A/N: Still in the flashback chapters. I think this is the last one for now, though.
Never Trust a Viper and Expect Not to Get Bitten
Three Days Later – 8:32 PM
Silent darkness blanketed the parking lot across the street from the SHIELD lab two miles outside of San Antonio, Texas. Agent Ward and his team, his team, had went ahead and arrived the day before Fury would arrive. He thought it best to scout out the lab prior to their confrontation with the double agent.
Sure enough, the double agent was there, in his usual post by the Phase Three weaponry. More specifically, right near the penultimate Phase Three technology, something they soon found to be named Ultron.
Reading over the specifications for this Ultron made Ward nervous. Henry Pym, who apparently had near Tony Stark level intelligence in robotics and programming, despite no formal training in either, had outdone himself.
With all that it was programmed to do, if Hydra managed to twist it toward their evil thinking, no one would be able to stop them. Which was why they was there, to make sure that didn't happen.
He, along with Agents Melinda May, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons and Skye had been cooped up inside the hacker's van, running surveillance using the small flying robot camera things that Fitz had been rambling on about upgrading. Grant had long since stopped listening and paid more attention to the surveillance footage.
"Target just got off the phone with someone named Eric Williams. We got anything on him?" May informed after eaves drop on the phone conversation.
Skye tapped on the laptop in front of her until his SHIELD rap sheet came up. "Some guy named Grim Reaper; lame. Spent a few years off and on in the Raft before being brought in by Hydra. Heh, says he's brothers with Simon Williams."
"That loser? God." Ward checked his gun clip and then opened the back doors. "I'm going in. Hydra's going to be here any minute, it seems. Mel, you're with me. You three stay here. Don't even think of coming in unless you're absolutely, positively, one trillion percent positive that we need help."
"Or you could just say don't follow us in and save yourself from being redundant," Skye quipped without looking up from her laptop. "Ooh, there's cosplay of this guy…"
Ward sighed tiredly and hopped out of the back of the van, with May close behind. "It's not a bad time to retire, right?" She shrugged in agreement.
He seriously considered bring them in with him, but ultimately decided against. Viper made it a personal mission to kill as many SHIELD agents as possible during her tenure, and the three kids in there still had their entire careers ahead of them. Whatever this Ultron was that Fury wanted protected at all cost wasn't worth their lives.
Besides, they were most useful away of battle. He'd might as well give three random teenagers a rifle and tell them to shoot. At least in Skye's van, they were more in their element.
Before they entered the facility, May caught a movement just inside her peripheral vision. She appeared to pay it no mind, but discreet tapped Ward on his forearm. He nodded and took a glance in that direction. A black van with deeply tinted windows was sitting at a stop sign a block away. Between them and the van were a pair of men in black jumpsuits walking down the sidewalk toward them.
"They're about to make their move," he whispered both to her and into his comm.
"Roger that. Alerting Fury now," Skye responded.
"I thought we'd have more time," May grunted.
"Better this way. Now we have less time to make mistakes." They opened the front entrance and made sure to lock it behind them.
Agent Jasper Sitwell, lead agent on the security detail, jumped to attention. He didn't seem at all surprised or shaken to see them both there. "Agent Ward, Agent May, what are you two doing here?"
"Hello to you too, Sitwell," she greeted coolly. "Fury sent us here to help bolster security. He suspects that Hydra may attack this facility at any time."
"He hasn't informed me of anything of the sort."
"Slipped his mind. You know, with the helicarrier being destroyed and all." She and Ward separated and took strategic positions by different weapons tables under the guise of curiosity.
He passed by the thick metal container bearing Ultron and paused. He tapped on the side, "Is this that thing Pym made?"
"Yes, that's the first prototype based on the Destroyer armor."
"It work?"
"So far, yes. But without Pym, we can't get some of the functions to work. It's apparently based on his own brainwaves, so we'd need him to fix it," Sitwell finished without missing a beat.
Ward regarded him for a moment. He was as calm and collected as he always was, which made Grant nervous. Ward glanced at May, who noticed the exact same thing. He put on a slightly curious face and queried, "So, anything interesting happening tonight?"
"No. Of course not. Why?" he fired in quick succession.
"Just getting that feeling, you know. What else can you tell me about this thing?" He tapped the container to emphasis his question.
At that, Sitwell swallowed. "Nothing I can tell you, Agent. Classified at Level Eight."
"Of course." He flashed a faux half smile and turned back to the table behind him. "Oh yeah, Fury said he'd be here in about thirty minutes," he added off-handedly.
"Thirty minutes, you say? Okay, sounds good." Ward had to stifle a groan. He watched Sitwell very briskly striding out of the main warehouse and into the office in the very back. They weren't going to get anything out of him, it seemed. Looked like they were going to have to do this the hard way.
"GRANT! MELINDA!" Skye screamed into the comm. The two agents winced from the feedback.
