Chapter 31
Some of the next few chapters will be one parts due to scenes being connected with each other so please enjoy.
Skye couldn't sleep much longer. She wasn't sure if it was because she was left alone in a cold bed only a couple hours before or if it was because of thinking about all the writing on walls that Coulson began to start. It hadn't even been that long ago that the director finally told her what was going on in his head.
The hacker rolled over to her husband's side of the bed and nuzzled herself into his pillow. The distinctive smell always seemed to calm her down. After a while she finally decided to get up and make her way to the kitchen for something warm to drink.
That trip seemed to be cut short once she heard the smooth sound of music coming from Coulson's office. Skye was puzzled for a few seconds on why he was up already but then remembered it was because of Ward that had them all on edge.
Slowly, the hacker pushed open the office door and found the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. standing at the wall carving. She takes a step towards the record player waiting for a moment. It wasn't until she heard the snapping of the blade on the box cutter he was using that Skye decided to turn off the music.
Coulson turned around surprised to see his agent standing in his office with her arms crossed. She gave him the look that he had been caught.
"Skye, how long have you been standing there?"
"I guess long enough, sir."
Coulson walks over towards his desk and puts down the broken knife.
"I didn't mean to wake you." He tells her.
"Does it look like I've been sleeping?" She questions.
"Was it Andrew? I mean I wouldn't be surprised." Coulson rambles. "A future grandbaby possibly?"
Skye shakes her head but smiles at the comments. She knows Coulson is trying to change the subject and as much as she would like a child now wasn't the time. Plus the childhood she had mixed with her husband's, it was kind of iffy to be honest.
"I can't believe you would say that." Skye tells him.
"What? A future grandbaby, I would smother them with Captain America."
Skye shakes her head. "You know Drew's uncle is Hawkeye, correct."
"So it's been mentioned."
"You have a lot of competition then, Phil."
"Not really, it wouldn't be hard to beat Clint at that game."
Skye chuckled as she smiled once again before stopping and carefully looking at the director. They needed to talk about what was going on with Coulson's writing on the wall.
"You know when May left, she mentioned that you might start this. I'm required to chaperone."
Coulson took a deep breath before looking back at the wall, studying it for a few seconds before turning back to face Skye who was studying it as well.
"It's all connected somehow."
"Ward has information about my father, who just happens to have the alien buzzkill device, which is somehow connected to the writing that is related to the G.H. serum that is in our blood. Like we're pieces to a puzzle."
"Except we don't know what the puzzle is or what it goes to."
"It's a hacker's worst nightmare."
"It wants us to know, I can feel it." Coulson tells her.
"Then it... should tell us, because I have been trying to match the writing to constellation maps, navigational charts, genome diagrams." Skye explains. "I've even had Drew take a look with a fresh pair of eyes and he got nothing. And he's good with maps."
"I'm not surprised you brought Andrew into it." Coulson answers.
"Should I have not done that?" she questions.
Coulson sighs before answering. "You two are married. Skye, you shouldn't have to keep this away from him. He's every much as a scientist as FitzSimmons so yes he can help. He's smart so it may help."
Skye uncrosses her arms and takes a step back from the record player making her way towards Coulson's desk.
"The only reason I got him involved was because he saw me frustrated that I couldn't figure it out. He thought a fresh pair of eyes would work."
"Which is quite alright. It works."
"How long have you been doing this for?" Skye finally asks.
"Used to be one or two times a month. Now it's once a week."
"Do you sleep? How do you function?"
"That's why we need to figure this out. We need answers."
Skye lets out a huff a hot air and begins to walk towards the door. This was probably going to be awhile.
"When does May get back?" she asks opening the office door.
"Not until we find Ward."
It's the only answer the hacker hears before crossing through the door frame and back into the hallway.
"This is Morse." Andrew hears Bobbi over the coms. "I have agents positioned at multiple locations. We have been sitting here for an hour."
"Parker reporting in. No sign of the suspect yet." He contributes in.
From the area on the roof he was at, the agent could see Bobbi from her spot but couldn't see Trip from his location who was inside the building.
"He has 11 hotboxes within 200 miles of his last known position. Odds are, he'll show up at one of them." May reports back from her location in the quinjet.
"Then we better be ready." Andrew tells everyone.
Once he says the comment, the agent hears Trip from the other side of the com. It seems that he has spotted Grant Ward.
"This is Triplett. I have eyes on the prize."
Andrew pulled out the sniper from the case that Fitz had prepared for him quickly during the middle of the night with the help of Mack. Fitz was getting better but he still needed some form of help. The sniper was made of the same dendrotoxins that an ICER had but had better range.
