Skye's POV
"Where are we going?" Coulson demanded to know.
"I don't know! I didn't do it!" May stated.
"Drop the weapon!" Coulson instructed.
"Coulson –"
"Drop the damn weapon and kick it over to the stairs, May, now!" Coulson shouted.
I watched as May closed her eyes and seemed to sigh, but slowly lowered the gun to the floor and kicked it.
"Now back the hell up! Over there!" Coulson pointed over near me as I walked a little closer to May making sure to keep my gun trained on her the entire time as Coulson came down the stairs, picked up her gun and walked over to May.
"Talk. Tell us where you rerouted the plane," said Coulson.
"I didn't set this new course. I swear!" May replied.
"Don't lie to me!"
"Yeah, well, the plane just turned around, for God's sake!" Fitz chimed in from his spot in the lab.
"How is this happening, then?" I asked.
"H.Q. can override automated control of the avionics, take us anywhere they want. Let me check the instrument panel, and I'll be able to –"
"No way!" Fitz exclaimed.
"You're not going anywhere until you explain what –" Coulson started to say before May cut him off.
"It's not me!"
"Why did you have an encrypted hard line?" Coulson asked.
"And try to shoot me when we found it?" Fitz added, crossing his arms.
"Let's take a breath, huh?" May suggested.
Coulson stalked closer to May, anger filling his face as he pointed the gun higher to her face.
"Let's not!"
"It was a dedicated channel...to Director Fury. That's the truth," she said. My eyes widened in surprise.
"Director Fury? I haven't been able to get him on the line for weeks," Coulson said.
"You were reporting to him?" I asked.
"That's all I can tell you," May told us.
"Oh, just come out with it!" Fitz shouted.
"That's all you can tell us?!?" Coulson said, looking like he didn't believe it.
"I'm under orders! Fury will tell you."
"What? Was this an order?" Fitz pointed to the broken glass of the lab doors where the I.C.E.R. round hit. To shoot me in the bloody head?"
"Hold on. We're not headed to Fury anymore," Coulson said as he turned to stare at May.
"I don't know where we're headed. And I can't get Fury on the line because Fitz cut the line!" May cried out.
"Skye told me to!" Fitz argued back and I rolled my eyes.
"Someone was talking to The Clairvoyant, the real Clairvoyant," I defended myself.
"You were in the walls, Fitz. You want to explain why you were tampering with the plane's sat cable?" May asked instead. Hmm...she had a point.
"Sure, because that's relevant! Don't try and turn this around on me!" Fitz stuttered.
Coulson kept his gun pointed at May but turned and looked at Fitz.
"Fitz?" He said raising his brow.
Fitz glared at May for a moment before speaking.
"I was trying to speak to Simmons at The Hub," he said.
"And you needed an encrypted line? What's so secret that you –" Coulson started to ask before getting cut off once more.
"Well, you tell me! Simmons and I know you two have been whispering – Keeping things from us, about the drug that saved your lives. Simmons is just trying to figure out how the whole thing works!" Fitz cried out as he waved a finger at Coulson and I.
"Fitz. Who is she talking to?" May asked with a serious look on her face.
"Fitz, open the door," Coulson demanded as he walked over to the lab doors.
"No way, not until we sort this out. I'm not opening anything," he replied.
"Open the door," Coulson repeated. "We can't get anything sorted until you open the damn door!" Coulson looked over at me before glancing at me. "Skye, get your laptop hooked up to our system. See if you can pull up any Shield communications. I want to know where this plane is headed and why."
"Coulson -" May started to say, lifting a hand pleadingly. He just responded by lifting his gun higher.
"You stay put!" He told her.
I walked over to the lab doors, lowered my gun and lifted my arms to Fitz questioning if he was going to open the door. He does so, looking like he'd rather have done anything else, and I entered. Coulson turned his head to look at Fitz.
"Now tell me who Simmons is talking to. Cause if it isn't someone we trust she's in serious danger."
Finally Fitz sighed and let Coulson and May into the lab as well. I went and grabbed my laptop.