"Stop yelling into the comm," May reprimanded sternly. "What is it?"
"They're about to blow the door!"
"Wait, wha–" Before he could finish, a extremely loud bang erupted from just outside the vehicle entrance. The garage door heaved inwardly before exploding, unleashing the immense amount of force that caused it to warp in the first place.
Ward was closest to the entrance, and thus was knocked to the ground. He groaned and rolled over onto his stomach in time to see several men dressed in Hydra gear storming inside.
"Spread out! Make sure no one escapes!" The man giving orders was dressed in all black, with a hood that completely obscured his face and a gray skull and crossbones on his chest. Two things were immediately noticeable about him; one, he was imposing, standing at 6'4; two, he has a massive scythe on his right hand.
Ward glanced over and saw May standing tall and already wielding the biggest gun immediately near her. "Drop your weapons!" she demanded.
"Sorry, doll. No can do; it's stuck to my arm, you see," the man known as Grim Reaper stated with a shrug. "But I can do this." He fired a purple beam of energy at her, which she barely dodged by diving behind a metal table. She returned fire with one of the experimental guns.
Ward used that as a distraction to jump to his feet and dive for the nearest gun. He had no idea what did, but right then, he didn't care. He fired, and watched the ice blue beam zip just by Reaper's head and blow a hole through an inattentive Hydra agent. "Holy shit," he muttered.
"You'll pay for that, you little…!" Reaper swung his scythe at his head, but he ducked and tackled him to the ground. He and another SHIELD guard managed to pin his scythe under him and laid a few heavy punches into him. Grim Reaper snarled and bucked wildly under the combined weight of the two SHIELD agents.
"They're after Ultron! Don't let them near it!" Even as her fellow agents fell around her from heavy fire, May managed to pick off any Hydra soldiers that got within ten feet of the metal container. "Ward!"
Ward was thrown off and landed hard on metal table. The other guard was thrown off as well and quickly beheaded before he could reach his gun. He snarled again and stalked dangerously toward the reeling Ward.
"Grant!" May fired deterrent shot at Reaper's feet to get his attention off of Ward and onto her. She wasn't expecting him to be on her so quickly, and cursed while flipping away from his scythe swing. When she landed, he had already queued up another swing and sliced her gun clean in half. "Fuck!"
Two of the remaining five SHIELD agents huddled back to back in front of the metal container to hold off the incoming wave of soldiers. They managed to pick of a few, but couldn't hold up for much longer.
"Ah, God." Ward rolled of the table and grabbed the nearest gun, which was the one he had earlier. His back throbbed and the back of his head pulsated dully from his two falls. Ignoring all of that, he overturned a table for cover and took aim. Three quick beams fired from the muzzle and drilled clean, bloodless holes into the chest of four Hydra soldiers.
His head jerked over at hearing May's scream. He grimaced at the sight of blood pouring out of a stab wound on her arm. "May!" he shouted as he whipped an experimental vibranium shield was made for Captain America to her.
She caught it and managed to block his scythe, though he did drive her back until she slammed into the wall. She grunted and tried to push him back, but his was too strong.
"Stupid bitch," he snarled. A sickingly perverse grin flashed across his cracked lips. "I'm sure Viper will have lots of fun with you."
"Damn it." Grant capped one more soldier in his way and grabbed a fire extinguisher en route to back her up.
Reaper reared back and slammed her repeatedly into wall before faltering himself after a blow to the back. Another to back of his skull had him stumbling to the floor. Two more hits from the shield and extinguisher and he fell unconscious.
"You alright?" he asked.
She nodded quickly. "Yeah, I'll live. Thanks for the assist."
"Hey, we're still a team. Coulson or no Couls-aagh!" Grant was suddenly choked off by a whip wrapping itself around his throat. A tug, and he flew back nearly thirty feet.
Melinda gawked and barely had time to raise the shield before five bullets impacted it, right where her face was.
Madame Hydra unwrapped her whip from Ward's throat and surveyed the scene before her. Several of her soldiers lay dead, mostly in a heap near the container. The majority of the SHIELD guards, all of but two, were dead in random spots.
And her mole was nowhere to be found.
That was too be expected, but she figured the facility would have been clear by the time she decided to make her appearance. Her eyes drifted over to Agent May, and spotted Grim Reaper unconscious at her feet.
She sighed and turned fully in that direction. "You managed to defeat the Grim Reaper," she commented with a ring of amusement.
Melinda eyed her warily and shifted the heavy shield in her hands. "Not without help."
"Your help seems to be a bit incapacitated at the moment, Agent." She raised a hand and a set of claws popped out of her gloves. She grinned, baring her venom bearing fangs, and charged quickly at her. May only had a moment to roll out of the way before Viper was on her. She avoided a swipe and returned with the shield. The sheer weight, since it was meant for a supersoldier, slowed her swing down substantially and actually whipped her off balance, enough for Viper to easily tip her over.
