Author's Note: This chapter will be a long one, probably won't get back to the main narrative (sorry), and will reuse the interrogation scene from "Hunting for Answers" and "Interrogation with a Ghost". Don't worry Skye will not be as dark and brooding as Oliver, she's like a mix of her canon self and Oliver Queen.
Present Day Chapter 3: Learning the Truth:
While Agent May and FitzSimmons were investigating the rubble of the lab (and capturing Skye, unbeknownst to Coulson and Ward), Coulson and Ward were moving in to capture their mysterious hacker, they found her van, only to find it devoid of any human life.
"Whoever in The Rising Tide hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. must have learned we were onto them and left in a hurry." Ward assumed.
"No… this is an A.R.G.U.S. issued van, whoever hacked us must have been undercover in The Rising Tide." Coulson deduced, his phone then vibrated in his pocket, the caller ID read 'Melinda May'.
"Hello May, have FitzSimmons found anything in that lab yet?" Coulson asked.
"That's why I called, they found a surveillance camera, a strange looking device that might be an 0-8-4, and your old friend, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and A.R.G.U.S. agent Skye AKA Dark Arrow in that lab, she was searching it, I managed to knock her out while FitzSimmons were unknowingly distracting her and we're on our way back to The Bus right now." May answered.
"Ward and I will head back right now." Coulson replied before hanging up. After a half hour of driving they were back on The Bus (a black heavily modified airplane officially designated S.H.I.E.L.D. 616 that Coulson's Team were using as their base of operations, Coulson got it as compensation for Loki stabbing him).
"Who is she?" Ward and FitzSimmons asked simultaneously.
"Luckily our command center can access S.H.I.E.L.D., A.R.G.U.S., FBI, CIA, and NSA data bases or else I wouldn't be able to explain to you." Coulson explained before pulling up Skye's A.R.G.U.S. file.
"A.R.G.U.S. Agent Skye, real name unknown, also known by her codename Dark Arrow, biological family is also unknown, she has been searching for them her whole life, she has a step-family in Central City, her step father, Joe West, is a detective for the CCPD, her step sister, Iris West, is an employee at Jitters and aspires to be a journalist, and her step brother, Barry Allen is an assistant forensic scientist for the CCPD who spends his spare time looking into anything he thinks will connect to his mother's murder, "The Impossible" in essence, basically what we'll be looking into on a regular basis, the police believe his father killed her, but he testifies time and time again that a man in yellow killed her, S.H.I.E.L.D. believes him and has placed this mysterious Man in Yellow on The Index as he is believed to have super speed. Skye spent some time 10 years ago on an island in the North China Sea called Lian Yu, which literally is Chinese for Purgatory Island. According to this she was trained by Slade Joseph Wilson, due to this training she can withstand Chinese Water Torture for 7 minutes –everyone bar Coulson was shocked-, he ended up crossing her after the death of his love interest Shado, he seems to pin the blame on her, Skye killed him by putting an arrow through his eye after he threatened to take away everything and everyone she cared about. She also worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. for a time after A.R.G.U.S. brought her to Hong Kong and she, Oliver Queen, he was on the island with her and was also brought to Hong Kong, and a couple others stopped the U.S. Army's attempt to cripple China with the Alpha-Omega bio weapon, but left to return to A.R.G.U.S. after a mission in Wakanda, there aren't any known reports on what happened there and she would have my head if I told you." Coulson explained.
"She has seen a lot of darkness over the past 10 years." Fitz realised.
"Yes she has Fitz, now I'm going to go in there and talk to her, give her a friendly and familiar face to talk to." Coulson told them before heading to 'The Cage' as they were calling it, the team watched through security footage.
"Long time no see Skye, I just need to ask you a few questions." Coulson started.
"Are you sure this will work?" Ward muttered to May.
"I have faith in him." May replied.
"Coulson, how the hell are you alive?" Skye asked, raw emotion heavy in her voice.
"I was never truly dead, I was only dead for 50 seconds, Fury faked my death so The Avengers would band together to save the world from The Chitauri. After that I had a stay in Tahiti for a few weeks and got this plane and team as a token of good will. Anyways, off to my first question, what were you of all people doing at the rubble of a blown up lab?" Coulson answered then asked.
"He actually was dead for only 8 seconds, Hill said so and that it gets longer every time he tells it, he told me he was dead for 40 seconds, for instance." Ward explained.
"Well… I've been undercover in The Rising Tide for the past 2 years, I've been using them as a smoke screen to take down Centipede." Skye answered Coulson's question.
"WHAT THE HELL IS CENTIPEDE?!" May, Ward, Fitz, and Simmons all exclaimed at once.
"Next question, what is Centipede?" Coulson asked.
"Thank god he's asking that." Simmons sighed in relief.
