Chapter 581

"QNB-16. A sophisticated cocktail derived from sodium thiopental. It’s the latest high-strength truth serum."

Coulson returned to the interrogation room with Ward, holding up a small glass vial. His expression was grimly professional as he explained the contents before loading the liquid into a syringe.

"I’ll talk."

Coulson froze.

"Don’t worry. The effects only last an hour, and there are no lasting side effects..." He trailed off, then blinked as the meaning of Skye’s words finally registered. "You’ll... what?"

His last word came out several pitches higher than intended.

What the hell happened?

When he left, Skye had been ready to die before giving SHIELD anything. She’d practically declared that they’d have to throw her off the plane before she’d cooperate.

And now, after leaving her alone for a little while, she was volunteering?

Coulson slowly turned toward Evenson, who was struggling not to laugh.

"You... did something to her?"

Evenson was the only person who had been alone with Skye during that time. There was only one obvious explanation for her sudden change of heart.

"I told you I have a talent for interrogation."

Evenson suppressed his grin and shrugged.

"So I spent some time talking to her. I appealed to her better nature, explained why SHIELD does what it does, and eventually she understood. She decided to cooperate."

Coulson looked toward Skye for confirmation.

She immediately nodded several times.

"He’s right. After talking with him, I understand why SHIELD’s work is necessary. We still have some small differences, but... I understand."

Coulson glanced down at the syringe in his hand.

He suddenly felt like the most unnecessary person in the room.

"Damn it."

He raised the syringe and jabbed it straight into Ward’s arm.

The entire vial went in.

Ward stared at him in disbelief.

Coulson ignored him.

"Understanding isn’t enough. I need you to trust us."

He turned back toward Skye.

"If there’s anything you still have questions about, ask this agent. Hopefully, that will put some of your doubts to rest."

With that, Coulson grabbed Evenson and dragged him out of the interrogation room.

The moment the door closed behind them, Evenson snatched the syringe away.

He examined the vial, turning it between his fingers before checking the label. Then he held it beneath his nose and took a sniff.

He smirked.

"Saline."

He’d known Coulson wouldn’t actually inject a mid-level agent with truth serum, then leave him alone in a room with a captured hacker.

The entire thing had been staged.

Coulson and Ward had put on a little performance. They’d locked Ward, supposedly drugged with a truth serum, in the room with Skye. The idea was to lower her defenses. Then Ward would reveal his "truths" under the serum’s influence, convincing Skye that SHIELD could be trusted.

And once she trusted them, she’d tell them the truth.

"So that was your backup plan?"

Coulson nodded.

Evenson leaned back slightly.

"So you’re planning to recruit her?"

If Coulson had only wanted information, there would have been no reason to go this far.

The intimidation at the beginning had already pushed Skye close to breaking. And now she’d openly agreed to cooperate.

Yet Coulson still insisted on making her trust SHIELD completely.

That wasn’t how you treated a prisoner.

It was how you recruited someone.

"She’s a rare talent," Coulson said, a hint of genuine admiration in his voice. "Breaking into SHIELD’s external databases is practically a walk in the park for her. You don’t find people with that kind of ability every day."

"Fair enough."

Evenson nodded, then seemed to think of something.

"She can get into the external network. What about the internal databases?"

"She can’t."

Coulson said it as though the answer were obvious.

"Stark designed our internal firewall."

"I see."

Evenson nodded thoughtfully.

Skye might be an exceptional hacker, but she was still a step below Tony Stark.

"Still..." Evenson frowned and glanced toward the interrogation room. "If you’re going to recruit her, I’d be careful."

Coulson raised an eyebrow.

"I don’t think her motives are as simple as she’s making them sound."

"You noticed that too."

Coulson’s expression shifted into something halfway between a smile and a knowing look.

"Of course."

Evenson sat down on the couch.

"I found out that she’s an orphan, just like me. And, by coincidence, we even spent time in the same orphanage."

He paused.

"After she was adopted, she never stayed with any one family for very long. She kept changing guardians. Her childhood was probably even harder than mine."

Coulson listened quietly.

"With a childhood like that, I’d understand if she developed some serious antisocial tendencies. Throwing Molotov cocktails at city hall wouldn’t exactly surprise me."

Evenson shrugged.

"But she didn’t. Instead, she devoted herself to finding the truth."

His expression hardened.

"Specifically, the truths SHIELD keeps hidden."

Why was she so obsessed with SHIELD?

And where had that obsession come from?

There was something about Skye that didn’t add up.

Everything she said made her sound like an internet crusader, the kind of person who would say anything behind a keyboard because there were no consequences.

People like that tended to be very different when confronted with reality.

If Coulson’s men had dragged someone like that into a black-site interrogation room, blindfolded and threatened them from the moment they arrived, most of them would have folded almost immediately.

Skye hadn’t.

She’d fought back from the beginning.

Even when Evenson had frightened her badly enough to leave her visibly shaken, she’d continued resisting for a surprisingly long time.

Something was driving her.

Something powerful enough to make her keep pushing against SHIELD despite everything they could do to her.

"What if she knows something?"

Coulson’s eyes narrowed.

Evenson continued.

"There’s only one possibility I can think of. Among all the things SHIELD has kept hidden, there’s something that directly concerns her."

He paused.

"Something serious enough that it may even be connected to everything that went wrong in her childhood."

"That’s more or less what I think."

Coulson sat down across from him.

"I’m not reckless. If I’ve decided to recruit her, I still need to do the necessary background checks."

He sighed.

"I just finished one."

Coulson shook his head.

"Her history is strange."

"She really did keep changing guardians. She never stayed with one family for more than three years."

He frowned.

"But it wasn’t because the families didn’t want her. And it wasn’t because she asked to leave."

"It was as if there were some kind of automated process running in the background. The moment the allotted time expired, paperwork appeared and her guardianship changed."

Coulson gave a humorless smile.

"And the rest of her records..."

He shook his head again.

"I wouldn’t even call them records. They’re edited files. On some of them, I can’t find more than ten readable words. There’s practically nothing useful."

Evenson rubbed his chin.

"That goes beyond suspicious."

If Skye’s background was this carefully obscured, then she wasn’t simply a talented hacker with a complicated childhood.

There were secrets surrounding her.

A lot of them.

"Could she have done it herself?" Evenson asked. "Maybe she altered her own records to keep SHIELD from investigating her."

"Impossible."

Coulson didn’t hesitate.

"Unless she was hacking government networks when she was six years old and somehow changed her own guardianship records without anyone noticing."

He paused.

"And there’s something else."

A trace of doubt appeared in his expression.

"I recognize the methods used to alter those files. And I recognize the way the documents were edited."

Evenson slowly looked at him.

"SHIELD?"

Coulson gave a heavy nod.

"If that’s true, then SHIELD has effectively controlled almost her entire life."

Evenson’s expression changed.

"If that’s the case..."

He finally understood.

"I know why she’s so obsessed."