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“Gàn,” May hissed as she stumbled over a snow-covered root. The uneven terrain of the woods that surrounded the Providence base was a pain to navigate in the dim light of the Canadian nightfall, and her shoes weren’t really the best choice of footwear. She should’ve packed the expensive winter boots her mother gave her for Christmas two years ago, but since they looked clumsy and she wasn’t sure how effective they would be in a fight, she’d left them at home.
She was trying to move in the direction the team had come from earlier that day, retracing their steps from memory as any footprints had long been obliterated by a heavy snowfall, because she remembered there had been a small road near where they had first landed the Bus. A road would get her into the nearest town, where she’d be able to call her mother from a payphone so she could pick her up. May had left her cell back at the base, not wanting the team to try and trace her before she was ready - she had a plan of action in mind and she didn’t need any surprises on the way.
Gritting her teeth, she narrowly avoided stumbling again, thankfully managing to put her foot down a couple inches to the right of another root at the last second. She silently cursed Phil for making her go through this, trying to ignore the heavy feeling that had settled in her chest after their argument. The cold words he had spat at her back at the base reverberated in her head, stoking the guilt inside of her. Perhaps it had been wrong of her to watch him desperately search for answers while all the while knowing about TAHITI, but she had been following orders and thought she was doing the right thing.
A heavy branch crackling somewhere above her head interrupted May’s musings, making her look up. She saw nothing but an interwoven roof of the forest, snow falling through the cracks between branches. There was another loud snap, and the branch was suddenly falling, snow glittering in the weak light of the dusk. It only narrowly missed the specialist, who had refused to move.
“Chǔnshì,” she muttered, glaring at the severed piece of wood that had given out under the weight of snow. She was a little surprised to realise she wasn’t sure if she was angry because the branch had almost hit her or because it hadn’t. Damn Phil for messing with her head like that - telling her to leave after everything they had been through.
Trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling that was squeezing her lungs, Melinda took a deep breath. She had been feeling anxious ever since she left the base, and it was making her senses go haywire. She could hear every crackle and snap of the woods around her as if amplified by a speaker; her eyes were constantly shifting as her brain searched for danger; and the adrenaline in her veins was causing her to feel restless.
Giving the fallen branch one last glare, she started to walk again. Her feet were cold because the everpresent snow had managed to soak through her boots. She had always hated going on missions somewhere cold - the icy air stiffening up fingers, the wet snow causing spills, and all the snowdrifts slowing down movement - winter hardly providing ideal conditions for a hand-to-hand fight or a shoot-out. She slipped again, barely catching herself on a tree trunk, and noted absentmindedly that the sun had finally set, and she was now surrounded by darkness. Picking up her pace slightly, she mentally ran through the list of wild animals that could be found in Canadian woods. Moose, wolves, caribou, bears, lynx… he’d better get out of the damned forest soon, no need to try her luck.
Taking another deep breath as the branches crackled above her and the snow rained down, she tried to dismiss the uncomfortable feeling as the result of Phil’s treatment of her, but it just wouldn’t go away. Her sympathetic system was in overdrive, fingers tingling with the need to punch something, legs restless despite the long hike, pupils dilated.
She trudged further through the heavy snow, taking care to breathe regularly and keep her heartbeat in check. Coulson’s words played on repeat in her mind, telling her in a cold and dismissive tone to either follow his orders or find somewhere else to be. Gritting her teeth, Melinda ran the events at Providence through her head again. The argument with Phil, the way he talked down to her in front of the rest of the team, the burning in her sinuses as she packed her bags, the relieved look on Ward’s face when she told him she was leaving, the determined set to Skye’s shoulders as May sneaked past her, the annoying chirp of the chip reader as she pressed her lanyard against it before leaving through the heavy metal door of the base.
May stopped abruptly, freezing in her tracks.
Quickly flashing back to the expression on the other specialist’s face as he had realised she intended to leave, her brain whirred with possible explanations. Sure, he immediately hid the expression behind a blank mask, but it had definitely been there, so why the hell had he looked so relieved?
Narrowing her eyes in thought, staring blankly into the darkness, she tried to remember every detail about her final exchange with Ward. She mentally catalogued his every single movement, every twitch of his face, his posture, his clothes, his injuries.
“Nǐ zhège xiǎo húndàn!” she hissed as the realisation suddenly dawned on her. Ward had been relieved because her leaving meant he didn’t have to try and get rid of her. Turning around determinedly, she broke into a run. She had to get back to the base as fast as possible - if she was right, Skye and Koenig were in danger.
