The Hydra agents rushed down the halls of the Fridge, all wearing masks that would protect them from the gas knocking out the SHIELD guards. Later, these guards would be contained and assessed to see if any would be willing to work for Hydra instead. Those who refused would be dealt with appropriately.

Garrett took off his mask, "Air's clear!" he called. Then he started his usual story-telling. Grant used to find Garrett's stories interesting, exciting even, but now he dreaded them. They just seemed like a way for Garrett to brag about what he'd done, what a great guy he was. Sometimes they weren't even true. However, he had to admit that sometimes John had fun anecdotes and he loved the feeling, even now, of being his confidante. "First time I came down here was to lock up Johnny Horton, ever heard of him?" Without even waiting for Grant to respond (which was typical), Garrett continued, "Guy somehow gave himself these lion paws for hands." He made lion paw motions in the air. "Can you imagine?"

"It doesn't seem practical," Grant replied, amused.

"Everybody's got their own weird thing I suppose," Garrett said. Grant smirked a bit as he reflected that, every so often, John would say something incredibly profound. Everybody did have their own weird thing. Coulson's was his obsession with nostalgic trivia, May had her rigid sense of duty, Skye her computers, Fitz his monkeys, and Jemma….well, he hadn't uncovered hers yet. And John? His weird thing was his desire to make everyone believe that he was the best. Hence the constant stories. And what was his? The thought that kept cropping up for him so recently, that the real Grant Ward had yet to be determined, came back to him. What was his weird thing? He hoped he lived long enough to find out.

Garrett turned the corner to find a secure door. "Here we go. You know the Sling-Shot Program?"

Grant looked a bit puzzled. "Yeah, it's how SHIELD gets rid of its' dangerous technology."

Garrett smirked and placed an explosive device by the door's controls, "Do they now?" he said in a sing-song voice as both he and Grant put their fingers in their ears. The door controls exploded and the door opened into a room filled with shelves housing what Grant now realized was the technology he'd believed no longer existed. "Welcome to the toy store," Garrett said as he walked in. "All right. Grab all you can, boys. If it looks dangerous, good. Alien? Even better," Garrett instructed.

"It's all here. Sling-Shot's a fake!" Grant commented to John. He felt a moment's anger toward SHIELD. They clearly had gone to a lot of time, trouble and expense to make people believe that they were doing the right thing and getting rid of technology that could cause a great deal of harm. He himself had been witness to one of their big deceptions. It had been a good memory for him, a feeling of satisfaction for a job well done and the comforting sense of a blossoming friendship with his team, but now it would forever have a sour taste in his mouth. Yes, Hydra was bad and needed to be stopped but SHIELD had its own flaws. They had a chance to get rid of this stuff so that it never fell into the wrong hands and they didn't take it. And now look at what had happened: it was no longer secure. What in the world was he supposed to do about this? If he ever got a chance to speak to Nick Fury again, Grant would definitely have something to say about this stupid breakdown in security.

"We shot a lot of empty rockets into space. Yeah, maybe every once in a while they put a monkey in one for kicks." Fitz would flip if he ever heard that! "You really think Fury would give away all these goodies? We're talking about the same guy that messed around with Tesseract technology and sparked an alien invasion," Garrett pontificated as he walked around the room, clearly looking for something. "There you are," he said gently as he opened up a case. "Remember this?"

Grant leaned over to look. "Yeah. We found it in Peru," he said, somewhat grimly. He remembered only too well what it had almost cost to get. So this was his reward? He'd almost lost his life on that mission – would have had Skye's quick thinking not saved him – all so that it would end up in the hands of Hydra. His conversation with Fury was going to get heated. "It's a sort of plasma particle beam."

"Plasma particle beam, my ass," Garrett said with a smirk at Grant. "I look at it more as a gold card." He then took it and tried it out on the wall. The beam blasted the wall out into the next room. Garrett smiled with satisfaction, turned on his heel and said, "Time to release the prisoners," as he walked toward the door.

Grant didn't follow him. He didn't see that there was anything he could do to prevent Garrett from freeing all of the dangerous people housed here, so he decided to see what else was stored in this room. Maybe he could hide a few things. Plus, the Specialist in him wanted to look for weapons he could use. Grant walked up and down the row of shelves, looking into boxes and picking up a few items until he came to a container holding something familiar. He took the box off the shelf and sank down onto the floor with it.

