Skye was bored. Coulson was still looking into her file, and Ward and Fitzsimmons were still mad at her for the thing with Miles. She itched to get online, but she knew that the team would trust her faster if she didn’t, so instead she read everything she could get her hands on. She jumped when May opened her door, compulsively shutting what she was doing.
“You need to come with me,” May said.
“Whatever it was… I didn’t do it,” Skye said.
“I know; come with me,” May said. Skye froze when she got off the plane and saw they were at the SHIELD base in New York. “Come on.”
Skye was silent, but she got into the SUV. She stayed silent as May drove, but her eyes went wide as they stopped in front of the FBI building. “Come on,” May said, putting up a SHIELD parking badge before practically dragging her inside and taking her up to the fourth floor. Skye did a double-take when she saw who was at the desk, but May wasn’t headed for it. She went up the stairs where a man in a cheap suit. Burke. Peter Burke, the FBI guy in charge of the White Collar division. It made sense, most of Skye’s hacks were publicly outing the fat cats who were embezzling from their customers or taking obscene end-of-year bonuses. She’d blow the whistle on them. While what she did was technically illegal, what the billionaires were doing was more illegal. Somehow she doubted the FBI would see it that way. Skye pursed her lips as she followed May into Burke’s office.
“Agent May?” Burke asked. “You said you have a source that can close some files for us?”
“This is Skye,” May said. “She’s going to cooperate fully and tell you everything she knows.”
Skye’s jaw dropped as she stared at May. “What? No way in hell!”
“Who is she?” Burke asked.
“I’m not squealing to the Suit,” Skye drawled, crossing her arms.
“What is it about the suit?” Burke asked, looking upwards as if some deity would know.
“Can I be honest about that?” Skye asked.
“No,” May chastised.
“You should,” Neal Caffrey said from behind them, May started, Skye didn’t. “Maybe he’ll actually listen to you.”
“It makes you identifiable. Why do you guys think bad guys can always make you? It’s because of the way you look. It’s predictable.”
“If I’m so predictable how come I have a 94% success rate for catching the bad guys,” Burke said proudly. “Doesn’t that make them predictable.”
“Back to the subject at hand,” May interrupted, looking annoyed. “Skye’s a hacker. She’s here to assist the FBI to close as many cases as she can in the next four hours. That’s how long a fuel up and flight checks will take.”
“No I won’t!” Skye objected. “I’m not a rat.”
“And what about your crimes?” May asked.
“I always signed my crimes,” Skye admitted openly. “And the statute of limitations is over on most of them. Almost all of them. I haven’t stolen anything in the last six years.”
“And before that?” May asked.
“Before that is none of your business,” Neal snapped, putting his own body between Skye and May.
“Neal?” Burke asked.
“I was going to play it cool, but sure,” Skye said, slightly muffled as her stomach was in Neal’s chest where he held her protectively.
“You know him?” May asked.
“He got me out of a slightly sticky situation once,” Skye said, modulating her voice so she could still be heard clearly.
“Sticky?” Neal, who still had her buried in his chest, asked her. “She could have been killed thanks to SHIELD.”
“What?” Both Burke and May chimed in on that one.
“Neal, get off,” Skye said, shoving him away. “I may have gotten a little hurt one time during a placement in foster care… and Neal might have saved me and gotten the police involved for the the other kids, but really it was no big deal.”
“She nearly died. I had to nurse her back to health for six weeks because SHIELD had that protocol on her.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Skye said softly, blushing bright red, turning to Burke. “I’ll, um, tell you whatever you need to know, Suit, except about that.”
By the end of the day, May realized that she’d learned more than she ever meant to about the young hacker. Neither spoke about the outing ever again.
Neal wasn’t surprised when he was summoned back to Burke’s office. “So you know one of the most skilled hackers on Earth and you didn’t tell me?” Peter asked.
“It’s never been about that with us, Peter. Skye… I can’t explain it,” Neal said in a rush, rubbing the back of his head and feeling awkward.
“It’s a good look on you,” Peter said calmly.
“What?”
“Fatherhood.” Neal stared at Peter blankly. “Can I ask what happened?”
“You can ask,” Neal said solemnly. “But I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
-----
“Hardison, I think you have mail…” Eliot Spencer called from the hallway.
“‘Sup?” Alec Hardison asked, unloading his netbook bag from the latest con.
“The firm got a letter… all it says is ‘1982. Skyenet.’ But Terminator didn’t come out until 1984. God, why do I know that?” Hardison rushed in before he even finished his sentence. And grabbed the post it from Eliot like it was made of gold.
“S-K-Y-E-N-E-T is a friend of mine… well, she’s my foster sister. I taught her how to hack, actually, when she was a kid. She picked it up pretty fast, and when she was sent back to the group home we were able to keep in contact for a while, but she ghosted six years back. Skynet, without an ‘e,’ is from Terminator .”
“Ghosted, like I can ghost?” Parker asked.
“No, like, she ghosted. She deleted herself from every network anywhere and disappeared,” Hardison explained. “She never had any idea of who her parents were, no matter how hard she looked. It was really kinda sad… looks like she still hasn’t found them and she got caught sticking her nose someplace it didn’t belong. Probably on purpose.” He started checking his files over the internet on a nearby computer. “Yup… apparently the only thing she managed to find was an old SHIELD file. Guess she got herself caught so she could find them.”
“Does she need help?” Eliot asked. He understood the whole protectiveness streak Hardison felt towards the siblings he kept in touch with.
“Naw, she can handle herself, don’t worry,” Hardison said. “If she needs help, she knows how to reach me in an emergency.”