Echoes

Mickey fought the weight of her eyelids as she stared at the screen scrolling through files as the program Jinx had written removed any remaining encryption. It had been a miracle that they'd managed to get any information off of the tiny USB device considering all that it had been through. Shoved inside a gaping bloody wound, hidden beneath bone and then submerged for a period of time in salt water? Yeah, it was lucky that this USB was giving them anything at all. As disgusting as it was, the gore from Clint's wound had actually protected the device from the salt water that would have corroded it.

It had been hours since Mickey had formed a team at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Manhattan and had set about decrypting the hundreds of files that Clint had brought with him. When they'd hit a brick wall Mickey had flown Jinx down from Boston and had set her about helping to crack through the encryption. It had thankfully been the boost that they required to crack through. Now they only had to sit and wait for progress to be made.

"Any luck?" Jinx appeared like a ninja out of thin air behind Mickey who leapt nearly a mile and then rubbed her eyes that were suddenly filled with gunk.

"Nothing yet. I mean, it's working through it but right now it's taking so long it'll be a miracle if we find anything tonight." Mickey yawned and stretched her arms above her head. "I'm glad I left Pluto at home, he'd be way too restless here."

"Yeah, though, I could use something to do." Jinx shrugged her shoulders. "Wrote the program and now you don't seem to need me." She laughed and then nodded down the hall. "Coffee? I can get coffee. I'm a good go-fer."

"You usually have some smutty novel lined up for this sort of situation, don't you?" Mickey chuckled though she was guilty of the same on most occasions.

"I…" Jinx started and then sighed before looking away. "I'm worried, that's all."

"I know." Mickey patted her friend on the shoulder and then sighed and looked back toward the screen. The last forty eight hours had been a nightmare. Jinx had grown closer to Scarlett than any of the others while she'd posed undercover as her secretary for so long. Having been torn from that role so suddenly and made aware of just how dire things had become had done a number on the usually bubbly agent.

"So, coffee?"

"Yeah, go ahead. I could go for some coffee."

"I noticed. You've got a bit of something…" Jinx comically wiped at her own mouth and then Mickey sat upright and did the same at once with a laugh.

"Watching the numbers was like a lullaby, okay? So judgy." Mickey watched Jinx disappear down the hall and then furrowed her brow. Hours ago she'd gone on and on about the bad feelings she had but the last hour she'd silenced herself and internalized it. Sure, several people had told her to cool it with the bad vibes stuff, it was making everyone nervous. Mickey was more unsettled after Jinx had stopped than when she had been constantly reminding everyone of the bad feelings she had.

Twenty minutes later Jinx was back with coffee and pulled up a seat near Mickey's desk and they were chatting back and forth over the weather, over the usual gossip but nothing quite felt right or real to either of them. They were going through the motions but everything felt slowed, odd, strange.

"I have such a bad feeling." Jinx grumbled finally and as the words slipped past her lips she felt relief flood through her. She'd been holding in the warning for so long that she swore it was driving her crazy. "God, I needed to say it."

"I could tell. I miss you saying it, actually. I mean, I know nothing's all right and to pretend it is just feels weird."

"Do you think anyone's going to come back from this? Clint was so hurt…"

"You warned him, Jinx, it's not your fault!" Mickey held up her hands at once to silence the darker haired woman who pouted. "Really, you have to stop beating yourself up over it. You know how they can be sometimes. Natasha pulls the same stuff… Heck, even Steve Rogers pulls that stuff and he's Captain good guy…"

"I know! I do, I know that but I can't help but think that if I had just pushed a bit harder he would have been fine! He never would have gone back undercover and then think of the grief we would have been spared! That Clint would have been spared! God, maybe Scarlett wouldn't have lapsed so much…"

"You cannot shoulder all of that, Jinx. It's not your fault. If Clint hadn't gone back under cover then we never would have gotten all of this information. I mean, what if this is the key to reversing all of the damage done? How cool would that be? Sometimes everything happens for a reason and sometimes bad things are just as necessary as the good."

