Disclaimer: I don't own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Obviously.

Thanks to Riley Holden/Colormeblue for being the beta-reader.

Author's Note: This whole chapter was like pulling teeth, bar a few bits, so... not my best work. I'm sorry. But multiple attempts didn't produce anything better, so it's this, or nothing. Really am sorry.

Out of the Shadows and Into the Light

By Alkeni

Chapter 6: Intercepting the Exchange

Coulson's Office, The Playground

September 25th, 2014

Hacking into the various traffic, street and ATM cameras in the area where Creel was – where Creel was going to give 'The Obelisk' to Hydra – was, as always, easy. You'd think people would learn to upgrade their security a little bit once in a while. Not so much, apparently.

"Alright, I don't have eyes on him yet, Grant." Skye told him. "Running facial recognition now." She hit a few more keys in rapid succession and it only took a few seconds for a ping, "got you now!" Skye muttered under her breath, then said, more loudly:

"I've got him. He's on a bench, middle of the area. I see a case next to him. That's gotta be The Obelisk."

"I see him." Grant replied. "Trip, can you get to firing position?"

"There's a building right across, perfect angle for him. He starts acting up, we'll take him down." Trip said confidantly, his voice cool and detached.

"Put that part off as long as possible." Coulson ordered. "We need to find out who his contact is."

"Understood Sir." Grant replied. Skye thought she heard a little exasperation in Grant's tone. Coulson had been very insistent on the 'finding Creel's contact' subject, and yeah, he was right to do so, but the point had been made a few times ago.

Skye checked the cameras, looking for anyone or anything that was suspicious. They had to figure out who was coming to meet him, soo she was especially searching for anyone walking towards the benches, or noticing Creel. Skye's program was checking faces against every list S.H.I.E.L.D. had access to. The program had even spotted a counterfeiter and thief wanted by the FBI, but one who had no ties to Hydra. Quickly, she sent a anonymous tip to the FBI on the man's location, then went back to looking for . Not their problem right now.

Suddenly, something pinged off of an ATM camera – in the distance, a man in a business suit walking towards Creel.

"Grant, I've got him." Skye reported. "Dark haired in a moving towards a pair of benches in the center."

"That's the package." Grant nodded. "I see the benches. Creel's just waiting for him. Can you get a bead on the new arrival?"

Skye ran the cameras. "No. He's got a newspaper covering all the good angles. It's pretty cliché, but it works."

"I'm moving to cover the meet sight." Trip said, "There's a perfect vantage point. I need three minutes."

"Let's hope, you have that much time." Skye said, "He's sitting down now."

The Exchange Site

September 25th, 2014

"Fitz, can you tinker with that microphone more? I'm not hearing anything from them." Ward said. He could watch Creel and the other man talk, but he couldn't get anything on what they were saying – and the angle from the truck was all wrong for trying to read even Creel's lips, let alone the other man's.

"I can try, but I'm not sure how lucky we're going to be." Fitz said, fidding with the equipment in the truck.

"I'm in position." Trip told them. "Setting up now."

"Wait for Creel to hand off the package, then shoot him." Ward ordered Hunter, are you in place with the Overkill Device?"

"I'm in position," Hunter answered. He was outside the truck, walking among the crowd, the Overkill Device in a gym bag. "Are you sure this thing is going to work, Fitz? I can't say I'm totally thrilled about putting my life in the hands of fancy tech I don't understand."

"Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D," May replied dryly, from her positon seated next to Ward.

"When you have years of engineering experience working with this sort of technology, then you can question if my technology is going to work." Fitz protested. "And if it doesn't work, you'll just have to run. You're former SAS, I'm sure you can manage," the engineer looked back to Ward. "Here, try the microphone now."

Ward put the headphones over his ears, pleased to hear that he was actually getting voices this time. Creel was talking with someone else, a man who sounded English and who had an especially refined accent at that. He couldn't place it though but that didn't really surprise him. Ward knew some names and faces from other branches of Hydra but he'd hadn't actually met that many. He knew what Strucker, Whitehall, and List looked like but he only knew of them by reputation.

"Remember that compliance will be rewarded." The Englishman said slowly, enunciating each word clearly. Shit. Compliance. That had to be a trigger word.