Sprinting through a snowy forest full of slippery roots and falling branches in the dark night of the Canadian wilderness was proving to be more difficult than May would have thought. She tripped over roots buried in snow and slipped on icy rocks, barely regaining her balance after each stumble, as she sped through. She barely felt the twigs that kept flicking her in the face or the cold that was biting at her feet. Her body was warming up, blood flooding her limbs, eyes adjusting to the dark, and heart picking up its pace, preparing to fight. She was vibrating with anger and betrayal, suddenly understanding Phil’s earlier behaviour a lot more.
She was only about half a mile away from the base, recognising her surroundings, when a fast-moving shadow on her eight o’clock made her slow to a halt. She automatically pulled out her gun, trying to see through the darkness what had spooked her. She noticed the shadow move again, crouched near the ground like a hunter - strong, calm, and coiled. It was an animal, May realised, a predator.
Quickly going through the list of North American wild animals again, she estimated the size and shape from what she could see and guessed that the most likely candidate for her uninvited guest was a Canadian lynx.
Not wanting to shoot the stealthy animal, even just to scare it as the sound would be extremely loud in the quiet of the night and she was too close to Providence, she searched for a way to scare it off without giving away her position.
As the lynx crept closer, muscles ready to pounce, Melinda could see the glint of its eyes. The cat had to be hungry, she figured, otherwise it would never try to attack a human who - albeit small - was still much bigger. May knew she had to act quickly. She grabbed an emergency pack of matchsticks, her fingers stiff and clumsy with cold, and pulled the first piece of clothing she could get her hands on out of her duffle. Then, putting a lit match to it, she hissed quietly as the heat sent pinpricks of pain through her frozen appendages.
The dry fabric caught quickly and May saw the animal pause at the sight. Shielding the yellow flames with her body, she watched the fire grow as it burned a hole through one of Melinda’s old Academy t-shirts. The animal took a cautious step closer, no longer ready to attack but still persistent. The specialist waved the flaming fabric in front of her in a zigzag fashion, taking a couple steps closer to the lynx.
It ran.
“Xièxie shàngdì,” May uttered, quickly dousing the fire in a pile of snow. It wouldn’t do to carry around a big, bright homing beacon for any longer than necessary, and the animal was hopefully gone for good.
Cursing the damned cat for holding her up and wasting two precious minutes of her time, Melinda started running again, the adrenaline pumping through her veins pushing her to go faster. Speeding through a narrow clearing a couple of hundred yards away from the base, it didn’t take her long to reach the place where Coulson’s badge had suffered irreparable damage from the Providence’s cannon. Avoiding the direct line of sight, the Chinese woman kept hidden behind the trees, rounding the base entrance. She had another way to get in, one that would allow her to enter undetected.
Once she found the ventilation shaft she had made note of during her customary assessment of her surroundings while she had been inside the base, she unscrewed the grate using her pocket knife and then crawled in. It was a tight squeeze, so she doubted a person any larger than her could’ve gotten through, but she managed.
Dealing with the grate at the other end of the shaft in the same way she had with the first one, she soundlessly dropped down into an empty hallway. Quickly orienting herself, she pulled out her gun again.
“Tā māde niǎo,” she hissed quietly as she fumbled, her frozen hands failing to hold the gun securely. She tried to breathe some warm air on her stiff fingers, but it wasn’t very effective - she hoped that she’d get the feeling back into her fingers before she ran into any trouble.
May hastened to move through the maze of hallways in the general direction of the main living area, quickly clearing one room after another. Her muscles twitched with the need to uncoil and fight, getting ready for the unavoidable confrontation with Ward. Hopefully, she wasn’t too late.
Barely a minute later, the specialist slipped past the common room, where Skye was still sitting exactly where May had last seen her, working on something on a computer. No sign of Ward or Koenig.
Creeping in the direction of the kitchens, gun ready to fire, she listened closely for any sounds. She passed several empty storage rooms and an unused server room before finally arriving at the kitchens. No one.
“Gàn,” she whispered to herself, turning back around and heading toward the place the team had taken their polygraph tests earlier that day. Her heart beat steadily.
Then, as she was passing Koenig’s office, she finally heard something. She paused, listening patiently, and a second later another quiet squeak - as if air was whistling through a very narrow space under high pressure - reached her ears. Slowly cracking the door open, Melinda glanced inside the office before immediately springing into action at what she saw. Ward and Koenig were standing in the middle of the office, the tall specialist pressing a thin wire against Koenig’s throat, trying to garrotte the chubby agent.