"I know." Jinx sighed and shook her head. "It's this feeling. It's eating me alive. I can't help but think that the worst is yet to come." She looked to her friend and Mickey felt haunted for a moment by her different colored eyes and got the shivers.

"Maybe try not to say stuff like that."

"You just told me to mention my bad feelings. Do you or do you not want to hear about them?"

"I do, you just… that freaked me out." Mickey shivered with a little nervous laugh.

"Hey, think about the good things. You're right. Maybe this stuff we're decoding will have some of the answers."

"Maybe." Mickey nodded and then looked back to the files that were slowly piecing together on the screen in front of her and then backing up consistently to S.H.I.E.L.D. servers just in case anything went wrong through the process. "Hey, hey wait… hold on." Mickey stood up and walked across the room to where there was a wall of screens, each showing different files being decrypted.

"What is it? Anything good?" Jinx scooted the rolling desk chair across the room after Mickey.

"Just give me a second, I saw something in the decrypted files…" Mickey waved her hand over a sensor on the desk in front of her and a holographic screen spread across the length of it, glowing an ethereal blue. Wiping windows left and right with a touch of her hand she maneuvered files and examined them for the formula she'd spotted before it'd disappeared while working on the next series of files.

"What do you think it is?"

"Just… let me find it before I jump to conclusions." Mickey waved her hand at Jinx who spun in her chair nervously. "Where are you? Please tell me I wasn't making up what I saw…" Mickey muttered beneath her breath, twisting files aside at an alarming rate. She was making Jinx dizzy.

"There! Stop there!" Jinx leapt from her seat and then tripped and almost lost her balance. Mickey froze in place and Jinx crept under her arm and slid a file forward and then spread it across the screen. It appeared in pieces on each screen along the wall and the two stared at it in awe as it unraveled. Part of it was still encrypted but from what they could see it was schematics for a bomb.

It wasn't the bomb itself that was what had caught their eye but what was inside the bomb was much more important. It was a series of toxins.

Some of them had been labeled as rejected and the last one that was half encrypted and half deciphered jumped out at Mickey. She selected the text and blew it up on the screen. Every head in the room turned to look at it and a hush loomed over the already quiet room. It was like someone had sucked all the air out through the vents.

"That's it." Mickey whispered and swallowed the lump in her throat and turned back to Jinx who stared at the formula and walked around the desk to get closer to what they'd decoded.

"I have a bad feeling." Jinx whispered and turned to look at Mickey, he face pale.

Mickey tapped away at the keyboard and tucked the file away and forwarded it to Jemma Simmons on the west coast in hopes the woman could confirm that this was in fact at least partially what they were dealing with. Whatever Scarlett had been infected with had been rejected by MedCo over three years ago and thrown away. Next to the formula were the words that had sucked the air out of the room.

Failure.

What did that mean? Was the virus fatal? Maybe somewhere in these same files could be the antidote that would cleanse Scarlett's ailing body. Or maybe, for all they knew, they could find the notes on how this particular toxin had been manufactured so they could break it down and work on starting a cure of their own.

"Mickey? Mickey, look." Jinx pointed to a file just beneath the one they'd been left awestruck by. Mickey highlighted it and brought it forward and saw a series of maps and memos. There were points of interests all across the United States.

One of those points was their building in Manhattan.

"Shit, shit someone call Director Fury." Mickey shouted but then the images on the screens and holograms flickered. Then they went black. All at once the lights turned off, the air conditioners stopped working and the ground shook. Silence fell and then an alarm sounded somewhere in the distance and the building shook.

"I have a bad feeling." Jinx whispered, breaking the tense silence. Mickey grabbed Jinx and pulled her down beneath the desk and held her beneath her and just in time. There was no alert, no warning sound, just a fiery explosion that lit up the room before the building collapsed in on itself and there was nothing but darkness.

Dianne Hendricks walked toward the employee entrance of Refuge and stared at the door and the small keypad that would grant her entry. She had thought about breaking into this building about ten thousand times but hadn't ever actually considered she would end up here one day to do just that.

