Previously: Skye went with Fitz to give herself up to Wolfe in order to complete the ritual, only to discover that he had been a Skrull, Paibok, undercover as her father. The Fitz she had been with was also a Skrull, Bartak, along with Raina who turned out to be a Skrull named Lyja.

Skye and the real Fitz are now prisoners of the Skrulls. Skye is being forced to sacrifice herself for a ritual to kill all the Inhumans while Fitz is being kept as leverage.


Chapter Twenty-Nine

Apparently Skrulls liked to talk, because between the time they had Skye on the ground and when they began to herd Fitz and herd off to wherever they were going to hold them, they had monologued the hacker's ears off. Maybe they just wanted to rub it in her face how foolish she had been to believe "her father's" story. But still, they told her everything.

Her actual father really had infiltrated SHIELD, but Paibok took him out and replaced him just a year earlier when they found out what he was doing. Who he was after, and that it was a possibility to find the sacrifice. Same thing happened with with Raina. Lyja was the one to replace her.

And of course, Fitz was taken by the aliens from the Hydra facility.

"Don't worry Skye, we're going to find a way out of this," Fitz assured her, far too brightly for their current situation as far as she was concerned. Their current situation being marched up the stairs of the decrepit building the Skrulls were holding them in.

"I know," Skye told him firmly, not voicing that his statement was only half true. Fitz would be getting out of this. She'd make sure of it. They may have had leverage against her, but she could use it right back.

"Well aren't you adorable," said Lyja of Fitz. "So optimistic."

"Shouldn't be too optimistic," said Bartak. "I hope you know that scientist you'd like as your mate has no interest in you."

Skye nearly stopped walking, a deep feeling of nausea setting in with the realization, regarding what Jemma had told her about Fitz while they were having their girl chat. It hadn't been Fitz at all.

"I don't…" Fitz glanced sheepishly at Skye, before turning his attention back to the alien. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Human, I was you. I felt everything you feel and had your memories. I was Leopold Fitz from Glasgow, who prefers wearing ugly comfortable jackets to suits and whose mother never let him have two biscuits after dinner growing up and let me tell you, there is no hiding the attraction you have to one Miss Jemma Simmons," said Bartak, and Skye saw a blush run up her friend's cheeks. "To be honest, it was pretty overwhelming. That's why I tried to do something about it."

Fitz' cheeks got even redder, but all traces of embarrassment were replaced with anger. He stopped, turning around to face the alien head on.

"What did you do to Simmons?"

Bartak smiled, showing off some decidedly pointy teeth. "Only what you tried to do when you were stuck in the ocean. Though I was a little more forward. Maybe that was a mistake because it took me out of character a bit… but nothing a quick memory wipe couldn't fix."

Skye gasped, removing her gaze from the floor to stare incriminatingly at the alien.

"That was you," she spat. "Graviton didn't mess with their memories at all!"

"Of course not, you little idiot," Bartak told Skye shortly, as if her epiphany was merely interrupting his story. He turned back to Fitz. "And I guess the little scientist must really hate you, because she turned me down more than once when I was in your form."

"Yeah right!" Skye exclaimed. "Simmons could never hate Fitz. She hated what you did to him, and she was going to figure out everything if you hadn't messed with her freaking brain!"

"Not that this isn't a fascinating conversation," Lyja pointed out from ahead of them, "but can we continue it while we move?"

Bartak nodded, gesturing for Skye and Fitz to continue their ascension up the stairs.

"Who's Graviton?" Fitz asked suddenly in a whisper.

"He's… a bad guy," said Skye.

"Oh, yeah. Thanks for that. Clears it all up."

"Well, is now really a great time for lengthy explanations, Fitz?" Skye told him, her voice decidedly frantic as she gestured around herself.

"Coulson is going to find us. He won't stop looking," Fitz assured her loudly, as though it were a proclamation to the aliens. Skye honestly didn't know he had it in him. But Simmons had mentioned him acting incredibly bold when he used the EMP to take Garrett out. Maybe Skye was just selling him short.

They walked all the way up the stairs until they reached the door to the roof, and Skye held her breath in fear and anticipation of what could be there. What was so big or scary they had to keep it on top of the building? Weren't they supposed to be taken to some sort of holding cell?

When Lyja opened the door, the bright sun blinded Skye's eyes momentarily. The staircase had been so dark it took them a moment to adjust, but eventually they did, and she was met with a great amount of… nothing.

