Ragtag (Part 1)
Skye’s POV
Reporter: Eyewitness claim the assailant smashed through several walls before killing Columbia's most notorious drug lord, Alejandro Castillo a.k.a. El Dogo. Speculation continues as to whether this superhuman assassination was carried out by a man, monster or machine,” a reporter on the hotel tv was saying as Fitz, Jemma, and I sat watching. I was also messing around on my laptop.
“The correct answer is "D" all of the above,” Fitz commented as he turned the tv off and looked at us. “What the hell is Deathlok doing in Bogota?”
“And why would he kill a drug lord with known ties to Hydra?” Simmons asked.
“Well, if they really are in Columbia, then Garrett and our hijacked plane might not be in American airspace. I have to expand our search,” I said with a sigh as I tapped away on my laptop.
There was a sudden knock on the door dividing our room from the one next door and Coulson was standing there.
“Guys...You want to come in here for a minute?” We all go up and walked into his room to see May standing in front of a tripod with a large pad of paper balanced on it, she was making some sort of chart or map. Inside each circle are different names: Ward & Garrett; Clairvoyant; Hydra; Quinn; Deathlok; The Bus; GH-325; Skye's Hard Drive; Centipede serum.
“This is just about everything we've been dealing with. And this...” Coulson pointed to the big circle in the middle which was still blank. “Connects them all.” He scribbled something inside the circle then backed away showing us: Cybertek. While he spoke he started connecting lines from Cybertek to each entity. “Cybertek built Deathlok, shipped items to Quinn, who was working for The Clairvoyant, who turned out to be Garrett, who planted Ward on our bus, because he wanted to know why I didn't stay dead. “Should've drawn another chart for this part.”
“No, I get it. Garrett's been developing centipede serum all this time,” Fitz spoke up.
“And he wants GH-325 as its final ingredient, a way to stabilize and regenerate his centipede soldiers,” Simmons added.
“And it's why Ward came back for the hard drive. It had all of your research about Coulson and Skye. It's all on there,” May said.
“But that's not the only thing on there. Skye left them a little surprise,” Coulson looked over at me.
“A Trojan horse. It's been slowly mapping every system they've uploaded it to,” I informed everyone.
“Well, that's brilliant!” Fitz exclaimed.
“A Trojan horse?” Jemma hit Fitz’s leg excitedly.
“You can wake it up and take over their systems!” Fitz said.
“Well done, Skye!” Jemma told me.
“Yeah, thanks.” I gave them a fake smile that dropped. “Except it doesn't work that way because I didn't have enough time to build it, so we need to plug this into one of their computers to activate it,” I said pulling out a flash drive from my back pocket and showing it to them. “Spoiler alert, we can't seem to find one.”
“I think we have,” May commented as I handed the flash drive to Coulson while she continued to speak. “Garrett and Cybertek have been working together for years. If it's on Garrett's system...”
“It's on Cybertek's,” I finished for her.
“Which is why we're gonna go into one of their offices,” May told us.
“We have no authority to do this,” Coulson said as he handed me back my flash drive. “We're no longer Shield agents, we're...”
“We're vigilantes,” Fitz offered.
“I was gonna say "doing this because it's the right thing to do," but...yeah. So if you're with me I'm gonna finish what I started. I'll be damned if I'm gonna let Garrett and Ward get away with murder. And I want my plane back.”
*****
“We're on with the R&D department up at Cybertek's Palo Alto offices,” Coulson told Fitz and I as he walked over to where we were sitting by the pool.
“It'll be okay, Fitz. No matter how deep they dig, they'll only find the new identities I've created,” I comforted him as he groaned.
“It's not that. It's the idea of giving them access to all of our designs.”
“We're not actually giving them anything. We just need to get inside so we can plug Skye's flash drive into one of their computers. You don't have to go,” Coulson said.
“It's not that, either. It's Ward. What if Garrett put an exploding eye into him, to control him? Maybe that's why he betrayed us,” Fitz suggested. I frowned.
“I'm pretty sure there's a much simpler reason. He's evil,” I said.
“Well I don't believe people are born evil,” Fitz said glaring at me.
We heard a squeaky gate and saw Trip walk into the pool area.
“Hey. Sorry it took so long. My mom's real sentimental about granddad's Howling Commando stuff,” He lifted up the suitcase and gave us a smile. We walked back inside and he set the case down on the bed.
“Trip was generous enough to offer up some of his grandad's spy tech to help us out, so we should systematically take a full inventory of every – Oh my, God. Is that a handheld hypno-beam?” Coulson reached into the case and took out a device that looked like a metal hairdryer. I grinned though as I watched him geek out. I completely understood his fascination with history I just hadn’t gotten a chance to really study it much what with never having been to school and all the events that had happened since I had escaped Hydra, but once things calmed down I intended to fix that.
“One of the original betas,” Trip confirmed. “See how it has the switch on the bottom?”
“The production models moved it to the side. This is amazing!” Coulson exclaimed and I could see May smiling at his excitement as well. I had finally realized the other day that the two of them were soulmates which I thought was incredibly sweet but it was clear neither of them were prepared to do much about it at the moment which I thought was a shame.
“Almost as cool as...” Coulson started to say as Trip proceeded to say the same thing.
“Transistorized blast gun.”
