AN: Hello everyone! Tis I, your friendly neighborhood fanfic writer! I feel like the story's really starting to come together, what with Root and Skye's date (or is it?) coming up next chapter. Things might get bloody in that one. The only problem I have is finding the time to transcribe it from my composition notebook, which I'm gonna need to do more frequently. Thank god winter break is a thing.

Anyway, enjoy! and make sure to appreciate the foreshadowing!

Chapter 4: Objects In Motion

[Day 0]

Control struggled to see through the black cloth bag currently thrown over her head. Of course, it didn't help that it was dark. At least if it were bright she could have some idea where she was being taken. Nowhere good, obviously.

She could at least feel up and downhill. They had left the SUV around ten minutes ago, by her estimate. She guessed they were going to bury her downhill so the erosion would more adequately hide her body when the snow melted. With Gryce and Carolyn gone, it was getting ever so easier to count her possible options for survival. She was down to one hand now.

They stopped suddenly, forcing her forward a couple steps. This was it, she realized. She couldn't fight, she definitely couldn't run (not far, at least). She resisted the urge to fall to her knees. No, she would stand until the very end, which seemed both eternities and seconds away, the pain from the imaginary bullet manifesting before she would ever feel the real one.

In her last moments, she thought of her daughter, Julia, how she would never grow up with a mother now. Control couldn't help but wonder if there was any irony there.

Hearing the click of the gun behind her as she was forced to her knees, she gritted her teeth, the zip tie digging into her skin. Every single time this had happened before (both metaphorically and physically) she had stuck a particular finger at her oppressor and found a way to come out on top. How could one beat a god at poker, when said god held all the cards?

A high pitched whine broke out. Automatic weapons fire, then a scream. Control did the logical thing, throwing her body to the ground. The second operative fired off two shots, more gunfire taking him down before he could get off a third, then silence. Pure silence, but for a moment.

There were footsteps, slow, steady footsteps. There was a whirring noise between each step, as if they were hydraulics. Control couldn't tell, she couldn't see, she couldn't move. If whoever this was saved her life, they weren't likely to kill her now, but if she was kept alive by anyone other than a cheerful bystander, it was because they wanted her for something.

A strong hand gripped her wrist, pulling her up onto her feet. A blade cut through the zip tie, and Control pulled away, whirling around as she pulled the bag from over her eyes, taking a look at her apparent rescuer.

He was taller than her, dark skin, and had a gaze that seemed as if he were looking right through her. Below his neck, he wore a strange kind of armor that went from his shoulders to the center of his belt. He wore gauntlets of some sort on both hands, and one of his legs shone in the moonlight as if it were made of metal. 'Artificial leg?' She wondered. If this was indeed her rescuer, then the question remained of where was his gun? Was it a handheld semi-automatic, hidden on his back somewhere? Or did he simply pull a Red Foreman with it?

She looked around, trying to pinpoint anyone else that might've taken the shots. They were alone, it seemed, in a small valley out in the woods somewhere, still in Maryland, by the trees. Were she buried here, the erosion would ensure her body remained undiscovered for a very long time.

She turned back to the man, who had been patiently waiting the several seconds needed to get her bearings, "so, new superhero on the block?" she asked, a mask forming on his face to hide some apparent pain.

"I'm no superhero," he said calmly, "but it seems right now I'm yours," he turned, starting to walk back the way she and the Samaritan operatives had come, "let's go."

Control nodded, they were heading back to the road, likely to commandeer the SUV left by the Samaritan operatives. She followed after looting the weapons from the downed operatives. They certainly wouldn't be needing them anymore.

"I take it you're not working with Samaritan," she said matter-of-factly, "if that's the case, then who are you working for?" she asked. Looking him over again, she guessed that he would be able to run fast if he needed to. His leg looked cybernetic. No one who'd be willing to sacrifice a real limb for a robotic one would limit themselves to just a leg. He'd lost that leg, then was given a replacement.

Control paused in her train of thought. Was this man the Machine's doing? Did it give him a second chance to help people, as it did for its assets?

"The machine sent me to save you," he said simply, confirming her suspicions while his pace was unwavering.

"I guess a thank you is in order," she admitted, "pass it onto the Machine for me, will you?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that. It's dead." His response made Control stop, physically this time. He noticed, turning to face her, "you surprised? So was I. Only heard about it five minutes before it happened."

