Whatever Simmons had given her, it was a miracle. Skye got six solid hours of sleep and emerged from a shower feeling like a new woman, ready to take on the challenge of chasing bad guys through cyberspace.

At first she tried working in the lab, but the noise and chaos of twenty people running in and out from the hangar with boxes of tech was already too much, before the samples arrived from São Luis and the lab became ground zero for every blood analysis known to man - along with a few tests Skye was pretty sure Simmons was making up on the fly. After she accidentally bumped into the centrifuge next to her laptop, earning a terrifying glare from the normally mild biochemist, Skye decided to set up shop elsewhere. She settled into the tiny lounge between the lab and the dining room, noting the absence of a big-screen TV. Maybe Sam Koenig had a projector for playing Call of Duty with his brother (brothers?) - she doubted he would settle for anything less.

The hours passed. Other agents periodically wandered through on a break, and Skye gathered from their reports that none of the work, whether in the hangar or in the lab, was yielding any useful information.

Neither were Skye's efforts. Late in the afternoon, she found herself letting out a frustrated sigh as her latest idea came up empty. Honestly, the level of electronic sophistication achieved by whoever was behind this intel was more advanced than anything she'd ever seen. It was almost like there was something supernatural about it.

Skye tried to brush away the heavy sense of foreboding that had crept up on her over the last few hours. Throughout the day, she'd had the steadily growing and completely irrational hunch that, somehow, her father was involved with the ambush in Brazil. It didn't make any sense. After all, it wasn't his style - not at all. Everyone was still alive, no sign of scalpels anywhere. And what would possibly be his motive? Still, she couldn't shake the idea that the whole thing had something to do with her. After all, São Luis was one of the closer SHIELD bases to San Juan.

It was probably just paranoia.

"Fifteen hours of glorified inventory, and not a drop of beer anywhere on base when I finally get a break." Hunter appeared from the direction of the dining room, a glass of water in hand. He leaned against the doorframe. "How'd you manage to escape?"

Skye pointed at her laptop and shot him a withering, incredulous look, a little snippy at having had her thoughts interrupted. "Want to trade places?"

Hunter screwed up his face for a moment in mock consideration before shaking his head. "Nope." He wandered over, pulling an ICER out of his waistband and setting it on the coffee table before folding himself into one of the chairs and putting his feet up on the table as well.

Skye arched a questioning eyebrow at the sidearm. "Coulson's decided that agents should be armed, in case everything goes to hell," Hunter explained. "Guess you missed the memo, hiding out in here."

"Yep."

Hunter took a sip of water, then added, "What are you working on?"

Skye sighed. "Still trying to track down the origin of the intel that the São Luis team was following up on when they were ambushed."

Hunter nodded. Skye thought he looked mildly impressed, but it could have been her imagination. "How exactly does one go about doing that?" he asked.

She made a face. "It's...kind of complicated to explain. And I'm not really sure I could explain it well anyway. It's half knowledge and half intuition, you know?"

Hunter nodded again, his blank expression betraying that he had no idea what she was talking about. "Found anything yet?"

"Nothing. These guys are ghosts. I mean, beyond ghosts. I'm pretty good at tracking down ghosts. But I've never seen anything like how these people have hidden their trail. They've routed through at least two dozen servers, and I have a feeling I'm just scratching the surface."

Silence fell between them. Skye, uncomfortable after a minute and reaching for a topic of conversation, thought of something strange she'd noticed last night.

"How come you and Bobbi aren't sharing a room?" she asked curiously. Bobbi and Hunter hadn't made an announcement or anything, but it was obvious from how they'd been acting around each other that something had rekindled their old flame.

Hunter had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. "Bobbi, uh, said she wasn't quite ready for that yet. Needs us to work back up to that point." He didn't sound entirely satisfied with the explanation. Skye caught the flicker of - what was that? consternation? frustration? - that crossed his face, but she didn't ask. It really wasn't her business.

"How did you guys end up back together, anyway?" she pried, turning her attention back to the computer screen. That really wasn't her business, either, but she was curious.

Hunter rubbed the back of his neck, a tiny smile playing on his lips. "It was...rather sudden, actually."

Skye smirked. "So, is she still a demonic hell-beast?" she asked, with a wry quirk of one eyebrow. Hunter opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated, grimacing. "Don't answer that."

"Right then." He stared off into space, tapping his fingers against his glass.

Skye thought for a moment she was having a breakthrough with the trace, but then she bumped up against another dead end. "Damn it," she muttered.

They sat in silence a few minutes more, and then Hunter looked over. "Mack said that Raina was a sight to behold after San Juan."

"Or a sight to get the hell away from," Skye replied, still distracted by her work. "She was hideous."

Hunter let out a chuckle. "Ironic, that. I'll bet she won't be snaring any more suckers with her looks. Wonder how she'll get along?"

