Chapter Text
"Wait!" Jemma grabbed Blake's arm just as he was about to kick in the door, his paintball gun brandished in his hand. "Look," she hissed, pointing to the keypad on the side of the door. "You can't just kick in a reinforced steel door that's connected to an electronic security system. Honestly." She turned to Fitz, ready to ask him to work on the door, but Griffin was already pulling a device from one pocket and had a screwdriver in her other hand to access the underside of the panel.
When Griffin nodded her head a few moments later, it was Fitz who pulled out an extendable mirror from one of his pockets, crouching low and positioning it at the bottom of the door while Blake pushed it open. He flicked the mirror side to side while Blake edged closer and closer to the doorway and Griffin and Simmons stayed back in what Academy instructors called the "safety zone." No shrapnel would find them, and no bullets would cut around corners.
"We're good," Fitz finally said to them, pulling the mirror back in. Griffin took it from him and pocketed it while he spoke. "No one in tha entrance. Lots o' old shelvin' though. Plenty o' places ta hide. Probably a good idea ta keep our guns out."
Jemma bit her lip. "One of us should probably scan for heat signatures as we go. That would be the best way to know if an offensive was coming our way."
"You should do tha'," Fitz agreed, already drawing his own weapon.
"Okay. Good. I'll take point," Blake said, stepping through the doorway and quickly scanning the room. Fitz followed, Simmons at his side, while Griffin brought up the rear, her own gun out.
The group spent what felt like hours peering around corners and attempting to get the lay of the land, not running into anyone.
"What kind of facility is this supposed to be?" Griffin hissed as they made their way in formation down a narrow corridor.
"Looks like it's designed to mimic an office building," Jemma remarked, scanner out in front of her, but all it was picking up was the four of them.
"Why would there be a hostage in an office building?" Griffin asked her.
"Would you two be quiet?" Blake cut in. "We might not be picking up any heat signatures, but that doesn't mean there aren't people here."
"I'm not just scanning for heat," Jemma muttered under her breath. She rolled her eyes at Fitz and he smiled at her in response. When she looked down at the screen in her hands though, there were more blips. "Wait," she murmured, holding one hand out to catch Fitz's arm. Griffin halted behind them and Blake, realizing no one was following him, stopped a few steps ahead. He surveyed the area ahead of him. They were coming to a fork in the corridor.
"What is it, Simmons?" Fitz still held his weapon ahead of him, but he moved closer to her, bending his head to look at the readings.
"There are people down the left fork. I'd say there's a room about four feet down on the left side of that hall. There are at least five people in the room. I'm not sure what the readings will be on our hostage since he's, erm, plastic, but it's the only group of people we've seen so far." She looked up questioningly, but she didn't point her gaze at Blake who seemed to have placed himself in charge of their team, but instead, at Fitz. He nodded his head. "Our best bet -" she began to the others.
"-is to find out who's in there," Fitz finished for her. "Where's tha' mirror, Griffin?"
Griffin edged closer to them and pulled the mirror from her pocket and placed her weapon in her holster, all set to go around the corner herself and check it out.
"Wait," Blake snapped, holding up a hand to stop her. "Say all five are hostiles. You need coverage. I'm with you." He waved his hand at Fitz and Simmons. "You two stay about three feet back from us."
"Standard gunfire spread. Give them a separate target that they have to recalibrate their aim for. Got it." Jemma nodded her head, the fingers of one hand twitching at her side while those gripping the device in her hand tightened.
She didn't have to remind them that the people in the room were likely at least level six agents as most of the rest of the assessment staff had been and were therefore, very good shots. Three feet wasn't going to mean anything if the agents opened fire on them. The Communications and Ops agents were all fresh out of the Academy, Level Ones. Blake and Griffin might have been good, but they weren't going to be that good.
Griffin led the way, extending the mirror as she walked, Blake just a few inches off her flank, gun at the ready.
"You know what would be smart?" Jemma mumbled to Fitz, an idea forming in her mind, as she followed along with him, a respectable distance behind their teammates, of course.
"Wha's tha'?"
"Something that would allow us to see through a wall a bit better. It's entirely likely that the agents in the room are going to spot the mirror. If we had something we could put on the wall to see in, something portable, easy to carry, that we could…" Her voice trailed off, and though her eyes remained alert, her mind was a million miles away.
"Like tha ol' x-ray glasses?" Fitz asked, trying to keep her talking so he didn't remember that he was terrified of a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in a room likely armed with nothing more than paint guns.
"Yes. Well, no. We know those didn't work the way they were supposed to. But maybe something chemical, something that could react with backscatter technology? We would at least have a general outline of people and weapons."
"I'll add it ta tha list o' all tha other things we're workin' on," Fitz teased her.
"Good."