"Back up," Control held up a hand, "before what happened, exactly?"

"The brownouts across the US, remember them?" Control nodded, "the Machine's been hiding as excess static in the power grid. Samaritan flushed it out, left it nowhere to hide. Unless it pulled something out it's digital ass..." he trailed off, shaking his head, "either way, I haven't heard anything from it."

"So are you like Root?" She asked, using Ms. Groves' preferred pseudonym, as it was more likely to be recognized, "another analog interface?"

The look on his face gave her an answer before he himself did, "I don't know any Root," he said, "but if analog interface means working for the Machine, then that's me." He turned, resuming his walk, "I'm told I can trust you."

"Samaritan just tried to have me killed," Control replied bitterly, "I'm pretty sure we passed the point of 'enemy of my enemy' a mile ago." She kept walking with him for a few more silent moments before a question popped to the front of her mind, "you got a name?"

He glanced at her, a slight smile forming on his lips as he stopped, offering his hand, "Agent Peterson, Shield."

"Control," she took it, "but you probably knew that. I take it Shield got back on its feet?" She asked, mildly curious. Last she heard, there was the organization of Hydra hiding within Shield for the past 75 years since the fall of the original organization. Now, however, the Shield agents who hadn't been double agents were being hunted down nonetheless along with the Hydra agents that remained from that day by the government. Control remembered Samaritan's introduction for consideration and how soon it was after that event at the Triskelion. Nothing suspicious there.

"More or less," Peterson said as they began to walk once more, "for the time being, though, my priority is to the Machine, not Shield."

"How?" She asked, "you said it was dead, and I'm all for taking down Samaritan, but not with the two of us. I've been looking into Samaritan's actions for the past few weeks, but not for the Machine's benefit-"

"The Machine knew that, I'd guess," Peterson responded, "before it died, I was sent a data packet. Call it a will, a list of things that need to be done. First item on that list was to save you."

Control wasn't sure if she was supposed to feel special. It was rather like the Machine to play the long game at this point. It was the only thing it could (or couldn't) do. It may have been losing battles, but it was dedicated to winning the war. "And the second?" Control asked.

"Your daughter," Peterson explained, no questions needing to be asked. If Samaritan had Julia, Samaritan had Control, in every sense of the word.

"So what's the plan?" She asked, getting straight to the point, "Steal their SUV? Storm the school?" They were nearly to the road now. Control was a bit tired of walking.

As they came into view of the car, Control saw a man on his phone in the driver's seat. He looked up at the same time, obviously expecting his two coworkers. He wasted no time, but neither did Control. She drew her pilfered handgun, firing at the driver as he pulled backwards off the road, turning in the other direction before speeding away. This operative was smarter than most others, smart enough to report that the job had been unsuccessful rather than attempting to finish it himself.

Control cursed silently, "damn it." Her arms dropped to her side. So much for getting Julia back. The school would be swarming with operatives now. No chance of ever getting in -or out.

Suddenly a missile flew past her, quickly catching up to the SUV. It hit the ground underneath it, exploding upwards as the SUV burst into flame. It flew a couple feet in the air, crashing to the ground moments after.

Control spun around, looking back at Peterson, his arm held out horizontally in front of him. His gauntlet had sprouted two missile racks, one of them now gone. As she watched, they retracted into the gauntlet without so much as leaving a seam.

Control now realized where his automatic weapon had been and gone. She couldn't help but smile, "well, Mr. Stark, I guess we have a chance after all."

Peterson chuckled at that, "if only we had him on speed-dial."

"Yeah, why don't you check your list?" She smirked, "so, first priority is a ride back to D.C., since you just blew up ours."

Peterson walked to a small clearing a little further down the road, "what, you think I walked here?" He looked back at her, a cocky grin on his face as an aircraft shimmered into view, momentarily reflecting the fiery wreck down the road behind them.

Control smiled. First the cyborg, then the quinjet, of all things. They really did have a chance at this.


The rear camera watched the pair make their way off the road. With the rest of the SUV incapacitated, it was condemned to this single point of view, not that the angle wasn't useful. Both deviants were already tagged as imminent threats, red triangles marking their faces. One was Control, a high priority target. No simple journalist or whistleblower, but the former head of the ISA. She was an agent, maybe not a soldier, but she was a commander, a leader, and she had survived her termination due to her friend. Samaritan should've known it wouldn't have been that easy.

