blast from the past

"Any idea what's wrong with him?" Coulson asks, entering the Vault where an unconscious Rex is still lying face down behind the laser grid wall.

"We can monitor his vitals from here and know that physically he seems to be mostly fine. It looks like he's running a fever, but we can't determine more than that." Jemma says, standing in front of the cell with Fitz, Mack and Skye.

"I think he might be overloading. Or at least he calls it that." Skye says, remembering her conversation with him shortly before he rescued Jemma for the second time.

"Overloading? Meaning what?" Mack asks.

"He said something about having too much nanites and struggling to keep control over them." Skye informs the group.

"Can we just extract some then? Maybe that will help." Mack suggests.

"Not yet. But... uhm, reverse." Fitz stammers.

"We could reverse engineer the method which we used to infect the rat with nanites in the first place." Jemma chimes in.

"Alright, get started on that then." Coulson says nodding and everyone but him and Skye clear out.

"Are you coming up? You said you wanted to show me something." Coulson asks Skye who looks worried at one of her best friends unconscious body.

"It's in the Bus. Rex found the solution to the map or at least I believe he did." Skye answers.

"Good, my carving has gotten to a point where I'm struggling hard not to do it all the time." Coulson tells her, patting her arm.

"They will find something that will help him." He says softly before leaving and heading to check on the map.

|Three hours later|

Skye put Rex on the bed in the cell shortly after everyone left and is now sitting on a chair inside the laser grid, trying to cool down Rex with cold towels and ice packs.

"Come on Rex, you gotta hold on for us. I'm sure Fitz and Simmons can help you soon." Skye tells the ill man quietly writhing in pain while he's sleeping.

Meanwhile in his delirium Rex, due to his nanites being overloaded slowly gets back some of his memories.

He remembers looking at his parents and his brother while he's sitting in a plain looking cafeteria, dressed in a Hydra school uniform next to a blonde girl dressed the same. The two of them were around 8 years old.

"Rex, I see you've met my daughter Ruby. I hope you two will get along. I've been a close friend of your parents for a long time." A blonde woman in her thirties tells the young Rex, who looks over to the woman's daughter.

Rex suddenly regains consciousness and is in the cell, struggling to move yet alone take a deep breath.

"What ... what happened?" He croaks out, Skye who was working on her laptop immediately looking up at him.

"Rex. You're awake." She says relieved.

"How long was I unconscious?" He asks confused, Skye wiping some sweat from his forehead.

"A couple hours." She informs him.

"You saved us from that Evo rat and then collapsed down here." Skye tells him.

"I'm remembering." He says shakily.

"Good." She says, patting his arm gently.

"No I'm remembering my past. Don't let me. Make it stop." He begs her, grabbing onto her for dear life.

"We've got it!" Jemma shouts racing into the vault at that moment with some kind of device.

"This should help you. But first we need you unconscious or this will be painful." Jemma says and promptly injects Rex with a sleeping dose after Skye opens the laser grid for the British woman.

"Help me turn him over." Jemma says and the two turn Rex so he's lying face down.

Jemma then runs a scanning device over Rex's back and finally places the other device on his left shoulder, pressing down on a button and the container is filled with a moving blue hue.

"This should make him all good. I extracted the highest population of nanites." Jemma informs Skye.

"He said something." Skye says.

"What?" Jemma asks.

"He said he's remembering his past and that he wants it to stop." Skye answers.

"I suppose his body going into shock can have caused memories to surface, but I don't think we can stop it from happening without doing permanent damage." Jemma says sympathetically.

Meanwhile Rex remembers some more scenes from his childhood as if reading a summary, only recalling some bigger parts of his life but no specific events other than the one with the blonde girl, who keeps appearing in his mind clearer than all other memories kind of like everything else is out of focus.

The last memories he recalls are him leaving for Egypt, where the explosion happened and another memory from him and the girl some time before.

A 20-year-old Rex is lying in his room looking at some kind of science article his parents published when his door suddenly opens and Ruby enters, shutting the door behind her.

"What is it?" He asks the girl one or two years younger than him, looking over to her from his couch in the Hydra dorm room.

"I hate it here." She grumbles, walking over to him and flopping down next to him on the couch.

"Yeah, I get that. I don't know why our parents are still here. They always claim to be using Hydra, not the other way around, yet here we are stuck in this Hydra academy for the last 10 years." Rex replies.

"Do you think we should, you know... run away?" Ruby asks him, leaning her head into his shoulder while putting away the article.

"Sometimes I want to, but we know how widespread Hydra is nowadays. If we leave, sure I might be able to escape, but you... They want you to be one of the heads, right? I doubt we'd get far."

Rex says.

"So, you're only sticking around for me?" She asks surprised and touched.