They halted their steps and their conversation as Griffin crouched a foot away from the door. There was a small window in the middle of the door, and Griffin made sure to stay out of sight as she pushed the small mirror to the bottom of the door, just where the sliver of light made its way through the jamb. She looked back at Blake and shook her head, mouthing, can't see. He gestured to the window with his chin, and she nodded, her mouth forming a small "oh" as she gave a slow exhalation, presumably to calm her nerves. Griffin raised her arm, angling the mirror and holding it just at the bottom edge of the window.
"Should 'ave brought small cameras an' receivers instead. More efficient," Fitz muttered in annoyance.
"More expensive for a training exercise," Jemma countered quietly.
Griffin eyed the mirror apprehensively and she pointed with her other hand, letting Blake know that the group appeared to be clustered at the far end of the room. As she attempted to move the mirror though, the edge tapped on the bottom of the window and her eyes widened in horror as she quickly retracted it, crabwalking back another foot and trying to draw her weapon at the same time.
For Jemma, it seemed everything was playing out in slow motion, but she somehow still didn't have the time to react appropriately. Her fingers barely grazed her weapon before Fitz was standing directly in front of her and Blake had placed himself in a ready fighting stance between the door and the rest of the team.
When the first agent came through the door seconds later, gun already drawn and aimed in their direction, Blake pulled the trigger on his weapon on autopilot, hitting the other agent squarely in the neck with a splat of blue paint. The agent nodded and immediately took a step back, sitting on the ground to indicate that Blake was successful in his kill shot.
The door, though it hadn't been the team's intention, acted as a bottleneck, and Blake took out the next three people much the same way. The fifth person never came through the door though, so it was Blake who moved forward, Griffin back on her feet and behind him. Blake crouched down low on the side of the door, his arm going out and firing blindly into the room. Griffin did the same above him.
"Successful hit," came a voice from the room.
Jemma breathed a sigh of relief and she and Fitz moved forward to catch up with their teammates.
Blake led them into the room, with Griffin taking up the rear again. It had become some sort of unspoken agreement to not trust the two scientists to be the leads with weapons. Jemma couldn't really blame them, though she happened to know that Fitz had excellent aim from all the time they had spent improving the way several of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s weapons worked.
The room they entered appeared to be a security office of sorts, though it was much larger than most they'd seen before. There was a bank of video monitors, apparently set up with live feeds of the building. Half of them were black though.
"I got this," Griffin said before anyone could even ask.
She sat at the console, fingers flying over the keyboard of the computer there, but none of the black screens came back to life. She furrowed her brow in concentration while Jemma began to search the rest of the room. Blake remained at the door on high alert and Fitz ventured further into the wide space, intent on trying to figure out who they were actually supposed to be up against.
Jemma flicked through papers on a desk, but all she found were message pads reminding someone named Larry to call his wife, a grocery list, lots of blank paper. Nothing that told them what they were even doing here.
"'t's a private security company," Fitz told the rest of them from the other side of the room. He held up a business card from his desk. "Owned by a Mr. Hammer."
"Hammer? But doesn't he provide some of the technology we use? Don't we have a contract with his company?" Jemma asked in confusion.
"Maybe he's looking for power, not just money," Blake responded. "A lot of people in the weapons and tech business want to be the most powerful man in the room, not just the guy with the most money to show for that big gun."
"Tha man makes a good point," Fitz agreed.
"So, what? He's kidnapped someone for leverage against us?" Griffin asked sarcastically as her fingers clicked and clacked.
"That doesn't make sense," Jemma agreed, "No one agent would be worth a four person extraction team that goes in completely blind. Not to S.H.I.E.L.D." She shook her head. "Has to be another reason."
-o-
In a trailer at the back of the building, May sat ramrod straight in her seat, earpiece in place, eyes on the monitor in front of her. She wasn't surprised that the group was speculating about why they were there. They were kids. They still didn't understand that with SHIELD, you didn't ask why. You just did as you were told. It was part of the deal. She saw her partner deduct a point from each of them out of the corner of their eye.
So far though, they were doing much better than even she had thought. The kids were good. Griffin was quick to follow the orders that made sense, but willing to speak up if she thought it was dangerous - good traits for a second in command. Blake was quick to take the lead, quick to assess the situation at hand. The two of them would actually fit well on the same team.
They weren't the ones she was interested in though.
-o-
"Okay, I can't get the cameras in these zones up, but I've got a look at the schematics." Griffin motioned for Fitz and Simmons to join her at the monitors and she brought up the file she'd found on one of the screens. "See this here - this whole block of rooms is self contained. All the same size, each have their own plumbing, electricity controlled from outside, automatic doors, no windows."
"Cells," Fitz and Blake said at the same time.
"That would be the most logical place for the hostage, wouldn't it?" Jemma asked.