Venom dripped onto her cheek when Viper mounted her and tried to dig her claws into her shoulder. She managed this, and elicited a scream as they drew blood and tore out bits of flesh.
A blade popped out of Melinda's shoe and was jabbed into her thigh. Viper yelled out and relented just enough for Melinda to kick her off.
Viper hissed and rose to her feet. Melinda managed to roll to her feet and heaved the shield with every bit of her strength. It was caught with ease. "Captain America, you are not, Agent." She casually threw it to the side, and it nearly pegged a rising Ward in the side of the head. He managed to duck before stalking toward her.
Ophelia smiled amusedly as they surrounded her front to back. "Watch the rebound."
"Rebound?"
She suddenly and quickly snapped a kick into Melinda's solar plexus as the shield smashed into the back of Ward's knee. He howled in pain and clutched his leg, and thence wasn't prepared for the powerful open hand slap to the side of his face. The smack echoed through the facility before he fell face first to the floor.
She smirked and turned to face Melinda. The pitiful woman was struggling to rise to her feet, but couldn't catch enough of her breath to muster the strength to do so.
Like a predator, Ophelia stood by and waited for the most desirable moment to strike.
Meanwhile, in Skye's van, Fitz delicately handled the rifle he was handed, as if it would explode at any moment. "Are you– are you sure about this?" he stammered.
Skye rolled her eyes and checked her own rifle. "Duh. Mel and Grant are getting their asses kicked. I'm, like, a trillion percent sure they need our help. Let's go."
Fitz sighed apprehensively and followed her and Simmons out of the van and across the parking lot. "If we enter quietly through the hole they made," the latter started, "we can take Madame Hydra out without any trouble."
"Can I say something cool when we bust in?"
"What part of quietly don't you get?"
Skye scoffed and pressed against the Hydra van. Leo took that chance to plant a tracer on the undercarriage. "Quiet is boring. This is Madame freaking Hydra we're talking here. I want her to remember what that one totally awesome girl with the gun said before she sent her to hell. Yeah."
Simmons and Fitz stared at her for a brief second before shrugging. "Alright, move in on… five."
Viper caught the roundhouse kick Melinda snapped toward her chest and slammed her into the ground. Her head bounced off the cement floor with a sickening thud.
Neither Melinda nor Grant were moving. Either dead or unconscious, it didn't matter. Viper glanced around and still didn't see her mole. She chuckled and started for the back office.
"FIVE!"
Viper was startled by the shout and turned toward the garage door. "Reinforcements?!"
Skye, Fitz and Simmons burst through the hole in the garage door, guns blazing. Skye smirked and trained her gun on the Hydra leader. She had been thinking about this for nearly five minutes. "Reach for the Skye, dirt…," the piercing emerald eyes of Viper glared and sucked any and all of the courage out of the three, "…bag?"
She calmed down upon realizing that it was only three children. "Drop your weapons," she commanded calmly.
"But, my cool one-liner," Skye started to protest.
"I said drop your –" They immediately threw their guns to the floor and put their hands up. Viper smirked and motion to the three soldiers behind them. They hit the three of them on the back of the head with the butt of their rifles, knocking them out.
With that taken care of, Viper roused Grim Reaper with a few shakes and then turned to walk toward the back office. Wood splinters splashed across her body suit when she kicked the door open. The agent inside, Sitwell, jumped and nearly hopped atop his desk. "Agent Sitwell."
"Madame Hydra."
"It would appear that Fury was not prepared for us. Although I was not expecting Coulson's pets to be here."
"Neither was I. They said Fury sent them to bolster security."
She raised an eyebrow. "I see. So Nick is smarter than I gave him credit for. If he sent them here, then he must have found out about our little arrangement." She eyed him with a measure of amusement when he began squirming.
"I don't doubt it, Madame. SHIELD has nearly unlimited sources to find things like this out, even if I didn't tell him a word about it."
"Oh, I'm sure you didn't. You're Madame would be so disappointed if her little Jasper failed her." She sauntered toward him and gripped his mouth gently. "Now then, the code to the container. What is it?"
Sitwell sighed and embraced her touch as a child would his parent. "0978656375."
She released his face and smiled approvingly. "Good boy." She started to turned, but stopped by him calling after her. She turned to face him again. "What is it, Little Jasper?"
"I was informed by Agent Ward that Director Fury will be here in thirty minutes. That was," he paused to glance at his watch, "fifteen minutes ago."
Viper frowned and tapped her chin. "Well, that will be a problem. Worry not, my little child, he will not stop us from leaving with what we want."
He nodded happily. "Good. What is my next assignment, Madame Hydra?"
To that, she actually laughed.
Jasper frowned. "Is something wrong, Madame?"
