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Maria climbs the ramp up to the Bus, and up the spiral staircase to where Melinda’s waiting for her at the briefing table.
Melinda raises an eyebrow at Maria’s large suitcase. “Think you have enough in there?”
“Maria Rossi likes to be prepared. And doesn’t exactly travel light. When are we heading out?”
“As soon as Coulson gets back. Trip radioed in, said everything went as planned. No injuries, no double-cross. The information was exchanged, Banham went to check on his intel and we were able to track him. As soon as Coulson, Trip and Morse make it back, we’re heading back to the Playground to analyze it. All in all, the mission went well,” Melinda concludes, dryly.
“That’s a first.”
Melinda snorts.
“How long before they’ll be back?”
“Not more than a few minutes, ideally.”
“I’m going to stow this away. Any cabin I should take in particular?”
“So long as it’s not occupied, be our guest.”
The Bus rooms six people comfortably, and over two dozen creatively.
After a scan, and Maria confirms that she’s the fifth in this party. The cabins are small, scarcely more room than than the mattresses, barely enough room for Rossi's overstuffed suitcase. Shelves line the wall behind the bed, with securement accessories available.
Not more than a few minutes later, the intercom system comes on. "Everyone strap in, we're up in thirty seconds."
No one has come up, so Maria makes her way to the overlook. Morse is doing a post-mission examination of the car. Neither Phil or Triplett are in sight, which leaves leaves them in the medical bay. As soon as the Bus has taken to the air, Maria descends the stairs.
Sure enough, Phil is sitting on one of the beds, and Triplet is bandaging a cut on Phil’s cheek.
“Nice cut you got there,” Maria says. “What happened?”
“HYDRA’s sniper was a bit off the mark,” Phil says. “Accidentally took care of one of my guards, though, so I’ve got that to thank him for.”
Maria nods. "That was fortunate," she says, keeping any sort of telling intonation out of her voice, while trying to figure out the best way to discuss this with Ward.
“Everything went well. Surprisingly so, if this is the only hiccup.”
“You going to debrief now, or back at the Playground?”
“Back at the Playground. I want to get some sleep first,” he admits.
Maria nods, and heads up to her bunk. Sleep sounds like a good idea, but as she’s contemplating it, her phone goes off.
"Hey, Pepper, what's up?" Maria asks.
"Miss Rossi, I was wondering when we could expect you at Stark Industries in New York."
Not a social call, then. Maria does not have the patience to maintain a different voice for Rossi, but she softens her voice to say, “As soon as I can manage. My old employers had a mild crisis, and my services were required.”
"Your services are required here as well," Pepper says, dryly. There’s a long sigh. "Maria, You know that I love having your cover work at Stark Industries, you work better than some of our actual administrative staff, but I need to know what your long term plans are. If you're actively staying SHIELD, that's great, but if that’s the case, I will need to have an official letter of resignation filed with HR."
Maria wants to keep her cover, for safekeeping, but the only way to have SHIELD safe is to actively work on it. She can’t leave SHIELD, and doesn’t want to leave Stark Industries, but she knows she can’t have it both ways. "I understand, Pepper, I know how cooperative you've been, and I do appreciate it."
It’s not an answer, and Pepper will know that. “Thank you, Miss Rossi,” she says, and it’s followed up by a dial tone.
Maria pulls out a jammer – newer, polished. Instead of static, it jams with silence, and is near undetectable. One of the benefits of Stark Industries – and a reason she’s reluctant to leave – is that Maria’s been able to play around with some of the prototypes.
“This is Ward.”
“Mission status report.”
“Mission successfully completed.”
“By any chance did you take over the post as the sniper?”
“With my superior marksmanship, it seemed the best option. And last I saw, everyone got out of it alive.”
“Uh-huh. Next time, try not to shoot Coulson.”
“I had to make it look believable.”
“Ward, you know how hard that shot is to make, and how easy it could have gone wrong.”
“I was trying to maintain my cover.”
“And you see how well that’s treated you in the past. No shooting Coulson,” Maria tells him, over his disgruntled noise. “Or causing him any other degree of bodily harm.”
“Roger that,” Ward says, irritation obvious in his voice. "Do you have a mission for me, or are you just calling to socialize?"
"Socialize. I feel like we haven't really gotten a time to really get to know each other."
Ward's response this time almost sounds like a laugh. "As interesting as that sounds, if you don't have a mission for me, I know a guy who has asked me to look into something, and I would like to follow up on that."
She’s immediately suspicious. “Last I remember, you were annoyed at being run ragged, and that you would like some downtime."
"I was annoyed at a Greyhound bus ride that I went without sleeping. I've gotten a few hours of sleep, I'm feeling rested, and I prefer to stay busy."
"In that case, you're going to have to be a lot more specific."
"One of my contacts–”
“Who?”
“Guy by the name of Freddy–”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s in my contact list that I wrote up for you. He found out that a facility here in LA has finally synthesized octanitrocubane, the most explosive compound known to the scientific community. The facility was broken into, and half the stuff was taken. Freddy asked if I could look into it, since most of his contacts have gone underground and batten down the hatches. He said he heard some folks up in Sioux Falls had been asking around for something with a bang, and that it might be a good place to start looking."
Explosive compounds should be something SHIELD should be looking into, if only they had the numbers. "Keep me updated," Maria replies. "I want to know when you get there, I want to know how it goes. If this becomes something more than a one-man army can take down, you call me, got it?"
"Honesty, communication, cooperation," Ward recites. "And that other one."
“When are you heading out?”
“It’s a half-hour until the next Greyhound bus leaves. It’s a long drive, but I don’t have any jump drives to stay awake to look after, so it should be more or less restful.”
"You traveling light?"
