Skye had enough footage to work with to get the word out with a new Rising Tide post. She wanted the world to see that there was more out there than just the Avengers. That people with abilities lived among them. Lived alongside them.
She also wanted the people that hunted those with powers to know that they weren't afraid of them.
It didn't matter where the enemy came from. The air? The ground? They would be ready. They wouldn't stay silent. How could they? The truth was in the wind. The truth would be their ammo against the corrupt and powerful. And who would stop them? There was no stopping the Rising Tide. No matter what any shady government agency did, they would not find them. They would never see their faces and rest assured; they would rise against those that shield them from the truth. And nothing, nothing, can stop—
Skye's van door swung open.
Caught right in the middle of her voiceover, she awkwardly turned to the two suited men and asked, "Hey. What up?" before a bag was forcibly put over her head.
The two agents took her into a different van where they drove for fifteen minutes, arriving somewhere Skye suspected was an airplane landing strip due to the overhead sounds of planes.
She walked up a ramp and through a hallway before being roughly shoved into a chair and the bag ripped off her head.
"You seriously need to wash that bag," Skye snapped as soon as she saw the two agents again.
"Noted," said the older agent. "Sorry for the lack of finesse. Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group, the Rising Tide."
Skye tried to deflect, "I don't know what you…"
"Okay. There are two ways we can do this," Agent Ward interjected, cutting straight to the threats.
"Oh, is one of them the easy way?" Skye remarked.
"No," Agent Ward replied, straight faced.
"Oh…" Skye muttered, actually a little intimidated.
"What's your name?" asked the older agent, in a far calmer tone.
"Skye."
"What's your real name?" Agent Ward demanded.
"That can wait," said the older agent. "It's another name we need. A certain hero."
"What makes you think I know that?" Skye questioned.
"Well," said the agent, "You made a little mistake. The phone you filmed the Hooded Hero with had the same cryptographic signature as a few of the Rising Tide posts.
"Wow," Skye mocked being impressed, "Yeah. Was that a mistake? Or am I now sitting in the center of your secret headquarters?"
It was a mistake. She completely forgot about removing her cryptographic signature from her footage.
"What is this? A plane?" she guessed, rolling with the lie. "I got inside. And by now you've discovered you can't beat the encryption on my equipment, so you got nothing."
The older agent didn't break a sweat, whilst the young Agent Ward looked increasingly annoyed.
"We have a fairly strong coincidence. You, being on the scene right before it went up in flames. Wanna tell me what my team is gonna find in there?" When Skye didn't respond, the older agent pressed his next question. "How did you know the hooded man was in the building?"
"Did you blow it up to draw him out?" Ward asked standing far too close for Skye's liking. His whole demeanor was way too aggressive for her to put up with it.
Skye didn't answer Ward's question, only clenching her jaw and trying to keep herself levelheaded.
Ward took her non-response as an answer. "I bet that's exactly what you did, Skye," he said her name almost sarcastically.
The tension was slowly rising in the metal kill box / interrogation room. The older agent was looking between her and Ward, quickly perceiving the brimming frustration.
Then her phone alarm went off.
The tension was immediately halted.
"Um," Skye said awkwardly, looking down. "It's 2'O clock. I need to take my meds."
"Is it in your van?" asked the older agent.
Skye nodded.
"Ward, if you don't mind," Coulson asked nicely but it was clearly an order. The younger agent nodded before moving to leave the room.
"Center console. The white bottle," Skye called out before the door shut.
A few minutes went by before the agent spoke up, "What kind of medication is it? If you don't mind my asking," he asked, sincere.
"Citalopram," Skye responded.
Leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, the man grew a softer look, "Mood stabilizers?"
"I have… anger issues," Skye admitted.
Before the agent could respond, Agent Ward opened the door looking to the senior agent and saying, "Sir, something's come up."
"If you'll excuse me," said the older agent, getting up to join the other agent in the hall.
"Uh—" Skye tried to interject, but the door was promptly shut. "My meds…" she finished weakly.
It was strange for her… she was always so right on time when it came to taking her meds. Now it was 2:15 and she was starting to feel anxious. Fifteen minutes shouldn't make such a huge difference, but to her it did.
Skye could feel a dab of sweat at the back of her neck and her heart rate started to spike. She could hear it thumping in her own ears.
"—not mood stabilizers," said Agent Ward.
Skye perked up in surprise at the voice of the agent. How was she hearing him through the closed door?
"You had them analyzed?" asked the older agent.
