On the Bus, Mike Peterson is staring at Raina, who asks him what he wants.  She tells him that she was just following orders, which doesn’t satisfy Peterson because she can’t use having an exploding eyeball as an excuse.  However, she claims she’s working with HYDRA in order to help Mike and others like him.  She says she’s “waiting for what’s inside to be revealed.”  In particular, there’s something inside Skye that she might have in common with Peterson.

At Cybertek, Coulson and May dig through files, before finding a cabinet full of information on the Deathlok program.  The surprising thing is that the program is much older than they thought.  It dates back all the way to 1990 (a year after Ward and Garrett first met), and the oldest file they can find has Garrett’s name on it.  Garrett was the first Deathlok!  The file has schematics on him and everything.  Coulson radios the van to tell Skye and Trip to get ready for a large file transfer, and when Skye asks how large she hears a crash and looks out to see an entire filing cabinet come crashing through the fourth story window to land next to their van.  They load it up and Trip busts out another one of his grandfather’s toys, a gun that fires a harpoon and a zipline, which May and Coulson use to escape out the window.

On the Bus, Ward is still pissed at Garrett for being willing to let him die.  Garrett scoffs at that, saying that they both knew Skye wouldn’t let him die, because she has a “soft touch,” just like Ward.  Ward fights back, saying he’s not a scared kid anymore, but Garrett tells him to stop acting like one.  He says that Ward is still always playing the victim.  In the middle of their argument, however, Garrett starts to cough and collapse.  Ward orders everyone out of the room and retrieves a box from a locker.  He lifts Garrett’s shirt, revealing a mechanical section of his torso, to which he hooks several wires.  After a few moments, Garrett stabilizes.  He tells Ward that it’s been happening much more often, because his organs are failing.  He says that HYDRA scientists have given him only a month or two to live.

Back at the motel, the team looks over Garrett’s files.  He was Patient 0 for the Deathlok program, and they decide that he wants the GH-325 serum for himself.  Fitz wonders if Ward is part Deathlok as well, perhaps programmed by HYDRA to do the things he did, but Skye reminds him of the fact that Ward murders people.  She blames herself for not letting Peterson kill him, saying that she was stupid and weak.  Coulson objects, because compassion is the harder choice, but she leaves the group anyway.  He’s interrupted, however, when a pizza arrives for Pablo Jimenez, Coulson’s current cover identity.

May follows Skye to her room, where she’s looking at Ward’s file on her laptop.  May tells Skye that Fitz is only saying those things because he can’t process the truth.  He believes what he needs to believe.  Skye asks if May believes those things as well, but May replies absolutely not.  Skye is envious of May’s “zen warrior thing,” but Skye’s just not able to not feel anything.  May objects that she does feel, but Skye calls her a statue.  She’s shocked that May seems so cold, especially considering the “thing” that Ward and May had, because if it were Skye she’d be furious.  “I am.  I’m furious,” May replies, but says she’s not going to waste that on a tantrum.  She’s going to mine it and save it and use it to take him down.  Skye wishes she had some of that “hate-fu” ability, and May says that she’s up at 5am every morning, implying that Skye can join her for some Tai Chi.  (Please, we need to see this happen at some point in the series.)  Coulson interrupts to say that they’ve tracked some of Cybertek’s shipments to Havana, Cuba, their next destination.

Meanwhile in Havana, Quinn has arrived at the barbershop that Garrett is using for his headquarters, and marvels at how cheap a haircut is.  Ward’s not pleased to see him, but Garrett says that he’s going to be the face of their “new enterprise.”  Ward doesn’t get it, as Quinn is a wanted man, but Quinn points out that the charges against him were brought by SHIELD, an organization he has publicly opposed for a long time.  SHIELD’s recent collapse has discredited those charges, which will be dismissed soon, allowing him to head to Washington, D.C. for another mission.  As he and Garrett talk, Ward gets a call from Raina and heads to investigate.

Raina reassures him that everything is fine, but confesses that she thought she was going to be helping special people.  Instead she’s working on GH-325 because Garrett is simply afraid to die.  She says she was investigating Skye’s hard drive and uncovered some information on her search for her parents, which triggered an old memory of hers.  She threatens to simply go to Garrett with the information but Ward stops her and wants to hear it for himself.  She says she was most interested in Skye’s DNA, which matched someone she heard about a long time ago.  In China there was a story about a baby girl, whose entire village was destroyed by monsters who were looking for the girl.  Ward asks if the monsters killed the girl’s parents, but Raina tells him that the monsters were her parents.

