Chapter 5: Doing Some Digging
Hiro was up for hours. After the cleanup crew was done with the HYDRA lab, Hiro had stored the information about it on a flash drive, which was now plugged into a laptop in FitzSimmons's lab that was in the cargo hold. Strange place for a lab, but Hiro didn't mind. What he was really focused on was his parents. What were they doing on a HYDRA staff list. Hell, what were they doing on anything HYDRA related. Hiro read the names over and over again, thinking he might have been mistaken, but it was as clear as day that those names belonged to his parents. But… why? Hiro hadn't know much about his parents, but from what he could gather from Tadashi, they were scientists. He never knew what company they worked for. That's when Hiro had the creeping suspicion that they were working for HYDRA. He shook the thought away and continued to try to hack into the secure HYDRA information.
"Hiro, i'm not sure all this lack of sleep is good for you," Fitz said, sitting in a chair and typing away at his own computer. "You should go get some rest. That information isn't going anywhere."
"I'm fine Fitz," Hiro said rubbing his eyes. "I just need another hour. I've never seen a program that I can't hack."
"Well, you've been at it for three hours. Whatever it is you're trying to do, it's clearly not going to work."
Hiro liked Fitz and all, but he was set on getting through these firewalls. For the past three hours, Hiro had been in this lab with Fitz, and he was actually a pretty interesting guy. He was the only one on the ship who was even close to being as smart as him. Almost. In the time he had known Fitz, Hiro had told him about the things he'd invented back at SFIT, and feeling pretty proud about it. But Hiro hadn't been through things like Fitz had. Fitz was constantly in the heat of action despite his profession. He had encountered superhumans that could lift shipping crates, ancient asguardian weaponry, and even a cyborg. Hiro had his share of criminals to fight, but he hadn't actually ever fought any metahumans.
"I," Hiro yawned. "I just need to find another way around-"
"Maybe Skye could do it," Fitz offered. "She's hacked her way into S.H.I.E.L.D. before. No doubt in my mind that she could hack a staff list."
"No, I can do it. I just need-" Hiro's head fell on the desk as he passed out from exhaustion.
"There, that should do it." Hiro heard a voice, but couldn't quite tell who it belonged to.
Hiro slowly opened his eyes to find Skye standing in front of his computer with Fitz.
"Thanks Skye," he heard Fitz say. "Hiro passed out after trying to do it himself."
"Really? It only took me a couple of minutes," Hiro finally opened his eyes and noticed he was laying on a couch in the lab. Had he fallen asleep? Hiro moved his body so that his legs dangled off the couch. Fitz noticed this and turned around.
"Oh hey you're up," he said. "I got Skye to hack into the list for you. I know you didn't want her to, but she actually got done fairly quickly."
Hiro looked at Skye who gave a weak smile. "Thanks," he said, walking over to the computer. "How did you do this so fast?"
"I've been hacking into computers practically my whole life. Code is like my second language."
Hiro just walked past Skye as if she didn't exist. He didn't want her help, and he didn't need. It.
He opened the file on the HYDRA staff list and found his parents' names. He still couldn't get used to seeing them anywhere close to being part of a HYDRA project. Maybe the files would give him a little insight.
He went to click on his mother's name first. Maemi. He hadn't remembered anything about his mother, but every time Tadashi or Aunt Cass said her name, it made Hiro feel good. He wasn't sure why. Hiro's heart sank when he clicked on the name and nothing happened.
"What? Why can't I-"
"Maybe you have to click somewhere else," Skye said.
"I know what i'm doing," Hiro said frustrated. Soon the mouse wouldn't move either. "What the hell is going on with this thing?" Then the entire computer crashed, but not before a faint HYDRA symbol was displayed on the monitor, taunting Hiro. The computer completely shut down.
"HYDRA had a fail safe on the information," Fitz said, looking at the monitor. Hiro didn't move. He had come so close to figuring out his parents' past, and now the information was gone.
"Damn it!" Hiro yelled pounding his fists on the desk. "This is why I should have done it myself. I could have worked my way around HYDRA's coding, find the fail safe, and deactivate it. Now I lost the only thing I can use to find out anything about my parents." Hiro began to storm out of the lab.