"Sir… I recognized the pill design. It's a sleeping agent designed for Black Op soldiers to take if they're ever captured. It doesn't kill you, but it slows your heartrate long enough to seem like your dead."
"How sure are you about this?"
"Very," stressed the agent. "It's not just that, but her whole medicine drawer is strange. There's a bottle labeled calcium pills, but the computer labeled it as Benzodiazepines…?"
"We'll need to get Jemma to check all this," stated the older agent.
"But what about…?"
Skye didn't hear anything more but then a moment later the door swung open again, somewhat startling her.
"There's a little problem with getting to your van at the moment," said the agent, sitting back down. "Do you think you can hold out for another hour?" he asked.
Skye gulped but nodded without a word.
There was a long pause between them as the agent looked at Skye, trying to glean something or understand her better.
"The hooded man," said the agent, getting back on track and reclaiming his chair. "Do—
"—What's…" Skye interrupted hating herself for revealing what she heard, clenching, and unclenching her fist. "What's Benzodiazepines?"
A new look crossed over the agent's face. It wasn't surprise or fear, but concern. Instead of answering the agent asked, "Who do you get your medication from?"
"My pediatrician," Skye said kind of embarrassed. "He prescribes it and I drive back to New York once a month to pick it up."
"Did you know that your meds have been spiked?" the agent asked causing Skye to look down in confusion.
"We have our own doctor on board, but right now she's investigating the blast site. If you have any information on the hooded man, we can expedite our investigation and get Dr. Simmons here to give you a look over. See why you've been prescribed…" he left the words unsaid.
Skye was silent again, not wanting to give up the man who selflessly saved a woman's life.
"We are not after him, Skye. We want to help him before someone who does want him, gets him."
Despite her warring heart, his words were enough to sway her, and his concern seemed genuine. "He's a factory worker. Recently laid off. I know what he looks like if…"
The agent nodded, standing up and motioning for Skye to follow him. She trailed just behind him as the agent spoke to the waiting Agent Ward, "Run a search on all the factories in the area. I need a list of all employee terminations."
Ward nodded and headed for the holo-table room.
Twenty minutes later and the rest of the Coulson's team was on board again. After a few brief introductions, the senior agent gave out the discovered info on the Hooded Hero.
"Michael Peterson. Factory worker, married, one kid. Gets injured, gets laid off, wife jumps ship. Good guy, bad breaks," Coulson informed. While he talked, Skye anxiously watched news footage of Mike throwing around equipment and threatening his former boss. "Best guess is somebody tells him they can make him strong again. Make him super."
"Who has the tech to do that? And why would they want to?" asked Agent May.
"Fitz, what do we have from the security footage? Before the blast," Agent Coulson asked.
Fitz tapped on the holo-table and brough up grainy footage of two men talking at the lab site.
"What are we seeing?" Agent May asked for clarification.
"Well, the man is angry at the other man," Fitz tried to explain. There was an awkward pause as everyone waited for further information.
"The data is very corrupt," Jemma explained, trying to break the silence.
"Yeah, like Cold War Russia corrupt," Fitz added.
"Yes," Jemma agreed.
"I-I can't sync the time code without—" Fitz was about to elaborate.
"What if you had the audio?" Skye interrupted. The tech agent looked at her with piqued interest. "I was running surveillance on the lab. I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file's in my van. There's too much background noise for me, but you could probably…"
"You could clean that up, can't you?" Jemma asked Fitz. "Find a sync point and use cross-filed validation to find—"
"But I can't scrub for expression patterns when the VITC is all…"
"Well, is there a chrominance subcarrier?"
"Yeah, attached to the back porch. Brilliant."
Breaking from their conversation of technobabble, Fitz-Simmons looked back to the group, "That audio would be great—" started Fitz.
"We will take that audio, please."
"— thank you. Thank you very-very much."
"You're van's here," said Coulson. "But you were right. We couldn't decrypt the files."
"The encryption's coupled to the GPS. Get my van back to that alley then I'm in business," Skye explained a little proud that her encryption held up so well.
"Agent May will escort you, but before that, Jemma, if you don't mind giving a once-over to Skye," Coulson said looking to the doctor.
"Oh. Oh, of course," she said, nodding.
Skye clocked the look that Agent May gave to Coulson.
"If you'll follow me," Jemma said to Skye.
They both went down to the med-lab while Agent May went to retrieve Skye's van.
"So, Coulson told me that you were taking the wrong medication…?" Jemma asked, pulling on white latex gloves.
"News to me," Skye explained. "I've been taking the same stuff for years…"
"About how many years?" Jemma inquired, at the same time directing Skye to sit on a chair.
