Chapter Twenty-Five

A/N: Hamilton comes up in this chapter and I know technically, timeline wise, that wouldn't exist yet, but I'm going to change the timeline a little bit and have it already exist. That might happen with some movies and stuff too, so please just go with it 😝

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Fury had told us to be the most productive team ever, and that's what we became. For the two weeks we were banned from field work, Grant and I ran all over the Triskelion, helping on the back-end of ops, doing internet detective work, and taking supply missions to and from various bases. Once we're allowed out again, we only got busier.

We took any and every assignment that crossed our paths. We went to Istanbul, Turkey; Carupeno, Venezuela; Lansing, Michigan; and then we did an 18-month undercover mission in London. I'm equal parts proud and embarrassed to say our near-death experience tally reached 174.

Now, two years after returning from Siberia, we were both flying high, now a level 6 and a level 5 (he was still just ahead of me dammit), and we were flying off to a mission in Silicon Valley.

"Buckle up," said Grant, flipping a few switches and then maneuvering the plane out of the hanger.

"Ready to hear the mission file?" I asked , pulling a stack of papers out of my backpack.

"Go for it."

"Ok, we're scouting out a hacker group called "The Rising Tide." Sounds lame," I started.

"You wanna get to the important part?"

"I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Chill. Ok, so this group has been taking classified information and spreading it everywhere, for everyone to see. They're spread all over the world, so there's not much we can do, but apparently somebody at SHIELD got a physical location for at least a few of their members. We're supposed to stake out their apartment and take the course of action we see fit to apprehend them once we have enough intel."

"Great. We're chasing a bunch of tech-wizards. How did we get this assignment again?"

"Beats me. But at least there's a low chance of adding to our near-death experience tally."

"You and I both know you're proud of that tally."

"Well yeah, I mean we survived 174 things that should have killed us. What's not to be proud of?"

"The fact we almost got ourselves killed 174 times?"

"Ah, don't be so negative. Now let's get going, I want to be in sunny California as soon as possible."

****************

We touched down a few hours later, loaded into our waiting SHIELD MDX (with the logos removed, obviously. We are a secret agency), and headed towards the apartment building we'd be staying in while under cover. That's right, we leveled up from hotel rooms. Pretty sweet.

"I still don't see any problem with my driving," said Grant, complaining from the passenger seat. After Spain and the Vespa, I drove whenever possible.

"There's no problem with your driving if we're in a car chase or a getaway vehicle. But on a normal day with a civilian cover, your tactical driving could get us arrested for reckless endangerment," I shot back.

Grant rolled his eyes and went back to looking through our mission file.

"These Rising Tide guys don't get it. They're never around for the fallout, so they just don't understand that some secrets are secrets for very good reasons."

"Preaching to the choir, Ward."

"I know. It just pisses me off."

"Well, you can vent some of that frustration on this mission for bringing a couple of them in."

"What are we going to charge them with again?"

"Hacking confidential government systems. Apparently, they're good enough to get into the Pentagon."

"Great."

"Yeah. I do think it'd be pretty cool to be that good with computers, though. To be able to code and hack and break firewalls and all that stuff. Maybe I'll try to learn it next time I have some free time."

Grant snorted. "Yeah, because we get so much of that. Besides, you should be working on learning more languages than just English and Spanish."

"Why? You're the linguist, that's why I picked you as my partner, so I can worry about coding and you can worry about languages."

Grant shook his head. "There may be a time when you need to translate something and you can't rely on me. We may not always be around to help each other."

"Woah. Dude. No. We're both going to have good, successful careers together and then we're going to go into retirement. Do not start the "what-ifs" on death."

"It doesn't have to be death. We could get split up, we could be put on solo assignments, or one of us could be hurt and unable to translate. It's better to be prepared."

"Okay, but the chances of that are much smaller than the chances of needed a translator and a computer genius. Besides, if it's really that important, then I can just do both."

"Good luck with that."

"Thanks! I appreciate it."

Grant shook his head, but he was smiling. We were practically inseparable now, and we had gotten much more comfortable joking and smiling with each other (we meaning Grant, because I was always comfortable joking and smiling).

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"Wow. This place is nice," I said, taking in our temporary apartment. There was a full kitchen, a living room complete with couch and TV, and a separate room for the bedroom and bathroom. The decorations were modern and I almost forgot we were here for a mission and not moving in.

"Too bad we're not going to be staying here very long," said Grant, going to drop all his stuff in the bedroom.

