A/N: This story is set post-01x16 and, so far, ignores the rest of Season 1.

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Fragile

Her head was spinning and it was getting harder to breathe. Still, she crouched in the corner of the lab, holding the strange gun she'd found on the table. When they found her, she was going to have to fight back. It was the only way.

Her hands shaking, she lifted the gun and aimed it at the door. She wasn't quite sure what she was doing; she'd never held a gun in real life, never pulled a trigger, never shot anyone or anything. There were plenty of guns on the guards at the lab, but since those guards paid as much attention to her as most mortals gave to clumps of dirt on the bottoms of their shoes, their guns had never been a possibility for escape.

The gun bobbed. She felt the next breath whistle in through the tube in her neck, and saw, for the first time, the blood seeping through the dirty gauze covering her fingers.

One chance. You have one chance.

The doors to the lab slid open and she raised the gun, aimed at the lab-coat-clad woman in the doorway, and fired.

Her shaking hands jerked the trigger and the gun emitted a faint pulse of blue light before clattering to the ground.

Tears welled up in her eyes. Damn it, I can't do anything.

The scientist in the doorway was holding her hands up. "I'm not here to hurt you," she said. Her accent was British, her voice soft. "I don't have any weapons. I want to help you."

That's how it always starts.

"We've taken you away from the Institute," the Brit went on. "You're safe here."

I'm not safe anywhere. They're not going to stop until they find me.

Tears spilled from her eyes and she reached up with one shaking hand to press them against her dirty gauze fingertips.

"My name is Jemma," the scientist said softly, taking another step towards her. "My friend Skye is behind me, here, in the doorway."

She looked up and saw another young woman standing behind the first. Neither was pointing a gun at her, which was progress.

"I can hear it's getting hard for you to breathe," Jemma said, and she was right, the little panicky gasps she could yank in through her trach tube were barely registering in her oxygen-starved body. "If I can come closer, I could give you some oxygen."

And what else? What else will you give me? Drug me into stupor just like the last "scientists." Keep me here until I tell you all my secrets and then you'll throw me away like the garbage I am.

For the first time, the second young woman spoke. "I've seen your records," she said, somewhat bluntly. "I know what they were doing to you."

You can't even imagine.

"It's not right," she went on. "In fact, what they did to you is heinous. We won't let them get away with it."

You don't have a choice. They do what they want and they never, ever pay the price.

The room tilted in front of her and she reached out for something to steady her aching body. In the past hour she'd exerted herself more than she had in years, and it was starting to catch up with her. Her knees went watery, and she grabbed the closest thing to her, whipping it in the general direction of the two women in the doorway.

Whatever it was hit the ground with a clank and she swayed on the spot, completely out of options. All I want, she pleaded silently, her chest heaving with unshed sobs, is to go home.

She saw the Brit dart in to catch her as she fell, and she opened her mouth, as though she could scream out her last few words. Sometimes she forgot that she was literally voiceless, her voice-box being one of those "intriguing curiosities" that had fallen victim to the Scientist's scalpel many long years ago. But home doesn't exist anymore… and even if it did, they wouldn't want me back. Not now. They know what I am now…

She hit the floor and pain blossomed up her tailbone. She knew that once they scanned her, once they figured out the true extent of the damage, she'd be euthanized, given medicine to keep her "comfortable" until the effort of breathing got to be too much. It was her literal last stand, and she was sitting on the metal floor of a plane, using her eyes to beg for her life.

Please.

"Ward!" the Brit called. "Ward, I need your help!"

The giant of a man she'd seen in the basement laboratory hulked into view, and she tensed her muscles. He'd seemed dismissive of her when he'd seen her, and she didn't have the greatest track record with gigantic, angry-looking men. But this one just scooped her up as though she weighed nothing, and set her on the procedure table in the middle of the lab.

"I'm going to put you on a respirator," the Brit said, calmly snapping on a pair of gloves. "It will give you some support while I assess your condition."

She tensed again, pain ricocheting around her body, and she tried to sit up, tried to run.

The other woman was in front of her in a split second. "It's okay," she said. "Simmons is the best."

And just like that, like she wasn't just some piece of human garbage they'd found in a basement laboratory, the second woman sat down next to her and took her hand. "I'm Skye," she said, "and I'll be here when you wake up. I promise."

She flicked her gaze to the Brit, Simmons, who was drawing medicines into hypodermic needles.

"And you will wake up," Skye went on firmly. "I promise."

She felt a needle slide into a vein, and her head got too heavy for her to hold up. The lab swam in front of her again, and she found herself making the conscious decision not to fight.