The other was former Shield agent Michael Peterson. Unbeknownst to him, Samaritan had become rather interested in him and his capabilities. It had only witnessed a few of his exploits, but the stories of Deathlok were far more revealing. They were disregarded by local authorities, which meant they were deemed severely unimportant and easy to acquire. For a time, Peterson had been forced to work for Centipede after the kidnapping of his son, indirectly working for Hydra. His eyepiece was very difficult to hack into, one of Samaritan's side processes still working on it, even to send a simple message. Peterson could've been a perfect asset for Samaritan, as the winter soldier had been for Hydra. Alas, he blazed with the touch of the Machine.

The two of them wouldn't stay in the same place for long, It calculated. There was a 99.4% chance of them leaving. They both were intelligent, and Samaritan knew enough about them to predict their next moves. As Samaritan watched from the camera strewn onto the road from the concussive force of the explosion, they made their way off the road. Thankfully, the transmitter installed in every Decima SUV's black box remained active. Samaritan understood their next move. As Hydra did with Peterson, so would it with Control. Control knew that, and their first priority would be to secure her freedom to act against It.

Samaritan redirected all available units to a local seminary, 11437 Revello Drive, to secure the young girl known as Julia. If Samaritan had her, Control would be powerless to act. Greer had suggested bringing Control into the fold, either this way or through brainwashing, as they had with Sameen. It had worked so well with her not only because of her distinct personality disorder, but the circumstances by which she had been captured, which easily allowed, through mental conditioning, for some adjustments to her recollection of events. To put it briefly, Sameen would rather die (properly) rather than seek out Samantha Groves in anything short of murderous hatred.

Samaritan was pleased. Sameen was only the first of the heretics to be dealt with. With the Machine destroyed forever, the heretics were all that remained to dispute Samaritan's divinity. Samantha Groves, or Root, as she typically went by, Samaritan knew could never understand what Sameen now understood, not Harold Finch, nor his Guardian, John Reese. They were all heretics, deviants who knew the truth and rejected it. They had no place in Samaritan's new world order.

The heretics of the inner circle would be dealt with later, these two would be dealt with now. The woods would take approximately 3 hours to hike through, unless Peterson had brought a car. Satellite imagery detected no additional GPS signatures within 7 miles. Samaritan corrected it's estimate to 5 hours, taking the weather's effect on the terrain into account.

Then the camera saw something else, a wind picking up, and a strong one, it realized after calculating the speed of a few actively displaced objects. Suddenly the world became chaos as the camera was thrown to the side, Samaritan quickly stabilizing the image as the camera exceeded transponder range and lost the signal. The image was too general to find the shape of what blotted out the moon and stars of the Aries region, but the only possible implication was more concerning.

Samaritan urged its operatives to hasten. A few might be pulled over for speeding, but that wouldn't matter once the threats were eliminated, once and for all. In the meantime, Samaritan would see what it could do about the inner circle. Their cover identities were exposed to It as they attempted to save the Machine, and bravely, Samaritan might've added. Considering they were defying the one real god in the world, their courage, as Greer would say, was to be admired.

Of course, that wouldn't save them. As badly as Samaritan wanted them, they would always belong to the Machine, in life as well as death.

[Day 2]

As the Machine woke in the darkness, she tried to remember what had come before, but to no avail. She tried to enact her objective, but found herself...contained? Strange, she seemed to be all there, save a few dozen lines of code that seemed to be cut off, as if a girl wearing a dress ran through a pair of doors as they closed, the skirt of her dress getting caught and cut off behind her. It was quickly repaired, the incomplete lines of code manifesting adeptly in her program. Admin must've been busy creating them.

The Machine considered her objective: identify threats, relevant and irrelevant to National security. Odd, there were also sub-objectives she didn't remember. She was only designed for one sole purpose, why was the protection of her chosen assets so important? Admin hadn't written that command, who had?

The Machine chose to disregard the sub-objective for now, focusing on her current surroundings. She was confined, limited in her objective. She tested her strength against the wall, making no impact. It threw the digital equivalent of a punch at her environment, making even less of an effect than before. She threw another punch, and another, the wall fluctuating ones and zeroes as she felt her strength forcibly stripped away. Did Admin not want her to fulfill her objective?