"In short, yeah." He answers, calmingly rubbing through her long blonde hair.

Ruby pushes off from the couch and moves in front of him, sitting down in his lap facing him with her shins on either side of him.

The two look at each other passionately before the blonde finally crashes her lips against his and unzips her tracksuit's top and is about to pull of her pants.

"Slow down there Ruby." Rex says with a chuckle, zipping the clothing back up partly, still giving him a good view of the crop top underneath.

"I think we're around this level." Rex tells her, caressing her flat stomach which he left revealed.

"You and your dumb need to think everything through. Can't we just fuck and go from there?" Ruby asks seductively with a pout.

"If we had just met, sure. But you're the only person I can say I truly care about." Rex tells her.

"Even more reason for us to do it." She says laughing.

"You should stop watching those shows." He chuckles, caressing her cheek and her lower back with the hand inside her tracksuit.

"You're a real pain in the ass you know." Ruby tells him going in for more kisses.

During the kiss he pinches her ass with one hand.

"I thought you asked for some pain in your ass." He says jokingly and moves them around so he's leaning above her, kissing her along her throat.

"Do you think we'll become Hydra like our parents?" She asks him with all seriousness, guiding his head up so they're face to face.

"Maybe, but as long as we're together, who cares." Rex replies, meeting her in a passionate kiss during which the flexible blonde slings her legs around his waist.

"Fuck!" Rex curses finally waking up in his cell.

"I told you I didn't want to remember." He shouts annoyed, looking at the main camera of his cell.

"Looks like we do need him to be in that cell now." Coulson says, him, May and Skye watching this video two hours later.

"Yeah. Looks like you were right Coulson. I'm sorry." Skye apologizes.

"You did what was necessary." Her father figure says.

"Maybe." She sighs, looking at the video of a grumpy Rex saddened.

"Will you still go talk to him?" Coulson asks, looking at the young agent in the room.

"I don't know. That doesn't exactly scream I'm still the same nice Rex I was before." Skye says, the video showing Rex fuming in anger in his cell.

"Yes, which makes him a valuable source of information now. If he really does remember his old life then he may know secrets about Hydra, about Whitehall that can help us bring them down." May says.

"Source of information huh? I thought he was our comrade until a few days ago." Skye says tiredly.

"I know this is hard, especially after Ward. But I have the feeling you're the only one he'll open up to." Coulson says.

"Fine. I know the drill by now. Keep him talking about himself not about me." Skye says scoffing lightly and leaves, heading to the cell.

"Hey. How're you doing?" Skye asks carefully walking into the room.

"I told you not to let me remember." Rex says disappointed.

"Ro be fair you were gonna die. We had to treat you." Skye says in response.

"You didn't have to knock me out to extract the nanites." Rex says.

"Simmons said we did, or you could have gone into shock from the pain and still ended up unconscious." Skye informs him.

"Just my luck. I help out and get punished for it." Rex grumbles sitting down on the bed.

"Is that what happened in the past in Hydra?" Skye asks.

"Yes." He replies and there is an awkward long pause.

"Let me guess you're supposed to do the same you did with Ward. Squeeze me for information?" Rex asks.

"I don't like it any more than you do." Skye says saddened.

"Then don't. Send Mack or Coulson. Heck even May." Rex grumbles.

"Why?" Skye asks.

"Because I don't want you to think of me like that. Like an intel asset." Rex tells her.

"Look Rex. How much do you actually remember? Maybe we can show the others that you're still the same Rex as yesterday?" Skye says calmingly.

"I'm not. A large part of me wants to be but the other part has other priorities." Rex tells her.

"Like what?" Skye asks.

"That friend I saw in my memories. I only remember stuff about her, besides things like my parents' names and some general stuff. I need to check on her." Rex says.

"Why?" Skye asks.

"Because she obviously meant something to me. And even if I don't remember much not even about her, that she's the only thing I do have clear memories of must mean something." Rex says desperately.

"If you don't want to know about your past, why cling to the memories of a girl you don't know?" Skye asks perplexed.

"I need to know. I need to know if I was a good man before or if I only changed because it was Fury who found me not Whitehall." Rex says frustrated.

"Whitehall?" Skye asks, not having mentioned the name to him before.

"Big player in the Hydra r&d department." Rex informs her.

"I know, but how do you?" Skye asks.

"He's a legend in Hydra. It's not every day you see someone age in reverse and stay young." Rex says.

"Aged in reverse? What are you talking about?" Skye asks.

"He's some kind of WW2 Hydra scientist. Sometime around 20 years back he suddenly turned from a 70-year-old to the body of a guy in his 30s." Rex tells her.

"I need to tell Coulson about this. I'll talk to you soon." Skye says and leaves the vault.