"Are the defenses ready?" Frigga asked when her husband and son came into the cafeteria several hours later, just as she finished with testing the last of the badly shaken agents.

"Ready, and Lady Sif has moved the last of the prisoners that there was some concern about to Asgard." Thor said. "Have you found any more traitors?"

"It seems the rest of the agents are loyal to Shield." Frigga said. "We just finished testing the last of them.

"It's strange, though." Alissa said from where she had been sitting, checking off agents on a tablet as they were cleared and trying to keep well out of range of any beverages hot or otherwise that she might knock over. "I've been here eight years now, and the agents that were cleared fit. They're most of them are level fours and fives, who have been with Shield at least five or six years. Except for a few people like Agent Nicholas, the agents who turned were level one and twos who joined in the last year or so. Not that being a level two is suspicious. I'm a two, but it's because I spilled hot coffee on a superior officer three times in one day and then blew up his coffee maker. I'll probably spend the rest of my career as a level two. But these people had great records, and they actually asked for the Fridge as their first assignment out of the academy. Agent Marley, have you ever heard of anyone asking for this place as a first assignment?"

"I noticed that too." Agent Marley said, and when he saw the Asgardians' confused looks, he explained. "The Fridge is an important Shield base, but it isn't exactly a top assignment. If you're assigned here, you're basically in the building twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until you complete a rotation of at least six months. We're in an isolated location so you can't visit anything on your days off. This place is important, but it's just not an assignment that most people would jump on right out of the academy. The Triskelion, the Hub, the Sandbox, those are places people want to go. The Fridge, this is where Shield sends you. Something's definitely off, with so many of the Hydra infiltrators being new agents and actually requesting the assignment here." But could that help with weeding out more traitors elsewhere? All he could do was to note the findings and hopefully Thor and his family would be able to get the information to someone in authority. But who was left in command now? Agent Hand was dead. The director was dead. Who knew where Agent Hill was. Agent Blake was in the hospital. Agent Garrett and Agent Sitwell were Hydra, although that was kind of strange about Sitwell, a Hispanic man joining a Nazi organization? What sense did that make? Who else was left, Coulson? Maybe Coulson was running things? He hoped SOMEONE was trying to run things. But before he could think about it further, an announcement came in over the intercom.

"We have a prisoner transport inbound. Arrival time in five minutes. The ID they're transmitting is for the plane that departed the Hub with Agent Hand, bringing John Garrett in for detention. We're also picking up five other aircraft, hovering just out of our normal detection range. We're assuming at least a hundred Hydra agents are on board based on the size and configuration."

"Get your people into position." Odin ordered. "My dear, can you provide a safe place for the wounded and non-combatants?"

"Already done." After a thousand years of marriage did her husband really think he could tell her anything that she hadn't already thought of much earlier? "Will we be waiting on the roof for these traitors, then?"

"They've already met Hela and Sleipnir." Thor said. "I think we should definitely introduce them to the rest of our family."

Even knowing that they were facing a Hydra traitor who had killed a level 8 senior agent, the two guards who met the Asgardians were willing to carry out their part, and were waiting at the closed doors when Ward stepped off of the plane with the seemingly secured Garrett. To hear that traitor talking about Agent Hand, though, after what he had done, it was all they could do to hold their positions to give the Asgardians time to get ready, and to lull the other aircraft into coming within striking distance.

"Something isn't right." Thor looked closely at the two traitors from behind the illusion his mother was cloaking them in. "Sleipnir kicked one of them, and Pepper burned the other, but now they have hardly a mark on them?"

"Even Asgardian technology would be hard pressed to repair damage from that so quickly." Frigga murmured. Something was definitely wrong and she sent out a careful magical probe to try to determine what it might be.

At least this was going right. After what had happened in the swamp with those women, he had been a bit worried. Tony Stark's girlfriend, and Stark had Shield connections. But apparently he hadn't been able to alert anyone, because the guards didn't have a clue that Hand was dead. "You want me to contact Agent Hand to turn around and come back here? Do you know how angry that will make her?" Ward said, just as a aircraft came swooping in an firing at them.

But instead of what he expected, the guards throwing open the doors against all protocol to help their fellow agent, the skies suddenly turned dark, storm clouds appearing Trying to capture g out of nowhere, and a bolt of lightning slamming into the aircraft, and sending it careening away from the building.

Lightning. Ward had a bad, bad feeling that was confirmed as he looked up. Thor was there, hammer out, and then two more people, a one eyed man that had to be Odin and then a woman that reminded him of the girl that had stopped them in the swamp appeared out of nowhere.

Asgardians. Somehow the Asgardians had found out what was going on, and had came to the aid of their allies. Maybe they should have weighted those bodies down. Vic had obviously somehow lived long enough to pass information along to them. Garrett tried to go for his communicator, to warn the other planes off, but it was too late. They were already in range of the Fridge's defenses, anti-aircraft guns were firing as Thor took to the air, to assist them in putting the planes down. Not good, this was not good.

"Aren't you supposed to order us to surrender?" Ward said as Frigga approached him, sword out, while her husband moved towards Garrett.

"Did you offer any of the innocents you slaughtered that curtesy? Did either of you show mercy when you threw a woman who was barely clinging to life into a swamp to drown?" And although she hadn't been able to determine exactly what was wrong with the pair, her probe had been enough to indicate that there was something very, very wrong indeed there. Trying to take these two alive could only lead to a disaster, and more innocents endangered.

He was fast and had apparently learned a few things, because Ward didn't try to pull a weapon, just dodging and swinging, trying for a hit or a kick that he couldn't get in, Frigga watched him move critically, as she pushed him back towards the edge of the roof, her blade making nicks and cuts but not a finishing blow, not yet. She wanted to test him as much as she could, to try to figure out what he was, before she did that.

One of the planes swung wildly, trying to dodge the weapons firing from the building, and Thor's lightning, clipping the edge of the roof before crashing to the ground. And Ward took advantage of that to try to lunge forward, only to end up with Frigga's sword shoved through him, before he was falling, tumbling off the roof and heading a hundred floors down to the ground.

"Mother? Father?" Thor called as he landed on the roof.

"What happened to the other one?" Frigga demanded as she looked down at her sword. The blood she had drawn with her nicks and cuts had been red but this, when she had ran him through, what was streaking her blade was a greenish-grey fluid.

"He through himself off the roof." Odin's one eye went up at the sight of what was on the sword. He thought the man had chosen death over capture but…. "Do you have any idea what they might be?"

"I'm not sure. But whatever they are, it's nothing good." Frigga said. She turned to Thor. "Go. See if you can find the one I stabbed. We need to know what these creatures are." If she hadn't killed him, hopefully he was wounded badly enough to prevent his escape. She had a very, very bad feeling about this.