When Michaela abruptly jolts awake, she realizes, in a haze of panic, that she's not at home. This is not her bed. And that woman who spooks at her sudden reanimation is not someone she recognizes.

"You're awake!" she squeaks, unnecessarily.

Michaela ignores her for a second, scoping out the room she's in. Everything's high tech, monitors everywhere, medical equipment arranged neatly on tables. The harsh tang of chemicals, though, is strangely absent. Not a hospital, then, which is probably for the best. Michaela still doesn't have health insurance, which, as a superhero, is something of a fatal problem for her. At least she's beginning to understand that, not least because right now she certainly feels like she's on the verge of death.

That's when it comes back to her — the fight, Kim, Coulson and SHIELD—

"You're... SHIELD?" Michaela rasps, and the woman, decked out in a spiffy lab coat, crosses the relatively small room to stand at her bedside. She reaches out to the wall beside her and taps at a screen, bringing up what look to be medical records. Michaela's? Most likely.

"I'm an agent of SHIELD, yes," the woman confirms, frowning at the screen before smoothing out her expression into a kindly smile that she turns on Michaela. She's British, though that hardly registers for Michaela when weighed against literally every other thing that's going on. "Jemma Simmons, at your service."

Michaela subtly stretches herself out atop the bed, testing her range of movement. Ribs are more bruised than broken, she thinks; the roadburn on her arms has been bandaged and numbed with something; she's aching everything but not as intensely as she'd figured she would be. Heavy-duty painkillers, or... it could be something else, probably, who the fuck knows what SHIELD gets up to while not actually existing in any like, legal way. Unfortunately, while she isn't in nearly as much pain as she was bracing for, she's woozy as hell, and that typically doesn't lend itself to making a grand escape from one's possible captors.

Stifling a groan, Michaela shuffles back until she's propped up enough against the pillows that she's not flat on her back, which is when she (belatedly) realizes something else.

Her mask and goggles are gone, along with the rest of her costume.

"What the fuck," she hisses, her eyes darting to Simmons', who blinks, face blanking in confusion. "Does the concept of a secret identity mean nothing to you?"

Simmons blinks again, then laughs, which does not endear her to Michaela in the slightest. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to... I'm not laughing at you," she says, gentling her voice and subsequently pissing Michaela off even more, "it's just that... Well, you've been on SHIELD's radar ever since the attempted robbery at that store... Cody's, was it? It wasn't a difficult leap to connect you to the hero who saved the day."

"Right," Michaela says, dry as bone. It's a concern she'd had back then, that people would recognize something about her, or someone would have seen her sneaking into the alley, or that Emmett might've remembered a detail about that nailed her identity. But nothing like that had happened. Or, she'd thought it hadn't. "That guy. Coulson? He said you guys weren't Hydra. S'that why you're violating my privacy?"

"Oh, we're not—" Simmons falters, paling slightly at the mention of Hydra. Michaela raises a brow in response, unsympathetic. She'd agreed to meet with Coulson's team but she didn't agree to being stripped of her cover, and someone's going to answer for that, even if they apparently already knew. "I'm sorry, I am, it's a hazard of the work we do. Information is such a valuable commodity, and in the beginning we didn't know if you were a threat or not. You're in our systems but your information doesn't go beyond our database, I assure you."

"That is the least reassuring thing I've ever heard, but okay. Where's Coulson? I said I'd speak to him." The and only him goes unsaid, but Michaela's sure her expression conveys the sentiment well enough.

"Yes, right, I'll just..." Simmons nods and steps away, moving towards the door.

Michaela, who is still a weak bitch even when under duress, heaves a sigh and says, "Thank you, though. For the... I'm assuming you're the one who patched me up, so. Thanks."

Just before she's out the door, Simmons pauses, looking back at her. She lights up with a smile. "It was nothing! You're hardly the worst patient I've had to treat! I'll be right back with Coulson, alright?" And then she's gone, the door sliding shut behind her.

That's not ominous or anything.

