containment

Skye is nervously sitting on her bed in the containment area of the Shield base, having her knees pulled up to her chest while looking at Rex's statue saddened, knowing full well what his last words were likely going to be.

Looking at the one hand at his side, while the other is balled into a fist she looks back to her own, recalling the feeling of his hand hardening just before her own did.

"Please be OK." Skye says in a whisper, wiping away the tears threatening to escape her eyes.

"How are you doing in there?" Coulson asks, walking up to the separated room inside the lab.

"Hanging in there I suppose." Skye answers tiredly.

"Well good news is that Fitz said you didn't bring anything contagious back from that place. But you still have to wait for Jemma to clear you." He informs his daughter figure.

"Where is she?" Skye asks.

"Pinpointing save places to set up bombs to flood the city without leveling the town above." Coulson replies.

"This is my fault." Skye says crying to herself.

"No, it's not. You tried to stop Raina and Whitehall and Trip gave his life protecting everyone. If that earthquake had gotten stronger who knows what damage it would have done." Coulson says.

"How are the others doing?" Skye asks sniffling a little, peering over to Rex for a moment before looking back over to Coulson.

"Trying to keep busy. Everyone is dealing with it in their own way." Coulson answers.

"We all know loss is a part of this job, but when you lose one of your own. It makes you doubt what you're doing. It scares you and makes you want to pack up and run." Coulson tells Skye.

"Do you ever feel like that?" Skye asks.

"Yeah, but then I remember what we're doing here matters. It saves lives. It stands for something." Coulson tells her.

"Except this time. We lost Trip we failed. I failed." Skye says glumly.

"We didn't fail. Trip stopped an earthquake which could have led to thousands of deaths. Whitehall is dead and while Hydra looks for a new head I promise I will do everything to make sure we use this opportunity to crush them." Coulson tells her.

"Now, it's late. Get some sleep. Simmons will be coming back soon." Coulson tells Skye fatherly.

"Yes, director." She says smiling a tiny bit and lies back down on the medical bed in the room, facing away from Coulson and looking at the statue of Rex, pulling it over carefully, the Agent having been placed on a platform with rolls to move him easier.

"I think you're still in there. Don't give up. I need you, now more than ever." Skye says, feeling weird ever since the cave in and the quarantine room suddenly starts shaking around her.

Skye grabs onto Rex's hand and takes deep breaths, calming down and the shaking stops.

Two days later Simmons is standing in front of the quarantine cabin, while one of her lab workers draws blood from Skye.

"Can you tell me something about Rex?" Skye asks worried, looking at the statue which has been placed under some kind of makeshift sensor.

"His cocoon or whatever it is, is some sort of metallic component. It has similarities with the stone crust from Raina we found in the temple, but I think his nanites tried to protect him and changed the outcome to this." Simmons explains.

"Is he alive?" Skye asks fearfully.

"Yes. That we can say for certain. Something is alive in there." She answers.

"What do you mean something?" Skye asks confused.

"When we were in the temple Raina attacked us. Skye, she was covered in thorns. Whatever she was, it wasn't human. I'm analyzing her DNA right now." Simmons answers.

"Did you capture her?" Skye asks.

"No, she escaped and I think capturing her... might not be the best choice." Simmons says.

"What do you mean?" Skye asks shocked.

"Something so dangerous. With unknown aftereffects. It might be better to just... end it for everyone's sake." Simmons tells Skye.

"What... But." Skye tries to argue but Simmons cuts her off.

"Anyways. We are monitoring Rex's brainwaves and they are very active. The readings could be affected by the shell, but I think he's getting his memory back." Simmons tells Skye.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Skye asks, Simmons only looking at her with worry before taking her blood sample and disappearing from view.

Hours later Fitz steps up to the quarantine while no one is there, everyone else busy with either capturing Raina or going after the heads of Hydra.

"I finally managed to get the data from your monitor. It was shattered from the inside out and I think I managed to piece together the truth. You were standing in the temple but you're unharmed with destruction all around you. Your heart rate was going almost in the 300 range. That's not human. You did it didn't you. You caused that earthquake." Fitz accuses her while holding his head from his mental stress.

"No, no, no. Fitz. Don't." Skye says panicking.

"There's nothing wrong with the data in my head Skye. There is something wrong with you. And the DNA will confirm it." Fitz tells her while she is nearly having a mental breakdown herself, the quarantine room starting to shake and none of the two notice cracks appearing on Rex's metal prison.

Fitz then runs away hurriedly when Skye falls to her knees holding her head, the lights in the room flickering and an empty vial falls off one of the carts in the room.