"A duffel bag so I don't draw attention for not having one, but I have a drop-box in Sioux Falls."
"That in your file too?"
He hesitates. "I thought the information on HYDRA was more important, and I put more time into that. But I have a file on there with all the drop-boxes I have. All the drop-boxes that I could think of at the time,” he amends. “If any more come to mind, I'll let you know."
"Keep in touch," is all Maria says before hanging up. She rubs at the bridge of her nose. Her speciality has always been combat, only knowing the biochem she’s needed to know, but if a convicted arsonist like Ward says it’s explosive, she trusts that it’s explosive. She's not sure if she should relay this to SHIELD or Stark.
But it’s no use dwelling on it if she’s not going to do something about it. She goes into her bag, and pulls out a stack of files. Settling onto the bed, she only manages to flip through one or two before she finds her eyelids drooping. She shakes herself, and then gets up from the bunk, and moves into the common area of the Bus.
Morse and Triplett are seated across from each other, a Connect Four board on the table between them.
Maria shakes her head. She remembers the board games. Good training exercise to figure out strategies of other specialists. Though these two seem to be playing to figure out best how to augment the other, than to take the other down.
"Hey, Hill," Morse greets, after she's dropped her black piece down, not taking her eyes from the board. "What are you working on?"
"I'm looking through SHIELD personnel files."
Morse turns around at that. "Why?" she asks.
Behind Morse's back, Triplett works on silently slipping an extra red token in.
"Because I've been looking at our numbers, and it's ridiculous," Maria replies. Which isn't something she should be saying, but she's tired. As far as letting things slip, it’s fairly harmless. "We are missing a lot of our numbers. And I'm trying to figure out where they went. We lost a lot of our higher-ranked agents to HYDRA, I know, but SHIELD was a large organization, and right now we're only fighting with half of what I estimate there should be. So I'm just going through the agents that weren't confirmed dead, seeing who might still be out there, who we can pick up. Mostly, there are PR agents and HR agents and the costume designers, but all numbers should help. Surprisingly," Maria says, voice dry, "HYDRA appealed more to our white male specialists more than any other demographic."
Morse snorts while Triplet rolls his eyes.
"And those that are left... let's just say, if we run across Agent Calderon and have to ask him back in, I'm not exactly going to be thrilled."
"What do you have against Calderon?" Morse asks. “Other than his lack of humor.”
Quietly, Maria says, “We were stationed together at Madripoor.”
Neither Morse or Triplett reply.
Maria turns back to her files. She's about to ask either of them about Phil's recruitment – according to the files, he spent his time going across Europe trying to recruit agents, but the numbers don't show a success story for him – when Phil suddenly hurries down the spiral staircase from his office, and then to the cockpit.
A minute later, Melinda announces over the intercom, "Hold onto something."
Maria finds her seatbelt.
Morse and Triplett sweep the unplayed red and black chips into the beaten-up paperboard box. One hand goes to steady themselves, the other to steady the playing board.
The plane makes an abrupt, rather dramatic, course correction.
"Meeting in five," Melinda adds, a moment later.
Maria looks between Morse and Triplett. Both share her suspicion and confusion.
Five minutes later, Phil and Melinda exit the cockpit. “New plan,” Phil says. "I just got a call from a source. The security system we set up for Providence was triggered. It's being approached. From what could be seen, it's HYDRA." Quieter, “And we’re not letting them take the base again.”
Morse frowns. "I don't get it," she says, looking around. "What's Providence?"
"Our Canadian SHIELD fortress," Triplett tells her, quietly.
"You mean the one where..."
Triplett nods.
"Ah," Bobbi says. "So we’re taking it back with a vengeance?"
“Not letting them get there would be preferred, but that’s the back-up plan.”
"Do we have the specs on the base?" Maria asks. "Any live-time surveillance?"
"We’re still working on the second, but we should have a layout of the base."
"How soon until we're there?" Morse asks.
"I'm burning the Bus extra hot," Melinda says. "We should be there in forty-five minutes or so."
“Why Providence?” Maria asks. “The point of the base was that it was a safe haven, its existence almost completely unknown. If alarms were tripped, HYDRA must have noticed them, and there’s no point in them going any further. There’s nothing there that would draw HYDRA’s attention.”
Phil lets out a long sigh. He gives Maria a glance. "Did Fury ever tell you about the Lie Detector?"
Fury did. Maria matches his sigh.
“Sorry to be asking all these questions, but…”
“Apparently Fury made the ultimate lie detector.”
Unbeatable but for two agents. Maria wants to look at the footage, examine what Koenig asked Ward.
“So the question is, does HYDRA want to use it or do they want to replicate it?” Maria asks. "They can't just download the software, there were... certain precautions built into the machine. And the hardware, too, was made as unhackable as possible. What would they even want it for anyways?"
“Nothing good is my guess,” Phil says.
"So we go in, we shoot a lot of HYDRA agents, we come back out, and increase security on the base?" Bobbi guesses.
"Something like that.”
"Four specialists against an unknown number of HYDRA agents," Maria says. “Great.”
"Four?" Phil repeats. "There are five of us here."
Maria stares at him incredulously. "You're not going in."
Just as incredulously, Phil replies, "Like hell I'm not."
"You’re the director of SHIELD. Worst case scenario, you get killed, what happens then? If you're down, that means May's down and I'm down. That's the top three most senior agents of SHIELD. Who runs the show if you get killed in there?"
"Fury went along on a number of missions that he shouldn't've," Phil points out.
"And Fury wasn't always a great director," Maria replies. "He played things loose, and now he's dead because of it. We don't have the luxury we did of having the number of agents to step into any newly open roles. We are at the bottom of the barrel for numbers, and we can't afford to let anyone in a lead position be killed. You shouldn’t even be on the Bus heading to the facility, but you better damn well stay on the Bus. You run communications from above, we go in and take down HYDRA."
