AN: Wow! You guys are wonderful, you have no idea how much I geek out over your reviews. Loved the guesses, when you find out who the two Inhumans are I hope you can just stick with me, one way or another we're gonna be done in about three chapters or so.
Let's get going, happy reading!
Disclaimer: I never own anything, this chapter is no different.
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Skye took one more steadying breath as she gazed at the Hydra base through the slight coverage of foliage she and Ward were using. Adrenaline was working its way through her, fear sidled around the edges of her mind, but it was kept in check by her training and not a small amount of excitement. Ward looked at her from under his cloaking hood (argument number twelve between he and Fitz, this one about the importance of peripheral vision) and gave her a slight grin that she couldn't help but return. It felt so good to be on a mission again together, especially now when she could truly handle herself next to him.
She heard agitated rustling from her other side and turned to see Hunter rotating his shoulders and stretching his arms, causing the gear and weapons he carried to clink and shift. Skye opened her mouth to tell him to quiet down when an arm came from her peripheral vision, the hand of which smacked into the back of Hunter's cloaked head.
"Quiet." Ward growled, all traces of good humor immediately gone. Hunter grumbled something intelligible back, but ceased his anxious movements. They looked like a group of crazy cosplayers at the moment, all hooded, every inch of their skin and gear covered by different segments of the cloaking gear Fitz had created (and tweaked repeatedly with Simmons's scolding on the dangers of heatstroke) waiting for the go ahead to begin the infiltration.
When not activated the material covering them from head to toe was a metallic gray, so they had to stay concealed in the greenery around them before they activated the gear and became for all intents and purposes invisible. The night vision like hybrid glasses they'd been equipped with could track their teammate's positions via technology. Said technology made the other cloaked agents appear like a sunspot when viewed with the high tech specs (Argument number thirteen: Gear causing confusion during mission)
The material even bounced back thermal readings, putting it mildly, Coulson had been very impressed and even Gonzales's craggy face had threatened to break into a smile at the demonstration.
Like the very thought of him was enough, the com in her ear activated and her teammates on each side stiffened up as the councilman's sharp tones gave the go ahead. Him and the other council members had insisted on Gonzales's presence, but Skye did not remember an agreement where he was to be running the back end. She should be hearing Coulson's voice, and was a little grateful to the boys for having her same reaction of frozen immobility. After several moments Gonzales's voice snapped through their com pieces once more.
"I said move agents."
There was a slight pause before May's voice, sounding dangerously irritated, snapped over the comlink, no doubt regretting her position at the backside of the base.
"Coulson?"
There was a labored pause before Coulson's voice, smugly cheerful, came through the coms sending them into instant motion.
"Alright guys let's go." And then more quietly. "I just won twenty bucks."
"Guess we know who gets to buy first round when all this is said and done." Hunter drawled.
"I'll buy the second round if you'll actually be quiet until then." Ward sighed good-naturedly.
"Move." The Director instructed.
Skye nodded at Coulson's order, and smiling, motioned to her team. She took point as they all initiated their gear, watching as it turned mirror like before blending them into the surroundings. They still had to be careful and move slowly, quick movement would appear to the armed observer like heatwaves coming off asphalt.
With a slinking agility the three moved to the compounds fence, made up with layers of barbed and razor wire all held in place by rusted metal poles and crossed two-by-fours. This in turn was monitored by a constant rotation of guards. The base itself was a squat ugly heap of haphazard concrete. Only one story high, it was slightly bigger than a football field, but irregularly shaped, as if its builders had slapped on rooms wherever and whenever they needed. Aesthetics had definitely not been part of the builder's list of priorities.
Getting through the fence was agonizingly slow, getting out would be much quicker, bloodier but quicker. Using their reinforced gloves, the three pried apart the layers of metal, freezing whenever a guard strolled past. They had to drop their heads down slightly, lest the guard view their strangely disembodied faces. (Argument number fourteen: The dangers of losing visual contact of the enemy). Entering the base was shockingly easier than they'd expected.
As in someone had left the nearest door propped open with a chunk of wood.