We get another flashback to 15 years ago, when Garrett returns to collect Ward.  He comes across a fairly cushy camp, with some nice tents and even some decorative antlers mounted on trees.  There’s even a dead animal waiting to be cooked.  As he walks around, Ward suddenly appears, putting a gun to Garrett’s head.  Garrett uses the fact that he brought tacos as a reason not to be killed, but Ward is pissed that it’s been six months since Garrett left him.  He confesses that the first few weeks were hard, but he eventually started raiding nearby cabins once he realized his thinking had been limited.  After Ward lowers the gun, Garrett pulls a revolver from the taco bag and points it at Ward’s chest.  After a moment he takes aim at a coffee pot sitting nearby and shoots it, proceeding to show off his marksmanship before promising to teach Ward to shoot.

Garrett is bothered by Raina, and watches her as she goes about her business.  Ward, who seemingly hasn’t told him the story about Skye, says that she’s just surprised about the move to pack up the lab to head to the US.  She comes up and tells Garrett that she’s almost figured out GH-325, and has condensed all of the samples Garrett brought into one vial, the only remaining amount of the drug in the world.  Garrett says he wants to hold onto it during their trip.

Coulson and his team have arrived in Havana, where Trip and Fitz are preparing the tech for their mission.  They each take one of Trip’s grandfather’s walkie-talkies, which resemble simple quarters.  Fitz doesn’t want any other tech, however, as he still has the Dwarfs.  Trip offers him a fist bump, which Fitz dorkily covers with his hand, part high-five, part handshake.  The group splits up, with FitzSimmons looking for the Bus while the rest of the team looks for Garrett’s base.

Both sets find their targets easily.  FitzSimmons finds the Bus sitting in an airfield three hours outside of town, while the rest of the team discovers the barbershop entrance to Garrett’s base.  The main team decides to infiltrate the base, hoping to activate Skye’s Trojan Horse, while Coulson orders FitzSimmons not to engage and get out of there.  Simmons doesn’t like that plan, as it’ll put them back at square one, something she can’t handle.  She suggests to Fitz that they fly one of the Dwarfs into the plane, so that they can track it.  Fitz thinks that’s a great idea, and decides to use Sleepy, as he’s the best listener, next to Simmons, of course.  However, before he can even start on that plan, Ward shows up where they’re hiding and says, “Long time no see.”

We flashback again, this time to ten years ago, when Ward looks much more like his present day self.  Buddy is still with them, but Garrett reminds Ward that the dog isn’t human.  That doesn’t matter to Ward, however, as the dog is trustworthy and loyal.  Garrett starts to tell a story, about how he was blown up by an IED, but when he called SHIELD for a medevac he heard nothing but excuses.  It was at that point that he realized he was more loyal to SHIELD than they were to him, and he vowed to do to them what they did to him.  So he stuffed his intestines back in and wrapped himself up with duct tape.  He tells Ward that he actually works for HYDRA, a secret organization within a secret organization, and one which understands the drive for survival.

FitzSimmons are dragged aboard the Bus, where Fitz immediately demands to get the plane back.  Garrett orders someone to call the barbershop to warn them, but Ward notices Fitz playing with something in his pocket.  He asks what he’s hiding, but when Fitz holds out his hand he just has a quarter and what looks like a toy joybuzzer.  However, he pushes the joybuzzers button and sets off an EMP, shorting out everything within 10 feet and causing Garrett to collapse.

As the Bus takes off to hover a little bit above the ground, Ward rushes to save Garrett.  Raina calls Cybertek to warn them as to what’s going on, but Fitz has some choice words for Ward.  He screams at him to let Garrett die, because he deserves to die.

One more flashback, as we see Ward hunting a deer with a sniper rifle.  He fires and the dog, Buddy, sets off after the kill, despite the distance.  Garrett tells him that Ward has been accepted into SHIELD training, but when Ward tries to thank him Garrett points out that Ward owes him nothing.  He reminds Ward that he can’t ever get attached to anyone or anything, as that would reveal a weakness within him.  He then orders Ward to kill Buddy, asking, “that’s not a weakness, is it?”

On the Bus, Raina informs them that the Cybertek facility in Miami is ready and waiting to treat Garrett.  The battery in his Deathlok system has been fried, however, not giving him much time.  He orders Ward to kill FitzSimmons, and when Ward objects Garrett asks, “that’s not a weakness, is it?”  He leaves Raina with Garrett, and heads off to find FitzSimmons.  Garrett tells Raina that he has a mechanical backup system in case of an electrical failure, and tells her that he has interesting insides.  She opens him up and sees that he has the Centipede serum coursing through his veins.  She wonders why it hasn’t made him strong, but he says he’s too far gone for that.  The only hope he has left is to jumpstart his system with GH-325.

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