Hi everyone! We're posting slightly earlier than planned because we hit 1000 kudos on AO3 today, and as a result we decided to celebrate.

After four hours, and several accidental excursions, we finally reached the first of the most probable locations. Annabeth let out a noise of disapproval when she saw the derelict warehouse that was sat in front of us. "Is that it?"

"There could be extra resources underground or something," I pointed out. "Derelict buildings make for good cover, and this one's pretty secluded and pretty big."

"Yeah, but I'm more used to it being a hideout for cyclops, not fucking psychopaths with drones." Her grip on her dagger tightened minisculely.

Reyna shrugged. "I mean, it could be both."

Oh, thanks for that wonderful insight, Reyena. That definitely doesn't terrify me more.

I crept nice and close, and switched off my torch, giving myself a minute to adjust to the darkness before standing up very slowly and peering in through a broken window. I ignored the others hissing furiously at me to be more careful or whatever. I knew what I was doing.

It was completely empty. Looked like this first site was a bust.

I gestured the others forward, and knocked some more of the glass out of the window frame with the base of my torch, then slipped inside, switching the dim beam back on to get a good look around.

It was abandoned. Not just mock-abandoned, but properly nobody's-been-here-for-months abandoned, with dust lying thickly on the floor and the crookedly-stacked pallets in the corner.

There was a series of soft thuds as the others climbed in through the windows, each switching their torches on too and beginning to look around.

There was something not quite right here though, a gut instinct told me.

The metal chests in one corner just didn't quite fit: this was an abandoned farm building, after all.

Naturally, I decided to go and investigate more closely, carefully studying the lock mechanism before finding my wires and starting to fashion a decent lockpick. The others largely ignored me, continuing their scan of the rest of the warehouse.

After a short amount of time in which I wondered whether or not I'd well and truly lost my touch, the lock gave with a quiet click, allowing me to throw open the heavy metal lid with a crash that echoed in the near-silence. Three torch beams sliced through the darkness to hone in on me. Oops.

It was worth it, though. The chests were filled with weird-ass lumps of tech that definitely didn't belong on a combine harvester.

"Guys, I think I've got something," I called over my shoulder. "I don't know what the fuck it is, but it is something."

Jason was the first over, sword already out and torch in the other hand, all tense and ready to attack like a good soldier-boy.

Somehow I didn't think that whatever this tech was was likely to attack him. To me, it looked like obsolete parts that didn't actually work, but I admired his dedication and all that.

I uncapped Riptide and used it to poke the contents. Nothing happened, so I reached in and picked up the topmost tangle of steel and wires. Once it was out of the box, it was quite apparent that it was a clunky metal forearm with a small arsenal attached.

I lifted it up and used it to wave. "Look familiar?" I asked.

Reyna nodded gravely, clearly unimpressed by my antics. Spoilsport. "That looks almost exactly like the drone used to attack the Camp."

I chucked the arm back into the chest and shut it a little more carefully than I had opened it. "Yeah, but this place has been abandoned for a while. We're easily the first ones to disturb all of this dust in a month or so. I guess that means that we should prioritise the next-nearest site, which is about two miles over the hills to our east."

Jason nodded. I clapped my hands together. "Is everyone in the mood for a bit more hiking?"

Annabeth groaned quietly.

o0O0o

Dawn was beginning to grey out the skyline by the time we arrived, but it was still dark enough for us to get pretty damn close by crawling around (dignified as ever) in the undergrowth.

I'd had a suspicion about this site from the start; something about the 50m-wide cleared perimeter and the fact where it looked half-abandoned and half-armoured in a weird kind of way. I hadn't been able to get close to this one at all on the original scout, because none of the paths went even remotely close.

I'd hoped and prayed that it wouldn't be this one, because this one was going to be the hardest to get at, but I'd always had a sneaking suspicion.

I turned to look in the vague direction of the others (with torches off and our faces practically in the mud, it was quite hard to see exactly where they were). "I'm going to see if I can get up close to that window," I pointed at the tiny dark opening on the first floor, "and if I see anything suspicious, I'm going to break it and get in there. If any alarms go off, you guys stay put: if I get caught alone then maybe they'll be less suspicious, but if they catch all four of us we won't stand a chance. If I'm gone more than an hour, assume that I've been caught and get the hell out. Questions?"

"Who died and made you the boss here?" Reyna asked, the worry tingeing her tone quite opposed to the harshness of her words.

Jason chuckled softly. "Oh, nobody died. SHIELD's very best is back, though. I'd listen to him if I were you." Aw, thanks man. His faith was completely misplaced (hell, he'd probably got twice my field experience now), but it was touching nonetheless.

No, I was volunteering because I was a dead man anyway. They could run all the checks that they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to track me back to either camp. I mean I don;t think that I'd truly interacted with anyone outside of the demigod world since that dingy little internet cafe in Chicago (except Clint, who I'd broken my promise about explaining the situation to on account of being almost dead); no one had any fucking clue where I was.

Good.

So I wriggled out of the undergrowth, and swiftly and silently crossed the painfully open gap between the shrubbery and the building, pressing myself into the tiny dancing shadows that the pre-dawn light allowed.

Fortunately, I hadn't lost my touch when it came to clinging to windowsills, so it wasn't long before I was peering over the bottom edge, pressing my face against the glass while holding myself up on white-tipped fingers and praying that my feet didn't slip from where they gripped on the not-quite-smooth vertical wall.

Well, my hunch was unfortunately correct, it seemed. This place looked to me like it was very much occupied, even though the owner was trying quite hard for it to look as if that wasn't the case. It was just a little bit too pristine to be abandoned, and it was also painfully obvious that everything in there was brand new.

