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This was definitely taking too long. Fitz was starting to get impatient.
“They should have woken up by now,” he said, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“You did say that someone recoded their escape route,” Prince reminded him, albeit reluctantly.
Yo-Yo was just as stressed as Fitz was. “Fitz is right,” she pointed out. “Unless something went terribly wrong, they would have been back with us so we could rescue the guys.”
Fitz ran his hands through Jemma’s hair, the pain of separation weighing heavily in his heart. “And unfortunately we can’t wake them up. It’s too dangerous.”
“Maybe we can send someone else in,” Piper suggested. “They might need help.”
“That was only supposed to be an emergency solution,” Prince argued.
Suddenly a beeping sounded from the monitors attached to Daisy. Her heart rate was severely elevated and tremors began to ripple the plane.
“This is the third time that’s happened,” Yo-Yo muttered. “What is going on in there?”
“I think this counts as an emergency,” Piper announced.
Fitz nodded. “I’ll go in.”
Yo-Yo raised an eyebrow. “Are you offering because you want to help Daisy or because you want to see Simmons?”
“Daisy is like my little sister,” Fitz reminded her. “If she’s in trouble in there, I’m going to do whatever it takes to help her.”
Davis’s voice sounded from the cockpit. “I hate to be a downer, but I don’t know if we have enough power for that.”
“Actually, we do,” Fitz corrected. He walked over to a nearby cabinet and pulled out a small device that contained a pulsing blue-green light. “Holden Radcliffe designed this self-contained clean-energy device to power Aida. He made another one to power the LMD version of himself and I claimed it after we deactivated him.”
“Can it power the Zephyr?” Prince questioned skeptically.
“It can power almost anything,” Fitz confirmed. “With plenty of energy to spare.”
He mounted it on the wall and pressed a button. A ripple of energy surged through the Zephyr, prompting a cheer from Davis. “That definitely worked, Fitz!” he called.
Fitz sat down, taking the only remaining Framework helmet. Yo-Yo moved towards him. “Are you sure about this?” she asked carefully.
While Piper wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm, Fitz nodded. “I have to do this.”
“Buena suerte para ti,” Yo-Yo told him with a nod.
As the technology took effect, Fitz closed his eyes, and awoke to find himself in the Triskelion.
“What the–” he began, staring at his surroundings. He was sitting at a desk in a large office. Signs in front of him confirmed that this was indeed the Triskelion, a Shield base he’d only been to once before. Or now, a Hydra base, he realized in horror.
He began typing into the computer, quickly pulling up documents and news articles, trying hard to figure out what was going on. What he found chronicled a horrifying story about Hydra’s complete takeover and dominance of the world. Shield was gone, Inhumans were being hunted and experimented on, and Simmons was…dead? How was that possible?
This place was definitely not the Framework as Radcliffe had described it. Fitz wondered exactly what had happened to turn this place into Hydra central.
Shaking his head to clear it, he began searching reports specifically related to Inhuman prisoners. Right now, there were only two live subjects. The other subjects were all listed as deceased. Briefly side-tracking, he skimmed through the list of deceased Inhumans and stopped when he got to the most recent entry: Lincoln Campbell, who’d died during testing.
His new horror reminded him what he was supposed to be doing and he returned to the file on live Inhumans. One was Vijay Nadeer, who’d been captured a few days ago and held for questioning. And the other, complete with an attached document describing days of experimentation and torture via someone known as the Doctor, was Skye.
I’ve got to find her. The thought consumed Fitz and he quickly located the cell she was currently being kept in. A live feed was streaming from the cell, and the sight of Daisy just cemented his resolve to get to her.
It only took a few minutes to make his way to the detention level Daisy was on. He sent the guards away, marveling at how easy it was to give them orders, and swiped a badge from one of them. He opened the cell door and there was Daisy, curled up against the wall, her knees drawn, and her face down.
She looked up when the door opened, and Fitz felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Dry blood was crusted in multiple places on her face and neck, along with bruising everywhere else. Exhaustion darkened her eyes, and she looked defeated.
Then Fitz began to walk towards her and she stood up, slowly, pain clear in every movement. She gave him a hard stare, her arm curled protectively around her torso. “What do you want this time?” she growled softly.
“What do I–what?”
“Are you going to experiment on me again?” Fitz froze. I did this to her? he thought, once again feeling like he’d been gut-punched. “Or are you just going to talk about how much of a monster I am?” she guessed bitterly.
Fitz winced. “You’re not a monster, Daisy. You’re just different, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Fitz?” Daisy breathed.
“It’s me.” The little strength Daisy had forced to make herself stand seemed to evaporate. Her knees buckled and she collapsed. Fitz quickly caught her, holding her in a tight hug. “I’ve got you, Daisy. You’re going to be alright.”
