Changing her Story
Skye blinked and jolted forward from where she was sitting. She nearly sprawled over her audio and computer set up in her van. It only took seconds to recognize where she was before the side door slid open, showing Coulson and Ward in their dark suits, standing there. She was shocked and confused enough that she didn’t fight back when Ward threw a hood over her head and grabbed her from the van.
Skye’s mind was racing as pieces began to form in her mind as to what had happened. Hydra’s Castle. Maveth. Ward and his brother. FitzSimmons and Coulson. Malick. The Monolith exploding from her final burst of vibrations. Drops of buzzing dark liquid latching onto her skin and literally vibrating her. And a single word whispered through the vibrations. "HIVE."
Skye felt herself being handcuffed and ushered into a car and couldn’t help remembering the last time she’d been grabbed like that. It had happened almost three years ago. Skye froze at that thought. She started to catalogue her memories and comparing them to what was currently happening to her now and couldn’t find a difference. The suits AC and Ward were wearing were exactly the same. Ward’s hair was the same style and her van had been recording an audio just like the first time she met SHIELD. Plus, Coulson still had his hand.
The car came to a stop and Skye was pulled out of the vehicle and tugged along. Skye felt her feet meet the ramp of the BUS and within no time was having the handcuffs being unlocked and ushered into the Cage on the BUS. The hood was removed and Ward not-so-gently dropped her into a chair. Coulson closed and locked the door and Skye looked down at herself.
She was still wearing her Caterpillars outfit and her hairstyle was still wavy and short, but Coulson and Ward both looked three years younger. Skye closed her eyes for a moment, mentally reaching for that hidden reservoir of her powers and could feel it lightly buzzing within herself. That hidden pool of energy was so small though that Skye knew if she tried to call on them, she’d instantly get a nosebleed for her troubles and collapse. She’d somehow transported herself through time with her own abilities and they were so shot right now and her body so exhausted, that sitting upright was a challenge.
“This is a big mistake.” Skye whispered to herself.
“You don’t look that big.” Ward sneered and Skye froze, remembering those same words.
“Sorry, for the lack of finesse. Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group, the Rising Tide.” Coulson told her and Skye frowned at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Okay, there are two ways we can do this.” Ward said stonily.
“Let me guess, one of them is the easy way?” Skye snarked back out of habit before the sense of deja vu washed over her.
“No.” Ward answered simply.
“What’s your name?”
Skye opened her mouth to answer before stilling, considering everything for a long moment and then asking, “What’s today’s date?”
Coulson and Ward both frowned down at her, exchanging skeptical looks before Coulson answered her. “It’s September 24th, 2013.”
Skye let out a shaky breath. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” She murmured to herself, reaching up and pinching her arm.
The two agents watched her, one with concern, the other with suspicion clear on their faces. Skye resigned herself to her current predicament and straightened in her chair before looking up at Coulson.
“You can call me Skye.”
“What’s your real name?” Ward asked but Coulson cut him off.
“That can wait. It’s another name we need. A certain hero.”
Skye furrowed her brows, trying to remember how this particular meeting had gone. “What makes you think I know that?”
“Well, you made a little mistake.” Coulson told her. “The phone you recorded the Hooded Hero with had the same cryptographic signatures a few of the Rising Tide posts did.”
Skye couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah, it wasn’t a mistake. I wanted to get caught. Because I’m now in your secret headquarters.” Skye pretended to look around. “Or plane. And by now you’ve discovered you can’t beat the encryption on my equipment so, you’ve got nothing.”
“We have a fairly strong coincidence.” Coulson told her and opened the file in his hands to reveal pictures of the building explosion in LA. “You, being on the scene, right before it went up in flames. Want to tell me what my team is gonna find there?”
Skye’s thoughts briefly went to FitzSimmons and May who were probably already at the scene of the explosion. She remembered the tech and DWARFS that they used on their earlier cases as a team which recorded the data and tried to remember what they would find at the blast site that would help them with their first case together. The surveillance camera with images and recording before the explosion as well as the alien metal.
“How did you know the hooded man was in the building?” Coulson brought her out of her thoughts.
“Did you blow it up to draw him out?” Ward asked her.
