A/N: Hello. I. Am. So. Sorry. for this long ass wait. I truly, honestly am. I have no excuse. There hasn't been new content for this fic in what... eight months? Nine? I apologize, from the bottom of my heart. I hope you guys can forgive me for just leaving you in the dust.
We get back on the BUS before nightfall, and are incredibly surprised at what Coulson and Ward brought from their side of the mission. It isn't a what, but a who.
"A member of the Rising Tide." Coulson informs us. "Her name is Skye. Right now she's interrogating Ward."
"Wait, she's interrogating him?" I ask. He nods.
"She'll be out in five minutes."
I give him a perplexed look and a strong shake of my shoulders, but he only gives me his signature smirk in response.
The interrogation is put on our screen in the conference room, (because, yes, the BUS has one of those!) We manage to catch the last few questions that this, "Skye," had for our agent. Did you have any animals growing up? Stuff of that nature. And once the girl is out, she's brought to our conference room.
Long brown hair cascades down her shoulders, with brown eyes that twinkle brightly, and she wears a purple shirt. Her smirk is very mischievous; playfully childish and has an heir of, "I-know-something-you-don't-know." In short, she's cocky. Also, gorgeous. Not gonna lie, she is beautiful.
I stand beside Fitz-Simmons, each holding pieces of science equipment. I hold my SHIELD badge, my level proudly written at the bottom. Level 7. I flip it open and closed, fidgeting because I have nothing to do. Coulson casually stands beside the holographic table in the middle, leaning against it as he quickly pulls up some files on Mr. Gifted. Skye strides into the room, her boot heels clicking against the floor.
"Did Agent Ward give you anything?" Coulson asks.
As she makes her way over to the other side of him, she says, "He told me he's been to Paris, but he's never actually seen it, and that he wishes you stayed in Tahiti."
"It's a magical place." He tells her automatically. Her hands grip the edge of the table, her fingers tapping the light blue hue that beams out of it. Each press to the screen makes a small circle form, bright white and just underneath her fingertips. She's in awe of it, I can tell, but she makes no comment of it.
"Ward doesn't like your style," she says instead. "Kinda think I do."
"What about his?" Coulson lightly presses a file that's on the holographic table and flicks his wrist to the screen that Fitz-Simmons and I stand next to. The audio-video file plays, showing the unidentified gifted hitting a foreman with heavy equipment from his factory. I wince inwardly as he yanks out a tank from the wall and begins to beat the foreman again. Sure, I've taken heavy hits, but nothing like that before.
As the news reporter on screen speaks of the assault, Skye shakes her head firmly. "This is wrong. This is not... The guy I met. He was..." She sighs heavily at the tv. "He just needs a break."
"Then give him one." Coulson says earnestly. "What've you got?"
With a thought, she gets a card out of her front pocket. His license. She hands it to Coulson and he sets it on the holo-table. Underneath the license lights up yellow, imitating a folder as it scans the card. He calls in May and begins to debrief us as a whole group, Skye included.
"Michael Peterson, factory worker, married, one kid." Coulson states. The files we originally had up are discarded to the left as tabs, and more articles pop up connected to the license. Fitz-Simmons and I lean over the table to look more closely.
"Gets injured, gets laid off, wife jumps ship. Good guy, bad breaks. Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again, make him super."
"Who has the tech to do that?" May asks, sounding as baffled as I am. "And why would they want to?"
"Fitz, what do we have from the security footage before the blast?"
Leo begins typing at an alarming rate on the holograph, pulling up the data and flicking it to the tv like Coulson did earlier. The footage is very blurry, but I can make out two men on the screen, one wearing a lab coat. The other looks like a junkie searching for his next fix.
"What are we seeing?" May asks, her voice authoritative.
"Well, the man is angry at the other man." Fitz points out. May rolls her eyes. Coulson gives an, "obviously," look to Fitz, making him a little flustered.
"The data is very corrupt." Simmons points out, letting Fitz out of the spotlight.
"Yeah," he scoffs, "like Cold War Russia corrupt."
Simmons nods apologetically to Coulson as Fitz informs us, "I-I can't sync the time code without-"
"What if you had the audio?" Skye asks. The science duo look at her questioningly.
"I was... Running surveillance on the lab." Her cheeks flush as we all look to her, taking in the explanation. "I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file's in my van. There's too much background noise for me, but you could probably-"
"You can clean that up, can't you?" Jemma asks Leo, completely breaking off Skye's question. "Find a sync point and use cross-field validation to find-"
"But I can't scrub for expression patterns when the Vit-C is all-"
"Well, is there a chrominance subcarrier?"