"Can you bring that block up on the security feed?" Fitz said at the same time.
Griffin was already doing it and she pointed at one of the screens. "This camera is from the door on the only way into the cell block. There's no other exit."
Fitz's eyes flitted back and forth from the camera feed to the blueprints Griffin had pulled up. "Can I see tha hall outside o' tha'?"
Griffin did as he asked, and showed him the hall, where a trio of guards were standing there talking.
"They don't look like they're on high alert or anything, do they," Jemma mused.
"Can you go through tha other feeds, see where there're guards who actually look like they care abou' their jobs?"
Griffin started rapidly switching amongst the footage, pictures sliding fast on the monitors around her, and Jemma had no idea how she was managing to keep up with it all at once. She glanced at Fitz, but his eyes were still taking everything in as he looked between the blueprints and the pictures he was being shown. Jemma could practically see his brain working as his jaw slacked and his eyes focused, the edge of his tongue darting out to press against his upper lip before he pointed to one of the monitors.
"There. Tha's where he is."
"How do you know?" Griffin didn't hide the tone of surprise. She was impressed.
"Three guards on one door. Tha room is suppose' to be a private office." He pointed with his other hand to a spot on the blueprint. "Private office with private bathroom and a safe. Security cameras inside are turned off even though tha rest on tha floor're workin' perfectly."
"Sounds right to me," Blake chimed in from the door. "I'll need to see the blueprints."
"'s all right. I can get us there."
"You want to draw me a map?"
"You wanna waste tha time?" Fitz countered.
The two men stared at one another for a moment and Jemma's lips twitched in amusement when it was Blake that broke first.
"You sure you know the map by heart?"
"Memorization is one o' my many strong suits."
"It really is," Jemma agreed.
-o-
"Huh. They didn't take the bait of the cells."
"You sound surprised," May responded dryly, watching the group pass from one of their monitored checkpoints to the next, everyone except for Simmons with weapons out and ready. Simmons had her device in hand, scanning the facility as they went, making sure they weren't about to be ambushed.
"First team I've seen who hasn't gone directly to the cells on this assessment and then had to backtrack to figure out where they should be. They might get this done faster than anyone else. Maybe they aren't useless."
"You're not used to testing the SciOps kids, are you?"
He didn't respond, and May didn't look away from the screens in front of her, listening to the chatter from the kids as they discussed the route in hushed whispers.
-o-
"You sure we're going the right way?"
Jemma rolled her eyes at Blake asking for the third time, answering for Fitz as he peered around another corner, "He's sure."
"I think Blake's just worried that we haven't seen anyone again for a while. It's suspicious."
"Tha whole place is suspicious," Fitz murmured to himself.
They continued their path in silence, pausing to take corners carefully, staggering the distance between them when Fitz gestured for them to do so, and switching positions when Blake gave them a signal. It was Jemma's gasp that alerted them that something was wrong, just as they reached the open space of the foyer before the office they wanted.
Fitz instantly froze, not turning his head to look at her.
"Jem?"
"Heat signatures," she whispered urgently. "They're popping up everywhere, Fitz. Everywhere!"
Griffin moved to Jemma's back and peered at the screen in her hand before she raised her weapon above her.
"Vents!"
The four of them flattened themselves against the walls and behind columns as splatterings of red paint appeared on the floor where they had just been standing, and Blake and Griffin let loose with their fire, aiming into the slats of the air vents along the hallway.
There was a chorus of "successful hit" from above them, but Blake looked confused, as if he wasn't sure if he should keep shooting. He gave a panicked look to the others and Griffin shrugged her shoulders in response. She wasn't sure if they had hit them all either.
Jemma feverishly counted the blips on the screen that signaled the agents above their heads, ignoring the ones that were rapidly approaching them from the foyer.
"Jemma!" Fitz hissed from the other side of the hall, his gun aimed toward the foyer. "How-"
"Seven above us," she answered before her could finish, "six coming from in front of us."
Fitz briefly closed his eyes and said, "you hit everyone in tha vents."
Griffin took him at his word and edged her way along the wall, closer to the firefight that was approaching them.
"You're sure?" Blake asked before he was willing to move, still crouched at Fitz's side.
"Absolutely. Seven different voices."
"Okay. Nice, man."
-o-
"Hmph."
"You thought we'd lose one of them there, didn't you?" May quirked an eyebrow making a note about Fitz's observation skills and Simmons' quick analysis of the numbers.
"Fast reaction times. I'll give them that."
-o-
Fft. Fft. FFFffftt.
She had expected it to sound like actual bullets. But the more she was hearing the red paintballs fly through the air and hit the walls and floor, it sounded like darts. Jemma wondered for a moment why S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't use some sort of laser tag system instead; there wouldn't be room to argue whether they'd got hit or whether they'd transferred paint on them another way, and the laser-receiving points on combat wear could double as a gauge of their accuracy.