Reconnaissance? Nah.

I dropped back to the ground to get another look at the window, before drawing a knife and jumping back up again, wedging the blade into the slight gap between the window's edge and the frame and using it to jimmy the latch. Once the window was open, it was a matter of seconds to pull myself very elegantly through head-first in a good impression of a beached whale, landing as softly as one can when they fall into a head-first pile on the floor (yeah, out of practice for B&E, it seemed).

Jumping to my feet, I instantly placed a hand on my gun, knowing that I was probably going to get attacked from multiple directions; no one leaves a military drone factory alone without supervision. That's just plain stupid.

Silence.

To be perfectly honest, I felt a little ridiculous standing half-frozen while nobody came to shoot at me, but it allowed me to listen for a brief moment to the complete and perfect silence: there really was nobody coming.

Alright then: time to get to work. I pulled the window as near to closed as I could (I may have slightly broken it whilst breaking in. They do call it breaking and entering for a reason), and headed off down a random corridor.

I wanted to get downstairs: there were no windows in the downstairs, which suggested to me that there was something dodgy going on. Only problem was that I wasn't psychic and didn't have a floor plan, and it wasn't like I could just go up to somebody and ask for directions, because 1) there was nobody around, and 2) they would probably shoot me.

So, trial and error it was. I just sort of opened random doors looking for a set of stairs until I found one (I'll admit that it took a few minutes, but in that few minutes I remained undetected so I counted it as a win).

Then, for want of a better idea, I jogged lightly down the stairs, pushing open the door at the bottom and coming face-to-face with a very tall guy in a bulletproof vest, who I took it was probably a member of the security team.

"Oh, hi there!" I enthused. "Sorry, got a bit lost. Can I ask where I'd find the bathroom?"

My idiotic display was enough to distract him for a split-second as he reached to his belt, and in that split second I felled him with a good punch to the jaw and a gentle (not) blow to the back of the head.

Then I sort of shoved him against the wall into a sorry sitting position, apologised to his unconscious body, and carried on my way.

I continued to run along this bottom corridor, hoping that I could find any evidence of the drones and who was building them. I rifled through (suspiciously) empty offices in the hope that there would be a pay slip or something that said 'Thank you for being employed to make murdering drones; your employer is...', but alas, no such luck.

What was (naturally) my luck was the thundering of hobnailed boots along the empty corridor. Seemingly my ugly friend had managed to raise an alarm of some kind. Or somebody had found my broken window. Either way, this was probably not a good sign.

I slammed open the office door and sprinted down the corridor, taking random turns through the warren until I came across a huge pair of double doors at the end of one.

Somehow I'd actually quite missed the running-for-my-life-whilst-supercharged-with-adrenaline part of my life at SHIELD: weirdly enough, I was really rather enjoying myself.

So I hurled open the double doors, not caring in the slightest whether or not the room was occupied.

And in doing so I hit the goddamn jackpot. Huge room, high ceiling, and enormous wires dangling down like cabled snakes, feeding electrical lifeblood to the dozens of cold metal drones that hung lifelessly in wired cradles. Catwalks zigzagged around their heads, and various ladders were propped against them.

And right in the middle of it all was a scraggly-looking man with a computer and a wrench. A scraggly-looking man who, in that moment, looked up from his work and furrowed his brow at me slightly, before reaching casually to his left and pressing a button, which at a guess, alerted the jackbooted thugs to my exact location.

That probably wasn't good, especially the part where he sat back and chuckled thoughtfully, scrutinising his computer display and completely ignoring the intruder.

Not gonna lie, it's kind of depressing to be so underestimated by an opponent.

I stalked up to him, my finger pointed towards him. "Hey! What the fuck do you think you're doing, messing around with drones that can murder people?" Not my most subtle interrogation, but I didn't exactly have a lot of time, did I?

He leant back further in his chair, the irritating picture of nonchalance. "And why exactly do you care?" he asked, speaking with a thick Russian accent.

I pulled out my gun, thumbing off the safety and pointing it at him. "Okay, then. I'll ask an easy one. Why are you doing this?"

Russian Guy narrowed his eyes at me, glancing to the barrel of the gun and back to my face. "Why does anybody do anything?"

"I'm asking, not you. You're answering, and that's not an answer," I snapped, fighting the urge to glance at the door, which was undoubtedly about to burst open to herald the arrival of a lot of people, who were most probably armed and going to shoot me. No time like the present.

"I'm not going to tell you shit." He turned his attention back to the computer screen.

I fired the gun, close enough for him to feel the heat as the bullet whisked just past his left ear, the retort echoing in the enormous, quiet space.

His eyes flicked back up to mine and to the smoking gun in my hands, and he just smiled. But it was his glance towards the door which gave it away.

I spun around and squeezed the trigger just as the doors exploded open and a small army poured in, all armed, all highly trained, and all looking murderously in my direction.

I kept shooting until the chamber was empty, and then I took a dive to my right, ducking in amongst the enormous drones and praying that I wouldn't trip over one of the flexes as I darted between them, dodging the stray bullets which came close to me.

I'd kinda hoped that they wouldn't shoot at the drones on account of them being valuable, but apparently they were bulletproof, which was just great, because it meant that 1) they'd keep shooting, and 2) there was the additional threat of ricocheting bullets which could come flying at me from literally any direction.

Time to maybe change the game a bit. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, I made my decision and all but flew up one of the many ladders, and took a flying leap off the top, grabbing onto the underside of a catwalk with both hands and miraculously swinging myself up and onto it without getting turned into Swiss cheese.