"Wait a minute; you don't know what Centipede is? –Sigh- I'll tell you, only because I figured you would have known about Centipede by now and you guys are only going to get more entangled in their business anyway. Centipede is some kind of terrorist organization hell bent on creating their own super soldier serum, by combining every known source of powers into one serum, Extremis, Mirakuru, Gamma Radiation, hell, even Erskine's serum all into one super serum. I'm no scientist but I know from fighting prior users of this serum that it has the explosive issues of Extremis, the emotionally instability issues of Mirakuru, and that users must be injected with the serum on a regular basis, without the serum their just men, at least, according to an analysis of the serum done by my step brother, Central City Police Department Forensic Scientist Barry Allen, he did because of 2 reasons,
Because he has always been interested and believed in 'The Impossible'.
Because he is smarter than any scientist A.R.G.U.S. has." Skye answered.
"So that's what Centipede is… but what the hell is Mirakuru?" Fitz thought out loud before letting his confusion out.
"Final question, do you still trust me?" Coulson asked Skye.
"You know I do, Phil, especially after what happened during my brief time at S.H.I.E.L.D; but Bahrain and Wakanda were proof that I was more of an A.R.G.U.S. agent than a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent." Skye answered without a second thought.
"After this whole thing with The Hooded Hero is over, would you consider giving us a second chance?" Coulson asked Skye.
"After 'You Know What' happened in Wakanda? You know that S.H.I.E.L.D. won't exactly welcome me back with open arms." Skye responded. Coulson sighed before saying,
"Just answer the question, Skye."
"Alright, I'll do it, but I've been trying to keep the killing to a minimum though so keep that in mind." Skye answered.
"I'll bear that in mind. Sorry but I have a couple burning questions in my head that need answering before leaving this room, who is 'The Hooded Hero' and did you hack into S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to maintain your cover?" Coulson reassured then asked.
"To answer your questions, Mike Peterson, you check my pockets for his ID if you need to be sure, and yes, the first time it was to search for info on my family, like when I snuck into the records library at The Hub to search for the same thing and like when I did that I found nothing, the other times were to help maintain my cover, like when I released the location of that Chitauri neural link, I hated every time I had to release S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets." Skye answered.
"She just admitted to have leaked that Chitauri neural link, I could have died because of her 'Undercover Operation'!" Ward exclaimed.
"But she did say she hated doing it!" Simmons defended.
"Whatever..." Ward sighed.
"Alright Skye, we're done here." Coulson told Skye as he opened the door.
"Good and can any of you get these cuffs off, they're tight as hell!" Skye exclaimed, Ward then removed the handcuffs once she was out.
"Skye, right? What is Mirakuru?" Fitz asked.
Skye sighed, "Mirakuru was the Japanese attempt to recreate Erskine's super solider serum. It almost worked, but it didn't, the flaws with the serum are that it causes bleeding from the eyes upon injection, if it doesn't consider you 'Worthy' you die, and if it does it will cause physical or psychological deterioration, Slade Wilson is an example of the mental deterioration. Oliver and I injected him with the serum, but it drove him mad and after Shado died, it also seems to cause hallucinations of the person the user misses most and said hallucinations tell them to commit horrible actions in their name, Slade seems to suffer from this as every bad thing he has done to me was in Shado's name." Skye explained. Then Coulson put on a news report on a factory incident that had just occurred, the team realized it involved Mike Peterson/The Hooded Hero.
"Alright, time to look up Mike Peterson." Skye muttered.
"Mike Peterson, factory worker, has one kid, and he's divorced, the poor guy got injured and then got laid off his previous job, good guy, bad breaks, then one day someone…" Coulson explained before getting cut off.
"Debbie Muller, Centipede's American recruiter, she runs their operations here, a woman named Raina recruited her into Centipede a few years ago, she must have recruited Mike, gave him the Centipede serum and swore him into secrecy." Skye realized.
"Fitz what do we have from the security footage Skye uploaded to her phone from before the blast?" Coulson asked, Fitz then pulled up the footage.
"Well the man is angry at the other man." Fitz answered.
"The data is very corrupt." Simmons explained.
"Yeah, like Cold War Russia corrupt!" Fitz exclaimed.
"I-I can't sync the timecode without…" Fitz continued before being cut off.
"What if you had the audio? I obviously have picked up some excellent knowledge of computers over the past couple years. I was running surveillance on the lab due to it being a Centipede lab, I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. If I get my van back into that alley, then I'm back in business. But there's too much background noise for me but you could probably-" Skye offered before Simmons cut her off, they talked for a bit.
"Um, that audio would be great. Thank you very, very much." Fitz accepted.
"We will take that audio, please." Simmons accepted at the same time.
"Skye, you'll go with May to that alley and send that audio our way and Fitz will figure out what happened in that lab, Simmons will be doing a breakdown of that serum to see there's anything Barry missed." Coulson told Skye.
"It would be my pleasure to do so." Skye responded.
THE END FOR NOW!