Chapter Text
It was a Thursday afternoon when the alarms went off and the “intruder alert” began to sound. When the tapes were later reviewed Hill would count a total of 150 men in head to toe gray combat gear come sweeping into SHIELD headquarters.
She flipped through the footage of the heavily staffed areas quickly. Those skirmishes got settled fast and without any major issues due to the large amount of armed agents. She was going through the footage for the medical floor when she saw a soldier in grey palm open a door, go through, and when his partner tried to follow he hit the ground.
The tech had already begun scrolling another area, but Hill stood up from her seat and said, “Go back. I want to see that hallway again.”
The tech nodded and Hill tapped the screen showing the fallen enemy soldier. “Zoom in.”
“Which part?” the tech asked.
“His eye,” Hill said.
The tech zoomed and the image moved in closer on the soldier, dead with his eye oozing blood from underneath a silver blade.
“What is that?” the tech asked. “A knife?”
“No,” Hill replied. “It’s a scalpel.” She sat back down. “Show me the med wing.
“Mind if I ask why, ma’am?” the tech asked.
“Cause that floor was only scientists and civilians,” Hill replied. “And that,” she said, tapping on the screen to where the soldier lay, “is not a civilian shot.”
Debriefing was a daily thing for the Avengers and any staff involved in some of their work. If they were in the city, than they were at SHIELD, nine am sharp, for a meeting. As Clint strode in, he spotted Natasha and Bruce in the room as well as Jane and Darcy. Seeing them, made Clint curious. As far as he knew, there wasn’t any work with Foster going on besides the bridge.
Greetings went around the room as he took his seat across the table from the physicist. Shortly afterwards Hill strode in with a folder in her hand. “Morning, everyone.” she greeted.
Clint and Natasha replied out of habit. Bruce and Jane were zoned out as they went over something on Jane’s tablet, and Darcy popped her gum.
Hill raised an eyebrow at Darcy, who popped her gum again and grinned. Hill dropped the brow and turned to the large monitor in the room. “As you are all no doubt aware, there was an incident yesterday where our perimeters for the building were breached and SHIELD was infiltrated by a group of heavily armed men.”
“Do we know who they were, ma’am?” Clint asked.
Hill shook her head. “At the moment, no. However, some of their gear looks like experimental Hammer tech from before his incarceration. So we’re looking into several options with that.”
Clint nodded and Natasha asked, “How’d they get in?”
Hill pulled out her clicker and the monitor split into several different sections, each showing different camera feeds. “From what we can tell, they infiltrated through the newly installed ductwork on the roof and through our recently repaired sewage lines underneath the building. “
“Repairs you went outside Stark’s contractors for,” Bruce commented from behind his tablet. Showing he wasn’t completely ignoring them.
Hill grimaced. “Yes. And believe me, we are going to be looking in to who approved that.” She pressed the clicker in her hand and the images changed again. “We had them detained within half an hour, Barton and Romanoff, your areas were about a third of that; but there was considerable damage throughout the more civilian areas. It will be fairly easy to repair, some projects will need to go on hold though. This includes the work on the Rainbow Bridge.” Hill looked at Jane. “Sorry, Doctor Foster.”
Jane sighed and nodded, it now making sense why she’d been asked to come to the meeting.
Hill continued on. “However, it’s obvious from their reactions that I don’t think some of the soldiers were expecting as much of a fight from some of the scientists that they got.”
Natasha smirked and Clint chuckled. Hill ignored them and said, “What’s most interesting for us in this incident is the med-bay.”
Hill clicked and the feed showed two soldiers going down a hall they recognized as the floor for one of the medical bays. The feed showed one soldier going through the door, the other following in his wake, only to fall back and hit the floor.
Hill froze the image there and Bruce squinted. “What’s that sticking out of his eye?” he asked.
Clint looked closer and saw something long, thin and silver jutting from the fallen soldier’s eye. “Is that a scalpel?” Natasha asked.
“Indeed it is,” Hill said. She clicked again and the feed of med bay itself appeared.
It showed Jane, Darcy, and one of the doctors. It showed the first soldier entering, and the doctor getting shot. Jane grabbed for the doctor, trying to stem the flow of blood as he fell to the floor. They watched as the soldier went towards them, Jane looking scared. Darcy froze for a moment and then reached a hand behind her, grabbed something off the table, and threw it swiftly. The soldier went down, a scalpel jutting out of his neck. Darcy didn’t wait before she reached behind herself again, flipped the scalpel in her hand for a better grip, and threw it towards the med bay entrance. This, the group realized, was the shot that felled the soldier in the hallway.
Hill clicked and the video paused, rewound itself to the point where the second blade left her hand, and paused again on Darcy. Her hand was outreached, the blade mid spin, her gaze calm as she watched it. Everyone turned to stare at Darcy in disbelief. Except Natasha, who actually looked kind of impressed.
She looked back at them and popped her gum. “What?”
“How…?”Jane asked. “Where did you learn that?”
Darcy shrugged. “Around, she said dismissively. “I learned as a kid. No big deal.”
“No big deal?” Jane asked incredulously.
Hill sat down across from Darcy. “We need you to tell us where you learned this, Miss Lewis. Despite what you may think, this skill of yours actually is a little bit of a big deal.”
“Because I threw a couple of scalpels?” Darcy asked, disbelief in her voice.
“No. It’s because you are privy to a lot of classified information as a civilian attached to Doctor Foster’s project. But if we learn that this skill was learned from a non-civilian outfit we can have all your clearance revoked and you can be incarcerated for failing to disclose non civilian status.”
“For throwing a scalpel?” Jane asked in disbelief.
“No,” Hill said. “For potentially being an enemy.”
Jane gulped and Darcy glared. Clint leaned forward in his seat. “That’s taking it a bit far, ma’am. Don’t you think?”
“Not unless Miss Lewis tells us where she learned this particular set of skills,” Hill replied.
Darcy glared at Hill. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I am not a threat.”
Hill shrugged. “Ridiculous or not, Miss Lewis, we need to know. Where did you learn?”
Darcy chewed on her lip as she thought about Hill’s threat. She glanced around the room, and everyone could tell she just wanted to snap at Hill and tell her to get lost.
“Darcy,” Jane pleaded. “Please tell her.”
“I don’t want to,” Darcy hissed. “This is something private. Just for me.”
“Private or not, Miss Lewis, I can’t have a potentially a dangerous civilian working alongside our operatives without proper clearance and background checks.”
“I did have a background check,” Darcy replied. “Coulson cleared me.”
“Ma’am,” Clint interrupted, trying to defend Darcy when she gave him a worried look. “This is getting excessive. And she’s right, Coulson ran her background before New York. He said she was clear. I took the report to HR myself.”
Hill ignored him and Darcy glared at her. “I’m not dangerous! I just threw some damn knives. I never wanted to learn to do it in the first place, and I know Clint sure as hell didn’t want to teach me!”