As someone who now had red paint all over her shoes, it was a thought that persisted at the back of her mind, even as she ducked down with Fitz behind a large potted fern to avoid getting hit. The hand holding her gun trembled, but she edged her arm around the side of the pot and fired blindly toward the enemy.
She was fairly certain she hadn't hit anyone, but it gave Fitz a chance to reload and Griffin a chance to take shelter behind the column next to them. The white walls around them were turning a very ugly shade of crimson, and it was starting to worry her. She was remembering not being able to take down her opponents in hand to hand combat, failing to retrieve her objectives during espionage training, and now, she was sitting on the floor in the middle of a firefight and her best friend was doing most of the work.
Jemma Simmons doesn't fail, she reminded herself. Forget about the earlier assessments.
She took a breath, forced her hand steady, and fired again, leaving her monitoring device on the floor between them. Each time one of them stopped shooting, Blake took up the slack for the three of them. She didn't know how he managed to reload so quickly, or how he managed to move from one column to the next so fast, but soon he was next to them and there were no more red paint splatters coming their way.
It was Griffin who stood and cautiously moved beyond her column though to give the all clear.
-o-
"They need better weapons training. Their aim is crap. They've probably used most of their ammo. Mark that."
-o-
Griffin hooked up a cable and a small computerized device to the keypad to the office, watching numbers spin across the screen until the door unlocked with a beep and a soft click.
"Signs of life?" Blake asked Jemma.
She shook her head. "No. But - the air vents before? I think maybe there's something in them that shields the heat signatures. I might not be able to pick things up until they're right on top of us if they've got people hiding in the vents."
"Why would they even have people in the vents?" Griffin wondered. "How would they have known where we were?"
"Maybe someone in the security office sent them some kind of signal." Blake was sliding the door open and poking the end of his gun through the crack. No shots were fired, no alarms sounded, so he pushed the door open the rest of the way and crept inside.
Their "hostage" was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, a bag of tools and what were probably supposed to be torture devices next to him.
"So…" Griffin looked around the room apprehensively. "They were torturing him for information?"
"Looks that way," Jemma agreed, walking right up to the plastic pieces held together with screws that resembled a human being. There were knicks and scratches in the material of his arms and chest, and she thought someone might have created them on purpose as a way to show where their pretend colleague may have been tortured. "If this were a real agent, we'd have to take time to assess him. Bind his wounds, things like that."
"We don't have time," Blake argued, moving next to her and looking at the same markings she was. "If these are supposed to mimic marks from torture, these would all be shallow - quick and sharp slices to inflict pain and make a point, but not serious enough to do any real physical damage." He worked knots as he spoke, untying the dummy from the seat and hoisting it over one shoulder.
"You gonna be able to shoot like that," Griffin checked.
"I'll make do," he said, grunting under the weight of the mannequin and moving back toward Fitz and the door. "Which way to the back entrance?"
"This way," Fitz led them out.
-o-
"Not just the SciOps kids who're smart now, huh?"
May rolled her eyes.
-o-
The group spent nearly twenty minutes cautiously making their way to the ground floor of the building. There was a moment when Blake was breathing heavy and sliding along on paint splatters on the floor and Griffin suggested maybe they should take an elevator down to save time that had everyone looking at her like she was insane.
"Right." Griffin nodded her head before rolling her eyes. "Stupid. Sorry. Elevator in is one thing. Elevator to get out when they know we're here is asking to get cornered and shot at."
Fitz grumbled under his breath as they all slipped and slid through the wet paint about how much of an inconvenience it was.
"Honestly," he said out of the corner of his mouth, "why don' they jus' shoot sedatives? I' would be easier. No mess."
"Yes," Jemma answered sarcastically. "That's just what I want, to be sedated and left in a building with who knows what kind of side effects, falling back and cracking my head open on this floor."
Fitz nodded as he realized she was right, but it sparked something in the back of his mind. "Those dendrotoxins you've been workin' with. You think you could make a safer tranquilizer, maybe somethin' immediate, with them?"
"I'll add it to the list," Jemma grinned, but the smile dropped when she moved to adjust the mannequin on Blake's shoulders as he stumbled.
Instead of their usual formation, Griffin took up the rear while Fitz took point, and Jemma attempted to help Blake navigate stairwells and sharp corners as best she could while monitoring for any incoming threats.
It wasn't until they reached the bottom floor and the very back of the building, just where they needed to be, that they ran into a whole new set of problems.
Blake removed the mannequin from his shoulders and plopped it unceremoniously down on the floor. Fitz and Simmons had frozen ahead of him, and he wanted to see what the hold up was.