Hydra agents continued to carry out boxes of the dangerous "toys" but Grant no longer heard them. He sat holding the Asgardian staff, remembering. The plasma particle beam had been physically arduous to get but the staff had stolen parts of Grant's soul. It upset his emotional balance, caused him to remember things he wasn't ready to manage and literally set his teeth on edge. It had taken everything in him not to lash out at his team constantly. The verbal blows he had given were bad enough (he'd never forget Skye's face when he told her that all she ever did was talk) but they were nothing compared to what he had wanted to say and do.

The staff had taken a lot from him but, as a result of that mission, he'd also gained a lot. Two women had offered parts of themselves to him – one physical, one emotional – in an effort to help him heal from the damage the staff caused. He'd become closer to the team overall and he'd been able to understand on a deeper level who he had become because of his childhood experiences. Grant reboxed the staff, put it back on the shelf and leapt to his feet. He couldn't stop the process of that healing now. To do so would betray the team even more than he already had to. He started to run.

About half an hour later, Grant could hear John calling him. Grant was standing on what was believed to be the ground floor of the Fridge. He started walking toward the elevators and rounded the corner just as John came towards him, the plasma particle beam still in his hand.

"John! I was just trying to find you. Come on! We've gotta roll. The chopper's almost full," Grant said trying to herd John toward the elevators.

John ignored Grant and walked toward the middle of the hallway. He stopped at a certain spot, smiled and said, "There it is." He took out the plasma particle beam.

Grant stepped in front of him, "What the hell are you doing?"

"You mind? You might want to take a step back." Garrett pointed the plasma particle beam at the floor.

"John, I'm not following. Are you going to blow up the Fridge, floor by floor? We don't have time for that."

Garrett stopped what he was doing and looked over at Grant. "Coulson told me there was a little something hidden down below."

Grant shook his head. "I hate to tell you but this is the bottom floor. I've seen the blueprints with my own eyes."

Garrett turned and faced Grant fully. "I'm pretty sure something is down there, something we definitely want to have."

Grant smiled. This was going to be fun. "Care to make it interesting?" John never could resist a bet, especially when he was certain he would win.

"Loser buys dinner."

"Perfect. I'm so sick of the crap we ate on that plane." Boy, was that ever the truth. Grant's culinary needs were fairly minimal. Being a specialist, they had to be. He often had to eat on the run or on chow down on whatever was available based on the mission parameters. However, to only be able to eat the same sandwiches, soups and poorly conceived dinners that the Bus provided was maddening when he knew that better food was just a few miles away. So, if nothing else was going to be good about this mission, at least the food could be.

Garrett smiled, aimed the plasma particle beam and fired. The two men had stepped back when the blast hit but now leaned over into the gaping hole. All that could be seen was darkness. There didn't seem to be another floor and there certainly wasn't any technological gadget or marvel to be seen. Grant smiled with satisfaction and turned to John. "Let's go. I can't wait to start eating that steak you're buying me. Do you think a potato will come with it?"

John looked into the hole again, shrugged and started walking away. "Well, I guess you earned it," he said to Grant.

Since Grant was walking slightly ahead of him, John couldn't see the smirk on Grant's face. I damn well did earn it.

Knowing time was short, Grant had run from the Sling-Shot room all the way to the secret basement entrance that Fury had told him about. The basement wasn't on any blueprint of the building and was so separate from the rest of the Fridge that initially he had been secure in his belief that the guards there probably didn't even know the facility had been compromised, so he didn't have to worry about them. However, Garrett's acquisition of the plasma particle beam was a game-changer, so much so that Grant had to get to the gravitonium room first if he was going to keep it out of Hydra hands.

Once he had gotten through the security measures (it didn't take as long as he thought it would since the area's existence was such a tightly-held secret that knowledge of it was its' own form of verification), he convinced the guards to deploy the use of the security blind. The blind projected the illusion that the walls and floors were solid and, even in the event of an explosion, would still look like the area was empty. Grant then ran all the way back up to the bottom floor and had just been catching his breath when he ran into Garrett.

Shaking his head a bit at the thought, Grant thought to himself that John was sometimes right about his assessment of the job. If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun.