Chapter Text
In a world where alien battles raged above the New York skyline, and superheroes took flight without the aid of engine nor science, there were still things that man had not yet begun to comprehend. Things that may strike fear into the heart of even a biologically enhanced super soldier who had found himself buried beneath the ice for seventy years.
For as long as the earth had existed – whether one favoured the idea of a creation that spanned many days, or a big bang that had sparked the first signs of life – the ideals of good and evil had been in play. Perhaps they were forces inherent to the universe, and certainly one would find it difficult to exist without the other. Whilst ‘good’ was a quality easily recognised, over centuries that quickly turned to millennia, ‘evil’ had taken many forms; invading foreign armies, great floods that had wiped out the known world, the lash of the slave owner’s whip, and the shepherding of millions to their deaths purely for their faith. It became a concept much harder to classify than its antithesis because ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ , after all. The lines blurred, frequently and relentlessly, but for the most part man strived to evolve and adapt beyond their base temptation to give into the darkness.
Grant Ward had given into his darkness, once. He’d regretted his actions thereafter with every breath he drew. At the time, he’d been a boy, naïve and foolish, but he couldn’t allow the shortcomings of youth to excuse his choices. His bed had been made and he’d lain in it with quiet acceptance, until he’d followed the woman he loved down into a temple in San Juan. He recalled thinking, as his own body calcified, that he’d deserved it; maybe there was some cosmic higher power and finally it had elected to rain karma down on his head. When he’d emerged from his stony chrysalis, wielding the fires of Hell in the palm of his hand, he’d believed more fiercely in a God that had forsaken him. There could be no more fitting punishment for a creature such as Grant Ward than to allow Satan himself to lick at his soul. It was foreshadowing to the clearest degree, and Ward was under no illusions as to what awaited him when the moment came for him to finally leave this mortal life.
The general hospital was small and outdated; a simple, two storey building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the sort of 1980s hospital soap operas his childhood nanny had watched. The emergency room sign was lit against the darkening October sky but the once vibrant red looked worn, as did many of the properties that dotted the streets of the mid-Western town.
Ward eyed the building with caution. His strategist’s mind whirred, carrying out careful risk assessments, and making rapid assumptions about entrances and exits. They would also need a game plan for removing the powered assailant from the presumably busy hospital without drawing attention to their presence.
Grant assumed Skye would be examining the building with a similar goal in mind but, when he stole a glance at the passenger seat of the SUV, he found her lost in thought. Her brows knit into a line as she stared out of the window with a listless expression drawn across her features.
“Everything okay?” Ward asked.
Skye startled at the intrusion and forced a smile as she glanced up at Ward with a nod. Registering the concern in his eyes, her smile grew more sincere.
“Yeah, I was just… it’s nothing. It’s fine.”
The following silence was practically deafening, until Ward finally ventured the question he’d been afraid to ask for the last week; ever since Skye had started to become distant, almost cautious in his presence. That was an issue for colleagues, certainly, but for lovers it was a far more serious concern.
“Have I… I mean… Have I done something?” he checked, almost afraid of her response. Whilst Ward was sure that his past transgressions had left some scars, he had thought they’d worked past it all, for the most part. The pair had once again transcended from colleagues to friends, before tumbling into a romance that everyone but Skye had apparently seen as inevitable. It had certainly come as no surprise to Coulson or FitzSimmons, and even May had greeted the news with less ire than Ward had expected.
Shooting him a look of confusion, Skye shook her head. “What? No! Of course not.”
Ward’s sigh of relief was audible, and Skye looked away from him when she felt guilt prickle her conscience. She reminded herself that she couldn’t help her feelings since, whilst she wasn’t technically completely human, she wasn’t an emotionless machine, either. She may have possessed earthquake powers capable of rocking a city but that didn’t mean she would never know uncertainty or fear. In fact, they’d become near constant companions to her since she’d inherited her powers. Her father may have viewed them as her birth right – a privilege – but those were ideas Skye had a hard time reconciling with. Thus far, her abilities had brought her no end of physical and emotional pain, as well as losing her the trust of the organisation that she’d thought of as her surrogate family.
