The System is Down

March 28, 2018:

A SHIELD team enters Gotham following carefully constructed clues Rin Nakano has found by tracking hackers attempting to access SHIELD personnel files.

Gotham, East End

It's got that rundown Gotham charm written all over it!

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions: Alice Walker, Bucky Barnes

Plot:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

Gotham. East End.

It took awhile for Rin’s program to track anything down concrete. The program and system she hacks against was incredibly robust. However, she does prevail and for a quick moment before they shut down the systems again, she finds an address in the East End of Gotham. The building that Rin’s hacking led them to is older, rundown. The outside is dirty and the windows have boards over them. According to the hacker’s expert skills, they know that the building is owned by a tech company currently owned by Gothamite Alice Walker, famously known as a widow of a multi-millionaire.

The outside building looks completely abandoned. There are no lights inside, nothing that seems to spill out onto the street. Observation of the building would also have yielded no results. No one has left or entered in the past few hours.

However, this is certainly the place that it seems like some of the outside attacks on SHIELD’s networks are coming from.

*

Three potential access points. The front door, chained shut with a big pickable padlock. Backdoor entrance. Possible fire escape entrance.

Phil murmurs into earbuds.

"Agent Moonstar, I need you on the fire escape. Agent Nakano, back door. I'll take the front." Covering all the exits, protocol. "We'll get any access problems out of the way and then we'll slip inside all at once." That way the exits are covered if someone just goes rabbiting out of there. It splits them up a little but they're also all pretty capable people. He imagines they'll all end up converging pretty fast, but he doesn't want to leave a lot to chance.

He suits words to action and slides up to the front door, taking out the tools to get that padlock dealt with. If it's just a simple padlock, probably in pretty short order, too.

*

Moonstar, for her part, has stayed relatively quiet. Just a shadow that sticks close to Phil Coulson. Every so often her eyes stray behind the man, or somewhere nearby and while she frowns, nothing is really said.

That doesn't stop her from being alert, however, as the woman keeps herself aware of just what's going on. "On it." She says when her assignment of fire escape is given.

Then like the good agent she is, the black-haired Cheyenne woman moves stealthily for the fire escape -

Elsewhere on another rooftop of another building, or even above in the sky, a winged horse holds watch. One just never knows when one might need a tank by the name of Brightwind.

*

Traking these bastards has been vexing for the field agent, but when she finally got a city, than a block, than an actual address all of her hard work started to pay off. Once they're here, she frowns as she watches the data flow on her Ocularis. "They're still at it." She murmers back into her earpiece. It seems that there are a few things that can turn down her Sarcasm level to tolerable, and that's not fucking up a mission. When she has her assignment she acknowledges it over the earbud and heads toward the door. Once she's back there, she frowns at how the door is boarded over. "We're boarded up back here. I can remove them, but it will take me some time to do it quietly." Or she could do it not quietly, but that'd rpobably blow the mission.

*

"Negative, Agent Nakano," Phil murmurs. "If it's boarded they're not coming out of here, go ahead and cover me here at the front."

He'll wait for her to get round with him, gun and flashlight now out and pointed downward, and to get info on the fire escape one way or another (either to send Moonstar in or bring her back down) before murmuring his, "Let's move."

*

Rin is all for this new plan. She carefully walks back around to the front of the buildind and takes her gun out. Recently, she's put a sticker on it that reads Displomacy, but hasn't shown it to Phil yet. She figures she'll wait until after the mission to point it out. For now she's focused, keeping an eye out while Phil opens the door and sends the signal.

*

As everyone takes their positions, Phil manages to pick the lock attached to the front door. It takes a little while as it seems to have been left out to the weather. It's rusty and hard to pick without breaking his tools or making a lot of noise. However, by the time Rin moves to the back of the building and then returns, the lock makes a squeal of protest and then opens.

The doors open with a screech of protest, despite all care. They have not been well oiled and any movement causes noises that echo into a seemingly empty hallway. In front of them lies an abandoned apartment building. Dusty stairwells move upward toward the roof where Moonstar will enter. On the bottom floor, three other doors are either shut or fallen open.

From the roof access, Moonstar is able to make her way inside. The door is held by an illkept internal lock, that is picked. Much like downstairs, there is a twin noise of a rusty door opening pairs with Coulson's movements. Immediately inside is a little platform, down the steps, Dani can see all three floors.

Inside, it is dark, only a few street lights making any sort of illumination through the slats in the windows. It's all flashlights and night vision from here on in.