Thank god SHIELD actually taught me some stuff before I decided to flee. I was going to have to employ every trick in the book here, the first of which was going to be the very fetching crab-run as I dashed along the catwalk whilst also trying to crush my entire frame into approximately two feet of height.

It's harder than it sounds, especially when you're six foot and running for your life while live ammunition sparks off the metal railings around you.

I peeked over the edge: good. Then I threw myself off the edge, landing on the shoulders of one guy surrounded by several others armed with nothing but a knife and a gun that was out of bullets.

Twenty slightly nerve-wracking seconds later, I had felled six guys and only got a small slash on my left arm where one of them got a lucky strike in with his own blade.

What was slightly unfortunate was the part where I was now completely surrounded by eight more of them, all of which were pointing guns at me.

So I paused, breath sawing in my chest and probably wearing my signature terrifying smile. Then I very deliberately dropped the knife and raised my hands very slowly, feeling my final weapon (ie knife 2.0) burning a hole in my weapons belt. I just needed one of them to take that one step forwards.

All eight stepped inwards in the same instant, and in that instant I reached for the knife, and the stillness immediately dissolved into a roiling bloodbath again. An iron-strong arm closed around my torso even as I thought that I was getting somewhere, pinning my knife arm to my side as the guy's other arm came around my throat, effectively crushing my windpipe.

He let me squirm uselessly for a few seconds, spitting curses in every language I knew (slightly hoarsely, given that crushing my windpipe also involved crushing my larynx), before letting another guy step in with a very large knife, which he held concerningly close to my face until I stopped wriggling, and then confiscated mine.

I summoned up everything I had into my death glare, but it probably didn't hold that much power given that I was both in a chokehold and being held at knifepoint.

The pair of them (plus the two or three others that I hadn't managed to get at) wrested me over to a conveniently-placed chair, which I was very expertly tied to.

And through all of this, the Russian guy just watched, leaning back in his chair.

"I have to admit, this isn't how I usually like to be tied up."

Wow, my brain really could not shut my mouth up, huh?

Ugly Thug #1 clearly didn't appreciate my wit, so he gave me a truly blistering crack on the side of the jaw that snapped my head to the side. Nice one, Percy.

"First off, let's establish who we need to send the body back to." The Russian guy finally got up to inspect me. Perhaps wearing all of my branded tac gear wasn't the best plan in this situation. "Hmm, who do you work for, boy?"

I'm sorry, boy? What the fuck? I am literally 24 years old. (Oh gods, I'm 24 years old) I decided to give him a taste of his own goddamn medicine and sat there in stony silence, resolutely staring him down.

"You have incredible loyalty to an organisation that sent you on a suicide mission." His eyes roved up and down my body. "Was it the FBI? CIA? Or perhaps" - his eyes caught the SHIELD insignia on the breast of my tac vest - "SHIELD?"

I couldn't help myself: I started to laugh. A somewhat insanity-tinged laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Oh, this was too good.

Thug #1 smacked me again, so hard that I saw stars for a good five seconds. "What's so funny?"

Okay, time to make something up. "I keep telling them not to emblazon every goddamn piece of kit with the fucking eagle because this is bound to happen, but did they listen? So much for 'don't tell them who you work for' when they can find out just by looking at you, right?

"Well, too bad. You're wrong." I sneered up at him, channelling all of my anger. "I don't work for anyone, especially not them anymore."

I saw a couple of the henchmen hesitate, as if trying to work out if this was an elaborate ruse, or just the truth. Jokes on them, it was both.

And, as I expected, as is unfortunately typical when thuggish types get a little confused, they decided to take the opportunity provided by the lapse in the conversation to go to town with their brass knuckles, which I had to admit wasn't fair, because I'd both answered their question, and was still tied to a chair.

But you know what? Life isn't fair, and it wasn't like this was the first ever beating I'd taken.

In fact, this was starting to feel very much like my final SHIELD mission, right down to the brass knuckles. Ahh, good times.

"Look, I'm just a guy that found one of your fucking drones, which then tried to shoot me by the way, terrible programming, and then I came to investigate, who the fuck is trying to shoot me. That's it." I spat a glob of blood onto the floor to underline my point.

The Russian guy frowned, and one of his thugs took up the questioning. "Then why the hell are you wearing SHIELD gear?" His lips curled up into the sort of predatory snarl that I'd expect to see on a lion's face before it ate me for dinner. "We've got you there, haven't we?"

I'd already said that much, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and let them figure it out, which they probably wouldn't like, but hey, you don't leave a tip when the service is bad and I was never coming back to this particular restaurant.

Thug #2 came and stood behind me, then took an enormous handful of hair and used it to yank my head back as far as he could while I was still tied to the chair. He then, predictably, held the edge of a sharpish knife to the thin skin of my throat.

I swallowed very carefully, and didn't say anything. I don't give in to bullies. Especially not seven years after high school.

Russian Guy snapped something at the other henchmen, who all filed neatly out, presumably to go back to whatever the hell they'd been doing before I broke in, leaving me in the room with just him and two rather beefy thugs.

Thug #1 took advantage of my slightly precarious position and used it to jam a short-bladed knife into my thigh, just above the knee.

I glanced down at it as best I could by just pivoting my eyeballs, and said, "Dude," in the best exasperated-but-at-best-mildly-inconvenienced voice that I could muster without my voice breaking because ouch.

I winced before pulling my hands together at the back of the chair. I'm not sure why evil guys always insist on tying me to chairs, but surely they'd think that we were probably given lessons on this in training.