The one surprising blessing that had arisen from the whole situation was the discovery of Ward’s Inhuman status, and the emergence of his powers, although Skye knew he viewed those in much the same way she regarded hers. The codename he’d chosen himself was telling enough; Hellfire . Skye had tried her best to make him believe that he wasn’t earmarked for an eternity of damnation but she hadn’t had much success in that area. Ward was resigned on the matter, despite the fact Skye had tried to convince him that it was his powers that had in fact led to his salvation. Grant was having none of it, and so Skye had given up trying after a few months. However, he had proven particularly skilled when it came to exerting control over his gifts, and it was largely thanks to Ward that Skye had eventually learned how to wield her own without causing some kind of devastation. It turned out that compartmentalisation was just the thing when it came to trying not to level a building with one’s mind.
“Are you sure?” Ward pressed, chewing on his bottom lip and shooting a glance back at the hospital. Nothing had changed out front. His eyes ticked back to Skye’s face, sweeping her features for some kind of clue as to what was disturbing her. He found none.
Whilst Grant had grown more open with his emotions since his transformation, Skye had only become more guarded. Almost as though she was protecting her heart alongside her secret. Ward supposed it was more than likely the two had become synonymous. In the days following their emergence from the temple, they’d been subjected to a barrage of tests at a S.H.I.E.L.D. lab, found themselves forcibly sedated by their colleagues, and been threatened with execution by an alien bounty hunter and an Asgardian warrior. It was enough to make anyone squirrely, let alone a girl who’d thought herself an orphan only to find both parents alive, kicking, and eager to betray her trust.
Those wounds were nearly fifteen months old and yet they still festered. Ward could tell with just a glance at his girlfriend. She trusted him perhaps more than anyone else, in a strange, unexpected twist of fate. These days even Simmons was kept at arms-length most of the time, allowed rare glimpses of the old, fun loving Skye; the girl from the van whose brown eyes had lit up when all her favourite people were in the same room.
“If you need to talk, you know…”
“Later,” Skye promised, checking her gauntlets to avoid looking back at Grant. “I promise. Let’s just get this done first. Maybe we can be back at base in time to pig out on all that Halloween candy Fitz stashed behind the canned peas.”
Ward smiled, leaning across the distance and placing his hand against her cheek to secure her attention. His lips pressed urgently against hers and he kissed away her responding smile until she pulled back to run her fingertips across his stubble lined jaw.
Skye could read the question in his gaze, and she rolled her eyes good naturedly. “Will you stop? I’m fine. Okay?”
“Whatever you say, boss,” he placated her. Doubt radiated off him in waves, piquing Skye’s irritation.
Emitting an exasperated sigh, she shrugged and offered a half-hearted explanation for her apparently sour mood. “I don’t know, I’ve just got a weird feeling about this whole thing. Just… something seems… funky.”
Ward let out a puff of laughter, his eyes back on the hospital. The automatic door slid open but nobody exited the building. Probably a fault, Ward decided.
“Well, it is Halloween… maybe the spirits are restless.”
“You’re hilarious,” Skye deadpanned, patting his cheek a little harder than necessary and rewarding his attempt at humour with a brief kiss. “Shall we?!”
Ward was left staring at his girlfriend’s back as she slammed the car door with obvious purpose. Knowing how to pick his battles, Grant climbed out of the SUV and followed in Skye’s wake. In two long strides, he’d caught up to her, and he marched at her side towards the entrance of the E.R. The parking lot was surprisingly empty but Ward was more relieved than suspicious about that. It would be far easier to collect their rogue Inhuman if there wasn’t fifty other civilians in the vicinity.
“What do we know?” he asked, effortlessly slipping into his agent persona.
Being the only other member of Coulson’s fledgling ‘Caterpillar’ initiative came with its perks as well as its drawbacks. The main one, to Ward’s mind anyway, was that he got to work almost exclusively with Skye. That may have perhaps been partly due to the fact that nobody else in S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted to be within a five mile radius of him these days. Becoming Inhuman hadn’t done much for either he or Skye in the popularity stakes, and so they tended to stick together, which was just fine by everyone. Coulson had tasked the couple with becoming the ‘Inhuman welcome wagon’, and they were dispatched to recruit or investigate any powered person who ended up on the government radar. If Skye and Ward failed to ensure their cooperation then the second wave of agents, led by May, was distinctly less friendly.