"Skye." The brunette suddenly hears a gentle voice say, which she feared she'd never hear again and suddenly feels Rex's arms around her from behind, turning her around and pulling her into his chest after kneeling down behind her.

"Rex?" She gasps quizzical, shaking like a leaf.

"Yeah. It's me. Well somewhat." He says calmly.

"Somewhat?" She asks fearfully.

"I remember everything. My parents were Hydra. But I wasn't, although I was trained to be one." Rex tells her softly, rubbing calming circles over her back.

"I heard you. You're not alone anymore Skye." He tells her softly.

"But are you even the Rex I knew?" She asks afraid of the answer.

"No. But he's a part of me. My feelings for this team. For you haven't changed. I am here to help Shield." Rex tells her and Skye believes him, feeling no animosity coming from him.

"Rex?! Get away from her. You could be infecting her!" Simmons tells the Hispanic man, shocked to see him out of his cocoon.

"Skye is clear. Her results are normal." Fitz lies loudly, entering the lab, only to see Skye crying into Rex's chest but Simmons quickly puts on a hazmat suit and drags Skye out of the quarantine against her will, the brunette finally having one of her best friends back only to be separated from him.

Simmons brings her over to a decontamination room and pushes her inside where she quickly is sprayed down by some kind of gas and then a torrent of water, Rex looking at this saddened while Fitz looks at him shocked.

"Thank god you're OK." Simmons tells Skye, hugging her tightly after the contamination protocol is over.

"How are you... Out of your shell?" Fitz asks Rex confused.

"Skye needed me." Rex says calmly.

"You. Who are you? The Rex from before or something different?" Simmons asks Rex with hostility.

"He's our Rex. But he has all of his memories." Skye says defending her friend.

"That makes him Hydra." Simmons says and panics, hitting a lockdown protocol on the quarantine, titanium shutters shooting down all around the room and trapping Rex inside.

"Was that necessary?" He asks loud enough to be heard outside.

"Yes. If you remember everything, that makes you Hydra." Simmons tells him upset.

"No. I never was Hydra. I fled before they could finish." Rex says to himself sadly, remembering overhearing his parents talk with Toshiro and say that once the latest procedure on Rex is finished, he will be nothing more than Hydra's first drone solider.

While fleeing Rex damaged a power line of the containment module and thereby is responsible for the explosion which scattered nanites around the globe.

"Simmons. You're going too far with this." Skye says upset.

"Don't worry Skye. Even with his abilities it will take him a while to get out of there." Simmons says and hurries off to get Coulson.

"You said I'm the same. That isn't true, is it?" Skye asks Fitz quietly and he shakes his head negative.

"Thank you, but why?" She says gratefully, hugging the scrawny man while crying helplessly.

"Being different is scary. I know." Fitz tells her, awkwardly returning the hug to the still wet and scared girl.

"What happened?" Coulson asks, arriving moments later with Simmons.

"Rex broke out of his shell or whatever and he has his complete memory back." Skye informs the director.

"Do we have eyes in there?" Coulson asks.

"If he didn't destroy them." Jemma says nodding.

"Let's see." Coulson says and Fitz types on a keyboard, pulling up the footage inside the quarantine room.

"Can we establish contact?" The director asks and Fitz nods, pointing a camera at Coulson and nods once he transmits the recording into a screen in quarantine.

"Rex. I heard you are out of your cocoon." Coulson says, appearing on a screen in the small quarantine room.

"Yes." Rex replies, looking at the screen with crossed arms while leaning against the metal panels over the window next to the door.

"Any idea what changed?" Coulson asks and Rex sees Skye panic behind the man in the recording.

"Maybe my memory just finished coming back." Rex says shrugging unaffected.

"When you say your memory is back. What exactly does this entail?" Coulson asks.

"If you're fishing for intel on Hydra I only have very little. I spend most my time in a training academy or getting used as a lab project by my parents." Rex tells them.

"But I can give you everything except for the location of the training academy." Rex offers.

"Why the exception?" Coulson questions surprised.

"I had a friend there who I need to try and break out before putting her in danger when Shield would crash the place." Rex tells them.

"Are we really going to buy that he's simply cooperating?" Jemma asks, muting the transmission, but Rex does see them talking over the display.

"Skye, you know him best. What's your take on this?" Coulson asks.

Skye looks at Rex's relaxed stance, looking totally unaffected by being locked up, instead of being annoyed and nervous like before.

"He's not the same Rex, but I don't think he's evil." Skye says.

