Temper in Red *Editing*

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

"Eyewitnesses claim the assailant smashed through several walls before killing Colombia's most notorious drug lord, Alejandro Castillo, aka El Dogo." Skye, Leo, Jemma, Antoine, and I sat in Coulson's motel room, watching the news. "Speculation continues as to whether this superhuman assassination was carried out by a man, monster, or machine."

"The correct answer is "D," all of the above." Leo muttered, turning away from the tv.

"What the hell is Deathlok doing in Bogota?" Jemma asked. "And why would he kill a drug lord with known ties to HYDRA?"

"Well, if they really are in Colombia, then Garrett and our hijacked plane aren't even in American airspace." Skye shook her head. "I have to expand our search."

"Guys," Coulson stuck his head in from the second room. "You want to come in here for a minute?"

We all got up and made our way into the other room where Coulson and May had been working most the night. Apparently May had been out looking for answers while the rest of us were dealing with Ward.

"This is just about everything we've been dealing with. And this connects them all." Coulson showed us the whiteboard that had various names in it. "Cybertek built Deathlok, shipped items to Quinn, who was working for the Clairvoyant, who turned out to be Garrett, who planted Ward on our bus because he wanted to know why I didn't stay dead...Should have drawn another chart for this part."

"No, I get it-" Leo nodded in understanding.

"Garrett's been developing centipede serum all this time." Jemma pieced together.

"Yes. And he wants GH-325 as its final ingredient-" Coulson told us.

"A way to stabilize and regenerate his centipede soldiers." Jemma finished for him.

"And it's why Ward came back for the hard drive." May told us. "It had all of your research about Coulson and Skye. It's all on there."

"But that's not the only thing on there." Couslon assured us. "Skye left them a little surprise."

"A trojan horse." Skye started to explain to all of us. "It's been slowly mapping every system they've uploaded it to."

"Well, that's brilliant." Leo smiled. "You can wake it up and take over their systems."

"Well done, Skye." Jemma told her.

"Yeah, thanks." Skye grinned, proud of herself. "Except it doesn't work that way because I didn't have enough time to build it, so we need to plug this into one of their computers to activate it." She pulled out a flash drive. "Spoiler alert -- we can't seem to find one."

"I think we have." May informed us. "Garrett and Cybertek have been working together for years. If it's on Garrett's system,"

"It's on Cybertek's." I finished, seeing where she was going.

"Which is why we're gonna go into one of their offices." May nodded.

"We have no authority to do this. We're no longer SHIELD agents." Coulson warned all of us. "We're-"

"We're vigilantes." Leo cut in.

"I was gonna say, "Doing this because it's the right thing to do," but yeah." Coulson shook his head. "So, if you're with me, I'm gonna finish what I started. I'll be damned if I'm gonna let Garrett and Ward get away with murder. And I want my plane back."

〰〰〰

"And you are now Rebecca Sutpin, twenty-four years old and an organ donor." Skye showed me my new identity on her laptop screen.