Chapter Forty-Three

Grant and I didn't get anywhere in the next several weeks, which sucked, but he and Skye didn't get anywhere either, which was a relief. Although, truthfully, I think all the relationship stuff came to a full-stop because of all the trauma we had to deal with.

First, we were tasked with helping a girl who thought she was being haunted by demons. It was like living in a scary movie. Grant literally had bruises on his arms from where I grabbed him when I got scared.

Next, on arguably one of our worst missions, Mike Peterson got killed and Coulson got taken hostage. We managed to get Coulson back, but not before he was tortured, and Mike Peterson's son was still without a father. That was a horrible mission. It was our first loss resulting in a team member dying, and it wasn't easy to deal with.

We took a trip down memory lane to go to SciTech, one of the other SHIELD academies. That visit had started out well enough (FitzSimmons were basically rockstars), but that one ended badly, too. Two students had made a device and tried to sell it to Ian Quinn, literally one of the most despicable people SHIELD has ever dealt with, and one of the students ended up dead.

By the time we'd gotten through that mess, everyone was ready for a win. And everyone was gunning for Ian Quinn.

I was feeling a little nervous though. Bad things usually came in threes.

****************

"Is it me, or do we have increasingly less downtime?" I asked, plopping myself down on the couch next to Grant. He was reading another one of the books Garrett had given him, and I'd decided to join him with one of the books on my TBR.

"No, we definitely have less free time," he agreed, looking up from his book.

"Do we get vacation time? Like now that we're on the team instead of working as our own team, is that still a thing?"

"I don't know... You can ask Coulson," he suggested.

"Eh, that's okay. I don't know what I'd do with more free time anyway."

"Guys," said Skye, coming over to Grant and I, "Meet in the Control Center ASAP, we've got a lead on Quinn."

Grant and I looked at each other.

"There goes that free time," he said, standing and offering me a hand.

"Oh well," I sighed, taking his hand and letting him pull me up, "It was nice while it lasted."

****************

The lead turned out to be a Cybertek train, and we had good reason to believe it would lead us right to Ian Quinn. We would have to go deep undercover for this one.

May and Grant were coming in as a couple, then May would go outside on the train and Grant would become a conductor. Fitz and Skye were pretending to be a couple (which was HILARIOUS, by the way. I wish you could've heard Fitz's American accent, it was bizarre). Coulson and Simmons were going to be a father and daughter, and I'll tell you right now, Simmons' performance was freaking AMAZING.

Now, I wasn't partnered up with anyone, so my character had a complex backstory that I probably wouldn't get to use. I was a wayward child who was being shipped home to her parents, and I was not happy about it. I was going to be angry and unfriendly towards everyone, which left me free to leave the car without anyone missing me.

I plopped down next to the window, pulling my hood up as far as it would go and scowling at anybody who looked at me. I pretended to listen to music and stared out the window with exaggerated anger.

Fitz and Skye were in the baggage car managing comms, and I was to join them once we got underway. Until then, I wasn't supposed to even look at the other passengers, except maybe to glare at them.

Grant came down the length of the car and past me, and he actually had to trip to hide a laugh when he saw me.

"This is opposite ville for you, isn't it Slater," he muttered into the comms. I could still hear the laughter in his voice.

"Very funny," I grumbled into my sweatshirt, turning away from the aisle so it wouldn't look like I was talking to myself.

"Seriously," he said, talking normally now. He and May must've made it away from the general public. "I don't think I've ever seen you go without smiling for more than a few minutes. How are you going to cope?"

"By channeling every urge to smile into stored energy that I will use to punch you in the arm when this is over."

I heard Grant laugh, but before he could continue tormenting me, I got the message from Fitz and Skye that it was time for me to come join them. We were going to run the op, and I was also there to keep the two of them safe, since they were in the bottom three for field training and experience on our team.

I got up and pushed past a few people standing in the aisle, making sure that everyone in the compartment would be happy to see me go.

I got to the compartment just as some lady announced the scenery over the train's PA system. Perfect timing. Right as we passed the beautiful scenery, I was entering a compartment with no view (sarcasm, in case you missed it).

"Hey guys," I said, coming to stand behind them.

"Hey."

"Hi."

"Anything interesting happening here?" I asked.

"May found the package, but nothing else so far," answered Fitz.

"Cool."

"Any chance whatever's in there could be an 0-8-4?" Skye asked Fitz.

"This? No, we may not know what it is, but we do know that it came from Cybertek."

"Right. Unknown origin," said Skye. They kept talking, but I kinda tuned them out. I was hanging on to one of the mail bags to keep from falling, and I closed my eyes as I shifted back and forth with the motion of the train. Maybe we'd get lucky, just this once, and have a mission go off without a hitch.

"Woah," I heard Fitz say suddenly, over the sound of static. I should know better than to even think stuff like that by now. "May's goggles are offline. When did that happen? May, do you copy?"

I hurried over to stand behind Fitz and Skye, and I could see the screen displaying May's view had dissolved to static.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"All comms and phones are dead," answered Skye, "Someone's using some sort of electronic scrambler."

"Cybertek knows we're here," I said. Crap.

"We have to warn our team," said Skye, looking panicked. She and Fitz moved to stand, but I stopped them.