Wordlessly, she pointed to the screen in her hands. It was a sea of dots, indicating the room in front of them was full of the enemy. And with the huge open space of what was essentially the shipping and receiving room of a warehouse, there was no telling what kind of coverage, if any, they would have.
Blake motioned for Griffin to join them, gesturing for the mirror that she had kept in her pocket. She handed it over, and he crept along the wall with it out in front of him, but whatever he saw in the mirror had him shaking his head and soundlessly jogging back to the rest of the group.
"How many?" Fitz whispered.
"I don't know. A lot." Blake handed the mirror back to Griffin and rubbed his face with his other hand. "And I don't know how we'll even get out once we get through them."
"What do you mean? Why not?" Jemma crossed her arms in front of her, the console dangling from the fingers of one hand.
"The blast doors're down, then?" Fitz sighed when Blake nodded and braced his hands on the wall, thinking.
"Blast doors?" Griffin echoed. "But, this is designed to be an office building. It's a warehouse mocked up to be an office building. What the hell would there be blast doors for?"
"It's the office building for a weapons developer," Jemma whispered. "The large open space of a receiving bay could easily be converted to a testing facility. Blast doors would be lowered to prevent the spread of any damage resulting from explosives tests." She paused, her face white. "They can't actually be using explosives though, can they? It's an assessment. A mock mission. They can't actually - "
" - use anythin' tha' could kill us, no," Fitz agreed. "But there're plenty o' other things they could use tha' are loud enough they'd wan' ta make sure i' wasn't heard outside."
"Flashbombs, noisemakers, things like that to disorient us and give them the upper hand," Blake added thoughtfully.
"Give them the upper hand," Griffin muttered, pacing now, "because numbers don't do that for them."
"No, they don'." Fitz pushed himself away from the wall. "I have an idea."
-o-
"This should be good."
May leaned forward, ignoring him and trying to focus on the plan Fitz was outlining. She nodded as he spoke to the others. It could work.
-o-
"I don't like this plan," Jemma murmured for the fourth time as Fitz went over an alternate route to get into the testing room with Blake.
"Yeah, you said that already," Griffin reminded her.
"Fitz," Jemma tried again, one hand self consciously drifting to the top of her vest, "we need to take a different approach."
"Guy's got a good plan," Blake answered her before Fitz could. "We don't have the time to come up with something else."
"I just - I don't think we should split up." Jemma drew in a sharp breath when she heard a noise coming from down the hall.
"We don't really have any other options," Blake said as Fitz hoisted the mannequin over his shoulder and began shuffling down one end of the hall with Griffin. Fitz nodded at Jemma, but didn't say anything, as Blake ushered her in the opposite direction, gun drawn. When the lone agent came down the corridor, a quick shot to the middle of his chest, and the agent held his hands up silently in surrender, taking a seat in the middle of the floor to show the team he was down for the count.
"Be careful," Jemma whispered across the space of the corridor as Griffin and Fitz made their way to one of the rooms at the end that Fitz was so sure was a lab.
"He'll be fine," Blake said, pointing to Jemma's side, reminding her to draw her weapon. "We've got comms, we'll hear if he needs anything," he added for good measure.
Jemma's eyes widened. "I'm worried about Griffin as well," she snapped. "We lose one person and it lowers our marks significantly."
"Whatever you say." Blake smirked.
-o-
"What else do I need?" Griffin asked as she stuffed a few more bottles into the box in front of her. She didn't say how bad this was that neither of them were going to have free hands when they needed them.
Fitz just motioned her over to the table and began assembling the ingredients she had laid out in front of him, and pouring liquid into the empty bottles in the box.
"You 'ave ta keep them steady while we're walkin'."
"I know."
"And ta activate them," Fitz went on as though she hadn't said anything, "you throw them as hard as you can. Don' hit tha agents. We don' want points deducted fer actually harmin' anyone."
"Right. Just smoke. No exploding glass on the guys with the paintball guns. Got it."
"Okay. Good." Fitz furrowed his brow and focused on the task at hand - measuring out the correct amounts of the substances. He could hear Jemma's voice in one ear reminding him that he didn't need to use a lot in each bottle either.
-o-
"Remember, Fitz. We don't need loads of smoke. Too much, and we won't be able to see either. The element of surprise won't matter." Jemma didn't have to see him to know that he was probably rolling his eyes at the reminder. She just didn't want him blinding them all. Not that they would actually be blind. It would just obscure their vision for a few moments before it began to clear. It wasn't even anything that dense. Closer to water vapor, early morning fog.
I should have gone with him. I'm clearly the better chemist.
Across the room from her Blake held up a bottle of red liquid instead of voicing his question and she shook her head.
She lined up a row of jars on the lab table in front of her and hurried through her own preparations.
Flash bombs. Smoke bombs. Feels like we're teenagers on a pranking spree instead of secret agents.
