"Mack," Daisy hisses, her face alight. "Mack!"
It is late – sometime past midnight, when the base is silent save for the guards that patrol its exterior. Daisy has burst into Mack and YoYo's room with no regard for the hour, her phone glowing with daylight's vengeance. The noise is enough to rouse Mack, who groans and shields his eyes with a hand. "Daisy? What the –"
"Robbie called," she says, waving around the phone. "He was caught but he's alright, Mack, he's alive and he's waiting for us – we need to leave. Immediately."
Mack massages his temples and swings his legs off of the bed. "Slow down, tremors," he says, brow furrowing as he takes in everything she's saying. Daisy realises now probably wasn't the best time to barge in. "Robbie contacted you? Our head-lighting-on-fire Robbie Reyes?"
"The very same," Daisy replies, hope brimming in her voice.
"Alright." Mack stands up, stretches. "Give me the run down. Robbie just called you, in the middle of the night, from the base where he's being held. I'm taking it that the Darkhold folks weren't too thrilled with this?"
Daisy nods to confirm. "He was only able to access the phone for a few minutes," she says. "There was a fight after he was caught – it lasted about ten minutes before the call disconnected. I was able to track it again, and the location we got is right. I have pretty exact coordinates now."
"Well," Mack sighs, putting his hands on his hips, "that's good, at least. But if these scientists know that he's trying to leave, or that he contacted you, we could all be in danger. We might need to take a quinjet and leave in the morning instead of tonight."
Daisy deflates slightly, looking up at Mack with pleading eyes. "Can we not leave now?"
"Listen, the way I see it," Mack says, "we're going to leave either way. We're going to get to him either way. And I'd prefer my team to be well rested before we go. This isn't anything we've dealt with before, so I want you to stay sharp. Get some rest, Daisy. I'll talk to Coulson now about switching the launch time to the morning."
"But –"
"It is –" Mack checks the alarm clock behind him, "– two thirty-three AM, tremors. I'm sure nobody would thank you if we left right now, including yourself. Go back to sleep and I'll let you know when you need to get ready, alright? Take the pressure of yourself. Robbie will be okay for a few more hours."
Daisy is quiet for a while longer but nods, glancing up at Mack with gratitude. "Thank you," she says, and hugs him, her small arms tight around his chest. "I think Coulson was right, to have you lead this op. You're good at that. And you're his SO, Mack." Her eyes are watery but rimmed with steel. "He needs you too."
"Go to bed, Daisy," Mack says again. She nods and takes a deep breath, shutting the door with a click as she leaves. Mack wipes a tear from his eye as he lies down again next to Elena, listening to her breathe.
Who knew he'd be so attached to that Robbie kid by now?
Daisy is surprised at how quickly she crashes, asleep almost as soon as she hits the bed. It seems only moments after she put down her head, Coulson is shaking her shoulder and the sound of an alarm is blaring in her ear. "Wh- what?"
The director of SHIELD grins like it's Daisy's first day of kindergarten. "You were really out, so May and I decided we'd just let you sleep. Wheels up in ten, your stuff is already packed."
Daisy scrambles out of bed, her hair sticking up in a million directions as he slips out of the room. "Coulson!" she calls to his retreating back. "Coulson, come on! Coulson!" She shakes her head in good-natured exasperation as she hears him chuckling halfway down the hall.
Well. It looks like Daisy has ten minutes to get ready.
The plane hasn't yet touched down, so Mack and the rest of his team are taking a hastily prepared quinjet instead. Daisy jogs into the main room to find the rest of them waiting and sends a firm glare in May's direction. "Took you long enough," May says with a smirk.
"Thanks for the wake-up call," Daisy responds with mock-offence. She shoulders her bag and glances over at Mack, who is surveying the two of them with amusement. "Are we ready to go, then?"
"Just waiting on you, tremors," Mack says, gesturing the team of agents towards the quinjet. "Let's go get your boy."
The group files onto the plane, tension building as the hatch closes and May takes her place at the controls. YoYo straps in next to Mack and Daisy; across from them are Piper and Fitzsimmons. "Déjà vu," YoYo says as she looks around. "Going to pick up a prisoner from a bunch of scientists obsessed with the Darkhold."
"Yeah," Daisy agrees with a huff. "Except this time it's our guy we're saving."
"Eh," YoYo agrees, grinning. "Your guy, really. I'm just coming because he's a good cook and his Spanish is better than Mack's. Right Mack?"
"That's not fair," Mack grumbles fondly. "Unless you're saying that it's you who's the bad teacher, considering that's where all my lessons are coming from."
""Yo creo que ella está bien," Daisy says, trying to eliminate the jitters of the mission. They can talk about Robbie freely now that they're on their way to go get him and bring him home. And they will bring him home.
"Come on, cabrona," Mack complains, all in good humour. "Are you really trying to one-up me now? After I got you invited to these Spanish lessons in the first place?"
"I could have just asked Robbie," Daisy returns, a smile tugging at her lips.
"Yes, yes, but you're a hopeless romantic," Elena butts in. "So you are making me teach you in order to make it a surprise."
"Hey!" Daisy tries to sound offended, but she's laughing. "I thought it would be sweet."
"It is sweet," YoYo says. "So sweet I'm getting a cavity. At least you have stopped answering me in Chinese."
"It was a learning curve," Daisy defends herself, and as Mack laughs, once again she feels at home.
