A/N: I am overwhelmed by the response to this story! You guys rock.
Reply to Review:
TrooperCam: Thank you for the review and the tip. I didn't even realize I didn't put it in caps until your review.
Guest 1, 2 and 3: Thank you, glad you guys enjoyed the chapter.
Lilomaus223: She will be perfect in combat, but I'm saving that for another chapter. *No spoilers* Thank you for the review.
Gatemaster: Skye will be different from canon. She will be a little... darker I guess you could say and more serious. However she will still show some traits from the show version because she will be putting on an act. And thank you for telling me about Pegasus, I completely overlooked that.
Sinistermorlock: Go for it.
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. Story idea goes to Annajadekin.
Chapter Two: Don't Say Too Much
Skye was almost never surprised. However when the agent, Coulson, had asked to talk to her, she expected it was to talk more about Centipede or Deathlok. Yet he had wanted to talk about neither of those things. Instead he offered her a spot on the team, or really he offered her a consultant position. Skye knew she wanted to be on the inside and thought it would have taken more time to be brought aboard this team.
Skye was currently sitting in her little room on the large plane. The bed was pressed against the wall, there was some space between the bed and the door allowing some walking room and a small desk area on her right. It wasn't much space, but it definitely was one of the more decent places she had lived in. Skye was fairly certain that the main reason Coulson wanted her on this team was not because of her skills. Her research and personal judgement on Coulson showed him as the type of guy who would never abandon someone.
He wanted to help as many people as he possibly could. In his eyes, Skye was positive he saw her as some lost soul, a rebel without a cause. She was going to be his charity case.
The thought made Skye's blood boil.
Quickly, before she let her temper flare up, she pushed the feeling and thoughts aside. There would be a briefing in the main center of the plane, command center seemed like an appropriate name for it. Skye walked out of her bunk and walked over to the command center. There was a large screen on the wall and table in the middle that would translate to screen as well.
SHIELD took all the best technology. What she would do if she had all this equipment? Skye knew she would use it all to hack into more places and do more multitasking. Even though she likes to think she could do some serious damage with this tech. Looking at the table, which she dubbed as a holo-table, Skye wasn't surprised that most of the world didn't know about machines such as these. SHIELD was full of secrets, no matter how small.
Get back here Mary!
Don't let her get away.
Somebody help me!
Skye bit her lip at the voices echoing in her mind. She knew they were just in her head, but they were strong memories that refused to stay buried. The young woman leaned back against the glass wall, counting her breaths she calmed herself and forced herself to push the memory away.
"Oh look," Ward said sarcastically, "The convict shows up to briefings on time."
Skye gave him a tight smile, "Yeah. Came here right after I robbed a bank and committed murder."
The agent glared at her, but Skye leveled his gaze. He could push her all he liked, he had no idea what she was capable of. Shortly after Ward arrived, Fitzsimmons walked into the command center both wearing smiles. Even though Skye had known them less than twelve hours, she already knew the two of them were inseparable. May walked in with Coulson a beat behind her.
"Glad everyone's here," Coulson said with a grin, "Now let's get down to business. We have an 0-8-4 on our hands in Peru."
Coulson pressed the table and a map of Peru showed up on the monitor. Skye knew what an 0-8-4 was, object of unknown origin. When Skye first hacked SHIELD a few years ago, she memorized a large portion of their protocols and codes like this one.
"An 0-8-4," Skye questioned.
"Oh that's right," Ward said bitterly, "You wouldn't know what that is because you have no training."
"It means an object of unknown origin," Coulson told her ignoring Ward, "SHIELD wants us to investigate it, see if it's useful or poses a threat."
Simmons said to Skye, "SHIELD gets called to check out things before they make it to the public."
Fitz added, "It's our job to keep it out of the wrong hands and such."
"Wait a minute," Ward commented, "SHIELD is okay with us investigating this potentially dangerous weapon with a security hazard?"
"Agent Ward," Coulson said with an exasperated expression.
Skye could only smile at the agent. Her brown eyes were shimmering with mischief as she wondered what she could say to shut the agent down. One of the perks to having her intelligence was being able to read people extremely well, noticing the details in their expression, the slight changes in their tone. Not to mention Skye, although she didn't like doing this, could take a person apart with a few words.
When she was in the third grade, a boy had made fun of her for being an orphan. Skye had only seen red at the moment and let her mouth run rampid. It was needless to say every word that came out of her mouth, although most was not foul language, tore the boy apart. She could see through anyone's walls and defenses. Could pinpoint their weakness after one meeting. If Skye wanted to, she was certain she would be a badass villain.