Knowing she couldn’t aim precisely enough to hit Ward without also injuring Koenig, she kicked the door open, loudly bursting inside. She wasn’t usually one for such entrances, but they were sometimes very effective. Before the two men could catch up to what was happening, she ran at the male specialist at full speed, driving her heeled boot into his chest and causing him to release his victim. Koenig dropped to the ground like dead weight.
Ward quickly righted himself and said something to her, but as she had just spent the last hour thinking - and talking to herself - in Chinese, her brain struggled to catch his meaning. Noticing she had managed to manoeuvre herself into a position where she had a clear shot, she raised her gun and aimed. Grant was quicker, however, and knocked the gun out of her insecure grip with a well-aimed kick, sending it flying across the room.
Koenig gasped weakly, his crushed windpipe desperately trying to supply his lungs with air. So not dead yet then.
Ward flung himself after the gun - inadvertently letting Melinda know he wasn’t armed. She tackled him.
They struggled on the floor for a while, Ward soon gaining the upper hand as her strength was still slightly impeded by the cold. He grabbed her by the throat and pressed her against the floor, smirking at her.
“This reminds me of the old days,” the man remarked as he straddled her thighs.
She bucked upwards violently, managing to flip him over her head and loosen his grip on her throat. “You were never on top,” she sneered back as she rushed to stand up.
Ward threw a punch at her with his right hand, exposing his left side slightly. May blocked the punch easily and went to jab him in the ribs. She recognised the fake-out a second too late, giving Ward the opportunity to grab her hair and jerk her head painfully backwards.
She grunted in pain, allowing her body to follow the movement of her head so as not to break her neck. She landed on her back with a dull thud that knocked the breath out of her.
The male specialist was on her again, crouching over her body and not pulling his punches as he attacked her face. Knowing she could only take so many hits to the head before losing consciousness, she quickly scanned him for weaknesses.
His centre of gravity was directly above his feet, which were planted securely on the floor; his chest was shielded by his left forearm as he held her down by the chest; his right hand was in a fist as he punched her again, splitting her lip.
She drove her knee into his crotch. As soon as he was off balance, she kicked his feet from under him, sending him to the floor. She was now closer to the discarded gun than he was, so she tried to crawl over to it, but Ward managed to grab hold of her foot and stop her. She kicked him off, hearing a crack as her heel connected with his hand.
She stood up just as he did, readying herself for another round, when he suddenly swiped something off the desk behind him and attacked her. She blocked a wild swing of his hand, following it with a right hook to his jaw. She noticed the glint of a knife too late.
Ward buried it in her thigh, twisting it.
With an injury like that, she knew she had to finish this quickly. It was time to switch from going for capture to going for the kill.
Using his brief distraction, she jabbed him in the throat. The satisfying crack of his larynx almost made her smirk, but she refused to make the same mistake he had and let herself get distracted. As he clutched at his injured throat, struggling for breath, she grabbed his arm and flipped him over.
He landed on his side, letting out a raspy sound. He struggled to rise to his hands and knees, and May almost admired his endurance as he crawled away from her, hand reaching for the gun.
His fingers had barely closed around the barrel, when May jumped at him, feeling the knife in her thigh shift and rip through her muscle, and finally snapped his neck with a learned move. He flopped onto the floor lifelessly, head at an unnatural angle and hand loose around the gun.
May lowered herself to sit down next to him, careful of her heavily bleeding wound. She watched the thin blade of what had to be an envelope opener twitch with every beat of her heart, blinking slowly. She could almost feel the adrenaline leaving her, pain assaulting her synapses instead.
It was at this moment that Skye burst into the office, a horrified expression on her face. “Ward!” she gasped, taking in the scene in front of her. “Is he-”
May nodded, breathing deeply. “He’s dead.”
Skye went completely hysterical. “What the fuck did you do?” she screamed, launching herself at the Chinese woman.
Melinda caught her arms, twisting them behind the girl’s back and immobilising her. “He was Hydra,” she sneered into Skye’s ear. “Tried to kill Koenig.”
The hacker thrashed wildly in her grip, trying to free herself.
“Skye!” May snapped, lifting the younger woman’s head and twisting it, so she could see the chubby agent lying on the ground a few feet away, gasping. “See? He needs help.”
Skye stopped struggling, going limp in the specialist’s arms. “May?” she sobbed, as if imploring her to say it wasn’t true. “No, please,” she breathed weakly.
Melinda hugged the girl to herself, breathing in the fruity smell of her hair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words coming easily to her for once. “I’m so sorry.”