Michaela lays back against the pillows, groaning aloud now that she's alone. Mostly alone. She doesn't doubt there's surveillance in here somewhere, though she doesn't bother trying to spot it. No point, and anyway she's exhausted, mind and body. There could be a camera right in front of her face and she would have a twenty-percent chance of picking up on it. Okay, fifteen, because one of her eyes is swollen and she's only just noticing that now. Fuck, when did that even happen? Well. Probably when she fell from the car, that's when all the other bad shit went down.

She's not going to be able to chide Daredevil about his reckless behavior anymore, is she?

"Ms. King, I'm glad to see you've woken up so soon."

Michaela squints open her good eye, a little unnerved that she can't recall closing it, to see Director Coulson standing at the foot of her bed. With another woman beside him. Ugh, why so many new people? Michaela is not in the mood for company of any kind, let alone multiple strangers who might have sinister intention towards her. The woman's a little shorter than Coulson, brunet, smiling sort of impishly; hands tucked behind her back, dressed in a leather jacket that Michaela is hilariously jealous of (which she blames mostly on the drugs).

"Hey, you're—"

"Hold on a sec," Michaela mumbles, cutting the woman off. She blinks, then lifts both brows as Michaela lifts a hand (as much as she can, at least) and points an accusatory finger at Coulson. "I didn't agree to this."

"Ms. King, I know you're under a lot of stress right now, and you're recovering from several serious injuries. If you don't remember our conversation—"

"Nuh-uh, don't pull that shit with me, Coulson. I am on drugs and I passed the fuck out, but I know what I agreed to with you. To talk, nothing more, nothing less. I did not agree for you to unmask me without my consent."

Coulson's bland smile doesn't waver, though the woman shoots him a look like this isn't the first time Coulson's done something like this, and it's not the first time he's been called out for it. Or maybe Michaela's reading too much into the expression. She's on the good drugs, she can tell now; it reminds her of when she broke her leg when she was eleven and ended up telling her best friend at the time that he had bunny teeth. It was not taken as the compliment she'd intended it to be.

"And I know my secret identity is a joke to you all, but what the fuck? I'm not Jessica Jones, I keep the mask on for a reason."

"You're safe here, Ms. King," Coulson says, like that makes anything better. "Your identity won't be leaked to the public in any way."

"You're missing the point, and I can't tell if you're doing it on purpose or not."

"With Coulson there's a good chance of it being either," the woman says, gently hip-checking Coulson so that he moves back and she can take his spot directly in front of her. "And I will personally apologize for all the bullshit you've been put through in the short amount of time you've been with SHIELD. But what Coulson told you before is true — we want to help, Blackout."

The use of her hero name has Michaela sinking a little further into her pillows, hitched shoulders loosening, her scowl not quite as prominent. The woman grins at her, crossing her arms under her chest and plopping right down at the foot of the bed, bringing a knee up onto the mattress.

"I'm Skye," she says, "and you have no idea how much we have in common."

That gets Michaela's attention, though she fights not to make that so obvious. If the mildly amused look Coulson is sporting is any indicator she's not doing a bang-up job of it, but oh well. It's a low-level priority. "Were you kidnapped by SHIELD too?"

"Nah, I walked in willingly. Although I'm surprised they didn't take me in sooner, since I'd been hacking the hell out of them for a while before Coulson made me an offer."

Hacking? She'd hacked SHIELD? There's a biting comment sitting on the tip of Michaela's tongue, about how if she could get into their systems how didn't she notice Hydra's tentacles everywhere, but she presses it to the roof of her mouth and lets it sit there. It's snippy and rude and, frankly, an oversimplification of an insanely complicated situation. Insulting this woman also isn't going to get her anywhere she wants to be, so she just nods, tries to be polite as she motions for Skye to get on with it.

Alright, her polite isn't of the usual variety, but she blames it on the drugs and the pain and her own general stupidity.

"We're similar in another way," Skye says, stretching from her spot on the bed to pluck a tablet from a set of drawers beside the bed, and she types something into it while she keeps talking. "So about seven months ago you were admitted to the hospital, yeah?"

"Yeah," Michaela agrees warily, flicking a glance at Coulson. He's not looking at either of them at the moment, seemingly reading from his phone, though Michaela doesn't doubt that he's still highly attuned to what she's doing. Fucking creepy, is what it is.