Bobbi was the one that showed him how to shoot a sniper on the mission they were on shortly after they left the academy. He was quite amazed when he saw his wife in a similar position when they were on the ship with Donnie Gill.
"Ready for action whenever." Andrew reports to Trip.
"I've got a clear shot and a trigger happy finger that needs some love.
"Standby until I give a signal." They hear Coulson.
"Director, I can end this." Trip says.
"The senator wants him in alive so try to wait until we need to use the ICER sniper."
"What do you want, sir?" Andrew asks.
"Bring him in any way possible."
"Copy that, sir."
Andrew loads up the sniper just in case Trip can't make the shot within the crowded building. It's only a matter of time until he would have to shoot Ward down.
"Damn. Agent Parker we have a problem." He hears Trip in his ear.
"What is it?"
"I don't know how, but he knows we're on him." Andrew begins to take down the sniper. There was no way he was going to get a shot now. "He's got a dead man's switch and enough C-4 to take down the block."
The agent next to Andrew takes one look at him before he is getting shoved the case into his chest.
"Take this back to the van. I need to help agent Morse." He says removing his vest before getting ready to climb down the ladder back to the ground.
"Stand down, Trip!" He yells before meeting Bobbi.
"He's on the move."
"Do not engage. He's not bluffing. Keep an eye in the sky, May." They hear Coulson.
Andrew made it to the next stop just a few minutes before Ward would come walking by. He found Bobbi waiting by the directory reading a book.
"I really hate this guy." He says as he stands to the left of her reading the directory.
"That puts you with the rest of the team." She responds.
"He's manipulating her. I can see it every time she visited him." He tells her referring to Skye.
"Are you having problems with your love life, Drew?" Bobbi asks changing the subject.
"No?"
"Right..." she shakes her head. "That is not what your wife said."
"Wait she talked to you?"
"I'm your acting big sister. Of course she talked to me. She's worried about you."
"I'm every much as worried. We both seem to have dad problems."
Bobbi chuckles at the comment. "Sounds like your both children of monsters."
"That is not good for our future children."
Before Bobbi could answer his comment, she sees Ward walk by. He's dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt wearing a jacket over it. The hat hides his face from the world.
"We have confirmation of the subject." She radios in.
Andrew is all set to go before she marks her page.
"It's go time."
Back on base, Coulson and Skye begin to look at the victim they had come across. She had the same writing on her forehead as what Coulson began to write on the wall.
"Micro, one of my sources, he's a crime scene junky. He came across the writing."
Coulson studied the photographs before answering.
"When did this happen?"
"Last night. Whoever did this is still out there."
"Who is the victim?"
"Her name is Janice Robbins. Lived in upstate New York."
Coulson looked over Skye's shoulder at the tablet in her hand. He was remembering something but couldn't put a finger to it.
"I think she's an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent."
"That doesn't sound right, sir. She's an art teacher from Iowa." Skye said confused by the comment. "I have her full bio."
Coulson shakes his head. "No I'm not wrong. I've seen her before."
Before Skye knew it, Coulson was dragging her along to the victim's apartment. It was dark inside when the director opened the door but Skye followed him in anyway. She knew it was wrong.
"You know we are breaking like fourteen laws right now." Skye tells him.
"Part of being an outlaw." Coulson responds.
Skye huffs and continues to shine her flashlight around. This was more of Drew's thing. He liked exploring possible thrillers, probably where she got what Simmons called her bad girl shenanigans.
The hacker continued to look at the items on the bookshelves. The array of paint brushes and books filled them but she couldn't see how the victim was connected to Coulson.
"What are we looking for exactly?"
"Answers." Coulson only says.
Skye sighs again. "You're right. This totally screams S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. You two don't have a single thing in common, unless you have some Enya albums you've been hiding."
"When you met Andrew, did you know he was an agent?" Coulson says from the kitchen.
The hacker tilts her head. "No, plus he was living with his mom at the time. He said he was between places."
"Okay but did his 'bedroom' scream agent?" Coulson says putting bedroom in quotes with his hands before heading towards the victim's own.
"You suck, Coulson." The hacker says with a laugh.
She doesn't get an answer from the man so she follows him to the bedroom that he is in. Inside the hacker sees exactly what they were looking for. Coulson's only answer was;
"No, nothing in common at all."
Andrew ends up making it on the bus to Atlanta before Bobbi to make sure he can see everything from the back once Ward gets on. His dark Atlanta Falcons hat covers his eyes only so slightly with the aviators he had one similar to what May wore when she piloted the Bus. One could only imagine that he got them from her but that wasn't the case as it was just something cheap he picked up at shop nearby.
He nods when Bobbi gets on the bus signaling to her. She ends up taking a seat six rows ahead of her hoping that both of them wouldn't found together by the HYDRA agent. It takes only moments to see Ward step on the bus behind a mom and her child.
"Target is in sight." Andrew reports to May.
"Wait for confirmation." She replies.
The agent hears the mom tell Ward that they wouldn't mind having him sit in the seat across from them but he declines and tells her that he prefers the back. That's when Andrew realizes Ward saw him and takes a seat next to Bobbi. He immediately grips the ICER on his side, prepared to pull it out if necessary.
"Excuse me. Is this seat taken?" Ward asks.
Bobbi looks up at the HYDRA agent and smiles. "All yours."
The engine from the bus begins to start up and Andrew can feel it all the way in the back.
"Don't like to fly, huh?" Ward questions.
"Excuse me?"
This was going to be awhile, Andrew thought to himself relaxing only so slightly.
"I never could understand why when you could just fly."
"Says the man on the bus."
"Last minute trip didn't have a choice." Ward tells her. "You here by choice?"
"I like the scenery. Can't see that when you have your head in the clouds."
"Or in a book."
"There's time for everything."
"You could just skip to the end. It can't be that interesting."
Andrew sighs once more. Is he trying to flirt with her or something because if so he's doing a terrible job. The agent almost wished he couldn't hear their entire conversation.
"And miss all the good parts?" Bobbi replied.
Andrew had to admit though, his sister from different parents was by far a great actress so far.
"Couldn't have been that great of a book if you're on the same page."
"What?"
"You were on page 117 when I passed you talking to that guy that strangely looks familiar."
"What guy?"
"I don't know maybe that guy who is acting as Skye's husband? What's his name?" Ward pretends to think for a few seconds. "I don't know, Andrew Parker."
Bobbi scrunches her face right as Andrew begins to pull out the ICER.
"You are working for Coulson."
"Who are they?"
"I'm impressed. You can tell Coulson that since Parker is already here on the bus." Ward tells Bobbi.
"I'm sure they told you about this?" Ward shows the bomb before standing up.
Andrew is about to get up himself but sees the HYDRA agent looking right at him.
"I wouldn't try it, Parker."
The agent freezes before hearing Ward tell the driver that he is on the wrong bus, grabbing his bag in the process and then leaves.
Andrew places the ICER back onto his side before grabbing Bobbi from her seat.
"We almost had him." He says.
"I know. It's my fault. I should have changed the page number." She replies.
"Don't worry we'll get him.
When they get off the bus, both agents take a look around before Andrew spots Ward heading towards the bus for Boston.
"We should have known since he spotted us before." Andrew says as he points over to the bus.
"I guess so." Bobbi answers. "Hunter you're on."
"Happy to comply." They hear from the coms.
Skye and Coulson make it back on base to find Fitz and Mack coming in with the body of the victim that had recently been killed. They met in the lab standing over an autopsy table waiting for Simmons to make an appearance.
"How did you two manage to get the body?" Skye asks.
"Corpsey diem, seize the dead." Fitz tells her as she just gives a puzzled look.
"Huh." Mack breaths out. "Like I told my man here, you want something in life, you got to grab it and walk out like you own it."
"Is that all it takes? Really? Because I always thought if you wanted something in life, you had to work hard and earn it." Simmons says as she makes an appearance in the lab. "Make some space, please."
They all move out of the way of the doctor as she unzips the bag that surrounded the victim.
"Does she have any family?" Simmons asks.
"She has no one." Skye answers.
"She didn't deserve this." Coulson says.
"Anything coming back, sir?"
"She was level six. It should be all in my head. But it's not."
The lab goes silent for a few seconds before Jemma decides to speak once more.
"We're going to need blood and tissue samples, full CBC, and multi-element analysis." She explains. "Would anyone like to leave before we get started?"
Mack raises his hand before anyone. Fitz does it next once he sees that his friend has done the same. Skye as well, she wasn't big on dead bodies during an autopsy like this.
"No dead body for you, Skye?" Jemma asks.
Skye shakes her head and the doctor chuckles for a bit.
"Seems to be more of an Andrew thing then."
"You have that right, Simmons." The hacker does a quick point and then leaves the room so Jemma can get started on it.
An hour pasts when Simmons is finally done examining the body. They all are back in the lab waiting for Jemma to tell them what happened exactly.