Skye quirked an eyebrow disinterestedly. "No idea." She tapped an agitated finger on the table. "I kind of hope she doesn't." A thought bubbled up from the raw, painful place deep inside her. If it weren't for Raina, Trip would still be alive.

Hunter studied Skye for a moment. "Lucky thing you escaped her fate," he observed evenly.

"Yeah," she agreed, letting out a sigh.

"Why do you think it worked on her and not on you?" He seemed cautious, as if knowing this had the potential to be a painful topic.

Skye paused from her typing and looked over at him. "I don't know," she shrugged. "Coulson and Simmons and I talked about it after we got back. I have a theory, but no way to know if it's right."

Hunter nodded, and Skye, seeing he was really listening, continued. "Cal - my father," she clarified uncomfortably, "said that my mother was special. He never said that he was. So I think that I'm only half...special, or whatever it is. Whatever my mother was and Raina is." She made a face. It galled her to have to group Raina and her mother into the same category, not to mention Raina and herself. "It must not have been enough for me to be changed. Just enough to keep me alive." Unlike Triplett. Skye bit her lip and turned back to the laptop screen, tears suddenly shimmering in her eyes.

Hunter knew what she was thinking about. Something had been weighing on him since their last conversation, and he decided that now, if not the right time to say it, was at least the time he was going to say it.

"You know," he began, taking his feet off the table and setting his glass there instead, "I cried myself to sleep every night for a week after we lost Hartley and Idaho." He leaned forward on his knees, studying Skye's face. He looked reassured by what he saw there, which, Skye felt pretty sure, was a jumble of discomfort, incredulity, and relief.

He went on. "Had a lot of survivor's guilt, too. It didn't seem right that I was the only one to make it out. Izzy in particular had more to live for."

Skye swallowed hard. "Her family?" she asked quietly.

He nodded.

"You don't have any?"

Hunter shrugged. "A mum and a married sister in London. But I'm not good at family the way Hartley was. I never get back to see them, and I'm terrible at keeping in touch. If I died, it really wouldn't change things for them all that much."

Skye regarded him skeptically, with a touch of compassion. "I doubt that."

He shook his head. "Not the way I know it affected Izzy's family," he replied firmly, regretfully.

Skye's eyes began to feel moist again, and she took a couple of deep breaths to calm and clear her mind. In retrospect, she wouldn't be sure what made her open up - maybe it was Hunter's unexpected vulnerability, or the fact that he understood some of what she was going through; maybe it was just because she couldn't hold it in any longer - but she found herself painfully voicing the thoughts that had swirled through her head a hundred times since Puerto Rico. "I've thought...so many times...that it would have been better if I had died down there, instead of him. He has - he had a really tight family, and a mother who adored him. All I have" - and her voice sharpened with bitterness - "is an insane estranged father who goes around attacking people for taking his revenge from him." A vision of Coulson's bloodied face hovered at the edges of her memory, bringing with it the horror of last night's dream. She pushed it away, blinking back the stubborn tears that refused to succumb to her best efforts at self-control.

"That's not all you have," Hunter corrected gently. "What about your team? Coulson? May? The others?"

"They would probably be better off without me." She didn't articulate the icy, terrifying suspicion that her father was somehow behind the incident in São Luis, that her very presence in SHIELD might be putting people in danger.

"I sincerely doubt Coulson would be better off without you," Hunter observed quietly. He sighed. "You can't bring someone back by thinking that way," he added, staring at his folded hands. "Believe me, I've tried it. You'll just dishonor Trip's memory by refusing to allow him to be a hero."

Skye's breath caught in her throat. Trip had been a hero; he'd died trying to save her - but the most tragic part was that she hadn't even needed saving. His death had been in vain, a fruitless sacrifice. "That's the worst part," she forced out, struggling violently to control herself. "If his death had accomplished anything, it might be easier to understand. But it did nothing." Her voice was getting louder, and she felt powerless to control it as her anger at herself, at everything, began to overflow. Hunter nodded, letting her know it was all right for her to continue, to let it out. So she did. "It was for nothing. Trip deserved for his death to mean something, not for it to be a total waste." She was almost shouting now, the tears beginning to stream down her face. "It isn't right!"

On her last word, a shock wave rippled through the room, knocking Hunter back a few inches. The furniture rattled. Hunter's glass rocked, and he quickly moved to catch it just as it began to topple over.

Skye froze, her eyes wide as her mind scrambled to process what had just happened. She saw Hunter pause and stare at the table for a moment, his hand still outstretched from righting the glass.

"Bloody hell," he murmured, and he turned to look at her, awe and realization sweeping across his face. There was a touch of fear there, too. "The earthquakes?"

It took Skye, numb with shock, some time to force out a response. "I have no idea," she whispered.

Hunter stood up and motioned toward the door. "Come on," he said firmly, his voice a little shaky. "Let's go have a talk with Coulson."