"Woah. No. We stay here. You guys have no experience, the rest of the team can handle themselves."

"No experience?" asked Skye, looking very outraged. Before she could continue to protest though, the door flew open behind me.

"Get down!" I yelled, wrapping one arm around Skye and one around Fitz and tackling them behind cover. Not a second later, gunshots exploded into the compartment. The computers were riddled with bullet holes in seconds.

I pulled out the Night Night gun and whirled into the aisle. I got off three shots. All of them missed. I ducked back behind cover.

Before either the guy or I could do anything else, Skye shoved a rolling bag of luggage at him and punched him in the face.

"Nice!" I called, moving in to help her. Unfortunately, he knocked her back before I could do much, and she fell into me. Fitz decided to attack too, bless him, and between his attack and Skye moving in the opposite direction, I couldn't get close enough to the guy to swing in the narrow luggage car.

My gun had been knocked out of my hands in the scuffle, and Skye was going for it, but I was still standing, so I could get to it faster.

"Smart thinking," I muttered as I reached over her to grab the gun. I spun around and pointed it at our attacker. For half a second I thought we might actually have won, until the attacker pulled out a live grenade.

Before I could do anything, Simmons came running in like a crazy person.

"We've been made!" she screamed, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw the grenade. Then, she rushed him.

SHE RUSHED HIM! What was she thinking?

"Jemma get back! Get into the other car!" I yelled, trying to get a clear shot at the guy. I could knock him unconscious and isolate the grenade so it could detonate without hurting any of us, but none of that was going to happen if Simmons didn't move.

She grabbed the guy in a bear hug, and the grenade detonated between them.

I swore loudly and rushed forward as Simmons and the guy collapsed. To my immense relief, she still had a pulse.

"She's alive," I said, looking to Fitz. Clearly, that wasn't a normal grenade, so I was going to deffer to him.

All of us let out a sigh of relief, and then Fitz sprang into action.

"Okay. Hold her up," he ordered. Skye and I lifted Simmons as gently as possible. Fitz brought over some luggage, and we propped her up.

There was a blue, vein-y looking glow around Simmons' eyes, but after a minute it faded.

"I think this is some form of dendrotoxin," said Fitz.

"The same stuff that's in the Night Night gun?" asked Skye.

"Yeah. It's clearly evolved. I think they made it airborne," he said. I shook my head. Airborne anything was much more problematic than the original form.

"Is that why their eyes are open?" asked Skye. She seemed unnerved, and I agreed. It was creepy.

"I suppose if they were in some sort of black sleep that would make sense," said Fitz, reaching forward to close Simmons' eyes. I felt bad for him. It was obvious how much he cared about her, and I knew it must kill him to see her like this.

"We gotta get out of here, don't we?" asked Skye, turning to me, "Find the others, figure out what to do next?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we need to connect with the rest of our team. We need to be careful though, we have no idea what we might be walking into when we leave this car."

While Skye and Fitz moved Simmons and made sure our unconscious attacker would stay unconscious, I went out into the rest of the train to asses the situation.

I walked the train from front to back, and found no sign of our team. Since the train hadn't stopped, I was willing to bet they'd jumped. Unfortunately, it probably meant they had been in serious trouble if they'd left us.

I trusted Grant, May, and Phil to take care of themselves, but I still decided to try one last-ditch attempt at getting in touch with them: Grant and I's emergency phone.

I dialed his number, but the call didn't connect. I wasn't sure if it was something on my end, his end, or both. Either way, there was nothing I could do about it now.

I walked back to the luggage compartment with Skye and Fitz.

"No sign of any of them," I announced, "I think they probably jumped off."

"Why would they do that?" asked Skye.

"I don't know, but it wasn't anything good." We were interrupted by the train lurching to a halt, throwing all three of us to the ground.

"Train's stopped," announced Fitz.

"Yeah... let's find out why," I said, moving over to one of the dusty windows. Between the three of us, we'd gotten a pretty good view hole cleared in seconds.

An exchange was going down.

"They have the package," said Skye grimly.

"Well what do we do, we're the only ones left," said Fitz.

"I'll follow them. You two stay back and connect with the rest of the team," I said.

"What? No way. We stick together," said Skye. Then to Fitz, "Do you have an extra tracker?"

"Of course."

"Then all three of us go. The rest of the team can trace the tracker."

I sighed. "Fine. But you need to follow my lead, okay? I have way more experience, and I don't want you guys getting hurt."

"And what about keeping you from getting hurt?" countered Skye.

"Better me than you," I said, standing and moving to leave the compartment.

"You know, you're starting to sound a lot like Ward," called Skye, making me stop.

"Alright, I'll give you that the 'I'll go on my own' thing was maybe a little too much of his influence. Staying together is better. But while we're on the mission, I'm the ranking officer. I have much more field experience than the two of you combined, and I know how to keep us all safe, okay?"

"Fine. But we're not completely clueless about all this stuff."

I nodded. "You're right. You held your own in that fight, and I'm sorry I made it sound like I didn't acknowledge that or care about it. But we've already lost two people, and I just want to make sure we don't lose anymore. Can we agree to forgive and forget?"

Skye and Fitz glanced at each other, then nodded, and I smiled.

"Great. Then let's go get these guys."