Clint leaned against the back of a chair in the lab with his arms crossed over his chest. Alex was nowhere to be seen. Since the whole hulk-wolf incident, she'd kept pretty much to herself. He could find her most of the time, but there were a couple days he hadn't seen her at all. He still made sure to leave a little snack in her room everyday. Sometimes it was touched. Sometimes it wasn't.

Today he hadn't seen her once, but he hadn't really expected to with Maria and a couple other agents popping in.

"We tested every dog in the building," Maria said.

She stood behind a lab table, both hands braced against the black marble with her shoulders slumped. There were dark heavy bags under her eyes. A few strands of hair poked out around the sides of her face. Every once and a while, she lifted a hand, tap-sliding from page to page on the tablet in front of her.

Since last week's fiasco, S.H.I.E.L.D. had seized all the company's assets, including the dogs.

Bruce nodded, pulling his glasses off and pressing two fingers into his eyes. "Some of their teams were still out in the field, but every dog we managed to confiscate has human DNA."

Clint sucked in a breath. His mouth opened and closed again. Human… DNA?

"What?"

Maria nodded with a grimace. "Shapeshifters. All of them."

"Where did they even get them all?" Why was his voice so high?

He took a steadying breath. Calm down, he told himself. But this didn't make sense. Shapeshifters? And all dogs at that. That was far too specific to be an accident.

"Records indicate that most of their dogs were homebred." There was a little disgusted twist in Maria's lips.

Bruce was silent, rage burning in his eyes. Clint's stomach twisted. Those sick bastards. Unfortunately, Maria wasn't done.

"We crossed the 'dogs' they had imported with local missing persons."

Clint's jaw clenched.

"The dates of each one of them lined up with a disappearance." She shook her head. A breath sucked in through her teeth and hissed out the same way. "Bastards."

Clint had to work hard to keep his voice even. "How are they finding them?"

Shapeshifting wasn't exactly the most detectable ability. Short of seeing the change happen, it was usually impossible to tell. Plus, mutant abilities weren't exactly… reliably inherited.

"We're still trying to find that out." Hill pressed the power button on her tablet and slipped it into a pack behind the counter. "We're hoping Alex can help us with that."

Bruce winced.

Alex. Clint grit his teeth. Was she one of those missing persons? Or had she been born into that collar? He wasn't sure which one sounded worse. How was he even supposed to ask that question? Hey, were you kidnapped or was your mother a bitch? There was just no way to put this that wasn't going to make her disappear for another three days.

But there wasn't much choice. The two remaining CEOs had gone underground. Rayner had crossed his rich little arms and demanded a lawyer. If S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't figure out who was helping them, they'd just start the program all over again.

"There's a tiny little anomaly in the genetic code," Bruce said, pinching the screen in front of him bigger with two fingers and dragging it up onto the wall. "Right… here."

Clint pushed out of his chair, squinting at the image. He couldn't see what was different about that particular bubble on the DNA strand compared to all the other bubbles, but clearly Banner could.

"What sort of equipment would you need to test for… that?"

Bruce shrugged. "Any lab can run it."

"So blood drives, doctors offices, hospitals." Clint counted each possibility out on his fingers.

"Narrows it down, doesn't it?" Maria grumbled.

Clint nodded.

"Do you want me to talk to her?" Maria was watching him closely.

He shook his head. "No."

Maria wasn't even going to be able to find her. He'd be lucky if he could.

"No. I'll talk to her."