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It started back when they set up shop in Boston. Every few months, Hardison received an email from an encrypted server to his encrypted server. Something no one, not even the team, was supposed to know about. Except the email wasn’t to him.
It was to Elliot.
When he told the team about it, he expected Elliot to freak out, Nate to flip and Parker to look at him oddly. Two of three happened, but Elliot just asked what the email said. Not who it was from, just what it said.
Green light.
Elliot then thanked him. Thanked him for letting him know. When pressed, he said the sender wasn’t a threat, that the sender was safe and wanted Elliot to know it. Nate seemed to pick up on something, nodded in agreement and told him to be on the
lookout for any more emails and to let Elliot know in the future.
The next one came a week or so after they hit Lillian Foods. Same thing, green light. Eliot was tense once they knew they had an email, and relaxed after it.
When they were final going after Damien Moreau, on San Lorenzo, he got another email from this person. He couldn’t tell Elliot until the plane ride back, but whatever ‘red light’ was, the man took off running from the plane. Nate seemed to accept it, and then somehow Sophie got it too. Parker still looked at him oddly, but he couldn’t figure out what Elliot was so concern with.
He tried to trace back the email, but whoever it was, the sender was good. Like his level good. Used some of his tricks for sure, probably even some he didn’t know, but he managed to get a location out of the email. Still no sender, but he traced it back to California. Elliot’s comm went off the grid there too, so whoever he was after or going toward, he didn’t want the team to know.
When Elliot came back, after Nate handed the hitter a beer, Hardison asked what going on. Elliot gave him that evil look of his, the menacing one he usually only used right before he hit something or someone.
“You want me to know where your Nana is?” Elliot asked him, more like growled. He admitted to making a strategic retreat at that point.
After that, the emails came back ‘green light’ again. One after he nearly died from being buried alive, after they got settled in Seattle, and one after they saved Elliot’s cooking mentor.
Everything was fine. Even the surveillance on the Interpol office was going well, not that anyone other than Nate need to know that. At least, well, until he got the most recent email.
“Elliot, I get that green light means something good, yellow danger, and red probably means something worse,” Hardison said, “but what does demon light mean?”
Elliot dropped the platter he was holding, which had their dinner on it. He scrambled to pull out his phone and tossed it to him. “562841. Track the info there. Now!” Everyone watched as he began to clench and unclench his fists. Hardison pulled up his programs on the screens and plugged Elliot’s phone into the system. “Get us surveillance on the diner.”
“What’s going on?” Nate asked. He moved forward calmly, even as Parker inched away. Sophie remained behind the counter, watching them. The info on the phone, whatever it was, linked with his system and began to track something. He watched the path it took, one he tried to follow and ended up lost in California.
“Dammit Hardison, surveillance!”
“Do it,” Nate said.
One of the screens he flipped back to the cameras they had set up in the bar and outside of it. He watched the program, even as the screen cycled through their cameras. Eliot relaxed a little beside him, not enough to stop gripping the chair but enough not to break it.
“Remember New York, two years ago? When SHIELD tried to blow up the whole thing?” Eliot glared at the screen, scanning for something odd or off. “Seems they’ve gone and done something worse.”
“What can be worse than trying to blow up an entire city?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ve got a…source in SHIELD,” Eliot said “Something’s going down. It's been going down for a while. SHIELD's compromised. They're gone, and my source...she's in danger. ”
Hardison stared at the man, both in awe and a little more fear. He’d hack them a few time, but even the he wasn’t crazy enough to go diving into that cesspool. Too much oversight for his taste. Had he not been working with Nate and the others, he would have joined up with Rising Tide. From what he heard on the darknet, they’d done some good for a bit before being taken down, mainly because one of them was a greedy son-of-a-bitch. And of course, SHIELD played dirty – they locked Miles out of any electronic device and stranded him in China. Sent chills down his spine just thinking about that.
“So what does demon light mean?” Parker asked.
“Green mean go, red means stop or danger in this case,” Nate said. “Yellow probably is a warning, letting you know your source is in danger but doesn’t need help.”
“It’s from this dumb site she goes to,” Elliot growled. “‘Kneel, says the demon light, with its eye of coal. Sauron knows your license plate and stares into your soul.’”
“Your source uses a code she picked up from tumblr?” Hardison asked. He tried to keep his voice neutral, but Elliot turned to glare at him and suddenly, tracking that information was much more important.
The signal bounced around a bit, hiding in IP addresses, on bits of hard drives always connected but never used. It took him a few minutes to finally get a lock on the signal, and he quickly pulled up the surveillance cameras, what few there were. One across the street in an ATM, another traffic camera a block away.
“Go back, like, an hour,” Elliot said as he stared at the screens. Hardison did the best he could, rewinding the feed under normal circumstances would be easy. A growling man over your shoulder kind of put some pressure on him. “Stop. That one.” He pointed at one of the traffic cameras.
A young woman was walking down the street with a man. She was maybe five five, five eight at the most, long hair and dressed casually. She held her bag at her side, both hands on it even as she pushed her way through the crowds on the street. The man towered over her, and kept looking around as if to spy for something. The man definitely looked like trouble, and from the way Eliot broke off a piece of the countertop in his hands (Holy shit!), he probably was. The woman kept glancing around, and finally stopped for a moment to stare directly at the camera. The man was looking the other way at the time, but it was enough time for the girl to nod her head.
“He’s SHIELD.” Everyone turned to look at him. “They have a very distinctive walk.”
“Not just SHIELD. Whatever happened in DC, this is involved.” Hardison kept working, following the trail of bread crumbs this little hacker left. Someone in DC was uploading a lot of files, and they were good. Too many to tag, but a quick algorithm to search and he’d be able to explore more later. That was one top of whatever little miss secret was doing. Something hinky was going down, definitely not good. "Think he's HYDRA?" That was the name spreading online about who took, or tried to take over SHIELD. There hands were in a lot of nasty pots, and if that info meant anything, this definitely was beyond their normal scope.
“Yes, but let’s worry about this right now.”
“She’s going to be done by the time we get there,” Nate said.
“No, she won’t,” Elliot said. “She’s stalling. We’ve got three hours, maybe less.”
“Flight will take us nearly in little over two. Hardison?”
“Already booked,” he said without looking up from his code. Someone was feeding him information, sending it along the way. Whatever it was, the info wasn’t meant to be shared outside of whatever organization, SHIELD or whoever was in charge right now.
“Bring your EMP gun,” Eliot said after disappearing somewhere. He had two go-bags on him. He stomped past him toward the door, glaring at everything and everyone. “And a badge or six.”
Hardison looked up as Eliot disappeared out of the apartment. Nate nodded at him to follow. Sophie stood stiller than ever, her body frozen as she watched the security feed he left up. Parker came over to his side. “Be safe,” she whispered, giving him a light kiss on his cheek.
How the hell did he get dragged into going? Grabbing his tablet, Hardison fled after Eliot. The ride would be silent, tense and awful. He only hoped whatever tricks he managed on this end would help Eliot’s girl. The world changed bit by bit, until it seemed like overnight superheroes and spies filled the cracks of every story. Nate avoided all that, and they did fine, for the most part, but this was a new level for them. All because Eliot needs the help.
You do anything for family. Even if it means jumping straight into the lion’s mouth.
Nate summed it up best over their coms: “Let’s go steal a spy.”