4430/Changeling/Leviathan: Knock Knock

Changeling/Leviathan: Knock Knock
Date of Scene:	11 May 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	All good things come to an end? Skye and Clint's vacation is interrupted by a shout out for help by a former Rising Tide member: Lag. Mystery is afoot!
Cast of Characters:	Hawkeye (Barton), Quake, Lag
Tinyplot:	Changeling
Tinyplot2:	Leviathan

---

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Secret Hydra Base
Somewhere in Mainland China

Zola's manager for this base, Lee, has been gone for a couple of days, dealing with some business or another. The man, if he could be called that, as Lag's senses tell him that there is a good deal of machine under the man's Asian features, however has left instructions to help get the base up and running a new state of the art data centre for Hydra based out of China. Most things are kept unpowered around Lag, though when the cat's away the mouse will play, and the guards have been getting lazy. One of them, off to talk to a superior, left his phone out, game still open, while a pair of his colleagues chat idly weapons hanging loose from their straps.

Temple Street Market
Hong Kong

Clint definitely stands out more than Skye in the Hong Kong crowds, the bane of being a six-three blonde guy in Asia. However there are plenty of cameras keeping an eye on everything for even Skye to get noticed. As it was, Clint was adding to his visibility by doing the tourist thing, looking at a note someone had scribbled and then trying to find addresses he could read above the doors of the various shops that line the market street.

"Hey, Keyboard," he says to Skye, "You seeing this place, Jun told us about?" he asks. There were a ton of noodle joints in the market, but so far, not the one Jun had told them about, the one where his cousin worked.

He frowns, hand on his hip as he stares across the tops of people's heads to scout out the shop. He can't help but smile a bit when he adds, "And if you need a boost, just let me know."

Quake has posed:
Unlike Clint.. Skye fits in eerily well. It isn't something you'd have noticed back home, but here, her colouring, her hair, even that subtle tilts of eyes are suddenly more visible. Of course she's mostly unaware of it.

Clint gets a look of disgust. "What is that, some sort of short joke? Wait, I bet you can't hear me up there."

And to top *her* joke off, she 'signs' her complaint at him - only she's not signing the words she's saying, but rather, a spate of expletives.

"Jun said there'd be a blue door.. or sign? Blue. I remember blue."

Lag has posed:
Lag eyes the guard's phone and suppresses a smile. Zola and his cronies had been careful to keep an eye on Lag and his access to the outside world. This was a rare opportunity he would not miss.

Lag stood up from the rack of servers he was working at and pulled out out a tangled bundle of ethernet cables. With a grunt of frustration he sat down where the guard had been and started straightening out the mess. He brushed his hand casually against the phone and in an instant, he was in. His mind raced across the networks until he found the old server running, neglected, in the basement of a rural post office in Maine. The web spider he left running there chirped its data to him in little flashes of light he saw in his mind's eye. Among all the data was a picture of a man and woman in a crowded Chinese street. And it was recent.

"Darksky," he muttered to himself, apprehension and hope rising in him. "She's free."

Lag wracked his brain and then remembered a job she had done; The Chinese Telecommunications Company connection logs. He found the network's threads close to him, which surprised him, and soon had what he was looking for. A digital tripwire. With a thought he set it off and left a process running on the server with the guard's phone number in it and a message.

"Text me. Lag."

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Lag's move goes unnoticed. The Guards still nattering away in Cantonese, only occasionally glancing at Lag and the other "volunteers'" way. The other folks assembling servers, some of them ex-rising Tide, don't seem to notice either and keep working away.


Clint holds a hand up to his ear, "Sorry? What? Can you shout from down there?" he calls with a slow grin, before make the flappy head motion with his hands in the face of the signed expletives.

"Right, there's a blue door!" he says when she reminds him. He uses his gift of height to survey above the crowd again and he sees it. "Ah-ha!" he exclaims and points, "That one."

Hard to believe the man's a secret agent, let alone a top one.

Quake has posed:
Skye's disgusted look turns into a laugh. "You are sooooo lucky I love you. Asshole." She reaches up and grabs his flappy hand, closing its 'mouth' and tiptoes up to offer Clint a kiss.

Of course, she can't see the blue door at this distance - all she gets is a sea of the tops of heads. They might be short here in Hong Kong, But she's just that bit shorter. Fiesty - but short.

"Cool.. So he said his cousin's name is Fung - "

There's a buzz from her pocket. And not just any buzz - it's one of the coded ones she'd put in place so long ago she almost didn't remember she'd done it. Old back doors. Some points of egress for contacts to reach out to her without blowing their existing covers... She frowns a little, pondering whether or not to check it out.