“I can’t believe you’re here, Fitz,” Daisy choked. Fitz could see tears welling in her eyes and her body was shaking as if she didn’t even have the strength to cry.
“Did I do this to you?” he asked, suspecting he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Daisy shook her head feebly. “It wasn’t you. The Doctor did this.”
Fitz sighed. “But I am the Doctor, right?”
“The Framework is a mess,” Daisy tried to explain. “Hydra won, May’s Hydra, Ward’s Shield, Jemma had to dig her way out of a mass grave at the Academy, and Coulson only has memory fragments of the real world thanks to the Tahiti Protocol.”
“But I did this to you?” Fitz pressed. If any version of him was responsible for hurting his little sister, he was going to make sure the right person took accountability for it. He hugged her tighter.
“You’re nothing like the Doctor, Fitz,” Daisy choked. “You are good and kind and smart and you would never do something like this.”
“Please, Daisy,” Fitz pressed again.
She let out a small sob. “Yes,” she whispered, almost inaudibly. “Aida programmed your avatar like this. But this you never met Jemma, never met Coulson, never went through the same things real you has.”
“But if you hadn’t saved me in Ivanov’s base, I would have done this–I would be responsible for hurting you,” Fitz pointed out. “So I’m going to take responsibility for it. I’m sorry, Daisy.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, I do actually. Because even if I didn’t personally hurt you here, I definitely hurt you at the energy lab in Pasadena. You were hurting and scared of hurting us, and you helped save us anyway.”
Daisy moaned. “Robbie saved you.”
“I’m pretty sure the Ghost Rider couldn’t have safely opened a nuclear reactor about to go critical,” Fitz pointed out. “That was all you. You went out of your way to protect us and I ragged on you. That was wrong of me. I knew you were in pain–I knew you were grieving and that people grieve differently, but I chose to hurt you instead of understanding.”
“It’s okay, Fitz,” Daisy said. “You were hurting too.”
Fitz shook his head. “That doesn’t excuse what I did or how I treated you when you got back. I should have apologized then, but I didn’t. I am so sorry, Daisy.”
“I forgive you, Fitz,” Daisy whispered. “I forgive…”
Before she could finish the sentence, she went slack against him. Fitz looked at her, concerned, and realized that she had passed out. “Come on, Daisy, stay with me. Come on, wake up.” She didn’t move. “Okay. Just rest then.” He rubbed her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”
They stayed that way for an hour. The door to the cell opened again, rousing Daisy, and May walked in.
“What?” Daisy demanded.
She stared at the two of them thoughtfully. “I never thought I’d see the day the Doctor showed mercy to an enemy, especially an Inhuman,” May noted. She looked directly at Daisy.
Daisy pushed herself to her feet again, refusing Fitz’s help. Just like before, her arm was covering her stomach. “Why are you here?”
“Is it true…that you’re an Inhuman?”
“Powerful enough to bring this whole place down,” Daisy asserted.
“And she wouldn’t even break a sweat,” Fitz agreed.
May stared at him again. “Why are you here?” she demanded.
“You can figure that out when you wake up,” Fitz told her. He pulled a device from his pocket, one that had somehow made the trip to the Framework with him, and aimed it at May.
It bathed her in a yellow light. “What are you doing?” she gasped. She reached out a hand, bracing herself against the wall, while she pressed her other hand to her head.
“It’s time you got your memories back,” Fitz announced. He watched as May slowly relaxed.
She opened her eyes, staring at him. “Fitz?”
“Welcome back, May,” he greeted.
“Why am I with Hydra? And what happened to Daisy?” she demanded.
He gazed at her evenly. “Aida and Dr. Radcliffe abducted you weeks ago and trapped your mind in a simulated reality called the Framework,” he explained. “We tried to find you but ran into some setbacks which led to every leading member of Shield being captured and replaced with LMDs except for me, Simmons, and Daisy. Daisy and Simmons went into the Framework to find you guys and get you out, but they haven’t been very successful. I came because I knew Daisy was in trouble.”
May slowly approached Daisy, who was leaning heavily against the wall. “Daisy,” she whispered, guilt and pain in her voice.
“Hey.”
“I’m so sorry,” May said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Daisy told her. “Aida is manipulating this whole thing.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” May pointed out.
“It wasn’t you.”
Fitz cleared his throat. “May, out of curiosity, do you know why you came here?”
May nodded. She reached into her sleeve, pulling out a translucent blue crystal. “To bust Daisy out.”
She tossed the crystal to the ground and the mist began covering Daisy in the stone chrysalis. The Inhuman smirked in satisfaction before being completely covered.
