So Long

Chapter 5: Wrong!

"Ward, can you still hear me?" Skye all but shouted as she kept clutching her ear piece, desperate to keep the radio connection to her partner up while he was on his way to the meeting with Dr. O'Leary. The video from the satellite feed on the laptop in front of her was bright and clear, but for some reason the radio signal kept getting weaker and weaker despite her best efforts to fix it.

"Yes, but you're breaking off a lot," the specialist replied in an annoyed tone. "What the hell is going on, Skye? You said the interferences weren't going to be a problem."

The young hacker rolled her eyes as she could imagine the sour look on Ward's face, but decided not to say anything about it. He was right for once, after all.

"I know that I said that and I meant it. I don't know what's happening here. I've been trying to send the signal through another channel, I even used the satellite connection to amplify the signal strength, but nothing seems to be working. It's like something is­—"

A loud frequency spike cut her off abruptly, causing Skye to yank her earpiece out with a startled yelp. As she moved to replace it, she quickly had to realise that the connection was dead. The hacker sighed in defeat. She was just about to reach for her cell phone to contact Ward this way, when her eyes fell once more on the readings she had pulled up on the laptop screen and an inspiration suddenly hit her.

"Wait, that's not coming from the TV tower. What is that?" she mumbled to herself.

Her phone immediately forgotten, Skye went back to studying the numbers and graphs on her laptop, completely focused. So focused in fact that she didn't even notice the door to the hotel room open noiselessly and two men in dark masks enter.

One of them was holding a small cylindrical device that he aimed at the young woman. As he pushed a button, Skye's tracking bracelet opened with a soft click and fell from her wrist onto the table.

"Whoa," the hacker exclaimed, startled by the seemingly random occurrence, as she hadn't realised what was happening yet. A second later, however, she noticed the soft footsteps coming from the door and sprung up, flipping her chair over in the process. As Skye spun around to face the intruders, her expression was panicked.

"Who the hell—" she started, but didn't even get to finish the question, as one of the men lunged at her, a taser in hand. Skye felt the pain at her neck and vaguely realised as she collapsed sideways against the edge of the table, but after that the world around her went dark.

                                                                                             

Skye was snapped out of the darkness as the door in front of her opened once again. She blinked wearily into the bright light shining in her face as she tried to move, her joints and muscles stiff from the cold and her restraint position. At least a few hours had passed since the last time her kidnapper had paid her a visit. After a while she had drifted off into an uneasy sleep, filled with even uneasier dreams, jumping awake every time she thought she'd heard a noise in the distance.

Her heart sped up as the now familiar silhouette of the man who kept her prisoner blocked out the light once more and stepped in front of her. Yet Skye was determined not to let her fear show and so she faced him defiantly.

"Listen, I don't know who you are, or who you're working for, but I can tell you right now that I'm not going to answer your questions and betray SHIELD and my friends. Because no matter what they might be thinking of me right now, I'm not a traitor."

"Really?" the man asked with a small chuckle. "Because I've heard that differently. You've betrayed everything your hacker friends at the Rising Tide stand for by working with SHIELD, and then you've betrayed your friends there by working with the Rising Tide again. That's quite an accomplishment in such a short time. But I guess you're just a complicated woman, right, Skye?"