Kaminsky slowly raised his head and looked around. There were wrecked cars and rubble all around him. He had heard the sounds of the fight, and he certainly wanted to help, oh yes, but he figured that it was just a little too dangerous for him to get involved. He was too important to HYDRA to get wounded in a skirmish like this. Yes, that was it. It had nothing to do with him being scared.
But now the fight was done and the SHIELD agents were nowhere to be seen. Kaminsky couldn't spot Ward or whoever had broken him out, but he figured they couldn't have gotten far. As stealthily as he could, he stood up and began to slink away. He had almost made it out of the parking lot before a SHIELD van pulled up in front of him and the agent that had been escorting him earlier jumped out. He let out a small yelp and spun around to run away, but his own feet got tangled together and he fell onto the ground.
Agent Bolewa picked him up by the shoulders and dragged him into the van. "You're not getting away that easily, mister. We still have questions for you."
"Oh come on!" he whined as she tossed him into the vehicle and slammed the door shut. "I don't wanna be prisoner anymore! I just want to go back to base!"
"What was the thing that attacked us?" Jemma asked from behind the wheel.
"I'll never tell! Hail HYDRA!" He tried to do the salute, but with his hands cuffed behind him all he did was yank uselessly on his shoulders.
"Ok, that was your one chance." Bolewa pulled out her I.C.E.r and put Kaminsky to sleep. "I swear, these HYDRA goons do nothing but talk."
Five minutes later, Jemma's van pulled into a diner several miles away, with a second SHIELD vehicle coming in beside them. The door opened to reveal Skye on her laptop and May on a stretcher. She was sitting up now, looking a little better than before. It helped that all SHIELD vehicles came with a supply powerful anesthetic just in case.
"Any word from Coulson?" Bolewa asked.
Skye shook her head. "Not yet. I tried tracking his communicator, but I'm not getting any activity, so there's a good chance it was damaged during the fight. But I have an idea where he might be headed." She pulled out the remains of the dried head, which had been pried open since Skye got her hands on it. "I managed to access parts of the CPU on this thing. It's called a B-BST, which stands for Battledroid - Bidirectional Shock Trooper."
Jemma shrugged. "Okay, so HYDRA gives weird acronyms to everything. What else did you find?"
"Well, I figured Coulson was either kidnapped by Ward, or he's following him. And I was able to find this." She spun her laptop around to show a map of the county. A squiggly red line was outlined on the map. "This is the GPS memory of the droid. Everywhere it's been since it was activated. This is the court house -" she pointed at one end of the line "- which means this is the point of origin. And, hopefully, where Coulson and Ward are headed."
"So it's where we're headed too," added May.
"Are you sure you don't want us to drop you off somewhere?" Trip asked from the driver's seat.
May shook her head. "There's no time. We need to stop Ward before he escapes, and we need to make sure Coulson is accounted for."
The truck slowed to a stop, and Coulson heard the doors open and close. "This way Mr. Ward," the voice said. Coulson was sure he had heard it before, but he couldn't place it. He waited a moment, then deactivated the magnetic grips he'd been using to hold on. From beneath the vehicle he saw the two men walking towards a seemingly empty warehouse. He pulled out his communicator.
"This is Coulson. Do you read me?" he spoke. There was nothing but static coming back. "This is Director Coulson. Do you read me?" Again, only static. He sighed. It must have been damaged in the fight with the robot. For now he was on his own. Alright, whatever. He had his weapons. He could handle whatever HYDRA had hiding inside that building.
Coulson crawled out from beneath the truck just in time to see one of the warehouse doors open and close. He pulled out his gun and jogged over to it, but when he tried the handle it was locked tight. He back up and tried to bust it open, but even when his shoulder crashed through he couldn't feel the door budge at all. He hadn't brought any gadgets with him - they were all back with the vehicles. Looking around, he spotted a window near the top that appeared to be unguarded.
