Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. One-shot: Figurehead

Hong Kong, shortly after the events in

“Girl in the Flower Dress”

          Miles Lydon seethed as he sat at the internet café in Hong Kong. He had to spend this minute well; he had been saving every dollar he had been able to beg, peddle and steal for this moment. He was going to get back at S.H.I.E.L.D. for all they had done to him. They’d taken away his laptop, his fortune, his way home—

          --the girlfriend he had thought he had in Skye.

          “I swear, Skye, I’m going to set everything right,” he murmured fiercely, drawing gazes from nearby vendors. They met his intense gaze and looked back at their screens.

          Miles sifted through the S.H.I.E.L.D. files with ease; logistics for current operations, top-secret intelligence, they were of no importance to him now. What he needed was locations of certain buildings. Why?

          Hours after he had been dumped in Hong Kong by Coulson and his team, a man had approached him, offering several hundreds of thousands of dollars if he was able to retrieve the location of a certain Stark Industries device currently in the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D. The man didn’t state why, only that if Miles could pull it off, he would be made rich.

          Miles took the job, but only now was it sinking in how much trouble he would be in if he was caught. Streams of code passed before his eyes, and Miles came to the conclusion that it was too late to go back. He keyed diligently, until the file he required was before his eyes.

          “What the hell?” Miles muttered, staring at the monstrosity before him. It was the shape of a cylinder, but with what appeared to be arms and legs protruding from the bottom and sides. A large, blaring red Classified alert went off in front of the file, but Miles knew that no one could know trace him. He took out his flash drive (the one thing Coulson hadn’t robbed him of) and began the file transfer.

          Within the minute, Miles was on his way out of the café, whistling happily at the prospect of becoming rich. He looked around; the man had said to meet him at the Tin Lung Heen immediately after he accomplished his task. He stood just away from the doors, and bounced back and forth on his heels.

          He wasn’t nervous; Miles Lydon never lost his nerve.

          “You should at least try for subtlety when you’re waiting for a rendezvous, Mr. Lydon,” a voice came from behind him. Lydon, already on guard from the tenseness of the situation, turned on his heel quickly. The man, dressed in a suit-and-tie, was approaching him, backed by two others in similar garb, but with black shades covering their eyes.

          The man was carrying a metal case, undoubtedly brimming with money. Lydon, restraining himself, said, “I’ll try to be more careful, if there is a next time.”

          “If indeed!” the man said amicably. “Give me the file, and I’ll be the judge of whether or not there is a next time.”

          Miles slowly retrieved the drive from his tattered jeans, and handed it to the well-dressed man. The man took it, and gestured to one of the men flanking him. The other man, the well-dressed man’s bodyguard, by the look of him, took out a laptop, brandless and smooth, and handed it to the well-dressed man.

          The man opened the computer and inserted the flash drive. His eyes widened, with a disturbing combination of glee and malice.

          “Well?” Miles asked, gesturing to the case anxiously. The man scoffed and handed him the case. “You’d do well to remember that HYDRA rewards gracious assets with more—“

          A loud blast! echoed through the area. The well-dressed man dropped on his knees, a bullet hole through his heart. His bodyguards fell in rapid succession. Miles panicked, grabbed the case with both hands and ran like the devil was on his heels; he had no idea what was going on, but he was now too rich to die young—

          “Mister Lydon!” a voice boomed, drowning out all the sounds of panicking civilians. Miles turned slowly, gulping, hoping he wasn’t about to die…

          Several men in what appeared to be yellow hazmat suits with opaque visors, armed and deadly, were approaching him. Miles threw up his hands in surrender. The men slowed down as a helicopter came down from above them. Two of them grabbed Miles and escorted him on as it landed.

          “Who are you?!” he asked over the rotating propellers. One of them turned to him and said, “We’re A.I.M., and if you want to live, you’ll do as we say.”

          “Sir!”

          The man turned to face another A.I.M. agent running towards him with the laptop. “The file’s on it, sir!”

          “Excellent. Let’s move!”

          As the helicopter lifted off, Miles looked around skittishly. The group leader opened the laptop, and the screen reflected eerily off of his visor. He chuckled darkly as he read the contents on the screen.

          “Mr. Lydon,” he said, turning to Miles, “you are about to become a very rich, very influential man…”

          Miles was straight-up confused now. “What’s on that file that’s so important?”

          “The key to resurrecting our leader, Aldrich Killian.”

          The man turned the screen so Miles could look at it. The Classified label was now erased, showing the acronym M.O.D.O.K. Under it read in smaller print, Mechanical Organism Designed Only for Killing.

          The man offered Miles a suit and a strange-looking ray gun.