"She's right," Melinda tells Phil. "It's too much a risk if you go down there."
"I'm not going to get killed," Phil insists.
Fury would have a few things to say in reply. Maria wants to make a comment about overruling him, but she knows that Melinda can field this far better.
“What’s our ETA?”
“Forty-minutes,” Melinda answers.
“We’ll go gear up,” Maria says.
She nods to Morse and Triplett for them to head off, and gives Melinda a significant look.
Melinda nods in reply.
-
By the time they return, Phil has pulled up the specs of the Providence.
Melinda catches Maria’s eye and nods again.
Relief floods through Maria, and she starts studying the base.
There are about ten different rooms to the base, in addition to the air carrier space.
“Bobbi, you spent some time undercover with HYDRA. How would they run this?”
“I was with Security, not Ops, but…” Bobbi starts pointing out areas where men would be. Phil chips in with details on what security there is, what information they have.
Same methodology, Maria thinks to herself.
“I don’t feel comfortable running this with four agents,” Phil says. He sighs. “Wish we had brought Hunter along.”
“Hunter?” Maria asks.
“A private contractor,” Phil says.
A merc, then. “Where’s the rest of your team?”
"We left FitzSimmons at the Playground. Neither are specially equipped for combat, and there were live feeds in case we needed to ask any pertinent scientific questions. For anything that needed to be done immediately, both Trip and Bobbi are equipped for it."
Bobbi was a biology major with psychology minor in college before abruptly changing to a specialist track, and Trip has superb medical field experience. Good credentials, but not quite at the level of biochem and engineering geniuses.
"Where's Agent Skye?" Maria asks. She turns to Melinda. "Last I heard, she was making good progress at upgrading to a specialist."
"Don't let any communication agent let you hear that," Phil says, dryly.
“Shouldn’t be too hard.” Communications made up the largest death toll of SHIELD agents.
Phil clears his throat. “Maria, could we talk a minute?”
Maria nods, and lets Phil lead her up into his office.
"I am going to tell you something," Phil says, "and I want you to try and take this as best as you can."
Maria generally considers herself rather unflappable. She just leans back in the chair, and gestures for Phil to go on.
"As a result of the San Juan incident, Skye has developed superpowers."
Unexpected, but not too alarming. Maria nods. "Alright," she says. "And?"
Phil blinks in reply. “You’re taking this a lot better than expected.”
“Is she safe?”
“She is,” he says, slowly. “She’s been found by others like her. She’s staying with them for awhile, to gain control of herself.”
“Others like her?” Maria repeats.
“They stay isolated.”
“Then there isn’t a lot to be concerned about. If she were still here when she wasn’t in control of her powers, and she were a threat, I wouldn’t be taking it well.” Also, if she knew Skye better. Having no personal connection to the girl makes it easier to be objective. "Who all knows about Skye's powers?"
"Everyone on the team here, as well as FitzSimmons. We're trying to keep it a bit more hush-hush."
"Why?"
"Her safety. We've had some on our own team get a bit skittish, I'm trying to prevent anything else concerning happening."
Maria nods.
Phil frowns. "Why?"
She shrugs. "I would be concerned about keeping her powers away from HYDRA, not from SHIELD. Is she on the Index yet?”
“Not yet,” he hedges.
Maria frowns. “Is that because you haven’t had time to find a psychologist to do a full evaluation, or is it because you are planning on keeping her off the Index?”
“I have a feeling I shouldn’t answer this.”
“She belongs on the Index, Phil. That’s what the Index was made for.”
“I’m still contemplating the best option.”
Administrative code for “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing and I need more time to figure it out.”
“You okay, Phil?”
He shakes his head. “This is personal. This is where it all fell apart," he says. "It happened before this, but there's part of me that separates it. Before Providence, after Providence. Before Providence, we were a team. SHIELD was still standing tall. Then SHIELD fell, we fled here. And then Ward was HYDRA, May left us, Garrett was alive, you turned on me–"
"I didn't turn on you," Maria says, keeping the sharpness of the thought out of her voice.
"You sold us out to Talbot."
Maria had told him to grow up then, and she thinks the same thing now. "I went to Talbot to make a deal, so that SHIELD could start to regrow."
"The man’s unreasonable and–"
"And he made an offer that would help SHIELD, at a very small cost."
"I wouldn't've made the call," Phil says.
"I know. That's why I made it." There’s a part of her telling her to let it go. But she can’t help it. "Do you think I enjoy every decision I make?"
"Why would you make them otherwise?"
Maria stares at him incredulously. "To make the greater number of people most safe. I'm not interested in selling anyone out, but I will do it if it will benefit in the long run."
“That’s not how I want to run things, Maria,” Phil says, softly.
“And that’s why I’m making these calls for you,” Maria replies, voice hard. Ruthless, cold-hearted bitch, she thinks. She had known it then, and knows it now: they weren’t wrong.
"That's a dangerous path to go down."
"That's why I tried not to go down it alone. Fury was the same as me, he brought me on because I would question his decisions."
"Who do you have to question yours?"
"You, it appears. Who do you have?"
"May."
Maria snorts. "May doesn't question you. She questions your motives, maybe, but there is no way you would have been able to get that far into the search for the alien city if she really questioned you."
Phil frowns. "It turned out alright in the end."
"How do you figure that? The city's gone, we've learned of a horrible artifact that should have stayed locked away, we lost a few good agents in the demolition, Skye's off controlling her superpowers..."
"She shot Ward," Phil says. "Who has, hopefully, bled out since then. And I killed Whitehall."
"You did kill Whitehall," Maria agrees. “Taking down an entire head of HYDRA.”
"I only wish we knew more about HYDRA."
It’s too dangerous to bring up Ward right now. The truth will come out, eventually, Maria wants to be honest about his involvement, but now is not the place to do it. She settles on saying, “If we had more agents, we could agents out to gather intel. How did your Europe recruitment go?”
Phil grimaces.
“That bad?”
“I didn’t do much recruitment. I was too busy with Theta Protocol–”
“Wait,” Maria says. “Really? Why?”
Phil frowns. “Why Because it’s important.”
“I was under the impression there were those who were capable of dealing with it–”
“It’s Strucker. The head of HYDRA. They need–”
“Stark owns near half the tech in the world. Rogers hunted HYDRA back in World War II. Barton sees better from a distance, and is damn good at projecting end points. Thor knows a god who can see anything. I’ll give you that Banner is better at losing a tail than finding anyone, but Romanoff’s skill more than makes up for his. You’re telling me Romanoff can’t track down Strucker on her own?”
Phil’s frown deepens.
“I heard yelling,” Melinda says.
“Arguing, not yelling,” Maria corrects.
“Maria, mind giving me and Coulson a moment?”
She makes her way silently out of the office.
Down in the debriefing area, Morse asks, “Everything okay? We heard yelling.”
“Arguing,” Maria repeats. She sighs, and turns her attention to the layout starts planning the attack. Specialist Ops have been her speciality, before her promotion to Deputy Director, and it's easy for her to see the strategic weak points of the halls, where there's a possibility for attack and counterattack, who goes where.
After a few minutes, Melinda and Phil make their way back down.
"So what do we do with them?" Maria asks. "The HYDRA agents," she clarifies at the other's looks.
"Shoot them," Triplet says.
"Shoot to kill, or shoot to slow down? It would be a waste of bullets to do the latter, and a waste of resources to do the first. I know all HYDRA agents go through the same routine, all have the same training, but between Morse out of her cover, and everything else falling through, we are running low on intel from HYDRA."
"So you think we should interrogate them."
"They're hard to crack," Bobbi says.
"But it's worth a shot, isn't it?"
"Where would we put them afterwards?" Phil asks. "We haven't been able to restore the Fridge yet."
"There may be other options," Maria says, slowly.
Phil stares at her. "What other options?” he asks, just as slowly. “I can't imagine you're thinking about taking them to the local police."
Maria shakes her head. "Fury may have thought about expanding the prison systems of SHIELD. There may be a facility."
"The Little House or the Vault?"
"Pym isn't cooperating. It's the Vault."
Phil sighs. "Any other pet projects Fury had that you haven't told me about yet?"
"A few," Maria replies. “You?”
He gives her a wan smile. “A few,” he replies.
-
Morse takes the lead, at her own request, Trip and Hill going after her, Melinda bringing up the rear.
The ambush is a pretty standard plan. Go in, take care to cover each others’ asses, avoid the security turrets that will be turned against them, take down hostiles, make their way to the central offices to gain control of the base, take down any remaining hostiles.
They enter the base, weapons drawn. Morse is the first to pull the trigger, and a HYDRA agent falls to the ground.
"Another one bites the dust," Morse says.
They take an immediate left down the first hallway, and then slowly make their way to the first intersection.
Triplett moves past Morse to take lead, and another gunshot rings. "And another one down," he says.
Morse joins him at the edge of the hallway. Another gunshot. "And another one down," she adds.
Another gunshot. "Another one bites the dust," Phil says, from over the monitor.
Maria rolls her eyes.
"What, you don't like the classics?" Triplett asks, catching the expression.
"I've heard it plenty in my time," Maria says, dryly.
Half the base has been secured. Carefully, Triplett says, "Word is that you were there for the birth of it."
"Me and Coulson, yeah," Maria says.
"What was it like?" Morse asks. "I've heard about half a dozen different versions of what happened."
"It was fun," Phil says, over the line. "The nineties. San Francisco. Experimental MDMA."
Fun isn't exactly the word Maria would use.
"Who actually started it?" Bobbi asks.
"That's classified."
Any further conversation is interrupted by a barrage of bullet-fire.
As far as attacks on buildings go, it’s fairly mild. They all have a good grasp of the layout, HYDRA hasn’t thought to blackout the lights, and Maria finds herself in good company of marksmanship. They’re all able to avoid any bullets, while HYDRA agent after HYDRA agent go down. By Maria’s count, there’s a good two dozen agents, none of them particularly skilled.
“Did anybody bring zipties?” she asks.
Triplett pulls a good dozen out of his pocket. “Always come prepared.”
It’s a slow, tedious process, slipping zipties onto each and every HYDRA member.
Phil joins them as they’re finishing up.
Maria knows to pick and chose her battles, and decides it’s not worth it to tell Phil that he should still be on the Bus. Instead she asks, "Where are we on any back-up for HYDRA?"
"I've been scanning the area," Phil says, not sounding entirely pleased, "and there were no signals going out, no sign of any incoming reinforcements. It's quiet."
Unnervingly quiet. Maria says. “How long until we can head back to the Playground?”
Melinda shakes her head. “I burned us hot to get here. The Bus needs to cool down and refuel. There’s enough power to keep us warm overnight, but not enough to get us in the air any worthwhile distance.”
“Hill, Coulson,” comes Morse’s voice from the hallway. “We’ve got a problem.”
When they join Morse and Triplett, they see HYDRA agents all writhing on the floor.
“What the hell–?” Phil starts.
“They’ve all got cyanide pills,” she says, voice tight. “It was hard enough to stop Bakshi, I don’t think we can stop all of them.”
Maria’s blood runs cold, and Phil is sharing a same look of horror to her side. He looks to the side, and his nostrils flare as he he takes a few deep breathes.