*

It takes a minute, but there's the eventual response from Moonstar, once she's scaled the zig-zag of steps that lead to the roof's emergency exit. "There's a lock but I think I can bypass." Moonstar says over the communication gear, "Give me five." She adds, and then the woman gets to work on that lock. When the tumblers align themselves and the lock clicks over, Dani rises swiftly to her feet. She waits a heartbeat for the command to go and when it's given, Moonstar does just that. Of course the squealch of the door earns an internal wince from the woman, but what can you do? It's not like SHIELD's fieldkits include oil!

Then it's inside, to the darkness. Her ICER is already out, her flashlight clicked on, and then like the professional she is, she mutters, "Damn steps." But quietly, the woman begins to descend, "Coming in from the top." She murmurs over the line, "Seems quiet up here."

*

"Copy that, Agent Moonstar," Phil murmurs.

Time to start clearing zones. He'll start methodically down the hallway, gesturing to Rin; starting with the closest on the first floor and working their way down. It's all proceedure, stepping in, checking for hostiles, covering each other, telling each other if it's clear, or not. As he does this, he murmurs, "You getting a fix on that signal from anywhere specific in here, Agent Nakano?"

They can't exactly race right up to it, not without following procedure (meticulously, in fact), but it would be a nice-to-know.

*

Rin knows the drill, especially the way Coulson likes it to be done. They take turns opening doors, pointing their guns inside, scanning the room and using mono-syllabic words. Still in the end they at least won't get jumped by anyone, at least they hope not.

"The whole place is lit up, I can't pinpoint an exact location. However we're in the right building. Seeing the state of this place, I'm begining to doubt that they're physically here, and instead just using this building as a decoy. I wouldn't be surprised if we find some ancient computer in a room, that someone has remoted into to do the job."

*

Meanwhile, Agent 13, back at work, has been lying on a cold rooftop for a significant amount of time. Enough that she's aching just a bit. She looks a little terrifying, what with just a pair of icy eyes peeking out from a balaclava. But at last she speaks into her comm unit:

"All clear up here. No one seems to be approaching. On my way in, sir."

She draws up into a kneel, lifting her rifle and disassembling it swiftly and carefully before tugging off the ski mask to reveal her face and hair. The hair's looked better. So's the face.

It's under a minute later that she's slipping inside, listening for orders from her CO.

*

As the SHIELD agents move into the building, it does seem very much like Rin has stated it. This place has not seen much use in years. As Dani and Sharon make their careful way down the floors to secure the building, they see very little out of the ordinary. Things are dust covered and run down. Some floor boards will squeak, others will creak as they move about what very readily looks like an abandoned building with very little inside of it other than a dead end.

*

In the far back room, Phil spots it.

He steps closer, shining his flashlight on the outline of a square. In a dusty building, this outline is completely clear. He crouches down next to it to get a closer look, frowning faintly. And there it is.

A trap door. "Agent Carter, Agent Moonstar, go ahead and rejoin us in 22A as soon as you're done securing the area. We've found something."

He won't take them in until they're all there, but he's already moving to quietly pick the lock. "Rin," he adds. "Any interesting signals issuing from under this door that we ought to know about?"

*

Down the steps Dani goes, her footsteps as light as possible, her attention sharp, as she pans the flashlight in front of her and around her. When Sharon joins her upon those stairwells the Cheyenne woman offers a quick nod of hello, before her attention is back to where it belongs. Ahead and around her. Making certain the area is clear before moving onward.

Those boards that squeak and protest are given a look from Dan along with a mental curse, but with being on the job - well, onward it is. Phil's call over the comm is answered with a quiet murmur, as Dani says, "On our way." And really, it won't take long to regroup. "What do we got?" Is the first question once the group is together again.

*

Rin was obviously distracted by all the data flowing in and out of this building that she didn't notice the trap door. When Phil points it out she frowns and walks over to it. While he picks the lock she focuses on that data and nods her head. "It's noiser here, so I am guessing it's leaking out from below. Still we've probably made enough noise that they know we're here.

She takes a defensive stance above the trap door, pointing her gun at it just incase someone pops out when they're not expecting it.

*

Outside is secured, at least. And Dani has secured the stairwells and the rest of her part of the building, so Sharon joins her in returning to their CO. She moves softly and silently across the floor, avoiding those creaky floorboards as well as she can. But she's ready to pull her sidearm if whatever they've found needs perforating. It probably does.