“Thirty year old male - Patrick Cooper - showed up about two hours ago in pretty bad shape, and claiming to have telekinetic abilities. The doctors were preparing to sedate him when a gurney rose six feet in the air and flew across the bay. Coulson’s managed to keep local law enforcement out of the way but we don’t have long before May’s team show up. Something about how ‘volatile’ this guy’s powers could be.”
“Oh good,” Ward said sardonically. The whole thing left a bitter taste in his mouth. After all, what could possibly be considered more potentially volatile than the ability to wield fire in one’s palms, or to quake the ground with a flick of the wrist?
It was the eerie silence of the practically abandoned ER which first alerted them to there being something very, very wrong.
The triage desk was unmanned - although the empty waiting room and upturned chairs indicated that there were no patients left for the staff to assess. Paper coffee cups dotted the room, the television on the wall was set to the local news channel, yet not one living soul remained. Presumably, they had all fled. But fled what, the Inhuman pair couldn’t be sure.
Ward nodded towards the hallway behind the nurses’ station, and he and Skye began a cautious route to the desk. A sudden noise catching his attention, Ward drew back his hand and almost immediately a flaming orb of fire crackled into life within his palm. A terrified woman in scrubs ran screaming from her hiding place underneath the desk.
“Ma’am?” Skye called after her hurriedly, “Ma’am, wait!”
The woman ran full pelt down the hall, her eyes wide in terror as she turned to assess the pair. “No! He’s one of them! Get away! Get away from me!”
Skye frowned as the woman clutched at a religious medal around her neck and started up a frantic repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, as if that would somehow repel the approaching agents.
“Ma’am, we’re not here to hurt you. We work for the government,” Ward assured her, holding his hands up to indicate he meant no harm. “We’re here to take the assailant into custody.”
Fumbling in his jacket pocket, Ward pulled out his badge and held it out for examination, although he didn’t dare move closer in case the nurse bolted again. The woman, who had backed herself up against the wall, slid down it until she sat in a heap in the corridor. Tears leaked from her eyes, and her hands trembled as they grasped at her perceived salvation.
“I saw you… fire in your hands… just like him…” she hissed, her expression wild with raw fear, “you’ll kill us all…”
Skye signalled for Ward to take a step back, and he obeyed without question. Whilst there may have only been two members of Coulson’s elite Inhuman team, Ward had willingly accepted his place as subordinate to Skye. S.H.I.E.L.D. may not have trusted either of them much these days but they certainly had more faith that Skye wouldn’t quite literally stab them in the back. Ward had hoped the extra responsibility might be good for Skye, encouraging her to emerge from the shell she had created for herself in the wake of San Juan, but so far no such luck.
“I swear to you, we are here to help,” Skye reiterated as she approached, keeping low to the ground with both of her hands in full view. Nevertheless, the nurse shook so violently that her head struck the wall at intervals.
“If that’s true, you should run whilst you still can,” the woman breathed. And then the lights went out, plunging the corridor abruptly into complete darkness. A scream immediately in front of Skye came as no real surprise, given the clearly jumpy nature of the woman, but the fact it died with a wet squelch proved something more of a shock. Seconds later, the overhead strip lights flickered and then came back on, as if nothing untoward had happened.
Skye reeled backwards as she was met by the sight of the woman she had seconds ago been pleading with. Her throat had been ripped open so wide that her vocal chords were on full display. She had died with the medal clasped firmly in her fingers and her eyes blown wide, no doubt to focus on the face of her killer.
“Jesus Christ…” hissed Ward whilst Skye stumbled over to him, her palm drifting up to land on his chest. Reflexively, they clung to each other, their eyes sweeping the hall to locate the threat.
It was the sudden static charge in the air that seized the attention of both S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and Ward found himself holding Skye closer as every nerve in his body tensed.
“Do you feel that?” Skye’s brow furrowed, and she cast a glance down the hallway as an icy cold chill permeated the air.
“Yeah,” Ward affirmed, his head turning left as the lights began to blink and, as if on cue, every computer screen behind the nurses’ station flashed on and off at a rapid pace. The ground beneath their feet practically hummed with energy, and they turned sharply to watch two chairs in the waiting room begin to shudder where they stood. After a few seconds of rocking, they lifted off into the air and sailed across the room as though tossed by an invisible assailant.
