Middle School Heroes

Chapter 34 - Switching Teams and Hailing HYDRA

Skye woke up a few hours after falling asleep and was awake for a while, thinking about everything that had happened since they got there. The one thought that she kept returning to was the fact that these people claimed to be members of a group that had supposedly been destroyed shortly after World War II. Were they just nutjobs playing to a cause that was long dead, or could it be real? The place that they were being held in obviously had something to do with HYDRA, but from the looks of it, it hadn't been used since the war, possibly. She didn't even want to imagine what this place would have been used for back then.

She knew that the kidnapping was well planned. They got onto the grounds and got each of them out without being caught, and that would require help from someone inside, especially after the first three kids went missing and the school went on lockdown. They also wouldn't have just randomly found this HYDRA island in the middle of the ocean, and the buzzing noise that Skye heard when she first woke up here were two fairly new looking generators. Those certainly wouldn't have been left around since the 1940's. They were prepared with food, supplies, fuel for the generators, cots and transportation from the coast to the island. She had never been through the door that the men always entered through, but they had some way to get a cell signal out here, as well as other supplies. She finally came to the conclusion that whether they were really HYDRA, they believed they were, and why anyone would want to be associated with a group like that was something she just couldn't understand.

Skye was already sitting on her cot when all four men came into the room. Jim looked around the cells, eyeing them all carefully, while Bob began dropping off their food.

"Oh look, the Nazis are back," Skye couldn't stop herself from saying under her breath.

She realized that she must have said it louder than she thought when Jim stormed over to their cell, stopping a few feet back from it. "You got something you wanna say, Sunshine?"

"Not really," she shrugged.

"Then I suggest you keep your mouth shut." He started to walk away, but stopped and turned toward her again. "Just so you know, HYDRA has nothing to do with the Nazis anymore. It is about so much more. Something you are gonna find out about really soon."

Skye desperately wanted to respond, but she pressed her lips together and sat silently while Bob finished delivering their food and all four men left the room.

Skye and Rumlow both sat down with their backs slightly to the camera as they always did.

"He's afraid of us," Skye noted as she handed him his bowl of oatmeal. "Before yesterday he would have been right up in front of the cell screaming at me."

"Yeah, but you don't need to be encouraging him."

"Well, I didn't mean for him to hear me. Still, how does a group like that survive this long without anyone finding out about them?"

Rumlow shrugged. "Maybe there's no one looking?"

They ate in silence until Skye finally spoke, changing the subject. "So, can I ask you a question, Brock?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"Maybe I'm wrong, but you don't seem too thrilled with Garrett and some of your team. Why do you stay with STRIKE? I've seen you fight, and you are obviously a good leader. I bet any of the other teams would take you."

"You think so? Think SHIELD wants me? I know what your buddies Steve and Bucky say about me and the rest of STRIKE behind our backs. We've been cast in the role of bad guys for them, and they actually lump us in with the people that are holding us here, HYDRA."