Hail Hydra

"Well yes. See the thing is, it needs to be regular to be effective."

"But it was done only a couple of days ago, wasn't it?"

This guard. He irritated his superior. He was the only one that bothered questioning anything.

"Sir- are you sure they're really doing maintene-"

"Temporarily moved. We need to do regular maintenence on the cell to make sure it's still EMP proof."

"But he has an inhibitor?"

"True, but do you really want to take that chance? Do you know for sure he can't fry it?"

Jacen laughed and shook his head. “Oh, oh no. As much as I’m sure you and your ego would hate a task as simple as cleaning, I have much more important tasks than that. If you don’t…” 

He tapped the screen of his watch a few times and brought up the hologram screen again. This time though, it showed security footage of one of the other prisoners. Bancroft frowned, stepping closer to the barrier that now separated him from the younger man and his security team.

“You have that… that mercenary I once hired?”

“Yes. Brandon Riggs,” Jacen replied. “I hear he’s rather mad that you left him behind when you were broken out of your first prison in SHIELD. That and he never got the promised pay as a result of you both being arrested.”

“You would hand me over to him!” Bancroft realised. “But he is a thug. He- he could kill me-”

“With his strength? Oh I know. He probably could without it honestly. Old man like you…” Jacen smirked as he watched Bancroft back away and sink down onto the bed, seeing as he didn’t have a chair in his new cell.

“...so what is this work?” Bancroft eventually asked, his tone flat.

Bancroft art! (mine)

Bancroft was sitting at his little table in his cell when they came, all armed and covered in insulated tactical gear, specially designed for dealing with electricity. He scoffed and rolled his eyes at the sight. They all knew he’d been stuck with an inhibitor cuff on for… what was it now? Nearly a year by now, surely. Maybe longer. He’d lost track. There was no calendar to reference, just a clock on the wall outside his cell, visible through the reinforced window by the door. 

Following the armed agents (soldiers really) was a youngish looking man, early(?) thirties Bancroft guessed. He wore a suit with a red tie; his dark, chin length hair neatly combed back. Normally the Suits that came in looked uncertain or at least a little timid when they saw Bancroft. This man however looked neither. 

Bancroft didn’t bother moving from his chair as they entered, instead just watching as a pair of guards entered, weapons with their illuminated accents identifying them as ICERS pointed at him. The other pair of guards waited outside the cell, but the suited man entered. 

“Good evening,” he greeted Bancroft, casually taking the empty seat on the other side of the table. He had an English accent, somewhat softened by his time in the States.

“Good evening…?” Bancroft repeated slowly, carefully sounding it into a question. 

“Jacen Westmore,” the young man responded, holding out a business card, which he allowed Bancroft to look at, but not touch. 

“The…Raft?” Bancroft frowned after reading the man’s details. “So you know-”

“Yes, I work quite regularly with both SHIELD and Ross,” the younger man sighed, his tone suggesting it was a rehearsed response to a question asked of him a number of times before.

The Hydra agent’s frown only deepened in response to being cut off. “And what do you want with me?”

“Oh, they haven’t told you?” Jacen said as he tucked his card back into a pocket on the inside of his suit jacket. One corner of his mouth twitched, as if he were about to smirk but thought it better not to. “The investigation against you, Pierce and the rest of your ‘Project SABRE’ has been finished. Pierce of course is deceased so we only have you to hold accountable for the Project and your …extremely well-kept records are more than enough to incriminate you, even if the agent you targeted hadn’t given his story. SHIELD’s legal department has sentenced you to Life -what’s left of it anyway- in the Raft.”

“The Raft?!” Bancroft suddenly rose from his seat, holding up a hand out of habit.

As soon as he started even raising his arm though, the two guards pointed their weapons at him. It was only because Jacen held up a hand to signal them to wait that Bancroft was still conscious to finish the movement.