I felt the rope on my wrists slacken. Bingo.

Thug #2 tightened his grip even more, drawing blood with the edge of his knife and probably pulling a big chunk of hair out of my scalp, while Thug #1 thoughtfully waltzed off to pull up a chair right next to me, sitting down with a (very bad) fake-thoughtful look on his face, before leaning over, taking a hold of the knife that he'd stored in my leg (inconsiderate), and twisting.

I felt every muscle in my entire body seize in agony, but I fought against the instinct to buck against the chair and scream for all I was worth until I trembled furiously, panting for breath through tightly-gritted teeth and only letting myself relax after he drew the blade from my thigh to stop and inspect it as blood dripped off the end and onto the floor (white, as floors seem to be so often in my life).

He glanced up, back to my face. I glared resolutely back. "So," he began again, "how many others are there?"

"Did you not listen to a word I just said?" I asked. "I don't work for SHIELD. There are no others."

"Well then," he said. "You won't mind us just giving them a call to check, then, will you?"

He pulled out his mobile and, at prompting from Russian guy, who pulled something up on his computer, dialled a number and pressed call, before putting it onto speaker. "Just get us through to somebody with some authority, will you? I suppose if you don't, we'll have to go outside and find your friends, and we might have to start removing non-vital parts of your anatomy. Because nobody just has gear from SHIELD, so you must work for them, yes?"

He demonstrated his point by pressing his thumb into the fresh wound in my leg, which sent a tidal wave of agony washing over my entire body again. I gritted my teeth, and continued to work on the ropes, even as a cheerful female voice came over the phone. "This is George's Fresh Flowers, how can I help?"

Well, some of the codes clearly hadn't changed. I shot another glare at Thug #1, who smiled at me and waved his bloody knife, before clearing my throat slightly to get Thug #2 to loosen his grip enough for me to talk. "Uh yeah, I'd like a bouquet with carnations and peonies, please," I ground out, trying to keep my voice level.

"Of course, I'll put you right on through," came the cheery voice again, and there was a click as the line switched.

"Identification code, please," snapped a different, altogether harsher voice. I'd met the people on the SHIELD phones a few times. They were scary.

Well, this was when things could get interesting. I knew for a fact that ID codes weren't ever reused if an agent's body was never found, so I couldn't be mistaken for anybody else, but I also knew that my code would flag up every search parameter in the damn room.

I hesitated, and Thug #1 dug his thumb into my leg again, and began to roughly undo the straps of my vest. As soon as I could breathe again, I took the hint and regurgitated the string of numbers. Russian Guy smiled, even as Thug #1 removed my vest and tossed it to him. He held it thoughtfully, examining the fabric, and the stitches that neatly closed the vertical gash in the centre of it from Kronos' sword.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line as the operator presumably was faced with a somewhat baffling search result. Thug #1 pressed the 'mute' key and snarled at me, "You'd better get us somebody good, or you can say bye-bye to the life of all of your friends out there and yourself."

He unmuted, and I coughed to get the guy's attention. "I know what you're thinking," I began, "but I wouldn't call unless it was urgent. Patch me through to Coulson. If he's busy, patch me through to Fury. This is important."

"I don't have the authority to do that."

Thug #1 decided then to take the lead. "I suggest you do what he says, or the only way you'll ever see your precious agent again is in a plastic bag, in lots of pieces."

There was a click, and a ringtone.

"Look, Barton, if that's you, I really don't have the time right now, you were supposed to be at training three-"

"Coulson," I snapped.

The line went so quiet that I almost thought he'd hung up. Apparently Thug #1 thought so too, because he slipped the knife between my ribs on my left side, which to say the least took my breath away a little.

"Is this some kind of a joke?" Coulson asked, voice carefully back to his usual flat monotone.

I exhaled slightly breathlessly. "Coulson, I need you to listen to me."

"Jackson?" he asked, the slightest inflection of what was probably incredulity in his tone.

Thug #1 grinned. "Hello, Coulson. We've got your precious boy here, and it won't be long until we find his team as well, so I suggest that you do exactly as he says and listen very carefully indeed. I don't know how you found us and to be quite honest I don't care, but if you ever want to see your agent alive again, then I suggest that you leave us perfectly well alone, understood?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. I don't know who you are, where you are, what you are doing, or why you have my agent in your possession, because I didn't sanction any mission for any reason."

Thug #1 twisted the knife in my ribs, and I let out a soft cry between my tightly gritted teeth despite my best efforts. "Don't play games with us. You will leave Ivan Vanko alone, and we will keep your agent for insurance."

No, they wouldn't. While Thug #1 had been using me as a pincushion, Thug #2 had relaxed his grip somewhat, since a Swiss-cheesed quarry doesn't usually try to escape. And I had been working on that damn rope, twisting my hands until my wrists were scraped raw, but I was almost there.

Coulson sighed, as if trying to explain something to a toddler. "I don't think you understand. I did not send the agent in your possession, so you will have to get me up to speed on exactly why he is with you." Typical Coulson; trying to keep them on the phone in the hopes that it could be tracked. If my Russian friend (I assumed Vanko) was good enough to get the number for the agents' switchboard, then he was good enough to scramble a phone signal, so it was a futile effort, but kind of him despite the fact that I was, well, dead in his opinion.

Thug #1 drew the knife from between my ribs, and I seized the opportunity that the moment provided, in one movement slipping my bonds and hurling the chair backwards to collide violently with Thug #2, who let go of my hair in his surprise.

The chair sort of rolled awkwardly over with my feet still attached to it, but it only took a moment or two for me to wriggle free and force myself to my feet.