“I think we can leave them for the police, now,” Phil says, the humor flat.
“Want us to start pulling them outside?” Triplett asks.
“You can do it now, or you can wait until morning.”
Triplett and Morse exchange a look. “We can start,” he says.
“I’m heading back to the Bus,” Phil says.
It doesn’t matter how many times Maria has been seen a hallway full of dead bodies, it never gets easier. She follows, and falls in pace with Phil.
“It’s been a long day,” he says. He turns to look at her. “Try and get some sleep.”
“You too.”
-
Maria wakes up at six o’clock sharp, and can’t make herself fall back asleep. Instead, she slides out of her room, disembarks the Bus, and goes to examine Providence.
Knowing the specs of the base is not the same as walking it, and both previous visits have been short. She takes her time, walking around, memorizing the layout.
She draws short at one of the rooms.
There’s a lightbox. Framed in it is a dusk sky, black buildings against a pink and purple and orange sunset.
Against that are white letters, carved into the lightbox:
WARD
IS
HYDRA
"Fitz was the one who found it,” Triplett says, from behind her. “We had just gotten back from saving Coulson’s girl. Feeling pretty good, only to find out that May left, and Ward and Skye were gone. The rest of us didn’t know what to do. We were all pretty demoralized. Jemma says she and Fitz were thinking about making pancakes to cheer everyone up. He was walking by, on the way to find the pantry, noticed the different time of day on the picture. He found it just as Jemma found Eric's dead body."
Maria nods. She's heard the story from Phil, from Melinda. Not from Ward. A part of her wonders if she wants to know his side of everything. She turns to look at Triplett. "Did you know him?"
"Eric? Nah. I don’t think most agents knew he existed, let alone actually knew him."
"I meant Ward."
The lines of Triplett's face go tense. He shakes his head. "We met during the search for the Clairvoyant–" and here there's a hard line to his voice "–but before that, I had never met him. Honestly, I hated the guy before I ever laid eyes on him."
Maria raises an eyebrow.
"Garrett talked a lot about him," Triplett says. "Granted, I know a lot of SOs like to talk about the agents they trained, and I knew my old Academy SO would boast about me, but it started to get to me, you know? I take a shot, Grant had taken a better one, this one time in Iowa. I infiltrate a drug ring, there was this one time Grant had ingratiated himself within the cartel with a funny story he had learned from Garrett. Then I met him, he was a good fighter, and seemed like a good guy.”
Maria nods.
Triplett shrugs. "Course, finding out that he was HYDRA, there wasn't a lot to be done afterwards. You don't come back from something like that."
"You don't think so?"
He goes quiet for a long minute. "My granddad fought all throughout World War II. Nazis, HYDRA, same thing. And it's hard, knowing all he suffered, and seeing people still… it makes it seem like he fought for nothing. That everything was for nothing. It doesn't matter what HYDRA agents try to ask for forgiveness, they're not going to get it."
By Maria’s estimation, a quarter of SHIELD agents were actually HYDRA. "Have any of them asked for it besides Ward?"
"Not that I know of," Triplett says. “But it doesn’t matter. Ward never really asked for forgiveness. Only tried to justify his actions. And yeah, Garrett talked about what went on behind the scenes. But there a lot of people that suffer that kind of abuse, and not all of them went and turned into a Nazi."
“Going off about Ward again?” comes Morse’s voice. “Ah.”
They all stand in silence for a few moments.
“Coulson wanted to see you,” Morse says, quietly.
Triplett turns and walks off without a word.
Maria keeps staring at the lightbox. WARD IS HYDRA. He defended, himself, saying that he was not HYDRA, that he was only loyal to Garrett. But there’s a saying about actions and words.
“It’s different,” Morse says. “Not being there for it. I know what he did, I know he betrayed SHIELD, betrayed this team. But I wasn’t on this team at the time, I didn’t feel the betrayal. Not with Ward, at least.”
Maria remembers their encounter on the airfield. Him tetchy and condescending, Maria stalling for him. She thought that she wanted nothing more than to punch him in the teeth for the eye candy comment. With him in her girlfriend’s apartment, and then her going to meet him, there were matters of greater urgency than following up on that desire, but it's rekindled now.
here’s part of her that wants to follow up on that.
She sighs.
“Yeah,” Morse agrees.
A few more moments of silence pass.
“Coulson’s making breakfast,” Morse adds.
-
Breakfast is a quiet, somber affair. Neither Phil, Melinda or Triplett seem particular at ease in the kitchen, and Maria doesn’t feel inclined to ask why not. The tension nags at the back of Maria’s mind, as well as a dozen other things about the base.
It’s not until Phil is collecting the plates does Maria ask, “Why come to Providence?”
They all turn to look to her.
“The Lie Detector was high-security, but HYDRA went after enough high-security scientists. They couldn’t hack it from here, but they could recreate their own. So why come here?”
“Because,” Phil says, a look of dawning realization on his face, “they knew we would come back for it.”
Voice hard, Maria orders, “Everyone search the base. Now.”
Triplett finds the first explosive.
It’s nothing Maria can identify, nor anyone else. While Triplett and Morse brainstorm possible compounds it could be, Maria makes a video call to Kyota.
Kyota doesn’t look exactly thrilled to see her, but before she can comment, Maria turns the phone to focus on the explosive, and she asks, "Do you know what this is?"
“Where are you?” Kyota asks, voice sharp.
“SHIELD base in Canada,” Maria replies. “HYDRA went after it, we came to get it back.”
“Is there any sort of detonation?” Kyota asks.
“Not that I see, no,” Maria says. “What is it?”
"That's octanitrocubane," Kyota replies.
Maria doesn’t react.