"Hiro, i'm sorry," Skye said.
"Save it," Hiro walked out of the lab and headed for his quarters. He wanted to be alone. He needed to think. He used to think much better with his brother around, but now he's learned to be able to think without anyone else's input.
Hiro walked into his small room on the bus and shut the door. He sat on the bed and looked out the tiny window. Clouds passed as the Bus soared through the sky. He wasn't sure where May was taking them. Coulson said that their current mission was to find Ansgar, but now all the leads were gone, so there was no way to tell where he was. Wherever they were going,
Hiro hoped it was getting him closer to finding Ansgar.
But for whatever reason, Hiro had totally forgotten about Ansgar and was more focused on his parents. If Skye hadn't touched the computer, Hiro probably could have found the information by now. But the information was gone now. HYDRA had implanted a fail safe in case someone had hacked into their network. This made Hiro think. HYDRA always seemed to be one step ahead of S.H.I.E.L.D. In case Hiro didn't want to build microbots, they threatened to attack his friends and Aunt Cass. When S.H.I.E.L.D. got a hold of their information, they implanted a virus that would delete the information. When Lucas was free and out roaming around in the world… they killed him. HYDRA seemed to have a plan for everything that went wrong. Hiro regretted wishing he was more like them.
As Hiro was looking out the window trying to think, there was a knock on his door.
"Who is it?" he mumbled.
"It's me." It was Skye's voice. "Can we talk?"
"Go away," Hiro said.
"Look," she continued to talk through the door, "i'm sorry. I should've checked to see if there was some kind of virus. I should've know HYDRA would pull something… i'm sorry." Hiro could hear her footsteps as she walked away from the door. He wanted to stop her, to talk to her, but then decided against it. He wanted to be alone right now. Hiro didn't know it but he was extremely tired, even after his short nap in the lab. He laid his head back on the pillow on his bed and shut his eyes, drifting into deep sleep.
"Baymax, is the scan done yet?" Gogo asked the healthcare companion. "Did you find
Hiro?"
"Scan complete ," Baymax replied. "Hiro is not within the city limits of San Fransokyo."
Gogo swore under her breath. She looked into the distance as she stood atop one of the many wind turbine in the city. She had flown Baymax up there to scan for Hiro, to see if HYDRA had him somewhere in the city. Hiro had given Baymax orders to listen to Gogo in the event something happened to Hiro. Alas, Hiro wasn't in the city.
"Are you sure?" Gogo asked. "Scan again.
"Gogo, this is the third time I have scanned for Hiro's vitals. From past results, I can deduce that scanning a fourth time will show no difference," Baymax said.
Gogo sighed. "Alright then. Let's head back to the café."
Gogo got on Baymax's armored back. She didn't have magnets to stick on like Hiro, but then again, she didn't do dangerous aerial tricks like Hiro, so she could stay on pretty easily. She flew Baymax through the city, thinking about what to do next. If Hiro wasn't in the city, then where was he? There was no way of tracking him. Baymax's scanner could only reach as far as the city limits, and no one knew how to upgrade it the way Hiro did. There was no way of finding him. No. Gogo shook that thought away. They were going to find their friend.
Baymax landed in front of the Lucky Cat Café. The team had been staying there after Hiro's mysterious phone call. He had told them to protect themselves and Cass. So far, no one had tried to attack them, but until Hiro was found, they couldn't be too safe.
Gogo opened the front door of the café and was greeted by the rest of the team, who were in their armor
Wasabi was leaning back in a chair, but stood up when Gogo entered.
"Anything?" he asked walking toward Gogo.
Gogo just shook her head.
Wasabi sighed. "So what do we do now? We just wait for him to come back into the city?"
"That might work," Fred said from one of the café booths. He was wearing his kaiju suit. "If he called Honey Lemon, then he's free. Why wouldn't his first instinct be to come back?"
"Yeah," Honey Lemon said, "but if he's not in the city, then he's probably really far away. How is he supposed to get back here?"
"Well what are we supposed to do?" Wasabi asked. "If we leave to go search for him, someone might come and hurt Cass. On the other hand, if we stay here, Hiro might get recaptured or something."
He was right. No matter what they did, they were putting someone in danger.