Neither of the thugs was coming for me, which probably wasn't a good sign.

I discovered why as soon as I tried to take a step on my stabbed leg, as blood promptly gushed over my knee and the damn thing folded beneath me, very unhelpfully landing me rather heavily and painfully on the floor. Stupid leg. Intelligently, I dragged myself back onto my feet and tried again, to much the same effect, just a pace further away.

Rasping laughter filled the room. "Is this what passes for SHIELD's best, now?" Thug #1 demanded into the phone, drawing a gun. "The fool who can't even run away?"

He aimed very carefully at the same leg that was collapsing every time I put my weight on it, and fired, the shot echoing deafeningly.

He hung up the phone and tossed it contemptuously away, even as I let out a strangled cry and fell again, the neat holes in my calf meaning that I was most definitely unable to walk now.

He strolled over, casual as you like, grabbing my left arm and dragging me back the pitiful distance that I had covered (probably knowing full well that it stretched the wound in my left side; asshole) and letting go, leaving me to sit in a pathetic heap right next to the chair I'd just escaped from. I knew as well as he did that I didn't have the strength left to make another break for it.

Vanko scoffed slightly, looking down his nose from his comfy-looking chair by his bank of monitors. "Keep him. Boss is coming later to check that we are ready. Maybe he will get him to talk."

The two thugs nodded, and each took an arm, hoisting me to my feet (well, foot) and half frog-marched, half-dragged me out of the main lab and a short way down the corridor, opening a door that looked inconspicuous from the outside but was concerningly thick and tying my hands securely together before looping the rope they were tied to through a ring in the ceiling that appeared to be there for the specific purpose of dangling prisoners at just the height that meant that the tips of their toes just about held purchase on the floor.

And then, like the assholes they were, they left, the worryingly-thick door (with no window, too), closing behind them like a death knell. It was probably soundproof.

And so I did all I could: hung about (ha ha) for a couple of hours until the door opened again, revealing the two thugs, Vanko, and a skinny guy in an expensive suit that I did, unfortunately, recognise.

"Finally," I whined. "You have no idea how numb my hands are right now."

Justin Hammer, the guy that had come to consult for SHIELD a couple of times that Clint and I had watched make a fool of himself from the rafters, shuffled uncomfortably. "Does he really have to hang like that? Surely he can't get out of the cell."

Vanko shrugged. "Maybe, but it's more fun this way." He gestured to one of the thugs (I think Thug #2), who strolled over and punched me hard in the solar plexus.

My body sort of tried to double over, but couldn't because gravity's a bitch sometimes. I would probably have made a smartass remark if I wasn't so bloody winded by it, so just stayed there for a couple of moments while I gasped for air like some sort of fish.

The irony of myself being fishlike was so unnecessarily hilarious to me that, as soon as I could make any sound again, I was laughing breathily like a maniac, even though Hammer was looking a bit scared and every slight movement sent little shocks of pain through my bruised and battered body.

You know what? Good. I sure as hell didn't have much dignity left (being strung up like a dead pheasant does that to you), but if I could still strike fear into people's hearts, even if only pathetic idiots like Hammer, I must be doing something right.

The nearby thug (#2?) grabbed my chin and yanked my face level with his. "Something funny that you want to share with the class?" he snarled.

I felt my face split into a wide, crazed grin. My teeth were probably bloody. "No, actually."

Hammer looked even more surprised now that he'd heard me speak English, as if he thought that this was going to be like some kind of bad movie, where the intruder is from far away and only speaks a very specific dialect of Ukrainian.

Of course, insolence only earned me punches, but I didn't feel like rolling over and behaving anyway (maybe that's why SHIELD hired me: I'm too stubborn to do as I'm told).

"Why are you showing me this?" Hammer asked, impatience lacing his irritating voice. "You're supposed to be telling me that the drones are ready for tonight's show and that I'm not going to stand on that stage with another pile of useless crap and make a fool of myself, not that you've caught some random kid breaking and entering."

Vanko chuckled, and gestured in my direction. "He is SHIELD," he said, "not a random kid."

Hammer froze. "Does this mean that we have a problem?"

Thug #1 spoke up from the doorway. "We made sure that SHIELD won't be bothering us."

I laughed again, wheezing slightly. "If you think that faking my death is going to make them less likely to bother you, you've clearly never been involved with SHIELD before."

Thug #2's brows furrowed murderously. "Are you threatening us?" he asked, taking a threatening step forward.

I ignored him. "Even if SHIELD cared about me, which they don't by the way, they now think I'm dead, which means that there's nothing to stop them descending on this place with all guns blazing and just razing it to the ground. No prisoners. No questions. Just a really big crater where this place used to stand."

Hammer dithered, as if he was thinking about leaving. "You serious?"

I decided not to bother answering that. Didn't want to get a rep for being a prisoner who told everybody everything.

Hammer seemed to get the hint through his thick skull. "I think we should move out. You can set up at my labs. That way you're closer if anything goes wrong, and if this guy's telling the truth, then there's nobody here to get blown up. Anyway, the drones?"

Thug #2 nodded at Thug #1, who tossed him a key before closing the thick door, leaving me in a soundproofed room with a guy who had a murderous gleam in his eye and the small advantage over me of not being tied up.

After about ten minutes, he got bored of using me as his personal punching bag and left without another word, leaving me to stew in the oppressive silence and wonder what on earth could be happening on the other side of that door.

I'll admit to sort of floating off for a while, letting seconds bleed into minutes into hours, until I found myself in a strange dissociated rhythm. It took me a while to care about what it was, but once I'd summoned up the brainpower to be curious, it became immediately and painfully obvious that it was my way out.

