Sorry for the delay! And yes, this story has now sprouted a third part, which will be along ... eventually.

I liked the way the hard drive plot played out; I was less satisfied by the logic of the plane setup, as this chapter likely indicates.

"No, Phil, we are not sending you in to rescue Skye."

"But—"

"Lola will be fine," said Natasha. "I'll enter the plane through the landing gear, take out Ward, and secure the hard drive. Barton will be in the vents for backup. Simple, fast, and minimal collateral damage involved."

"Do we even have vents?" asked Simmons dubiously. "I mean, it just seems like a bit of a security risk, having vents for people to crawl around in."

"You'll have vents after he's done," muttered Maria Hill. Buildings had a way of developing new architectural features after Barton had spent any amount of time near them. Coulson would be lucky if the plane just ended up with vents.

Barton pointedly ignored her comment, though Stark looked worried. His battles with the city architectural board were legendary.

"I do appreciate your all coming out here today," said Phil, "but don't you think this is a bit … overkill? This is just one rogue operative. I can handle him." He scanned the group; the whole of the Avengers, minus Thor, were there. Stark looked a bit warm in his suit; Banner looked as calm as he ever was; and this was Rogers' first field mission out of the hospital. Barton and Romanov, the erstwhile SHIELD personnel, merely looked bored.

Coulson's midlife crisis must have been worse than HR had reported if he was deluding himself into thinking he was a match for Ward. May could have taken him, sure, but she was a combat specialist. Coulson had been in management.

"I don't know about you," said Maria, "but the longer I spend out here, the less time I need to spend in Congress. HYDRA cleanup outweighs a subpoena." She and Natasha exchanged understanding looks. "This is almost like the old days. Except with less property damage."

Banner looked away meekly. "The Big Guy—"

"It won't come to that," she said. "You're here as a very last-ditch contingency plan. Between the rest of us, that plane will not be getting off the ground."

"Hey, Steve and Nat already had their fun in DC," Stark said. "I want my turn smashing up SHIELD property, too."

"I would prefer if I got my plane back in working condition," said Phil mildly.

Both of these statements were technically inaccurate – SHIELD no longer existed to possess property. Nor was the plane Coulson's to receive back. But now was not the time to argue the legalities of ownership – that could wait for Congress.

"All right, all right, you can chat later. Agent Fitz, how's our surveillance?"

"I have visuals," said Fitz, passing around the tablet controlling his surveillance units. "Skye looks uninjured, just a bit shaken up, and—"

"That's Deathlok," said Simmons. "Oh, he's not looking too good, is he?"

"Is she handcuffed to the staircase?" said Coulson incredulously. "What is Ward doing?"

"Kinky," Stark leered, but he shut up upon receiving Coulson's glare. He coughed. "I mean, Agent – Fitz, is it? – this is pretty sweet tech. Stark Industries is always hiring, if –"

Fitz looked like all his dreams had come true, all at once. He also looked like he was about to start hyperventilating. "Think of the monkeys!" said Simmons encouragingly, patting him on the back.

Maria sighed. How did anyone get anything done without her? "Save it for the debrief. Stark, you can recruit later. Agent Triplett, you've encountered Deathlok before."

"We used electroshock discs on him last time," said Triplett, "and those seemed to work, but he was able to remove them."

"Not a problem," said Natasha briskly, rummaging through the duffel bag of equipment she had brought. She fished out some cartridges and snapped them onto the Widow's Bites at her wrists, slotted another few discs onto her belt, and hooked her earpiece in. "Mine are stronger than standard SHIELD issue. Stark's been experimenting."

"Let's get this over with," said Barton. "Nat, you ready to go? We'll sneak onto the plane while you distract Ward. We'll let you know once we're in position."

"Who wants the honors?" Maria said, offering her microphone.

"You've got seniority," said Coulson. "And we're trying to keep up the element of surprise, right?"

"This might even be fun," said Maria as she adjusted her mike, ignoring Stark ("What do you mean, you don't have fun working for me?"). She scanned the frequencies and tuned into the one Fitz had delivered, a patch directly into the plane's speaker systems.