“No! Did you?” Skye snarked back.
“That’s not our style.” Coulson answered.
“I was just kidnapped by your style. SHIELD covered up New Mexico, Project Pegasus. Of course you’d be covering up Project Centipede.”
Skye recalled this conversation and watched as Coulson and Ward shared looks. Ward stood behind her mouthing the word: Centipede?
Skye smirked at them. “Holy, no way. You don’t know what that is, do you? Billions of dollars of equipment at your disposal and I beat you with a laptop I won in a bet?”
“You need to think about your friend." Coulson said evenly. "We’re not the only ones interested in people with powers. We’d like to contain him, yeah. The next guy will want to exploit him, the guy after that will want to dissect him.”
Ward put his hand on the table and leaned over her intimidatingly. "What is Centipede?” He asked in a steely voice.
Skye pushed him away - to his surprise - to stand up and pace. “I don't know much. There was chatter on the web, and then gone. I traced the access point mac address to that building.”
“What were you after?” Ward questioned.
“The truth.” Skye said it like it was obvious. “What are you after?”
“World peace.” She scoffed at that. He shook his head at her and stood up, walking closer but she refused to back down, even though she knew exactly what he was. “You pseudo anarchist hacker types love to stir things up but you’re never around for the fallout. People keep secrets for a reason, Skye.”
He was mocking her chosen name because it wasn’t real. It was the one she'd picked after she’d erased herself out of existence first.
Skye faced him, refusing to back down. “Well, just because you’re reasonable and firm doesn’t mean that you’re not an evil, faceless government tool-bag.”
“Just give us your guy’s name.” Ward said tiredly.
“He’s not my guy!” She threw up her hands at him, exasperated.
“You understand he’s in danger!” Coulson reminded her.
“Then let me go! Let me talk to him. Not the, T-1000 here.” She gestured to Ward.
“You want to be alone with him? Of course.” Ward stepped over towards Coulson. “She’s a groupie. All this hacking into SHIELD, tracking powers. She might as well be one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Towers.” Ward told Coulson.
Skye just rolled her eyes before kicking his legs, and grabbing his gun from his holster. Coulson jumped up, as did Ward, but both stopped short as they watched her empty the magazine, and the spare bullet from the chamber, slamming the parts onto the table and stepping away.
“Can a sweaty cosplay girl do that?” She asked him irritatedly with her eyebrow cocked.
Ward reached for his weapon on the table, slowly putting it back together and then holstering it as Coulson opened the door and indicated Ward should follow him. Skye watched them go smugly while Coulson began to reprimand Ward.
“Is it the girl? She getting under your skin?”
“Sir!” Ward started but Coulson kept going.
“Or is it the assignment? Are you so anxious to get out of this that you deliberately blow an interrogation and underestimate her enough that you let her take your weapon from you?” Coulson looks back at him, shaking his head.
“She caught me off guard! Just give me a minute alone with her and you’ll have your answers.” Ward leaned over as Coulson retrieved a case from a metal cabinet in the command center of the plane.
“She’s an asset!”
“She is such a - wait, asset?” Ward asked.
“We know nothing about her.” Coulson told him, putting the case on the holotable. “Do you appreciate how often that happens? That never happens. We need what she knows.” Coulson opens the briefcase revealing a sort of mechanical injection gun.
When the agents come back into the room with a truth serum and it’s corresponding injector, Skye watches nonchalantly as AC explains it to her.
“This is QNB-T16. It’s the top-shelf martini of sodium pentothal derivatives. It’s a brand-new and extremely potent truth drug. Don’t worry the effects only last about an hour.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Skye told Coulson and he blinked at her easy attitude.
Ward loomed over her though, “Once we’re done, you’ll have a nice little nap and we’ll have all the answers to our - hey!” Coulson shot the truth serum into Ward’s arm. “What the hell?” Ward hissed out in a low voice.
“I’m sorry, did that hurt?” Coulson said in a light, almost too-apologetic, tone.
“No!” Ward was indignant. “But you’ve lost your mind. You should never do that to a member of your team - and yes, it did hurt a little bit. But I always try and mask my pain in front of beautiful women ‘cause I think it makes me seem more masculine. My God, this stuff works fast.” Ward looked down at his arm and slowly sat down, trying to come to terms that his Commanding Officer just shot him with a truth serum.
