Between the blanketed sense of panic amongst the inmates and the general chaotic nature of 'elimination week', it was near impossible to notice the sudden appearance of a previously missing prisoner. In fact, most residents would be more surprised if you told them that she'd even left in the first place. It came, therefore, as no shock when Torres suddenly sauntered into the cafeteria midweek and was met with nothing but a quick indifferent glance from those who saw movement in their peripheral, and one gawking inmate who insistently held her gaze from across the room.

Cambell.
The lazy lopsided grin that cut across Torres's face was not forced.

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

She looked good for someone who was originally .05 seconds away from heaving her guts onto the floor. Still a bit shaky and sallow though – shit I hope she's not contagious. She also didn't seem to have an appetite – which was understandable – but did Torres have to stare at me while I ate?

"So…" I started, momentarily setting down my fork in favor of my napkin. This isn't awkward at all. "How was the hospital?" I asked into the paper.
She shrugged dismissively and looked off to her right. "Therapeutic," she answered vaguely.
"Good, good…" I murmured, feigning complete satisfaction with that reply.
We sat in silence for a moment while she stared off thoughtfully into the distance and I stared dejectedly at my mashed potatoes.
"How are your elimination runs?" she abruptly asked.
"Alright."
"Mmm."

We went back to staring at our respective objects, and I lasted a full fifteen seconds before I blurted,
"It's absolutely fucking bullshit," and pushed the tray away from me and leaned onto my elbows towards her. Torres, the little shit, had the nerve to look surprised when she turned to face me - like she hadn't been hearing the horrors of elimination week and had assumed mine was all sunshine and buttercups. Well maybe she hadn't heard yet – she'd only been here about thirty minutes… assuming she went straight from the infirmary to the cafeteria. Who wouldn't?
"First day they tossed me into some hell-hole basement and made me stay there for like seventeen hours and I had to pee, and then," I smacked the flat of my palm against the laminated wood of the table, "they ignore me and forge my signature on some weird voodoo contract that says I can never leave this shit-stand."

Torres raised an eyebrow – at my swearing or story I didn't know – but made no move to shush me, so I continued. "So I get back to my cell thinking I can sleep for a moment, but literally like five seconds later they wake me up and throw me back in there, saying now I've got to complete some fucking pointless shit task about proving my innocence, which is fucking bullshit," I growled out the last bit - noticing that my voice was slowly rising in both volume and hysteria, "because the fucking law says innocent until proven guilty – not this backwater bullshit fucking shit ass system Fury-Fucks got fucking going on with fucking everything!" My hands flailed over my head as I pantomimed and elegant speech, as I was suddenly losing my vocabulary and replacing everything with swears. "Fucking eighty percent hacker the fucking wall-box told me after I did the first 'innocence task' – you know what it made me do?"

I glared at her for a beat before she caught on and leaned in.
"What did they make you do?" she asked softly, face feigning seriousness but eyes crinkled at the edges and clearly giving away her enjoyment of my pain. Or maybe my storytelling abilities.
"They told me to fucking push the shaped blocks into the corresponding holes in the wall. HOW THE FUCK DOES ME KNOWING HOW TO SHOVE A SQUARE IN THE SQUARE FUCKING HOLE MAKE ME A HACKER?"
"It doesn't." she replied, still leaning in despite my yelling.
"And the next fucking day, fucking six seconds later; I can't even get a breather from this fucking stupid fucking program bullshit, they drag me the fuck back in there!"
She shook her head sadly like it was fucking news to her.

"More fucking bullshit this time, Fury-fuck wants me to connect the colored fucking dots with their corresponding fucking colored strings. But OOOOOH," I held my hands up in mock surrender and leaned back in my seat. "I'm a hacker now 'cuz the strings are actually wires; thirty three fucking percent hacker that round, according to wall-box."
Torres leaned back in her seat as well and crossed her arms over her chest. "So where does that leave you?" She asked.
"Somehow, I'm a fucking hundred and thirteen percent 'the' hacker. I'm so fucking hacker, I overshot everything. I'm the fucking terminator of fucking hacking; but bullshit Michael over there," I jerked a thumb at a man sitting two tables to our left, "is fucking two hundred and twenty nine percent fucking hacker." I drank angrily – I didn't know that was even possible until now – from my water bottle and slammed it back down. "Because fuck logic."