*

The lock is picked and the trap door opens. Immediately there is a bit of cooler air that hits the team. There are stone steps downward, obviously old and most likely part of the building when it was installed. Those that cautiously makes their way down.

The basement of this building - not available by any schematic - yields quite an interesting sight. There are no dividers, it is a large open plan. The only thing that breaks up this are are large stacks of hard drives - all linked together - lights flickering in reds, greens and whites. The information moving about seems to be at a constant, as those drives are constantly whirring and the lights switch between colors frenetically.

This technology all seems of a very modern make from a cursory glance. Computers and desks seem to be illuminated toward the back of the room.

*

Coulson takes point, nodding as Rin covers the exit. But when nothing bursts out, when it's just a matter of creeping down the steps, he relaxes. He will pause to quietly look for hostiles here in the server room. Not seeing any immediately, he frowns. This is…

He takes out a device meant to sweep for explosives. So far it looks like they left a lot of expensive equipment alone and unguarded. "Let's cover Agent Nakano while she sees what kinds of heads or tails she can make of this."

The indicator light on his device flips from blue (scanning) to green (no, you are not about to be blown to Kingdom Come, you may keep your face today without concern). He creeps for the cooling element, giving it a once-over with narrowed eyes. "Sharon, can you come over here and make sure nobody can shut this cooling device off remotely? I can think of a few bad things that could happen if someone could."

*

Moonstar follows the leader of Coulson and the others, somewhere mid-way in the pack of their group, and once down in the 'basement' the woman pauses to take actual stock of what they're seeing. It's enough to bring a frown to her lips, "Sure is a lot of hardware down here." Mutters the woman, and at Coulson's remark about giving Agent Nakano protection, the Cheyenne woman steps resolutely over to Rin.

"I suppose suggesting we just unplug this all wouldn't be a good thing, eh?" Asks the woman with a sardonic bend to her voice, and while she speaks Moonstar automatically scans the area around their little group.

*

Once the door is opened, the room is scanned for explosives and they're settled down inside, Rin stars her scan as well. It's more sophisticated than she believed it to be and she slowly looks over the server racks to see what type of equipment they're using, and how the data is flowing. "That explains why they would have continued the attack on SHIELD after our break in. We wern't exactly silent." Which the doors are to blame for.

She stalks around the room before she finally settles into one of the computer terminals and pulls out her cellphone. "I wouldn't worry about that too much, so long as we don't get above eighty degrees we're fine. The whole, ice box server room thing is overrated." She says with a wave of her hand. "Besides, it's their loss if they fry their own equipment." Turning to Dani she smirksk and shakes her head. "Oh we could, but that wouldn't be any fun. I think it's time for the Asstrap." With that, she begins to work her magic. Literaly and figuratively.

She's careful however, knowing they can easily shut down the connection on their end, and she won't find where it's really coming from. So delicately she begins to work through the computer, trying to find any shred of information that is going to help her in the long run, while setting up a tunnel from this server room to her own personal device for ease of access."

*

"Of course, it'll get above eighty degrees pretty quickly if the cooling system stops. Still…" Sharon stoops, examining the cooling element and then following the wiring. She points to the center of the ceiling: "The HVAC system that controls it is up there. I can't tell if the cooling element itself can be tripped, but the main system itself probably can be remotely. We should do what we planned and get out of here as quickly as we can."

*

Some quickly descend. Others? They are cautiously observing. However, as they do, there is a silent whine that suddenly embeds itself in the floor right by the trap door. Then, even more start to hit, now much louder and sounding exactly like the bullets they are. The door to 22A again kicked open and then quickly moves forward. There are no words, only gunfire.

As Rin tuns on the terminal, she realizes that it is password protected. It will take some time to find the proper password, or the proper bypass in order to get through the system to get all the secrets that may be available there.

*

The man who once spent a frustrating 30 minutes waving his hands over a holotable grumbling, "Holotable on," only to finally take out a laptop that was obsolete in 1992 to run his program might be forgiven for having only a cursory understanding of computer technology. He understands how to use it for the most part, but everything else is just fiddly bits Phils aren't built for.

In the meantime…

"Agent Nakano, don't stop working!"

He figures the others know to return fire without being told. He certainly does that, using his ICER, taking what cover he can, swearing. They're in a far better position, firing down at them from above, though all their quarry has to do is move deeper into the room to not be in danger. Which means they're coming down, probably. Course, they could pin them down for awhile this way before making other bad things happen, but right now there's not a whole lot he can do about that. Probably should have stationed Sharon and Dani upstairs. Hindsight is what it is.