Ward's words kept getting louder, speeding up and his upper body seem to gesture more when he rambled. It was hilarious to watch. Skye smirked at him before lifting an eyebrow and meeting Coulson's gaze
“Don’t trust us? Ask him whatever you like.” Coulson circled around the younger two and the table as Ward protested.
“Wait a minute. Wait, you can’t just - this is definitely not protocol!” Ward called after him but Coulson closed the door on him, locking them both in.
Skye smiled predatorily at Ward and unzipped her Caterpillar jacket, slipping it off her shoulders and slinging it over her chair. She leaned over the table giving him a generous view of her cleavage in her tank top as his eyes dropped down to her chest for a moment before meeting her gaze again.
Skye considered her position. She knew the cameras were recording and thought quickly. If she asked him the right questions she could expose him for being a HYDRA agent right now and everything he knows about Garrett, Deathlok, the Centipede program as well as any other fellow HYDRA agents. But if the timeline was playing out like it did before, Mike Peterson would become dangerous to the rest of the community again. And, she realized, somehow she’d been given a fresh start. Even though she still had her Inhuman abilities, her knowledge of the next three years could be detrimental in keeping SHIELD intact as a spy organization and exposing HYDRA as well as stopping the threat of the Winter Solider and Project Insight ahead of time. So she made a decision. To follow her script.
“You seem nervous, Agent Ward.” She gave him a tiny smile and stood up, practically stalking him as he spoke.
“I’m calling to mind my training. There’s no way I’m gonna reveal classified secrets to a girl who’s hell-bent on taking us down.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?” She hovered over his shoulder.
“Yes, a few.” He answered instantly then closed his eyes in frustration with himself as she circled around leaning on the table on his other side. “High-risk targets. But they were terrible people, who were trying to murder nice people." He made sure to keep eye contact with her and not her chest. "And I didn’t feel good afterwards.”
“And does your grandmother know about these things?” She asked him, cocking her head as if flirtatious and coy, a mocking tone to her voice. He grimaced before looking up at her.
“Gramzy?”
By the time Skye was done having fun with Ward and his truthful answers, it was dark and Skye was let out of the Cage while Ward slept.
“Did Agent Ward give you anything?” Coulson asked even though he knew she hadn’t asked any real penetrating classified questions.
“He told me he’s been to Paris, but he’s never really seen it and that he wishes he got to stay in Tahiti.”
“It’s a magical place.” Coulson smiled at her and Skye had to recall her training with May to keep her face blank.
“Ward doesn’t like your style.” Skye told the agent. “Kinda think I do.”
“What about his?” Coulson asks and using the holotable in the command center on the BUS shows Skye a news reel of Mike Peterson angrily beating his previous employer at the factory he worked at.
“This is wrong.” Skye said disappointedly. “This is not the guy I met. He was,” she sighs. “He just needs a break.” She tells AC.
“Then give him one.” He says softly and Skye nods her head slowly. “What have you got?”
She reaches inside her pocket but doesn’t have Mike Peterson’s ID that she’d originally stolen that day three years ago. “I don’t have anything on me, but I can pull up everything I know about him.” Skye tells AC, gesturing to the holotable and Coulson pauses.
“You don’t know how to use it, though.”
Skye keeps her face as blank as possible before rolling her eyes. “Come on, AC. I might not be a genius, but I think I can figure it out.” Finally, Coulson nods, stepping aside for her, watching her carefully.
When the rest of the team gets there, Coulson briefs FitzSimmons, and May about Mike.
“Michael Peterson. Factory worker. Married. One kid. Gets injured. Gets laid off. Wife jumps ship. Good guy. Bad breaks.” Coulson lists off the information. “Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again. Make him super.”
“Who has the tech to do that and why would they want to?” May asks and Skye jumps at the perfect opportunity for her to start planting seeds of knowledge ahead of time.