“Ward…” Skye’s eyes widened as more of the chairs lining the furthest wall were jerked off their legs, this time hovering in the air for a moment before they too became missiles. “You see that, right?”
Following Skye’s gaze, the former Specialist felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand erect as he took in the sight of the figure standing at the end of the hall.
It was tall, slender, black mass of long limbs that appeared to be staring at them with their head tilted, almost as though curious. Ward couldn’t discern if the figure was male or female, and in fact it only looked vaguely human to his mind.
“I see it,” Ward whispered. His breath swirled from his parted lips in a thick cloud that exhibited just how much the temperature had dropped. Slowly, he reached around his back and slid an I.C.E.R. from the waistband of his jeans. He pulled it around to the front of his body whilst Skye raised her hands in readiness. If the apparent assailant made a move towards them, they’d either be greeted by the full force of Skye’s powers or a hefty dose of dendrotoxin. However, rather than advance, the figure vanished in the next moment, as soon as the lights dipped again.
“Patrick Cooper, you need to come with us,” Skye said, her voice echoing with a note of authority. Usually, she would add a caveat about how they meant no harm, or else outright state that they were the good guys, but this time she refrained. A quick glance to his side revealed to Ward that Skye was evidently counting the seconds until May’s team made an appearance. Her jaw was clenched tightly, her shoulders squared, and her back rigid. Every millimetre of her body was ready for a fight, and Ward was confident she’d be getting one before the afternoon was through.
There was no answer to her demand, and so Ward and Skye began to creep in unison down the corridor. As soon as they neared adjacent doors leading off into private rooms, they moved to stand back to back, making themselves less vulnerable to attack from the sides.
“Come out now with your hands behind your head,” Ward commanded. He peered into the nearest doorway as they passed, his stomach dropping to his feet as he caught sight of the state of ruin the room had been reduced to. The window was smeared with bloody handprints, the metal hospital bed had collapsed on one side, and the overhead light had been smashed completely. The bulb weakly but persistently flashed every few seconds, just enough to allow Ward a glimpse of the doctor who was slumped face first on the floor. A pool of blood had formed and long since congealed beneath his body, which was no surprise given the fact that he had been impaled from behind with the sharper end of a drip stand. Ward almost blanched. He’d seen some things in his time – many that he wished he could wipe clean from his memory – but this was new territory.
“Down there…” hissed Skye, jerking her head towards the very end of the hall, where the door to what appeared to be another private room had been ripped half from its hinges. “I can feel vibrations.”
They inched past several more rooms. Ward glanced into every one of them, unsurprised to find them all either empty or else devoid of any living presence. He didn’t stop to count the bodies, too sickened by the amount of blood he saw splashed across walls and bed sheets. Whoever had committed such atrocities was obviously without conscience.
Ward tied to dismiss the unfamiliar flutter of nerves in the pit of his stomach - as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best former Specialist, second only to the legendary Black Widow herself - Grant wasn’t accustomed to anxiety. But something felt wrong, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He wouldn’t have to wait too long for his suspicions to be confirmed.
Reaching the door at the furthest end of the hall, the pair stopped outside with perhaps more caution than they’d usually exercise. Toeing the bottom of it open with his boot, Ward stepped into the room, I.C.E.R. drawn in place of a handful of flames, which may not have been prudent in a hospital room filled with oxygen cylinders.
The room appeared empty. The sheets on the bed lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, and the television aired nothing but white noise. Yet Skye could feel it; the power thrumming through the air and even walls, surging, searching, as if it was coiling itself around her like a snake about to devour its prey. She shrugged off the uncomfortable sensation it provoked and resolved to focus on the task at hand.
Ward’s eyes swept the room and Skye found herself following suit. It was a horrified gasp that left her lips when they found their young, Inhuman charge.
“Holy shit!”
“I’m guessing that’s Patrick,” Ward stated, still training his I.C.E.R. on the body that hung upside down, seemingly suspended in the air in the corner of the hospital room. Dried blood marred his eyes; eyes that were open, revealing empty sockets. It was a site that neither agent would forget in a hurry.
