Something was wrong with Ward. Well, something was always wrong with Ward. Ward was wrong. But Skye had expected him to move as soon as Videmus triggered the floor's release. Ward could attack with a speed that had always astonished Skye. His ruthless efficiency in combat had made her admire him once. Now, it made her wary. Skye had thought he'd make a grab for the man. Snap his arm. His neck. Or, in the very least, lunge for the door. She'd been waiting for it. It had been her Plan A. Ward would make his move and then they'd run. She waited for him to do it and then the wall closed. She glared at the blank wall, the closed box, and then she turned her glare on Ward.

His boots were free but he stood, frozen in the same space, eyes vacant.

"Ward?" Her voice was pinched, her displeasure showing. He was like a statue: tall, immovable, striking. Her irritation peaked.

And, then, Skye started to wonder. She wondered if Videmus had done something. If the whole mind reading eye creeping thing was a whole lot worse than it sounded. It sounded pretty awful to begin with but what if Videmus was able to damage as well as see? What if he could mess up what was in your mind?

He could kill you.

Or make you a vegetable.

Or brainwash you into obedience.

"Hey Ward?" Skye took a step toward the statuesque figure of her former S.O. The only sound is the room was their breathing, hers getting faster and faster as she contemplated just how many terrible things could happen to someone's mind.

She reached out and touched his forearm and, still, he did not move. He didn't feel dead. He was as warm and solid as always.

"Ward? Hey. Grant. Snap out of it."

She saw it then in his eyes. All the broken, little pieces that made up the enigma that was Grant Ward snap together as if drawn back by a magnetic force. Her brief insight was gone and all she had left was the blank face, the mask, that Ward always put back on. He shook her hold off his arm and ran his hand through his hair. He looked tired. Even the mask was unable to cover the bone deep weariness that had settled into him.

"Whatever you were trying to do, did it work?" Ward asked.

He'd sat on the ground leaning back into the wall and Skye joined him. If someone had told her a day ago that she'd be scooting closer to Grant Ward by choice, she'd would have thought they were insane. An involuntary snort came out at the thought of that insanity. Her current reality was certifiable and she still couldn't beat Candy Crush. She said as much to Ward, watched his smile, and couldn't decided if that was genuine warmth she saw curl his lips or if this was the reappearance of the same earnest liar that had been such a dependable member of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team until he'd betrayed them all.

If they were playing at being S.H.I.E.L.D. agents again, Skye could play too. "They have very low security on their WiFi network. I was able to pull the IP address of the modem my phone linked into and geolocate where we are. We're in New Jersey."

Ward nodded but offered no more to the conversation. His silence made Skye nervous and she rambled on "I also turned on my GPS so if your friend is intent on finding me, I've made it really easy for her." Saying friend and knowing it meant another traitorous Hydra agent made Skye's gut churn, made her want to growl and snap. That the agent looked like May, a former lover of Ward's, didn't make the feelings any less ferocious. She hid it though. She sped into the next bit: Plan B.

"...So, we probably want to make a break from here before everyone decides to show up."

"I suppose you have that all figured out too?" God, no. She had Plan A figured out. Plan B...this was going to be entirely by the seat of her pants.

"When he released the floor, did you see how he did it?"

Ward shook his head. "I was … otherwise occupied." Skye really wanted to pursue that statement. To dig into that half second verbal pause and chase after the real answer. She wanted to ask him more about what it was like playing games with mind readers. She wanted to know if it was just like the way he'd played games with her. Was his mind just like his personas? Full of lies hidden in truths hidden in lies until it was impossible to tell which was which? Instead, she glanced at the lights. The floor could be modified with electrical pulses. It would stiffen or melt away. Electricity was the key. That much had been clear from Videmus's little demonstration earlier. And, if they could get through the weird white protection of the walls, it couldn't be that hard to open a storage container. They had to have safety catches in case someone dumb accidentally shut themselves inside, right?

Melt the wall. Find the catch. Run, run, run. Plan B wasn't all that far from Plan A. Simple is always better.

"That's a lot of ifs, Skye." Okay. So, maybe she didn't keep it all that simple but: "Do you have a better plan?"

Ward shook his head. "I really don't."

So, that was how Skye found herself perched atop Ward's shoulders stripping wiring out of the lights. They had 6 lights and they only needed to make one of the light's electric current run into the wall where they knew the door to be. That left 5 lights to give them reach, to supply them with extra wires to make it to the wall.

Ward had given a good try to dismantle the lights on his own. He was gloriously tall which had allowed him to pry the covers off the lights. He wasn't tall enough though. He could bang at them but couldn't finesse the wires out, couldn't work with them.

"I can lift you up there," Ward had offered.

"I know you like to pretend you're super-human, Ward, but I don't think even you can just hold me up a couple of feet for an unspecified length of time without wanting to chop off your arms. I need something to stand on."

They both glanced around the room as if a table would magically appear in their time of need but no such thing occurred. When Skye's eyes landed back on Ward, he was striding toward her. When he got close, he knelt in front of her and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. The move was apropos of something else entirely and even after an indeterminate amount of time in near solitary confinement in New Jersey, Ward managed a sort of debonair flair to his movement. If he'd pulled out a small box and popped a question, she wouldn't have been surprised in that moment. She'd have been pissed, sure, but not surprised.

"Climb on," Ward said pulling Skye back into reality.