The plumbing system. Of course. The strange gurgling rhythm that I'd accidently tuned into was the steady flow of the water in the narrow pipes that ran across the ceiling of my cell.

I mean, there wasn't going to be enough water in them to do anything particularly impressive, but it would be a start.

So I took a deep breath and closed my eyes (cliche, yes, but when it works we just go with it), focussing on the pathetic little stream running through the rusty pipes, and then I pulled with the edges of my mind.

The pipework fell from the ceiling with a clang, a truly pathetic trickle flowing from the broken edges. Great. But, it was enough for my primary plan, which was to untangle myself from the ceiling, and I didn't need an ocean to snap the rusty hook to which the rope was connected.

I didn't really think it through, though, because as soon as I broke the hook I had nothing holding me upright anymore (strange, that), so I elegantly folded like a house of cards onto the damp floor, where I just sort of lay for a couple of minutes as agony throbbed in my injured leg and side.

Once I was done being pathetic (harder than it sounds; trust me), I turned my attention to the rope still binding my hands together. It was good and long, and, if I could untie the knots, I could probably repurpose it with a length of pipe to make some sort of splint for my leg.

Fifteen minutes later, and I had removed the rope from my hands and used it to lash two lengths of pipe to my left leg. No idea whether it would work, but it was worth a try. I also grabbed a longer piece of pipe to use as a crutch. It was entirely possible that it would snap under my weight, but I didn't really have any other options.

So, one hurdle down. The next thing to tick off the 'bid for freedom' list was the three-inch thick door between me and the corridor. Not sure how I was going to get out of this one, given that I couldn't even see through it. I had no idea what was going on outside my cell, which at this moment was not helpful for me. But hey, sometimes life gives you lemons, so I was going to have to deal with it.

Man, I'd rather have a bucketful of lemons than sit another second in this godforsaken box.

I crawled over to the corner of the cell, right next to the door, and positioned myself so that I was almost standing and possibly capable of jumping at someone, and then I waited. The one advantage that I had was that they couldn't see into the cell either when they opened the door.

After what felt like three hours but was probably more like five minutes, there was a dull thunk from the door. That meant to me that a lock was disengaged, which would then mean…

The door creaked open, and I flung myself rather awkwardly at my assailant, knocking them to the ground with a small cry of shock.

It was Thug #1, which made me extremely happy (hopefully, he'd come to gloat and I'd cut that short). I gave him a good punch and hoped that he'd stay down in the time it took me to unpeel myself from the floor and hobble along the corridor, right hand pressed against the wall and left clinging onto that stupid length of pipe as if my life depended on it.

Surely villain's hideouts would have a fire escape or something, right?

o0O0o

Okay, so no fire escape. But there was a back door, which was much the same thing except locked.

I didn't have a key, but I did have a thin wire hidden in the top hem of my boot, which made for a decent-ish lockpick in a pinch. And I was determined, so it only took my three minutes to hear the hammers fall and chuck myself at the door, flinging it open onto the darkened landscape (again? I'd been in there longer than I thought).

The alarm started to wail. Wasn't that just fabulous.

No time to lose, so I limped out as quickly as I could, tottering across the open stretch with my gaze fixed on the tree line that was so close and yet so far away.

I was about two-thirds of the way across when the floodlights turned on, and the idiotic half of my brain just went berserk with panic. I was not going to get caught now, not when my freedom was in sight.

I glanced behind me as a shadow moved into the light of the open doorway, and aimed something large in my direction. Not desperately wanting to get shot for a second time in a 24-hour period, I hit the deck and began to do a super dignified wriggle to try and cross the last twenty or so metres.

Bullets strafed at the ground around me, and I wriggled faster as flecks of soil and rock spattered in all directions. Voices echoed into the silence as whoever was shooting decided to point out exactly where I was, just in case the whole world didn't know.

Screw it. I wasn't going to die with my face in the mud here, and I certainly wasn't going to cross the final ten metres in the time it took for those guys to mobilise.

So I got one foot under myself, and gripped my metal piping with white knuckles, taking a deep breath (ouch) before summoning pretty much all of my fading strength in one last gargantuan effort, leaping to my feet and taking just three huge strides to cover the last open stretch into the trees, stumbling on the roots and almost falling, but not quite, because making it this far didn't mean that I'd make it out entirely, and if I fell now then I wasn't going to get up again.

I weaved drunkenly into the woods, pain forgotten as adrenaline coursed through my blood, and stealth definitely a thing of the past. I had barely gone a hundred metres when a strong hand grabbed onto my arm, and I flinched away instinctively, twisting to look at my assailant. Make that assailants.

"Percy!" Annabeth hissed furiously.

I paused. "What are you guys doing here? I thought I told you to leave!"

Jason chuckled quietly. "Have you met these two? They weren't leaving without you."

Stupid loyal friends. "We have to get out of here. I wasn't exactly subtle in my escape; they'll be looking." I tried not to lean too hard on my makeshift crutch.

Reyna twisted around. "Come on then; we'd better move fast."

Yes, and they'd move one hell of a lot faster without me hobbling along with one and a half working legs, but either they hadn't noticed in the darkness or were just choosing to ignore that fact.

Reyna disappeared into the trees ahead, but neither Annabeth nor Jason moved. There was a faint click as Annabeth turned her torch on and shone it at me briefly before switching it off again.

She winced (that bad, huh?). "Now this is going to sound stupid, but are you okay? That all looks kind of bad."

I waved off her concern. "It's fine. Reyna's right; we have to get moving."