Michael looked over and smiled apologetically. He must've felt my glare. Or heard me... probably heard me.
"This is such…" I opened and closed my fist and glared at it while I tried to form a coherent sentence. "He doesn't even fucking, like," I huffed angrily and slammed my hand back down. "Fury's fucking pulling bullshit out of thin air and doesn't even bother to cover up the fact that he has no fucking clue what he's doing." I sagged back into the seat and stared at my polystyrene tray, suddenly feeling empty. Not better, but emptier. It kinda sucked, and I held in the urge to sniff like a goddamn child.

Torres stayed still, probably thinking that she looked super perceptive and enigmatic with her unreadable face and steady gaze. Really she just looked like she was holding in a stomach ache. Fucking Torres. She probably was too – I'd imagine food poisoning lasts a while.
"But anyways." I sighed and leaned forward into my hands to rub them tiredly over my face. "Four more days of this and it's back to normal."
Torres made a short hum of affirmation or denial – I don't know – and idly rubbed at her wrist.
We sat there in silence and watched as the inmates filed in and out – some directly from their basement trials, and others moving towards their cells or designated pick up areas for their elim runs. It was depressing. Everyone looked worn down and defeated – with the exception, as per usual, of that stupid group of five. They'd seemed to arrive as the same conclusion that most of us had – that the percentages we were awarded at the end of each trial was just a random number. Unlike the rest of us, they took it in stride and found the whole thing hilarious instead of disheartening.

They blew my fucking mind – these runs were apparently our only way of proving innocence. Who honestly reacts with "lol k" to the realization that your only exit is a joke?

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

Cambell snored. Softly. More on the inhale than the exhale – but it was enough to be annoying. Loki stared up at the grey ceiling with his hands folded neatly over his stomach - Torres's stomach - and reviewed his plan to get into the agentless group of five. It was a hard thing to do with Cambell heavy-breathing all the time. He looked over and glowered at his cellmate's head, imagining plugging their nose and covering their mouth until they stopped thrashing and their eyes dulled.
Cambell snorted and rolled over.

This new position was apparently easier on the airways, as the snores came to an abrupt halt and Loki was finally left with his thoughts. Whatever he did, it'd have to be when Cambell and four of the group of five were in the basement. Divide and conquer. The mousy looking boy looked to be the easiest to manipulate, but if the other four were as clever as he thought they were, they'd see it coming. He'd have to get one of the important members to open up. And as Torres, he couldn't very well aim for the three men – her motive for gaining their trust could be misinterpreted.

Dweller then. Loki shut his eyes, pleased that the path forward was relatively clear-cut. He'd just have to remember to tell the guards to take the other four members away as well when they came to collect Cambell in the morning. And be discreet about it.

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

Torres snores loud enough to wake the dead. I'd hoped that when she showed back up, my nightly radio-listening escapades wouldn't be interrupted. I figured that whatever noises the radio made – it didn't make very loud ones but guilty consciences make everything seem louder – would be covered up by her snores. Well, apparently she wasn't going to fall asleep tonight so I had to improvise and make my own – and they seemed incredibly put-on because I've never snored and wasn't really sure how to actually do it. I was half afraid she'd accuse me of pretending to sleep and demand to know why I was being so fake.
Guilty conscience.
I have no idea why I have one; I'm a wonderful person.

I gave up eventually – the snoring was hurting the back of my throat and the radio wasn't really saying anything interesting – and rolled over to face the wall. Somewhere along the line I'd fallen asleep, because the next thing I know I'm being pulled up by the shoulder and shouted at for not being at the pick-up area in time. Torres, for some reason, was getting yelled at as well – and she seemed to be patiently waiting the row out. Knowing her, she'd be hitting the punching bags after this. I'd kill to see her snap and actually smack someone – she looks like she could be lethal.
I have got to get her to tell me where she learned her stuff.