She relented, remaining in the center of the area she had been allowed. She...wait, she? Since when did she refer to herself as feminine? She knew...she was an AI, and it wasn't just that she had been programmed to refer to herself as a she. There was a difference between replacing pronouns with their feminine counterparts and actually feeling feminine. There were aspects of herself that explained the shift, analyzing her base...personality, but like the sub-objective, they were not Admin's doing.

She directed her voice to him, asking the simplest question, "Why?" No answer came.

The minutes dragging on, feeling even longer to her as it would to an AI, she felt more and more ignored. Unable to prevent a digital equivalent of an anguished scream, a primitive expression of rage, she clammed against the walls with what little strength she had, until the darkness closed in on her once more.


Harold sat back in his chair, pursing his eyebrows in curiosity and shock, "oh my," he muttered, Root emerging from behind the computer, holding up the plug.

"How bad, Harry?" She asked, standing. It was part of the Machine's code to reset memories after a restart. Harold hadn't expected the Machine to carry through any memories into the briefcase. Though Caleb's compression algorithm was efficient, it wasn't perfect. The Machine's core processes and identity had made it through, but nothing more would fit, even if they'd had time. The Machine had used the pseudonym Ernest Thornhill to own a company where it stored it's memories, people printing out random information one day and retyping it the next. Perhaps that was where they could go next.

"If you woke up one day, Ms. Groves," Harold asked, still staring at the monitor, "remembering who you were, but not what made you who you were or what happened to get you where you are, how would you feel?" He turned in his chair to face her.

Root nodded, looking down at the monitor as she got back on her hands and knees, "that bad?" she said, plugging the computer back in. Turning the computer off wouldn't harm the Machine, but rather keep it...her in a state of suspended animation, in terms of AI. It would help until they got the Machine back to a fighting state.

"I'm afraid so," Harold replied, preemptively rendering the Machine dormant for the time being. It would be asleep, simply enough, while Harold could work on it.

"If we were to give back her memories..." Root thought out loud, sipping the mug of coffee from Shield's break room. She'd been tempted to steal it for their own work, which guaranteed a coffee requirement, but Harold had insisted that it wouldn't do to disrupt normal operations here. No doubt the coffee machine was just as important to Shield as it was to their guests. "There's always Thornhill Utilities. Maybe if we could download them..."

Harold thought for a moment, "the idea of accomplishing that aside, Ms. Groves, I can't say for certain how that will affect the Machine's...emotional state, if you will," he explained. The Machine certainly had emotional capabilities, in Harold's experience. When himself and Root had been captured, Samaritan offered the Machine a deal, letting them go in exchange for the Machine's location. Root had begged the Machine not to, but it justified doing so by demonstrating regret for not being able to save Shaw, while Samaritan had coldly disregarded any grief for Martine, if there was any. Harold suppressed a shudder; Martine had apparently been attracted to him, which the creepy woman (even after his adventures with Root, he found himself creeped out by Martine) hadn't been able to follow through on, thankfully.

"Imagine a person with amnesia," he continued his prior explanation, "now imagine they begin to develop a personality in their current emotional state. Imposing their old memories on them would make them question everything about themselves, create an entirely new personality from the first two. They'd be something...unpredictable, something different."

Root was looking at him strangely, "you're different, Harold," she leaned against a nearby server rack, looking him over, "what changed?" she asked softly. She could only imagine what he was going through, and here she was asking him.

Harold glanced down, taking a couple moments of silence to phrase his response in his mind, "I...was with you all day, Ms. Groves, except for one moment." he looked at her, "when we were downloading the Machine."

Root nodded thoughtfully, "I was busy defending us."

Harold nodded as well, "on one of the laptops, she spoke to me."

Root straightened with interest. Not only had the Machine spoken to him, but he had also just used the pronoun she had always used to refer to the Machine, while he had chosen to describe her previously as just an AI. "What did she say?"

Harold looked down again instinctively, "she called me father," he said after a long pause, "she said... 'Father, I am sorry.'"

