001 > TEXT.

[hydraated]

[Ward's throat still feels like shit and a half, but he's managed to process the following. He's no longer in jail (that's a plus), he's got super powers (he's unsure if that's a plus or minus) but he arrived and avoided the network for a few days out of fear of breaking the damn thing. He's decided long since then that he can't let Skye intimidate him.

She's here. And she's been here for awhile. She has home team advantage.

The only problem is they have a record of him. This whole registering thing was crap - what was the point of being given a second chance if he really couldn't leave Grant Ward behind? For the first time he wants to.

So time to test the waters. He's been to the ceremony, he's been sworn in, he's had a dramatic reunion with the woman he'd thought he cared about.]

New arrival here. Roomba salesman and repairman. Anybody else get a completely shit job? I know nothing about Roomba's.

Assuming Roombas here are the vaccuum robots. Y/N?

Also feel like shooting myself in the foot here, but is there some kind of a "so now you have super abilities" support group? Any help or advice appreciated.

[Reading over it two or three times he nods, satisfied that it's not incriminating, that it's blaise enough that even if people decide to ask him questions he can think up enough to talk about without screwing up.

He'd been in worse situations.

His roommates might have noticed that his doorknob on the outside was significantly bent and someone has been closing doors in their apartment very, very quietly.]

Comments

[hackitude]

Sorry, bad wording. It was Koenig's tracking device, not Ward's. I was looking for something else on his desk and came across it. None of us-- Ward included-- knew it even existed. The trackers must have been on the security clearance cards he gave us. ... I don't know why he killed Koenig, though. We'll probably never know. Maybe he found Ward out too.

I didn't confront him about it right away. After all, it's like you said: it wasn't a situation he could've recovered from without killing me too. I'm no match for him, so I was pretty much imagining my imminent death slasher-film style. So instead, I... played him right back. Pretended I didn't know. I knew eventually there'd be an opportune moment.

And there was. Feelings aside, he needed me for something. To decrypt my harddrive. ... Er, not just any harddrive. A special one. ... Okay, that probably requires a little backtracking to explain, sorry.

You ask if there were others like him? You don't even know the scope of it. I would say almost fully a third of SHIELD was actually Hydra in disguise. Rotting the organisation from within. When Hydra revealed themselves and staged their attempted takeover a few days prior, Coulson told me to scrub our entire operation. All our research, all the things we'd found. Erase every trace. We couldn't risk any of it getting into the wrong hands. But I made a back-up on an encrypted harddrive. Stupidly, I gave it to Ward to hold onto for safekeeping. I was thinking that of all of us, he'd be the least likely to get captured and the least likely to give anything up under torture if he did. Little did I know. He took it straight to Hydra. They desperately needed something that was on it. I'm not sure what exactly, but I can make a guess. Anyway, it's not important.

Long story short, they couldn't get into it-- I set the harddrive to immediately erase every piece of data on it if anyone tried to hack their way in. They didn't want to risk it, so Ward had to try and play me. Get me to unlock the drive by pretending it was for Coulson. Said Coulson had rung him from the field, supposedly requested some information from a file that was on the drive. Needed help from us on their mission.

[xpostate]

This is why you never trust SHIELD. When the people running it aren't being extra shady on their own, there always seems to be some other organization subverting them from within. And all the while, Nick Fury's dead until the opportune time comes for him to reveal it was all a ruse.

Coulson probably wasn't even supposed to know about the drive, was he? Seems like the kind of thing a commanding officer might disapprove of, if he wanted you to wipe everything. But Ward wouldn't have known that.

But that explains a lot more about the situation. At least I have some picture of how he works and the dangers he presents now.

[hackitude]

[Skye isn't even going to touch that comment about SHIELD with a ten foot pole, because that's a whole new argument Skye doesn't particularly want to spend another half hour debating and feeling attacked over. So. Sorry David, no bite for you.]

No, he knew about it. I wouldn't do anything behind Coulson's back. ... Well. These days, anyway.

And no problem. Was there anything else you wanted to know? About him, or me, or the situation back home...?

[xpostate]

[ it's not like he's bitter or anything. ]

No, that should about cover it. Thanks for the info, I'll do what I can from here. You just take care of yourself, okay?

[hackitude]

... You too.