*

Curiously Dani watches Rin work, up until a faint sound grabs her attention - whatever she hears brings her eyes around and a frown begins to form, "Do you hear that?" She asks, but her question is soon lost as the gunfire erupts. "Dammit." Spats Moonstar and then like Coulson her ICER is brought right on up. She returns fire, aiming for those that can be seen, and if for some reason that doesn't work Moonstar will stretche outward with her psionic powers. Her powers reach for the person that can be seen, and they strive to pull from the shooter their deepest and darkest fear.

The kind of fear that stops a person dead in their tracks from the shock of it.

*

"Shit." Rin says as she hears the bullets above and Phil giving out orders. When she comes to the password, she sighs and shakes her head. Normally she'd run a few programs and take her time to do this right and stealthy, but seeing that they're already being shot at, stealth isn't the option anymore. Rolling up her left sleeve, she pulls out a USB cable and connects one end into the computer and the other into the implant on her arm. She's going to directly interface with the terminal and force her way in. "On it." She says in response to fill, letting her focus turn from the room around her, to the computer in front of her.

*

Sharon, meanwhile? That nagging thought that she should keep behind at the trap door is coming back to her, and she is more than a little irritated that she didn't see these gunmen coming in after her. Did she miss them coming in? Did they follow her? She thought she'd been stealthy; clearly, she wasn't stealthy enough.

She draws her own sidearm, stepping around the perimeter of where the bullets are striking. There's not a dram of panic in her. If she can get a bead on where exactly they are, she might be able to dive in long enough to ICER one of them. "Can we take them out quietly?" Because she doesn't know exactly what Dani can do. Or Rin, for that matter.

*

The person in the doorway pauses, gun out finger still on the trigger. The man there freezes almost immediately. Then, there is a shriek of terror in his voice and he rears back. The gun shoots wildly a few times, aiming at things that are surely not there. However, the form disappears behind the doorway.

Through the boarded windows, more shots fire. Splinters spray across the new shafts of light that pierce into the room. More gunfire erupts from around the doorway. They are not playing with ICERs, these are bullets and guns.

In the basement, Rin pulls out the USB and plugs herself into the system. Immediately, a feeling of sickness and wrongness will flood her system. The code here? It is filled with viruses.

From the basement, mingling with the servers, another figure appears. A gun raises up and just as Rin plugs herself into the system, she will feel see the figure approaching her. A gun is raised and pointed right at her head. "Step away from the computer."

*

Phil is very focused on the front. He's focused on the way a bullet just grazed the back of his neck, too, causing it to erupt in fresh, hot blood. His heart thunders with sudden adrenaline; his senses turn up to eleven, and he notices the woman stalking Rin. He pivots on one heel, pulling his actual sidearm now. But that just sends real-live bullets up the stairs. This woman seems like a great person to keep alive if he can.

"Quiet, she's busy," he says, firing the ICER right at her head…and…missing. Living up to that Deadeye name the Guardians gave him. Or. Maybe just trying to manage two shots at once. But maybe he'll at least call attention to her, opening away for the other two in the room to do something about her.

*

Once Rin is fully integrating with the device she scowls at the viruses with in. "Ugh, it's like getting hugged by Overly Affectionate Pam." That is a lot of viruses, but they're there for a reason, probably to overload SHIELD's systems. She would have done something simliar when she was younger. It's almost cute to her, but thankfully she's got firewalls and virus protection programmed into her own systems. "And this kids, is why we don't hop into the internet naked. It's fully of nasty—" That's when she notices that there is a gun at her head.

"Well we obviously didn't sweep this room well enough." Slowly she removes her hands from the computer, however she's already done what she needs to do. She got herself in, and getting to this point, means she doesn't need to be plugged into it anymore. So she raises her hands and turns with a smile. That's about when Phil's shot goes wide and she hopes that she's distracted enough that she won't notice the kick coming toward her, which is a little awkward from a sitting position, but she's reactionary at this point.

*

Sharon isn't looking at Coulson, but she can smell the faint tang of blood that mixes with the gunpowder. She doesn't hear the demand to step away from the computer; she's busy firing three ICER shots toward the torso of one of the people upstairs, darting forward long enough to take aim before dodging and rolling behind a bank of servers.