When she was done layering her own sequence of chemicals into the jars, she carefully screwed on all the lids and nodded to Blake, who had taken to peeking out the door periodically. She took that to mean she was taking too long.
"All set," she told hims as she gathered an armful of jars into her hands.
Blake took up the rest, cradling them with one arm, his gun ready in the other hand, and he spoke to Fitz through the comms, "We're heading out to start the distraction. Are you two ready?"
-o-
Fitz grunted in response as he hoisted the mannequin back over one shoulder, his knees bending under the weight.
Griffin answered instead as she carefully stuffed bottles into the few empty pockets she had. "We're heading out now. See you in the bay."
-o-
Blake took the steps at the end of the corridor two at a time, but Simmons couldn't move that fast when she was loaded down with the jars and she wasn't used to the physical requirements of being in the field. She paused in the middle of the set of stairs to catch her breath while he moved into the next floor corridor. She groaned and hurried up after him, but entered the next floor to a string of paintballs flying by her, so she turned and moved in the opposite direction while Blake handled the return fire, only to turn a corner and run smack into a man playing the enemy.
"Oh, Bloody hell."
He was so surprised, he didn't even draw his weapon, and she took the chance to elbow him in the side since her hands were full, and tried to move away. She only succeeded in annoying him though, and he tilted his head to the side with something of a smirk and drew his gun. She shut her eyes and turned her head, but shots never hit her. Instead, Blake rounded the corner and shot the man in the middle of the chest.
"Jesus, Simmons. Who let you out of the lab?"
-o-
"Simmons?" Fitz shook his head, trying to hear through the comms a little bit better. "What's going on?" He and Griffin turned a corner and he banged the side of the mannequin into the wall, but he didn't even notice. Griffin didn't mention it either since they were coming up on the door opening they needed. The mannequin was an unconscious prisoner anyway; it wasn't like the guy would feel it.
-o-
"I'm fine." Jemma adjusted the jars in her hands as she and Blake made their way to one of paths that ran along side the upper reaches of the testing room. She didn't have a problem with heights, but when she looked out over the railing to the floor below, her stomach dropped a bit.
"I'm fine too," Blake muttered, just loud enough for the comms to pick him up.
-o-
Griffin smothered a chuckle as she peeked her head around the corner of the doorway and took stock of where the enemy was located. She took a quick glance up to see if Blake and Simmons had found a good spot to cover them.
-o-
"We're in position," Blake added, lining up his jars on the floor by Simmons' feet and taking her gun from her.
-o-
"Throw as hard as you can toward the back of the room, Simmons. We've got the front," Griffin answered. "Ten seconds. Then start the fireworks."
-o-
Jemma counted to ten in her head, and just as she reared an arm back and prepared to throw, there was a crash and rising smoke from the floor below on the other side of the room. She gave a grim smile and let go while Blake started firing on their opponents.
I hope this works.
-o-
The firestorm of smoke bombs and cheap magician's parlour tricks didn't last long since they could only carry so many jars and bottles each, but Griffin was still throwing hers into the melee when Jemma and Blake joined them in the corridor. Fitz, still with the mannequin over his shoulder in case they had to make a run for it, was crouched next to her, firing, but he wasn't landing too many hits through the smoke.
"How many were left standing? Could you tell from up top?" Griffin asked as she tossed another bottle toward the blast doors.
"Five before we took the stairs down," Blake answered, taking aim and firing into the haze. "I think that's four now."
"We should make a run for the control panel before the smoke clears," Griffin said breathlessly. "It's our best chance. And we have to get the blast doors open in order to leave. By now, they've probably realized we're not throwing anything from the upper level anymore."
"Here, I'll take those. You shoot." Jemma took the last three bottles that Griffin had been holding onto, and Griffin took the lead instead, running for the first table she saw that would give them cover while Blake laid paintball fire behind them. As she reached the table, she crouched down and provided the cover for the rest of them to run.
It was like some weird game of tag as they made their way from one point of cover in the room to the next, Jemma throwing smoke bombs along the way, paintballs whizzing over their heads and making the floor slick as they reached their destination. There were still agents shooting at them, but they'd made it to the control panel and were partially hidden by a set of tables and a column; that was the important part.
"Almos' there," Fitz muttered as he let go of the mannequin to help Griffin remove the metal covering and get access to the wires. The mannequin dropped to the floor with an odd crunching sound - head first. 'Wha'?" he asked as everyone looked at him in horror.
"You just dropped Manny on his head," Blake remarked before firing off a few warning shots when one of the agents popped their head up from behind a desk.
"Wha'? It's no' like he's a real person. He's fine. He's plastic." Fitz waved it off and went back to work. "I'd never drop a real person on his head. Honestly." He pulled the panel completely out of the way to reveal a mess of wires of all different colors to Griffin who looked very confused.