“Oh dear, been down here so long that you’ve forgotten, have you?” He said quietly, his tone no longer professional but mocking. He pointed at Bancroft’s left wrist, where instead of a watch sat his inhibitor cuff. “It must really hurt that big ego of yours, I’m sure; No one around here to manipulate. No chance of zapping anyone who annoys you…”

“I did not just ‘zap’ over small-” Bancroft started angrily.

“Oh no?” Jacen raised an eyebrow and pushed up the end of one sleeve. He pressed a button on the side of the watch he wore and a holoscreen rose from the small device, Jacen reading Bancroft’s case file off the floating image. “...’Clayton Weiss, Level 1 Agent from Internal Affairs…’ Held captive and murdered by you because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time-”

“He was annoying!” Bancroft snapped. “Always making jokes like a little child!”

Jacen scowled at him. “That is no justification for what you did. It certainly doesn’t excuse the murder, or the repeated attempts to capture and manipulate SHIELD agents. Nor does it excuse the experiments you made records of, where you and Pierce reportedly pushed powered agents so far they wound up dead!” 

He switched off his holoscreen and rose from his chair. He was fairly thin, Bancroft guessed, but the younger man stood a little taller than he did (much to the electrokinetic’s annoyance).

“You’re lucky you got away with simply being locked in a cell!” Jacen hissed. “From what I’ve read of your records, not even the Raft is punishment enough for you.”

Before Bancroft could respond, he felt one of the guards’ ICER shots hit him. 

The next thing he knew, he was groggily lifting his head off the floor of a moving vehicle; his hands cuffed together. He huffed and let his head gently drop back onto the floor and laid there, glaring at both the handcuffs and the inhibitor that were locked around his wrists. 

“Oh good, you’re awake. We weren’t sure we had the correct dosage.”

“What?” Bancroft shifted to sit slumped against the wall of the van, breathing heavily after the effort while both groggy and handcuffed. “You… irresponsible little-”

“I really don’t think you’re in a position to be insulting me Elijah,” Jacen casually pointed out. He then lowered his voice, not that anyone but his own guards were present. 

It only occurred to Bancroft then, as the younger man got up from his seat that the van wasn’t currently moving.

“I may be formally recognised as a Superhuman Corrections officer, but I do have interests outside of work…”

“And why should I care?”

Bancroft sat with a frown. The room was small and bright. All he had to look at was his hands, cuffed to the table. Still locked with the power inhibitor on his wrist that he’d been surprised with back in Canada (how could he possibly have been prepared for a damn ghost?!). It was that, or the so-called mirror in front of him that the Hydra agent knew was one of SHIELD’s two way mirrors.

Ironically, it was on the other side of the glass that he had first encountered Ray Hartell for the first time. Bancroft had heard about the Comms agent who had undergone Terrigenesis and had quickly found himself helping SHIELD with interrogations. Bancroft, as the then Head of recruitment and training for that base, had asked to be allowed to attend and observe.

Eventually, a female agent entered. Despite the inhibitor cuff, Bancroft noted she openly wore a holster with an ICER in it attached to the belt on her pantsuit.

“Still working here, are you?” Bancroft asked snidely. “Thought they would have got rid of you after the first failed interview before I got away. What was your name again? Howdy? Hopeless?”

She was used to people trying to wind her up. They usually assumed that she would get too upset or scared and back off, or at least that she would forget she was waiting on an answer. She simply rolled her eyes.

“Agent Janine Hadley,” she replied calmly. “Still one of the top Legal Investigators here actually.”

And then there was the other, younger agent who entered the room.

“And a junior?” Bancroft laughed. “You really think a junior agent will help you get your answers?”

//I am in the process of (finally) writing out the questioning scene following:

- Project SABRE, both previously and the plan with Ray (@empatheticagent)

- the capture and murder of @theghostofagentweiss

- Bancroft’s break out from his cell in SHIELD and escape to Canada

- the Canada incident involving the capture and neglect of Ray Hartell