"How sure are you about that?" Coulson asks.

"Not at all." She replies honestly with a downcast expression.

"Fine. He'll stay in there. The cells in the basement obviously can't hold him, so relocating him there wouldn't do us any good." Coulson tells them.

The rest of the main team then shows up as a group.

"What did we miss?" Hunter asks surprised to see everyone standing around and look at a screen.

"Rex is out." Fitz replies.

"Out of what?" Mack asks, seeing the quarantine locked down and Skye out of the room.

"Out of his cocoon." Coulson answers, showing them the video link, where Rex is looking at the metallic crust which covered his body, holding it into a light in the room quizzical.

"Hey, what is this stuff anyways?" Rex asks, holding the piece he was examining into the top-down camera in the room.

"Is he listening?" Mack asks.

"No. We're muted." Fitz replies.

"What are we doing with him Sir?" Bobbi asks.

"We're going to have to keep him in there for now." Coulson tells them.

"Rex, we're going to have you stay inside her for a while." Coulson informs the teen over the feed.

"How long is a while?" Rex asks, sweeping up the pile of his cocoon with his hands and gathers it in a corner.

"To be determined." Coulson says and stops the transmission.

|Two days later|

Rex is lying on the medical bed in the quarantine that morning when Skye approaches the computer connected to the one inside the quarantine and turns it on.

She looks at his calm, resting face before waking him by calling out his name over and over.

"What?" He asks waking up grumpily.

"How are you doing in there?" She asks him.

"Better than you I'm guessing. I felt some shaking every now and then." Rex replies, stifling a yawn and sits up looking at the screen.

"Yeah, I'm not doing that great with Jemma waging a war on everything unusual." Skye says, looking around herself to make sure they are alone.

"So, any idea how long you want me to stay in here?" He asks stretching a bit while hopping off the bed.

"No news yet, sorry." Skye answers shaking her head.

"The problem isn't that you're changed. It's that we didn't know what the Rex before the explosion was like. You say you're not with Hydra. And I believe you, but I think the others would need solid proof." Skye tells him.

"Yeah, that's not existing as far as I know. Maybe Fury had something in his magic hard drive or whatever he gave Coulson before disappearing?" Rex asks.

"I'll ask him to check." Skye says.

"Thanks." Rex thanks her.

"So, how are you really? I'm used to being different, but for you it's completely new." Rex asks her.

"I'm scared. I don't know what is happening with me or how to control it." Skye replies tiredly.

"I'd offer you to help, but I don't think that's a possibility right now." Rex says.

"Not really, no." She replies laughing softly.

"I gotta go. The others will come soon." Skye tells him.

"Stay safe. And if you need someone to talk to... That's all I can really do from inside here anyways." Rex tells her with a smirk.

"Give me time. I'll do what I can to help get you out." Skye tells him.

"Don't force yourself too much. I don't want you to blow your secret because of me." He advises and Skye turns off the transmission.

Hours later Skye secretly activated the station linked to Rex's screen and turned on the transmission.

"We must find any remaining diviners as well as anyone who was transformed." The Kree tells Coulson, May, Skye and Lady Sif.

Rex notices no one addressing him and refrains from asking who the two unfamiliar faces are.

"We drowned the temple so, that's a plus and we do know of a woman who was changed." Coulson says.

"So, someone was transformed. A Kree slave warrior. Have you put it down?" Lady Sif asks and Skye turns towards the console, hiding her horrified face from the group.

"No, she escaped." May answers.

"We don't know much about Raina's transformation. Skye witnessed it but didn't see much and from her recollection Rex was... cocooned first." Coulson explains.

"You were there? What did you see?" Lady Sif asks.

"Who is this Rex? The cocoon means he also went through the change." The Kree says.

"I didn't see anything." Skye says almost choking on the knot building in her throat.

"You must understand these creatures are weapons, abominations. Even if the change is not on the surface." The Kree says while everything around them starts shaking like an earthquake.

"What is this Son of Coul?" Lady Sif asks.

"Skye, do you want to talk to us?" May asks, spotting her fear-stricken face.

"Skye, what's doing this?" Coulson asks stunned.

"I am." She confesses fearfully and Lady Sif reaches for the girl, only for a loud banging to catch the groups attention and a big imprint pushes out of the quarantine room, before a screeching sound is heard and Rex peers out of the room once he broke through by using his giant metal fist constructs as drills, spinning them at high speeds.

"Skye, calm down." Rex says, jumping out of the hole.

"I can't. I can't control it." Skye stammers and most of the glass around them shatters.