“Well, I think they’re trying to make super-soldiers.” She says to the group and they all turn to look at her. “When I met with Mike, he was trying to hide it, but he has a device attached to his arm that actually looks like a Centipede. It has a clear casing with an orange drug on the back and what looks like steel metal keeping it glued to his skin. I assume it’s regularly cycling through his blood. I don’t know what it is, but obviously it gave him super-strength.” She paused thinking deeply for a moment. “What if this lab is the one that gave it to him? He was near the building when it exploded and he went up to that top level specifically and saved that woman - and she was wearing a lab coat. Didn’t it mention on the news that she was a doctor? He saved her, because she made the drug that did this for him.” Skye realizes and everyone stares at her thinking it all over.
“Fitz, what do we have from the security footage before the blast?” Coulson asks and the engineer pulls it up from the holotable to the screen against the wall.
“What are we seeing here?” May asks.
“Well the man is angry, at the other man.” Fitz states the obvious. Skye fights another eye roll.
“The data is very corrupt.” Simmons makes excuses.
“Yeah, like Cold War Russia corrupt.” Fitz jokes. “I can’t sync the time code without-”
“What if you had the audio?” Skye interrupts remembering her part here. “I was running surveillance on the lab, I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file’s in my van. There’s too much background noise for me but you could probably-”
“You could clean that up, can’t you?” Simmons asks Fitz.
“Find a sync point and use cross-field validation-”
“But I can’t scrub for expression patterns to find when the vit-c is all-”
“Well, is there a chrominance subcarrier?”
“Yeah, attached to the back porch. Brilliant.”
FitzSimmons thank Skye for her offer, finishing each other’s sentences.
“Your van’s here. But you were right, we couldn’t decrypt the files.” Coulson tells Skye.
“The encryption’s coupled to the GPS. Get my van back to that alley and then I’m in business. But we should hurry.”
“Why?” Coulson asked.
“When I met with Mike, I originally told him I could help him with a new identity if he needed and warned him against you guys. You know scary men in suits and all, covering up information and events like this. And since he’s all over the news he’ll probably be headed for me so I can help him get out of town undetected, most likely through Union Station. I don’t know if your agents can handle a paranoid super-powered person.” Skye told them and AC nodded to her.
“We’ll be fine. Agent May will escort you. And on your way out, wake up Ward. And Skye, could you pull up all the information you can get on this woman in the hospital? I want to know everything we can about her.” Skye nods.
May and Skye got back to alley in her van easily and May stood outside, the side door open so she could watch the younger girl and keep an eye on the alley as Skye worked. She called up the BUS, speaking to AC and FitzSimmons so she could let them know when she was done.
“Audio file should be coming through, it’s not compressed so it might take a minute.” Skye told them.
Fitz confirmed it was coming through and then awkwardly tried to make conversation, accidentally making innuendos. He hung up on her embarrassed, as he set up a virtual playback of the security camera and linked over the audio Skye was sending through.
All the while, Simmons was studying the strange metal they’d found at the explosion site, while Coulson questioned her.
“So the alien metal wasn’t the explosive?”
“Well I assumed from the break pattern and dispersion that it was but, it’s just dripping with gamma radiation and - now it’s actually dripping!” She squeals excitedly while Coulson watches anxiously.
“So what did that get us?” Ward stomps through the lab angrily.
“Skye’s sending us the rest of her decrypted files on Centipede.” Fitz tells Coulson. “But we have her audio, I’ve loaded it up.”
"Nice work!" Coulson says pointedly and Ward tries not to glare at his C.O.
Fitz continues to move around, explaining what he is doing. “Now using motion estimation, bayesian inference, a beam splitter and a little diffraction theory, our mystery man . . . appears.” Fitz actually managed to emit a holographic display of the security camera from the lab.
Ward steps forward assuming the explosives are in the boxes and cases shown in the holograph.
“Please calm down. Just let me check your vitals.” The man in the lab coat from the 3D lab is saying. The second man dressed casually in the virtual video demands to see the doctor for another dose of the centipede drug. He’s very angry and picks up a chair to throw down as he loses control of his temper. Fitz rewinds the video a bit as Coulson and Ward spot the Centipede device on his arm. Simmons walks up explaining what it looks like to her.
“It’s an intravenous filter for his blood. This goo - sir, very similar to the serum Dr. Erskine developed in the 40s for the . . .”