She followed the edge of one wire with a finger, shook her head, and went back and did the same with another, and then another.
"Griffin?" Blake asked from his position behind her as he took a few more shots. "I'm going to run out of paint soon. I've already used my extra clips and I'm on to Simmons' now."
"Right. Sorry… I just… this isn't like any system I've ever seen before. I don't -" She balled her hands into fists and chewed on her lip. "I don't think I can override it from here."
"Are you bloody serious righ' now?" Fitz yelped as a paintball flew past his head and he held the panel in front of him like a shield.
"I think it's going to require a double override," Griffin explained carefully.
-o-
"And now it gets interesting. The clock is ticking."
May sighed. If it wasn't against policy, she would have knocked this guy out and graded the assessment herself an hour ago.
But he was right. They had less than 30 minutes left.
-o-
"A double override?" Jemma called to her from her spot on the other side of the panel. "How do we do that?"
"We've got to cut power to this whole section, let it reboot. Then I can do a manual override of the door… if I can figure out how exactly to do that."
"There's no other way?" Blake's voice wasn't as angry as Fitz had been, but they could all tell his patience was wearing thin too.
"Well…" Griffin thought for a moment, trying to catalog all the things she knew about electronics and door locks and everything in between, but this particular type of electronics wasn't her area of expertise. "Look, I'm not an electrical engineer, okay? I'm communications, not a wizard."
Blake looked up at the ceiling as though pleading with the assessment deities for help.
"'s possible tha' overloading i' could make it malfunction," Fitz broke into their trains of thought. "Hit i' with enough power, and i' could short circuit on it's own."
"You think?" Griffin wondered.
"Is that faster than a full reboot?" Blake said at the same time.
"Definitely," Fitz, Griffin, and Jemma all told him.
"Do it." Blake loaded the last of the paintball bullets into his gun.
Jemma's empty gun now lay on the floor, but she picked it up and holstered it, just in case. They weren't supposed to leave any S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment behind, no matter how small. She set to work helping Griffin and Fitz reroute any electrical components they could into the control panel for the day.
It didn't take long for Blake to run out of paintball bullets from his last clip either.
"Guys."
"We know," Griffin snapped, tossing him her own gun, which was down to its final ammo as well, before turning back and throwing subtlety aside, ripping out a chunk of wires. "What?" she asked when Fitz looked at her aghast.
"Jus' - don' electrocute anyone… or blow anythin' up."
"Oh, God." Jemma shifted back where she was on her knees at the base of the door. She crept to the side and lifted a fire extinguisher from its hook on the side of the desk behind them. It got a couple of shots fired in her direction, and she was breathing heavy when she fell back to her original position, but having it made her feel a little better. Griffin shot her a surprised glance. "Just in case. I don't want us sparking any fires and failing because of third degree burns."
"Lab rats," Griffin muttered under her breath, but she was smiling, "safety first."
The three of them worked in silence for a few moments until Fitz nodded to both of the women. He had a loose wire in his hand when he called to Blake, "Prob'ly wan' ta take cover under tha desk." He waited for Griffin to move back to the desk, and when Jemma didn't immediately follow, he gestured with his chin.
"No. I'm staying right here. Just in case you need a fire put out." She pulled the pin from the extinguisher and nodded at him, hands shaking.
He sighed and took the loose wires, scraped down to their copper, and carefully scraped them along another set, sending a spark into the system and setting off a chain of pops and crackles. He gave a high pitched chirping sound that was likely his attempt to stifle a surprised yell, and Jemma aimed the extinguisher in his direction, but there were no flames.
And the blast door didn't move.
"What. The. Hell." Fitz looked at the wires in front of him, the control panel, his fingers tracing routes, his eyes darting everywhere."That should have worked."
"Not enough power," Griffin mumbled, crawling over to the door with him.
"No, it's not that. Well, it is, but that's because -" Jemma interrupted their inspection to point up above the control panel. "Look. That section there. You ripped out the wires; those aren't getting a connection through."
Sure enough, just above the panel, above where Griffin had foregone finesse to get the job done, was an entire section where the wires had pulled loose. Someone was going to have to connect them. And whoever did it wasn't going to have any cover from the enemy fire when they stood to their full height to do it.
Fitz grumbled under his breath about jobs not being done right and started to move, but Griffin scrambled to her feet faster than him.
"You better cover me, Blake."
As Griffin reached the panel and began re-attaching wires faster than humanly possible, one of the agents, who must have been out of bullets as well, rushed their little group from the left, and Jemma reacted on instinct, extinguisher at the ready. She let loose with a spray of foam in his direction, obscuring his vision enough that Blake was able to knock him back - and out - just in time.
"Three more," Blake muttered as another agent took advantage of their situation to fire on them.