Creel's not a willing recruit. He's been brainwashed. But why? Garrett had always said that Creel liked hurting people, that Creel had seemed enthusiastic about getting paid to use his powers. Had he balked, at some point? Or had someone just decided that it would be easier to brainwash the man and make sure he was always under control.

That just seemed... wasteful. Pointless.

But then again, he is powered. Hydra doesn't give anyone a chance to say no, especially not them.

Brainwashed or not, they had to make sure Hydra couldn't use Creel again. Ward felt better about that fact because Creel had joined willingly at first – Garrett hadn't had to coerce him. He'd just made Creel a deal.

"I'm happy to comply." Creel replied slowly.

"Good. Now, give me the Obelisk." The man replied. Creel reached for the case that was sitting at his feet and passed it over to his handler. "Return to your van. Everything will be sorted out there – you've complied, and it shall be rewarded." The man stood, walking away.

"I've got a grab on his face," Skye's voice came through the comms. "Running it now."

"Alright. May, Ward, move on the new player. Follow him, grab the Obelisk. Capture him if you can, but getting his identity will be a good start." Coulson ordered. "Hunter, follow Creel. Trip, take the shot as soon as you have a clear angle. If that doesn't work, Hunter, you move in with the device. Creel is not getting away."

"Got it." Ward confirmed. Ward was out the door, May right behind him, both of them intent following the Hydra agent. For the moment, they both moved casually, not drawing attention to themselves – Ward had his ICER under his jacket, May was, of course, not even carrying one.

"I'll move around to the right." May told Ward quietly, "It looks like doesn't know we're onto him, and as long as that's -"

The sound of a bullet from Trip's rifle rang through the crowded, noisy square. It was as if everything went on pause and mute for a split second, and then panic, as another bullet sounded. Then everyone began to scatter, running from the square, moving into cover. The target sped up his pace a little, but he still didn't run too fast, moving with the crowd as they moved. The whole mass of people parted, spilling into alleys and storefronts, running to the edges and the other ways out.

"Creel is not down. I repeat, Creel is not down." Trip said urgently. "Even these rounds have nothing."

"I'm moving in on him." Hunter reported. "If you could give me some backup so he doesn't break my ribs, that'd be great!"

"I'm on my way," Trip replied.

Coulson's Office, The Playground

September 25th, 2014

Keeping track of everything was proving to be harder on Skye than she'd like – she had the cameras constantly shifting on her laptop's screen and on the main screen on the wall so she could keep an eye on both targets and the team.

She watched Hunter go at Creel, and winced as she watched him take a punch to the ribs and go flying backwards, crashing into a streetlight poll. Free of any package to deliver, it looked like Creel was going to go full on assault. He stalked towards Hunter, pausing only briefly as his arms started to turn into metal.

"Oh shit," Trip called out over the comms. "He's using the tungsten from the rounds. He must have one in his fist."

"A little help here, please!" Hunter ground out, groaning in pain as he forced himself to his feet, moving around the pole to put it between himself and Creel.

"Use the device!" Fitz shouted, but Skye could see that Hunter didn't have it in his hand anymore – the bag was a few feet away, but there was no way Hunter was going to get to it without getting past Creel.

"I'm trying!" Hunter tried to lunge and roll past Creel to get to the bag, but the man moved far quicker than someone dragging around arms made of solid tungsten should be able to and blocked Hunter's path. The mercenary barely managed to evade a punch to the head for his trouble.

Skye glanced quickly over to the string of cameras tracking the Hydra agent carrying the Obelisk.

"May, Grant, the target is preparing to get away with the Obelisk. He's running!"

"Moving to intercept," May replied tersely, almost at the same time as Grant said: "Almost on him."

Coulson's Office, The Playground

September 25th, 2014

Coulson looked at Agent Ward, standing in front of his desk at attention, hands behind his back - which was ramrod straight. It didn't take a genius to tell that Ward wasn't happy about the failed mission.

"Regret to report, Sir," Ward said, his tone lacking any inflection whatsoever, "that the Obelisk was not secured."

"I did watch the whole thing - most of it at least - Ward." Coulson pointed out. "You made the right call - Trip and Hunter alone just weren't enough to handle Creel. I would have made the same choice - May should have been able to easily secure the target and the package. Instead, things… didn't go according to plan."

"It was my operation, sir." Ward disagreed. "I didn't consider the possibility of Raina interfering like that."