“Super soldiers.” Coulson finishes for her. “Skye was right.”
“I’m reading alien metal, gamma radiation, the serum - every known source of superpower thrown into a blender.” Simmons continues explaining.
“We need to see the origin of the blast.” Coulson tells Fitz. “Run it back from the last point recorded.”
Meanwhile, back in her van, Skye finishes downloading everything she can on the doctor Mike saved from the lab onto a flash drive. "Alright, that should do it." Skye says then turns. She slyly grabs a tiny microchip from underneath a pad of paper and slips it into her bra when May isn't looking.
"We need to get out of here." Skye tells the older woman.
“Let’s head back.” May agrees. Skye freezes listening to the sounds outside.
“May, look out!”
Mike Peterson jumps down from the fire escape and grapples with May before finally getting a grip and throwing her into the alley wall, knocking her unconscious.
“Mike, what are you doing?” Skye says worriedly.
“Saving you, from the scary men in dark suits. And you’re gonna help save us.” He answers.
Skye stares at him knowing the answer to the question she's going to ask anyways. “Us?”
Mike pulls his son, Ace out from hiding and into the van while Skye moves out of the way.
“Don’t cry. Okay? Stay strong for me Ace. What are we?”
“We’re a team.” The kid answers nervously.
“That’s right.” Mike turns to Skye and frowns. “Did you get a haircut? And change clothes?”
“Uh, yeah.” Skye tells him. “Wanted a new look.”
Back on the BUS, Fitz rewinds the camera in slow motion til everyone can see the explosion rolling back until it’s origin is obvious. The angry man in the recording, there's an almost orange glow beneath his skin as it seems to pulse and then burst.
“Extremis.” Coulson says. “It’s new. Completely unstable.”
“Poor man, didn’t bring an explosive. And Mike has the same stuff in his system.” Simmons says sadly.
“And judging by his strength level, a lot more.” Ward concludes.
“So any minute now-” Fitz begins.
“He’ll take out anyone within a two-block radius.”
“Well,” Coulson walks up to them and turns to Ward, remembering their first meeting earlier and his special skill-set at defusing bombs. “You wanted a bomb.”
Ward begins assembling a sniper rifle in the command center when Simmons walks up to the older two agents.
“Sir? He didn’t explode because he was angry." She pauses, trying to figure out how to explain. "The two are connected. It’s kind of a chemical surge, but calming him down will buy him a minute at most. He will detonate within the next few hours.”
“Solution?” Coulson asks.
“Isolate him, get him away from people?” Simmons suggests.
“Or?”
“Put a bullet in his brain.” Fitz states bluntly.
“If he’s dead, this irradiated metabolic process will stop.” Coulson glances back at Ward assembling his gun and sighs.
“We need to come up with a third option. One that doesn’t involve Mike’s son losing a father.” He steps back into the command center.
“We have a couple of hours at most. There’s no way that we could possibly-”
Coulson spins back around to the scientists with a determined look on his face. “Don’t ever tell me there’s not a way! It’s on you! Get it done!” He turns away and FitzSimmons hurry back to their lab. Coulson answers his phone. “May?”
“He took Skye.” She tells him leaning against the alley wall.
“You alright?”
“We’ll deal with that later - at length." She's barely containing her anger right now. "Right now, we need to figure out where they went.”
“She mentioned the train station.” Coulson tells her.
At LA Union Station, Skye’s van is parked right outside and she’s typing on her keyboard, making sure to erase any trace of Mike Peterson or his son.
“How long is this gonna take?” He asks her.
“This is top speed, trust me. It’s not like I’m deleting a Facebook page. I’m bypassing the License Bureau’s A.E.U.-protected data stream, so chill.”
“How do I know you can really do this?” Mike asks paranoid.
“I’ve done it before.” She answers easily. “If you give me a few more minutes I can even make you guys new identities, ones no one will ever find.” She offers.
“No, no. Not yet. We’ll do it when we get there.” Mike says. Skye sighs as she finishes deleting his and his son’s existence from the world wide web.