Skye was walking by the entrance's broken admissions panel when she heard Hunter grumble something about events becoming 'anticlimactic' before there was another slight sound of impact and silence.
Deciding they needed to get this mission over with before Ward hit Hunter one too many times and got himself shot, Skye quickly moved down the first hallway. They had no real idea about the layout of the base once inside, so they moved from door to door, easing open one at a time and peeking inside. Any they came to that were locked, had to be painstakingly opened and checked. All the while the two teams worked in towards the middle of the base, each fruitless room and hallway bringing them closer to the center, and each other.
They came across half empty barracks rooms, a mess hall, pantry, storage closets, office looking rooms with chipped furniture, small training rooms with heavy bags and weights. The locked rooms usually held weapons, one was just full of different kinds of alcohol. Ward sabotaged the locking mechanism to the armories so they couldn't be opened.
Hunter stole an extremely old looking bottle of whiskey.
"No sign of the targets, approaching mid-base." May's voice breathed quietly into Skye's ear via her comlink. Of course May's team was quicker, Skye shook her head and tried to stay focused.
They had just come across what appeared to be the surveillance room when the ever dreaded alarm began its warbling wail through the hallways. Accompanied as always with red flashing lights, Skye had a moment to wonder why people found it necessary to have the two together, like the sound or the flashing wasn't enough?
Frozen in the doorway, she watched as the Hydra agents began manically checking feeds to find where the security breach had come from. When none of the agents whipped around in their direction she figured her team hadn't tripped some alarm on the surveillance room door. Making a quick decision she proceeded into the room, taking it on faith that her team followed her in.
"The big one set off a motion sensor." May's voice muttered. "Good news is I think we found where they're keeping the captives, area's big though, Team One needs to get here."
The screens had all been turned to one specific area of the base, and while they couldn't see the intruder's, Hydra guards had been sent to check the disturbance. Making a quick note of the layout based on what she could see, Skye turned and saw Ward, or a basic rough image of his proportions near the door. Hunter's outline waited in the hall, keeping watch for any incoming Hydra backup.
The three quietly closed the door and began double timing it down the gray hallways. They went by an opening door and Skye got the impression of a much fuller barracks room before they were passed it, nearing the center of the base where more and more sound was coming from.
"Someone update me." Coulson bit out, noticeably unhappy with his decision to honor his agreement of staying on the Bus.
"Waiting on an ETA from One." May answered. "Staying out of the way until then." Skye could vaguely hear the sound of upraised voices in between May's words.
"ETA sixty seconds." Ward's voice rumbled from beside her.
"We talked about that." Coulson deadpanned, and Skye shook her head in confusion when Ward replied with a snarky.
"ETA one minute Sir."
"Permission to engage." Skye said, as the voices got ever closer.
"Permission granted." The Director affirmed quickly, then. "With pleasure."
"Permission to rethink the nutball decision to join S.H.I.E.L.D." Hunter grumbled.
"Permission denied. I have your signed contract." Coulson answered, sounding a little too pleased.
"It's a post it note." Hunter complained.
"Guys." Skye admonished as she rounded the last corner to where the light squad of Hydra agents stood, milling around the open door to a cavernous room beyond.
Part of her felt bad for the men who were caught completely unawares by her controlled blast of power that sent them ass over teakettle onto the hard cement floor.
Not bad enough not to smile as she did it, but it was close.
As Ward and Hunter went around ICING and applying zip tie restraints, Skye couldn't help but feel a little bit like a badass. Listening to the men's groans and muffled curses, she exulted in the litany of shockingly elaborate insults the opposition threw at their invisible attackers before the ICER round struck them inert and silent. She did a quick check and heard an answering thrum to all the bodies in her immediate area.
No casualties.
Fuck badass, I'm a goddamn superhero!
Watching the irregular outlines of her team as the boys finished up, she led the way into the huge room that was important enough for the Hydra agents to put motion sensors on. It was lined with yellowed tile that at some point might have been a pristine white but now looked cancerous. The concrete flooring was stained in worrisome tracks and blotches that congregated around the blackened seepage drains. In fact the only thing about the room that wasn't old or disgustingly dirty, Skye saw as her team skirted along the wall, was the copious amounts of medical equipment.