"The cuts were all quite deep, but the cause of death was cardiac arrest. She died from shock due to the pain, not from the wounds. Very common in this type of ritualistic murder."
"Ritualistic?" Skye questions.
"It has all the characteristics. The cuts are very precise, and the killer continued to carve on her long after she died, as if there were some need to complete the work. My hunch is that it wasn't the first time, either." Simmons pauses for a moment to catch her breath. "It's also not the first time we've seen these carvings. They're the same ones Garrett was making, correct?"
"Yes, exact same ones." Coulson responds before a lab tech comes up.
"Doctor Simmons, here is the lab report you requested.
"Thank you." She says before flipping through the files. "As you can see it's an analysis from the subjects."
She shows them the paperwork briefly.
"Wait, subjects?" Coulson questions.
"There was a secondary source under her nails. She put up a fight, sir."
"Oh, no." Coulson whispers.
"She had the GH-325 in her system along with whoever killed her."
Simmons looked at Coulson and then at Skye and then back at Coulson and then Skye once more.
"Don't look at me. I didn't do it." Skye freaks. "Drew barely lets a hold of me when we are sleeping."
Simmons rolls her eyes. "Well of course not you. Both of you have it though. And that's too much information I didn't need to know."
"It's TAHITI. That's the only way." Coulson says before leaving the lab.
Skye and Simmons both look at each other confused and set out to follow the director in the hallway.
"Have either of you been experiencing a compulsion to write or carve?" Simmons asks.
"We're fine." Coulson answers.
So it begins with the other questions as a true doctor would ask. But with every question the director would answer with 'I don't know.'
"If you don't know anything, then how are we going to find them?" Skye asks.
"You'll have to torture it out of me."
It seems like forever passed, but Andrew and Bobbi make it on the plane with Trip and May. They are completely silent when they board knowing that their part of the mission was a bust. Andrew had Ward right in his sight but couldn't do anything due to not knowing how fast Ward would push the button and trigger the bomb.
"We need to contact Coulson." They hear May finally say.
Trip is the one tasked with trying to get him on the line but nothing is going through. If only they knew what the rest of the team was doing on base.
"I'm not getting anything. The line keeps fuzzing out." Trip says.
Andrew gets up from the spot that he was sitting in right across from Bobbi.
"Here let me try and contact Skye. Maybe she will answer."
A few minutes pass as Parker tries to contact his wife but nothing goes through. He almost loses hope until one comes through.
"Sedate him, I'm calling May." He hears through the headset.
"Skye?" he questions. "We have a Ward situation that will probably end badly."
"Drew! I have a problem. Coulson went through the memory machine."
The agents hear May yell a loud what.
"It wasn't my call."
"Lock him up until I get back." May says.
They don't get an answer but can hear Skye from a distance.
"Coulson, don't make me use this!"
"That's not good." Andrew says.
They land far away from Hunter's location which seemed to be a pub of some sorts. Andrew is the one that finds him still sitting in his car waiting for a cue. He pulls him over to the van they have so they can prepare to go in.
"It doesn't seem you were successful, I take it?" Hunter questions.
"You didn't blow your cover, did you?" Bobbi asked.
"Of course not. I'm better trained then you two." He says pointing to herself and Parker.
"At least I wasn't dressed as a cowboy." Andrew comments as he gets the ICER sniper ready.
"So dressing as an action star would have been better, pretty boy?"
Before Andrew could answer, May tells them that's enough. She doesn't want to hear any more of them bickering about what they did wrong. She's ready to move since Trip was all finished surveying the outside of the building.
Bobbi and Andrew end up taking one side of the entrances while May and Trip take another. Hunter goes around a side door on his own but doesn't seem to find anything.
"It's clear over here." He says.
"Clear here too." Andrew says from over by the bar where the others are at.
It isn't until they all search the kitchen area that they find a person tied up, sitting on a chair.
"Is he dead?" Bobbi questions.
Andrew lets his sniper fall against his side. The strap holding it against him over his shoulder. He then pulls the bag off to revel the man underneath.
"Bakshi." Andrew says almost a whisper but not all the way.
They only get a grunt as an answer from the HYDRA operative.
After Skye gets rescued from the basement that Coulson locked her in, she and Mack take off in one of the SUVs after the director. They have his location but the drive gives Mack time to ask Skye about TAHITI.
"It was designed to revive a fallen avenger." She answers.
"So like Captain America, Iron Man. Those lines?" Mack questions once more.
