Last Last Chance
Chapter Two
Two days later, Daisy stared at her cell phone, determined to make the call she was trying to hype herself up for, but also dreading it in a way that made her throat want to close up. The ten innocent little numbers glared up at her from the screen, and she pulled her legs up to her chest. She could do this. She hit the green symbol and lifted the phone to her ear.
It rang six times before it was picked up. "What?" the voice grunted.
"James? It's Daisy. I need to talk to Hive."
"You lit out of here pretty fast a few days ago. Could be he doesn't want to talk to you. Maybe you're not the favorite anymore."
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Was there a time she hadn't been at least mildly disgusted by this man? Yes, but only under Hive's influence. Even then, she found him distasteful. "Don't you think he'd like to make that choice for himself? I can't imagine he'd be thrilled when you hang up on me, I manage to get through to him anyway because I'm me, and he finds out you didn't give him a chance to say yes."
There was a long pause, and she knew he was considering hanging up on her anyway. She stayed quiet because she hadn't been kidding about finding another way to get in touch. She knew she could do it, even if it took a few days that she'd rather not waste.
Finally, he said, "Yeah, yeah, okay. Hold on."
While she waited for him to find Hive, Daisy concentrated on what she was going to say and how she was going to be convincing. She'd never been much of an actress. Her time with SHIELD had helped, but was it enough to fool a disturbingly observant immortal? It would have to be. They really only had one shot at this plan, and far too much of it depended on her.
She heard muffled voices and shuffling on the phone, then, "Daisy?"
"I want to come back," she said in a rush, pouring every ounce of desperation she could into her words. "Please. Please, I need to come back."
"I...don't understand," Hive admitted. "We're not connected anymore. Whatever that creature did seems to be permanent."
"I know." She closed her eyes, picturing John Garrett. "I know it can't be undone, and I hate him for it." She dismissed the image from her mind, calling up one from her early days at SHIELD, before it all fell apart. "But I want to come back anyway. I've never felt so happy before, so...at peace. I know where I belong. I believe in what you're doing, and I want to be a part of it, even if the bond or whatever it was is severed and can never be fixed."
"If all that is true, then why did you leave in the first place?"
Daisy had prepared for that question and had discussed potential answers with the team before choosing one that sounded plausible. "Once the bond was cut, I had to go back to my team so I could tell them I wanted to leave. They didn't believe me when I told them before, but when I told them without your influence, they had no choice but to accept it or lock me up. It had to happen this way, or they would have kept coming after us forever, and I don't want to have to kill them."
"And they won't come after us if you leave now?" Hive asked.
"Not if I leave in peace and don't steal any of their stuff. If I take my car, I can be in Union City in two days."
Daisy bit her lip as silence stretched over the line, knowing Hive was trying to decide if she was lying. "You'll come alone? Normally I wouldn't object to you bringing your friend Lincoln along, but after the fiasco he caused last time, I'd just as soon have him stay put for the time being."
She let out a sigh of relief, and it was genuine, though it wasn't for the reasons Hive probably thought. "Thank you. I'll come alone. I won't fail you again, I swear."
"Then I will see you in two days, Daisy."
The line went dead.
"Did I do okay? Do you think he bought it?" she asked.
"I would have," Coulson answered.
"I wouldn't," May said, "but I was watching your face. Your voice alone was passable."
"I don't like the idea of you going alone," Lincoln said.
"What a surprise," May murmured, too low for anyone but Daisy to hear. She looked at the older woman who had become her mentor when her first one had failed her so spectacularly, but May didn't seem to want to say any more on the subject.
"Alone is the only way this works. I'm the only one who he wants there who can't be controlled by him. If I bring any of the team, he'll have them killed without a second thought, and I have enough guilt. If I bring another Inhuman, he can take them over faster than I can do anything about it."
"I should still go with you," Lincoln argued. "If we take a van, I can stay inside and he never even has to see me. What you need to do shouldn't take long, and I shouldn't even have to get out of the van. I can just be there as backup for when things inevitably go wrong."
Did May just roll her eyes? Daisy thought. She might have seen it happen out of the corner of her eye while she was looking at Lincoln, but she couldn't be sure, and now May's impassive mask was back in place. "Honey, don't take this the wrong way, but if you go, I won't. I'm not risking anyone else. I'll feel guilty for the rest of my life for the things I did under Hive's control. The last thing I need is to get someone I care about killed, in addition to all that."
