to say no to a few people. Since they found the Playground, more agents came back to SHIELD but since it had been labelled a terrorist organization and they were now acting in secret, lots of agents had decided to leave or make a deal with the government. So there werent a lot of them left and they couldn't afford to risk the lives of every single field agents they had.

Jemma was so nervous that, at some point during the flight, Skye had to put her hand on her leg to stop her from moving.

"You need to stop that Jemma, you're making the whole plane shake!" Skye said with a teasing smile.

"Sorry, I'm just a little ..."

"Nervous? Yeah I kinda got that from ... your whole attitude actually." Skye said, her smile growing bigger and Jemma couldn't help smiling back. It was nice having a little distraction.

"it's just that it's been three weeks, so many things could have happened in that time ..."

"Yeah but he's been your friend for years, I'm sure he survived just to avoid making you angry ... You're surprisingly scary for someone so small!" She said, raising her eyebrow.

"You know that's probably something he would say ..." Jemma answered with a small smile and just as she was about to add something, May announced that they were approaching their landing site and would soon start their descent.

"Not much longer to wait now" Skye said, gently squeezing Jemma's shoulder one last time before going back to her seat to buckle up.

-0-0-0-

The quinjet landed as close as they could to the Sci-Ops building. But of course it being in the middle of the city, even if it was still very early in the morning, they couldn't just land anywhere. They had decided on an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city five kilometers from Sci-Ops. Thanks to the cloaking device and May's impressive flying skills, they were able to land safely and unnoticed on the roof of said building. It had been decided that they would break in groups of four to five people, each using a different subway station to access the network of abandoned tunnels they would use to access the secret passage to Sci-Ops. There were 30 agents accompanying Jemma, May, Hunter, Trip, Mack and Skye and even in civil clothes, such a big group wouldn't go unnoticed. So they were all given GPS and were due to meet at a specific point in the tunnels before making their way into Sci-Ops all at once.

Jemma went with Hunter and two field agents she had only seen a few times since they settled at the playground. From their landing site, they walked fifteen minutes to get to the subway station they were supposed to use. Hunter tried to make small talk to lighten the mood and she was grateful for it, but as the moment of knowing if Fitz had managed to survive or not approached, she couldn't focus on anything else. So after several minutes of only getting a nod or a tense smile from her, he let go of it and focused on the mission entirely.

Since it was so early, they managed to get down on the tracks and find the service door that led to the abandoned tunnels without being noticed. After that, it became a little more complicated as some parts of the tunnels they were supposed to use weren't accessible anymore. So they had to make several detours but they finally made it to the rendez-vous point. Most teams were already there but they still had to wait fifteen more minutes for Skye's team. Her subway entrance was the farthest from this point so there was an even bigger chance that they stumbled upon the same kinds of problems Jemma and Hunter encountered.

As Jemma was pacing back and forth, waiting for the others to arrive and carry on with the mission, Hunter came to talk to her once more.

"Hey!" He said and she turned around quickly, visibly startled. "Sorry love ... you should sit down, rest a bit. We don't know what's waiting for us in there, you'll need all your strength." he added with a gentle smile.

"Yeah ... I know, it's just I-I can't, I'm too nervous ... it's like I want to get in there as soon as possible and bring back Fitz but in the same time I'm terrified of what we might find ... And what if we're too late or what if we're just ... " She started stopping her pacing for a moment, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Hey hey you did everything you could to make this mission happen ..." He said, gently squeezing her shoulder. "And you know, I might have said Bobbi was a terrible person and everything a few times, and I'm telling you when we're going to see each other it's not going to be pretty, but ... she's very good at pretty much everything she does. Which can be terribly annoying but in this case it's a good thing, I'm sure she did everything to keep your friend and everyone in there alive." He added and the sincere look in his eyes gave her a little hope.

-0-0-0-

Once every one made it to the rendez-vous point, May, Jemma, Hunter and three other agents made it to Sci-Ops' secret entrance for a first recon of the place. May was the most experimented agent, Hunter would be able to recognize Bobbi Morse immediately and Jemma, having worked there, knew the building very well. And anyway no one, even May, would have had the courage to tell her to wait now that they were so close. Like Coulson told them, the door opened to a simple room that opened to a corridor in the basement. There was a simple lock on it that was easy to break and once they got to the other side, there was not a guard in sight and not a single camera. Obviously, it was a forgotten part of the building and they all internally thanked Coulson for his knowledge of SHIELD history. Jemma also promised herself that if the mission was succesful, she would never again dismiss SHIELD history as being a useless classe.

When they got into the corridor, agent Morse wasn't in sight either so they started advancing, looking for any potential danger and an access to the higher levels of the building. There was no elevator coming down here, only what looked like service stairs, which explained that no one from Hydra bothered to come here. As they were turning around towards a darkened hallway -apparently no one even bothered to change the light bulbs in here- they heard a voice coming from somewhere ahead of them.

"Wow, the situation must be worse than I thought if SHIELD is willing to send Lance Hunter for such a sensitive mission." The voice said with a playful tone and Hunter let out a loud sigh.

"And that my friends is the sweet voice of the devil" He said lowering the gun he had automatically pointed towards the voice for a second before recognizing the voice of his ex-wife.

At that the woman stepped out of the darkness and revealed herself. It was obviously very hard not to notice her with her blonde hair, towering height and athletic figure. She was wearing a red jacket and high black leather boots that made her look perfect for the part of an Hydra agent and if Jemma didn't know she could be trusted, she would definitely be scared.

"Hunter ... always nice to see you" She said, rolling her eyes then turned to May. "Agent May, nice to finally meet you."

"Likewise" May answered with her usual neutral tone then Bobbi turned to Jemma with a small knowing smile.

"And you must be Jemma Simmons" She said.

"Oh ... yes I am. How do you ..." Jemma started, surprised that the woman knew her by name, but she was cut.

"I'm a friend of Fitz's, I've seen your picture ... and heard about you ... a lot. I'm not surprised to see you here." She said with what looked like a fond smile. Fitz didn't easily make friends and the woman didn't look like they had much in common. Jemma would have a million questions to ask her about that later but right now, there was only one that really mattered.

"And is he ..." She started but obviously Jemma was quite predictable when it came to Fitz because Bobbi cut her again.

"Yes he's alive"