"Well, yeah, attached to the back porch. Brilliant!"
They look to Skye (in sync, might I add,) and Fitz tells her, "Um, that audio would be great. Thank you very much."
At the same time, Simmons says, "We will take that audio, thank you, please."
She looks to them, bewildered but nods at the, "yes please's," and looks to Coulson.
"Your van's here, but you were right; we couldn't decrypt the files." He tells her.
"The encryption's coupled to the GPS. Get my van back in that alley and we're back in business."
"Agent May will escort you. And on your way out, wake up Ward." May nods to Coulson, and Skye follows her out the door.
Fitz and I begin working on setting up another holographic something-or-another (He tried to explain the tech to me but I was so lost that even he gave up hope on me being able to understand it.) Simmons leaves us to go grab the hexagonal line to show Coulson, and the both of them are going to come back to the lab to start doing tests on it.
As Leo sets up the hologram tech, he gives me pieces to hold for him while he uses a solder, wrench, and a screwdriver to put pieces together and set up the holograph devices. Fitz has a comm receiver in his ear, using it to communicate with Skye from her van. I'm currently holding screws in my hand, standing beside Leo as he starts to twist one in place with a screwdriver. Before the job is done, though, Skye starts talking on her end.
He quickly drops the screw back into my hand and he scurries to the computer, chatting away with Skye about the file. "So, ah, when you get back, I can show you my thing."
His cheeks immediately redden and he squeaks out, "A thing. It's not... It's my hardware. My equipment! Let's just... Hang up!" He quickly throws the comm onto his desk and begins typing away at the keyboard.
Feeling rather courageous, I walk behind him and smirk. "Wow, only one day with us and you're already showing her your hardware? I'm feeling neglected."
He turns to look at me, ears bright red and he babbles out, "That's not what I meant! I just-"
I laugh heartily at the response. "I'm teasing, Leo. Just a joke."
He grumbles under his breath, still very red in the face but slowly relaxing from the embarrassment high.
Just then, the doors to the lab open and Simmons and Coulson come strolling through, the bag of hexagonal lines in her hand.
She sits down at her own desk and begins working on her own piece as Leo and I get back to work.
"So, the alien metal wasn't the explosive?" Coulson asks her.
She begins to cut through the burnt metal as she responds. "Well, I assumed from the break pattern and dispersion that it was, but it's just dripping with gamma radiation and- oh, now it's actually dripping! Fun!"
The lab door opens yet again, and Ward strolls through, noticeably angry with Coulson. "So what did that get us?" He asks, annoyance dripping from every word.
"Skye's sending us the rest of her decrypted files on Centipede." Fitz answers, grabbing the tablet that he used on the DWARFS earlier. "But we have her audio. I've loaded it up."
"Nice work." Coulson tells Ward, giving him a smirk.
"Now, using motion estimation, Bayesian inference, a beam splitter, and a little diffraction theory, our mystery man..." He quickly types on the tablet, and the beams that we worked on together light up like a Christmas tree. The picture that we had on the tv in the conference room is now a three dimensional holograph in front of our very eyes, matching the colors perfectly.
"Appears!" Leo finishes, grinning. I gasp lightly at the hologram. Damn, I think. He did really well.
"It's like magic." He smiles to Ward as the agent moves closer to the projection. "But it-it's science!"
Ward circles around the image, looking at the two men; the scientist and the experiment. "Explosives in the case?"
The image starts to move, and the scratchy audio begins. "Please just ca-calm down. Just let me ch-check your vitals." The scientist looks worried. He holds his arms out, trying to keep the crazed patient away from himself.
"I feel fine. I want to feel more!" The trial patient says. His beard is patchy and unkempt, his hair ragged. His clothes are baggy and raggedy, and with wide eyes he screams, "Where's the doctor? Where is she?!"
"If you don't set-settle down," the scientists voice quivers, "I'll-I'll have you sedated!"
"Where is she?!" The patient screams again, and this time he grabs a stool with a single hand and brings it down on the table in front of him.
"Wait- Did you see that on his arm?" Leo furrows his brows together, and he rewinds the hologram to the point just before the chair is smashed. The hexagonal line is in the patients arm.
"What does that look like to you?" Coulson asks. His question is aimed at Ward, who is standing right in front of the frozen image.
"A Centipede." Ward answers.
"It's an intravenous filter for his blood." Jemma nearly jumps out of her chair to get to the rest of us. "This goo, sir, is very similar to the serum Dr. Erskine developed in the 40's for the-"
"Super soldiers." Coulson whispers it, but we all hear it, loud and clear.
