Chapter 23 : THE HUB
The Hub rose from the desert like a monument to secrets.
SHIELD's central operations facility was everything the Bus wasn't—massive, permanent, filled with agents and analysts and bureaucrats who'd never seen field work. The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. Hallways stretched in every direction. Elevators required clearance cards. Everyone moved with purpose, part of a machine I'd only seen fragments of until now.
We'd been summoned for a classified briefing. Coulson had that particular tension in his shoulders that meant something significant was happening, something above our usual operational level.
"Level 8 clearance required," he'd said during the flight in. "That means only Ward and I attend the primary briefing. The rest of you wait in the designated area."
"And do what?" Skye had asked.
"Try not to cause an international incident."
We'd managed the first part. The second remained to be seen.
The waiting area was comfortable enough—couches, refreshments, screens displaying sanitized SHIELD news feeds. I sat with Skye and Simmons while Fitz paced, clearly frustrated at being excluded.
"I have Level 5 clearance," he muttered. "I've designed half the equipment they use in the field. But I can't know about this mission?"
"Clearance levels exist for reasons," Simmons offered.
"Bureaucratic reasons. Not logical ones."
I watched him pace, a knot forming in my stomach. I knew what this briefing was about—or thought I did. The Overkill device. South Ossetia. A mission so dangerous that SHIELD considered the operatives expendable.
And Fitz was about to be assigned to it. With Ward.
The irony was almost unbearable. Sending Fitz—brilliant, irreplaceable Fitz—into mortal danger alongside the man who would eventually try to kill him. If I'd wanted to intervene, to change the outcome, this might be my chance.
But I couldn't. Not without revealing knowledge I shouldn't have.
Coulson emerged from the briefing room with Ward. Their expressions were carefully neutral—too neutral. Something was wrong.
"Ward, Fitz," Coulson said. "You're up. Specialized extraction mission. Victoria Hand will brief you directly."
Fitz stopped pacing. "Me? In the field?"
"The device requires technical expertise to disable. You're the best we have."
"What about Jake?" Fitz glanced at me. "He's got field experience—"
"The mission parameters are specific. Ward for combat, you for technical. That's the assignment."
I caught Coulson's eye. Something flickered there—frustration, maybe, or helplessness. He didn't like this any more than I did.
Fitz squared his shoulders. "Right. Okay. When do we leave?"
"Twenty minutes."
Ward headed for the armory. Fitz followed, still processing. I intercepted him in the corridor.
"Fitz. Wait."
He turned, eyebrows raised.
"Be careful in there." I gripped his shoulder, hard enough to convey importance. "Watch your own back. Don't assume the mission parameters account for everything."
"Jake, what—"
"Just trust me. And remember: you're not expendable. No matter what anyone tells you."
Confusion crossed his face, but he nodded. "Okay. I'll be careful."
I watched him walk away, following Ward toward the Quinjet bay.
Sending a friend into danger. Sending him with an enemy. And I couldn't do anything to stop it.
---
The hours crawled.
Skye found me in a corner of the waiting area, staring at nothing.
"You're worried about Fitz."
"Is it that obvious?"
"You've been clenching your jaw for the past three hours." She dropped onto the couch beside me. "I'm worried too. Classified mission, no details, Ward's his only backup—something feels wrong."
"Something is wrong." I turned to face her. "We need to find out what this mission actually involves."
"That would require accessing classified files."
"Yes."
She studied me for a long moment. "You're serious."
"Fitz is out there with minimal information and no extraction plan. If something goes wrong—"
"How do you know there's no extraction plan?"
I caught myself. Too specific. Too certain.
"I don't know. I'm guessing. But the way Coulson looked when he came out of that briefing—he wasn't happy. And he couldn't tell us why."
Skye's expression shifted from skeptical to calculating. "You want to hack SHIELD. In SHIELD headquarters. To access classified mission files."
"I want to make sure our friend comes home."
The silence stretched. Then she pulled out her laptop.
"I'm going to regret this."
"Probably."
"If we get caught—"
"We won't."
"If we do—"
"I'll take the blame. All of it. You were just following my lead."
She snorted. "That's adorable. Now shut up and let me work."
---
The vending machine had become my stress-relief mechanism.
Three candy bars deep, I watched Skye work through the encryption layers, her fingers flying across the keyboard with focused intensity. The sugar wasn't helping my nerves, but at least it gave my hands something to do.
"Want one?" I offered as she hit another security wall.
"Fourth one's mine." She didn't look up. "Almost through the second firewall."
I fed coins into the machine and retrieved another chocolate bar. The wrapper crinkled too loudly in the quiet corridor.
"Got it." Skye's voice was flat. Wrong. "Jake, you need to see this."
The mission parameters filled the screen. South Ossetia. An Overkill device capable of triggering mass destruction. Ward and Fitz assigned to disable it.
No extraction plan.
"They're not planning to bring them home," Skye breathed. "SHIELD sent them on a suicide mission."
"Expendable assets." The words tasted like acid. "That's what they are to whoever approved this."
"Coulson doesn't know?"
"Coulson wasn't shown the full file. Level 8 clearance means he gets the objective, not the parameters." I pulled up the authorization chain. "This came from above him. Way above."
Skye's face had gone pale. "Fitz is going to die. They're just going to let him die."
"No." I stood, decision crystallizing. "We're not letting that happen."
"How? We're not authorized for extraction. We don't even have a Quinjet."
"We have the Bus. And we have May."
"May doesn't know—"
"Then we tell her. We tell Coulson. We show them what we found and let them decide."
Skye closed her laptop carefully. "This is insane. We're going to lose our positions. Probably go to prison."
"Probably."
"For Fitz."
"For Fitz."
She stood and shouldered her bag. "Let's go tell Coulson that SHIELD is trying to kill his team."
May fired up the Bus thirty minutes later. We were going to South Ossetia without authorization.
Part of me wanted to leave Ward behind. The rest of me knew that wasn't who I was trying to be.
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