It only took a moment before Daisy blasted the stone away triumphantly, before dropping to her hands and knees. May reached out, grasping her by the arm and pulling her to her feet. “You’re looking better,” May noted.
Daisy felt the space where she’d had dried blood on her face. “Yeah, thanks for that.”
“Time to go,” Fitz announced. May nodded, leading the way. Daisy claimed the gun of a guard who had stupidly appeared during her terrigenesis.
Getting through the Hydra cubicles was laughably easy. At one point, May asked them to cover her, but she didn’t actually need it, since she ran out and shot everyone on her own.
They were forced to stop at the elevator when two Hydra soldiers and a dark-haired Aida appeared. “Drop your weapons!” the soldiers ordered.
“Interesting,” Aida mused. “No matter the circumstance, none of you can escape your true nature. You, the warrior,” she told May. “Mack the protector, Coulson, the father, and Fitz, well, you’re a romantic, whether you realize it or not.”
Daisy glared at her challengingly. “And me, what, I don’t make the list?” she sniped. Before Aida could respond, she’d quaked her out the window. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I beat Ivanov,” Daisy said with a grin.
Fitz could tell that it had taken a toll on her. “We’d better get out of here,” he suggested. “I’m pretty sure that even terrigenesis can’t heal everything.”
“Yeah, my ribs aren’t that happy with me right now, and transition’s like a hangover made of bees,” Daisy agreed.
* * * * *
Surprisingly, it hadn’t taken long to find the secret base, which was, apparently the Playground. Coulson and Mack were already there. Mack drew Daisy aside to apologize for getting her caught by Hydra, and Fitz took the opportunity to return Coulson’s full memories.
“It’s good to see you again, Fitz,” Coulson greeted warmly.
“Likewise, Sir.”
Coulson looked over at Daisy, who was still moving gingerly. “How is she?” he asked.
Fitz winced. “She’s been through a lot in here and she’s also injured in the real world thanks to the LMDs she had to fight.”
“How injured?”
“She almost died,” Fitz admitted. “Jemma really didn’t want her to come here, but agreed that she would technically be getting rest.”
“Bed rest through mission completion,” Coulson mused. “If only it worked that way normally.”
Daisy and Mack came back over, interrupting the conversation. “Hey, Fitz, can I have the thing?” Daisy asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Fitz acquiesced. He handed it to Daisy, who returned Mack’s memories.
The second the process finished, Mack wrapped his arms around Daisy, who sank into them contentedly. “Tremors,” he whispered.
“Hi,” she murmured back. The smile on her face was wide.
A few moments later, Jemma returned from the mission she’d been on. Her face lit up upon seeing Fitz, and they kissed for a moment. Then Jemma saw the others. “Daisy!” she exclaimed. “You’re okay.”
“For the most part,” Daisy agreed, hugging Trip, who'd come with the biochemist. “You’ve got May and Fitz to thank for that.”
“You followed us into the Framework,” Jemma stated in disbelief. She gave Daisy a tight hug, all the worry she'd felt projected by the gesture. “Even though we specified that it was an emergency option only.”
“Daisy was in trouble,” Fitz explained. “When I got here, she’d been tortured and experimented on by my avatar.”
Jemma glared at Daisy. “Medbay. Now,” she ordered firmly.
Fitz joined them once Jemma had completed her tests. “So what’s the diagnosis?” he asked.
“Somehow the injuries she’s sustained are identical to the ones she has in the real world, minus the gunshot wound and facial injuries,” Jemma announced. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”
“We need to get out of here as soon as we can so she can get actual medical treatment,” Fitz realized.
“Radcliffe gave coordinates to the backdoor out of here,” Daisy said. “And I don’t think Aida knows where it is.”
“Aida’s building herself an Inhuman body in the real world,” Jemma said.
Fitz glanced at her sharply. “Project Looking Glass?” he guessed. “There was something about it in the files I looked at, but I didn't have a chance to dig deeper.”
Daisy shrugged. “If we leave now, we can get out before Aida realizes and take her out.”
“Let’s go then,” the scientists agreed.
* * * * *
It was easier than they had anticipated. Apparently Aida really didn’t know about the backdoor, so they didn’t meet any resistance on the way out. May, Coulson, and Mack found themselves in Ivanov’s underwater base and took great delight in destroying Aida, the Ivanov LMDs, and Ivanov’s inexplicably still alive head. Meanwhile, Daisy and Fitz dismantled the Framework and deleted every trace of Aida’s code.
After recovering the rest of the team and blowing Ivanov’s base to bits, the team gathered at a diner to celebrate. Having spent weeks in harrowing and traumatic situations, it was nice to have a chance to sit back and relax. And well, if a certain sentient Chronicom abducted them and sent them through a monolith to the future, dinner was nice while it lasted.