Chapter Ten: Skeletons in the Forgotten Closet
That's right, I'm back once again to post another chapter of this fabulous story, especially since I know you all must be dying of withdraw after what occurred at the end of last chapter. So, as if I need to say this at all, be sure to follow and favorite this story and leave comments, I love to hear what you like and what you don't and just general opinions of this.
Blood roared behind my ears, pulsating every few moments completely in tune with the throbbing, pain induced spasms in my head and the aching behind my eye balls but even with all these side effects from the afternoon before, I still force my eyes open. Nausea sweeps over me as I watch my vision goes from just white nothingness into the world obscured in a cloudy blur as my gaze bounces in and out of focus.
Tangy, bitter iron flavored blood swirls around my mouth, but twitching my mouth slightly indicates it's dry blood trailing down the corner of my mouth. Narrowing my eyes to attempt to better survey my surroundings ends up more difficult due to the lack of help from my still wigged out eyes. Slowly but surely the world comes into focus and I can start making out shapes, objects, and then Bryan's face.
He's huddled up in the corner of what appears to be some old, rundown ski-resort with extreme fire damage based on the oil black makings scrawled along the tangerine colored walls. That's when I notice that Bryan is completely and totally stark naked with his knees tightly pulled up to his chest to hide his bits and pieces. A strange look decorates his face, almost animalistic, like he saw a monster.
Bryan's dark brown hair is disheveled and his deep brown eyes seem cloudy and far off as if he isn't living in this time but living some sort of alternate reality that is haunting him. Reaching for the black backpack beside me I dig through it, moving me and Nathan's pistols aside, Tara's rolled up whips, then I see what I'm looking for. A set of spare clothes kept for emergencies.
"Bryan..." my whisper rings across the room, I try not to be too loud as all the rest of the crew lay around me, completely passed out after the fall from the cliff side. Tara's hair is awfully disheveled, skin pale like a ghost, and dark purple blotches splatter her face as well as the others, a consequence of falling from such a height.
Raising my voice I repeat what I said. "Bryan... Hello? Can you hear me?"
This time I catch his attention, his eyes skirt to me, the storm of apprehension and terror rages on in full force like a hurricane is tearing him apart at the very seams and no one is able to stop the fly away pieces. I slide the spare clothes across the floor and to where he sits before turning around allowing him to get dressed in semi-privacy.
How can Phil Coulson be alive? That's all I can think while my back is to Bryan. Obviously Nick Fury's behind that reason but the real conflict is what was done to bring him back. If we can get that information that would be the perfect blackmail to get him and S.H.I.E.L.D. off our tails. While the thought of doing something awful like blackmailing makes my skin crawl I know it's better than letting Nick Fury continue his pursuit of us.
"Y-you can turn back around now..." Bryan says, voice so low I barely heard him at all.
Turning around I see that Bryan sits in the same position on the floor as if he never got up to dress himself. Digging his chin into his knees, I can see how lost and alone he feels without even hearing it from him.
"Do you want to talk about it Bryan? Tell me what happened."
He shakes his head. "No, I'm fine. Right now we need to focus on what to do about Nick Fury."
"Yeah I've been thinking about that and the only thing I can think of to do is—"
"Ugh! What the hell, was I hit by a train or something?" Tara sounds, her voice rough, thick, and raucous. Her eyes are squinted as she slowly but surly pushes herself up off the ground from a laying position into one where she's sitting upright. She glance from Bryan in the corner to me sitting on the left side of the room with my legs crossed.
"That probably would have felt better..." I comment, lifting my eyes to her's while still in deep thought as to how to get Nick Fury to leave us alone. Where cold I find evidence to use against him? Seeing as Coulson and his team brought us to this mountain, there must be a secret base here so if I can get into the base with Tara's help and hacking skills we might be able to obtain the dirt we need to bury Fury once and for all.
It shouldn't be too difficult to recruit Tara for this little hacktivist mission, anytime she's allowed to break into secure networks and systems without having to worry about me lecturing her for it is a golden day for her. "Hey Tara, how would you feel about breaking into a former S.H.I.E.L.D. base and stealing a load of completely CLASSIFIED and unreleased documents from the database?"