"I hope you're as good at this stuff as you claim to be." Dianne whispered as she stared down at the small USB device in her hand. Tony had given it to her before she'd left for the airport. He said something about Jarvis, talking about it like it was a human being who would help her, and then assured her that there was no lock he couldn't crack; electronic or not. She sure hoped Jarvis wasn't code for some kind of explosive, that would be terrifying.

Then again, he said this would get her into Scarlett's computer systems too so she wondered if perhaps Jarvis was code for some kind of program he'd whipped up. He was Tony Stark after all. Searching the side of the keypad she found nowhere to insert the device so instead she plugged it into the bottom of her phone, just on a hunch. At once her screen was completely controlled by something else and doing things she never knew it was capable of.

"Mrs. Hendricks?"

"Uh… yes?" She scoffed as her phone spoke to her in a charming British accent.

"My name is Jarvis. If you would hold me close to the lock I will get you inside."

"You're… Jarvis?"

"Just a Rather Very Intelligent System."

"Cute."

"I tend to agree. Now if you could."

"Oh, yeah." Dianne scoffed and then held up the phone close to the keypad and winced. "Is… is this good?"

"Perfect, Mrs. Hendricks."

She held the phone and watched as the keypad lit up without so much as a touch and then it glowed red and blinked.

"Well, this is rather unexpected." Jarvis spoke and Dianne turned the phone back to face her. "I cannot seem to hack through Miss Damien's security to login as her. Is there perhaps another employee we could use to grant us access? A name would help but is not required."

"Oh she has this adorable receptionist… Julianna Bennett, I think her name was. I remembered because it was as cute as she was. She has these crazy eyes, I'll never forget it. Reads these really smutty novels. Recommended one to me on my way out last time I got to interview Miss Damien. It was some real harlequin level stuff."

"Thank you for the helpful information, Mrs. Hendricks." Jarvis silenced once again and the keypad glowed blue and for a moment it blinked red and then chimed pleasantly and the door snapped unlocked.

"Welcome, Miss Bennett." A pleasant voice greeted her from seemingly everywhere. Dianne slowly pushed the door open and stepped inside the building.

"I've elected to keep the lights off as I need a higher clearance to operate through most of security. Given that Miss Bennett is Miss Damien's personal secretary it appears you can access an elevator to the highest level. You cannot, however, access Miss Damien's office."

"You really can't get through it?"

"I would require Mr. Stark's assistance to break through the complex security measures she has set up. He would be impressed."

"Hell, I'm impressed. He seemed so confident."

"Don't rub it in his face, he doesn't like that." Jarvis scanned the building as they walked. "If you cannot find any information of value in Miss Bennett's personal files then perhaps we can see if there are any clues on how to access Miss Damien's office. Even if you are able to remove her hard drive to transfer back to Mr. Stark then we can make some headway."

"This went from breaking and entering to stealing very quickly."

"Don't worry, all blame will fall on Mr. Stark if you are caught. He's a man of his word."

"I trust you." Dianne stalled and looked around the maze like pathways of Refuge, feeling wrong for breaking into the building and going behind Scarlett's back. Maybe this was the wrong way to go about this. She thought back to her conversation with Tony and knew that he had strong feelings for her, but this was perhaps not the best foundation to build a relationship on. Still, she wanted to help and if it meant she had to get her hands a little dirty in order to do that, then she was willing.

Sometimes to beat the bad guys some rules had to be broken. Dianne knew that better than anyone. She was an advocate of peace, of privacy, but she knew very well that just because she was it didn't mean that everyone else was too. She knew very well that Scarlett was in no way always a woman of peace. From what she could put together with the information provided, Scarlett was very much of the same mind set. Sometimes in order to do some good, some wicked must also be done.

"Mrs. Hendricks, do you have a family?" Jarvis asked as the elevator came to a stop at the top floor of the Refuge building.

"I do, husband and two kids." She smiled to herself. "Both little girls and both trouble. I hope they grow up to be as much trouble as I am."

"That's very sweet."

"Why'd you ask, Jarvis?"

"Ah, I am not used to dealing with people in stable relationships and I was merely curious."