Grim Reaper stepped to the office to stand behind Viper. "Yes," she grunted, "It seems that, with the completion of this mission, you have outlived your usefulness to me. I'm afraid that I will have to sever our relationship."
A shuddering, almost hitching breath escaped him. He searched her eyes, trying to find any deception or mistruth. There wasn't any. "You… you can't! I… I still wanted to serve you!"
She smirked and pushed him into the desk. "I'm afraid there is nothing more you can do."
Jasper look saddened, almost devastated by the news. But, he nodded firmly. "Understood, Madame."
She pursed her lips and looked down at the disappointed man without an ounce of mercy or empathy. "Actually, Jasper, I was mistaken. There is one last thing you can do for me." She turned to leave with his excited face as her last image of him, but stopped just behind Grim Reaper. "Make an example out of him."
Grim Reaper grinned and moved further into office. Jasper stood still and placid. "Understood, Madame. Thank you for allowing me to serve you."
Jasper Sitwell's screams would have sent chills up anyone's spines, had anyone but Viper and Reaper been awake. She strode to the container, a satisfied smirk resting on her lips. Two Hydra agents stood at either side of it and saluted when she approached. "Is there anyone coming?"
"Not that we know of, ma'am," one of them answered promptly.
"Good." She stepped forward and entered the passcode. From the first moment she heard of Ultron from Pym, she had been salivating at the very thought of seeing it in real life.
The doors began to open.
Her grin widened.
They opened fully and revealed something… less than spectacular. It was not unlike something a five year old would design. It was bulky, clunky; the welding lines were wobbily and looked like the work of a Parkinson's patient. The head had a smiley face on it and overall it was not at all the streamline piece of technology she imagined it to be. Not at all.
Her grin vanish. "What the fuck is this?!" she demanded. "This piece of shit is what that moron Pym was bragging about for weeks?!" She growled and kicked a dead body. "Put it in the truck!" She stormed off as they placed it onto a dolly. "Kibaszott seggfej! Kitépem a kibaszott torkát!"
Fury and his agents, Hill, Morse and Coulson, arrived five minutes after Hydra cleared out, just missing them. By that point, there was no sign that they were even there, other than the dead bodies riddling the facility.
After getting rid of the local PD, he stepped inside to survey the damage. Several, over a dozen, SHIELD guards were dead, with a few dead Hydra soldiers sprinkled on top. Ward and his team were alive, but banged up. He wasn't shocked to see the three youngest in there with standard issue rifles within reach. Coulson had rubbed off on them in a good way, it seemed.
Ultron, as he suspected on the way there, was gone. He cursed sharply under his breath and placed his hands on his hips. "Well, our only hope now is that Pym has a few tricks up his sleeve."
"Sir, I think Ward is coming to," Bobbi announced. Fury turned his attention to the man and watched his eyes fluttered softly before snapping open.
"Gramsy?" he mumbled softly. He locked eyes with Bobbi, and then Coulson for a brief moment. "Crap, I'm dead, aren't I?"
"Yes. I'm going to need you to fill out a certificate of death form in triplicate." A small, ghost of a smirk flashed as he knelt down beside him. "Kidding, kidding. You're not dead; it's just that the reports of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated."
Ward sighed and, for a brief moment, a look of relief mixed with utter jubilation broke through his mask. It was gone. "Good to have you back, Phil. Or, uh, whatever." He stood, with help from Phil and dusted himself off.
"Agent May is already being tended to. The back of her head is busted open and she has puncture wounds on her shoulder. Those three will be fine. You have a torn ACL in your right knee," Hill listed off after having checked him over while he was still out.
Ward cursed. "I'm sidelined, then? Shit! Someone check on Sitwell. He's in the back office."
"Don't bother. He isn't going anywhere," Fury said. He moved to the side and allowed SHIELD medics to exit the office, not with one large body bag, but with several small bags. From where he stood, he could see streaks of blood along the all of the room.
"They killed him," he told himself. "Why?"
"Why does Viper do anything? All I know is that with Jasper gone. But why was he still loyal to her, when we retrieved his son from her months ago?"
"His son?"
"Viper had his son kidnapped several months ago in a bid to gain leverage over him. He came to me, and we sent in a task force to get him back. They succeeded, and the kid is safe with his mother in Sacramento. I don't understand why he was still following her orders to spy on us with no leverage at all. At any rate, it was because of him they got the location of Stark's passcodes, as well as the location of Dr. Pym, Mr. Lang, and Lang's daughter, as well as learned of Van Dyne's connection with Pym."
Fury sighed and glanced back at the office room. "He trusted her. If there's one thing you should never do with a snake, it's trust them. You'll only get bitten."
A/N: I hope no one is upset about Sitwell. If so, I'm not sorry :P
Translation:
Fucking asshole! I'll rip his fucking throat out!