Fitz fired back, but he couldn't hit the other man behind the column where he was hiding, so he stopped shooting.
"Damn it," Griffin yelped, squatting on the floor in front of them and cradling her hand to her chest. "Those paintballs hurt worse than I thought." Across her right wrist and palm, crimson paint was smeared, appearing eerily like an open wound.
"It's not a fatal hit," Jemma said quickly, mainly for the benefit of the comms, in case anyone thought the hit meant Griffin should be taken out of the assessment. "We just need to, to wrap your hand."
"I don't know if I'd still have a hand after a hit like that," Griffin deadpanned.
"It would depend on the bullet." Blake shrugged when they all stared at him. "Just - bandage her. We have to get out of here. Time's almost up."
Jemma searched her tactical gear for medical supplies, but she couldn't find any. As the one person with a biology background, she knew standard procedure would usually designate her as the one to pack, at the very least, bandages, but the agents hadn't prepped them with anything of the sort. With a groan of frustration, she unclipped her vest and shrugged herself out of it.
"What 're you doin'?" Fitz's voice had an edge of panic to it, but Jemma was already tearing at the fabric lining the inside of her vest.
"No bandages," she explained as she reached inside and pulled out the extra piece of lining that she knew was made to help absorb moisture, twisting and securing it around Griffin's wrist to create a makeshift bandage. "Fitz, please," she sighed when he tried to help, "just get the door open."
He turned from her and quickly popped up, dodging fake bullets and paint spray to finish rerouting the wires and put them together.
None of them realized that while they were hesitating over Griffin that two of the three agents that were left working against them had crept closer, one of them taking aim at Fitz. It was Jemma who saw the agent raise his gun just as Fitz touched the wires to the connectors of the panel to get the blast door to rise.
"Fitz!"
He grinned, mistaking her fear for congratulations, though he hadn't actually got the door up yet, and flinched when she launched herself at him, ending up with three red splatters on her black t-shirt. Fitz turned without thinking and shot the other agent point blank, emptying the rest of his bullets into the other man's vest before dropping his gun.
"Simmons?"
"Griffin's right - I did not expect - that hurts. Oh god, that really hurts."
She sat down, looking at the splatters down her side and across her chest, having trouble catching her breath.
"Jemma." Fitz knelt next to her while Blake and Griffin gaped at her.
"There's still two enemy combatants left. Open the doors, Fitz."
"But-"
"Fitz." She gestured at the paint splatters sadly. "Fatal hits. Open the doors. Get the hostage out. I'd have - maybe two more minutes before I bleed out."
He shook his head, trying to push the thought away that the red paint was a very effective substitute for blood. He thought he might be sick. "We're no' leavin' you."
Blake fired on the agent that had been coming at them from the other side, and the man bounced back, hiding behind an overturned cabinet.
He and Griffin exchanged a look, and she climbed back up to the panel, finishing Fitz's job while he argued with Simmons, getting the blast doors to rise a foot from the ground before they jammed; it wasn't much but it was enough to get them out.
Blake handed the gun to Simmons.
"There's only a few shots left. Cover us?"
"Of course."
Griffin grabbed one arm of the mannequin, dragging him with her under the door, struggling under his weight with only the use of one hand, while Blake shoved Fitz in the direction of the door. Fitz angrily shook Blake off.
"We can't jus' leave her," he snapped, and while Jemma was busy emptying the rest of the team's bullets in the direction of one agent, the last fired on Blake and Fitz. Blake ducked just in time, making it under the door. Fitz didn't.
-o-
"Guess the SciOps kids couldn't hack it after all."
Something like a smile quirked at the edges of May's lips at his words.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Rumlow."
They were perfect. Loyal. Intelligent. Competitive. Able to think outside the box and stay within the rules. Perfect. She was sure. She made a note in the file, designating them a good fit for mobile unit 616 even as Rumlow failed them.
-o-
Four weeks later.
"I don' understand, sir. My field assessment -"
"You have a unique skill set, Dr. Fitz. I don't care about the assessment results." The agent's eyes crinkled at the sides when he smiled. "And your assessment results were very good, right up until the end. Happens to the best of us."
Fitz played with the wrench in his hands, not looking the older agent in the eye. "I - erm - can I think about it?"
"Sure." There was a pause while he set his card on the lab table before turning for the door. "Dr. Simmons asked the same thing. Not sure if she wants to do field work after all."
"You asked Simmons too? I thought - isn' it jus' one scientist per mobile unit, Sir?" Fitz's head perked up and he watched the agent pause in the doorway.
The man in the tailored suit chuckled and called over his shoulder. "They've given me a lot of rope. It's my team. I get who I want."
And with that he was gone.
Fitz reached forward and picked up the man's card.
Phil Coulson. Level Seven.
-o-