[2] An Executioner's Requiem | Leo Fitz

12

"It's a hacker's worst nightmare," Skye sighed, "everlasting gobstopper of firewalls."

"It wants us to know. I can feel it," Coulson whispered. Skye gave Nina a confused look but the killer just shrugged and reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels, debating becoming a 3 am drinker like Stark used to be.

"Then it...should tell us," Skye said, standing beside him, "because I have been trying to match the writing to constellation maps, navigational charts, genome diagrams. And if it's a map, it's a map to nowhere."

"Maps to Nowhere is a good book," Nina muttered, not insulted that neither Skye nor Coulson reacted to her comment.

"I need you to stick with it," Coulson told the hacker, "the writing's coming more and more frequently. Used to be two, three times a month. Then once a week. Now it's every day, every night. I can't turn it off."

"How do you function?" Skye asked worried, "when do you sleep?"

"He doesn't," Nina cut in, "that's his 6th coffee of the morning and he'll have one every hour on the hour to get through the day. It's honestly a little concerning."

"That's why we need answers," Coulson said, allowing the shock of Nina's words to wash off Skye's face.

"And what if we don't find them?" she asked, resulting in Coulson giving her a helpless look. Nina felt for Coulson at that moment because where she wasn't fighting urges caused by alien blood, she understood what it was like to be held hostage by your mind.

"Anything else?" the director asked her, turning away to focus on the wall.

"When does May get back?" while Skye asked her question, Nina noticed the broken blade resting on Coulson's desk. She quickly pulled out a knife from under her top and held it in front of Coulson's face.

He looked at it, surprised that Nina was giving him one of her sacred weapons and at the fact that she remained armed even when she was meant to be asleep.

He accepted it with a smile, "not until we find Ward."

Skye watched Coulson go back to carving with a worried expression while Nina watched with equal amounts of amazement and concern, ignoring the annoyance in her stomach at the fact that Ward had escaped.

He was the last person who deserved to be alive let alone a free man.

*

3 YEARS AGO

SOMEWHERE IN CAMBODIA

Nina walked through the jet, a miniature Bus designed by Stark, with her hands in her pocket and one earbud tucked in her ear. She honestly had no idea what was playing but she never usually did when she let Clint make her a playlist. She headed to the cockpit, ignoring her rowdy team as she knocked and entered the room.

"Can I get an ETA?" she asked from behind the pilot.

"About 7 minutes," they answered and Nina nodded. The man behind the wheel was someone who'd fly Nina and her team out on a regular. He was a level 3 agent with deep brown hair, a bright smile and an annoying zeal to improve.

He hadn't been trained as a pilot and he'd only become her team's pilot because Tony had made the jet ridiculously easy to fly and Sara didn't hate him. The latter was really important to Nina because Sara hated most people.

"The kids should be ready by then," Nina nodded. She knew it was ironic to refer to her teammates as kids considering she was the youngest, but she did anyway, "we'll camp out tonight, come get us tomorrow at sunrise."