When she's safely out of easy firing range, she peers out from behind it, getting a better grasp on the situation. Luckily, the room isn't that large. She takes careful aim, therefore, at the woman who has a gun on Rin, and waits for her shot.

*

The woman pointing a gun at Rin turns at Coulson's perfect one liner. There is a stunned look in her eye as she does so. That movement is exactly what makes the ICER round pass by her and leave her unscathed. However, as she moves, Rin's kick to her legs hits squarely where it is meant to do so. As that happens, the SHIELD press secretary sprawls to the ground, gun spiraling out of her fingers.

The woman curses, scrambling forward to grab at it.

Upstairs, Sharon is keeping the oncoming bullets from being a storm to something closer to a sprinkle. ICER rounds hit their targets where they present themselves. However, even as she does so, the high powered rounds from outside pierce through the window intermittently, attempting to keep her on her toes.

*

Coulson glances upward. He realizes there's a guy with a gun on the server racks. He also realizes he doesn't have a shot. Dani's occupied with her psychic work, and that means he's got to rely on Sharon.

He's got something else to do instead. He flattens himself to the wall, waits for that moment where the gunfire hesitates, and then rams one of the boards on the windows as hard as he can with one of his elbows, breaking it neatly in half. The two halves hang to either side on their nails, swinging lightly. Gunfire starts up again, he flattens again. Listens. Intense concentration on his face.

There. There's the break. There's a whining squeeeeeeeeeeeal as he ramps up the power on those discs to their maximum setting, then flings them outside. They erupt in a flare of blue-white taser lightning, and with luck, that will shock the whole damned lot of the crew outside the building.

"For the thousandth time, her name's not Pam!"

*

They work like a well-oiled machine. There's a relationship between some people that becomes like ESP. It's what makes team sports so much fun: when you know your teammates so well that you know what they're going to do, it's like a pack of wolves all leaping at once. Not because their alpha told them to, but because they all knew it was Time To Leap.

Coulson and Carter got that way surprisingly quickly. Sharon can see the man with the gun crouching atop one of the server racks. She shifts her aim there instead, taking a deep breath, then — three squeezes of the trigger. Bam-bam-bam. With any luck, one of them will end up in his neck.

*

Rin watches as the woman falls to the ground, with the distraction being just enough to keep her from getting shot in the head. That's not something she thinks she can recover from with a quick nap. As the woman goes skittering for the gun, Rin unplugs herself and moves to tackle her, trying to get her into a prone position and hopefully ziptie her hands. Granted that's going to take some effort. "Look, I don't normally get this fresh on a first date, but I think I've seen your face before so it's probably okay." Right now she's focused on keeping the gun away from the woman while the others take care of the shooters.

*

With Moonstar locking down those through the doorway and Phil's power discs tossed outside, there is a sudden silence in the abandoned warehouse. The gunfire from both outside and the doorway quiets. The woman attempting to attack Rin is quickly zip-tied, despite her struggles.

The man atop the server has his sights clear on stopping Rin's attempts to plug back into the system before Sharon's ICER round hits him square in the side. His body tenses and he freezes exactly where he is.

*

"Good work everyone," Phil says, when the storm seems to have subsided.

And then he's staring down into the face of the woman they just captured. He's certainly gone enough rounds with her in recent weeks, both from his dramatic declaration on the steps of the Triskelion that SHIELD would support registration efforts over his dead body to his meetings in Washington to his continued attempts— close to successful, in fact— to getting SHIELD to adopt a more useful stance in that regard.

"Jesus Christ, Chelsea," he mutters. The SHIELD Press Secretary, one of the Hydra traitors. They hadn't gotten on, but he never would have thought…

He swallows, looks away, suddenly just tired.

He hauls her up, like she's some sort of bride he's about to carry over the threshold, zip ties and all. "Let's get out of here," he says. They got the data, they got a prisoner. All in all, it's a good night.

But he finds he doesn't have it in him to sit across from this woman, to ask her why.

"Sharon," he says softly. "This one's yours to interrogate. But we're not taking her to SHIELD. I'm calling in a favor. There's a CIA site not far from here that nobody's using right now. I'm going to see if we can't use that."

At this point, his trust has narrowed down to the members of his team, and a handful of others. He's certainly not bringing her to the Trisket, where she could be assassinated before she gives up what she knows.

*

Once the danger is over, Rin returns to the computer to get the data she needs. Now that she's forced her way in, she's going to take whatever she can. It's not until Phil says her name that Rin finally realizes who it is. So they wern't wrong, it was an inside job but to have a mole that high up is a little disconcerning for her. Her usual bravado is subdued and she instead focuses on getting the data, and themselves out of there.

