ΑΝ: I know it's not the weekend anymore, and I do apologise for the delay, but here is the latest chapter. Thank you MegaDiary123 for putting up with me and a big thank you to all readers out there! I hope you all enjoy.

All rights go to Marvel

Skye's POV

"You heard Coulson get up this morning?" I asked May in a hushed tone as we went through our Tai Chi sequence. At the silence that followed I continued, "I picked up his movements moments after I woke up. And I didn't get much sleep last night"

The ever so stoic May continued her forms as if she hadn't heard anything, but I knew better. She would breach the subject when she wanted and not a moment before. All I could do was give her information to think upon and she would come to me when she wanted. That was why I was surprised when I heard her voice, actually expecting a reply to follow. "It's been more than a dozen days than the meeting with the Director, and we've been doing Tai Chi together every morning since". I was actually a little surprised she didn't say anything about Coulson, but I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up in the first place. "What do you say we spar? Lay down the mats and go a few rounds?"

My whole attention was on her as I stopped my, otherwise, fluid movements abruptly and let my arms fall to my sides. "You want to spar?" I asked, wanting to verify that what I just heard was not a figment of my imagination.

"I want to see how much you have improved for myself. I have seen you spar sometimes with Ward, but you could say that I am curious to see how far you've come" she came to a stop next to me and turned to look at me. "Unless you are afraid" she raised an eyebrow in a challenging manner.

"I am not" I quickly supplied. "It's just… well, I don't want to push you. I don't want you to do something you are not comfortable with" I honestly phrased.

She scoffed at that. "When have I done anything I didn't want to do?" Was all she said as she went to the side to start preparing the cargo for what was to follow. "But since we are doing this, we are doing it right. No protection equipment and I want to get a proper look at what you can do".

"Fair enough" I agreed as I went to help out. "I promise I will start easy on you" I said, a smirk on my face.

I could feel the eye roll even though I was not facing the woman. "I have seen you spar with Ward before you know. I told you as much. I know what to expect and you holding back will make it way easy for me to take you down" Even though I still had my back on her she threw my water bottle at my direction. I felt it coming before it even left her hand, and so I swiftly turned and grabbed it before it hit me. "And no vibrations" she said the last part quietly in case we had a third set of ears listening to our conversation.

I brought my free hand to my chest. "I would never" I said as if wounded she even suggested such a thing. "I wouldn't even do that to Ward during a sparring match, let alone you". After downing a gulp of water, I started stretching my muscles in preparation. "Plus, I'm even holding back with him. My brother was my S.O. while I trained with my sister a lot as well. Let alone Maria" I said without wanting to give out Clint's and Natasha's names. "Have you talked with them recently by the way? I am sure you want to know why they kept the secret" I said and walked on the mat, waiting for May to do the same.

"No. No, I have not" she said as she mimicked my movements. "We've got a lot on our plate right now, and I have no time to spare on something like this. You said it was classified and even though I'm sure they would have liked to inform me, I was not in a good place mentally either. I understand why they didn't"

And with that she stood still facing me.

I took a deep breath and walked the remaining distance before copying her stance. I took a deep breath and pushed my powers down, silencing them.

The constant radar that I had mentally created grew quiet and it was a very satisfying feeling. Having a buzzing 24/7 in my head could be tiring and annoying, but I had learned to live with it. But, every once a while, and when I knew that nothing bad was going to happen in the near future, tuning it down was like taking a deep breath of clean air after being underwater for a very long time. I let out a breath and opened my eyes, my gaze holding May's. This was going to be interesting.

Just as May was about to make a move, a beeping sequence echoed through the cargo hold letting us know that we had an alert for a new mission. "Saved by the bell" May said as we both made our way to the debriefing room.

We were the last ones to arrive as everyone else had been on the sofas right outside the meeting place. Coulson already had the picture of a person up in the screen and started talking as soon as we walked in. "Chan Ho Yin" he pointed at said person. "Just a struggling street performer until a few years ago when Mr. Chan began to exhibit moderate pyrokinetic abilities"

My head shifted from looking at Chan's picture to Coulson's face and back to the picture. This would be the first mission since I was added to this team that was related to another powered individual. That is if you don't count Mike Peterson whose added powers were clearly artificial. "So what gave him powers?" I faintly heard Fitz ask.

"Still under investigation, but Chan lived near the decommissioned Wan Ta nuclear plant when it caught fire. To our knowledge no other resident had exhibit similar trades". Coulson said. Well, that was reassuring.

I could see Jemma from across the room, her eyes sparkling as her mind was working. "So how did we find out about him?"