"Hey, hold a minute, Hotshot, got a call."

And even knowing he's liable to protest, she pulls out her cell phone and activates the scrambler before checking out the message.

What she sees has her frowning more deeply. "Uh, Hotshot? This might be nothing, but it might be important. Think we can spare a few?"

Lag has posed:
Lag's brow furrows in concentration as he moves back to his server stack, keeping the connection to the guard's phone. It is his only lifeline. Once at the server rack he sets about slowly plugging in the blade servers, while mentally taking full control of the phone. A cheap ZTE, it was full of holes and soon he had it fully cracked. The guard would never see any messages Lag did not want him to.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint returns the kiss before pulling away grinning. "I know," he says giving her a brief hip check. "Thanks for making the climb."

"Yep, Fung, he said he was expecting us too," Clint confirms as he starts to lead them towards the blue door. The buzz gets him to stop. He tilts his head as Skye pulls out the phone. They hadn't gotten many calls since going on the trip and her demeanor said this wasn't just any call. "Sure," he says nodding for Skye to join him under the awning of one of the shops. He grabs a piece of wall to lean on, switching from tourist to Agent of SHIELD in heartbeat, eyes sweeping the street. "Trouble?" he asks her.

Quake has posed:
Likewise, Skye follows Clint to under the awning, placing her back against the wall to give herself that added bit of cover - habit these days. May would be proud.

"Not sure," Skye answers him quietly. "Text from an old colleague. One who shouldn't be sending me greeting cards. Not sure what's up."

Lag had been called in after Momento and her crew had gone missing, and he'd just as mysteriously not been with the group that had been taken into custody: a notable exception. Which lefft Skye uncertain how to take this reaching out. It could be a cry for help, or a social call (not terribly likely given the nature of hackers).. or, her mind provided, it could be a trap.

Her 'defection' into SHIELD hadn't gone unnoticed when she'd been released from custody. And while Lag wasn't part of that group, if he'd maintained connections..

Still, she found herself replying:

>> Hey. What's up? Channel secure. -DS

Lag has posed:
Lag feels the message from DarkSky come into the guard's phone and his heart beat faster. He was already exposed, he knew. If DarkSky was still working for Zola, there was no telling what Zola would do to him. But if DarkSky was free after the round up, it meant she had friends. And Lag desperately needed friends.

Lag glances down at the track marks on the inside of his left arm. Marks left by injections of an antidote he needed from Zola every 24 hours or he would die. He had no doubt it would happen. Zola had shown them all how bad the end would be by withholding the antidote from one of the others who made a reckless attempt to escape.

But it was too late for doubts now, he had to take the risk.

>>I'm still in, need out. Can you help???

Lag's stomach churns as the message goes out. There is no taking it back now.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint nods, he'd been afraid it was something like that. "Sounds fun," he says dryly not taking his eyes off the crowd. He was unarmed, but there were a more than a few items he could fight with within reach. "I'll keep an eye out," he says.

Quake has posed:
The message she gets in return has Skye silent again before sighing as she worries at the inside of her cheek. "Really not good. I mean, sure, could be a trap, but shades of G here." And she shows him. "I know we're on vacation, but think Fury'll blow a gasket if we check it out?"

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint looks down at the phone, letting out a snort of a breath through his nose. "Don't mind, honestly, I expected trouble sooner than this," he says. They'd had a blissful spell here, no work, no trouble. This was pretty much par for the course. "Don't think so," he says about Fury. There's a beat, then a smile, "And you said we wouldn't get to use our bows."

Quake has posed:
Skye smirks wryly. "Yeah, actually figured Fury would be the one to poke it this way first. Surprise. Someone got the jump on him.." She laughs. "Hey! No fair, I was about to say you were right about the kids. Though not sure they'll be much use for this.. So... We're doing this, right?"

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint nods, "Yeah, expected the boss to call waay before now. Or he knew we'd come to China before he offered us vacation and had some op planned." Wouldn't put it past the crazy one-eyed bastard. He grins about the 'kids', "Sure, we could arm up at the Hong Kong station, but where's the fun in that?" he teases, before nodding, "Yeah, we're doing this."

Quake has posed:
Clint get *a look*. "You don't really think? I mean, how would he have.." Then she laughs. "Right. How. I've got my files. He tells me about this mystery about me. And where am I going to go?"

She shakes her head. "I shouldn't be so predictable. *We* shouldn't be so prectable."

And she isn't - under normal circumstances. Then again, Fury has a talent.