Jemma continues. "I'm reading alien metal, gamma radiation, the serum- every known source of power thrown into a blender."
Coulson turns to Fitz, using his authoritative voice. "We need to see the origin of the blast. Run it back from the last point recorded."
Fitz answers right away, swiping on the tablet and the hologram fast forwards itself to the last recording. The blast in full force, a huge mushroom cloud of smoke and fire all mixed. Then, he rewinds the recording slowly, shrinking the cloud until it's no longer there. Instead, it's the patient, looking like he's glowing from the inside. The explosion was him.
"Extremis." Coulson says, looking directly at the hologram man. "It's new; completely unstable."
"Poor man didn't bring an explosive. And Mike has the same stuff in his system." Jemma tells us.
"And judging by his strength level, a lot more." Ward adds. Shit.
"So any moment now Mike is gonna-?" Fitz starts.
"He'll take out anyone within a two-block radius." Simmons answers.
"Well," Coulson walks to the door of the lab, stopping where Ward stands, "you wanted a bomb."
Ward huffs in annoyance as Coulson leaves, but he trails behind our boss, going upstairs. I follow suit; there's nothing for me to do in the lab, I'd much rather be working on something I'm good at. Liking helping Ward put together a sniper rifle holder and scope on the holographic table.
I'm given the task of cleaning each piece before handing it to him to put together. We're halfway done with the rifle as Fitz-Simmons comes back upstairs, informing Coulson, "Sir, he didn't explode because he was angry. The two are connected. It's kind of a chemical surge. But calming him down will buy him a minute at most. He will detonate within the next few hours."
"Solution?" Coulson asks.
"Isolate him, get him away from people?"
"Or?"
"Put a bullet in his brain." Fitz answers dejectedly.
Jemma elaborates, "If he's dead, this irradiated metabolic process will stop."
"We need to come up with a third option- one that doesn't involve Mike's son losing a father." Coulson says, authoritative.
"We have a couple of hours at most. There's no way that we could possibly-" Jemma starts.
"Don't ever tell me there's no way!" Coulson nearly yells it. "It's on you. Get it done."
The duo scurry away, looking like nervous baby kittens. I turn back to Ward, and he grabs all of what we've assembled for the holder and stuffs it into a bag.
As Coulson enters our room, he clicks on the comm in his ear and the audio jumps into the computer on the wall. "May?"
"He took Skye." I hear her gasp out.
His face turns into immediate concern. "You all right?" Coulson asks.
"We'll deal with that later, at length. Right now we need to figure out where they went."
Coulson nods, though May can't see it. "We're coming to you. Stay put."
He clicks his comm, shutting it off. "You two ready?"
I nod excitedly. Ward gives a shrug for an answer. "As ready as we'll ever be."
We head down the circular steps with our gear to toss in our SHIELD van, ready for a fight. I can feel it; there's going to be a fight. I'm ready for one. My adrenaline's already pumping in my veins.
"What is this nonsense? Why are you making nonsense?!" I can hear Simmons asking Fitz, agitated. They've been working on this concoction for a while (a while in SHIELD time is actually around an hour, but for Fitz-Simmons it felt like three.) They work determinedly per Coulson's orders; they want to save Mike.
"This isn't me!" Fitz says defensively.
"What's happening in there?" I ask, running up to them. They're at one of their many computers, and in the corner of the screen, "SECURITY BREACH," is bolded in red at the top left. The rest of the screen is filled with tiny green numbers, like some code. "Oh my."
"It's not me." Fitz says again. My hand goes to the back of the chair he's sitting on, and the other goes on the desk as I lean to the screen. "It's noise. Someone's hacking our secure channel."
"It's longitude and latitude." Coulson walks into the room. "Mike took Skye. She's telling us where." Smart girl.
The entrance to the plane opens broad for us, and Coulson takes the front seat of an SUV. Ward takes the passenger side.
"Looks like that's my cue to leave you two." I tell the science duo with a grin. Finally. Something to do. "Good luck on that serum! I'll see you on the battlefield."
I pat the backside of the chair and twist from them, hopping in the back of the car behind Coulson.
He takes no time to reach the longitude and latitude points Skye sent us. We're at the Union train station in less than an hour (don't ask how fast he was going.) Coulson grabs an amplifier from the back of our van and the three of us begin walking.
As we get to the front doors of the station, my hand itching for a fight, I hear Ward telling Coulson, "Look at this place. You're gonna risk thousands of lives over some nobody."
"Nobody's nobody, Ward. FitzSimmons will come through." Coulson says coolly.