The quinjet, now fully cloaked, lands softly in a field by the Nevada base. The laughter from earlier is gone; Daisy is tense and ready to punch some LMDs into the sun. "Are we pulling their power yet?" she asks Mack, deferring to the leader of the operation.
"Not yet," he says. "Fitz is going to do it remotely once we're inside, so we can maximise on the element of surprise. Once the power is off, they won't be able to communicate using comms, but we haven't found a way to root around it so the lights will go too. Make sure to be on guard at all times – those androids have way better eyes than we do."
Daisy nods, her leg bouncing up and down as she unhooks her seatbelt and stands, reaching for a pistol. "What are we allowed to do to them?"
"LMDs? Go all out," Mack says with a frown. "ICERs only on the people, though. If we can take them into custody, Coulson thinks we might be able to get something out of them."
"Alright." Daisy accepts another gun from Simmons and tucks it into her waistband, exhaling through her mouth. "Let's go."
The team hurries off the plane, heading through a back door revealed to them by Coulson's schematics of the Nevada base. A hush falls over them, of quieted footsteps and raised stakes. "We're in," Mack reports back to Fitz. "I'll tell you when we need to shut the lights off, alright?"
Daisy hears some murmurs of an affirmative and the group moves as one, weapons raised. "Everyone's comm units on?" May asks, and there is some general agreement. "Good. Because by the looks of this hallway, we're going to need to split soon." She nods up ahead and Daisy's eyes flicker to a split, lingering on the two paths.
"May, I'll go with you," Daisy says, thinking aloud. "Simmons can come. Mack, do you want to take YoYo and Piper? Whoever encounters anyone first can tell Fitz –"
"I like your plan, tremors," Mack says, "but we've already got company. Fitz!"
And the lights flicker. For a moment Daisy thinks it didn't work, but with a decisive click, all the lights go out and the room is plunged into darkness. Mack surges forward, shooting, as an army of LMDs come out to meet them. They'll have an advantage for perhaps ten seconds, but soon the SHIELD agents will be completely on their own.
"Come on!" Daisy yells. "Come on, if we take them down we can leave faster. The base doesn't need to be compromised –" Her face twists as she fires off a few rounds, leaving the androids with some gruesome looking holes, "- we just need to get in and out!"
"I think it's too late for that!" May shouts in return, stomping on the robots' knees and feeling the wires crunch beneath her boots. "We've made quite a first impression. We'll need to move faster."
The two teams exchange a glance, now at the end of the hallway. The carcasses of the LMDs are scattered behind them. "Be safe," says Mack, and turns to leave.
"You heard him," Daisy says, taking a deep breath, and she goes too.
"Are we sure this is a good idea?" YoYo has to jog to keep up with Mack's strides, her brow furrowed with worry.
"You saw the layout," Mack replies, his face stony in a way YoYo has come to interpret as concern. "There's two holding cells Robbie could be in. This way we'll hopefully have people in both, if we're going in the right direction."
"We should be," YoYo says, looking reassured. "Unless this place has been renovated since Coulson last updated the floor plan."
"That," Mack says, cracking a smile, "is not even funny." They lapse into comfortable silence, Agent Piper a few metres ahead of them as they walk. The hallway is cramped without the light and Mack resists the urge to grab hold of Elena's hand.
"Hey," Piper says, holding out her arm to stop them from going forward. "Something went wrong here. Take a look."
There is a round room in front of them with another hallway branching off of the other side. It appears this place was once a common room, or a control centre, but no longer. Furniture is strewn everywhere, charred and melted in a way that sends relief flooding through Mack's body. "Robbie," he breathes. "We're in the right direction. They'll be sending more LMDs soon, which means we need to hurry."
As the three agents take off down the hall, following it with Coulson's map in mind, Daisy's voice crackles through the comm units. "Have you found Robbie?" she sounds out of breath. "May and I just stumbled across this room – like a containment module, but it's empty. There were a load of LMDs guarding it though; we're not sure why."
"We're on our way to him," Mack responds. "We found the room from where he called you. This should be the place he's held."
The door, of course, is locked; Piper grins and fishes a small explosive out of her bag. He accepts it gratefully and the trio stands back, the handle blown off. YoYo, for dramatics, kicks in the door – and there is Robbie Reyes, looking furious, broken glass at his feet. "Hey, Mack."
"Yeah," Mack says with a grin, "we got him."
"We're going into the containment module," May says. "See what's in there."
Daisy's voice comes in overlapping, giddy with excitement. "You found him? He's – is he alright?" Mack can't help but smile at the enthusiasm in her voice.
"Yeah, but he's not alone," he warns, regarding the blonde scientist, who looks horrified to have the SHIELD agents stumble in. "I'm pretty sure the way out is going to be ugly."
"We're inside," May reports, static buzzing through her voice. "Doesn't seem to be anything important–"
This, of course, is when an earthquake storms through the Nevada base and shakes it to the core. It comes out of nowhere, a seismic hurricane, that whirls across the countryside like a stampede. The whole building shifts, crumbling slightly; the ground feels like liquid for those terrifying seconds.
And because Robbie can't seem to catch a break, the floor crumbles beneath his feet with the force of it, plummeting him and Dr Taine somewhere deep underground.
"Well," says May, more annoyed than scared. "Looks like I was wrong."