As though it had been waiting for her permission, her body seemed to agree, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

"Let's start at the beginning," Coulson said. His team was holding their impromptu council meeting in the med bay, because Skye refused to leave their newest passenger alone for even a moment.

"Okay," May said. "We went into the lab expecting to discover the source of the RED serum being used by the Institute in their newest endeavor, the Clarion Project. In addition, we hoped to figure out where their leadership ended up following our raid on the compound at Lisbon."

"We recovered eight vials of the serum," Fitz continued. "Any one of them should be enough for me and Simmons to synthesize a chemical break-down."

"Good," Coulson said.

"In turn, that might give us their location," Simmons put in. "If one or some of the ingredients can only be found or manufactured in a specific place, it might tell us where the Institute's leaders are now, or where they might go."

Coulson nodded.

"It was when we entered the basement laboratory, said to be the domain of the Institute's leader, known only by his code name, the Scientist, that we discovered our… passenger," Ward said. "She was tucked away in a locked cell in the back of the laboratory."

"When we first saw her, we thought she was dead," Skye said. "I mean, she wasn't moving…"

"We figured out how to unlock the cell," Ward went on, "and Skye went to get Simmons while I assessed the situation. It was then the girl woke up."

"She threw things at Ward," Skye said. "He ducked most of them."

"When I tried to assess her condition, she bit me and ran," Simmons said. "Skye and I managed to follow her out of the laboratory and onto the Bus."

"… where she tried to fire the Night-Night Gun at us and failed," Skye said. "Then she passed out."

"She tried to fight us, sir," Simmons said to Coulson. "In her state… it was remarkable, the fight she put up."

Coulson looked through the window of the med bay, thinking of a time not so long ago when he'd sat by Skye's bedside, waiting for her to wake up. Now a tinier, far-too-pale girl lay there, barely moving under the frame of tubes and wires Simmons had strung around her like too many Christmas decorations on an overstuffed tree. "What's wrong with her?" he asked, his voice breaking.

"Where should I start?" Simmons started flipping through the chart she held. "She's malnourished, she's oxygen-starved, she's been pumped full of sedatives, and she's been beaten. Often."

Coulson shook his head.

"Sir, that's not all," Simmons said. "We discovered the source of the RED serum."

Coulson jerked back towards his team. Simmons looked saddened. "She's the source, sir."

"That's not possible."

"They've been running tests on her," Simmons said. "For years. Skye managed to get some of their research, but until I've had a chance to look it over, all I know is that she was a guinea pig for some very unsavory experiments."

"Is that why she's wrapped up like a mummy?" May asked bluntly.

"The skin deterioration is a side effect of the testing," Simmons said. "She's covered in wounds that are more like third-degree burns. I managed to drain some of the infection and treat the wounds before I wrapped her back up. Obviously her handlers at the Institute were only interested in keeping her from bleeding all over their experiments – hence the shoddy wrapping."

"She's the source of the serum," Coulson said, hardly daring to believe the words.

Simmons nodded.

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I, sir, but Fitz and I will go through all of the records we retrieved until we can figure out who she is, where she came from, and what's been done to her," Simmons said.

"Good. Go," Coulson said, and the two scientists scurried away.

"If the Institute discovers we've stolen their only link to the RED serum, we're going to be knocked out of the sky," May said. "The Clarion Project created upgrades for the Institute's previous models of super-soldier – impenetrable skin, faster reflexes, vastly upgraded capabilities overall. If this girl was the reason those upgrades were developed, her value on the black market just became astronomical."

"But the lab was abandoned," Ward said. "If the Institute jumped ship, why would they leave her behind?"

"Because they're done with her," Coulson said. "She's served her purpose."

He turned to the med bay again. "But not to us."

"Sir?" May asked.

"To us… she's the key we've been looking for," Coulson said. "I'd wager that she holds the answers to almost every unanswered question we have about the Institute and their protocols. We protect her at all costs."

May nodded, and left, heading towards the cockpit.

"And because she's a person," Skye put in. "Even if she doesn't have any answers, we protect her because she's defenseless."

"Can't afford to think like that," Ward said.

"Why not?" Skye demanded. "She's helpless. Her skin's coming off her in sheets, she's got a tube punched into her throat, and she was left for dead…"

"Maybe she wasn't," Ward cut in. "Maybe she was left there for us to find. What if she's a sleeper agent, able to be triggered remotely by the Institute whenever they choose? She's an unknown, and an unknown is a danger."

He looked like he wanted to say more, but shook his head and strode away.

"We protect her," Coulson said, "but in no way do we drop our guard. She's been on the inside at the Institute, there's no telling what she knows that could destroy us and SHIELD completely."

"You're wrong," Skye said. "She's not a weapon. She's a victim."