"What do you mean, "noise"?" Coulson asked me as I told him my findings.
"I mean literally noise, across every Shield communication channel. Some sort of blanket signal."
"Encoded data, maybe?" Fitz suggested.
"I think so," I replied.
"You want to fill us in? We root you out, a mole, suddenly our plane shuts down, our communications jammed," Coulson said turning to look at May.
"I don't know what's happening. I wish I did. You have to believe me," May pleaded.
"No, I don't," Coulson told her.
Suddenly through the static I can hear a voice. Once it got through we all recognized the voice.
"Do you read? Do you read 6-1-6?" It was Garret.
"Where's that coming from?" Fitz asked.
I hit a few keys on my laptop.
"Close," I told everyone.
"Enemy aircraft, on my tail. Over," Garret's voice said.
"Garrett?" Coulson said in confusion.
"Coulson, I'm under attack. Drones. Repeat, Shield drones are on my ass. We're not getting along. Do you copy?" I frowned this didn't sound good.
"Copy!" Coulson replied. "Garrett, what's happening? We've lost control of our aircraft," Coulson told Garret.
"Hell if I know," he answered. "Tell me you got guns on that thing. I'm coming to you."
I saw Coulson look down for a moment then up at May – then he fired his gun. May let out a groan when the bullet hit her shoulder and sent her down to the ground. Fitz and I stared at Coulson with large eyes but said nothing.
"Fitz, can you manually wire the guns to weapons control, bypass our system?" Coulson asked him.
"If I have cables long enough, yeah."
"Skye, decode the signal. We need to get ahead of this. I don't want any more surprises today."
I bent over my laptop getting to work as Fitz hurried to find cables and Coulson dragged May out of the room; my guess to the holding cell where Ward was.
*****
"It's a simple message repeated. Semantic encoding. I needed to find the mnemonic key, it should only take me a minute more to decipher," I told Fitz and Coulson as they joined me later in the command center. As I was speaking I noticed Garrett walk down the spiral staircase.
"Can I ask the obvious question: What the hell?!?" He exclaimed as he entered the room with us.
"We don't know. We don't even know where our plane is headed," Coulson told Garret.
"Oh, I saw your trajectory. You're being tractor-beamed straight to The Hub. Those drones were launched out of there for sure."
"Victoria Hand," Coulson said.
"Hand? Can't be," Fitz said disbelievingly.
"Can't be what, now?" Garret asked confused.
"The Clairvoyant," I told him.
"I thought Ward capped that guy," he replied. Once again something about his response seemed off but for the life of me I couldn't figure it out.
"I don't believe the man Ward killed was The Clairvoyant. I think he was an unwitting decoy meant to end our investigation," Coulson explained.
"That's a lot of trouble to go through for a red herring, don't you think?" Garret pointed out.
"Because The Clairvoyant is a Shield agent," Coulson told him. "Using high-level clearance to stay ahead of us, make it seem like she's got psychic abilities."
"She"? You think Victoria Hand's The Clairvoyant?" Coulson lifted an eyebrow and nodded as Garrett scoffed. "I don't mean to pee in the punchbowl, but that doesn't make a lot of sense. I was stationed with Vic in Lisbon. She's a hard-ass and a buzzkill at parties, I grant you, but do you really think she's capable of that?"
"Excuse me, didn't she just try to blow you out of the sky?" Coulson pointed out.
"Don't get me wrong, she's definitely gone nuts, but her actions prove she's not The Clairvoyant, right? I mean, if she's been hiding in plain sight all this time...why reveal herself now?"
I tuned them out my eyes glued to the monitor.
"Guys!" I said, getting everyone's attention. The decryption I had been running had hit jackpot, a message appeared on the monitor: OUT OF THE SHADOWS INTO THE LIGHT.
"Out of the shadows, into the light," Coulson repeated as Fitz walked over to stand by me. My eyes widened in shock at the next word that popped up on the screen. HYDRA.
"Well, I'll be," Garret said.
