Chapter 1.9
The next corridor they had found themselves in was, well, a proper corridor rather than some sort of a sewer (and not even a glorified one - just a sewer). The floor was dry, as were the walls and the ceiling - in fact, the whole atmosphere felt dry, like some sort of a cellar or an attic, save that it wasn't cold or cool - just dry. The fact that there were no people that weren't captive helped too.
No, seriously, there wasn't anyone in the corridors - apparently, most of the 'Green Branches' staff already left, and security didn't come here very often either - apparently they made the other personnel nervous and interfered with their concentration. There weren't even any video cameras, as far as any of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents present here could detect.
They had already explored several rooms before reaching this level, and until the last room, they hadn't discovered anything particularly incriminating. And then there was the odd room out - not a proper lab, but more a break room, which for some reason raised everyone's hackles. It was warm and comfortable, with a huge soft Bukhara carpet lying all over the floor. There were armchairs and sofas everywhere, as well as cocktail tables and lamp tables - and the lamps too had an oriental look and feel to them, they clearly weren't bought in a convenience store. There was a bookcase, albeit filled with journals...that were sorted according to their topics, (all related to biology but different), and according to Bobbi, only a select few scientists could properly understand what was in them. A fridge, a stainless steel sink and an electrical stove with all the accessories, (enabling people to prepare a full dinner here) completed the scene.
Lance and the others looked around, noticed a polished wooden oval table and 8 chairs from the matching set and weren't impressed.
"Looks as innocent as Bobbi's butt," the Englishman noted.
...While he and Bobbi went at it again, Skye began to investigate - they were missing something here, she was sure of it. Garner and his allies wouldn't be hiding important documents at home, or at a safety deposit box in a bank - even they weren't that amateurish. It was quite likely that they would hide them someplace like here, but where exactly? Not behind a fridge, under the carpet, in the walls - people look at those places first.
Beckoning Hudima to follow her, Skye walked to the bookcase and began to remove the journals. For a while their search proved fruitless, but at the end of the second shelf they hit jackpot - the door of the safety deposit box. Skye could've blasted through it, but they were going for discreet here, so she and Hudima switched their positions with Lance and Bobbi and let them break the combination lock, while the two InHumans kept watch.
...It took just under 5 minutes for the Brits to break the combo. Lance claimed that they could've done it quicker, but didn't want to rush the job. Everyone made vaguely believable noises at his statement and started looking through the paperwork. The photos especially were very...vivid - so vivid, that only Hudima's grip prevented Skye from going full quake on this compound, so instead they went to the appropriate level to look at the evidence and to start a rescue mission - and so here they now were, in this cold and featureless - so very different from the break room - corridor.
On the sides of the corridor were windows/doors, which opened into small enclosures - cells, really, not unlike S.H.I.E.L.D.'s containment units, save that they're immobile, and are designed as the more traditional prison cells that they are.
Skye looked around - and caught the eyes of the prisoner in the last (or the first?) of the enclosures in the corridor: "Lincoln?!" she stared and frantically looked at the others. "I don't know what he's doing here...we must get him out..."
"Well, you've handled the giant mutant rats in the sewer when I couldn't - not without setting the entire tunnel aflame due to sewer gas," Hudima rumbled, as he put his hands on the glass - and they glowed yellow-red, and the glass...vaporized, like common paper from a candle's flame. "Done?"
"Daisy?" Lincoln gets onto his feet and in a shaky, but steady, manner gets across the now-unlocked cell to the foursome. "It's you! And I remember you! You're the big man who rescued me back when-"
"Yes, yes," Lance said quickly, startling the InHuman trio. "How did you get here?"
"Oh, uh, it's complex - we need to bust the other InHumans trapped on this level - any ideas?" Lincoln turned to the Englishman.
"Do I?" Lance said rhetorically, before pulling out a medium-sized semi-collapsible crowbar (S.H.I.E.L.D. had inventions of this sort too) and slammed it right through the nearest conventionally-located control mini-panel that he had noticed earlier. There was a small explosion, an equally small electric discharge, (Lance was wearing rubber-insulated gloves that he had put on for just such an emergency, so he wasn't electrocuted), an electric fire was an follow-up, and all of the electronics in the corridor collapsed, releasing the InHumans from their cells.
Sadly, this sort of thing didn't pass without incident, as alarms began to blare almost immediately; the sprinklers too go off, as there's plenty of smoke in the air, but only emergency lights remain on, so the atmosphere is quite murky and confusing, so-
"Everyone!" Bobbi yelled from the top of her lungs, which were considerable - just look at her chest, cough. "Follow Lincoln! He's the one with the main plot as to where, and how, you are to escape!"
The exodus went in mass.
///
"May, what are you thinking about?" Leo asked shyly the woman in question. (Shyly because he had sort of drifted apart from his former Bus teammate and the two of them never got together to begin with, due to all the differences between the two of them).
"Nothing."
"...Say what?"
"I'm not thinking of anything," May explained with a sign, clearly trying to figure out how to tell Fitz to get lost without actually saying this directly. "I'm just enjoying the view. Can't you do that?"
"No," the small (in stature) scientist admitted. "I cannot. I'm constantly thinking, even when...even after I'd recovered from my near-death experience by being thrown off the plane. I cannot...I can't just switch my brain off and enjoy the beauties of nature like you do; I'm sorry."
May looked down at the other agent. (Physically, it wasn't easy, but she managed.) "Areyou trying to insult me?" she finally spoke, but without any real malice behind her words."
"No," Fitz paled, because May was May, even to her friends. "I'm trying to compliment you; I'm sorry if I got it wrong-"
"All right, this is what I suspected," Melinda let Leo off the hook. "So, what are you thinking about?"
"Jemma," Leo visibly dropped. "And - your family. What's that like? My parents died in a car accident when I was 4; I'd been raised by my aunt and uncle until I went to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s academy. They're not bad people; they just weren't my parents, and we all knew it. My uncle, in particular, was upset that I went into S.H.I.E.L.D. and sciences, not politics as he did, so we didn't really stay in touch even before the Hydra uprising and now..." Leo shook his head. "You, the director, the others - you're more of a family to me than my aunt and uncle are, see?"
"Not sure," May shook her head. "For the last 7 years of my life I tried to do what you're supposedly are trying to do - to cut off all the roots from the civilian aspects of my life. As you've seen, this has backfired on me very badly - maybe even on the rest of us. Naomi, physically, is going to be fine - but otherwise? She lost about 6 years of her life while in a drug-induced coma." She paused and gave Leo a look. "And you've got issues with that?"
"You know that it isn't your family I got issues with," Leo refused to be baited. "It's just, well just, you know what I got issues with, or rather - with whom. Your family has no issues, though how are you going to go with them from here?"
"That is the tricky question," May exhaled. "I don't know. I want to help Naomi, I don't want her in S.H.I.E.L.D., I know that it is too late for that, I, Leo Fitz, I am sca-"
It was then that Raina and Coulson emerged.
"Melinda, Fitz," Coulson said calmly. "Apparently Raina got some friends landing here in their airport."
"Not friends - some fellow InHumans," Raina shook her head. "Want to come and see them?"
And this was what Coulson and the others did. Seeing Daisy and their fellow agents emerge from clearly not a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane was a surprise of its own; but the biggest surprise wasn't them or Campbell emerging from the aircraft; it was Ian Quinn.
TBC