We get to the rusty blue van that can only be Skye's, and Coulson speaks into the amplifier. "Mr. Peterson, good morning. We're not a threat; were here to help. But you're in danger, and we need to take you in."
I silently pray that Mike will come with us easily, but knowing what the Centipede drug does to a person, he wouldn't hold hands with us and skip into the sunset. No, this will be hard, just like any other mission. I'm just waiting for the boot to drop.
The door to Skye's van goes flying out at us, and I think, there it goes.
Non-federal personnel around us scream and jump in fear of the new projectile. I crouch out of the way to save myself. I can feel the mixture of excitement and adrenaline pulsing and I mentally grin.
Mike grabs his son and Skye and they mush through the crowd and into the front doors. Ward, pushed to the ground by the unexpected blast, grabs his gun out of his holster and makes his way to the doors. Coulson and I follow suit, my hand twitching slightly. Ready to punch. Ready for anything.
"Carter, I want you on the second floor balcony. Form a perimeter, get as many people out. Wait for Agent May. Ward, come with me." Coulson instructs. "You get to help diffuse a bomb."
I nod and say, "Yes, sir," and make my way to the stairs, taking two at a time and telling as many people, "I'm with SHIELD. We need to evacuate the area. Please exit the building." My comm goes off every now and then, Coulson barking orders and May finally getting inside the building with us.
As soon as that job is done I make my way to the large glass doors on the outside. My eyes trail Mike and his prisoner Skye going up the stairs in the middle of the chaos. Since I'm outside on the posh balcony I don't hear any words, but I see Mike yelling to Skye, and then someone taking a shot at the two of them. And then suddenly the back of my head gets bit with something strong and I fall to the ground.
I groan, my hand automatically going to the attacked site. When I pull it back there's blood at my fingertips. I don't waste time, swinging my arms together with my elbows out at my persons knees and getting them to drop to the ground. My eyes vaguely roam over the person, noting that they're a blonde female with an alarmingly tight bun atop her head. She points her handgun at me from her new spot on the ground and pulls the trigger. I grit my teeth as I hear the glass door crack from the shot. I try to wrestle the gun from her hands, and once I finally get it out of her hands she pulls a pocket knife out. Argh, I hate pocket knives.
She gains the advantage and begins thrusting the blade at me. The motion makes me maneuver awkwardly backward, falling on the back of my thighs. I scoot back on my butt as she thrusts it forward again, dangerously close to my face. I'm so occupied by the knife that I barely notice a second person reaching the balcony. This person, a man with a shotgun, points it at Mike inside the station and shoots multiple times. The sound of glass breaking makes me internally scream. No!
With my focus on the other guy instead of the knife, it gets too close this time and it makes contact with my arm. A decent laceration is made, at a downward angle and deeper than I would have liked. I cry out in pain and in vain try to grab the bottom of the knife from her hands.
I desperately kick at her legs underneath her, and a small cry of victory plays in my head as she goes back again. With a big kick of adrenaline, I punch her in the face and she's out like a light.
Okay, now onto baddie number two. My eyes scan to the left and right of the balcony, and I notice immediately that Baddie Number Two is lying on the ground motionless, with Agent May standing above him. Her eyebrow cocks up at me. "Took ya long enough."
My jaw drops open. "May?! How long have you been standing there?"
"Not long. I knocked him out first." She answers smugly. "You need more knife combat training."
My lips press into a hard line at the comment. "Thanks." I say flatly.
"C'mon." She cocks her head to the door, and I follow suit. We go inside together, meeting up with Ward and Fitz perched on the balcony. Ward has the sniper rifle held out, staring at Mike. Some pieces of it are lit up in blue. The serum, maybe?
Then Ward takes the shot, hitting Mike straight in the forehead. Mike, standing awfully close to Coulson below us, falls backward as his face flushes in blue. Simmons runs out to him, checking for a pulse. With a grin, she gives us a thumbs up and Fitz gives one back to her.
"We did it." I sigh in relief.
"Yeah, we did." Fitz grins back to me. Then his eyes go directly to the gash in my shoulder. "You're bleeding."
"'Tis a flesh wound." I brush off. His hands go gently to the cut, pulling away the ripped shirt sleeve and exposing the dried blood beginning to cake the edges. I wince as his fingers roam the edges of it.
"Not just a flesh wound." He says. "You're gonna need stitches."
"I've had worse." I tell him.
His eyes go up to mine in concern momentarily before he lets go of my arm. "Jemma could probably fix it for you."
"I'll be sure to ask." I assure him.
