Chapter Seven

"SLATER! WAKE UP!"

I jolted awake, heart racing as I shot up.

"What? What is it, what's wrong?" I asked in a panic, looking around wildly. Instead of finding some deadly threat, I came face to face with Grant Ward, so close our noses were almost touching.

"It's time to move," he said, suddenly calm as he leaned away.

"You couldn't gently shake me awake to tell me that?" I asked, sighing and rubbing a hand over my face. "I almost had a heart attack, I thought we were under attack."

"I tried. Seven times. You really need to be a lighter sleeper if you want to survive once you don't have someone watching your six."

"Yeah, ok, I'll work on that," I muttered, barely able to stop myself from rolling my eyes. Now that the adrenaline had worn off I was barely awake.

Grant moved out of the tent and I tried to motivate myself to get up. I desperately wanted to lie back down and wake up slowly, but I knew that if I did I just wouldn't wake up at all.

I sighed heavily, then dragged myself out of the tent to find everything but the tent and my sleeping bag packed up. Considering that Ward was training me, I thought it was pretty nice of him to not make me pick everything up "for practice".

I shook my head to clear it as Ward ducked back into the tent and rolled up my sleeping bag too.

"Thanks," I said sleepily, leaning against a tree while I waited for my legs to wake up enough to walk.

"The sooner we're packed the sooner we can move."

Instead of responding, I just started helping pack up the tent. By some miracle, no monkeys had come and stolen our food in the night, so we ate a quick power bar breakfast and then started hacking our way through the rainforest again. My legs were already screaming at me, but I did my best to ignore them.

If Ward was fine, then so was I.

After another several hours of walking, we came to a break in the endlessly dense rainforest. A small, circular clearing was sitting in front of us, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere. Smack in the middle of the clearing was a single tree, with a small blue orb sitting in one of the lowest branches. I had no idea what I'd been expecting, but it definitely wasn't this.

"Is that our object?" I asked.

"Looks like it. All our tech was working, albeit a little unreliably, until we hit this line into the clearing. Now everything's completely out," he said, holding up one of our scanners for proof.

"Alright. So, SO, what do we do now?"

"We approach," he answered. He tucked the tech back into his backpack, then scanned the tree line before stepping slowly into the clearing. He moved carefully and kept his head on a swivel, canvassing the area exactly how my teachers had told us to do it a thousand times at the academy.

Now I got to put that same training into action.

I started to move forward after Ward, but I froze in my tracks when I heard a small rustling noise to my right. I whipped my head in that direction and squinted into the tree line to see if I could find the source of the noise, but I didn't see anything.

I glanced at Ward again, but he was still making his way towards the tree and the orb. He didn't so much as glance back once to see if I was with him.

I didn't move for another few seconds, debating my options. Whatever I'd heard in the bushes was probably just an animal. If I went over there and investigated it, only to find a bird or something, then I knew I'd never live it down with Ward. I was trying to prove myself, and detouring for a bird in the rainforest would only prove that I was jumpy.

On the other hand, this was uncharted territory, and we were in the rainforest going after a strange, unidentified object. There could be anything, or anyone, in here with us, trying to get to the orb or keep us away from it.

I sighed. It was almost definitely better to be safe than sorry. I turned back to the tree line and started creeping towards where I'd heard the noise. Maybe it would turn out to be nothing, and Ward would have a snide comment or twenty for me, but it would be infinitely worse if it were a real threat and I just let it go.

As I started walking, the rustling noise started up again. I was careful to walk around behind whatever it was, so hopefully I could get the drop on it. Ward was fully in the open, but who or whatever was here might not know about me yet. That was my advantage.

After another few steps towards the noise, my heart stopped. I could see the shape of a person through the trees. Thankfully, the person was too busy watching Ward to notice me, and I'd been quiet and careful enough that I was almost right behind them. I crouched lower and tried to use some of the plant life as cover, then looked to see why they were so intent on Ward.

Crap. From this angle, almost perpendicular to Ward's path, I could see the cover of a pit trap. It was just uneven enough that, from here, I could tell there was nothing beneath the top layer of dirt. Unfortunately, from the direction Ward was walking, he wouldn't see it. I'd been over there, and nothing on the ground had looked out of place from that angle.

My first thought was to run out and warn Ward, since I had no idea what was in that hole or who else might be around besides the person in front of me. I stopped, and forced myself to think about my options. I had to deal with the person in the bushes first. If I gave away my cover, they could just shoot me and Ward as soon as I ran out to him. The fact that they didn't know I was here was my biggest advantage right now, and I was not about to give it up.

I crept forwards, trying to get in range of the person in the bushes. They were still intent on Ward, so it wasn't particularly hard. I just had to be careful not to make noise.

Once I got right behind the person (I was relieved to find there was definitely only one), I started moving towards them. I didn't want to reach for my gun because the noise of drawing and cocking the weapon would alert the person to my presence, and frankly, if it was possible, I would always opt for the non-lethal choice.