They both looked at each other with a smile and chuckled.
“Ah, ha ha. Okay. The two of you can get a room later, but we have a plane to catch!” I reminded them.
Fitz was holding what looked like an old school noise maker. He began to spin it but Coulson saw him and quickly put his hands over Fitz's stopping him.
“No,” he said and I chuckled.
“Where did they buy this stuff, from the back of a comic book?” I asked as I picked up one of the items.
“Come on, baby girl, that's not really a joy buzzer. That's a –“
Before he could tell me I had pressed the button on the device and there was an electrical crackle and the lightbulbs blew out in the room.
“E.M.P,” Trip finished as everyone sighed at me. “Knocks power out in about a 10 foot radius.”
“Yeah, a lot of vintage S.H.I.E.L.D. spy craft was designed to look innocent in case a spy was caught. Like um...” Fitz looked into the suitcase and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Okay, like these smokes,” he said pulling one out, twisting it and pretending to smoke while a laser beam shot out of the end.
“Thanks, Trip. This is a huge help. Gives us a fighting chance against these bad guys,” Coulson said but stopped talking as the sound of a fire filled the room followed closely by the smoke alarm. Fitz had the laser cigarette pointed over his shoulder toward the wall behind him and had set the curtains on fire.
“Oh, Fitz,” Jemma sighed as he turned off the laser.
“Watch out, Hydra. Here we come,” May said with a roll of her eyes.
*****
“Score one for the Howling Commandos!” I commented as May activated her lapel pin at the start of her and Coulson’s conversation with Cybertek. I had noticed before we left that it was in the shape of Steve’s shield and had to repress the urge to flinch as I recalled that same shield knocking me across Avenger Tower. “Your grandpa's pin should help me locate Cybertek's mainframe,” I told Trip.
“I didn't know they had Wi-Fi back in the day,” he said.
“They didn't. That's the beauty of the pin. It uses UHF to search for data. Nobody's even scanning those frequencies for potential leaks.”I laughed but frowned as my laptop needed and a message flashed across the screen: Unable to detect data signatures. “That's weird. I'm not finding any digital data about anything, let alone a source for it. How is that possible?”
“Maybe it's protected? Or...insulated somewhere inside?” Trip suggested.
“Guys, just keep them busy a minute longer,” I said into my radio. “Here we go,” I said a few minutes later as I managed to pull up the schematics of the building. “Building permits Cybertek's filed in the city. There's something funky about the fourth floor. Only one way in or out. Extra reinforced security door.”
“That's got to be it, right?” Trip said.
“Coulson, May, can you get to the fourth floor?” I asked into the radio.
“Skye, I think I know why you couldn't find the mainframe,” Coulson said several minutes later once he and May had made it to the fourth floor. “There isn't one.”
“What do you mean there isn't one?” I asked.
“All their files are hard copies,” he told me.
“Skye, Trip, get ready for a large file transfer!” Coulson called out a while later.
“How large?” I said.
A window on the fourth floor crashed and out came a filing cabinet. It crashed to the ground not very far away from the front of the truck and I stared at it with shock. Trip and I looked up and saw Coulson and May standing in the open window. The back door of the truck opensed as Fitz-Simmons and Trip get out of the truck while I scooted over and got behind the wheel. Fitz-Simmons hurried to the cabinet while Trip went to the back of the truck and opened the suitcase with his grandfather's gadgets. He pulled out a rifle and tapped the side of the truck.
“Back it up!” He told me.
The tires squealed while Skye while I did so. Trip aimed the rifle at the window, and fired some sort of grappling hook that provided a getaway for Coulson and May. Fitz-Simmons hefted the cabinet into the back of the truck while Trip tied off his end of the rope around the front grill of the truck. I watched as Coulson removed his belt and May found a u-shaped piece of metal to use as they slid down the rope.
*****
“Garrett started Project Deathlok way back in 1990. Look at this. He was patient zero!” Coulson said as he flipped through one of the files as we sat around a table by the pool back at the motel.
“We've been looking at all this backwards!” I said throwing down the file I was looking at and rubbing a hand across my forehead. “Garrett doesn't just want GH-325 for his Centipede soldiers. He wants it for himself. So he can become a real, live boy again. And if he happens to create an army of programmed super soldiers for Hydra along the way, triple bonus points.”
“How do we know Garrett didn't do that to Ward, too? Maybe he's been programmed,” Fitz suggested. I frowned again. It was sweet that he kept trying to give Ward the benefit of the doubt but he needed to see the reality soon.
“Fitz, when are you gonna stop clinging to the idea that Ward's the victim and not the perpetrator?” Jemma said gently.
“When I see something that tells me I shouldn't with my own two eyes. We don't know all the facts!” Fitz exclaimed.
I gave him an 'are you kidding me' look and leaned in on the table closer to Fitz.
“You want a fact, Fitz? Ward murders people. I should have let Mike finish him when I had the chance!” I stood up and turned away, frustrated with myself. “I'm stupid and...weak.”
“You weren't weak. You had compassion, that's harder,” Coulson said. “We'll find him.”
“Pizza delivery for Pablo Jimenez?” A man called out.
Coulson kept looking through a file for a moment then looked up realizing.
“That's me.” He turned, got up and greeted the pizza guy while I stormed off.