The surgical table and instruments were all the more sinister for their sparkling cleanliness. Skye felt a weight drop low in the pit of her stomach at the sight of them. Neither man behind her said a word, but she could feel the tones coming off Ward like heat waves at her six. Hunter was vibrating with the urge to either fight or flee, she got the impression that he just wanted to get either one over with.
Opening the nearest door and looking inside, she saw a line of even more doors with small windows placed at eye level. Three varying shapes, resembling the chalk outlines of victims at crime scenes, stood tensely still to one side of the entrance to the operating room. With Skye's appearance all three shapes took a collective breath of relief.
"About damn time." Mack's voice grumbled into the suddenly quiet hallway.
The blaring alarm had shut off. No doubt Skye's little show of force had looked nearly supernatural to those watching in the surveillance room. A larger force would be coming.
"We're not the ones that tripped the bloody alarm there mate." Hunter snapped back, in the resounding silence between the two still-fighting friends, Skye addressed the smallest form that was undoubtedly May.
"What've we got?" She asked, straining to hear any approaching combatants.
"Two unresponsive forms in the farthest cells." May answered quickly, flicking a couple fingers towards the end of the hall. "Each room locked with a separate key pad."
"Closed circuit?" Skye asked, already knowing the answer.
"Nothing you can hack." May replied neutrally, gesturing to the large form next to her as she continued. "Mack says Fitz should be able talk him through rewiring them to open."
"We should have two people manning that main door out there." Ward cautioned, from next to her. "Better to bottleneck any incoming out in that hallway with all those liabilities tripping them up."
"I'll do it." Hunter and Bobbi chorused. Awkward silence reigned in the group as the two waited for the other to back down first.
"We've got work to do guys." Mack rumbled, and Skye heard Hunter take in a breath to argue before Ward cut him off smoothly.
"He's got it." There came another small sound of impact which was different than the previous two. It sounded more like Ward clapping Hunter on the back, instead of the Englishman's skull. "He doesn't need you to tell him how to do his job."
Skye was glad no one could see the expression on her face. The man was unbelievable, he'd just gotten done smacking Hunter upside his head multiple times and now he was all genuine confidence and reassurance.
"Right, I got it." Hunter replied gruffly, his footsteps moving off across the surgical room. "Let's go Bob." He tossed casually over his shoulder, Skye and Ward shuffled out of the way for a muttering Bobbi.
"Keep your cloaking up unless it becomes absolutely necessary to drop it." May cautioned quietly through the open doorway. The four agents then moved down the barely lit hallway to the two cells that May had indicated.
Skye found herself pleading with any entity that was listening that the captives in these squalid compartments weren't irrevocably damaged. After seeing what they could to a man like Ward, a woman like Kara, she knew Hydra had a way of mutating the human mind.
Would it be the same for the two Inhumans?
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Ward stood next to Skye and listened as a slightly peeved Fitz maneuvered Mack through the steps to rewire the panel to the holding cell. Apparently the little engineer had made certain attempts to make the suits able to even go through motion sensors undetected. The fact that he'd made them invisible and virtually undetectable to both the human eye and thermal technology wasn't enough. The resulting 'failure' made him a little tetchy. Ward allowed a grin as the Scottish brogue became more pronounced the more irritated his friend became.
"No, for the love of God, you shouldn't have to splice the wires." Fitz's voice cracked whip-like over the coms. "Simply pull the blue set, unplug it from its bottom mooring, bottom, yes and then plug it into the lowest port."
As this continued, with May over seeing each careful movement, Ward tried to get a read on Skye. Which as she was still cloaked, made it nearly impossible. He thought he could see a certain rigidity in her stance, but that could just be nerves from the mission. He didn't think that was it, and even though a recent presentation involving scans of his brain made him doubt his instincts, if he knew her at all Skye was anxious to meet these Inhumans.
To save them.
If she was unable to do that she'd no doubt internalize the failure and make it her fault. Not that he could entirely blame her, people with childhoods like theirs… Logic didn't always play into the way they thought. And she no doubt just wanted to be around others that were like her. For all the team was her family, love and familiarity could only go so far to make her feel at ease with what had happened.