"Where is Cass?" Gogo asked, looking around the café.
"She's upstairs takin' a nap," Fred says, pointing a claw to the ceiling. Gogo liked the thought of Cass resting. For three months she couldn't sleep. She always had nightmare, nightmares about Hiro and what might have happened to him. Cass was relieved when they informed her Hiro was out there somewhere.
"I think our best option is to stay here," Gogo said. "I don't like saying it, but Hiro can handle himself. Cass needs us here, and besides, Hiro has his armor…" she stared off into space when she said this. Hiro had his armor. "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hiro has his armor!"
"Yeah, so?" Fred said.
"So, all of our suits have tracers in them!" Gogo couldn't believe that she hadn't thought of that sooner. She mentally facepalmed herself.
"Hey, you're right!" Honey Lemon yelled.
"Baymax," Gogo looked at the robot, "can you find the tracer on Hiro's armor?"
"If that is what you wish, then yes," the marshmallow-like robot said calmly. There was a beeping noise coming from Baymax's head, and he began to speak again. "I have displayed Hiro's current location on my belly screen." Wasabi pulled Baymax's chest armor off, and revealed his belly screen. There was a map displayed, but it was zoomed in on a highway. A blip quickly sped across the screen and disappeared.
"Woh," Gogo said. Baymax zoom out." The highway shrunk, and the map now showed the outline of a state. Gogo recognized it as Colorado. The blip was moving slower now, but it was still not taking any roads. "What the hell? Is Hiro on a plane?"
"Maybe he's coming back!" Fred said excitedly, jumping out of his seat.
"Where was he taken?" Wasabi asked "He's over Colorado, but he's been gone for a while." It feeled Gogo with a tiny bit of relief that Hiro might be coming home. Then again, he could have been recaptured like Wasabi said. Even though the blip was heading in the direction of the city, there was a possibility that if he was in an airplane, he could land somewhere else. But Gogo held on to her hope.
"Alright," Honey Lemon said. "So we know where Hiro is. Now what do we do?"
"We stay here," Gogo said firmly. Everyone looked at her. "The way I see it, someone is still after Hiro and us. We need to stay here and protect Cass, and hope that that blip is coming here." No one responded to what she had said, but she knew they all agreed with her, even if they didn't want to.
Now they just had to wait. Wait for their friend to return home.
Hiro awoke from his deep sleep in his quarters. He didn't have any dreams. That is to say he didn't have nightmares either, he just slept.
He got of his bed and stubbed his toe on his helmet, which was on the floor.
"Ow!" he yelled, rubbing his foot. He looked around for the usual Baymax to come ask him what was wrong, then remembered Baymax wasn't here. None of his friends were. He stopped rubbing his foot and looked out his tiny window. It was dark out side. He could barely see the clouds that passed by the Bus. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was one in the morning, he never woke up that early. What was wrong with him? Knowing there was no way he was going to be able to fall back asleep, he stepped out of his quarters, and into the dark lounge. He was heading for the kitchen, for he had some unfinished business with an unfinished bag of gummy bears.
The Bus was really creepy at night. Everyone but May must've been asleep because all of the lights were shut off, and the only noise that could be heard was the sound of air hitting the Bus's hull.
Hiro tiptoed down the long hallway to the kitchen area. Why he was tiptoeing, he didn't know. If he had walked, he still wouldn't make any loud noises that would wake up anyone. Maybe tiptoeing felt like the natural thing to do while walking around someone else's property.
He approached the door to the kitchen, but then noticed that there was light pouring out of the bottom of the door. Was someone in there? Hiro opened the door to find Skye standing next to the small table in the kitchen. They both stared at each other for a while.
"Hey," Skye said kindly.
"Hey," Hiro said, less cheerfully than Skye. He didn't know what to say to her. He couldn't just be silent though, that would make things awkward. He was less angry with her now that he'd had time to cool down, but now he just felt awkward after everything he had said to her. "So… what, uh… whatcha doin'?" That was all Hiro could manage to say.
"Just… grabbing some water," Skye said, holding out a bottle of water.
Skye," Hiro started, "i'm sorry, about what I said-"
"No it's okay. I mean… I messed up. You were trying to learn about your parents, and I got in the way of that."
