better to burn than to fade away

The Freezer was a tall rectangular skyscraper that jutted out from the middle of the Pacific Ocean like an enormous splinter. Skye’s heart was thump thump thumping in her throat when the helicopter touched down roughly on the helipad, yet once her feet hit the ground she felt oddly weightless. It was like being in the middle of a hurricane, wind whipping her hair into her face and threatening to pull her off her feet and down to meet her final watery resting place. Never had she felt so careful as she made her way towards the prison’s entrance, legs shaky. As the elevator doors slowly slid shut, the helicopter was but a black sesame seed floating on the horizon. For a moment, Skye imagined herself slipping through the doors and jumping off the edge. Maybe Agent May would care, but Skye was a fairly new recruit. They would blame it on a mental break down and no one would be the wiser.

But then the doors closed, and the silence was deafening.

Escorted by the two guards, Skye felt smaller than usual. She had just gotten used to the weightlessness of the helipad and the roar of the wind and the pure silence and the pure white halls were unsettling. How had they not heard her heart, still ramming into her chest like a jackhammer? It had taken two years, a month and nine days of meticulous planning to get here and now Skye felt just as lost as she had been at the very beginning.

Her legs felt like noodle when the elevator doors slid open again and Agent Victoria Hand’s calm brown eyes bored into her skull.

“Agent Johnson.” With a curt nod she towards the guards, she entered the elevator. Beside her, Skye fought the urge to fidget.

“If we were at a S.H.I.E.L.D. training center I might excuse a small lapse in protocol,” she said, concise and to the point as ever. Skye resisted the urge to roll her eyes. As if Agent I’ve-got-a-stick-up-my-ass Hand would ever even excuse a small lapse in protocol.

“But we are in a highly classified prison and mistakes will not be excused. Likewise, if you see something does not add up, you report it. Immediately.”

From the back, Skye wondered if she would have assumed Hand was a bit more fun to be around, with her thick ruby highlights that gleamed in the florescent lights.

“Is that understood?” she says turning around to face her, brown eyes dark and faintly threatening like a blanketed fire.

“Yes Agent Hand,” Skye said, solemn.

Hand continued staring at Skye as she reached out to stop the elevator.

“You would not have been my first choice to work at a classified facility.”

What a surprise. May hadn’t recruited her because she was good at following the rules. She had never actually met Agent Hand in person, but when Skye had been nothing but a rising star in the hackitvist community, she had majorly interfered with one of Hand’s missions. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that Hand didn’t know the identity of the hacker who had caused her mission to fail, but Hand was so dead pan it was hard to tell. Skye didn’t think she wanted to know. It didn’t matter anyway.

Agent Hand paused, but Skye just tilted back her chin regaining some of the confidence that the wind had swept away.

“Several infractions were listed on your file, and you must understand that none of that will be tolerated here. Toe the line and there will be unpleasant repercussions.”

“Agent Hand,” Skye said with a wry smile, “You are not the first person to have this conversation with me. And I don’t exactly have the desire to be the cause of a prison break.”

“I’m glad this is not a surprise to you then,” Hand said, suspicious but somewhat satisfied as she turned the elevator back on.

Accompanied by the guards, Skye and Agent Hand exited the elevator and began walking down a long, barren hallway.

“Why am I here by the way?”

In front of her, Hand sighed.

“You were being trained for the field were you not?”

And to think her heart had just began to not feel like a jackhammer. Only down her heart rate seemed faint. Skye took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“Yes. And?”

They had reached the end of the hall, just in front of what looked like the entrance to a vault.

“I’m just curious.”

“Agent Hand,” Skye said, surprising herself at the lack of gritted teeth, “no you’re not.”

“Agent Johnson, I am just curious until I tell you otherwise.”

Hand was concise alright, and Skye had to respect that, just a little bit.

“Your official duty is to update and maintain our surveillance system. You will be aided,” she said as they reached a door at the end of the hall, “By Agents Simmons and Fitz.”

.

Jemma Simmons was even shorter Skye. She was a pretty woman with owlish eyes, two Masters and a doctorate. Fitz was Scottish and could wax poetry about mechanics and anything that involved engineering along with an odd fixation on monkeys. They were an odd pair. And yet, Skye could not deny their charm..