"Until we can confirm that, we need to be wary," Coulson replied.

He turned, leaving Skye in front of the med bay, then sighed. "Why do I have the feeling that as soon as I leave, you're going to go in there and sit with her?"

"You're a smart man, AC," Skye said.

"Just… be careful, Skye."

"Sure," Skye said. "I'll be on my guard around the heavily sedated child in there. And I'll look out for teddy bears and unicorns too…"

"Don't joke about unicorns," Coulson said. "They'd impale you just as soon as look at you."

Skye rolled her eyes.

"But for what it's worth… she needs someone on her side," Coulson said. "If it has to be one of us, it's in her best interest that it's you."

She opened her eyes. The light in the med bay was dim, and the back-lights from the monitors and medical equipment was casting most of the room's illumination. She could feel IV lines slid into her veins, feel the comfortable pressure of a respirator hooked up to her trach tube, doing the breathing for her, feel the glorious weight of new bandages over her raw skin. She was lying on a comfortable bed, with clean clothes pulled over her, with a blanket snuggled up around her. She was floating somewhere between awareness and pain, and for the first time in a long time, it was more awareness than pain.

A noise beside her made her jump, just slightly, and she turned her head. The woman from earlier was sitting on a stool next to the bed, a laptop balanced on her lap, and she had obviously just woken herself up from a catnap and was now trying to grab everything without falling out of her chair.

"Um, hi. Sorry if I woke you."

She shook her head, looking at the woman – Skye – with what she hoped was a kind expression.

"Do you need anything? I can… get Simmons."

She shook her head again.

"You know, you can talk to us," Skye said. "I don't know if we told you, but we're the good guys."

She brought one hand up from the bed and pointed to her voice-box, then shook her head.

"Because of the tube?"

She shook her head again.

"Because of the…" and here Skye paused. "… experiments?"

She nodded.

"Oh," Skye said, and something changed in her face. "Well, let's fix that."

It's not really something you can… fix…

Skye set her laptop on the end of the bed and hopped to her feet. She went out into the hallway, rummaged around for a few minutes, and came back with a whiteboard and a marker. "We bought this to plan meals," she said, "but Simmons and Ward got into a fight over how many nights a week it was acceptable to eat pizza, and then… then it just stopped."

Skye handed the whiteboard to the girl on the bed. "Here… use this as your voice until I can figure out something more… high-tech."

She picked up the marker and scrawled Where are we?

"On a plane," Skye replied, hopping back up onto her chair. "We call it the Bus for some reason."

Where are we going?

"At the moment? We don't know. But we're going to take down the people who did this to you." Skye watched the girl's eyes. "But let's not talk about that right now. Tell me something about yourself."

Like what?

"Like… what's your name, how old you are… how many nights a week you think it's acceptable to eat pizza," Skye said.

The girl thought about this. Katheryn, but as far back as I can remember I've been called "Kat." I think I'm almost eighteen. And I don't think I've ever eaten pizza.

Skye's eyes followed the marker, looking up at the girl. "Never had pizza?"

Kat shook her head.

"We'll work on that," Skye said.

Kat looked sad.

"What?"

I know you think you're going to take down the Scientist and the Institute goons, but… you can't.

"Why not?"

Kat's eyes filled with tears. They're too big. There's too many of them. And they're using things you have no hope of fighting.

Skye put her laptop back on the bed and got into bed next to Kat, holding the girl close to her. Kat sobbed. You should have left me there. They're going to be mad when they find out you took me, she scrawled. They need me.

Skye thought back to Coulson's words: "She's served her purpose." She looked down at the frightened girl in the bed next to her. "They don't need you as much as we do," Skye said firmly. "We're going to find them, we're going to take them down, and you're going to help us."

I can't help anyone, Kat wrote. They made sure of that. I'm a perpetual child in a burn victim's body whose organs and fluids have been used to perpetuate an army of cannibalistic super-soldiers and –

Skye put her hand over Kat's. "Slow down," she said. "Maybe you won't think of this as helping, but we're all helpful in different ways. Can you draw a map of the Institute?"

Kat furrowed her brow. Why?

"It might help us to know where the most important places in the building are. You have information no one else has, and we need every piece of ammunition we can get."

I can draw you a map, Kat wrote. If I had some paper.

"I can get you something better," Skye said with a smile, and she wriggled off the bed.

Kat tapped her hand against the bed rail, and Skye turned back to look at her. "Yeah?"

If I help you… and you take them down… She hesitated.

"When we take them down?" Skye corrected.

Promise me something.

"If it's in my power, sure."

Make them suffer.

Skye smiled. "I think we can make sure of that."