“What’s the level of danger we’re in?” Phil asks.
“If it had been hooked up to a detonation, I would have told you to start running for your lives. It’s dangerous stuff.”
Trip has been examining it. “You sure? I’ve heard of the stuff – sure as hell packs a punch, but it’s been damn near impossible to synthesize.”
“I was more bio than chem. What’s so difficult about it?” Bobbi asks.
“It’s not overly difficult to synthesize, it’s just too damn expensive,” Kyota says. “But someone had the money, and they did it.”
“There’s a few ounces here. It were me, I’d have about ten of these around. There’s got to be at least a kilogram of it here,” Trip says.
"Well that's not exactly good news."
"How much went missing?" Maria asks.
"About two kilograms," Sayuri replies.
"That is very much not good news," Phil says. "Who wants it?"
"There are always people who want things that go boom. The only one, though, that's been vocal about obtaining large quantities of it, have been a domestic terrorist cell up in South Dakota. SHIELD took them down once a few years back, if I remember correctly."
"I remember them," Phil says, gaze flicking over to Maria.
"You went against them?"
"No, but I'm friends with one of the agents that did. Funny stories came from them."
Maria allows herself a moment to fondly reminisce. She still has the photo.
"Well, they're not so funny nowadays. They've kept themselves word of mouth, which is why no in communications has been able to catch them."
“When can we head to South Dakota?" Maria asks, looking to Melinda.
Melinda shakes her head. "I burned us extra hot on our way up here. Combined with keeping the power on so we didn't freeze last night, it needs time to cool down, fully refuel. It should be a few more hours, and a two hour flight after that."
“Do we have any agents in South Dakota?” Maria asks, turning to Phil.
“Maybe one or two. I’ll make some calls, see who I can get to come canvass the area, so there’ll be less legwork when we arrive. And I’m going to see if I can get an agent or two from the Playground to escort Simmons out. If there is octanitrocubane, she’ll be the best bet for safely containing it.” Phil looks around. “Anyone else know anyone in the area?”
“One or two,” Maria replies, turning and heading out of the room. When she’s far out of earshot, she makes the call.
Two rings, then, "This is Ward."
"Where are you?" Maria asks. "And don't be a smartass, if at all possible."
He makes a noise on the other end. "Outside Renner. Just a few miles north of Sioux Falls."
"Mission status report."
“Still need to amass the right connections, but things are going well, more or less. What time frame do you need from? Is this a spot inspection or do you need anything?”
“All your updates on the case.”
“Why?”
“We’re following up. HYDRA got their hands on some of the stuff. They had a kilo.”
“Which means there’s a kilo missing. I’ll do what I can to speed up the investigation.”
“I’ll call you when we land in Sioux Falls.”
“I’ll talk to you then,” Ward says, before he hangs up.
Until then, it’s a waiting game.
-
“They had two headquarters,” Ward explains over the phone, while Maria watches Melinda and Triplett back SUVs out of the Bus. “One in southern Sioux Falls, and the one up in Renner. I just got back from the Sioux Falls base. HYDRA’s killed everyone in the group, and there’s nothing else there. I’m heading back up the warehouse they have in Renner.”
“Don’t approach them,” Maria tells him. “SHIELD is heading there. This will work better with numbers. Get close to the area, but do not make contact.”
“Understood.”
Maria hangs up on him.
“I just got word in from an ex-SHIELD agent,” Phil says. “There are two areas they could be. Sioux Falls and a town a further up. According to the agent, it’s most likely they’re storing the octanitrocubane in the Sioux Falls base, and the town up north has more of their numbers. I want us to split our numbers, half going to one location, the other half to another.”
There is absolutely no way Maria can say that the Sioux Falls base would be a bust. Not without a lot of questions to avoid, and suspicion being raised, and questions becoming more and more insistent… there are battles not worth fighting. She listens as Phil orders Triplett and Morse to pick up Simmons and go neutralize the explosives, while he, Maria, and Melinda go to the Renner location.
As far as plans go, it’s not necessarily bad, and if Maria has to go against HYDRA, she’s with her two best options out of the group.
Still, as they approach the warehouse – dark, and more than a little bit suspect – Maria starts to have her doubts.
And then things go dark.
-
Maria comes to slowly. She groans, and looks to her side. Phil is next to her, and Melinda behind him. They’re all tied to chairs, and Maria guesses they’re both as groggy as she feels. “How long have we been out?” Maria asks.
“Ten minutes, I’d say,” Melinda replies.
Good, Maria thinks.
“Phil, you okay?” Melinda asks.
Phil gives out a slight groan as he fully comes to. “Mostly,” he says. “Either of you know where we are?”
“The warehouse, I think,” Maria says.
“And do you know what happened to us?”
“Not in exact detail.”
A new voice says, “Perhaps I can help you with that.”
The newcomer steps into the light. It’s a HYDRA agent – not familiar to Maria, so probably one of their newer recruits.
Definitely one of their newer recruits, Maria thinks, as the agent starts monologuing.
She really hates the monologuing. She tunes out of it easily, instead focusing on counting the other agents (six), thinking up escape routes (few), and trying to get over the fog of unconsciousness (well-practiced).
"SHIELD knows nothing of what has happened here," the man concludes, looking down between Maria, Phil and Melinda. He looks pleased with himself. "They will be sending you no back up. All electronic bugs on you have failed, we have shut down SHIELD communications. You are going to die here. And HYDRA will take over, rising from the ashes of your burial."
"A bit melodramatic, don't you think?" Phil quips.
Maria rolls her eyes, and suspects Melinda does the same, but she doesn't exactly mind Phil’s posturing. Every second is a second more Ward can get into a better position, and she won't argue with that.
She taps her foot, two long beats. Marco.