The roof was bare.

Before Skye could ask a question they were ushered to the middle of the flat empty space, where Lyja promptly tapped in the middle of the air. A keypad rose up from nowhere.

A floating, alien symbol language, keypad. Weird.

Even weirder when a door seemed to appear out of nowhere, dropping down in front of them to the point where it almost made a ramp.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Fitz. And while Skye definitely wasn't expecting it, she hadn't felt much of a shock. She'd been getting way too many surprises handed to her in the last couple days.

"What were you saying about someone finding you?" giggled Lyja, as the two agents were pushed onto the invisible aircraft.

The first room they entered looked similar to the BUS' cargo bay, in the fact that Skye was pretty sure it was a cargo bay. But everything else was different. It had lines of patterns running around the walls and for the most part, the room was empty. It just looked cleaner in general, actually.

"So it's cloaked," mused Fitz, looking around at the space. "I've thought about making one of these devices before!"

Lyja chuckled. "I definitely want to take Curly Hair here for processing," said the alien as she mussed up Fitz' hair as though he were a dog, but he quickly flinched out of her reach. "He's too cute! You can take that thing. It's no fun to be around her if we can't even rough her up."

"Fine by me," said Bartak. "I've had enough of the tiny man, seeing as I lived him."

"Oh but first… take off your jacket," Lyja told Skye, who scrunched up her face in confusion.

"Why?"

"Because I'm telling you to," said Lyja, voice firm with impatience.

It wasn't really much of an answer, but her jacket didn't matter. Heck, she had a whole bag of clothes with her that in the confusion she had no idea where they'd gotten off to.

With jerky firm movements to make sure to outwardly show her disdain, Skye ripped off her black leather jacket and flung it at the Skrull, who caught it diligently in one hand. She then promptly began to put it on.

"Oh, I see. You hate me but you like my style?" scoffed Skye. "Shame you've got me on the chopping block, I'd love to give you some fashion tips so I never have to see another one of those flower dresses again."

Lyja smiled. "Trust me, I hate the dresses too. But when you're another person… well, sense of style changes. A lot of senses change." She gestured to the jacket. "It just would have been such a shame for this to go through processing."

"Processing?" asked Fitz warily.

"Don't worry, it shouldn't take too long for you. You may not have known it, but you've been our guest for quite some time." She smirked, showing off her monstrous teeth in a way that made Skye sure the creature could never smile in a way that didn't look pure evil. Her grin swiftly dropped and she turned to glare at Skye. "That thing has to go through a little more in depth process, seeing as it's new, but you'll see it soon enough.

Fitz glanced uncertainly at Skye, and she could almost feel his worry radiating off him in waves. They shared a quick moment of renewed dread before Lyja grabbed Fitz' arm to start tugging him away.

"Ow!"

"Hey!" Skye growled at the roughness. She took a step to run after him only to find herself jerked back by a hand on her upper arm, hold tight enough to bruise.

"You don't want to do that, little creature," chided Bartak, red eyes bearing into her own. "Lyja may have to hurt the human if you do."

Skye wanted to punch a wall or something. Why couldn't they just threaten her? She could take a hit. The nuns even had a belt for when her rebellious attitude proved too much for them as a kid. But it was always someone else. When she was at Hydra it was Coulson, now it was Fitz. Even Deathlok stopping Ward's heart.

"Fine," she fumed, trying to rip her arm out of his grasp. He softened the grip but didn't release her, using it to guide her through the ship.

As it turned out, "processing" entailed a few things.

First, she was put into a strange rectangular chamber, where she jumped frigidly when jets of cold, purple liquid shot near-painfully onto her entire body, not stopping until she was drenched as a drowned rat. Skye could see why Lyja wanted to take the jacket before she went in.

Just as she started to shiver, a powerful blast of heat slammed into her and dried majority of her off in just a few seconds. The impromptu shower was definitely strange and unexpected, though nothing she couldn't handle. She had gotten this far without fainting.

Next she was put through a scanner in what seemed to be a medical room. It didn't look like any lab she'd ever seen, but after strange rays flashed over her - a scan for injuries, perhaps- she was immediately taken over to a sort of healing machine. A Skrull calibrated it, and almost like magic her hand was fixed. They then stuck her head in to fix the bruises and cuts she'd acquired over the passed few days.