“Okay, why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” Jemma asked, bright and sunny and unmistakably nervous. Even Fitz had stopped fiddling with the miniature drones he called the dwarfs.

“You two are way too smart to be stuck here. Not to mention that your area of expertise has nothing to do with running a prison.”

“Au contraire! Every prison needs a prison doctor.” For a moment, Skye felt a bit guilty because Jemma looked so proud of herself.

“Maybe if you say it with a little more conviction I’ll believe you.”

Jemma’s face fell and Skye bit back a smile.

“We’re not entirely sure, actually.”

“Fitz!,” Jemma hissed.

“Well it’s true,” Fitz told her looking a little harried.

“We’re supposed to be doing things like testing the emergency generator systems and going over patient files, but Agent Hand refuses to tell us why.”

“I’m supposed to be updating the surveillance system, but Hand suggested that wasn’t all I would be doing.”

“See,” Fitz told Jemma emphatically, “we can trust her!”

“We don’t know that- not that I don’t think you’re lovely Skye, I’m sure I’m just being paranoid-”

“No offense taken. You guys are adorable.”

Jemma glared, but it lacked any sting.

“Fitz is the adorable one. I am not.”

Fitz looked a bit downcast at that, and Skye felt herself becoming oddly sympathetic.

“Is that why you have a grumpy cat coffee cup?”

Jemma opened her mouth in outrage, and Fitz was smiling widely.

“That’s what I keep telling her Skye, but she insists otherwise,” he said moving in for a fist bump which Skye returned with aplomb.

.

Days were quiet more often than not. Most of the time, Skye hated it.

She was used to blaring music and the sound of city streets filling up the silence in her life. Skye was required to come into a SHIELD base most days for work when she first started, but after awhile, less and less of her superiors cared where she got her work done so long as she kept up her standards. Many days would find Skye wearing large over sized head phones, tucked away in the nook of some quirky hipster coffee shop, where she looked just like any other neurotic, sleep deprived college student.

But today, three weeks after coming to the Freezer, it was loud.

Loud, loud. Like blaring sirens whose main purpose in existence were to burst your eardrums. Fitz wordlessly handed her ear plugs, which Skye was grateful to accept, but only deadened the noise. The throbbing of the sirens sensation of the sirens, however, remained.

There had been a fight, or at least that is what a seething Agent Hand tells them when they are all herded into her office once the sirens have gone off.

The older woman’s office is predictably bland. No pictures propped up on her desk, no accommodations hang on the walls no colorful magnets stuck to the filing shelves. If fact, the only thing that showed this is Hand’s office was the vault like door.

Fitz and Simmons look at each other worriedly, but Hand ignores them in favor of staring at Skye speculatively.

Skye doesn’t flinch.

“Agents Fitz and Simmons, please send for Dr. Pluto. I’d like to speak to her and Agent Johnson alone.”

They were alone for a surprisingly short time before a woman with a perfectly curled halo of dark hair and prophetic eyes glided into the room with the elegance of a ballerina. Dr. Puto smiled a I-use-crest-white-strips-and-I-will-steal-your-boyfriend smile, and Skye knew sure as she knew the sirens had not been caused by a fight that she would never trust this woman.

“Agent Johnson, this is Dr. Raina Pluto. Dr. Pluto, prisoner 86 attacked you during your session with him at 0900, correct?”

“Yes, Agent Hand.”

“What caused the attack?”

“I’m not sure.”

Dr. Pluto’s voice was perfectly poised and perfectly contrite and Skye was surprised that Hand could be so easily duped. Dr. Raina Pluto knew exactly what caused the attack.

“86 was agitated at the beginning of the meeting and he continued to seem restless until I asked him if he wanted to talk about,” she paused and glanced at Skye, “Agent May.”

Almost unconsciously, Skye straitened her back. That was always something Skye had admired about May; her posture. She was often the shortest woman in the room and yet she had the unique ability to tower over others.

“After which he was somehow able to break through the plasma shield and attack.”

“Why aren’t you injured then?”

Hand coughed.

“Dr. Pluto,” Skye added.

Pluto turned and gave a slight smile that made Skye’s blood thrum in the same way it did before she would get into fights.

“Prisoner 86 was unable to hurt me because the second plasma shield stayed in place.”