Judging by Ward's hostility towards her meant he had serious trust issues, suspected everything and everyone, didn't like the unknown and preferred to keep himself under lock and key. Considering his stance and tone, he had been taught to keep everything together. Most likely he was abused as a child and found the only way to take control of his life was to fight for a cause.
"It's alright Agent Coulson," Skye said still smiling, "It is risky that I go on this assignment. After all, I am a criminal. Who knows the trouble I could cause on this investigation."
Ward could only glare at Skye with his arms folded over his chest, nostrils flaring ever so slightly. Although May didn't trust Skye, she trusted Coulson's judgement enough tolerate the young woman. It seemed Agent Ward didn't care what his superior said. He may need to work with her when necessary, but that didn't mean he had to be friendly with her.
"Agent Ward if you cannot handle this as a professional, then you can leave the room," Coulson said seriously.
Ward debated his options and decided it would be best to remain quiet. Coulson took that as Ward's way of agreeing to act professional for the time being.
"We go in, investigate and then we come out," Coulson said simply.
May walked out and called, "We leave in two minutes."
Fitzsimmons left to strapped in, May traveled up to the cockpit while Ward went his own way. Coulson nodded to the side, a motion to Skye for her to follow him to a seat. Skye got the message and the two sat down on at a little table with white seats. The plane was impressive. It had just about everything a person would need in order to be comfortable.
"Sweet ride," Skye said as she strapped into the couch.
Coulson nodded at that, "Yeah, I earned a little good will from Director Fury after I got hit before the battle of New York."
"You took a bullet," Skye asked surprised.
"Ish," Coulson surprised, "An Asgardian stabbed me through the heart with a Chitauri scepter. The effect was similar."
Skye couldn't argue with that, but she wondered how he had survived being stabbed through the heart with an alien scepter. Even though Skye wasn't great with anatomy, she figured depending on where he was stabbed would have determined how he was able to survive. One day she would ask him, if she stayed here that long.
"Got a few weeks R&R and this plane," Coulson continued pulling Skye from her thoughts, "Had it completely refurbished, studs up, spared no expense."
"Yeah," Skye said, "You also went to some tropical place right? What was called, Tahiti?"
Coulson nodded, "It's a magical place."
The lights flickered off followed by the noise most planes had when they were trying to signal the passengers to put on their seat belts. It had been three years since Skye had last been on an airplane. Although she wasn't afraid of flying, she knew that there were a good amount things that could go wrong during take-off, landing and even when they were just in the air.
She tried not to think about that though. Instead she let her thoughts wander to the past. Skye glanced out the window and watched as they rose into the sky, a false smile growing on her face. The first and only time Skye had ever left the country was in the third grade. By this time, many people new of her above average intelligence.
This had to do with her outstanding test scores and near perfect memory. One foster mother, one who she had been staying with for nine months, had helped her "career" flourish. Before her life took a turn for the worst, this woman had been there for her and helped in ways no one else would or even could. Skye had gone overseas to Japan to compete in a music competition, piano, a chess competition in England and more. It had been an exhausting month for the young girl, but she had become a star. Until a month after her ninth birthday and the little genius who was slowly rising to the sky had vanished without a trace.
Where are we going?
Once they had landed in Peru, the team moved out to investigate the 0-8-4. They arrived at an Inca archaeological site, it was an area Skye had done some research on a few week ago. There was a group of rebels against the mines here, one of their bases was actually five maybe six miles away. As Skye followed Coulson and Fitzsimmons to the temple, she wondered if some rebels would show up.
Coulson had told her, he wanted her to keep this investigation secret. If word got out, it would be her job to steer the public away from this which Skye could agree with. After all the riots going on around here, she knew something like a dangerous object with unknown potential would set the country into a frenzy. While Coulson spoke to the man in charge of this site, Skye stood off to the side while Fitzsimmons pulled out their equipment.
She learned they were the seven dwarfs responsible for measuring radiation, collecting data, comparing its frame and structure to other known items. It was quite impressive technology, Skye had to admit it.
"What do we got here guys," Skye said staring at the 0-8-4 in the wall.
The metal reminded Skye of platinum, but as she examined it up close she immediately knew it was not from earth. At the age of ten, Skye memorized every element on this planet and all the elements from other planets that were known. This information she had either obtained herself or her "tutors" gave it to her to learn. It was definitely a weapon, Skye knew that much. She recognized the small, barely noticeable smell of the blue energy inside the metal.
Asgardian. Tesseract. Chitari Invasion.
"The objects placement in the fossiliferous in the rock suggests it has been here for at 1500 years," Simmons said looking up from her data pad, "That pre-dates this temple by a millennium."
"It was buried in the rock and the temple was built around it," Skye muttered to herself.
"Ah," Simmons said, "Maybe it's alien."
Fitz spoke next, "Yeah, but it's shape and craftsmanship, it's almost German."
