Chapter 7

I got transferred to the nearest secure SHIELD office, the boat Gonzalez used to run. Funnily enough, it was only secure for a few days. Then the super-people showed up and put me in a room with all the SHIELD personnel.

"Why were you being kept prisoner? Join us and fight your captors!" The man's eyes blazed with cult worship.

Jiaying strode into the room, barking orders like the dictator she was. "Don't bother with her, she works for Coulson." Her pause told me she'd connected the dots.

"You touched the crystals, and here you are." She moved in close, alight with fanaticism. "You're one of us. Join us, and help everyone receive their birthright, just as you've received yours."

The change was so abrupt, even her followers were momentarily confused.

"How about no. I know it kills most people who touch it. Only the unlucky survive."

"Only the worthy survive." That didn't make any sense. What did it divine as worthy, and how did a rock made that kind of decision? "If you're meant to be one of us, it bestows on you a gift."

"A gift?"

"A power. Yours must be subtle to go undiscovered this long. Or have you learned to control it?" I shook my head mutely as she told me to think back, look for anything unusual about myself or happening around me.

"Healing," I realized. "I've been healing supernaturally fast."

She smiled warmly at me. "Your gift is not destructive. It's peaceful, like mine. You are meant to help our people. Please, help us now. I'm trying to create a world where our people can live freely, without fear or persecution. I'm building you a better world."

I felt gutted. Jiaying wanted me, she told me I belonged. She cared about me already.

I gave one of the copy-women a nod, striding down the hallway with a guy carrying a box of crystals. My cover was blown the second anyone saw me, but luckily my job was just to babysit the crystals. The first one to enter the room was Mack, carrying an impractical seeming fire ax.

"You're-"

"The prisoner. Not anymore." I stood, making a show of stretching and cracking my knuckles.

"I was gonna say the girl who saved me. But sure," He raised the ax, "We can go with the dramatic version."

Mack swung, but I faked in, grabbing his outstretched bicep and launching myself onto his back, leaping into the air and rebounding on the wall, right off the security camera. I rolled to a stop on the hard floor, just past where Mack stood. The camera fell behind him, mangled and lifeless. He stopped and glanced between it and me.

"They're about to send someone down here to check on me. You should be gone then. Take the crystals, I'll do my best to slow them down."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Whatever hit me, it belongs to the world. But the world isn't ready for it. Go!" I shoved the crate into his massive arms, and he hefted it onto his shoulder. "Find Skye. I think Jiaying is going to hurt her. I'll try to fake them out down here, get as many out of your way as possible. Go now, before they show up."

Surprisingly, Mack obeyed me, lugging away the heavy box as fast as he could. He turned the corner out of sight just as Gordon, a teleporter, popped in.

"What's going on? Where are the crystals?"

I pretended to glance nervously back at a cabinet, just enough that he would notice but it wouldn't seem purposeful. He took my bait, reappearing over there in front of it, just as my homemade bomb went off. SHIELD really shouldn't leave so much unguarded. Gordon attempted to teleport out the door, but Agent Fitz was there, and he clotheslined him with a metal pole. I hobbled over, one side damaged by shrapnel, and fell brutally on Gordon. Fitz looked away at the last second as I twisted his head sideways, snapping his neck and standing back up.

"When did you steal a bomb?" He asked, looking at the shredded wall and floor where the cabinet had been.

I couldn't help but smile a little, though I doubt he could tell through the dirt. "I made it. All that time I've spent with you and Simmons, your science rubbed off."

Fitz laughed, his smile disappearing as someone spoke over the coms. "Skye's mom tried to kill her. Mack says her father stopped her, but Skye ordered Mack to dump the crystals in the ocean first. What's that gonna do?"

"I have no idea. But that means it's time to go. Do we…" I motioned Gordon's limp body.

"What do you want to do?"

"I can do whatever I want?" He winced, clearly not understanding my meaning. Maybe putting them on spikes wasn't something SHIELD actually did. "I could take it?"

"No! What do you want with a body?" He demanded, clearly ready to be horrified by the answer.

"I want to send him back to his family," I decided, lifting the body onto my shoulders. "Someone cared about him, and they'll be needing this for the funeral."

Fitz studied me, making me a little uncomfortable. I felt like maybe he saw a little too much of me, even what I tried to hide. "Why?"

I knew he wasn't talking about why they'd need a body for a funeral. He was asking why I was showing mercy, which made me uncomfortable again. "I don't know. Just keep it to yourself."

We walked up to the deck and found Skye and her father, looking far worse off than we were. Her father cried all the way back to the base.

It felt good to finally make my own decision, to control myself. Although Coulson was probably going to be pissed.

"You're sure you have to go?" Skye stood in front of the door, waiting with her security pass like I'd asked in the note I'd slipped in her bunk.

"Yes. I've been someone's weapon since I was nine years old. It's time to find out who I am, when no one else gets to tell me the answer." I was leaving, maybe for good. It was odd, knowing that from now on I wasn't Hydra's. Simmons had found a way to clear my mind of the brainwashing, making it so only my original trigger words, in their original languages, could ever give someone power over me again. And luckily I was the only one alive who knew what they were.

Skye stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Don't worry about Coulson. Good luck." She pushed the bag she was holding into my hands. "It's just some clothes, a little money to get you started. Call me if you get into trouble."

"Thank you, Skye."

"It's Daisy actually. Daisy Johnson." She gave a tentative smile. It was her birth name, from the parents she'd just lost for the second time. A way to honor them. Maybe I could do the same for her.

I reached out, shaking her hand. "Nice to meet you Daisy Johnson. I'm Jamie Frederick."