“Ward… I don’t think we’re dealing with an Inhuman, here,” Skye stammered, blinking rapidly as she turned her head away from the corpse of the man they’d been sent to retrieve. The mission no longer made sense, its directive having become impossible, and Skye wasn’t certain what the best course of action would prove to be, especially when every nerve in her body screamed at her to leave.
“I know you’re the boss and all, but I think we should get out of here,” Ward suggested, narrowed eyes constantly roving every inch of the room. He didn’t trust the situation anymore – not in the slightest. Ward knew that every Inhuman’s powers were individual to them, and S.H.I.E.L.D. probably hadn’t even touched the tip of the iceberg as to what was possible, but it no longer seemed likely that one individual – powered or not – could wreak so much havoc.
Skye nodded and together they backed towards the door, both half expecting some sort of attack to present from the front. When nothing happened, Ward was equal parts relieved and suspicious. He didn’t pause to close the door again, figuring it didn’t much matter anyway since there didn’t seem to be a living soul left in the hospital to disturb the crime scene.
He shoved the I.C.E.R. back in his belt and clasped Skye’s hand as the two started down the corridor at a much more hurried pace than before. They’d made it a few feet before a figure barrelled out of a side room, and Skye let out a strangled noise of surprise. Ward’s heart picked up speed, thrumming fast like a hummingbird’s wings, as he swung a left hook around to connect with the face of the assailant. Ward’s fist didn’t manage to make contact and he grunted as he found his whole arm frozen impossibly in mid-air. It felt almost as though he was pushing against a wall, and he found that he wasn’t able to even so much as twitch his fingers to free himself.
“What the…” Ward ground out, expletive poised on his lips when the attacker lurched forwards again. Ward’s mouth dropped open and he forgot his struggle for a moment as he found himself staring into the crazed eyes of the doctor with the drip stand sticking out of his back. In fact, he didn’t seem to have stopped to remove the pesky hindrance, and Skye, recovering from her shock, seized the end of the pole to help her swing the near rabid doctor away from her lover.
The ploy worked, holding the man at bay, however, Ward soon discovered the hard way that he didn’t appear to need to make physical contact to prove dangerous. As though pushed by a cruel, invisible hand, Ward felt his own wrist snap backwards with an audible crack that sickened him to the pit of his stomach. He yelled out in pain and just managed to prevent himself from dropping to his knees on the hard tiled floor when he was suddenly released from the grip that had held him. Ironically, he didn’t need a doctor to tell him that his wrist was certainly broken.
Almost on reflex, Skye sent a bolt of energy towards the seemingly animated corpse, with enough force to send him flying through the wall, leaving a pile of rubble and mortar, and sending up a cloud of dust.
“I can’t use my powers in here or the whole place could go up like a tinder box,” Ward ground out, holding his injured arm close to his chest as he surveyed the hospital room, where there was likely piped oxygen running through the walls.
“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Skye said, placing her hand on his arm and watching with a wince as he grimaced at her touch.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ward agreed, more than happy to evacuate the scene, given the wholly unusual and apparently powerful entity that had invaded the hospital.
The couple had barely started down the hall once more when a rumbling rose from the ground, causing every item of furniture and medical equipment to vibrate. The lights resumed their frantic blinking, and Skye and Ward darted forward, side by side. Ward ushered Skye before him, a new sense of desperation in his movements. He carried his injured arm close to his chest but kept his free one circled around Skye’s waist, as though he was afraid that if he relinquished his grip on her, she might be lost to him.
“Almost there,” Skye said, whispering for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom herself. They were just a few steps away from the main entrance, and Skye’s relief was nearly palpable as she spotted their SUV at the edge of the parking lot. As soon as they were free and clear of the hospital, she’d seal the doors to trap whatever had attacked them inside, and liaise with May’s team, who would already likely be en route. She gripped Ward’s sleeve tight in her fist, urging him on gently but persistently. They arrived in front of the automatic doors and Skye strode ahead, stopping short of the glass just in time when it failed to slide open.
“Oh come on, not now,” hissed Skye in frustration. She slammed her palms simultaneously against the top pane, and kicked the bottom one with the toe of her boot for good measure.
“Fuck!” she yelled, delivering another angry blow to the door, which held surprisingly fast.
“I could try to shatter it with my powers?” she suggested, already taking a step back and beginning to roll up the sleeves of her jacket so that her gauntlets were exposed.