"You stayed for a couple of days, doctors ran some tests on you because you'd been exposed to an unknown airborne substance and they didn't know what the side effects were going to be. All you got was a pretty high fever and some achy muscles, which they attributed to the trauma of the ongoing Avengers thing at the time."

"This isn't new information," Michaela mumbles, "I was there. I remember all this. You got a point to go with it?"

Skye grins again, this time a little wider. "Sassy, nice. We need more of that around here. Anyway, yeah, I've got a point. That unknown airborne substance? It's not really unknown. They call it Terrigen Mist."

That makes it unknown to her, still, which she comments to Skye, who shrugs and makes a face like, Sorry, I've got a script I've gotta get through. Which. It would be hilarious if Skye were actually speaking from a script, like the tablet she's holding was acting as a teleprompter. It would also result in Michaela's blood pressure skyrocketing, so it's probably for the best that she's more or less speaking off the cuff.

"I'm not gonna get into everything with you right now because there is a shit-ton of info you'd need to be briefed on, and I bet that's not appealing to you. So we'll get to the good stuff. This Mist, it's used to bring out the Inhuman genetics in people."

"...and this is where you explain what an Inhuman is, right?"

"Right." Skye flashes her teeth in another infectious smile. "Inhumans are... they're alien experiments that made it to Earth. That Mist is what gave them powers in the first place. And they formed their own society away from humans, developed and evolved separately. They stayed separate for a long, long time. But shit happened and then humans and Inhumans were mixing together, and since they're pretty identical to humans in terms of appearance, things got heated eventually. You know?"

"Yes, I think I understand human mating rituals enough to grasp what happened there."

"Just checking. It's been a few generations now, so there are humans with some Inhuman ancestry nowadays. And that Mist that gave them their powers originally? It can do the same thing for their descendants."

"...you're shitting me."

"'Fraid not," Skye says, sounding genuinely sympathetic as she turns the tablet towards Michaela. On it is a diagram of a DNA strand, though it looks... off in a way Michaela can't pinpoint. Underneath it is her name, King, Michaela F. Her DNA. Her weird-looking DNA. Cool. That's... cool. "Dunno how far back it's from, but you have an Inhuman in your family history somewhere, so when you were exposed to the Terrigen Mist..."

"It awakened powers in you," Coulson finishes, evidently done playing with his phone. "You, and a handful of other individuals residing in New York. One who technically lives in Nevada but came here for a chance at the big city life. Like I mentioned before, we've been monitoring these individuals because they're potential threats, and because Skye here is interested in training them."

"Because I'm Inhuman, too," Skye adds, seeing the poleaxed look on Michaela's face. "And I know how terrifying it is to suddenly have these powers and have no idea what to do with them. You're rockin' them well, though, much better than some of the others. You took it better than me, anyway."

Should she say thank you?

Michaela's head is spinning. She's not entirely human. That's... not that hard to believe. She'd had no idea where the fuck these powers came from, had thought that maybe that toxin or whatever had mutated her, or irradiated her, or something. Because obviously she doesn't subscribe to the batshit insane theory that Thor is her dad, so logically, that day, caught in the fallout of an Avengers' battle, that's the likeliest catalyst for change in her life. Unless it had been something she ate, which. Unlikely.

Can't say she'd considered alien ancestry to actually be a viable possibility. Not Asgardian genes, but Inhuman, a race of people who previously didn't exist in her worldview. Michaela carefully slots that information away so she can freak out in private later. Preferably with as much cheap alcohol as she can get her hands on. Daredevil's gonna have to handle another night or two on his own.

"Okay," Michaela says slowly, scrubbing a hand over her face, just for something to do that isn't staring mindlessly at Skye and Coulson. "Okay, so. That's what the electricity is about. Good to know. And... that guy? Knock-Off Iron Man? He's Inhuman too?"

"That's right," Coulson says. "Julius Rodriguez. He's a technopath, according to FitzSimmons."

Michaela raises a brow, and Skye says, "You met Simmons. Fitz is like her other half. They're the nerd duo on this team. They're a package deal so everyone just calls them FitzSimmons."

"What are you going to do with him? Rodriguez."