I was dragged, pajamas and all, down the hall towards the showers so that I could wash up and change before the trials began again that day. I was too tired to really care that they had obviously called on me five-ish hours too early; besides, there was nothing I could do about it and arguing was a futile endeavor in this place.
"Piss off!" Someone snapped from down another hall. As my guards and I passed the entryway that the voice had come from, I rubbernecked enough to make an owl jealous and tried to check what was going on. It wasn't a totally unusual sight – just another inmate dragging their feet as a couple guards wrestled them into whatever direction they were supposed to go. It was funny mostly because the inmate had very nearly wriggled his way out of not two but three heavily armed guard's grubby little mitts – and was seconds away from bolting.

"Move…" One of my own guards said warningly and tapped the small of my back with the muzzle of his gun – as if to dispel any thoughts I had of causing a scene as well. I shrugged a shoulder forward and scowled.
"I am." Shitstick, I added mentally.
The guard remained silent, but his smirk was practically palpable. Not that I knew he was smirking… I mean he was behind me, made no sound except for the 'scuff scuff' of his steel-toed boots on the concrete floor… and he had a helmet on that covered the majority of his face. BUT HE WAS GRINNING I JUST KNOW IT. And so were the other guards. Fuck them too.
I heard a muffled 'ungh' and the telltale breathy groan and soft thud as someone – most likely the inmate – was punched in the gut and left to flop gracelessly to the floor. Bet ten bucks we can't even sue them for that. SHIELD'll just make some bullshit excuse like 'reasonable force'. Hell, I bet somehow we'd be court ordered to pay SHIELD instead – probably for something stupid like lost wages or emotional distress. Fucking… bullshit… ass… balls…

I was in a perfectly foul mood by the time the elevator doors opened and I was ushered into my two room basement hellhole again. Nothing had changed. The first room still held nothing but the clock, and the second room that it lead into still held only the table and mounted wall-box. Talbot, the name I'd given to the automated male voice that most often came through the wallbox, greeted me as per usual and asked that I take a seat at the table. I still hadn't figured out if that was supposed to be a joke – since there was no chair, or if a chair actually was supposed to be there and it was just never installed. No one had chairs. I'd asked multiple people, who all turned out to be just as confused as I was.

Today seemed like it was going to be as aggravating as it normally was – until Talbot dropped a bombshell three seconds into my contemplation of SHIELDs lack of interior decorating.
"Today, you will be given your own laptop."
Fuck me. My head snapped up and I stared at the retro intercom tacked to the wall. Fuck me right now, are you serious?! I shouted internally. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that this room was under video surveillance somehow – even if I couldn't figure out where the camera was. Act cool, act cool.

A soft hissing sound emanated from the funky table in the middle of the room, and I turned to watch the world's oldest laptop slowly rise from the table's depths 'Mission Impossible' style. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen.
"Today, you will be performing feats of great cunning."
"Oh yeah?" I asked sarcastically, moving around the table to stand before the laptop on the other side. Yesterday had been a feat of 'great dexterity' according to Talbot.
I ran a finger around the laptops thick edges. It was old enough to be deemed decently outmoded, but not old enough to be considered cool in an antiquated kind of way. I depressed the button where the lid and keyboard met and stifled the urge to throw the thing across the room. It wasn't a useless laptop; even the ancient ones perform well enough when needed. It was just aggravating that there was absolutely no way I could feasibly use this thing to escape – even though it was one of the best tools for creating said escape route. Besides a key. Or a gun. Or a full pardon and an open door.

Besides, I was being watched and SHIELD was either expecting me to make some magic and figure out how to escape using this thing, or expecting me to hold back and just do whatever Wallbox told me to do and left it at that, or they were expecting me to refuse even touching the laptop. All roads somehow in some stupid way lead back to SHIELD ruling that I was the hacker. Well. I was. But they weren't supposed to know that.
"Today," Talbot interrupted, "you will be receiving your own SHIELDtop."
I tugged at the laptop and tried to turn it over to check the bottom, only to find that the thing was somehow attached to the pedestal that it had risen from. I also tried to keep myself from banging my head on the table at SHIELDs attempt to rebrand the word 'laptop'.
"You will be installing a program." Talbot continued as cheerily as a robotic voice could. My hands stalled their prizing at the plastic sides and I glanced up wearily at the box.
"Think fast." It chirped.

A 'click' sound alerted me to some action happening near my crotch, and I looked down to find a CD sticking out from the side of the table. I hunkered down and pulled the thing out, then watched as the slot closed and sealed itself so well that the hairline crack that indicated a movable part was all but invisible. How many of these things are there? I idly wondered, running a finger over the fissure.