"I thought Hydra was defeated after World War II," Fitz said.
"It was. Shield was founded in the wake of that victory," Coulson told him.
"And now they're back?" Fitz asked. I tried not to shudder as I arrived to hold off Hydra flashbacks. I could see Coulson looking over at me with a worried look and I sent him a small smile.
"Hydra always comes back," I commented.
"Cut off the head, two more will take its place," Coulson added.
"Is it a head? I thought it was a limb," Garret said looking confused.
"No, no, no. "Cut off a head," Fitz replied.
"Cut off a limb," Garret argued back.
"It's a head," Coulson corrected.
"But it was sent from a Shield source. It's got to be some sort of activation signal, to Hydra members within Shield," I said slowly. Not liking this one but. Seriously, day 1 as a Shield Agent could not be going any worse!
"Hand must be one of them," Coulson said.
"Okay, stop. Stop. W-what does that mean? In Shield," Fitz said worriedly.
"Targeting Level 8 agents, seizing power. Wonder how deep it goes," Garret said.
"The signal is everywhere. Deep," I told everyone.
"You know what this means?" Coulson asked.
"Yeah. We're screwed," Garret answered. I wholeheartedly agreed with his statement.
"We can't change course, and we have no idea what's waiting for us at The Hub," Coulson commented.
"I say we blow a hole in the side of this puppy and parachute out. Live to fight another day," Garret suggested.
"We can't," Coulson said as I looked over at Fitz and saw him looking at the ground as he fretted over Jemma.
"It's a cherry ride, I'll give you that, but let's not just hand over the keys," Garret said.
"Simmons is at The Hub. We have to save her!" Fitz argued. Coulson and I nodded in agreement.
"Oh, crap, yeah. Trip's there, too. I don't mind saying I don't like the odds on this one. We should let your specialists out of their cage. We can use every weapon we can get," said Garret.
"We've got to save her!" I repeated, Jemma would not do well under Hydra. Sure I constantly worried about her and her obsession over analyzing my blood etc but at the end of the day she was a good person and Hydra would chew her up and spit her out.
"So, we'll fly in there, face the music...even if it is the Hydra theme song," Coulson stated.
*****
I glanced over at Ward as he walked up to where Garrett, Fitz and I stood just outside the cockpit where Coulson was getting May to try and contact Fury.
"Sir, what is going on?" Ward asked.
"A whole lot," his former SO told him.
"Who is shooting at us?"
"Come here, let me catch you up." I watched as Garret too him by the arm and lead him away from Fitz and I but something about the way they were glancing at each other looked suspicious so I discretely tucked my hair behind my ear and used my super hearing to listen in.
"Apparently, Agent Hand is The Clairvoyant, so chew on that first," I heard Garret telling him.
I then hear a man pick up the phone from inside the cockpit and tell May that Fury was dead. Shit this couldn't be good. And then all hell broke loose as bullets started flying.
I squealed in surprise as Ward tackled me to the ground. I glared up at him - I was perfectly capable of finding cover on my own. But suddenly his hand was wrapping around my waist and I got very distracted.
I watched on with worry as Coulson snuck May out of the cockpit - it looked like she had been hit in the arm. Fit, Garret, award and I all followed.
Fitz and I broke off though and while Fitz worked on opening the lock to one of the lockers I reached up and took down a large bag.
Skye and Fitz break off from the rest and Fitz goes to a locker and works on a lock as Skye takes down a large bag. Ward and Garrett are just outside the door and Ward looks at him.
"Is there anything on this plane you don't want them to get their hands on?" I heard Garret asking as he walked into the room. I glanced over to see Ward staring at me. I raised my brows at him confused by the look he was giving me but shrugged it off. Now was not the time to worry about what may or may not be happening between Ward and I. Though as I looked over at him I couldn't help but notice how handsome he looked. I mean no where near as sexy as Steve or Clint, even Tony but he was definitely not bad on the eyes.
He turns and looks back at Ward. Ward lifts his eyebrows and nods at Skye.