Meanwhile, FitzSimmons are in their lab hurriedly trying to come up with a paralyzing agent to neutralize Mike without killing him and stabilizing the Extremis in his blood. Fitz’s computer starts beeping and he looks up baffled.
“Oh no, what is this nonsense? Why are you making nonsense?” Simmons asks her partner as she looks over his shoulder.
“This isn’t me! It’s noise, someone’s hacking our secure channel!” He explains.
“It’s longitude and latitude.” Coulson says as he rushes through the lab. “Mike took Skye. She’s telling us where.”
Skye is still working on her computer while Mike talks to his son. He's anxious and sweating but his focus on his boy allows him to tell Ace that instead of taking an airplane they'll take a train, bring the nice lady with them to help them start up a new life - like it's an adventure.
Coulson and Ward beat May to the train station and see Skye’s van parked outside. They get out with their guns drawn but Coulson has a loudspeaker too.
“Look at this place.” Ward tells the senior agent glancing around at the people around them. “You’re gonna risk thousands of lives over some nobody?”
“Nobody’s nobody, Ward.” Coulson says almost scolding him. “FitzSimmons will come through.” Coulson raises the loudspeaker and turns it on. “Mr. Peterson, good morning. We’re not a threat. We’re here to help. But you’re in danger and we need to take you in.”
“What did you do?” Mike yells at Skye. He begins to panic, his adrenaline and anxiety spiking as he tries to figure out what to do. He puts his hands out, ready to smash the door off it's hinges and knock out whoever's standing behind it.
Skye spins at the last second just as Mike raises his foot to kick out the door. She pours what little energy she has left for her abilities into her hands to manipulate the vibrations so that the door literally falls away instead of flying across the pavement. The cops outside jump back out of the way and Mike grabs his son and Skye and run into the train station.
Skye thinks quickly, trying to remember how she handled this situation last time and sees a group of tough-looking guys crossing their path. She kicks one guy in the crotch, hard.
“You’re right.” She turns glances at Mike and then back to the guys. “He is a little bitch!” She sneers.
The group of men go to attack Mike and he lets go of Skye to defend himself. She and Ace both rush off in different directions.
Coulson finds Ace and motions a policeman over to collect him. "Let's get him out of here." He tells the cop.
"Help my Daddy." Ace says worriedly and Coulson nods to him.
"I promise."
Ward comes up from behind Mike, kicking him in the back of the legs - much like Skye did to him - and Mike is forced to his knees. Ward wraps his arms around Mike’s neck, trying squeeze his throat so he’ll fall unconscious without any air.
“Look, the stuff inside you is unstable. It’ll kill you and everyone in here.” Ward tries to reason with him.
“Who’s gonna miss us?” Mike manages to stand and slam Ward into the Metro Rail schedule behind them, breaking it and then flips him onto his back on the ground, knocking the breath from Ward.
Mike spins seeing Skye running and goes after her. She rushes for the exit before remembering too late that it doesn’t open. She turns right into Mike just as someone dressed like a cop shoots a shotgun at them, missing. Mike kicks open the door, dragging Skye with him in his tight grip.
May finally gets there and Coulson alerts her where he and Ward are.
“We’re at the north entrance, May.” Coulson helps Ward up as they both stare at the corner of the station where the noise of the shotgun came from.
“You told them to hold fire." Ward says.
“I don’t think that’s us. We may have a third party here.” Coulson says through the coms. "He’s gonna head down to the tracks. You should stay high, I’ll go low.” Coulson tells Ward. “Only take the shot if you have to, Ward.” The younger agent walks away. “Ward!”
“If I have to.” He repeats glancing back at Coulson.
Mike and Skye take the stairs outside still under construction into the atrium of the station, looking down on everyone else.
“Mike you gotta stop! These people can help you!” Skye struggles with him.
“The men in suits? They’re your buddies now?” He sneers at her.
“No!” She argues. “Mike, look at me. Look at me!” She shakes his arm and he turns towards her. “Your son is outside, safe, but you are not.” His grip tightens.
“You said you were gonna help me!”
“Mike, you watched me erase you from every system on this planet! I did exactly what you told me to, but you were scaring me!”
“Scaring you? I was scaring you?”