I yelped in faint surprise as Jason wordlessly stepped in to swing my arm over his shoulder, taking my weight off my damaged leg. Annabeth nodded approvingly and followed Reyna into the trees, and Jason and I followed suit a short way behind, just out of her earshot if he was quiet, which he was.

"Jeez, man," he muttered. "They weren't kidding when they said that you'd drag yourself out of any situation using your fingernails if you had to, were they? How on Earth were you walking on that?"

I tried to shrug, but it's surprisingly hard to do when you're being mostly carried by someone. "I didn't look at it, I guess."

"You're actually crazy. You know that, right? I can't think of anyone else who'd be able to waltz out like that."

"It's not as bad as it looks, man. I'm okay," I hissed back, doing my best to take some of my own weight as Jason stumbled slightly, probably tripping on a root in the dark.

Was it just me, or was it getting darker? Everything was starting to hurt more as the adrenaline spike of my escape began to fade, and my limbs felt suddenly and impossibly heavy.

Jason stumbled heavily as the weight he was supporting increased. "Whoa, man. You doing alright?"

I sagged against him, quite suddenly trapped in my own body's leaden weight, head lolling into his shoulder. I blinked furiously to try and clear the blackness over my vision, but I couldn't make anything out. It was just so damn dark.

"Percy?" he hissed, his free hand coming up to feel my forehead and brush the hair out of my face. "Percy?"

Maybe this was kinda bad, I mused absently as consciousness slipped just out of my grasp.

o0O0o

I registered being alive, and I hated it.

It felt like I was lying down on some rather lumpy ground, and that it was ever-so-slightly damp, and cold. But I mean, apart from that, it was all great.

Time to attempt to open my eyes. Gross.

So, it wasn't pitch-black anymore. If I wasn't quite so spaced out, I might have been embarrassed that I was lying in Annabeth's lap, but right now I couldn't care less, because it meant that I was safe (in relative terms).

I blinked owlishly, and immediately tried to sit up to see where the others were. Annabeth was not impressed. "Are you trying to kill yourself?" she hissed furiously. "Lie still, for gods' sakes."

Okay, I was starting to think that there was something I was missing here (hopefully not a limb; I like my arms and legs attached). "Where am I?" I asked, kind of regretting using my voice upon hearing how horrible it sounded; I coughed to clear the gravel from my throat.

"We're hiding under a bush two hundred metres from a road while Reyna and Jason go to fetch the car," Annabeth informed me helpfully. "We weren't moving fast enough while carrying you as well, and looking at the pattern bruising you've got, we're dealing with multiple internal injuries so we decided not to move you any further until we have to."

Right, yes. Pattern bruising. Sounded like a fancy term for 'black and blue' to me, but whatever.

Fuck.

Why did everything go wrong every time I entered a warehouse?

My brain fritzed out again for a good few seconds, but then an unpleasant realisation came crashing down on my head. "What time is it?"

Annabeth shrugged. "I don't know. Ten in the morning, perhaps? You were in that place for almost eighteen hours."

Which meant that when Justin Hammer said tonight, he meant in less than twelve hours. This wasn't good. And with no Jason, there was only one person who could contact SHIELD to warn them.

"Do you have a phone?" I asked, suddenly and uncomfortably awake.

Annabeth frowned. "What is it, Percy? I get that you're upset that you lost time in there, but you have to be really careful. If they track the phone call, then we won't be able to get away fast enough."

"Annabeth, this is big. We were right about it being Hammer Industries. Hell, it's not just the company; it's Justin Hammer. And I don't know what he wants, but there are dozens of those drones and they're going to be mobilised tonight." Whew, and that was way too many words. The world fuzzed around the edges as if it was telling me that I'd used my quota.

"Percy, there will be time to do all of this once the others get back. Right now I want you to focus on staying awake. Can you do that for me?"

"He said something about being on stage," I rambled on, "something about presenting them. Is he doing anything big? Any egotist would want an audience for-"

Annabeth gasped. "Stark Expo," she said. "I think he's presenting at the Stark Expo."

That made things a little more complicated. "There must be hundreds of people there. Annabeth, I need your phone." I tried to sit up again, which was a Really Bad Idea (I never learn, apparently). Black spots washed over my vision like a tidal wave of unconsciousness.

Annabeth's voice was tinged with fear, even as she reprimanded me in a furious undertone. "Percy, you've got to be careful! You've lost a lot of blood and you need to stay conscious right now. I can make a phone call for you."

Nice gesture, but that wasn't going to work. "Annabeth, I have to call SHIELD. There are codes and protocols and stuff. I need the phone."

She frowned unhappily, but twisted around slightly to reach behind her, eventually turning back with phone in hand, passing it to me as I reached clumsily for it.

It didn't take me long to realise that this wasn't going to work, because for one, I could hardly see straight enough to tell which number was which, and for two my fingers were so wobbly that I couldn't key in the right number anyway.

Annabeth gently took it out of my lax grip, even as I could almost cry from frustration. "Tell me the number?" she asked. "I'll hold the phone."

If the situation wasn't so dire, I'd have declared my undying love for her there and then. As it was, I clumsily recited the number through a fogged brain, trying to hide my concern that I couldn't even remember the phone number for SHIELD, let alone whatever identity code I had to give them later on.

She pressed 'call' and put the phone on speaker (parallels, wow), before holding it close to my ear as it rang.

"Welcome to Des' Donuts! What would you like to order today?"

Annabeth looked at me as if I had grown a second head, sentiment clear. I thought you were calling the spy agency.