Skye remembered she spent months digging through Europe's dark history, some of the stuff she found showed how places such as Russia and Germany had more advanced technology. German engineers based a good amount of their technology and weapons off of foreign objects, alien artifacts to be more specific. The way this 0-8-4 was styled and Fitz's comment triggered her memory.
She knew what this item was and just how dangerous it could be if it got into the wrong. Skye parted her lips slightly, prepared to tell them everything she knew, but abruptly closed her mouth. If they knew about her, they would lock her up like the others did. She had to keep her intelligence a secret, if not SHIELD would lock her up or worse, they would find her again.
Coulson told the man in charge of the site to evacuate his team, which was the best thing to do. They needed to get this thing about of the wall, get it to a safe location and out of the wrong hands. If not, this would become a more feared weapon than nuclear bombs.
"Sir," Ward said through the speaker, "We have a situation."
"It's the military or the rebels," Skye said to Coulson.
"Not enough gunfire," Coulson replied, "Keep working, I'm on way."
With that, Coulson walked out of the temple to assist May and Ward. Hopefully he could sort this thing out with whatever was going on outside. When Coulson went outside, he hadn't expected to see his old friend Camilla. He knew she worked in military, but he didn't know she was a commander. After being able to greet her, properly after both their teams put down their weapons, he was able to tell Ward to let the others know everything was fine.
In the meantime, he would speak with Camilla, catch up a little and work this whole mess out with the 0-8-4. Inside the temple, Fitzsimmons and Skye were still observing the 0-8-4. Fitz made a comment about the item being alive, but Skye knew that was a false way to describe the object. It was pulsing with enough energy and power to mimic a more than ten life forces in the same area, but that didn't mean it could be compared to something alive. All of Skye's lessons on alien tech came rushing back to her.
This had the same source of power as the tesseract. The item, the weapon, could destroy a life.
"Alive-alive," Skye questioned surprised.
"It has a functioning power source," Fitz said and Simmons added, "Sleepy is reading radionuclides, but they don't match any known isotope."
"I get temporal matches, but even then they seem to shift, is that even possible," Fitz said.
Skye smirked to the wall. They couldn't find a match because SHIELD's database has no knowledge of chemical bonds such as these. All that equipment and resources and still a young woman who lived in a van has more knowledge than this agency.
"Depends on the frequency you search and isotopes you use," Skye whispered repeating a teacher's advice, "It will shift because that is how it stabilizes, through movement. You won't find a match because there is nothing to match it with… unless you break
it down."
"What," Simmons questioned Skye.
She was certain she heard something very interesting from the young woman across from her. She heard her muttering something about they said, but the words were unclear. If Skye knew something about this, then she hoped the woman would share it.
Skye turned back to Simmons, she wasn't going to blow her cover, "Depends on the temporal radio shifting stuff. It's totally weird right?"
Fitz paid no attention to Skye while Simmons seemed slightly disappointed. Perhaps she misheard or imagined what Skye had said. A moment later, Ward walked in with news.
"We've got company," he said, "National police."
Fitzsimmons said, "What? Why are they here?"
"They heard about this object and probably want to protect it," Ward told them, "This area has lots of rebel uprisings."
Skye couldn't hold back a laugh. There was no way Ward was serious about the rebels wanting to protect this. The rebels were against mining policies and digging into the ground any further than they already had.
"What's so funny," Ward asked Skye bitterly.
"The rebels are fighting against the government's mining, archaeological digging and searching policies," Skye replied, "If anything this is a reason the rebels are fighting. It's fairly kick-ass."
Ward rolled his eyes, "Kick-ass and all the violence."
"That's not what I meant," Skye replied flatly.
Ward ignored her and questioned the scientist, "How much longer?"
"What's the hurry," Simmons asked while Fitz added, "Are we in danger?"
"Not if everyone does their job," Ward said, then turned to Skye, "What is yours exactly?"
Skye made no comment. A few moments of silence passed before the temple started to shake. Rebels. The national police was now fighting the rebels. The four of them needed to get out of there, now. Fitzsimmons packed up their stuff quickly while Ward pulled the 0-8-4 out of the wall. Skye knew the weapon would be fine so long as Ward didn't activate it or "pull the trigger."
Meanwhile Fitz was having a melt down because he had to pack his equipment hurriedly and Ward pulled the dangerous weapon out of the wall. They rushed out of the temple only to be welcomed by gunfire causing them to retreat. Ward used one of SHIELD's devices, which Skye recognized almost instantly, and rendered the rebels stunned.
All of them were flown back and ten feet away from where the last stood. This was their chance to make a clean getaway. May pulled up the car then and they all climbed in, Coulson climbed into another car with Camilla and her men. Quickly, they all drove away from the area.