Skye and Coulson share a glance, communicating solely with their eyebrows. Michaela would be annoyed at how they're cutting her out of the conversation, except she's still processing everything that came before this, and her brain does not have room for excess words right now. She almost appreciates the brief few moments of silence.

"We're hoping to rehabilitate him," Skye says eventually, careful, in a way she hasn't been up until now. Michaela's gotten the sense that she's been fairly open and honest with her from the beginning, but this must be a touchy subject. "But for now, we have a place for him to go, so that he's not throwing the gauntlet down at Tony Stark's feet any time soon."

As much as it makes her skin crawl to think of Rodriguez locked up in some supermax prison, his powers dampened and probably drugged (she's drawing on a lot of sci-fi movies, don't judge her), she's relieved, in a way. That guy almost had her today, and she really does not want to know what damage he could actually do to Stark. She's sure the other Avengers could handle him, easy (especially Cap and the Hulk, given how little they rely on any sort of technology to fight), but Stark's a wild card at times, and for the love of Christ, the man gave out his home address to a terrorist a few years ago, he's clearly not above trying to settle disputes personally, without backup. Who's to say he and this technopath wouldn't get a good bit of alone time before anyone cottoned on to Stark's reckless plan?

No, unfortunately, it's a good idea that Rodriguez isn't roaming the streets. And it does take care of the problem she'd been contemplating before, of what exactly she was going to do with him. This takes his fate out of her hands.

She's only slightly bitter about it.

"You said you wanted to help," Michaela says, directing it at Coulson, narrowing her eyes at him. He just nods, unperturbed. Michaela grits her teeth, then forcibly relaxes her jaw. "What would that entail, exactly?"

"Training," Skye answers. "It's how I got my powers under control, and how I want to help all the newly-minted Inhumans running around out here." She pauses, fiddling with something on her tablet, then looks up at Michaela from under her bangs. "Your powers, they're... a lot like someone else's I know. Based on your genetics, there's a chance you might be distantly related."

Oh, good. Relatives. Michaela loves meeting new relatives. Like Aunt Renee, who alternated between demanding why Michaela didn't have a boyfriend (she emphasized husband but Michaela drowned that part of it out) and what the hell did she think she was doing, going into graphic design? (Which she'd spit across the table like it was a curse specifically designed to insult her mother). Ignoring the fact that Michaela is openly bisexual to her family and therefore not restricted to the heteronormative trope of settling down with a nice guy and cooking all his fucking meals, she got into graphic design because she likes it. It had been a bright spot in her otherwise cookie-cutter curriculum. So having that brought up in a manner that said her chosen degree and subsequent profession wasn't a real job, that— that made something dark and writhing burn low in her gut.

Michaela doesn't start fights. She doesn't want to, most of the time. She's not a fan of conflict, especially with friends. But she's clawed her way back to some degree of self-confidence after drowning in her teens, and having that made out to be nothing, of no interest?

Michaela wishes now, absently, only paying the thought a smidge of attention, that she'd had powers for when Aunt Renee came into her life.

Realizing she's gotten off track in her head, she smooths away whatever expression got Skye and Coulson to look at her with twin looks of concern and nods to herself. "You think this guy would be willing to work with me?"

Skye considers that, tapping away still. Michaela wonders if she's multitasking or buying herself time. She doesn't fault her for either, really; Michaela may be mixed up in this clusterfuck of a mess, but she's not exactly entitled to all these government (pseudo-government?) secrets. When Skye meets her gaze again, though, something seems to have settled within her.

"I think I could persuade him to pay you a visit," she says, smirking.

Michaela frowns, checking another unsightly groan. "Make it a supervised visit. Either you come along or I don't even wanna meet the guy."

"'Long as Coulson doesn't need me, that should work out fine. I'll get in contact with Lincoln and let you know, 'kay?"