"Yeah, the only thing is the avengers don't know that Coulson is alive. Drew's uncle is Hawkeye, you know how hard it is not telling him what team you're on. I had to tell him once, it was May's last time I contacted him."
"How the hell could Coulson forget that? What, does he have alien blood, too? Man, can you imagine that… S.H.I.E.L.D. being run by a man that's part alien?" Mack rambles.
"Imagine that." Skye says quietly before hearing someone yell.
Mack stops the car to find a man waving his hands for help.
"Call the police. There's two guys trying to kill each other. They're out at my place, Thompson Welding. It's right down the road." The man says as Skye rolls down her window.
"Alright. Stay here. We'll handle this." Mack tells him before they take off towards the place that was mentioned.
They drive down a dirt road heading towards the house. Behind it is a large garage that has its side door wide open. They can hear Coulson yelling at the Derik who he mentioned before he locked Skye in the basement.
Mack and Skye go in quietly hoping not to be noticed just yet. When they do make it in, they see Coulson on the loft above the wooden model pushing Derik almost off the rail.
"Coulson, you need to stop!" Skye yells pointing an ICER at them.
"It's okay." Coulson responds. "I'm okay now."
"That's what you said before you threw me into a cell!" Skye fires back walking up the stairs to the loft.
"Fair enough, but I'm not trying to kill him! I'm trying to save him."
"I'm giving you to the count of three, and my gun is real!" Mack shouts.
Coulson pushes Derik just a little bit further.
"It's all here Skye. What we were looking for."
Mack begins to count just as Coulson tells Derik to open his eyes. It gets to three but Mack never shoots as Skye tells him to put the gun down just as she does the same. Down below them, they see the pieces come together.
"It's not so much a map as a blueprint." Coulson says.
"It's a city." Skye answers.
Everyone is back on base after the day they all had. They brought back Thompson to talk to him about what had happen on his property. Skye was happy that everyone made it back in one piece especially her husband. Coulson had finally stopped writing on the wall and he seemed back to normal once more. Andrew was just happy to back after traveling all over the place to find Ward but was still kind of disappointed that he couldn't shoot Ward with the ICER when he had a chance on the bus.
They hulled Bakshi onto the base and took him to the cell in the basement. They were going to use him Intel of what was going on with HYDRA. Andrew kind of hoped he could possibly tell him more about his father. He wanted to piece everything together the best he could.
Skye received Bakshi's phone and was told to work her magic on hacking it. She left to work in her separate office while Andrew went to go get them food after the long day they both had.
It wasn't long before that the phone began to ring.
"Hail HYDRA." She said into the phone.
"Hey Skye." The voice said on the other line.
"Where are you, Ward?"
"Just wanted to make sure you got my present. I promised him a face-to-face with Coulson. Probably not exactly what he had in mind. I'll be sending a few other gifts your way now and then."
"Like a cat bringing in dead birds." Skye says just as Andrew walks in carrying a couple plates of hot pockets.
Andrew tilt his head and mouthed "Who are you talking to?"
"Just trying to be helpful. Oh, met the new recruits. I don't think they need to hang around much longer." Ward says. "Especially that agent Parker again. He's kind of iffy."
"Is that a threat towards my husband?"
Andrew sets the plates down on the nearby table and steps closer to his wife waiting for a response that he knew now was Ward. Skye latched onto his arm taking a deep breath.
"Just a suggestion. You could do better, Skye." Ward pauses. "But then again, I'm harder to replace."
Andrew takes the phone from his wife's hand as she takes it away from her to let him talk. She can't focus on what's going on and begins to pace.
"How about you tell me where you are and we can talk about it?" Andrew tells the HYDRA agent.
He can hear the surprise in Ward's tone when he responds. "Oh hey, Parker. Didn't know you were around. I have to go now, Agent Parker. I have a few personal matters to attend to. But I'll be seeing your wife real soon. I promise."
Before Andrew can respond yelling, he hears a beep as the phone disconnects. Ward is gone and they probably won't be able to contact him again. The agent sets the phone back on the table and walks over to his wife who is still pacing. He stops her and pulls the hacker in for a hug hoping to make everything better.
"I'm going to protect you as much as I can." He whispers.
He hears Skye sniffle just a little bit.
"If I have to, I'll kill that son of a bitch." Parker says with his teeth closed.
And that is the end of the chapter. All I have to say is please, I beg you please leave a review. I would like to know if you are still interested in the story because I hope you all are. I wouldn't want it to drag on too much if no one was.
Also please let me know what missing scenes you would like to see as I will be writing some of those.
You can follow me on tumblr at clintbartonishawkeye where you can chat and ask questions also.