"This is Maria Hill to SHIELD 616. You have 30 seconds to come out and surrender. I repeat, come out and surrender."

"We're in the plane now," said Natasha through her earpiece. "Keep talking."

"You going to answer me, Ward, or do I have to come over there?"

Fitz's drone showed Deathlok – no, Mr. Peterson, what kind of a name was 'Deathlok' anyway? – handing Ward a microphone. Technical difficulties, then.

"Maria Hill. Kind of hoped you went down with the Triskelion."

Captain Rogers looked outraged for her, bless him. This wasn't nearly the worst she'd heard before.

"And I hoped you weren't the duplicitous lowlife you turned out to be, but here we are."

"Gonna be honest with you, Hill, I'm having a pretty bad day. So if I were you, I would get the hell out of my way."

"We're in position," said Barton. "I'm in the vents with a clear line of fire, and Nat's hiding behind the corner."

"I was expecting more intelligent conversation," said Natasha sardonically. "He used to be a SHIELD agent, I thought we had standards."

Maria agreed, but as Ward was still ostensibly a SHIELD agent, she would have to endure his abysmal attempts at villainous banter a little longer. There were protocols to be observed. She had to offer him the chance to stand down peacefully,

"Give up Skye, and we'll talk about it."

"Yeah, that's not happening."

("He sounds like an axe murderer," said Barton.)

Well, then. She'd made the offer in good faith, and he'd rejected it. She could really go to town now.

"You know, I never liked you, Ward. Not from our first sit-down, but I never figured you for John Garrett's lapdog."

("Ooh," said Stark, clutching his heart dramatically. Maria ignored him.)

"A lot of us lost respect for Fury after he picked you as his second. He wanted eye candy, he could have at least picked Romanoff."

"Really?" said Natasha, over the comms. "This again?"

("I think you're pretty," mumbled Captain America. Maybe they shouldn't have let him out of the hospital yet.)

Maria rolled her eyes. "That's funny. I'll tell her you said that." ("You do that," said Natasha.) "Now hand Skye over, or I'll have a squad of F16s knock you on your ass."

It was actually a wing of RCAF Hornets, not F16s, idling on the next runway over – the Canadians had been very helpful after she'd notified them of Talbot's violation of their sovereignty – but she doubted Ward was the type to appreciate the fine distinctions of military hardware.

"Even if you had that kind of pull any more, which you don't," ("Excuse me!" said Stark. "You still have that pull. I have all the pull."), "Coulson would never let you do it. He would never sacrifice Skye like that. But you know Garrett would. So don't try and follow us."

"I can't listen to this drivel any more," said Natasha. "Clint, watch my back, I'm going in."

The camera feed from Fitz's drone showed Natasha tossing three electroshock discs out to intercept Mike Peterson. She stepped out from behind the corner as the Deathlok cybernetic implants began shorting out.

"Who said anything about following you?" said Natasha, directly to Ward. "Are you going anywhere? You don't look like you're going anywhere to me."

Ward looked, in fact, like his bad day had just gotten twenty times worse. He hadn't even bothered getting up from where he was sitting against the wall. Natasha, on the other hand, was clearly enjoying herself.

"Hey, Nat, stop hogging the prisoner," said Barton, from somewhere in the ceiling. "The rest of us are waiting outside, you know."

"The… rest of you?" said Ward.

"As Fury's 'eye candy', I know a lot of people," said Maria. "Including the Avengers. Garrett must be so disappointed right now, really."

Garrett had always been a bit patronizing towards her, yes, but he had never underestimated her. Apparently that had not been passed along to Ward.

"Wait, this is Garrett's rookie?" said Barton. "Wasn't that the one who got poo drawn on his evaluation? Pretty good judgment in whoever vetted him—"

"It was a porcupine!" Though Ward had turned out to be more of a poop, really. She should have taken Coulson's misinterpretation of her doodle as a sign.

"This is all really cool," said Skye, "and on any other day I would be all over you guys, especially the part where Ward is a piece of shit, but seriously, my wrist is starting to hurt. Will someone please unchain me from the staircase now?"