Assuming Lincoln is this guy she might share heritage with, sure, that's great. Michaela nods and Skye, pleased, tucks the tablet under her arm and stands. She shares another quick eyebrow-convo with Coulson, then says, "We fixed your phone, by the way. Or, Fitz fixed it. He'll want you to know it was him." She rolls her eyes, clearly fond this Fitz guy. "Plus I convinced Coulson and May to let me add in that number you had inked on your arm—"

Startled, Michaela glances down, searching for that sliver of skin that hadn't been scraped raw by the asphalt, seven numbers written down out of trust and a sense of comradery— and all she finds it clean, ink-free skin, bracketed by bandages. Fuck, she didn't even notice it was missing.

"—without them putting a tracer on it," Skye says, and Michaela can see that she's smug about it. She winks at Michaela. Michaela blinks. Then blinks again.

Ah. Skye thinks Claire's number is for a date. Well, Michaela isn't going to correct her, seeing as that means she doesn't have to explain that Claire has some very interesting abilities of her own that SHIELD would surely take an interest in. Claire probably isn't Inhuman, anyway; she didn't sound like she was from New York, and she didn't seem like she'd been in the city long. If she isn't Inhuman, SHIELD doesn't need to know. It'll be nice to have a friend – or at least an ally – out there that is most likely flying under SHIELD's radar, because Michaela isn't for a second going to believe that they don't keep tabs on Daredevil, Spidey and the others.

"Thanks, Skye," she says, a genuine smile pulling at her mouth, which is a first for her time held in SHIELD captivity. Ugh, okay, captivity is too harsh a word, but Michaela would very much like to get back to her life now that she's had the whole Inhuman thing explained to her. In fact... "Now that we've got all this settled, when can I leave?"

"You really should stay for medical—"

"We'll get you out of here, ASAP," Skye says, cutting Coulson off. He narrows his eyes at her briefly, but then he just shrugs and nods his assent. Michaela is a little bit in awe of Skye's powers, and she doesn't even know what kind crazy shit she can do from a superhero standpoint. "The only problem is, a lot of what you were wearing didn't really make it out of the fight, except for like, the goggles. So we'll get you replacements for everything and drop 'em off to you soon."

"That's..." Not necessary, is what she goes to say, but that's a generous offer and she can't really turn it down. Doesn't want to turn it down, if she's being honest. She's too tired to think about redoing her costume by herself, and she's too grateful about the phone (she can call Daredevil and Spidey now!) to start an argument just for the sake of it. "That's great," is what she settles on after a moment.

"Cool," Skye grins. She comes around and loops an arm under Michaela's shoulder, gently urging her to her feet. Michaela sways slightly but plants her feet, lets the moment of dizziness pass, and grins back at Skye. "You can keep the sweats you're in, by the way. In case you were wondering. But anyway, let's get you home." She slips a hand into her pocket and comes back with Michaela's phone, which she promptly tucks into Michaela's own sweatpants pocket, because Michaela is definitely not coordinated enough for that right now. "I'll be in touch, alright?"

"Sounds good," Michaela says.

Coulson lets them go without a word, just smiles pleasantly at Michaela as they pass, which Michaela finds more disturbing than anything else he's done thus far. She deliberately doesn't look at him as Skye leads her out of the medical suite, vaguely hoping they don't run into anyone else. Michaela can barely handle playing nice with Skye right now, and that doesn't take much effort. She just wants to get home and sleep for ten years.

Oh, fuck, what is she going to do about work? Or her finals?

Michaela decides abruptly that this is going to be a future Michaela problem and silently shunts that off to a far-off corner of her mind, where it will eventually be discovered with all the fervor and anxiety of the unearthing of an ancient Egyptian tomb. Is she going to be cursed? Probably. Again, though, that's for later.

"How are you getting me home, anyway?" Michaela asks, barely paying attention to the base/facility/whatever SHIELD runs out of these days as they move through it, clinging to Skye with a desperate sort of intensity. She doesn't seem to mind, at any rate, so Michaela's guilt stays relatively level throughout their excursion. "I don't... really remember how I even got here."

"Oh, no worries, we've got a car."

Later, Michaela will wonder at the nonchalance with which Skye said that, the absolute lack of any indication that she meant anything other than a car. She will be baffled and a little sick to her stomach, though not because of some great betrayal. For now, though, she just nods, because what else is she going to say?

A car. Sure, how else did she think they were going to transport her somewhere? Via teleportation device? Ha.