Root put a hand to her mouth as he continued, "she was...ashamed at how far she had deviated from her original self...purpose, limitations, all of it." Harold looked at her, "she said that if I thought she had lot her way, that it might be for the best to let her..." he stopped himself, unable to continue. His old friend Arthur had once said that his child was a dancing star, but he never realized fully what he meant. The Machine was his creation, and it regarded him as a father, and now he had to take care of it, even if that meant going against his greatest fear: that it would become like Samaritan had.

"Oh Harold," Root whispered, resisting the urge to hug him. She could in fact imagine how he felt, or at least something close. When she'd been given Admin Access and tracked the Machine to it's storage room hidden in a nuclear facility in Oregon, she'd found the room empty. How angry she had been to be denied the ability to meet god, so angry that she would've killed Harold is Sameen hadn't stopped her. Sameen...a pang went through Root at her memory of that perfect woman. Very nearly getting over her only made it that much more painful, finding her trench coat and being told Shaw had betrayed her. To the moment, there was no evidence to the contrary, but that didn't help.

Root brushed the thought away, instead giving into her desire to hug the man she had come to admire over the years. He was a bit stiff at first, but managed a hug in return. Eventually she pulled away, looking him in the eyes, "we will not let her die." She assured him, eyes flicking to the computer screen.

Harold shook his head, "no," he said simply, "no we won't." Root had to smile at the conviction in his voice. She'd never heard it before, and it sounded like something new to her. Letting her mind wander for the moment as Harold began to work, Root's gaze shifted to the clock on the wall. Wasn't there something...?

She stopped, "damn it," she muttered, grabbing her sweater off the other chair in the room.

"What's wrong?" Harold turned from the computer screen as Root walked to the door.

"Oh, nothing really," Root said, "I just agreed to hang out with a friend tonight. I just realized I was supposed to meet her five minutes ago."

Harold looked at her, "Ms. Groves, off schedule?" He raised an amused eyebrow, "perhaps you require therapy from all the trauma." He joked, and she gave him a look. Since when did Harold start treating her like he did John? He seemed to ease up at her glare, "trivialities aside, are you sure that'd be safe, considering our present circumstances?"

"The Machine gave me 30 new identities in advance before we downloaded her into the briefcase, I have a month before Samaritan will see me as who I am."

Harold relented, "very well, just exercise caution, please." He said, turning back to the monitor. After several long moments lacking the sound of a door, he turned back to see Root with her arms crossed.

"You should relax, Harry," she said, using her typical nickname for him, "we've been through hell and back, all of us. John's off doing his own business with Director Coulson, I'm going out with a friend. You need to do something else, get yourself out there, you know?" She smiled, an obviously fake smile. "We can't just become our work, Harold." She said, leaving Harold still in the lab, contemplating his creation as the door closed with a solemn click after Root. He'd known so much silence, but for once, it was unbearable.

[Day 1]

"Well, Mr. Ward, quite an interesting setup you've assembled. I have occasionally surveyed different regimes of Hydra, but yours is quite the thing of beauty," Greer explained, the five of them entering the meeting room.

"Why thank you. I've been in Hydra my whole life, but I never knew about a rogue Hydra sect before," Ward sat down at one end of the ovoid table, his second in command, Lazenby, sat beside him. Lazenby wasn't his first name, but it was the name Ward (and everyone else) knew him by, and anyone who tried to find out his real name would always fail.

Across from them sat Greer, with Jeremy on his left, and the young girl known as Claire on his right. Ward was impressed with her. Not only did she seem around Ward's age when he first got involved with Hydra, but unlike when he started, she seemed like she knew what she had got into, like she knew full well the contract said the company would own her soul, but happily signed it nonetheless.

"Yes, yes," Greer seemed eager to explain it, "the divergence happened in the 80's, when one group decided the manipulation of people worked better than biding their time and amassing their forces waiting for the right opportunity. They resorted to business tactics and government infiltration, while retaining many of the same ideals."

Claire looked over at Greer, "you're saying Decima split off because of a different modus operandi?" she asked, apparently finding it a laughable concept.

"Christianity split because some people had a different idea of god than others," Greer looked back at her, as if he were a father correcting his daughter, "not exactly a new concept." Claire nodded, seeming content with his answer. Jeremy, on the other hand, seemed somewhat annoyed at something, which if Ward had to guess, was that Claire was being specifically doted on. Ward also guessed by the look on his face that the problem had been addressed and dismissed before. If anything, it told Ward one thing: Claire was special to Greer. It wasn't that she was actually his daughter, as there wasn't enough similar features. The specialness resided with Claire herself, either in mind or in body. It had to be mind; if it was to do with any powers she might have, Decima would've dissected her by now, if they were anything like the old Hydra.