Faintly, she hears a short beat, two long, another short. Polo.
"Were it untrue, perhaps," the man admits. "Though even so, you would not last long enough to taunt me for it. You are going to die here, Melinda, Phil, Maria." The man stares at her last, his expression fading into one of irritation. "Why are you smiling, Deputy Director Hill?"
"Technically, the title has been changed to Commander," Phil notes. “I tried to get rid of most ranks when I became director. I think that’s a demotion, though.”
“Took you long enough to notice,” she says.
“Sorry, Maria–”
“Stop stalling!” the man snaps. He strides over to stand in front of Maria. Good. Ward would have kept her in his sight. The man has walked into the perfect line of fire. "Why are you smiling?!" he demands.
"Because in five minutes, I'm going to be walking out of this compound."
"SHIELD doesn't know where you are, none of your agents are here to save you!"
"He's not SHIELD," Maria tells him.
And with that, a gunshot goes off. The man falls to the side, dead.
Six more shots in rapid succession, each accompanied by a HYDRA agent falling to the ground.
"Impressive," Phil says, turning to look at her. The slight smile on his face turns strained. "Although your man seems to have missed an enemy agent."
Maria looks over her shoulder, sees Ward striding into the open of the barn house.
"You haven't told them?" Ward asks, as he flicks a knife open.
"There hasn't been much of a reason to," Maria tells him.
"Maria," Phil says, his voice strained, even as his smile stays fixed in place, "What haven't you told me?"
"Untie me," Maria tells Ward, before turning back to Phil. A moment later, she feels his hands on her wrists. It's a tactical move – keep hold of the hands of the person being untied, so that way once the rope is loose, they cannot immediately attack. Maria's hands have gone cold from the tightness of the ropes and the lack of circulation, and Ward's hands are warm against her skin. A moment later, the ropes fall away slack, his hands gone in the same instance. She pulls her hands in front of her, rubbing at the slight chafing of her wrists, standing. "Ward came to me after San Juan. He made an offer, and I took him up on it."
"And what offer was it? To ingratiate himself into your company, so he can turn around and betray you and stab you in the back?" Phil asks.
Ward stands behind Phil, hesitating. He's impacted by the words, but he hides it with a wry smile. "If you really want me to stab you in the back..." Ward says.
"I distinctly saying something about not causing Coulson any bodily harm," she tells Ward. To Phil, she says, "I don't care about him. He's not part of my team, he's not part of my agency anymore. I could shoot him right now and I wouldn't feel guilty about it. But he was one of our best specialists before HYDRA came into the light, and he's still one of the best specialists that exists. I'd rather have his loyalty than have HYDRA try and bring him in again."
"I'm not loyal to you," Ward corrects.
"And see, this is why this is a really bad idea for you to work with him," Phil says.
"He's honest," Hill says.
Phil snorts. "That's funny, Maria. Really funny. Because last we saw him–"
"Grow up, Phil," Maria interrupts. "He has his uses, such as saving our lives just now. I would rather not die, and there are some things that SHIELD can't do. He has his uses, and so far, you haven't objected to the help he's been to you."
"The help he's..." Phil starts, before it clicks. "L.A."
Maria nods. "He's a free agent, and I'd rather have him acting in alliance with us. Or me, if you don't want anything to do with it."
"I would rather lock him up," Phil says.
"I wouldn't've guessed," Maria says, dryly. Still, she turns to Ward. "Untie them."
“Honestly, I’m still recovering from the last round of bullet wounds I got, and I’m not entirely certain May isn’t going to try and kill me.”
“She’s not going to try and kill you.”
“Not entirely certain of that,” Melinda says, coolly.
“Lengjing xialia,” Maria tells her. “Ward, untie them, now.”
“What about me?” Phil asks.
“You’ve had your chance,” Ward murmurs, as he gets down on one knee. She can tell the moment Ward takes his hands from Phil’s flinch.
“You found it?"
"Roughly one thousand and twelve grams of CNLW."
"You keeping any of it?"
"Why would I keep it?"
"That's not an answer."
"No, I didn't keep any of it. Why would I?"
"Fall back plan."
"That amount of explosive would not last well in any sort of drop box."
"Selling it?"
"Freddy's offered better money for its return to owner than anyone could get for selling it."
“Who made it?”
Ward moves onto cutting Melinda’s ropes. “I didn’t ask, and Freddy wouldn’t’ve told me even if I did.” As soon as her hands are free, he takes large step back. “And I’m not all that keen on burning that bridge.”
Maria nods.
He looks relieved. “HYDRA will be sending back up in. You want me to help you take them down?”
“Not unless you–”
There’s a gunshot.
Maria immediately draws her weapon, and whirls towards the source.
“Fuck,” Ward hisses.
Simmons is standing in the doorway, a gun held in shaking hands.
“Drop your weapon,” Maria says.
“Jemma,” Phil adds, softly.
“You okay?” Maria asks.
“I’ll live.”
Maria looks him up and down. Grazing shot to the arm. “Did you never teach her to aim?” she asks Phil.
“What’s he doing here?” Simmons asks, voice in a high shrill.
“Leaving,” Maria says. “I’ll contact you in twenty-four hours.”
Ward lets out a sigh of relief at the dismissal. “Sir, yes sir.” He leaves the back way.
“You’re letting him go?”
“Back up is on their way. We should head out,” Maria says.
It’s a quiet ride back to the Bus.
As she climbs up the stairs to the cabins, Maria counts down to the inevitable confrontation.
“So,” Morse asks, “what is this I’ve heard about Ward being brought back in?”
“He’s not been brought in,” Maria says. “But since San Juan, I’ve been using him as a private contractor.”
“Why?” Morse asks.
