He wondered briefly if they would want privacy but he knew even if they requested it and he left the room they would still be heavily monitored. There was no escaping that. 

Miller was watching the surveillance and was on coms with him in case they needed some sort of binary translation help again.

It was all set up. All he needed was for Nero to make the force field transparent and unmute her for them to begin when he was ready. 

“Just see what she wants to give you and we’re done. Mute her if you need to and when you’re done you can walk away.” Sterling said firmly. He had been briefed but he wanted to make sure Nero was reminded. He wasn’t fragile and maybe Sterling was treating him like he was but after seeing him react to the names...

They needed this intel but he didn’t like how it was being obtained on Zero’s terms. He held a percentage of control in this situation that was just a touch too high for Sterling’s comfort. He made sure they grasped as much control as they could manage before going in. Zero was smart. She had done a lot of damage in a small amount of time in Providence. He didn’t want to give her that opportunity again.

Sterling had gathered a small team for the mission. Javi was flying the plane. Akela had been his field agent for his department so he knew she would be in. Germaine was on comms and recording what they were seeing and hearing should the mission go wrong and the footage was needed. He was also in their ear for advice, calling backup, or looking things up for them from the safety of base. Barton, well... After Sterling’s car wreck he had volunteered to help hunt down the ones responsible. 

And this was exactly that.

The plane had touched down smoothly in a clearing of snow in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. Sterling had honestly never seen this much snow in his life. He’d made sure they all bundled up for the trek through the snow, checked weapons and supplies, had Javi put cloaking on the plane as he waited in it for their return, and took up the middle of the three man team as they began the journey to the exact point of the coordinates he was given. He wasn’t the leader of the mission, he had made sure they knew they all had equal say in what was to happen on the flight over. The other two had far more field experience and if this wasn’t personal for Sterling he probably wouldn’t even be there. He couldn’t help but feel like this was somehow meant for him though. He wanted to see this through. One last field op. He had promised Chen. 

 As they walked he trusted the more experienced agents to check for enemies or traps so he could concentrate on navigating to the right spot. They had been walking in the ankle deep snow for about an hour before Sterling suddenly stopped and checked the device in his hand. 

“This should be it. Akela.” 

As Sterling looked over at her she pulled a pair of glasses from her bag and put them on. She tapped the side of it to activate the backscatter imaging on the glasses that had been made to mimic her old eye implant. Sterling had borrowed them to search for whatever they were looking for and give them a slight advantage and while he had said he would use them Akela had volunteered. She had 3 years of experience with them and while it had been a rather dark time in her life, she wasn’t against taking those reigns again. She was stronger than anything Hydra had done to her. 

“A secret underground base. How cliché.” She pointed toward a rock face. “There’s a door there.” 

“Testing comms. You there, Shepherd?” 

‘the Home won’t be the last thing your wife loses.’ could have meant a few things, the obvious of which was that she would lose her life. It could have also meant she would lose her husband but he knew that’s not that Nero was implying. He had to get in touch with her. Now.

Sterling sat on the bench in the hallway of medical, hunched over, and hiding his face in one hand. He sighed heavily, shifting the ice bag his other hand was holding to the back of his head slightly left. He looked... defeated. Physically and mentally and emotionally defeated. Exhausted sorrow filled his features and for a while he did not move in stark contrast to the way medical swarmed and bustled around him. 

“I heard what happened.”

“Rebecca?” He called out into the room for her. It had been a long night and he was exhausted, he was hurt, he was miserable, and he just wanted to see his wife. 

[text-ES] I’m right down the hallway from your office. Be there before you get this probably. And she started walking. She needed answers.

Sterling already had his office door open and he was standing, waiting for her to arrive. 

“Close the door behind you, please.” He said as soon as she was in sight. He’d already drawn the blinds on the large windows on the side of his office which looked out over the department. 

He sat on the floor in the hallway of SHIELD just outside of medical. His arm had been newly patched up and, in a rare turn of events, he was sans jacket. It had been ruined on the mission and absolutely covered in dust and blood, like the rest of him. His white dress shirt held faint patches of Barton’s blood and a rip just below the shoulder with stains of his own blood, red with a bandage beneath it, his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he was an absolute dusty mess.

But he waited. For Barton to wake up. For the events of the mission to fully sink in. For his head to stop pounding. For his ears to stop ringing. It was too much all at once. The names. The list of his closest friends mixed with enemies. 

They had Zero removed from her holding cell and brought to an interrogation room. The original plan had been for Sterling to be in the observation room but given the events of the Providence base raid they concluded that having Sterling in the room as well might have a different effect for the first round at least. She was cuffed to the table with power inhibiting cuffs. They still hadn’t figured out if she had abilities and after seeing what the tablets were in the metal wallet they couldn’t be so sure about anything at this moment. 

Sterling held the door open for Agent Miller to enter the room first before he took his seat opposite the mysterious woman known only as Zero. Or, they assumed that was her alias as she had been on the base that was listed as Zero’s location. 

He made eye contact with Zero, the first real time he had since she had a gun on Akela. She had been thoroughly searched while she was still ICED, mostly for suicide capsules that could cut this interrogation short and lose them an asset. After a moment, he turned to Agent Miller, head of Counter Terrorism and nodded for him to start.