A smirk crosses her plump, pink lips as she narrows her eyes in a mischievous glimmer in them. "Shaylene, are you giving me your total permission to break into secure files and steal? This is a day to celebrate, looks like fuddy-duddy has finally manages to drag her ass out of the dry mud and live a little on the edge of danger!"
I shoot her a dirty look. "Just this once so don't get a big head or anything, I know how you like to runaway with your ego."
"Hey!" Tara whines, falling on her back and whining like a little child with her eyes pulled tightly closed. "I'm the funny one with all the quips, barbs, sarcastic comments, one-liners, and nicknames. Stop stealing my thunder Shaylene, I don't try and steal your role as Malibu Barbie."
"Stop calling me Shaylene and I will be more than happy to give you your purpose for life back, and I am not Barbie!" I reply, raising an eyebrow when she bolts back up into a sitting position, crosses her legs, and presses her hands on her knees making her resemble a hunching over statue.
"Fine," she huffs, sticking her tongue out at me. "You win this round Shay but I can think of new barbs and nicknames on the spot Blondie."
"Cleaver..." I sarcastically reply making my tone somewhat nasal and preppy but dragging the the E, A, and R syllable on in a mocking manner and Tara simple rolls her eyes, obviously to lazy to make a quip back. Pain rips through my spine as I push up off the toffee colored carpet barely stained with any signs of a fire but I grit my teeth until the pain eases when I'm all the way standing.
"You mean now? We have to go now?" Tara asks, the reluctance and apathetic tone overshadowing her tone tells me she doesn't want to get up but we have to go find the base and get the information as soon as possible. The longer we stay here without the information we need puts us at a higher risk of Fury's men locating and re-capturing us.
"Tara, we need to do this before Phil Coulson and his team come searching for us, we need to get this dirt on them or else Nick Fury will never leave us alone and I know Fury won't let us live if he catches us so we need to get to work ASAP," I explain, my blue eyes fixed on her brown ones. A groan of annoyance escapes her as she rises to her feet and trots over to me.
"Bryan, watch over the rest of the crew until I get back, understood?" I ask.
Without saying a single word, Bryan only nods his head to confirm what I told him before slowly scooting over to where the other three still lay motionless on the ground, back's to the floor and stomach's facing up. Looking away I turn and head towards the open door of the ski-lodge, Tara hot on my heels as we step out into the chilly mountain breeze.
Crunching of snow is our first evidence of proof that we're in fact on a snowy mountain side but as my eyes adjust to the bright, reflective color of the white snow that's when I see the full extent of what snow can really do. All signs of actual earth is gone, replaced by the glittering remnants of what must have been a extensive amount of snowfall.
So that's when we begin our trek up the mountain side, my arms, legs, and face are numb by the time we reach the spot where Coulson and his team were when we'd been knocked off the mountain side but now they're nowhere to be seen. The snow here seems to be keep melted away and a large gaping mouth of a cave resides in front of us but it only goes less than an inch in but it must be the opening to the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.
Glancing around I assess the area in search of the access panel or a button, possibly a keypad code entering device to open the doors to the base but Tara seems to have beat me too it as she turns to me and points at a pass code device.
"I know I'm not rocky mountain expert but I'm pretty sure keypads are not apart of the mountain climbing experience."
Crossing the terrain, I reach her side, looking down at the ancient looking devices but am not fulled by the old style makeover. It's probably designed like that to keep nosy people away, leading them to believe that since there's old tech on the outside of this place that nothing inside could be of any worth or great value but those people are gravely mistaken.
"What do you think the pass code is?" Tara asks, turning her head toward me, a joking smile on her face.
"N-Dec-51-Last-Resort. That's probably the code," I say, shrugging my shoulders to display the lack of effort driven into deciphering the possible code for the pass code. A green light flashes over the top of the caves opening, rumble sounds beneath our feet as the rusty colored rocks mouth splits open into two pieces which slowly pull apart, revealing a doorway.
A shiny metal hallway is evident as we look into the mouth of the cave, I enter first, guns raised in defense as Tara follows behind me, utterly helpless without her whips which she'd left back at the ski-lodge. Inside the base we're greeted by silence, a peaceful sort of silence that is disturbed by the presence of people which means that no one has been inside this base in awhile which is good.
Phil Coulson was planning to bring us in here I'm sure but if we escaped he'd never think that we'd be the ones breaking into a S.H.I.E.L.D. base when we fought so hard to stay away from it. Most of the files have been leaked to the internet after the helicarrier incident but there are probably a few that Nick Fury kept under wraps and Tara is a master hacker and should be able to access secure and corrupt files.