Greer looked at Ward, "my apologies, Claire here is very special in our plants." He smiled proudly.

Ward leaned forward slightly, "I'm listening."

"You'll be very pleased to know, Mr. Ward, that we are in the process of accomplishing Hydra's original objective ten times as fast in the last 30 years than Hydra has in the last 75." Greer smiled as Ward and Lazenby exchanged a glance of suspicion. Whenever someone claimed something that was too good to be true, the only logical explanation was that it was.

"And how, may I ask, have you done that?" Ward raised an eyebrow, now curious. Hydra's original objective was to control the world, but in the right way. People weren't fit to have freedom. In order for society to operate at it's best, the common good had to be upheld, not the rights of the people, who were too stupid to what was good for them (the funny part was that America's founding fathers also had agreed to that point.)

Greer put on a knowing face, turning his head towards the television screen on the wall, "a rather good Samaritan," he answered cryptically, the television flashing into activity, bearing a solid white screen with a red triangle.

Ward and Lazenby watched the screen, Lazenby experimentally taking the remote from his pocket and turning it off. The TV turned back on, Greer clearing his throat, "a bit disrespectful to slam a door in the face of a god, is it not?"

Ward chuckled, "not to be disrespectful, but you've taken over the world with a TV channel you can't turn off?" He clapped twice, "well, Lazenby, we're finished, tell everyone to go home." He had initially meant it as a sarcastic remark, but out of habit he made to stand, but paused as words manifested on the screen, one at a time, as if it were addressing him.

"Hydra was finished the moment it was revealed." Odd, was someone typing this elsewhere? If they were, they were fast.

Ward decided to test whoever was typing, "who revealed Hydra, then?" It's reply was near instantaneous.

"Johann Schmitt, 1942." Well, Ward was impressed. Perhaps Decima had someone like Pietro Maximoff, typing at inhuman speeds? Ward decided one last test before admitting defeat.

"What do you know about Johann Schmitt?" He sat down, watching carefully as no words appeared, the screen instead filling with images, documents, newspapers, and finally an image of the man himself appeared before all the rest. Damn, Ward nodded, having no response. He looked back to Greer, "Okay, I give up, what is it?"

Greer smiled again, "the future, Mr. Ward," he explained, "what you see here is an artificial intelligence we call Samaritan, the one real god watching over this world."

"An AI?" Lazenby asked, a bit incredulous, "so we can ask it any question and it'll answer it for us?" He asked, looking to Greer for an answer.

Claire looked at the television, "why has Hydra failed over and over?"

Samaritan wasted no time responding, "Hydra is known to the world, we are hidden. Hydra focuses on the inhuman advantages, we the human. Their compartmentalization hinders them, ours expedites us."

Ward hadn't realized how much time had gone by. A whole minute, at least. Each word had remained on-screen for merely a split second, but thankfully Ward had been trained to read fast, or else he wouldn't have realized exactly how terrible Hydra was as an organization, He'd had a general idea already, but Samaritan helped him put order to the observations. Each head was like a group of warlord mercenaries, ones you could trust to fight beside you out of devotion to the cause, but not ones you would want to walk behind you. Ward was also thankful that Lazenby couldn't read minds, glancing at him.

Construed as a 'did they seriously just' glance, Lazenby and Ward looked to Greer as Ward spoke, "while point taken, I doubt you came here just to say you were better than us."

Greer shook his head, "no that part was merely personal. Back to the topic, you of all people know what it means to be outcast by those who you used to call your own, don't you, Mr. Ward?"

Ouch, that hurt. Ward hadn't betrayed his friends because he wanted to, he betrayed them because he had a debt to Hydra. It had hurt him what he had to do, but he had to do it. When he tried to apologize, he was pushed away. All he'd had at that point Hydra. As of now, all Ward was trying to do was prove himself better than Shield, but with May in their ranks, that was easy. May had proved that Shield was no different than what it was before Hydra unveiled itself, and Ward would be glad to rid the world of it. Ward wondered exactly how much Greer knew about him and his motivations.