"Um," Skye racked her brain. "Three years ago. I was in a car accident that messed me up pretty badly, I had to have half a dozen metal plates and rods put in because my bones broke too easily—"
"Oh my," Jemma said concerned while also beginning her check-up.
"—and I learned that I had Osteoporosis and the only doctor I had on my file was my pediatrician, so he got called and he showed up to help me. Free of charge, of course. After a few weeks of medical evaluation, we learned that the accident caused some minor brain injury so… I've been on the meds ever since."
"Oh, you poor thing," Jemma said. Finishing the surface level checkup, Jemma moved to look at a plastic bin that was left on the table filled with Skye's meds. "This is what you were prescribed?" she asked.
"Yeah."
Jemma didn't say anything more, taking out a pill from each of the five bottles and taking out a machine to analyze them. "Oh dear…" she said.
"What is it?" asked Skye, worried.
Jemma didn't respond only saying, "Oh dear…" quieter with a tone of deep worry.
Jemma looked back up from the analyzer to Skye as if trying to discern how a young woman could take such medication and not be suffering from extreme liver failure or a heart attack.
Something was very, very, wrong here.
"I'll need a blood sample," stated Jemma, walking across the room to get a syringe. She had Skye roll up her sleeve and drew her blood methodically.
At the same time, Agent May arrived, pulling up the van and parking it on the ramp. "We ready?" May asked.
Skye looked to Jemma for the answer and the doctor replied, "It'll take some time to get this analyzed," she said gesturing to the vial of blood.
That was answer enough for Skye, who got up from her seat and joined May in her van. At the same time Fitz and Ward descended from the upper level with the debris and tech that was found at the blast site.
Watching Skye and May drive away, Jemma was filled with an awful amount of dread and worry. Her analyzer showed that the medication that Skye had been taking, supposedly for the last three years, was designed to induce early-onset dementia as well as weaken and breakdown the enzyme used to promote healthy muscle growth. What she was looking at was a medical cocktail that was designed to induce a chemical lobotomy in any regular person. Dull the senses, weaken the mind… it was horrific. And yet Skye was walking around with perfect higher brain function… it didn't make any sense to the poor doctor.
"Ready to look over all this?" Fitz asked, startling her.
"Y-yes," Jemma responded, side-eying the vial of Skye's blood currently being analyzed.
The ride to the diner was silent until they were about five minutes away. A question was bubbling at the tip of May's tongue. What helped to distract her was the dancing hula girl figurine on the dashboard. That, and the state of Skye's van told her all she needed to know about the young hacker. Reckless but smart enough to keep her work mobile. Passionate about her cause but carefree enough to not let herself be tied down by it. "Ulterior motive" were the words that ran around May's thoughts. And the question, if she had to ask, was why Skye was so suddenly willing to work with the agency she was against.
But May didn't ask that question. Her orders were as is: Take Skye to the alleyway to get the audio sync. She could question her later.
"Just right around this building here," Skye directed, pointing to a closed diner. When they parked, Skye maneuvered to the back of the van while May got out to survey the area and make sure it was all clear.
Skye's phone rang and she answered. "Fitz. Yeah, booting it up now." Skye found the audio and started to send it to the S.H.I.E.L.D. server on the Bus. "Audio file should be coming through. It's not compressed, so it might take a minute," she explained.
"—Uh, yeah, Yeah, yeah, I'm getting it," Fitz replied rambling, "So, uh, uh, when, when you get back, I'll show you my thing. A thing. It's not… It's-it's my hardware," he said before realizing how that might sound. "My equipment!" he tried to correct himself but failed. "Let's hang up—" he said before the line went dead.
Skye made a half-confused face before putting her phone away. Once the files were all sent, Skye quickly grabbed a micro SD card hidden under a journal and slipped it into her bra before closing her laptop, "That should do it," she told May.
The sound of boots scraping against brick caught Skye's ear briefly.
"Let's head back," Agent May said before a shadow suddenly dropped on top of her. It happened fast, the figure grabbing May and throwing her across the alleyway where she smacked against the wall and went out like a light.
Then Skye realized who it was, "Mike!" she said surprised, "What are you doing?"
"Saving you. From the scary men in dark suits. And you're gonna help save us."
"Us?"
Then Mike pulled a kid into view. His son.
"Don't cry, okay? Stay strong for me, Ace," he told his son, ushering him into the van. "What are we?" he asked his son.
"We're a team," Ace answered.
"That's right," he said, then turned to Skye, "Now drive!"