Redback Widow IV I Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [15]

The Good Samaritan

"Agents down," I reported as we swarmed the room. I knelt next to one of the bodies, checking for a pulse.

Nothing.

My lips formed themselves into a thin line as I gently closed the agent's eyes.

"Lucy Bauer was here, but she's long gone," May reported.

"Wait. Uh, Agent May, can you go back and give me another look at where the cable meets the chamber?" Fitz requested. 

"Sure," May responded as I took the badges off the dead agents. 

"Yeah, okay, that's--that's--that's definitely different from before. Uh, there's a number of pieces missing. She must've taken them," Fitz said.

"She already has the book, the power cells...my guess is she's trying to replicate the experiment and reverse the process. Un-ghost herself," Coulson speculated, coming onto comms.

"Is that why she took Eli Morrow?" May asked.

"He's part of her original dream team. Maybe she needs him to do something she can't,"

"What? Show her facing without scaring children?" I joked.

"The Momentum facilities are controlled by us now, so she needs a new place to work," Fitz realized.

"We need to find her. Before someone else gets hurt,"

-

"So, what is different now? Why does Lucy Bauer think that she can succeed this time?" Fitz speculated.

"She has the book," May said.

"Yeah, but she had it back then, too. Didn't stop her from getting ghost-toasted. There must be something--something new," Fitz countered.

"Did you get our inventory from Momentum Labs?" she asked.

"Yep. I'm looking at it just now. It seems like they took everything crucial, apart from the main--" a door slid open in the background. "Hey. Hey! What the hell?!" he shouted.

"Director's orders," an agent replied.

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, in that case, you should check under the microscope and in the fridge, 'cause those Inhumans can be tricky bastards. Yeah, you can tell the Director this is just one giant snark hunt. That's British for a bloody waste of time," the door hissed closed.

"Feel better?" May asked.

"Nope. Not in the least. 'Cause I don't like the way they're hunting down Daisy like an animal. I don't trust the new Director, and if Simmons doesn't call me back soon, I swear, I'm gonna..."

"You're worried about her safety or are you two going through something?" May asked.

"Not sure. Maybe both. Power. Yeah. It's power. Momentum couldn't produce enough energy at their lab, so she needs a place with more power. Start looking into it,"

-

"They're definitely here," Coulson said as we mounted the Quinjet, meeting up with the other part of our team. "The plant started producing energy an hour ago."

"The stats are high and very unstable. Turbines can blow and destroy the whole building, or the dam could break and wipe out everything in its path," Mack reported.

"So, no pressure,"  Coulson added.

"What are we waiting for?" Reyes asked.

"Remind me why he's here after what he did to Mace," May said.

"Mr. Reyes wants the safe return of his uncle as much as we want the power plant shut down," Coulson said.

"And I'm gonna stop that lady the way I stopped the other ghosts," Reyes said.

"And who's gonna stop you?" May countered.

"Hey, guys? I've got some big, fat, disappointing news. I can't hack in and shut down the plant's operating system from here," Daisy said over comms.

"Well, you're out of practice. Too much punching, not enough hacking," Fitz claimed.

"Very funny. No, I can't hack in because their system isn't on a network. It predates the Internet. Coulson, how did anything ever get done back in the old-timey days?" Daisy said.

"I ask myself that all the time," Coulson joked.

"Let's just hope we don't have to shove more filing cabinets out of windows," I said, referencing that time long ago when we did just that.

"Okay, you heard Daisy--we're gonna have to do this from the inside. Fitz and Mack are the engineers. Focus on shutting the power plant down. Asya, you're with them for backup and an extra pair of hands. We'll rescue Eli Morrow," Coulson said.

"Got it," Reyes said.

"Okay then,"

-

"Oh, this is bad, very bad," Fitz panicked.

"Why won't this power down? It's not like we're idiots. I've build boards like this before. I understand what's supposed to happen," Mack objected.

"Well, maybe they did something to it with that stupid book," I suggested.

"What? Like, put a spell on it?" Mack questioned.

"No, no, of course not," Fitz claimed.

"I dunno, Fitz. At this point, feels like anything is possible," I pointed out.

"No, the book just showed them a different way to power it. I mean, think about it--their power cells are full of quantum tech that we might never understand," Fitz said.

"What--what about one of those, uh--those perpetual EMPs from L.A.? Maybe it would disrupt all of this without blowing us to Kingdom Come," Mack suggested.

"Yeah, let's do it," Fitz agreed.

"Alright, there's one on the Zephyr. I'll have Daisy send it down in the Containment Module. Daisy? You copy? Coulson? Alright, hold down the fort. I'll be right back,"

-

 Alarms started blaring around us, the equipment going haywire. "Oh, no," Fitz breathed. I tried to grab Fitz, protect him from the blast, but I was too slow.