Dianne laughed and then walked around the desk at the end of the room near the double doors that led into Scarlett's formidable office. She sat behind the desk and adjusted the chair before searching for the computer to flip on.

"I'm at a loss, Jarvis…"

"Allow me."

Dianne placed her phone on the desk and was amazed when the screen to the left came alive without any assistance.

"It appears that the computers here are quite sophisticated."

"Seeing as I can't even find a computer."

"The hard drives are all locked away and accessed independently from each system wirelessly through a secure network only accessible by Refuge employees."

"Does that mean we can get to Scarlett's files from here, maybe?"

"It appears that she is the only employee who is not connected to this system."

"What?"

"She has access to all of it but her files are not in the hard drives. I have already scanned most of the information. Why don't you start going through Miss Bennett's information while I search around?"

"Okay, I can do that." Dianne was out of her league and she knew it. Jarvis did too. Her laptop barely worked half the time and her phone was two generations too old. She couldn't even play Candy Crush Saga properly on it most days. She was more of an old school reporter, or at least that's what she considered herself instead of the truth which was that she was technologically challenged.

Prying through folders and files, Dianne was relieved when nothing else was locked up. Whatever security had been protecting Miss Bennett's files had already been broken through thanks to Jarvis. It saved her any further embarrassing questions.

"Wait… S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Dianne wiped her hand over her mouth and leaned back in the chair. She knew that Scarlett was involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. and all reports and speculation led her to believe that she was seeing a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor for something or another. That was the extent to which Dianne had been aware of her involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sure, no one was every simply involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. for something small, but health reasons seemed like more than enough.

"Miss Bennett is actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent who goes by the codename Jinx? She exchanges a lot of very silly emails with another S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent. This one I'm more familiar with. She meets with Scarlett every few weeks. Agent Michelangela Pierce. I can't piece together what they actually do for S.H.I.E.L.D. but it appears they are very close." Dianne hit a button in her pocket and recorded her voice so that any further thoughts wouldn't escape her if she had to recount them later to Tony.

"Refuge's files are very interesting but not in the way that we would hope. Miss Damien has a rather impressive future ahead of her." Jarvis spoke and the screen of Dianne's phone blinked blue pleasantly.

"Oh… oh, maybe not." Dianne grimaced as she came across a series of files transported between another S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent and Miss Bennett. "Oh no, Jarvis…"

"Allow me to look." The screen manipulated without Dianne's help and the files spread across the screen, locking into place, faster than Dianne could actually read through them.

"Oh no, she's sick… I mean I knew something was wrong but…" Dianne placed her hand over her mouth as she read a rather upsetting email from Jinx to Mickey, expressing her worry.

"From the information I have gathered personally on Miss Damien I would say that this all adds up. Her health is in great decline. If it continues this rapidly…"

"She's dying." Dianne whispered and felt her eyes water. "I can't stay here. This is terrible. Gather what you can and then let's get out of here. I'm going to be sick." Dianne stood up. Jarvis hummed a pleasant blue from her phone but then one by one files on the screen that Dianne had been working through disappeared.

"Alert." Jarvis' voice spoke and his screen glowed red. "Intruder. You are not alone, Mrs. Hendricks. Leave me and go. Take the path through the front door. Break through the door and set off the alarms if need be."

Dianne didn't waste a second but she didn't leave Jarvis. She grabbed him and shoved him in her pocket. Over the last half an hour she had gotten oddly attached to the computer. Sirens blasted overhead and the floor suddenly glowed red beneath Dianne's feet and she crouched low in a panic.

"Files are disappearing from Refuge's internal hard drives. Miss Hendricks, something terrible is happening."

"Jarvis, call the police!" Dianne whispered and hurried down the stairs, afraid of getting stuck in the elevator if something went wrong. Sure enough even the emergency lights that had begun to glow failed and an eerie hum faded out into silence. The floor shook and Dianne could hear Jarvis alerting the police of an incident at the Refuge building but it would be the last thing that Dianne ever heard.

In a flash of fire and shrapnel the Refuge building crumbled to the ground. Hundreds of tons of steel and stone collapsed on top of Dianne Hendricks, killing her in an instant.