>> Can help. Have backup. Only, where are you? co-ords? -DS

Lag has posed:
Lag feels the message come in and closes his eyes in relief. Whoever sprung DarkSky must be heavy, and they would need to be to help him out. With a moment's concentration he pulls a longitude and latitude from the phone. He checks the coordinates on Google quickly and realizes he is not far from where his web spider put DarkSky. A chill of foreboding tingles down his spine and lag swallows hard. What was DarkSky doing in China? Was this all a setup?

Lag noticed Surge, another of the former Rising Tide hackers, watching him.

"What?" Lag asks, as nonchalantly as he can.

"You gonna put that in, or just stand there?" Surge says.

Lag looks down and realizes he is just standing in front of a storage array with a hot-pluggable drive in his hand. Lag mutters something about being tired and slides the drive into place.

>>Coordinates attached. A datacenter, underground. Armed guards.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
"Totally, but I think in this case there's nothing we could do but come here," Clint reasons. It wasn't even his own past, but Clint had been inspired to dig into it. He could only imagine what it must be like for Skye.

"How well do you know the guy on the other end?" he asks.

Quake has posed:
"Fury knows what he's doing. Only way I can deal with it is to find it, huh?" She'd thought about that long and hard before deciding to come here. And longer and harder before suggesting to Clint that after the Hong Kong portion of the trip that they head over to Hunan Province and check out where she'd been born, and subsequently rescued from.

"Well enough? Decent enough hacker. Pulled fro the ranks when Momento got nabbed." Which reminds her that they really never did tie up those loose ends. "Clean work. No red flags I can recall. Pretty much run of the mill. Not sure why he'd in over his head, but it's also a contact, huh?"

She lifts her head and considers. "If it's a trap, were going to have our asses handed to us. Then again, if it is a trap, we've got a bit of a jump in already thinking on those lines - and Fury would send us in anyway. Maybe with more backup than we have here." She shrugs. "Not sure. Not getting that prickle, though. Feels pretty up and up. And it's laying waste a node."

A few flicks of her fingers, and some code strings later.. "Well, it's not on the beaten path. But the darknet gives a few pings. Underground doesn't usually mean good things. Armed guards. That's the Benefactor's mode. Only, if he wasn't with us when we got nabbed, wonder how he got back in. Well, why. Could be a diehard fanatic. How do you want to play it, Hotshot?"

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint's lips quirk in a thoughtful frown as he takes in the facts as Skye lays them out and takes a glance at the most recent text. "Ask him for an estimation on numbers," he says. "Either way we can hit up the Hong Kong office for supplies and back up, then scope out the site, if we can do it, I'd like to get in and out quickly and quietly, maybe leave a few surprises for the Benefactor on the way out the door."

Quake has posed:
"True," Skye nods, looking equally thoughtful.

>>Numbers? Need to plan our attack. How long can you hold? -DS

While she waits for the reply from Lag, she asks Clint, "What sort of surprises?" Not like Skye can't think of a few, but she's still interested in hearing his thoughts.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint glances around for people who might be listening, finding none, he says, "Was thinking the kind that go boom, but, I suppose there are some from your side of things that might work better and give us an idea about what these guys have been up to."

Lag has posed:
Lag types away at the KVM in front of him, trying to keep his focus.

>> At least three in this room. Don't know about the rest. Can hold out, but will be operational soon. Not good.

Lag sends the message and exhales.

Quake has posed:
Skye wrinkles her nose. "He's at least as good as I am, but then again, he doesn't know about my ace. Still, the boom kind would be nice. Maybe some sleepers codewise. I don't expect they'll be overlooked, but they might let you get the other up an running."

Lag's return message has her nodding her chin at Clint. "How long do we need, do you think? 12? 24?"

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint pulls out his own phone and punches in the coordinates. It came out a couple dozen kilometers outside of Ganzhou, in the Jangxi province, still basically southern China. "Twelve," he says. "May need to revise it once I get eyes on the site, but we can do twelve."

As to the surprises he says, "Cool, some of your stuff to keep them busy? Then some boom to make sure the place is shut down?"

Quake has posed:
"You just like boom." Grinning, she punches in a reply to Lag.

>>Can you hold for 12? We need to pull it together. Will know more with recon. -DS

Lag has posed:
Lag breathes out slowly when he gets the message. Twelve hours. Just twelve more hours. The reply comes back right away.

>> I'll be ready, but offline.

Quake has posed:
Her reply was equally fast.

>> Hang tight. 12 hours and counting. -DS