“Yes! You threatened to kidnap me, just like those suits did before you got there. But these guys are different. They don’t want to erase you, they don’t want to experiment on you - they just want to help.”
“They took my son! Help my find my son!” He shouts just as May arrives at the top of the stairs inside the atrium, but before she can do anything Skye is screaming at him.
“Not unless you calm down!” He and May both look at her in surprise. Skye grabs his other arm, pushing up his sleeve and points at the device on his arm. “This drug is enhancing you, Mike. It makes you strong, makes you feel in control. But right now you’re not, and your brain can’t handle that feeling. It’s making you dizzy, clouding your judgement. And because your brain can’t compute, it’s sending the wrong messages to the rest of your body. Your adrenaline is racing, your emotions are heightened and you can’t reign in your anger or fear or anxiety! There are cops and guys in suits here and you see them as a threat, but right now they’re not the ones hurting other people and fighting. You are! I told you I thought you were a hero, and somewhere in there you still are. But you aren’t acting like it, you aren’t showing your son that you can be a hero! So, here.” Skye takes the arm she’s holding and puts his hand against her chest so that he can feel her heart beating. “Breathe with me, slow your heart rate down to mine, and calm down.”
Mike watches her worriedly for a moment but begins to do as she says, breathing deeply in sync with her and May stares at the two.
But they’re interrupted.
A tall stocky blonde man, dressed like a cop, comes up the steps from outside, spotting Mike and Skye through the glass and shoots his shotgun at them.
“Get down!” Mike yells and pushes Skye away from him, knocking her off her feet.
He faces the fake-cop and but is shot in the shoulder, the force knocking him over the ledge, falling three stories and crashing into an empty information booth. The fake-cop cocks his gun to shoot at Skye but May is already there.
With five strong moves he’s on the ground out cold. She meets Skye’s gaze still in her crouch and Skye can’t help smiling at her as she shakes her head, disappointed in herself. She can’t believe she forgot about the man with the gun as they’d been running from him just moments ago. Skye stands up and limps her way over to the ledge to look down on the scene unfolding in front of her.
Coulson walks up to Mike slowly, seeing the orange glow beneath Mike's skin pulse before it returns to normal. When he's only a few yards away, he sets down his gun - but Mike, having lost what little calm he’d regained with Skye, stares defiantly at the man in the suit.
“Think that means anything? Skye told me you guys are trying to help me, but I know you have men everywhere waiting to put me down." He can see Ward up above with his gun pointed right at him. "I know how this plays out.”
“I don’t.” Coulson tells him. “I know you got poison in your system. I know it’s burning you up. Mike, the last guy who wore that, exploded.” Coulson points to the Centipede device on his arm.
“I’m not like that other guy! It matters who I am - inside, if I’m a good person, if I’m strong.”
“I have a clear shot. Do you copy?” Ward mutters through his coms. Coulson swallows ignoring the report.
“I know you’re strong.” Coulson tells Mike. “Your boy knows it. He needs you to let us help.”
“You took him!" Mike looks at him with a pained expression. "You took my wife, my job, my house. You think this is killing me?” Mike shows him the glowing orange device on his arm as May and Skye finally make it to the ground level. “All over, there’s people being pushed down, being robbed. One of them tries to stand up-" He rips a pillar from the broken booth behind him, his energy and anger fueling him "you gotta make an example of them.”
“You bring this building down on us, will that help them?”
“That’s a lie!" Mike spins with the pillar knocking down the remnants of the booth in his frustration. "All you do is lie!" His anger pulses with the orange glow under his cheeks. "You said if we worked hard . . . if we did right . . . we’d have a place." Mike walks up to Coulson slowly. "You said it was enough to be a man. But there’s better than man." Mike says opening his arms in exasperation. "There’s gods. And the rest of us . . . what are we? They’re giants. We’re what they step on.” He says sadly.
“I know.” Coulson says solemnly, stepping closer to Mike. “I’ve seen giants - up close. And that privilege cost me . . . nearly everything. But the good ones . . . the real deal - they’re not heroes because of what they have that we don’t. It’s what they do with it. You’re right, Mike. It matters who you are.”
“I could, you know? Be a hero.” Mike says remembering Skye's words.