"You know, that wasn't actually the reason I was mad at you. Where i'm from, i'm pretty much the best at everything. I was top ranked in all of my classes, and I even got into college a couple of months ago. The thing is, I spent hours trying to hack into HYDRA's software, and then I saw you do it within minutes of touching the computer." Hiro walked over to the table and sat in a chair. "When the information got deleted, I guess I was just being mad at you for being better than me at something." Hiro had his head down. He felt ashamed of his jealousy. Tadashi had always told him it was the worse thing you could feel about a person, and he hadn't really realized what that meant until now.
"You?" Skye laughed. "You're jealous of me? I've seen your file Hiro, and I have got to say that you have nothing to be jealous about. Sure, hacking's probably not your thing, but that's like, my only skill. You have all those skills, so it makes sense to not be the best at all of them." Hiro let out a chuckle.
"Yeah, I guess so." It did seem silly to Hiro now, knowing he had all those skills, and being jealous of someone who has only one It made him feel big headed though, which Gogo had once stated to be his most annoying trait.
"So, you want something to eat?" Skye asked.
"Nah," Hiro walked over to a cupboard. "I came back for a bag of-"
"Guys!" Fitz burst through the kitchen door. Why was he up? "You have to come see this."
"What's wrong?" Skye asked.
"What? Oh, nothings wrong. Actually, I think this is the opposite of wrong. Come check it out." Fitz motioned them to follow him out of the kitchen. Hiro was a little disappointed that he couldn't eat his gummy bears, but Fitz was excited about… something, so Hiro had to follow.
They walked down the hallways of the bus, and Fitz explained what was going on. "Alright, so I went to check the laptop, you know to see if I could fix it-"
"You fixed it?!" Hiro asked excitedly.
"Erm… no," Fitz replied, wiping Hiro's smile off his face. "No, the virus had left the laptop to destroyed to be fixed. But, the flash drive's information wasn't all damaged. There were little chunks of it that were for some reason left over. One of those chunks was the information on your parents Hiro. To be honest, this feels like a movie. The bad guys have done everything in there power to stop us, yet for some awfully convenient reason, the thing they were trying to stop survived by some miraculous miracle."
"The data wasn't deleted?" Hiro said. "Did you look at it yet?"
"Nope. I thought you might want to see it first." That was nice of Fitz. Not only had he found the information Hiro needed, but he also didn't want to get into Hiro's personal business.
They found their way to the lab and Hiro sat himself down in front of a different computer.
"So what'd you do with the other laptop?" Skye asked.
"Oh, that thing?" Fitz said. "The thing was too far gone to fix. I threw it away."
"Fitz!" Skye yelled. "That was my laptop! You can't just throw it away."
"Well i'm sorry. I don't know what you were planning to do with it. Every time I tried turning it on I get electrocuted."
"Serves you right." Skye mumbled
Hiro booted up the laptop and noticed something off. "Hey Fitz, what's wrong with this thing?" The mouse was moving super slow."
"Well when I plugged the flash drive, I managed to get rid of the virus before accessing the data, but the flash drive was still a little buggy. The laptop should only lag a bit. Nothing to worry about."
"It still bugs me." Hiro was used to his high speed internet back home. With that he was able to get work done fairly fast. But, he guessed he would just have to make do with what he had. He clicked on the program for the flash drive information and waited for it to load. He was finally, for real, going to learn a piece of his parents' past that nobody knew about.
The page with the staff list loaded and he quickly clicked his father's name. Due to the lagginess, it took a while for it to load up, but when it did, Hiro was met with an entire page of information.
Name: Tomeo Hamada
Age: 35
Occupation: Biologist
Hiro had only read about three lines, but he learned two things about his father that he hadn't known. He was, last recorded, thirty five years old, and he was a biologist. Biologist. Tadashi had told Hiro that their father was a scientist, but he didn't say what kind. Hiro had thought he received his robotics skills from his father, but apparently not. Hiro read on.
There was plenty of stuff that surprised Hiro at every turn. His father had been working in that lab back at Miami for eleven years. When he was three, Hiro had vague memories of his parents being gone a lot, but Miami? That was a whole country away, and he had been leaving California for eleven years to go to Florida? The information showed that his father was experimenting with animals down in that lab. It wasn't stated what was being tested, but it was HYDRA, so probably nothing good. That made Hiro remembered that his parents were part of the most dangerous group of criminals in the world. He tried not to think of his father that way.