"Great, so once again I'm stuck at the base while my girlfriend runs off into mortal danger." Lincoln stormed out without another word, and Daisy rose to go after him.
May caught her arm. "If you're going to be in Union City in 48 hours, you don't have time to soothe Campbell's bruised ego. FitzSimmons needs to brief you on the device they've cooked up for you to use, and that takes priority."
Daisy nodded, both knowing May was right and not wanting to piss her off. May's ex-husband had just died to save her, and she could barely look her former S.O. in the eyes. She knew that it wasn't her fault, that she couldn't be blamed for her actions under Hive's influence, and that May herself had put Lash on the quinjet, but in her heart, she wasn't sure she'd ever forgive herself for being the reason behind his death.
"Right," she agreed quietly. "I'll talk to him if there's time before I leave. Just..." she looked at Coulson, pleading, "keep an eye on him while I'm gone, okay? Don't let him inject himself with anything untested or mount a rescue mission or something."
"You got it," Coulson said.
Daisy made her way down to the lab, hoping they could give her some clue as to how she was going to pull off a resurrection. The plan hadn't been put into motion until Fitz came up with the tech to make it happen, but she'd wanted to get the call to Hive out of the way before seeing it for herself. She thought she would be more believable if she wasn't picturing using whatever the device was on him, so she had avoided knowing about it until now. The downside of that was that she hadn't been able to veto the gadget. She had to put her trust in FitzSimmons to do their part, just as they had to do with her.
She entered the lab to find Fitz attempting to piece together several bits of metal and Simmons carefully putting a cap on a frighteningly large syringe filled with a clear liquid.
"Please tell me that's not for me," Daisy said, pointing at the syringe.
"Well, I'm giving it to you, but no, it's a possible step two in bringing Ward back." The way Simmons said the last three words showed her aversion to the plan, even if it was the best one they had and was, in fact, partly her idea.
"And step one is...?"
Fitz stood up from the table and presented her with a disk-shaped object about four inches in diameter and an inch thick. Daisy took it and was surprised to find it weighed about five pounds, much heavier than she was expecting. The only feature that she could see on the otherwise blank silver surface was a button on the outer edge of the device.
"Step one is you put this in the middle of his chest and push the button. Hopefully you won't even need a step two," Fitz said.
"But if you do," Simmons added, "try to get this needle into a vein. Not sure if it will work because his heart isn't actually pumping his blood, but it certainly can't hurt."
"Okay," Daisy said, looking over the gizmo and hoping to see some magical bit that would explain how it would work. Since all she saw was the button, and it was unwise to push buttons on things designed in this lab when she didn't know what they did, she looked at Fitz again and waited for him to explain.
He recognized the look immediately. "After you push the button, the device will dig in to his chest so it can't be removed until it's done. Even through clothes, it should work. So long as it's just cotton or something and not, say, body armor. Anyway, it will dig in and start emitting a mild magnetic charge that should keep his parasites in place. Then it will extend built-in machinery to shock his heart until it starts going again. It will stop automatically if or when it senses a heartbeat, and it will detach."
"Cool," Daisy said, impressed. "How long does it take from the time I push the button to start shocking his heart?"
"About five seconds. Hopefully it'll only take one or two shocks to get it going again, and then, again hopefully, you'll be dealing with Ward instead of Hive. If it takes more than ten seconds after you push the button, stick that needle in his neck."
"And what's in the needle?" she asked.
"Epinephrine, along with a few other things," Simmons answered. "It will aid the device in bringing his heart back into working order. Medically speaking, anyway. I make no guarantees for his personality being improved."
"Okay, and how worried should I be about how many times you guys have said the words 'hopefully' and 'should' in the last two minutes?"
The two scientists looked at each other, and Simmons sighed. "Unfortunately, we can't actually test the device. We're working entirely in theory. It would likely kill anyone we tested it on."
"Mechanically, it does what it's meant to when you push the button," Fitz assured her. "But it's meant for exactly one being. Everything we know tells us that this is the best possible way to get Ward's heart beating again. But..."