"Can I have a dozen magical rainbow sprinkle donuts and three of today's Chocolate Special, please?" I asked, hoping that it was the right code for that 'donut shop' (why there were three separate ones on the list, I'd never know).

"Right away, sir." The phone began to ring again, and was picked up in a matter of seconds.

"SHIELD switchboard. ID please."

I blinked to try and clear the fog from my mind, and gave them my ID code for the second time today. Annabeth gave a tiny, slightly sad smile. She knew what this meant, after all.

There was another long pause on the other end. "Could you repeat the ID code, please?"

I gave it to them again, and there was another long pause. "ID confirmed as Agent Jackson. What can I do for you?"

Wow, this operator was more chatty than the last one. "I have a message that needs to get to the Director."

"Sorry, but Director Fury doesn't take calls from dead agents."

Ouch.

"Then get me Coulson, and he can pass it on. Please; I wouldn't call unless it was urgent."

"Urgent enough to call your ex-handler twice in 24 hours?" Had the phone handlers been briefed on me now? In the last eighteen hours?

"Yes. If he doesn't find out, thousands of people could die. I know you're tracking this call, so don't bother keeping me here waiting for the location to come in. Please, just put him on the phone."

After another pregnant pause, the dial tone sounded again. I exhaled in relief.

"This is Coulson," came a familiar curt voice. "Whatever it is, please make it quick."

"Sir," I began, and didn't get any further because he cut me off.

"Jackson?" he asked, with what sounded suspiciously like a touch of emotion.

"Sir, I need you to listen to me. It's the Stark Expo. This is going to sound crazy, but you have to trust me on this."

"Agent Jackson, is this about why I received a call threatening to murder you eighteen hours ago that ended with a gunshot? Because I am extremely curious to know what the hell you are doing that could have led to that situation, especially considering that you no longer work for this agency and, as far as the authorities are concerned, have been dead for over a year."

"Justin Hammer has these killer drones, and they're being made by a guy called-" I bit my lip, and searched through the haze in my mind - "Ivan Vanko. They're planning to attack the Stark Expo tonight at Hammer's presentation. I found their lab because they attacked the town I was staying in earlier this week."

There was a distant clicking noise, as if Coulson had just closed quite a heavy door. "Agent Jackson, what's your status?" If I didn't know better, I'd have said that he sounded concerned about my wellbeing. I mean, he was my handler, and he had listened to me getting both stabbed and shot not that long ago, so I guess he was right to be concerned.

"I'm okay, sir," I replied vaguely, blinking again as my vision got fuzzier. Was my breathing getting shallower?

"You can tell me the truth, Agent." It was nice that he was calling me an Agent again, did that mean that I was back on the payroll?

"Not great, sir. I'm managing, though." Okay, definitely starting to get a bit wheezy now. Annabeth began to run her fingers anxiously through my hair. She stared down at me with a clear message: stay awake or else.

"Did they shoot you, Agent? When they ended the last call?"

"Flesh wound, sir," I replied, but even those three words were quite suddenly becoming a chore.

Coulson hummed to himself. "Do you at least have another person there with you? Someone that could keep you steady?"

"Yes, sir. One civilian, with another civilian and one SHIELD agent en route." I coughed a little, and I watched the panic flash through Annabeth's eyes.

"Good. I'd hate for my best agent to bleed to death in an alleyway by himself, but I hope that you can understand that evac is completely out of the question in this scenario."

I chuckled weakly. "Best agent? Even with Captain America on the books?"

Coulson's frown was audible. "I'm trying to keep your spirits up, Jackson."

"Much appreciated, sir," I gasped, each word getting harder and harder to force out. Annabeth's breath hitched softly.

"Are you on speakerphone, Agent?" Coulson asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, I'd like to address your civilian friend for a moment."

Annabeth moved the phone towards her slightly, so that it could pick up what she said. "Annabeth Chase, sir."

"Annabeth," Coulson said, in the kindest tone I'd ever heard from him. "Is he lying to me? He has a bad habit of downplaying bad situations, so I'd like to hear it from you."

She swallowed nervously before speaking. "I don't think it could get an awful lot worse, sir," she said, voice almost level. "But he was telling you the truth; there are others coming."

"Do you have any experience in First Aid, Annabeth?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied. "I've done all I can."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Good. May I know the identity of the SHIELD agent that is approaching your location?"

She glanced down at me, panic in her eyes. I gave her a small nod, and tried not to show how dizzy that tiny action made me feel.

"Jason Grace, sir."

Coulson chuckled softly. "You know, of all of my agents, his name was the last one I'd expect to hear from you. I always thought that he was good at staying out of trouble, but I'm glad. He is a good agent."

"Yes, sir," Annabeth said softly, almost absently.

"Agent Jackson?" The phone asked quite suddenly. I'd have started, but that was too much energy.

"Sir?" I slurred, mildly concerned about the swirling mess that should have been my eyesight.

"Just checking that you're still with us," he responded curtly, as businesslike as ever.

"Yes, sir."

"Just keep breathing, Jackson. Don't you go giving up on me now," he snapped. "You remember San Francisco?"

"Yes, sir." How could I forget?

"Well then, if you managed to survive that, then you can survive whatever the hell you've got yourself into this time, can't you?"

I opened my mouth to reply, but no sound came out. My breath stuttered in my chest, and I tried to hang on, I really did, but it was all so dark, and so cold.

"Percy?" I heard Annabeth call through the fog. "Percy?"

Thanks for reading! Let us know what you thought of this in the reviews!

If you want to read more in this universe, there's a companion fic to this on AO3; it's called 'wearing a blindfold, my shoelace untied'.