"Hand her over. And what is he?" Lady Sif demands, staring down Coulson and May, who move in front of Skye protectively.

"I'm the one you really want." Rex says, rotating his shoulder and summons a giant axe construct as well as what looks to be a machine gun in his other hand.

"Take her somewhere safe." Rex tells Coulson and May.

"Abomination, surrender and you won't get hurt." Lady Sif tells Rex.

Meanwhile May takes Skye down to Vault E and erects the forcefield around them, the Kree with his weapon slowly following them, getting slowed down by Coulson, Hunter, Bobbi and Mack.

"We don't need to fight if you would see reason. Skye is part of our team. It's our world and our responsibility to see who decide who is dangerous." Rex tells the Asgardian.

"You are not of this world anymore. You are an abomination like her." Lady Sif says angrily and charges at Rex, who blocks her sword with his axe and the back of his rifle jabs into the titanium behind him, a part of it dissolving with a slight glow before he shoots bullets made of the material he absorbed with the rifle construct, making Sif shield herself with her arms.

Once he's out of bullets Rex dissolves his constructs and instead takes on the lower body of a hoverbike and speeds by the woman, grabbing her roughly by her throat and carrying her with him on his way down to the cells.

On the way he sees that with Fitz bringing a powerful blaster Bobbi managed to beat the Kree by taking away his own memory with his hammer like weapon.

"You saw it. We can beat you. Just go home, whoever you are." Rex tells the woman, dropping her in the large open area in front of the cell in vault D.

"You have no right to demand anything from me. I am your superior. Asgardians watch over Earth." Lady Sif shouts angrily and starts fighting Rex, who constructs a normal sized sword in one hand and a club in the other.

While they are fighting Rex knocks down part of the Wall leading to Vault E and Lady Sif kicks him through it, the Evo skidding to a halt in the middle of the room.

"You took her here of all places?" Rex asks with a groan and intercepts Lady Sif who dashes at May and Skye, her sword cutting right through the laser grid, only for Rex to kick her across the room with his giant boot constructs.

"I can do this all day." Rex says.

"Stop it." Skye shouts, the shaking getting stronger when the two were fighting in front of her and she grabs the icer gun in May's back pocket, before shooting herself.

Rex sees Skye collapse unconscious and rushes to her side, checking if she's OK.

"She harmed herself." Lady Sif says stupefied.

"Because she doesn't want to hurt anyone. She's one of ours." May says and holds back Rex who is glaring at the alien woman, his eyes seemingly glowing red while his arms shake in anger.

"Stop it. I think we can get through to her." May says, holding out the icer to Rex.

Rex looks back to Skye and then at May.

"If someone hurts her while I'm out. I will come after them." Rex warns May, accepting the gun and shoots himself, the bullet not working because his nanites instinctively stop it.

"What the heck." He grunts annoyed and opens the magazine, taking a bullet out and crushing it in between robotic fingers, the icer's liquid dripping down into his mouth and he drops over unconscious as well.

Hours later Coulson and May have brought Sif and the Kree somewhere, where they can use the bifrost while Fitz as the one who covered for Skye is getting faulted for this by the rest of the team as they are cleaning up after the destruction left by the events.

"We could have handled her in a way that kept everyone safe." Skye and Rex hear Fitz say, the two just having woken up from the icer.

"We had a right to know Fitz." Bobbi agrees.

"A right to know? The same way Sid and the Kree had a right to know?" Fitz asks challengingly.

"The situation is a little different Fitz." Hunter says relaxed.

"No. You would have done the exact same what they wanted to do to her. I mean look at how we treated Rex. We locked him up and no one even considered letting him out anytime soon. You'd handle it by locking her up just like him. We should be protecting her. We're her friends. Family." Fitz defends Skye.

"No Fitz. We're the ones that need protection from Skye, from both of them." Mack says and the team finally spots Rex and Skye standing around the corner like they just wanted to meet their friends and Skye stares at them in shock and disappointment before quickly making her way to the exit, with a bag.

"Skye." Fitz says trying to stop her, but the brunette simply grabs Rex hand firmly and leaves the facility, both of them heading to the containment room inside the plane.

"Are you sure you're fine with me staying here too?" Rex asks Skye while she tosses her bag onto the bed in the room and sits down wordlessly.

"Skye?" He asks concerned, sitting down beside her.

She doesn't say a word and only wraps his arm around her leaning into his chest while tears escape her eyes.

"I need you here with me." She says finally, sounding vulnerable.

"Then I'll stay right here." He says, rubbing her shoulder comfortingly.