"No one would have expected Raina to have gotten her hands on an armored car, or that she'd drive right at a crowd of people. We're only lucky everyone got away - otherwise we'd have a mess of injured and dead civilians to contend with as well. It would have been more ideal if the move hadn't forced May to get out of the way and lose her grip on the other target, but..." Coulson was far, far from happy that Raina had gotten away with the Obelisk, and even less so when it was combined with the fact that she quite possibly had a working sample of GH-325. Which, if that was the reason Skye could hold it…

That meant, at least in theory, that Raina could too. Which was an even less pleasant prospect than her simply having it.

But what does she want it for? Hell, what does Hydra want it for? Is it a component to something, some weapon that could spread its effects? Or do they still need to study it? Hydra wasn't going to just let the thing they'd tried so hard to get their hands on get away from them. They surely were going to try to track down Raina as well.

"Your team still managed to take out Creel - Fitz was right about the Overkill Device dealing with him. And Hunter proved himself a valuable asset." Things hadn't gone according to plan with Creel, but Hunter had still managed to deploy the weapon in time to stop the bastard from breaking Trip's skull open. And he could take orders, which was essential.

"One objective out of three is a failure under any metric, sir. I made the call, I made the mistakes."

"I'm not saying you didn't make mistakes, Agent Ward. I'm just saying that you don't need to break out a whip and start flagellating yourself like you're a character from The Da Vinci Code. Yes, if you need me to say it, you failed. Raina has the Obelisk, and the courier got away. We have his face, but that doesn't count for much." It did count for something though. From what Simmons had managed to get to him, Coulson could match the target's face to Sunil Bakshi. He wasn't in charge, but he was a high ranking official in Hydra, and he was the kind of person that had Simmons's coworkers and bosses running scared whenever there was even a rumor of him taking interest in something related to what they were working on.

Which means that this is something that is too important to trust to someone lower. Hydra wanted this Obelisk. Very, very, very badly.

Ward nodded, "Orders, sir?"

"At the moment, nothing."

"Sir?"

"Ward, I'm taking you off duty for the next two days."

"Sir, I know I failed the objective, but I can still-"

"This isn't a punishment, Ward." Coulson reassured the men before he could continue to defend himself. "Until we have more information, there's no point in rushing ahead blindly. I want a mission report on my desk in two days, complete with what you would have changed about the mission in hindsight." Ward needed to relax or he was going to work himself to death. But he wasn't going to let himself do it after a failed mission.

Skye's been good for him, but nearly a decade of Specialist work still has him with a lot of habits he needs to unlearn. Purely from a staffing perspective, S.H.I.E.L.D. could not afford to let a specialist as capable as Ward burn himself out, but Coulson also didn't want to see the man, purely as one person to another, collapse under the weight of the job.

If Ward didn't learn to cut himself more slack, he was going to crack.

"You can start working on the report tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm ordering you have a little downtime. If you can appreciate the contradiction there. You need to relax, Ward. If you don't, you're going to burn out. We're operating with a fraction of the resources and personnel S.H.I.E.L.D. used to have, and an equally small fraction of the intelligence. We're going to have more failures. You can't be like this every time the mission goes wrong."

"Understood sir." Ward dropped his hands to his sides loosely. "I'll... try to keep that in mind."

"Dismissed."

Coulson's Office, The Playground
September 28th, 2014

"You wanted to see me?" Skye asked, stepping into D.C.'s office.

"I did." Coulson nodded. He started shuffling through some papers on his desk, then handed her a thin folder. "I've done some digging, and I've found some more examples of the strange pattern we found in the Totteroff Building and on the Obelisk." Skye accepted the folder and opened it up. There were three photographs of very similar designs, carved into wood, and… a chalkboard, in one case. Or what looked kind of like a chalkboard.

Skye's brow furrowed as she looked at it. "Sir… where did you find these?"

"Classified." Coulson replied. "I need you to reach out to your Rising Tide contacts - look for anything resembling this design. It's the only lead we have on the Obelisk."

Skye started to protest the way Coulson just blithely dropped the word classified as if it was enough of an answer, but then stopped short. He wasn't going to tell her just if she demanded to know.

But the secrets were starting to pile on. There was something off about the way he was asking her to do this, giving her the pictures without even a little bit of context. This was closer to the chest than he'd ever been before.

"Yes sir." She finally said after a long moment. "I'll see what I can do."