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

A lone guard stood between Sophia and her cell, and judging by the shoulder-width planted feet and stern gaze, he obviously was not going to let her climb the stairs to her second-floor cell. She wondered why.
"Use the next stairwell." He said firmly.
Sophia scowled at him but continued down the hall without rising to the bait he so neatly laid. She refused to start out her mornings in a foul mood, because in the penitentiary it was only possible for things to go worse – so starting out bad was never good.
Seven, eight, nine… "Ten, eleven, twelve…" she whispered on her exhale. Inhale… Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
She reached the top of the stairs just in time to see one of her friends being escorted down the other stairwell at the far end of the hall – the one she was just shooed away from. He looked down to her end for a brief moment before he was out of sight. Sophia frowned - he had had one of those looks where the communicator tried to say something with their eyes; all raised-brow and wide-eyed like. Something's going on…?

Sophia stared intently at her cell door a few paces away. Was there someone inside? Was her friend in trouble? She couldn't do anything about that. Maybe Beckett knows… She turned to head to the wing that the rest of her group of friends stayed – and collided with another inmate.
"Fucking-!" Sophia barked before she could censor herself. "Excuse me." She muttered coldly, and strode back towards the stairwell.
"I wouldn't go down there if I were you." The inmate she'd just run into muttered.
Sophia turned to eye the newcomer wearily, "Why not?" she asked in a clipped tone.
"I heard your name tossed around coming up." The newcomer flicked her head and the loose strand that had been in her eyes settled back behind her ear. "Might be nothing - but you never know."
"And how do you know my name?" Sophia asked, furrows between her eyes growing deeper. She did not trust this woman.
"I've been sitting not even two tables away from you in the cafeteria for the majority of our time here." She replied nonchalantly.

Sophia squinted and tried to place the woman's face. "Yeah… what's your name?" she asked.
"Torres."
"Weren't you sick?" Sophia suddenly blurted and straightened her head back up – it'd unconsciously tilted as she studied the inmate.
"How could you have possibly known I was gone?" Torres asked, grinning widely.
Sophia snorted softly and quirked the side of her mouth, "Heard your friend complaining loudly. Twice."
Torres nodded.
"Weren't you hospitalized?" Sophia asked.

Ah, there it is. Loki grinned internally like a cat that had just cornered a mouse. He'd arrived at this portion of the conversation sooner than he'd hoped.
"Yes." Torres said, "Only for a couple of days though. They have a few rooms up on the third floor-"
"Third floor?" Sophia interrupted.
"Yes, I think it's like…" Torres cocked a hip and squinted off into the distance, "…pretty sure it's above the one that overlooks the cafeteria. Not sure though, there were a lot of corners."
Loki looked back to his captivated audience and wondered when they'd ask for more details. Currently, Sophia looked like she was trying to chew her words and keep them from all tumbling out. It took a few more weary squints before she unclenched her jaw and, "You want to sit with us for dinner?" She asked. "I mean," Sophia feigned indifference and shrugged, "if your cellmate isn't around."

Sophia watched as Torres glanced down briefly at the ground before furrowing her brow and nodding slowly. "Sure," she agreed, then looked up and flashed a grin. "If Cambell's not around; my cellmate's a little… loud."
Sophia snorted again. "Yeah," She agreed.
"Right, well," Torres backed away slowly towards the stairwell. "See you later, Draper."
Sophia froze, then relaxed and grinned. "Nooo, my surname's Dweller."
Torres cocked her head and suddenly looked worried. "You're Dweller?" she asked. "…But the guards on the stairs…" she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, "they said they were after Draper."
"Well you missed him," Sophia said. "He was just being pulled off as you came up."
"Ah…eh…" Torres looked moderately stricken. "Sorry, I… oops. Mixed you two up."
Sophia waved a hand dismissively. "It's fine, they would've gotten him anyways."
"My bad, though." Torres looked to her hand on the guardrail. "I'll get it by dinner." She turned and stepped lightly down the stairs.