She laughed then. Probably because she, too, was exhausted. She was clearly having trouble keeping on task and not letting her mind wander off after fanciful delusions. "A piggy back ride, Ward? Really?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her in that maddeningly patronizing way of his. "Unless you have some way to grow about 4 feet, I think a 'piggy back ride' is going to be our best option."

He was right and so she'd walked around him and climbed on. Her fingers raked into his hair for grip as he stood and Skye bit down on the urge to throw her arms wide and screech. She loved piggy back rides as a kid because it meant she wasn't at the orphanage. The nuns would never allow such rough housing or personally partake in that kind of silly play. Prospective adoptive parents or siblings were great for it though. There was no better treatment for a lovesick little girl than to whisk her up in your arms, throw her on your back, and walk around. You never had to have hard conversations or eye contact with piggy back rides. It was a perfect way to bide the time until, as always, the orphanage would come back. The paperwork would get messed up or the match turned out to be not quite right. It had been better for Skye that way too. She'd only remember the impression of strong shoulders and the elation of being so high in the air – not the names and faces of those families that didn't think she was good enough to stay on long term.

Skye made quick work of the five other lights. She stripped the wires out of them and set them dark one by one. The room was nearly consumed by shadow when she decided to make sure they were both working with the same play book: "Ward, when I connect these wires into that light, we're going to go dark."

She could feel his head start to nod between her legs before he decided nodding wasn't a good call at the time. "Yes. I know."

"I'm going to have a line of live wires ready. Once, it goes dark, I need you to let me get down first. Then if you can get near the wall... I don't know if the electricity is going to melt the wall or stiffen it. In either case, we need to break through and find the way to open it."

"Got it."

Skye smiled. Ward taking orders from her was definitely a novel experience. Skye twisted her line of wires together, checked each connection and then, with a quick breath, pinching her fingers around the live wires that ran around the electronic ballast. She felt the quick tremor of a light electric shock and the hot burn as it ran up her fingers. Quickly, she pulled her hand away.

The last light went out.

Ward lowered himself to the ground and she scrambled off his shoulders being careful to hold the coating of the line of wires. Their little white room was a black pit now. She could see nothing but she felt as Ward moved forward, the disturbance in the air as he shifted. She could hear him as he pressed into the wall.

"Ready?" he asked. His voice reaching out from the darkness.

"On three," she replied, taking a deep breath. "2. 1." She pressed the wires into the wall and felt the sickening crackle of electricity as it ran up her arm. She didn't move her hand this time though. Not yet. She wanted to make sure that the wall was reacting. She could hear Ward huffing and scrambling about near her feet and then she heard a promising squelch as a clump of the wall liquified and rolled down.

"I got it." Ward said. A groan followed and the whine and clack of a metal door rolling upward then a slick, wet thud as the rest of the wall pooled up and crumpled to the ground.

The world beyond the room was gray but even the muted tones were harsh after the absolute darkness. They stood in a large warehouse with containers just like theirs stacked three high. She couldn't tell how many there were from where she was but was thankful the only thing visible to her was rows and rows of boxes. The warehouse floor was lifeless. No one was guarding their box, no one was moving the other containers. They hadn't alerted anyone with the abrupt opening of their wall.

Plan B had worked damn well.

"Let's go," Ward said.

He was standing beyond the box now, reaching a hand toward her. Skye started forward until she reached the edge of their prison and saw the pile of white goo tremble. Like that, she remembered why they'd been there in the first place. This prison had been the first time since San Juan that Skye had felt normal. She had not worried about killing people unintentionally. She had touched, kissed, laughed. For a prison, it had been a little slice of everything Skye could think to ask for. The box was protection against what she'd become and she'd ruined that. Her one track mind had been so locked on escape, she hadn't had an opportunity to think about the what then. Panic, hopelessness, and fear, her constant companions these many months, welled up in her. She looked at Ward, eyes brimming with all her terror and she was surprised to see no judgment or impatience there. He looked at her with an instant recognition that was startling. He stepped back to the box and pressed his hands to both sides of her face, framing it. "You can do this, Skye. You've done it before on your own. And, now, you'll have help."

"You once told me that you'd trained to be the whole solution. I've always just been a piece of the solution. A player in the game. Often one that someone else is moving. This whole full-scope thing is new to me and a little difficult to get into." Skye said. She looked at the gray warehouse beyond and knew she was wasting time.

"I told you that when I was deep undercover for Hydra, Skye. Clearly, I wasn't seeing the whole picture either. We've each been a player in a game controlled by someone else. Let's get out of here so we can find a different game."

Skye took a breath and pulled his hand from her face but didn't release it. His touch settled her. It kept the panic at bay. And, as she'd found before, Ward had some affinity with tiny hedgehogs when it came to controlling her powers. "A different game? I don't know if that's possible. But, uh, thanks."

"For what?"

"For talking me down from that," she made a gesture with her free hand and scrunched her face in a manner that clearly painted her disgust. "Panic. It doesn't help."

This time, Skye left the room first stepping gingerly over the shining glob that had been a wall she pulled Ward along behind her. His eyes remained locked on her, tracking her movement, her emotions. He must have been satisfied with whatever he saw because he curtly nodded to the left. Keeping his voice low, he said, "Let's head that way and find an exit."

Skye nodded. "Before we get out of here, there's one thing I want to check on."

Ward's quizzical eyebrow asked the unvoiced question but Skye didn't respond to it. Instead, she shot a quick look to make sure the floor was clear and slid out into the rows of boxes.

Ward followed close behind.