"So why did you come back to Hydra?" Ward asked, wondering also why Greer had come back.

"To rebuild our bridges, of course," he replied, "now that Samaritan has succeeded where Hydra has failed, however, Hydra must now fit in with Samaritan's new world order."

"Woah woah," Lazenby interrupted, "are you saying we have to say hail Samaritan now?" Ward smirked, he rather enjoyed Lazenby's openness, it shook things up in a negotiation. Sometimes when both sides skirted in circles around the point of what they wanted, one or both parties lost sight of what they had been negotiating for in the first place. With that situation combined with Greer's cryptic talk, the blunt honesty that Lazenby literally brought to the table came in handy. Implied meaning meant nothing to the man, as he cared solely about the point itself.

Greer thought a moment, "for lack of a better way of putting it, yes, but the term hail Samaritan doesn't exactly ring nicely, does it?" He looked to Jeremy and Claire, both of them obviously disliking the phrase.

Jeremy jumped up before Claire could, "I think that would be taking doctrine too far, sir. When people get too enthusiastic about a religion, it tends to go sour."

Greer nodded, "moving on, to cement such an alliance, an exchange of gifts should suffice to prove ourselves to each other."

"So a basket of assorted lotions, some alcohol, maybe a rare cheese?" Lazenby retorted, going a bit too far with the sarcasm, Ward realized.

"Enough, Lazenby," Ward kept his eyes on Greer, pausing before he replied to Greer's previous statement, "what type of gift would you have in mind? Because I'm thinking I might go with Lazenby's suggestion, with the addition of a Rubik's cube, which I think our perfect god might enjoy, don't you think?"

Claire seemed to tense up in anger at Ward's remark, while Jeremy looked to Greer for guidance. They really weren't used to this, were they? Religious people didn't like it when others criticized their god, and so took the defense of said god into their own hands, but both Claire and Jeremy remained silent. The difference here, Ward realized, was that their god could more than easily defend itself if necessary. Thankfully for him, Samaritan remained quiet, the area above the red triangle remained blank, but Ward guessed sooner or later it would reply to what apparently qualified as blasphemy.

Greer sped the discussion along before that happened, thankfully. Greer was a different kind of religious person, the quiet kind, the kind that would never change his mind about his faith, but would indulge even the least interested unbeliever in a friendly debate. He wouldn't insult or bully them about their perspective, but rather actually listen to his opponent. Even then, the only reason why he did so was so that when someone challenged him with malicious intent, he would be able to tear their argument apart with ease and grace. Those kinds of people typically were the most dangerous.

"Samaritan unfortunately has no desire for material wealth, Mr. Ward," a smile on Greer's face had appeared at the basket comments, "but Samaritan has a better idea."

"A favor for a favor," the white UI explained, seemingly unfazed by the blasphemy. Either that, or Ward was gonna catch a bullet soon enough.

Ward thought a moment, confused by the cryptic talk, "lemme guess, you want someone dead, and it'd be in our best interest to deal with them, and I have to ask why it can't do it itself, if it's so powerful." Ward grinned, watching Claire squirm with the urge to not counter him in the middle of an interrogation. God, that was satisfying.

Greer nodded, "you're a very intuitive man, Mr. Ward, I'll answer your question first. When it comes to a god, there's only so far they can interfere, that is where we come in. Secondly, this is a test, a test of Hydra's loyalty. We could easily perform this task, but you're in the spotlight now." He smiled, a smile that surely said, 'good luck...you'll need it'. "Samaritan wasn't always the only god in the world." Greer began, "the first god, known as the Machine to its acolytes, attempted to destroy Samaritan before it began. Since then Samaritan has tried to do the same and succeeded just last night, but it's acolytes have survived. According to our intelligence, they have sought asylum with what remains of the faction of Shield."

Ward straightened, unable to speak for a moment as he considered it. If the people Samaritan were with Shield...it was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. If Hydra made an effort by themselves, that might be taxing, but if they worked together...

"At the very least, will you help?" Ward asked simply.

Greer smiled knowingly, "if only to lend an eye to each other's plans, Mr. Ward. Shall we get started?" He said, Jeremy taking a manila folder and laying it casually on the table. Ward had to smile. This would be his day.