Even her ankle, which had been bothering her so little she was actually confused when that was the appendage they forced inside the machine. Skye couldn't even recall when it had happened… probably one of the times she was thrown around by Graviton.

But the last place they brought her was definitely her least favourite activity. She was in eerily empty, circular room that automatically made Skye hug herself. Great beams of yellow light took up residence in the center of the chamber, and what looked to be a female Skrull stood on the other side of them.

"What is this?" Skye asked curiously, voice quiet, as she felt dwarfed by the strange chamber. It wasn't surprising when she didn't get an answer.

She was pulled to stand on the opposite side of the room from the Skrull already present, just over a strange circle on the ground and something that looked nearly like a gun above her.

She tried to control her now erratic breathing as her stomach started to churn, unable to take her eyes off of the thing above her. If she weren't fairly certain they didn't want to kill her, that's exactly what she'd think they were doing.

So what were they doing?

A light just like one in the center of the room suddenly burst out of the gun and Skye tensed up. She expected some kind of pain, or some sort of uncomfortable feeling, but she honestly didn't feel anything. It was as vacant as though it were merely shining a light on her. Maybe her head felt a little squeeze, but it was hard to tell.

When she looked across the room, she saw it happening to the Skrull standing there as well.

Then it was gone.

No sooner had it been turned off than Bartak was grabbing her arm again as he started to pull her out of the room. She seemed to have gotten the gist of what was happening during the rest of the processing, but that was perplexing.

The young woman glanced behind her back into the chamber one last time. She was just able to make out the Skrull that had shared her experience change before her eyes, into someone the hacker knew quite well.

Herself.

"No," she whispered near inaudibly, before looking up at her Skrull warden accusingly. "You can't do that! She can't replace me!"

Whether with the help of adrenaline or just from pure rage, with a good shove she was able to free herself from Bartak's firm grasp and began running back to the room. It crossed her mind that there was probably nothing she could do, but she couldn't just let someone impersonate her. She couldn't let her team be tricked like that. Again.

When she neared the chamber she saw Skrull-Skye talking with some of the other aliens, but the fake girl stopped as she noticed the hacker bolting back towards them. Skye saw her own face smirk at her, along with a taunting wave of twirled fingers.

Talk about self-conflict.

Seeing the gesture made by her twin was so strange it made something snap in Skye, and she stopped in her tracks. Just stared.

It was too long of a pause and she felt Bartak's hand on the scruff of her neck, gripping firmly as it mingled with her hair and pulled loose strands from her head. She craned her head backwards.

"Get back here," he growled as he forced her back away from the chamber.

"But you can't do this," Skye snarled as she tripped over herself and was hauled away, surprised at how furious her voice sounded as opposed to afraid. "You can't replace me with some half-assed versio-"

"It's a precaution," he interrupted, speaking simply. "But we needed the scan now. Now stop whining."

He pronounced the last word as she was shoved fiercely forward, his hand leaving her neck. She rubbed at it tenderly, her cautious eyes watching the Skrull. She was still finding it hard to look at them. Their appearance was new to her and frankly, kind of horrifying.

More horrifying was what they could do.

She came to the conclusion that if the team even came close to finding them, they'd send out her clone to deter them. The alien had all her memories and her skills. Why should the team suspect it wasn't her? They didn't with Fitz. She didn't with Fitz, and Simmons had almost paid the price for it. Thank god that girl knew her best friend.

No, there was no hope for her. But she would not go down without knowing Fitz was safe.

Bartak guided her down a small flight of stairs where she was met with what probably should have been a disappointing sight, but she still felt a sigh of relief push passed her lips.

Fitz was sitting on the cot inside of what was, for the most part, a clear cage. Though the walls weren't completely see through, they had some distortion so you could tell the boundaries. He seemed to be wearing some sort of skin tight, dark blue, jumpsuit. It wasn't incredibly flattering.

He stood up when he saw them coming, but he didn't say anything. Merely blinked. She didn't know what to say either. 'Hey, how was your induction to the alien spaceship prison?' just didn't seem to have that ring to it.

Bartak brought her right up to what seemed to be a door to the cell and brought a key out from his belt. The strange metallic door slid open gently with a hiss, but before releasing Skye to go inside he shoved something into her chest.

"Put that on," he told her firmly, and she realized it was probably the same thing Fitz was wearing.