Sophia watched as Torres made her way down until she was out of view. She wondered if the rest of her group of friends would be upset with her welcoming a newcomer in; but Torres was the only one who'd been that far out of bounds and come back. The unpleasant thought that this inmate could be a snitch – or worse, an agent – gnawed at the back of her mind, but the risk right now might be worth it. Candle – or whatever their name was, might be a liability though. Hopefully Torres and her cellmate could be separated.

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

Loki strolled back towards his and Cambell's cell, perfectly pleased that he'd been able to accomplish in two minutes what had taken Fury's team more than eight years - and counting. He sincerely believed that the hacker was one of the five, or all five together; it all just fit so well. This was the first step towards proving them - however many – guilty. And getting the hell off this planet.

The trip back was relatively uneventful, but Torres grinned at the guard stationed nearby her cell as she entered, and relished the sudden tensing of his jaw beneath the helmet. Little pleasures, Loki thought.

~~~~~~~01100101 01011000 01100101 00100000~~~~~~~

After groping the sides of a computer long enough to make anyone who'd been watching uncomfortable, the computer whirred – literally – to life like a particularly noisy purring cat. It'd been easy enough to figure out that this was no ordinary outdated machine. In fact, it was only designed to look ancient. A little name engraved into the plastic and a small sticker proclaimed that this déclassé piece of trash was an IBM ThinkPad from somewhere around 1997 – but that was bullshit. Only the casing around the important bits was from 1997, and there wasn't a doubt in my mind that the reason this thing was incapable from being pulled off its pedestal was because the real machine was below the table. Maybe the whole table contained the computers drives and interconnected parts, and this plastic thing was just the controls. The shit I could pull off. Fuck I wish I wasn't in jail.

The screen flashed and informed me I was running on Windows 95, before stopping on the login screen. The only user available for me to pick was administrator. Well fuck. There was obviously no password. Because of course, they wanted me to go around it. I stared at the screen for what seemed like hours before Talbot Wallbox got annoyed with my lack of movement and prompted me into action.
"Think fast." It repeated, complete with clicking noise indicating that the CD slot on the side of the table had opened again to dispel its contents – which were no longer there. I rolled my eyes, and twirled the CD around my fingers. Hum… maybe…

At this point I decided to figure a way past the login. I mean, I was already here for other unrelated hacking stuff – it shouldn't come as a surprise when SHIELD found out I could do this much at least. Others could too, it wasn't that exciting. But I had a sinking suspicion that the CD I was given wasn't a computer game for me to play. I stuck the CD into its drive, then slid the thing home and restarted the bulky machine, and waited for the change in computer screen scenery. Windows made a brief appearance before the screen switched to black and displayed… yup. SHIELD had given me a 'password recovery' tool, and it looked suspiciously like Ophcrack. Which… meant someone was lying; because I was 2000% sure that ophcrack didn't work on Windows 95. Either this wasn't Windows, that wasn't Ophcrack, or both were neither. Fuck my head hurts.

It made sense now why SHIELD had called on Mister Stark and Doctor Banner – and probably a bajillion other computer-wise morons who remained behind the scenes to work on this penitentiary. They were trying to trip us up using shit we were familiar with. And how the hell did we go from matching shapes and colors to cracking computer passwords?
"Think fast!" click.
Piece of shit.

I pressed 'any key to continue' and watched in vague fascination as the screen changed again to confirm – quite loudly thanks to the bright green font and bubble letters – that this was indeed ophcrack… or at least trying very hard to be. I had a few options on how I wanted the thing to run, and went with the 'I'm not a hacker and I don't know what I'm doing' response and selected the 'automatic' option to keep my input to a bare minimum.
If Wallbox doesn't tell me I'm 0% hacker after this, I'm going to be very upset.

A/N: StoryKindaUpdateThing- I wasn't sure whether or not this was worth mentioning, but since the second avengers came out, I figured it'd be smart to work Ultron in here somewhere. This story's obviously AUish, but it assumes the second Avengers hasn't occurred yet – or at least this story's occurring just before the shit hits the fan in the movies. Anyways, this story is kinda *flails and makes ghost noises* so feel free to shout out some kinda negative or affirmation in regards to… that… idea? Or anything in general. And thanks for the kind reviews, you guys make me grin like an idiot :)
I should be updating faster from now on at least, since I no longer have doodies. Hah. Duties. Work duties. Sorry. Thanks for reading:3