There was a lot of vague information, mostly stuff about the hours that were worked, the people that were worked with, and even what kinds of animals that were experimented on. There were mice, monkeys chimps...Hiro froze when he saw that there was a file on human test subjects.
"Human test subjects?" Skye said aloud. Hiro had forgotten that she and Fitz were with him.
Hiro clicked on the file, and was horrified at what he saw. There were dozens of pictures of creatures that looked like humans, but were disfigured in strange ways. There were ones that had limbs that were longer than they were supposed to be, ones that had eyes that were closed sideways, and some that had different skin color. All of them were dead. Every single one of those 'humans' had their eyes closed, and they were laid out on body bags. Hiro was speechless. His father had done this. He had done horrible things to these people, who were probably innocent like Lucas.
Hiro scrolled down some more and found a video. It appeared to be the only recording of experimentation on a test subject. Hiro hesitated before clicking, knowing it might be footage of his father doing horrible things to people. But he clicked anyway, and he wasn't sure why.
The video started by showing a young man, who looked about thirty, standing in front of the camera wearing a labcoat. He had brown hair that looked like Tadashi's and glasses. Hiro remembered from old photos that the man was his father.
"Okay," his video father said, "this is test subject thirty… thirty.. thirty two! That's what it was." Hiro could tell his father was in the underground lab that belonged to HYDRA, and he walked over to the table, where the scientists had been experimenting on a scaley man when the team got there. Laying on this table was a normal looking man, with nothing but boxers on. He looked like he was held on the table by clamps around his wrists and ankles, and seemed to be asleep. Of course. Who would willingly volunteer for one of HYDRA's experiments?
"Alright, so it's time to test the modified Extremis shipment we received last week. Hopefully the problem with the overcharging had been sorted out." Hiro's father held a syringe that was filled with some kind of red liquid. Apparently that was Extremis. His father injected the strange liquid into the man's left arm until the syringe was completely empty.
"Here, hold this." His father handed the syringe off to someone behind the camera and returned to the man. For a while nothing happened, then the man's eyes shot open and he was looking around. His eyes were an unnatural red color.
"I think we've got it." He grabbed the man's chin, stopping him from jerking his head around. He wasn't being rough. He was actually rather gentle. He looked into the man's eye's carefully. "Amazing. So far, no signs of overloading, and this dose was stronger than the last." There was clapping coming from behind the camera, and Hiro's father was smiling at his… accomplishment. All of this was interrupted when the man began to scream. His face was turning red, not like blushing, but actually glowing red. The rest of his body did this and Hiro's father began telling everyone to get back.
"Shit! He's overcharging! Everyone get back. Get back!" Everyone stepped a good thirty feet away from the man as he looked at his father with those red, devilish eyes. Then he exploded. There was smoke, screams, and Hiro's father approaching the table. Nothing remained. The table had been reduced to the small metal bars holding it up.
"Damn it!" He yelled. Then he grew quiet, and sighed. "Send the Extremis back. Tell them it need improvement." The video ended there, leaving Skye, Fitz, and especially Hiro completely silent. Hiro slammed the laptop shut. He'd seen enough. He' grabbed his information to learn about his parents. Now he wished he never had.
"Hiro," Skye started, but stopped when Hiro gave her a stare that said "don't". Hiro had heard stories about his father being this great man. About how he'd always go out of his way to help people. But now Hiro knew the truth.
His father was a murderer.
(A/N) OH. MY. GOD! I'm finally done with this chapter. I have no idea why it took me so long to write. I had it all planned out to Hiro watching this video, so writers block wasn't the problem. In any case, I hope you guys like this chapter. It was meant to be a chapter where Skye and Hiro interact with each other, as well as Fitz. Also I want some input. I'm thinking of a possible epilogue that will link up to a Big Hero 6 crossover with the Avengers i'm working on. The thing is, I don't know if it's worth writing. You guys tell me. Should I make this story or no? That's DaydreamDepartment out of your hair! ;)