Skye didn't answer the alien. She merely walked inside the room as she heard the door slide shut behind her, watching Fitz' eyes as he, in turn, watched Bartak leave up the stairs. The moment he was gone, Fitz hopped over to Skye.

"Ok, so I've been examining the cell and I've never seen anything like it! It's as though it has a cloaking device in it of itself. But honestly it's not that advanced, we could have something like this up and running at the BUS soon enough," Fitz told her in a near cheerful voice. Actually, it was pretty dang cheerful.

"Alright," said Skye slowly, trying to take in the small mouthful of information.

This was the first moment they had to themselves since this whole experience started, and that honestly wasn't the first thing she'd think of to talk about. But he was on the right track as he got right to work with thinking of ways out, so she tried to do something Ward taught her when he was still her SO: compartmentalize. He said to put away your fears in a tiny box and focus on the now.

Skye closed her eyes, and tried to imagine a box in her mind…

"Hey, are you alright?" asked Fitz. "I mean, other than the obvious of course. You kind of looked like you were in pain."

So making a box was so hard she looked like she had a massive headache or something. Great. Why did Ward have to make everything seem so easy?

Imaginary box or not, she still managed to push her fears far enough to the side for now.

"Sorry. No, I'm fine. Well you know, considering... I was just thinking," she rambled. "Anyway, what does all that mean?"

"Ah, nothing really. I just thought it was interesting. I was trying to see if it had any flaws we could use but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's near impenetrable!"

"Great," Skye said sarcastically, maybe snappy enough to be considered harsh, just before walking passed him to sit on the scanty cot.

"Yeah, there's only one bed. I don't know how you wanted to handle that…?"

"Simple. I won't sleep," she told him.

"What?"

"I've got a week left of life," she pointed out. "I'm not going to waste any of that time unconscious."

"Oh come on, Skye, that's ridiculous!"

"More ridiculous than being trapped on a spaceship surrounded by shape shifting aliens?" she asked him wryly.

"Well… uh, yes! As that seems to be happening and not sleeping for a week could physically harm you, not to mention how difficult it would be to even accomplish in the first place... Anyway, we're getting out of here. Coulson will come."

Skye almost protested, but she decided against it. He didn't need to know about the other Skye that was ready to take her place and throw them off the trail. What was wrong with giving him a little bit of hope, even if it was false? It was just like when he disagreed about Ward being a traitor. It was his coping mechanism.

She sighed. "You're right. All the more reason for one of us to be up and ready when he comes." She furrowed her brow, suddenly realizing that the engineer had had his back to her for the whole conversation. "Fitz… what are you doing?"

"Oh well, I just thought you might be changing," he told her, still facing the door.

She glanced down at the jumpsuit with disdain. Dark blue with black stripes running up the arms wasn't exactly fashionable. Then again, even if it was Gucci or Prada, it would still be prisoner's clothing.

"Wasn't really planning on it, actually," she mumbled.

With the information that she wasn't intending to change for the aliens, Fitz turned to face her.

"I was thinking about it. Maybe we should try to co-operate, because until we find a solid way out of here or to affect them, we don't want to give them any reason to suspect. You know, any more of a reason to keep an eye on us."

Skye considered the words as her gaze shifted back to the clothes. "I guess I should, then…"

Just as she began to reach for the garment they heard the door opening, and Skye came to stand by Fitz as Lyja and Bartak came down the stairs.

"Hello, you two," sang the former.

Skye wasn't sure if she hated her voice more now or when she was Raina. With the Raina voice you could tell she was just trying to work you over, but everything Lyja said now sounded like she was trying to be extra hyper. As if to excite a child, or even a pet.

"How do you like the new place?" she cooed.

"Well, it's a prison cell, so not much," Skye said dryly.

"Could be a bit roomier," put in Fitz.

Lyja smiled sideways, her eyes moving over to look at Bartak mischievously. "You know, I think they're right. Must be boring."

"I agree," said Bartak. "What should we do about that?"

Lyja's eyes seemed to sparkle, and Skye feared for whatever thought was giving them so much excitement. Fitz chewed his lip next to her.

"How about we play a game?"


A/n: Spoilers: They gonna play Monopoly.

...

Kidding.

It's Uno.

And isn't "mopes" a funny word? I like it.

Ok sorry. My brain is kinda fried from schoolwork right now! Thanks for reading, as always!