Three days later, Los Angeles, a retro café near Union Station.
The sun was shining brightly, but the atmosphere inside the café was somewhat strange.
Skye wore an ordinary hoodie and a baseball cap as she sat in the corner, her fingers flying across her laptop keyboard.
Outside the café, in a black SUV, Phil Coulson held a pair of binoculars, a faintly amused expression on his face.
"Sir, target confirmed." Ward's voice came through the earpiece.
Coulson lowered the binoculars. "May, prepare to move. Don't hurt her."
"Copy."
May pushed open the car door with a cold expression.
Inside the café.
Skye looked at the deliberately planted vulnerability in the program on her screen and silently counted down. Three... two... one.
"May I buy you a drink, miss?"
Ward's voice sounded above her head.
Skye looked up, putting on a panicked expression. She snapped her laptop shut and prepared to run.
But the back door had already been blocked by a cold-looking Asian woman in a leather jacket.
At the front entrance, a middle-aged man with a slightly receding hairline and a professional smile walked in.
Phil Coulson.
"Skye, right?" Coulson displayed a black ID. "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Or... you can call us S.H.I.E.L.D."
"We'd like to talk."
Skye backed against the wall, her eyes filled with fear and vigilance as her right hand instinctively brushed the cold mechanical watch on her wrist.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Skye sneered. "The organization that wants to turn the whole world into a prison? Are you here to arrest me? Or silence me permanently?"
"Perhaps."
Melinda May, the woman known as the Cavalry, had appeared behind Skye at some point and spoke coldly.
Skye slowly raised both hands in a gesture of surrender.
"All right, all right. The mighty S.H.I.E.L.D. mobilized