There is one thing she can't help but to common on, despite how tired Phil looks. "But she looks like a Pam, right?"

*

The Press Secretary. Sharon steps out from behind her bank of servers, eyeing the man she ICEd on top of the server bank. "What about him?" She nods his way, but her attention is now on… Not Pam. Chelsea, from work. Chelsea, who she's actually had coffee with more than once. She feels a little sick when she looks at the woman, but she nods to Coulson regardless. She's not going to ask him how much further up this goes. She's not going to ask him who else he thinks might be behind this. There's more moles in SHIELD than she thought possible, more holes in the organization than there ever should have been. How it got like this, how the rot went this far —

Frowning at Coulson, she reaches into one of the pouches of her jacket and pulls out a little cloth-backed first aid kit. "Hold still," she mutters, stepping up behind her CO. A swipe or three with a disinfecting pad and a bandaid later, he's no longer bleeding. Superficial wound, clearly, but it's turning his shirt collar red.

She'll cover them on their way out, too. Rin has what they came looking for. Coulson has what they hadn't hoped to find.

*

As Agent Coulson cuffs Chelsea Pugh, she rouses from her desperate attempt to grab at the gun she very recently attempted to shoot Rin with. Fear and confusion crosses her face. "What…what am I doing here? What is happening? Why are you handcuffing me? I know you dislike me, Coulson, but this is beyond the pale. I will hang you for this. I knew it. What are you going to do with me?" Seeing Sharon there, she blinks a few times. "Agent 13? What…no…you're not…you're not a part of this, are you?"

Rin's plug in gets more of the same viruses. The information in the system is incredibly dense, but she can certainly recognize the same signal that she has been tracking over the pat few weeks. The attacks have come from here. As that information is shared through the link, a shower of sparks from the unit above them erupts. The temperature of the room quickly upticks - as if it was not just the servers, but another failsafe triggered. There is only a short amount of time for Rin to pull what she can from the computers before everything will burst into flame.

*

And a thought occurs to Phil.

Information that got uncovered during the Bucky Barnes trial. Information about Hydra mind control efforts that disappeared, but also that made it into public record. Nanites.

He pulls out a very tiny, very focused EMP disc. Fixing it to the place behind the ear as described in those reports? He triggers it. Otherwise if it's there it can be used to kill her. She could just be covering her own ass, of course. She could be a more traditional Manchurian Candidate. She could be any number of things…

But hopefully with that step she will not have her head explode because of mind-controlling nanites.

All this happens while he stands still for Sharon's ministrations. There's a thankful look for her, a half-amused, half-exasperated face for Rin, and then? Sparks. His expression flattens, and he starts up the stairs. "That's our cue," he adds. Hopefully Rin won't linger long, but as he can't help her? It's time to get this prisoner to their vehicle.

*

It's going to take some work to sort everything away from the viruses, but Rin will devote the tiem to it. After all it's not like anyone wants her interviewing people, it usually doesn't go well. However when the sparks start flying she curses again and tries to speed up the data transfer. She's guessing how much time she has to go, and she really brings it down to the wire. She unpluggs and darts up the stiars before the fireworks really happen.

*

The reaction Chelsea gives… well, it's possible they're being controlled somehow. It's also possible that Chelsea is smart enough to start a very strong affirmative defense. Sharon's eyes narrow as she looks down at the woman.

"Well," she says. "I guess we're going to see whether you're one of the better liars I've ever seen. Wouldn't it be nice if this were all just a tragic misunderstanding?"

Nodding to the stairs, she steps out before Phil, crouching as she climbs back up, sidearm out and reloaded, ready to plug anyone who gets in her way.

*

As Chelsea is handcuffed, she just lays on the ground, defeated. She also looks very confused.

"I"m not lying," she tries to argue with Sharon, emphatically. "I don't know why I'm here. You have to believe me."

However, as things wrap up in the basement, the scene is secured and more SHIELD agents are brought onto the scene to secure it and to also look for more information.

Rin's plug in got her a flash of some things before the coolant blew and that seemed to trigger something else that ensured that the drives would burn. The whirring systems have stilled. It was like white noise before, now it is interrupted by sparks and flames and the sound of SHIELD agents setting down markers.

Though the space holds no further clues, as far as they can tell, it also no longer is a base for Hydra. And that is a victory.

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