“That means whatever’s in here with us can get out there,” Ward said, jerking his head in the direction of the outdoors. “We’ll have no way to trap it.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” ground out Skye. She turned back to the waiting room, eyes roaming the space as she searched for another way out of the building that wouldn’t involve breaking a window.
“We could try a fire exit,” suggested Ward, the irony of that not lost on him. Skye debated the idea for barely a second before shaking her head. She didn’t want to delve any deeper into the building unless it was their only remaining option.
“There’s probably a door release behind the desk,” she grumbled, already rushing back to the station whilst Ward kept an eye on the mouth of the corridor. Skye placed one hand on the surface of the desk and hopped over it, frowning when she found that she had landed in the midst of a pile of blood splattered papers and a broken coffee mug. She crouched down carefully, avoiding the shattered porcelain fragments, as she ran her hand over the underside of the desk in an attempt to find the controls for the door. She fumbled around for a few moments without success, mentally cursing Coulson for landing them with this mission as she worked. Eventually, her fingers met with something thick and sticky coating the wood, and Skye recoiled in immediate horror. Raising her hand to eye level, she found her skin stained with an inky black substance that she couldn’t identify – nor did she think she wanted to. Wiping her hands off hurriedly on her trousers, Skye stood up and searched out Ward with her gaze. He hadn’t moved from the spot she’d left him in, his whole body visibly tensed and rigid, aside from the useless arm he cradled to his chest.
Thinking for only a moment as he weighed their options between the stairwell to his left or the end of the darkened hall where the ambulance bay was located, Ward nodded towards the single door opposite the reception area.
“The roof. We can contain whatever the hell that is in here, and then maybe we can hitch a ride in the away team Quinjet.”
Skye nodded in agreement, already making her way across the room as Ward pressed his uninjured hand to the door that led to the stairs, preparing to usher Skye away from whatever it was that had rendered them both so powerless. For one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most feared agents, and the leader of their Inhuman strike force, it was a foreign sensation to be the prey instead of the predator.
“Looks like there’s only three flights,” Ward said as he gazed up into the dimly lit stairwell, which was illuminated by the emergency lights that dotted the sides of the walls.
“You know I hate cardio,” Skye retorted through a playful grimace, and a smile passed between the pair as each vividly recalled her initial days as Ward’s belligerent trainee.
“Want me to carry you up, Rookie?” Ward joked, watching her eye roll with an affectionate smile tugging at his lips, despite the urgency he felt to get them as far away from that facility as possible.
“Walking wounded,” Skye reminded him, although she stole a moment to tenderly sweep her palm across Ward’s cheek. They exchanged fleeting smiles, and then Skye started up the stairs, her hair bouncing as she ran. She took the steps two at a time, keen to reach the safety of the rooftop as soon as possible. Every so often, she stopped to shoot a glance over her shoulder to ensure that Grant was still behind her – still making good time despite the obvious pain he was enduring. It was in one such moment of pause that she watched, confused, as Ward’s smile faded and his eyes that were upon her grew startled and wide.
“Skye, behind you!” He tripped over his words in his haste to yell out a warning, which Skye was too slow to heed. She spun on the spot to find herself nose to nose with the same nurse they’d first encountered upon entering the hospital; the woman who’d had her throat ripped out and gargled her very last breath right in front of them. Letting out a gasp, Skye just managed to evade the slap the woman aimed at her. The nurse didn’t appear at all deterred or disappointed though, and her bloodied lips contorted into a smirk, whilst the movement of her facial muscles pulled on the exposed flesh at her neck. A chunk of something tore itself away from her and hit the floor with a wet sounding slap, making Skye’s stomach clench.
“What the…” she began, although she found herself soon cut off by the nurse’s hand closing over the base of her throat. Effortlessly, the woman lifted Skye off her feet and rammed her hard against the stairwell wall. Ward cried out in anger, voice also tinged with fear, but Skye could focus on nothing but attempting to claw the woman’s fingers away. Her oxygen supply was running out at an alarming rate and her vision was growing fuzzy at the edges.