“I’m counting on it.” Coulson says reassuringly.
Skye braces herself as she remembers what comes next and a silenced gunshot can be heard in the immediate vicinity. Mike is knocked down with the force of it. May and Coulson both swing their gazes up, even as Simmons rushes forward, to see the orange glow in Mike's cheeks diminish, turning blue from the special bullet. Ward stands up with a modified rifle, Fitz standing behind him to see his own handiwork. Coulson steps forward as Simmons examines Mike’s previously glowing skin, checking his pupils and his pulse. She glances back at her team and smiles, while Skye lets out a breath and May gestures a stretcher and some paramedics to Mike. Coulson meets Skye's gaze with a grin, while Fitz gives Simmons a thumbs up. Coulson glances up with just a tiny nod at Ward who looks down at Coulson seeming happy and impressed with his leadership.
Coulson reports into SHIELD H.Q. about their case. "Subject is in stable condition. All clear at Union Station."
Skye goes with Coulson to take Ace to his Aunt and cousins wearing the same red dress she did the first time she did this with him.
“I told him his father was coming home.” She says to AC.
“He will. We have some experience with this.”
“You need to move Mike’s family somewhere else and keep it classified.” Coulson stops in his tracks at that and turns to her.
“I can’t believe you just uttered those words." He says almost teasingly. "And why would I do that?”
“Because if whoever is running this Centipede project realizes that Mike is alive and stable without the extremis in his system, they’ll track his family down and blackmail Mike into working for them. They’ll run tests, take his blood, experiment on him, make him hurt people, all while keeping his family prisoners.”
Coulson considers it for a long moment before finally nodding to her. “You might be right. They won’t like it, but we’ll explain it’s for their safety.”
“And have only people you trust move the Petersons and keep an eye on them.” Coulson’s stare deepened so she sighed and began to explain in a low tone. “Look, I trust you. But that doesn't mean I trust SHIELD. This project with the centipede serum-" Skye paused, shaking her head. "It's like multiple conspiracies all within each other. This feels bigger than your super spy organization and I don't have a lot of faith that a few agents can protect Mike's family compared to people you trust. Especially if they keep trying to make more super soldiers like Mike."
“Alright.” Coulson says after a minute. “I’ll call some people make sure that the Petersons are taken care of.”
“Good, cause I already made them new identities.” Skye admits. Coulson starts laughing.
“I knew you were gonna say something like that.” Skye grins, walking with him back to Lola.
“I can’t believe Mike almost blew. We almost died.”
“We have some experience with that, too.”
“Don’t have it all mapped out.”
“True. We didn’t cut off the head of the centipede. Whoever sponsored that little experiment is still out there, among other things.”
“It’s a brave new world, and a really old car.” Skye jokes.
“Lola can keep up. What about you? Have you thought about the offer?”
“Hitching a ride on the crazy plane? I’m not exactly a team player.” Skye remembers what to say to him. Coulson grins at her back.
“We’re not exactly a team. But we’re in a position to do some good. You’d be a great help. You’d be front row center to the strangest show on Earth - which is, after all, what you wanted.”
“I was able to hack SHIELD from my van, and I might not have been a sweaty cosplay girl, but I’ve broken through Stark’s firewalls a time or two.”
Coulson looks at her skeptically. “Seriously?” She nods and he looks thoughtful.
“So you think you’re gonna show me something new?” Skye dares him and right on time, AC’s cell phone rings. He puts it on speaker.
“Go.”
“Sir, we’ve got an 0-8-4.” Ward’s voice echoes.
“Is that confirmed?” Coulson asks a little surprised.
“They want us to go in and confirm it.”
“What’s an 0-8-4?” Skye plays along as Coulson ends the call and starts the engine.
“You’ve got exactly ten minutes to decide if you really want to know.” Coulson tells her and Skye snorts.
“Unless this thing flies, there’s no way we can make it to the airfield in-” Coulson flips some switches and the car actually rises off the ground. “Ten minutes.” She finishes not having to hide her awe in getting to watch Lola fly.
Skye leans over to see that the tires have rotated horizontal to the ground, propelling it into the air with some sort of energy source.
“The tide is rising.” Coulson tells her and she grins at him.