Once I was within a few feet of my target I could tell it was a woman. She was focused on Ward's progress, so she was completely vulnerable from behind.

I counted down in my head, preparing myself to attack.

Okay, okay. You got this Slater. One, two, THREE!

I sprang forward and hooked my right arm around the woman's neck, pulling with my left arm to put pressure on her veins, cutting off the blood flow to her brain. We had learned sleeper holds on one of the first days at the Academy, and although it was considered pretty basic, it got the job done. As tense and serious as this situation should have been, I couldn't stop myself from being incredibly excited too. I was finally getting to use some of my training!

The woman fought back as soon as she realized what was happening, raking her nails across any exposed skin she could find. I got lucky, and managed to avoid most of her attack, but I made a mental note to keep my nails longer. Clearly, they could be deadly weapons.

Despite the attack, I managed to hold on, and soon she was unconscious. I was feeling pretty proud of myself until I looked up and saw that Ward was almost at the pit's edge, about to fall in. In the heat of my minor battle, I'd completely forgotten about him and the trap he was literally walking into.

I shoved the now-unconscious woman off of me and sprinted out of the bushes towards Ward. He turned at the last second to give me a confused look, but before he could ask any questions, I'd already tackled him and we were on our way to the ground.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, staring up at me in bewilderment. We'd landed hard about a foot away from the trap, but Grant had softened my fall, and now I was laying on top of him.

"There's a pit trap," I said simply.

"There's a what? And get off." He rolled over and shoved me off him, scowling as he sat up.

"A pit trap. I heard something in the bushes, so I went to check it out. I thought it might be a bird or something, but it was a person. I knocked her out, and from over there I could see the Indiana Jones-style pit trap you were about to walk into," I stood up while I was explaining and walked over to the pit, pulling off the cloth and dirt that covered the hole. "See?"

Ward just looked at me for a minute, and I could literally see his brain working. Slowly, he got up and walked over to where I was standing. He looked in the pit, then walked to the tree line and looked at the woman. Then he walked back over and looked at me.

"Well done," he said, a serious expression on his face. My eyebrows immediately shot up.

"Wait seriously? You're telling me good job?"

"Yes. That was impressive for a new specialist. So... good job."

Ward turned and walked towards the tree with the orb again like it was no big deal, but I was grinning from ear to ear. That was a compliment! From the guy who wouldn't even look at me at the Academy!

"Come here," Ward ordered, calling me over to the tree and gesturing to the orb. "What do you think this is?"

Now he wanted my opinion? Where was this new Agent Ward suddenly coming from?

Maybe he'd hit his head when I tackled him to the ground?

I approached cautiously, eyeing him to make sure he wasn't kidding or about to pass out from a concussion. He looked fine, so I turned and looked at the orb.

"I have no idea," I admitted after studying it for a few seconds. It looked like a smaller version of those glass balls you find in gardens, except glowing blue, and every so often the light would pulse.

I was expecting a snide comment about not knowing, but instead Ward pulled out a basic scanner.

"Let's see if this can be of any use," he muttered, trying to get the screen to display something besides static. While he was distracted, I took a minute to really look at him closely and see if I could find anything out of place. His attitude had suddenly done a one-eighty, and I wanted an explanation as soon as possible.

I was about to just come out and ask him, but I didn't want to do anything to mess up this new change of heart. It happened right after I'd taken out the agent in the woods and saved him from the pit trap, but that didn't seem particularly special. All SHIELD agents (and especially Ops grads) were expected to do things like that.

That's when it occurred to me: he didn't expect those things from me. Before now, for whatever reason, Ward hadn't thought I was capable of doing what SHIELD agents were expected to do. Now that I'd just saved him in the field, he couldn't think that way anymore.

I didn't know whether to be mad that he'd doubted me or happy that I'd finally broken through his first layer of grumpiness.

"This thing is useless!" Ward exclaimed before I could come to a decision, smacking our scanner against his free hand a few times before shoving it back into his bag.

"Agent Vargas told us it messed with tech, and I guess he really wasn't kidding," I sighed. "Well, there's only one thing left to do."

I pulled out a pair of gloves and a containment bag from my backpack. We were here to take this thing out with us, and this was the only way to do it.

"Be careful," said Ward. I resisted the urge to give him a look. Any level of serious concern from him was completely new, and it honestly felt like I was talking to a different person.

I reached into the tree and carefully picked up the orb. The minute my hands touched it, the pulsing stopped and the blue light completely faded away.

I shared an uneasy glance with Ward.

"Weird," I decided.

"No kidding. Let's get this thing out of here before it starts acting up again. There are more secure containers on the Quinjet."

"Sounds like a plan, partner."

"SO," he corrected. Baby steps.

Once we got the orb in a bag and tucked it into my backpack as carefully as we could, we walked back to the woman I'd taken out. She was still unconscious, so we tied her hands and feet, and then Ward picked her up to carry her as we started the trek back to Agent Vargas and our Quinjet.

Hopefully she'd wake up and be able to walk on her own soon. I didn't want to deal with Ward making me carry her for the second half of our journey.