"But you don't know if that will actually have any effect on Hive, and even if it does and we get Ward back, you don't know what he'll be like, with Hive trapped inside," Daisy finished.
"Precisely." Simmons shook her head, at a loss for words for a moment before she recovered herself. "I hate that we're sending you into this much danger so unprepared. And the best case scenario here is we're back where we started before Ward died."
"More like before we traded him to his brother," Fitz said. "Being that he'll likely be back in Vault D."
Daisy stiffened and had to call on all the training May had given her to not to let them see her reaction. She couldn't count the lies that Ward had told when he was on their team, but she'd never doubted his terror toward his older brother or the nightmare that he claimed his youth had been. She wasn't sure she could name a biggest regret in her life, but not fighting Coulson on that decision had to make her top five. She silently promised both Ward and herself that he would not be traded and used as a pawn again. Allowances would also have to be made so he didn't attempt suicide again. But she was getting ahead of herself. All of that would have to wait until after she'd survived and succeeded in her mission.
"I better get going. I've got a hell of a drive ahead of me," Daisy said, hoping to move things along so she wouldn't stand there, ruminating on the past, for too long.
Simmons walked over to her and handed her the needle. Daisy stuffed the device into a large pocket in her jacket and the needle into an inside pocket that had been meant to hold a gun, back when she needed one. Simmons suddenly hugged her tightly. Daisy returned the gesture, feeling for the first time how much danger she was walking into alone. If this didn't work, Hive would kill her; she was sure of that.
If it doesn't work, I hope Ward's not in there, she thought, surprising herself. He shouldn't have to see me die.
Simmons pulled away and quickly turned back to the table, but not before Daisy saw the tears in her eyes. The biochemist was confident in her expertise and in the skills of her partner, but it was written all over her face that she didn't expect to ever see Daisy alive again.
Fitz seemed slightly more positive, but he still hugged her before she left. When they parted, he told her, "May wants to brief you one more time before you go. She's waiting in the hangar."
Daisy gave him a rather watery smile and said, "Okay. I'll see you in a few days."
She left before either of them could respond, though she thought they'd learned enough tact to not actually tell her that this might very well be a suicide mission, even if they couldn't keep it off their faces. She made her way down to the hangar, where she'd left a bag with some extra clothes and toiletries in a nondescript SUV.
She found May leaning against the vehicle. "You wanted to see me?" she asked.
May nodded. "Mostly I was making sure Lincoln wouldn't stow away in your car, but I also wanted to offer some last minute advice."
"Simmons thinks I'm gonna die, so anything you've got to avoid that, I'd love to hear."
May's brow creased briefly before smoothing again. "No, I don't believe Hive will kill you if this goes sideways," she said slowly.
"Why?" Daisy asked.
May shook her head, unwilling to elaborate. "Just a theory. Anyway, my advice is this: don't settle in and wait until you're trusted again. Campbell is right about one thing, that you only need a few seconds to achieve your goal, and the longer you're there, the more chance there is of your being discovered. Just get in, get him alone if you can, assuming you don't want to fight all of his brainwashed Inhumans, and get the job done."
"And then?"
"If it works and Ward is unconscious, cuff him and get him in the back of the car. If he's awake, knock him out. If it doesn't work, get the hell out. You said you'd be in Union City in 48 hours. You now have a little more than 47, and it's a 32-hour drive. No matter how it shakes out, I'll be at the nearest airfield within two hours after you make contact."
Daisy nodded, absorbing May's advice and knowing, despite the other woman's brusque nature, she was here, seeing her off and offering tips gained from years of experience, because she was worried and because she cared. "Okay," she said, "I'll see you in a couple days." She paused, then added, "Listen, if I don't make it back, tell-"
May grabbed her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "You will be back. You cannot go into this mission believing you're going to die. Hive will see it all over your face. You walk into that town believing you're doing the right thing and that you have found the place where you belong, because you are and you have. Do you understand me?"
Daisy took a deep breath, centering herself and attempting to wipe the fear and anxiety off of her face. "I understand. This will go as planned, and the most I have to worry about is a couple hours in a car with Ward."
The corner of May's mouth twitched in an almost-smile, then she handed Daisy the keys to the SUV. "I'll see you soon, Agent Johnson."