"Well, I'd call our first mission a success." Ward smirks to us. He pulls the rifle off the balcony expertly, setting it back into the duffel bag beside him.
"Hell yeah it was." I give an earnest smile to him before turning to look at May. "Where'd May go?" My eyes scan over the station, finding her by Coulson and Skye below.
"Damn woman has catlike reflexes." Fitz points out. I nod in agreement. "She truly is the Cavalry."
"She saved my ass today." I note aloud. "Truly Cavalry material."
The three of us all begin our descent down the stairs to the rest of our group. May and Coulson are already handling the authorities at the door, ready to pull out the red tape, I'm assuming. Jemma, after checking and double checking that Mike's readings are normal, runs over to us when we reach the bottom of the staircase. Her arms go around Fitz's neck, hugging him tightly and laughing out, "We did it, Leo!"
His arms go around her tiny form in response, laughing with her. "Yes, we did! We need to celebrate back on the BUS."
"Of course!"
"Goodness, you guys are so lovey dovey." I roll my eyes playfully at them. The two break apart, each having a shit-eating grin on their features.
"This is our first mission! And it was successful. If that's not cause for celebration I don't know what is." Jemma excitedly explains.
I nod to her. "Very true, but it's only our first. We're gonna fail too. Missions don't always end happy. Be excited now, but don't expect this joy always."
"Party pooper." Leo grumbles, shoving his shoulder against my good one.
"Maybe, but I'm realistic." I point out.
"Either way," Jemma juts in, "we were successful today, and we deserve to celebrate."
The science kids did good today. Don't rain on their parade.
So I smile to them and say, "Yeah, sure!" I grab my bad arm and point out the dried blood to Simmons. "After you sew me up, hopefully?"
"Of course!"
Four chicken teriyaki sticks, wontons, and a to-go cup of fried rice later, I'm officially sewn up by Simmons. Skye and Coulson left to go tell Ace, Mike's son, that Mike is safe and sound, and will come home, eventually.
I sit next to Ward, picking at rice slowly while Fitz-Simmons flit about, talking science-nonsense. I hit the bottom of the to-go box when Ward's phone goes off, Maria Hill proudly lit up on the screen.
"Ward." He picks it up stiffly.
"I saw your teams work today. Good job." I can hear Hill congratulate. "Ready for another mission?"
"I'm always ready." He answers automatically. All eyes are on him as he goes to the other side of the room, giving his conversation privacy from me and the science duo.
"What do you think it is?" Fitz pops down beside me, sipping from a beer bottle. Where'd he get that? "Suspicious murder? Kidnapping? Bomb?"
He leans in a bit to me, a smirk playing on his lips. "Aliens?"
"My money's on suspicious murder." Jemma leans against the table, her slender fingers holding a beer bottle too. Damn, I feel left out. "A women found unconscious with stab wounds and no weapon matches. Turns out it's a weapon from Asgard and we get to meet Thor." She waggles her eyebrows at me.
I groan aloud. "I would love to meet Thor."
"Any straight women would. Maybe even a few men." She adds, sipping her beer contently.
"Are you two gonna start drooling?" Fitz rolls his eyes. "He's only a god, with beautiful blonde hair. He's only saved the world, what, twice? Pshh."
"Jealous?" I tease.
He blushes lightly, shaking his head. "No, of course-"
"We got an 0-8-4." Ward announces. The three of us jerk our heads over to him.
"What?" and, "No way," are uttered at the same time from Fitz-Simmons.
"Really?" I raise my brow, suspicious. "Confirmed?"
He shakes his head and makes his way to the rest of us. "They want us to go in and confirm it."
"Call Coulson then." I say. He quickly taps on his phone and calls our boss.
As he gets off his phone, I look over the three of them. "Ready for round two?"
A/N: Not much, but I hope this makes up for not writing in so long. As you all have probably noticed by now, this is written with a present-tense narrative. In the earlier chapters, it was past tense. Well, since I like to be confusing it's going to stay in present-tense. I also changed chapter 6 to be in present-tense too, along with some minor grammatical changes.
And, just so you all know, I'm not going to go through all of season one. As much as I love it, I just can't stomach going through all of it with Genevieve added in. Truthfully, she wouldn't change much here. Season two onward is where I have much more planned and much more will change. So, I'll go through a couple more episodes here, build up Fitz and Ginny's budding relationship (which doesn't even exist right now,) and have nice little team building. Then off to season two we go!
Well, after all that, feel free to leave me a review on this chapter. Even if it's just to yell at my shit timing for updating new content. I'll take what I can get here.