"An informer saw him lighting torches in a street show…" it was May's input, "…with his pinky"

Coulson nodded at that. "Brought it to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention. We told him to keep his abilities under wraps. He's been in the Index ever since"

Oh, yes. The Index. I remembered one time when my name and my abilities were in there, that was until Fury decided to scrape everything about me and the rest of the Avengers, all of whom but one were part of the Index as well. Yes, even Tony and Natasha. Tony, despite not having any superpowers, was in because of his suits. And Natasha, well… Natasha came in the organisation in an unconventional way. They needed to keep an eye on her for a while and then she just remained in the list until she wasn't anymore. Clint was actually the only one whose presence didn't grace the list. That lucky bastard.

My thoughts were interrupted by the team leader's voice continuing his narrative. "Mr. Chan was a low risk individual, so he was assigned a case agent who checked in with him every few days. That's how we discovered him missing". He pressed something at the pad he was holding and a video call appeared on the screen, with various S.H.I.E.L.D. agents going through an apartment, probably Chan's.

May moved around the table, which was in the middle of the room, and stepped closer to the screen. "Hello, agent Kwan. How are you?" She started speaking in Mandarin. I had picked up the language from the time I stayed with her after she first found me, always finding it interesting. And then I studied it while in the Academy and later on when S.H.I.E.L.D. started training me again to become an agent with Clint. I wasn't fluid in it, but I was pretty good at them, both understanding and speaking the language.

Agent Kwan nodded his head to May's direction as a greeting. "Not as good as I could be".

"Everyone, this is agent Kwan, Chan Ho Yin's case agent". From the corner of my eye I saw FitzSimmons wave at the man and I had to hide a smirk that rose on my face because of their antics. "What can you tell us?"

"Not much I'm afraid. Chan is a magician. So at first I thought he made himself disappear" he said, clearly very satisfying with himself for coming up with that.

This time, instead of a smirk I had to try and suppress an eye roll. Thankfully, Coulson asked white quickly after agent Kwan had spoken and so I could focus on that. "The file says you caught him violating his Index agreement before". It was not a question.

"On two separate occasions, claiming we are 'hindering his artistic expression'. But late last night, he was taken by professionals. The only thing they left behind was this scrap of aluminised material" he said and lifted his hand, where he was holding said material, for us to see.

"Fireproof clothing" Jemma said, almost as if talking to herself.

Ward actually looked puzzled. "So, whoever took him knew about his power"

Agent Kwan smiled sadly at our inputs. "Yes, and we believe we know why. The last few days, the Tech division discovered a crack into our data stream. It's the same Cyber-Punks who hacked us before. Somehow, they got in again. It's the Rising Tide". Fuck, I mentally thought. For some reason everyone in the room turned to look at me, but at the same time no-one spoke. "Hello? You got really quiet. You guys are still there?" Kwan asked.

"Give me a few minutes" I moved closer to the table and closed Chan's documents while I opened a program to start looking for whoever hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. "Agent Kwan, we will chase this thing from our side, you keep working from Hong Kong and inform us if you have any news" Coulson said, and after a quick dismiss closed his window and turned around once again. Though my eyes were trained on the lines of coding I was typing, I knew he was watching me closely.

No-one spoke as I kept typing away, my fingers flying over the digital keyboard. I was mentally beating myself up while I was still trying to find the digital print that the information had been leaked from.

"How close are we?" I could hear the restlessness in Coulson's voice.

"Almost there" I replied, without moving my eyes from my work.

Fitz and Jemma who had been watching close as well and could sort of understand what I was doing provided some input for the rest of the team to have a general idea of what I was doing. "She's identifying the remote-access trojan and the infected endpoint—", Fitz started only for Jemma to finish his sentence for him.

"And is searching for a TCP to correlate the hypertext with signature information and then—"

"Bob is your uncle" Fitz added while I was closing in on my goal.

I faintly heard the rest of the team whispering at the back, but I didn't care about what they said. "We got an origin" I said but kept working onto finding outa the identity of the person. "Austin, Texas. Really close to getting a name as well. I'm in the system of the cafe that our hacker worked out of. Gonna check if any credit-card charges match with any known hacker and… we got a hit" I finished as I pulled Miles photo on the big screen. "That will be Miles Lydon"

Still looking at the picture, Coulson asked "You know him?"

But before I even have the chance to reply FitzSimmons spoke again, Jemma starting this time. "A lot of people do. He infiltrated the Kremlin"

"Yeah, the picture of, uh, Putin shirtless on horseback that was his hack" Fitz continued.

"It was also his hack that got Chan kidnapped" Ward silence the science twins.

"We need to bring him in. May, set course for Austin" and when May confirmed she had already done so through the tablet that she was holding, he continued. "Any ideas?" He looked around the table.

"If I may" I started without hesitating and Coulson nodded. "While I was undercover I worked with Miles a lot. If we bring him in he will refuse to cooperate and I doubt we will get anything out of him"

"What do you think we should do then?"

"Well…"