"He's a liar," Phil yells.
"Yes! He is!" Maria yells back. "He's a liar and a murderer and you know who else is a liar and a murderer? You. And you know who else? Me. That is our field, Phil. Dress it up however you want, but we're all a bunch of liars and murderers, and–"
"He betrayed us!"
"That is the field we signed up for, Phil. That's what we all knew we were going in for when we joined SHIELD. I'm not happy with Ward, I'm not going to defend his actions, he's fucked up plenty, but he is of use, and SHIELD doesn't have the numbers not to make use of that!"
"We have good agents left–"
"But there are not enough. You went all across Europe, where you should have been focusing on re-recruitment, but you didn't come back with a single agent! Blake’s retired, Kyota's in the private sector, 33 was taken by HYDRA and is god knows where now, we are down some of our best."
"And that's because of Ward!"
"Ward, and Garrett, and Rumlow, and Pierce, and the rest of HYDRA. Yes, at any goddamn point Ward could have told you, or Skye or May or anyone on the team, and I know you're upset that he didn't, but so could have any other agent. There's a lot of fuck ups that happened, and SHIELD needs to improve from that–"
"I'm trying, Maria, do you know what it's like running SHIELD?"
Maria’s getting tired of him asking that. "I was Fury's other hand, so yeah, I have an idea of what it's like," she says, scathingly. "I learned what it is to make the hard calls, something I don't think you know a thing about!"
"I am still learning to make hard calls," Phil admits, quietly. "But this isn't one I'm going to take. Let go of Ward."
"No."
"I'm ordering you–"
“I am still deputy director–”
“Commander.”
“–and I still have a vote on–”
"This is not a democracy, Maria!" Phil yells.
Maria pulls herself to her full height. She takes a step in closer. "You really going to make me order to drop Ward?" she asks, dropping her voice down.
His mouth tightens.
"Go ahead. I'd love to see what you can do. You couldn't order Ward to give any information, you don't delegate well, you're not going to be able to follow through on this. Because you know what? I'm not going to drop Ward. So you can monitor my calls, my emails, everything I do, try and intercept it, or you can turn your attention to where we really need it."
"And where do we really need it?"
"Rerecruitment. We need our numbers up. Our training facilities were lost in the HYDRA uprising, so we need to get our agents back. There's no way HYDRA could have taken them all, we have to have additional numbers somewhere, and we need to find them. It's just as important as taking down HYDRA."
"And how do you propose we do that? Either of those."
"You split SHIELD in half, and divide up the jobs. See who was friends with who, see who can convince the agents like Blake and Kyota back into SHIELD. And we need to go after HYDRA, each of the heads."
"We don't have any information–"
Maria pulls out one of the duplicate jump drives she made of Ward's information.
"–what's that?"
"Information. You couldn't get Ward to talk, but I did."
"We can't trust–"
"We can't trust Ward, but we can trust his information. I've already looked into as much as I can, to see if it checks out. You can have Morse double-check things if you want. But we have the information now. For the first time since HYDRA came out of the dark, we are a step ahead of them.”
Phil is still glaring at her.
Maria turns around to look at the assembled crowd. "Anyone else got anything they want to say?"
“Yeah, a bit,” Triplett says. His arms are crossed over his chest, and his expression is flinty. “I’m just trying to figure out a place to start.”
“Do you have any idea how many people Ward’s killed?” Simmons asks.
“That’s a good place to start,” Triplett mutters darkly.
“A rough estimate,” Maria replies. “Do you know how many agents Romanoff killed before she was brought into SHIELD?”
“Ward killed Victoria Hand and Eric Koenig and–”
“And Romanoff killed my SO. I wish I could claim moral superiority. SHIELD is better than HYDRA–”
“It doesn’t seem like it!” Triplett yells.
“How does using Ward drop us down to the level of mass-mind control and genocide?” Maria asks. “Listen, I don’t like him. Trust me, I knew more people who were killed in the uprising than any of you. I’m pissed that HYDRA got deep, that so many agents had to die. I am fucking furious about what happened. But we can’t dwell on it. We have to improve from it.”
“Not with Ward,” Simmons yells.
“What’s our other option? He’s been shot by Skye, he’s been shot by you, and Coulson sold him out to his older brother. I kick him to the curb, he is going to be angry, bitter, and resentful, and I don’t want to chance having HYDRA take him back in.”
Maria looks around. “Do any of you?”
Silence meets her.
With no replies, Maria goes off to her bunk.
Door shut behind her, she spends a few silent minute fuming, letting the adrenaline ebb out of her system. There’s only one thing that genuinely helps in times like this, and she pulls out her phone.
Rough day she texts Jordan.
A picture of yellow roses is the reply.
Maria smiles.
A minute later, it’s followed up by, Have a question, will ask later.
Which sounds faintly ominous, but she’s had too much work drama to deal with even the thought of personal life drama. She allows herself a few moments to stare the picture, before she starts shoving things back into the suitcase.
There’s a knock at her door.
Maria slides it open a fraction. Seeing Melinda, she slides it fully open.
"This is what Ward does," Melinda says.
“You aren’t going to change my mind.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
Maria sighs. "I don't want to talk about this."
"He gets under people's skins, makes himself valuable, makes it so you don't think to criticize him."
"I criticize him plenty."
Melinda sighs. "Just be careful, and be prepared. He could turn on you in an instant."
"He's not going to," Maria says. She mostly believes it.
“Phil told me to tell you that we’ll keep an eye on Ward so he doesn’t ambush you at Stark Industries."
SHIELD does not have the numbers to track a low-level threat.
And that, more than anything else, makes Maria’s decision. "I'm not going back to Stark Industries.”
Melinda frowns. "You're packing."
"So I can move to the Playground."