IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: Something seems to have gone wrong with Chapter Six, the previous chapter, in that notifications that it was published weren't sent out, at least to the people I know in real life who follow my work. In other words, if you have been following this story since before chapter six and were depending on getting an email for an update, please check out the previous chapter to make sure you read it.

Last Last Chance

Chapter Seven

Something was off about the cell, Ward was sure of that. Whatever it was, it had woken him up. The vault door was open, but that didn't matter. It might as well be a thousand miles away so long as the barrier was up, except...it wasn't. That was what was wrong with the cell. The electric edge he could almost taste in the air when the walls were up wasn't there. He stood and went to the invisible barrier, expecting to see the grid when he tried to touch it, but his hand went through. The barrier had failed. Was it a power outage? Maybe, but it was damn convenient for a power outage to happen and for someone to leave the vault door open. Wasn't the barrier on its own generator anyway?

He walked to the door and through it, expecting agents to appear at any moment with ICERs to force him back into his cell. He would go willingly. He wasn't trying to escape, but if something had gone catastrophically wrong in the Playground, they might need all the help they could get. Even their psychotic basement-dwelling prisoner. He started heading for the stairs, ready to raise his arms in surrender if he ran into any agents.

He rounded the corner and found the agents he was expecting, except they were dead on the ground. Blood was spattered all over the walls, and when he looked at one agent more closely, he saw the wounds that had ended his life had been caused by large claws. He'd never even had time to draw his weapon. Ward took it instead, clicking the safety off and making sure it was loaded. If there was something loose in the Playground, something that was killing people, he knew what his priority was.

Skye.

Knowing that time could be of the essence, but not wanting to attract attention, he moved as quickly and quietly as he could as he went up the stairs and came out onto the dark main level. There was no screaming and, as far as he could see, no dead bodies. He went out into the main hall and looked toward the door that led to the outside. It was open, hanging off one hinge. It was possible, then, that whatever had killed those men had only done so out of necessity while trying to escape. He doubted it could have taken out the whole base, and if the remaining agents knew about it, the main level wouldn't be so quiet.

Ward didn't really need answers yet. He needed to know that Skye was safe. He'd never been allowed to wander the Playground freely, but it had a similar layout to other SHIELD bases he'd been in over the years, so he knew where the living quarters were. He just had to guess which one would belong to Skye. The last thing he needed was to accidentally knock on Coulson's door in what must be the middle of the night. He went in the direction he assumed the living quarters were and quickly discovered that he was right. There were nine doors in the living quarters on the southern side, where he found himself, and another eight on the northern side, but he knew Skye would have chosen the southern side because the shooting range was on the north, and it would have woken her up in the morning if she was sleeping near it. He looked over the area and decided she would most likely be in the far corner room, both because it meant she had only one neighbor and because it was closest to the labs where Fitz and Simmons spent most of their time.

He went over to the door and tucked the gun into the back of his pants after putting the safety back on, then raised his hand to knock. Before he could, the door was wrenched open, and Skye was there, in a threadbare tank top and boxer shorts. She looked at him with wide, worried eyes. "Ward? What's happening?"

He was so relieved to see her okay after the carnage he'd seen downstairs that he forgot about all the blood that had been spilled between them, pulling her into his arms in a tight hug. To his surprise, she didn't fight him, instead hesitantly wrapping her arms around his waist. He pulled back after a few seconds, but couldn't seem to take his hands off her. They brushed, seemingly of their own accord, against her arms, her waist, her hair. Her neck.

Her puzzled eyes turned fearful when his hands wrapped around her neck and began to squeeze.

"No!" Ward shouted. "What? Stop! I'm not doing this! I would never do this!"

His hands continued to squeeze, and although Skye grabbed and clawed at him to make him stop, her small body was no match for the strength he'd honed over years of fighting to stay alive. Fighting like she was now. He was trying to stop, ordering his hands to release her or for something to go fatally wrong in his own body, because he'd rather die than harm Skye.

Her attacks against him were growing weaker, and the light behind her eyes was dying. "Stop," Ward whispered, his voice breaking as tears leaked from his eyes. "Please. I'm sorry, Skye. I'm so sorry."

She stopped struggling, and a voice in his head started to laugh.

Ward jerked awake to the sound of Hive's maniacal laughter. This had been the third night in a row that he'd dreamed of killing Skye, though each dream had been different. Hive seemed to have more control over his mind when he was asleep, and the immortal knew exactly how to torture him.

He guessed the time to be just after 5 AM, and that was a blessing. He would never get back to sleep after that dream, so at least he'd woken up at a time close to when he would have anyway. He rolled out of bed and brushed his teeth at the sink that popped out of the wall when he needed it, then went through his morning workout routine.

It was like he never left.

Daisy looked at the small pile she'd gathered to bring down to Ward in Vault D. She'd done well, scouring each store's website for the best sales she could find and making sure those sales were honored in physical stores. She'd found most of the books he wanted at thrift stores. She had managed not to pay full price for a single thing she'd gotten for him. That hadn't been necessary. SHIELD paid decently and provided everything she could possibly need, so she had a nice savings account for a person of her age, particularly one who used to live in her van. But somehow spending as little as possible on everything she needed felt good. Like sticking her tongue out at Director Coulson for making her feel like crap for wanting to treat Ward like a human being.