“You see Agent Johnson,” Hand continues, “it appeared that the first plasma shields all around the prison malfunctioned, but every single back up shield worked perfectly.”

“I know,” Skye said with a raised eyebrow.

“You know.” Agent Hand narrows her eyes and Dr. Pluto looked at her with significantly more interest than before.

“When I was reviewing the code on your operating systems this morning, I found a discrepancy in the backup systems. In my professional opinion, it was too major not to fix right away.”

The room is silent for a while and Skye fights the urge to fidget. Hand seems torn between anger and approval and there is something mirthful in Pluto’s eyes.

“I sent a memo.”

“May was your SO, yes Agent Johnson?”

“Yes Agent Hand.”

“Dr. Pluto, fill Agent Skye in on 86. I want her to interview him. Maybe he just needs a change of pace.”

.

“What are you doing?” Raina asked as Skye pushed her swiveling computer chair down the hall.

“I’m going to be in there awhile, I might as well be comfortable.”      

Prisoner 86 was a handsome man with too dark eyes. Tall and hulking, he seemed too big for the slender mattress that lay in the corner of his cell and something about him made Skye think that he was used to taking up people’s attention, distracting them from other things.

According to the Freezers data base, prisoner 86 was born Grant Douglas Ward; a level nine prisoner, highly skilled in hand to hand combat. The words ‘DO NOT APPROACH’ were emblazoned on the bottom of his profile.

The bound and (Bless Hand’s little black heart) laminated dossier on the Freezers lingo said that level 9 prisoners were one vague distinction away from level 10, meaning that instead of committing high treason against SHIELD, Ward had only helped and abided a traitor.

Which told Skye virtually nothing.

Dr. Pluto had been similarly unhelpful, slipping and sliding through every question and far too interested in her role in updating the security system. Yet even Skye’s own searches were fairly non-conclusive.

Grant Douglas Ward was the second son of William and Margaret Ward. His father and mother died in a mysterious fire and his older brother took their father’s place in the senate. Then there were the little details; he grew up in Massachusetts, he has a younger brother and sister, he is 32, he was sent to a military academy for high school.

It was what she doesn’t find that makes her suspicious.

No sign of college applications, no high school report cards, no parking tickets, not even a magazine subscription. Skye could look deeper and she will, but in depth background checks take time and less than illegal methods and she had to be especially careful now that she was in a highly guarded government prison.

Ward glanced over at the sound of rolling wheels. He probably intended to be uninterested and glib, but he failed when he saw that it was not Dr. Pluto entering the room.

He sat up on the bed and Skye could feel his eyes on her as she hopped up on the chair and folded her legs underneath her.

“Why were you sent to military school?”

Ward looked at her blankly and laid back down in the mat, and closed his eyes. Skye sighed loudly and pulled out her laptop. Grant Ward was a shady character, and a mystery and mysteries were meant to be solved whether Grant Ward liked it or not.

“According to you medical chart you broke your left arm twice when you were in middle school and broken your right thumb and left index finger also around the same time. But you only have record of going to the hospital once during that time.”

Ward looked up with narrowed eyes.

“Abusive parents? Or negligent parents and an abusive older brother?”

Ward looked impressed against his will. And wary.

“The former. You hacked my medical files?”

“Why do you think SHIELD recruited me?”

“From juvie no doubt.”

“No actually, although apparently you are very familiar with juvie.” Skye scrolled down the page, and felt the realization slam her in the gut as she connected the dots.

“You set the fire that killed your parents.”

Ward was sitting up again, meeting her eyes dead on. The picture on the Freezer’s profile would have fooled you into thinking that Grant Ward was a handsome, clean cut boy scout, a brunette shoe in for Captain America. The Ward looking at her now had sunken eyes and a grizzled beard; a sneering grim reaper with ghosts hanging off his shoulders.

“What did you say your name was? Daisy?”

Skye’s heart dropped to the floor.

“Skye,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You got a last name Daisy?”

This had been a mistake. She hadn’t gone to the freezer to be played around with like she was a mouse and Ward a feral cat.

“Not for you I don’t.”

The room suddenly the room felt claustrophobic. The air was becoming thick and viscous in her lungs and Skye could feel Ward’s dark, dark eyes were boring into her skull all the way down the hall.