The thump of boots against concrete alerted Skye to the fact that Ward was making a valiant attempt to reach her, and she managed to sweep her gaze sideways just in time to see the nurse fling out her free hand, sending Ward tumbling back down the stairs in a heap. Skye was unaccustomed to hearing the shout of pain that Ward let out, yet even a soldier as formidable as Grant had their limits. Skye’s feet kicked helplessly at the air, and all she could do was gasp, choke, and flounder in the woman’s vice like grip. Her strength was inhuman, but not in all the ways that Skye was most familiar with. As she peered into the woman’s face, Skye’s realised that her features had contorted into a mask of sheer malevolence, which was reflected just as well in her milky eyes. The aura of death surrounding her was both unmistakeable and shocking, yet something that Skye had no time to attempt to understand.
“You… will… do…” the nurse barely managed to growl, hindered by vocal chords that flapped and juddered in plain view. A spatter of blood hit Skye’s cheek but she couldn’t care much about anything other than her dwindling oxygen supply.
Ward’s boots pounded against the stairs as he raced back up towards his girlfriend, his jaw set in determination. He was almost within touching distance of her when he found himself restrained, bound by the same invisible force that had bested him earlier.
“Skye!” He struggled even to shout out, suddenly feeling as if his entire body were encased in concrete - and as though he were somehow weighted to the spot.
Thrashing against her supernatural attacker, Skye tried to use her powers against whatever creature held her with newfound determination. However, the more she struggled and attempted to send jolts of vibrations up the woman’s arm, the wider the nurse’s sinister smile grew. Slowly, she leaned forward and buried her nose into Skye’s hair.
“I can smell your power,” she hissed into the shell of the Inhuman’s ear, before drawing away with a grin that revealed white teeth speckled by blood, which also ran down her chin and into the void left from the attack that had killed her. “You are the one.”
Skye felt her heart rate accelerate as the fingers around her neck tightened. Mere moments later, the nurse opened her maw impossibly wide, to the point of dislocating her own jaw. An insidious stream of black vomit spewed forth from her lips, leaving Skye gasping and reeling as she attempted to stop the hideous liquid from entering her own mouth.
Panic seized Skye but she found herself unable to escape the torrent of liquid, which almost seemed to have a mind of its own. She gagged and retched whilst the ooze gushed down her throat, filling her up, drowning her. Her head whipped from side to side, hampered by the still virulent grip of the nurse, which made it impossible for Skye to turn fully away and save herself. Blood rushed in her ears, her entire body trembled, and tears coursed down her cheeks. All the while, Ward screamed threats until his voice grew quickly hoarse, but nothing seemed to effect the woman, who was intent on completing what would prove to be her final mission. When it was over – and every last drop of the liquid had been expelled from the nurse’s body – she dropped to the floor, where she lay prone; finally at rest.
Skye fell with her, hitting the ground hard, and in the next instant Ward found he was released from whatever unseen bonds had held him. Broken arm and his own pain all but forgotten, Ward covered the feet that remained between him and Skye in a matter of seconds.
“Skye! Baby, can you hear me?” Ward demanded as he dropped onto his knees and did his best to turn Skye’s body over with the hand he still had use of. She was terrifyingly still, and her complexion seemed to have paled by several shades. Curiously, there appeared to be no trace of the black liquid that Ward had watched the nurse regurgitate staining her skin.
With a badly trembling hand, Grant placed two fingers against the pulse point on her neck, relieved to find her heart rate steady, even though sluggish.
“Skye?” he called out again, more softly. He brushed her hair back from her eyes and then tapped at her cheek, urgently trying to wake her up. Skye remained perfectly still, only the faintest rise and fall from her chest indicating that she was breathing at all.
Ignoring the searing pain in his wrist, Ward scooped her up and gathered her as close to his chest as possible. He began to ascend the stairs again, intending to reach the roof so that he could signal the away team to retrieve them. May was piloting the jet, and just the knowledge that the ‘cavalry’ was on the way made him feel- for a moment at least - somewhat reassured. Nobody messed with Melinda May and lived to tell the tale, and she was especially protective where Skye was concerned.
Reaching the door that led out onto the flat rooftop, Ward pushed it open with his shoulder. He found himself stopping in his tracks as Skye began to stir in his arms. Her eyelids flickered open, but the relief that washed over him was short lived.
“Skye? Talk to me! Skye?”