As we move forward we enter a large, open room with checkerboard floors but in red and black instead of the traditional black and white. A medium sized computer screen sits on a lonely white desk with dust collecting on the mouse. Moving forward Tara sits down in the spinning computer chair and I sit down in a plain ground bound chair beside her, guns still held high.
Tapping of computer keys are the only sound now, but I still keep focused and my eye on the prize. As the minutes tick by I feel the nerves bundling in my chest which each passing moment and it's like a bomb is building up in my chest and sooner or later it's gonna explode but the longer it's contained the more powerful it's growing.
"See what you can find out on Coulson's team, we need to know who we're up against," I tell her.
After a couple of taps later Tara speaks. "Got it, Melinda May, also known as "The Cavalry" is a pilot and a formidable enemy, skilled in hand-to-hand-combat, firearms, and other types of dangerous attack strategies."
"What abut Coulson's prize agent?" I reply, looking over at Tara whose brows are creased in focus on the task at hand.
"Well, she seems to have deleted the files on her but she didn't do a very good job, it's an easy hack to retrieve the deleted files but for an amateur it's not that awful. Here we go..."
Full Name: Mary Sue Poots
Nickname: Skye
Affiliations: The Rising Tide, S.H.I.E.L.D., U.N.I.T.E.D.
Date of Birth: April, 1989
Clearance: Level 1
"Must have been new to S.H.I.E.L.D. when HYDRA was revealed to be involved in their organization, now what dirt can we find on Nick Fury to get him to sway in out favor?"
"Let's see what you've been hiding Nick Fury..." I hear Tara mutter under her breath as she clicks a few times on her mouse but the her section beside me goes silent. "What's Project" T.A.H.I.T.I.?"
"Have you gotten access to the secure file?"
"No," Tara replies, the tapping of keys vigorously squawking away as she tries to bypass whatever's blocking the files. "Oh my God. Project T.A.H.I.T.I. stands for Terrestrialized Alien Host Integrative and they don't have the last two letters acronyms listed. It's a level 9 security protocol detail using certain serums received from some dead alien creatures and used the DNA to create a serum."
Turning around I glance at the screen. "Yeah, designed to be able to revive a fatally injured of deceased Avenger. Whoa, look at the test subjects who were used as lab rats for this test. Phil Coulson, lacerated heart, it was torn is half, that would have killed him unless they used this project and their miracle drug GH-325 to revive him; the Avengers are probably still in the dark about this, I don't think they'll be to happy to know their favorite agent is alive and they were left in the dark."
Tara glances over me as if asking if that's all the information we need but the one more thing crosses my mind. "Coulson said something, about U.N.I.T.E.D. and to me it sounds like a group name, lets see what we can find on this project."
I watch the screen as Tara's fingers collide with the keys until documents start popping up all over the screen, each of them having the encrypted title: U.N.I.T.E.D. but then a new document pops up, one with the meaning of those five letters. "There!" I say and Tara stops messing with the keys as her eyes scan over the document.
"Undisclosed National Intelligence and Tactical Examination Division," I read the words allowed, my brain still trying to grasp the information laid out before me as I scan over the words. After New York Nick Fury used Project T.A.H.I.T.I. to bring back Coulson but never told the Avengers but then it was discovered that S.H.I.E.L.D. was infested with HYDRA agents so it was disbanded but Fury must have allowed Coulson and his team to work in secret.
However, Fury must have decided to make a much larger organization to protect the world so he sucked Coulson and the remaining parts of S.H.I.E.L.D. into a smaller division inside his new Intel organization which he named U.N.I.T.E.D. That's perfect, exactly the sort of juicy type of secrets we'll need to bring Fury down once and for all, nodding I give her the signal to collect the data from the computer.
Pulling out a secure flashdrive Tara enters the small device into the computer and move the files into it along with many other highly classified as well as all the information on Coulson and his team. Tara digs into Project: Last Resort and professionally deletes every, and all traces of our information. She did transfers those files of information to our collection but when she's finished, I whisper our time to leave, loud enough for only Tara to hear.
"Time to face the muse Nick Fury. We're not going down without a fight so you better be ready, we're coming for you this time..."