"So what's the plan?" I asked, following him in.

"We'll go on stakeout tonight in the car outside their building. Do you have the address."

"Yup."

"Good. The file made it sound like SHIELD was hoping to get a few members of the group, so we'll watch and see if anyone starts spending time with our two confirmed targets."

"Great. I'll order the stakeout pizza."

"And I'll get our gear together."

"Yay teamwork!" I yelled, going into the other room to call for two large pizzas. Our stakeouts had a history of taking forever, so we had a system down to get everything we might need. Grant was in charge of practical mission gear, and I was in charge of snacks and entertainment. After our first stakeout with a few sandwiches, some water, and no music, I had decided Grant couldn't be trusted with anything else.

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It was now nearing ten at night in our seventh hour of the stakeout vehicle outside the Rising Tide apartment building. We had already gone through an entire box of pizza, half a pack of soda, and the entire Hamilton soundtrack. No one had come in or out of the building.

"We should've started in the morning," I said, leaning over to start the Hamiltunes over from the beginning.

"If there's a meet up between illegal hackers who got into the Pentagon, I don't think they'll be doing anything shady in broad daylight."

"Yes, but if they're trying to avoid looking shady, they wouldn't do anything in the middle of the night."

"Well, I guess we're just going to have to keep an eye out for both potential situations, won't we."

"Ugh, fine. Tomorrow morning though I'm going to go get breakfast and you can stay here and watch."

"Wouldn't have expected anything else. I'm the only patient one in this car."

"Maybe until you sit in the driver's seat."

Ward snorted. "Whatever Slater."

I grinned and leaned back in triumph. It wasn't often that I won the comeback-off.

"Hey," said Grant, tapping my leg to get my attention. I looked out the car windshield to see our targets walking out their front door and heading down the street.

"Dang," I said, "I was kinda hoping we wouldn't have to do anything tonight."

"There's always something for us to do when we're on-mission."

"I know, so statistically, one of these times, we should have nothing to do."

"Ok Slater, keep hoping. Now let's get moving."

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We followed the targets, Marco and Tess, until they finally stopped outside a small, dingy looking building.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"A nightclub," he answered unhappily.

"Great. Do we have to go in?"

"If our targets meet someone inside, we need to be there. So yes, we have to go in."

"Even greater."

I got out of the car and slammed the door in protest.

"Are we going to use covers?"I asked.

"Let's use the ones from Greenland. Kayla and Derek haven't been out for while and they're already established."

"Good plan. Let's do this."

I took a deep breath to steel myself before walking into the club. This was so not my scene, but when you're a secret agent, you don't get much of a choice.

We walked in and found a crowd of people dancing (read: jumping in place) as a live DJ played music. I tried to look casual as I scanned the room for Marco and Tess. They were by the bar, talking in hushed tones to one another.

"Let's go get a drink," suggested Ward.

"Brilliant idea Derek."

We walked towards the bar, making it look like we were casual club-goers. We sat a few seats away from Marco and Tess, Grant sitting closer in case they were using another language.

"One Shirley Temple please," I ordered. I never really liked alcohol, and I've always loved Shirley Temples.

"And an Arnold Palmer," added Ward. He added to me in a whisper, "Good thinking with the non-alcoholic choices. We don't want to lose any of our thinking capacity."

"Thanks," I whispered back, taking full credit.

Once the bartender returned with our drinks, we sat and listened, trying to overhear anything our targets had to say.

We only caught bits and pieces of their conversation, but unfortunately for us, it sounded like they were honestly just here for a night out.

"Crap," I muttered.

"I know. And now that we've shown our faces we're going to have a much harder time following them anywhere else."

"Well since staying hidden has already gone out the window, what if we went up and talked to them? You know, maybe say we heard about the Rising Tide and we were looking to join or something?"

"It would be a tough sell. We know nothing about computers."

"This is why I should be studying coding instead of languages."

"Now? We're going to talk about this now?"

I shrugged.

"Either way, it doesn't matter," said Grant, "Neither of us has computer knowledge, so it'll be difficult to convince them we're honestly looking to join Rising Tide."

"Well, what if we didn't play it that way? What's the name of that guy SHIELD found and recruited a few years back?"

"Cole? The one who was hacking governments just because he was bored?"

"Yeah, him. What if we said a friend name Cole turned us on to the Rising Tide and, even though we're not computer geniuses, we still want to 'join the fight for the freedom of information' or something like that?"

"That just might work. Let's do it."