Staring up through white bleached, lifeless eyes, Skye’s lips twisted into a smirk, and the voice that left her lips was most definitely not her own. “Skye’s not here. This body belongs to me now.”
Ward didn’t have time to react, nor the necessary strength left, meaning that Skye was free from his arms and he was on his ass on the concrete before he knew it. She towered over him, staring him down with a cold, cruel look in her eyes that he barely recognised. It reminded him of his days spent under Garrett’s thrall, when he’d never truly known when the next beating would come, or if he’d live to see the end of another day. Fear bubbled up in his chest – not for himself, but for Skye – yet Ward refused to show it.
“Who are you?” he demanded, not bothering to stand. He gathered that who or whatever squatted inside Skye’s body would knock him back down anyway. His only option was to keep her talking in the hopes that May wasn’t far.
She cocked her head and gave him a once over with a derisive leer in place of her usual bright smile.
“Irrelevant, to you, at least,” she replied in a voice that was more of a growl. It chilled Grant to his core and he couldn’t help the shudder that wracked his body, although he did his level best to hide it. The pain in his arm had intensified, probably due to him carrying Skye up to the roof, but Ward clenched his jaw against it to keep his focus.
“It’s not,” he snarled, at least some of the fury he felt reflected within his eyes. “Who are you and what do you want?”
Skye – or more likely, the thing inside her – flicked her wrist in Ward’s direction, as though to dismiss his very existence. Clearly, he was of little consequence.
“I am the end of days,” she said, unaffected by her own admission. “I am going to burn you all, and I will use this body to do so, until there’s nothing left but pulp and dust.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Ward vowed, sitting up as an act of defiance.
The stranger wearing Skye’s face let out a bark of laughter, which carried on the evening air to Ward’s ears, making him shiver.
“And what is going to stop me? You? This body holds great power. I felt it as soon as she stepped inside this place. The others were weak, but she - she will help me unleash chaos.”
“I’m gonna ask you again, who the fuck are you?”
“You command a demon to tell you its name?” she chuckled in amusement, tilting her head at an odd angle to regard him. The word struck Ward in the chest like a physical blow and he could do very little to prevent the look of horrified disbelief that crossed his features. Whilst he’d found himself contemplating the existence of gods and devils on a semi regular basis since his Terrigenisis, hearing his worst fears and suspicions confirmed was quite something else entirely. However, in that moment, Ward’s concern for Skye far outweighed his own persistent fear over what might become of his soul one day. Skye was good and pure – everything he was not – and he couldn’t stand to contemplate the idea that she might be consumed from the inside out by such darkness.
Ward was poised to speak when Skye’s head was suddenly thrown backwards and, for just a moment, he saw her face - her real face - staring back at him, features taut with panic. All too soon, the being took hold of her again. It terrified and repulsed Grant all at once, since, thanks to over two decades of abuse, he knew all too well what it was like to have his thoughts and feelings used against him.
“Skye?” he scrambled to his feet and held her firm by the tops of her arms. Barely a moment later, she vanished from his grasp, as though she was made entirely of smoke, and he found himself alone on the rooftop with the sky above darkening ominously.
Removing the coms. device from his jacket pocket, Ward threw open the door and jogged down the stairs. He knew May’s unit would be close, and probably anxiously awaiting a status update since he and Skye had both dropped off radar some time ago. He spoke into the unit hurriedly, not caring about the obvious notes of panic that bled into his voice. He doubted anyone would want, nor dare, to call him out on it anyway.
“Away Team One… It’s Sk… Quake… she’s… she’s been compromised. I don’t… I don’t know what it is, but send a containment team… and…” he paused, contemplating for a few seconds how ridiculous he would sound before resolving to continue. “Get a priest.”
Ward shoved the device back into his pocket just as he burst through the door that would lead him back out onto the ground floor – where the nightmare had first begun barely thirty minutes before. The lights had ceased their incessant flickering, and the automatic door had slid wide open, allowing him blessed escape into the outside world.
Without looking back at the carnage in the hospital – for nothing could be done for anyone inside its walls now - Ward broke into a run. He headed straight for the parking lot, where he prayed he wouldn’t have too long to wait for May’s reinforcements. He was almost certain that Skye’s life – perhaps all of their lives – depended upon it.