She hadn't talked to Coulson since that discussion, three days ago, but she figured he'd call when he needed her. He had given her an idea when he was yelling at her though, and that morning, she'd slipped the cook a bribe to make sure Ward's food wasn't tampered with and that he got the same quality as she did. No more prison gruel.

All in all, she'd managed to obtain a flatscreen Smart TV with Netflix on it (she was most proud of this, as she'd had to talk the management at Best Buy into offering her the floor model at a discounted price before they were ready to part with it), a TV stand, a bookshelf, and about thirty books. She'd bring him more if and when he exhausted the list he'd given her, plus those she'd added because they jumped out at her as things he might enjoy.

Now she was just waiting for Mack to join her with the two other guys he promised he'd find. She needed people to carry stuff down to the vault. Mack had helped her get the stuff from the car to the hallway, but decided they needed more people to get it downstairs and set up. Now she was standing guard over it until he came back with help.

Her phone chimed and she pulled it out of her pocket to look. Damn. She was due in Coulson's office in five minutes for a briefing on a new mission, and she and Lincoln were meant to be on their way in thirty. She scanned the hallway for Mack again and saw him approaching with two agents she didn't know. She'd wanted to oversee the setup of Ward's new stuff, but it looked like if she wanted to do that, it would have to wait until she returned from her mission, and she didn't know how long that would be. She didn't want him to have to wait.

As Mack approached, she pulled her little notebook out of her back pocket and scribbled a a short note to Ward, then ripped it out of the notebook and folded it in half. "Listen," she said when Mack got into hearing range, "I hate to bail on the heavy lifting, but Coulson is calling me for a new mission. Please, please tell me I can count on you to get all this set up down there without maiming or killing Ward?"

Mack laughed and said, "Tremors, half the base knows you went toe-to-toe with the director himself to get this done. I'm actually looking forward to setting this stuff up. Once we have everything down there, I'll put Nystrom and Turano," he gestured to the two men behind him, "on ICER duty and should be done pretty quick."

Daisy smiled, relieved. Mack always had an interesting way of looking at things, and he was the one person in the base who she really trusted who hadn't been betrayed by Ward when SHIELD fell. Now that she thought about it, she was almost sure Mack had never even met Ward, just heard the stories. He wouldn't harm Ward over what everyone had said about him without at least forming his own opinion first. She handed him the folded piece of paper. "Can you give that to Ward when you're done?"

"Sure," Mack said, taking it and tucking it into a back pocket. "Now you better get up to Coulson's office. Best not to piss him off any more, don't you think?"

She gave him a smile and a shrug and then took off for Coulson's office at a jog. No need to make things any more unpleasant than they already were. Maybe the mission would be interesting, at least.

"This is crap. Ridiculous crap. Insane crap!" Daisy complained to Lincoln in the quinjet. She knew May could hear her up in the cockpit, but she didn't care. In fact, she directed her next question to May. "Have you ever seen a file this thin? There's no information here."

May refused to comment, but she was fighting a smile.

"We're supposed to investigate-" Lincoln started.

"Laughter! We're supposed to investigate people laughing in South Carolina. That's it. Laughing. That's all we know."

"Unnatural laughing," May added.

Well, she was right about that. Rumors were flying around Greenwood, South Carolina about people being overcome with the urge to laugh, and not being able to stop for anywhere from five minutes to a few hours. Several had been admitted to the local hospital and put on a psych hold because they couldn't stop laughing long enough to tell the doctors they weren't crazy. There was no known source, and the town had already checked for gas leaks and all the other obvious causes for the strange behavior. Rumors had reached SHIELD, and Daisy and Lincoln were sent to investigate.

Daisy found it very suspicious that she should be sent on a mission with almost no information to go on right when she was about to really get started on her Vault D project, and she wanted to ask May about it, but she couldn't with Lincoln there. If her solo mission to resurrect Ward had been an issue for him, she couldn't even imagine how he would react to the concern she felt for him. Things with Lincoln had been strained since she returned, on both sides. His ego was still bruised over her refusing his offer to help with Hive, and she was looking closer at their relationship since her talk with May.

All in all, the timing for this mission, if it could be called that, couldn't be worse.

After Agent Mackenzie finished making Vault D more hospitable, he left with the two other agents he'd brought, leaving a very confused Ward in his wake. The two men, who he hadn't gotten the names of, had been the standard type he'd gotten used to from SHIELD: quiet with hard faces and ICERs pointed at him should he make one wrong move. Agent Mackenzie – Mack, as he'd asked to be called – was different. He introduced himself, exchanged pleasantries, and even made a few comments on the books Skye had picked up for him.

In another life, they probably could have been friends.

Ward unfolded the note Mack had passed him before he left. It was only two lines of Skye's somewhat messy scrawl, but he laughed quietly at what she'd written:

Netflix username: I_sank_your

Password: ?

"Battleship," he murmured.

He suddenly doubled over, coughing harder than he ever had before. Worse than the worst flu he'd had in his life, one of the winters out in the woods. He'd thought he was going to die out there for a few days, and this felt worse. He covered his mouth out of habit, not courtesy. There was no one in the cell he could get sick. When the coughing finally ended, he pulled his hand away and saw the phlegm he'd expected, but it was full of tiny black spots.

Hive started screaming. No words this time, just deafening, enraged screams.