"Stop it." She hissed, loud enough for only him to hear.
"What?" He murmured back, trying and failing miserably to sound nonchalant.
"You're staring at me, I can feel it." She answered.
"Please." Ward scoffed cockily, smiling when she jabbed him with an elbow. "So…" He hedged speaking in a normal volume, in an attempt to disperse some of the tension as they waited. The two watched as the panel to room one lit up green. Mack moved to the second room and began the rewiring process all over as May kept her position by the unlocked cell. "Who do you think it is? In the rooms?"
"No idea." Skye replied tightly, and he heard the sighing of fidgeting material as her form moved about in a restless shrug.
Whisper yelling was starting to come from the operating room. Ward could feel the tension like a localized humidity. It didn't quite touch him, but he worried in a detached kind of way about their decision to let Hunter and Bobbi work together unsupervised.
"Time for us to find out." Mack answered, as Fitz's voice quieted and expectation weighed heavily on the team. May and Mack took charge of the first room, leaving Skye and Ward with the second. One by one they turned off their cloaking gear, and pushed the hoods back.
Nodding to Skye, May motioned for Mack to open their door. Ward mimicked the movement so that the women moved into the mandatory quarters in unison. One hand held his firearm out of sight as he stayed close to Skye, following behind her quietly.
The chamber was possibly even smaller than it looked from the outside. A slab of stone protruded from the wall, not unlike the one he'd found Skye on not so long ago. It boasted little more than a long mat for padding between the unforgiving surface and its occupant. There was no sink, and Ward figured the reeking bucket in the corner acted as the prisoner's toilet.
The person in question lay in a heap of ripped, dank blankets, and Ward felt an uncontrollable shiver snake down his spine at the temperature in the room. Even though they were smack dab in the middle of balmy jungle, the atmosphere in the room was nearly frigid. Remembering the way Gonzales and his people had kept Skye sedated to negate her power, he wondered if the Inhuman's ability had an adverse reaction to cold.
"Coulson you're not going to believe this." May's voice sounded in Ward's ear unexpectedly.
He saw as Skye's head cocked to the side and she eased closer to the bunk. He could feel his heart rate start to pick up. Those instincts of his were starting to niggle at him, gooseflesh spread over his safely cloaked skin, and it didn't all have to do with the chill.
"Tell me." Coulson's voice answered with practiced calm.
"Well I can't be completely sure but…" May's voice was cut off by Mack's fluid cursing.
"Didn't someone tell me the dude with no eyes, grabbed this chick? What the hell is she doin' here?"
"We think it's Raina, we'll need you to confirm." May continued louder.
"If the prisoner is diminutive and covered in thorn like protrusions then I think we can definitely confirm it's her." Coulson answered, Ward thought he could hear Gonzales's angry voice in the background. "Her condition?"
"Drugged I think." May replied businesslike. "There's enough bedding here I should be able to wrap her up and have Agent Mackenzie carry her out."
Well, Ward definitely had not seen that coming. Not to mention of all the people he did not want to ever see again, Raina was pretty high on that list. After all, most of the others were dead.
"Oh. My. God." Skye breathed out. Her placement in front of him was blocking his view. Ward took a hurried step forward only to knock into her back.
She had reached with barely shaking fingers to pull away one of the rust brown blankets to expose the person beneath to their view.
Ghost
There was an ashy cast to the once dark skin, which clung too tightly to its framework of bones. The once lively body shivered and shook in the threadbare clothes it was housed in. But the eyes twinkled, when they opened, the chapped lips smiled, and the honeyed voice was only a little raspy when he said.
"Come on girl, you know I look good."
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Woah! Minds blown am I right? No? Terrible? Well I can't help it I'm trying to right some wrongs here people! #Triplives damn it! ^.^
Let me know what you think! I'd also say try to withhold judgement until you read the next chapter, but I understand if there's concern. Though, ya know, remember its Marvel and crazy shit happens.
Oh, and sorry for the short chapter, it feels really long but it's a few hundred words less than one of my usual ones, oh well c'est la vie.