Chapter 2: Code Amber (Death Is A Relative Condition)
They have less than twenty-four hours with their daughter before the unthinkable happens.
A nurse takes her away so Bobbi can sleep, practically prying Lily from her mother's arms. But Bobbi isn't afraid yet; Lance seems to know this nurse because he comments on her flowered scrub cap.
She's tired. Exhausted, really, and everyone is telling her to sleep. So, that's what Bobbi does.
When she wakes up the hospital is on "Code Amber" and her baby is gone.
The rest is blurs.
There are lights and sounds and police and then SHIELD gets involved but they still cannot find her.
Hunter and Mack help them search and Bobbi wants to but the stupid son of a bitch doctor says she can't.
Of course, Morse tries to anyway, but she just ends up in surgery again.
When the haze of drugs wears off, her mind feels clearer. Clean, almost. Hunter and Mack are there, Hunter's eyes rimmed with red.
If Bobbi didn't know better, she'd say he had been crying.
"Did you find her?"
Solemnly, Mack shakes his head. "She must have been taken out of the hospital."
Bobbi feels wet tears start to threaten the boarder of her eyes and face. She holds Hunter's hand for a while, searching for a piece of the child they lost.
She can't find anything.
Then the nurses give her more pain meds and she falls back into oblivion.
The nurse/intern in the flower scrub cap does not like children. Not at all. In her mind, children just about equal to cockroaches. Actually, they're worse. At least roaches don't make noise.
But, when your boss tells you to abduct a kid, you do it. No questions asked. They are in a recession, after all. Jobs are hard to come by.
Especially for people in her line of work.
She gets to the car without incident. No one really notices a nurse, especially one carrying a baby, and a new mother is even less visible. A quick change of clothes in the bathroom stall and no one even glances in her direction.
Flower cap becomes flower shirt and jeans.
Waiting in the van is the Clairvoyant's liaison. He gives Raina her new assignment, looking at the baby with even more disgust than she feels.
It's impressive.
"Use it for Centipede."
There are more false starts over the next few days, but Bobbi eventually wakes up for good. There are more police, more questions.
Yet no answers.
Eventually, Bobbi heals. Mack takes her back to the base. Hunter visits and they plot ways to get Lily back. She is still out there, waiting for them to find her.
Some days, it is the only reason why she can get up in the morning.
Hunter stops drinking, to his service. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, he is focusing on getting the people who did this.
Morse is almost the same as him, only she also has to go on missions for Fury. But her heart is never there anymore. It was taken the day they took Lily.
Even Mack is changed, though Bobbi thinks it's due to the memories this has brought back. Every spare second is spent with Hunter and Bobbi, trying to figure out where their girl is.
It is not healthy. Everyone, even they can see it.
But caring is a whole different matter.
"It could have been those mercenaries we pissed off in Prague," Hunter suggests. His face is haggard and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot. Lance's hands grip a mug of coffee like it is the only thing keeping him alive.
"No, no. We went back and killed them." Bobbi shakes her head. She is dressed in her Mockingbird suit, batons in hand. She's ready to fight pretty much anyone, has been for weeks.
"How about the Salamander dude?" Mack suggests, head in hands. "He certainly didn't like us."
"Went back and arrested him."
This is basically the extent of their conversations over the next three months. The men suggest people who may have taken Lily, Bobbi points out why it couldn't be them.
Though, even this is better than when there are more people surrounding them. Whispers that follow the trio around the base, theories about what had happened to Lily. That Fury killed or abducted or sold her. That Bobbi and Lance faked the whole thing so that she could have a normal childhood. Even that she had been part of some mass infant genocide.
Hunter gets into more than a couple fights with the perpetrators. Morse wants to beat some of them over the head with her batons, but settles for stony glares instead. However, nothing changes until Mack decides to take matters into his own hands and resurrects the old shotgun-axe, albeit with a lot of duct tape.
It shuts them all up pretty quickly.
Then, on the three month anniversary of their daughter's birth and kidnapping, it's like the veil is parted. Bobbi can finally really see what has happened to them.
They are all so much more broken than they were before.
Hunter does not sleep. Maybe an hour a night, just enough to keep himself alive and breathing. Certainly not enough to keep him healthy. Though, that does not seem to be a priority these days. The only thing he cares about is finding Lily. His job, his sanity, is life all no longer matter to him.
Mack is scared and pissed off. He walks around with a fully-equipped shotgun-axe, ready and willing to swing it at anyone in the vicinity. Just that morning, he almost took a cadet's head off because the scientist talked above a whisper.
Without apologizing, Mack stomps off, muttering viciously about weird twin geniuses who finish each other's sentences.
Bobbi herself is not much better. She's constantly preoccupied, thinking about her daughter and the bastards who took her. What they were doing to her. Why they needed her. Why they even wanted her in the first place. It never ended because they would never have closure.
They would never find her.
She makes a decision then, not one that she is proud of, but something she feels she has to do.
For their sake.
Bobbi has to put an end to the pain. But, to do so, she has to put an end to the search.
Bobbi sits Hunter and Mack down, her face breaking. Tears start falling of their own accord.
She doesn't have to say it to Mack, he already knows, can already read her face. Strong arms wrap around her, and he puts down his shotgun-axe for the first time in a week.
Lance does not even react until the words come out of her mouth. "She's dead." Even then, it takes a moment for the news to compute.
And, being Hunter, he jumps straight to the bottom of a bottle. Bobbi and Mack partake in this ritual for a couple of days.
Then they all go their own ways.
Hunter… he returns to his life as a mercenary, making more than enough money to drink however much he wants. Their daughter is just a blip in his history, especially considering he has only known of her existence for a few months.
Mack takes a job on the Iliad as an engineer. Morse knows within a few years they'll promote him to the chief, deservedly. It's a good move, on his part. Planning for a future. Distancing himself from everything. With time, he will be the old Mack again.
That's all she can hope for him
Bobbi was staying behind, at least for a while. She has cases to finish. But, as soon as they're done, Morse is getting a transfer.
Like the others, she needs a fresh start.
Raina walks through the halls of Centipede's newest project with a broken little smirk plastered on her face. She'd been relieved of the child at the door, so that it could be decontaminated and she could change.
But, now, it's back in her possession, crying and sniffling and doing other things Raina doesn't care to think about.
She completes the, sadly mandatory, checkup. They had to make sure the kid would live, because what was the point if she didn't? It would just be a waste. A waste of what could be their breakthrough, according to the data they were getting from the others.
But the kid is fine. Unexpectedly, given the manner in which she entered the world. Every organ functioning optimally, every cell intact.
She was strong, this one, and her genes would make this even more interesting.
"She'll do," Raina tells a nurse, who nods and takes the kid away. "Tell them to bring me Number 3. I think he's ready for a Centipede."
A/N: So this is a day late! I'm so sorry about that, but I'm back on schedule now. Thanks for reading! Reviews are much appreciated.