"Alright. How long has it been since you've scaled a building Phil. A year? Two? Five?" He swung his arms back and forth in a half-assed stretch, trying to estimate how high the wall was and how many footholds it had. He wasn't afraid of heights (you can't be when half of your work is done in a plane), but he was afraid of falling, especially with nobody around to catch him. Plus it had taken him a long time to establish even the simplest muscle memories from before he died. He doubted his body had the same reflexes he'd need to get up there. He sighed. "Here goes nothing."
He too a running start and jumped as high as he could, and landed with a *SMACK* on the wall. He managed to grip on a small ledge running across, and held himself there for a moment before continuing. The warehouse had almost completely vertical walls, but Coulson could fit his fingers in between where the sidings had drifted away from each other. Half of the time his feet were dangling uselessly and he could only rely on his upper body to keep himself from crashing down to the bottom. Slowly he worked his way up to the window.
He had almost made it when he put his hand down on a damaged piece of the siding. It had been torn by age or a storm or something, and now sharp bits of metal sprung up from the edge. One of those pieces drove deep into Coulson's finger, and he almost jerked his hand away before realizing that he would never be able to keep himself hanging with only one hand. What he couldn't stop was his cry of pain. Muffled as it may be by the building, he was still concerned that somebody inside had heard it. After a few seconds Coulson could hear his pulse in his head and the warm trickle of blood sliding down his finger and onto his palm. He lifted the hand, feeling the chunk of metal slice back out of the finger, and carefully reached it higher until it could clasp onto the window sill.
After all of that, climbing into the window was surprisingly easy. The glass swung open to the inside, and the beam stretching out before him was large enough to stand on. Coulson swung his feet in and place them on it, glad to have a steady surface underneath him after that last ordeal. He tore off a piece of his shirt to bandage up his finger and was just wrapping it up when he realized that he was being watched.
Slowly Coulson raised his head to meet the eyes of the HYDRA guard pointing a rifle at him. "Huh. I guess you were watching the window after all," he commented offhandedly, continuing to bandage his wound without breaking eye contact.
"Sorry to have to do this, Mr. Coulson, but orders are to shoot anybody coming in that we don't approve of." The guard shrugged, very nonchalant about the whole business.
Coulson frowned. "Cameras, I suppose?" The guard nodded. "You certainly hid them well. How do you know my name? Is HYDRA distributing my likeness now?"
The guard grinned and shook his head. "Really? You don't remember me? I'm Agent Columbus! I ran security with you way back in the day. Stark Expo? Vanko's drones?"
The SHIELD agent cocked his head and stared into the distance, trying to remember. "Well, there were a lot of agents there and it was pretty chaotic...I can't say I remember your face exactly."
The HYDRA guard groaned. "Come on man, there weren't that many people with you. I told you that joke about the fish?"
Coulson shook his head. "Yeah I don't recall. Sorry."
Columbus lowered his rifle. "See, this is why I sided with HYDRA. SHIELD never appreciated - urk!"
As soon as the weapon was lowered, Coulson had jumped the man. In a moment Columbus was in a headlock, and after a few seconds more he had passed out. Coulson unwrapped his arm from the man's neck and let it thud to the ground. "Now I remember you. You were always lowering your weapon. Bad form." He searched the man, taking his weapon, his ID, and a keyring that he found. "The joke was funny, though."
On the other side of the beam was a ladder going down to the floor. Once Coulson had climbed down he saw...well, he didn't see much of anything. There weren't any other guards around. A small booth in the corner held monitors showing feeds from everywhere around the building's outer area. At the back, a single door stood with a card reader beside it. Coulson looked at the ID card he had lifted. It had a mag strip, likely used for going through that door. He walked over and swiped it.
The door opened, and a small room appeared to Coulson. It was completely white lit. Embossed on the back wall was the tentacled skull of HYDRA, but it somehow seemed more formal and noble. Not as sinister as it usually would. Stepping inside he saw a panel with several numbered buttons on it. An elevator, built into a false back of the building to make it look like a door back outside. Clever.
Coulson went over the buttons and spotted one that, rather than a number, had the HYDRA logo once again. "Seems like an easy choice," he muttered to himself as he pressed it.