Initial Reactions: Maria Hill
The smell of the motel room was familiar on a deep level, and she swore that the wallpaper in the bathroom was the same pattern that had been in the living room of her apartment back in Chicago when she was growing up. She supposed that explained why she hated it.
Or it could be that she just hated where she was and what she was doing, hated setting up a laptop to do SHIELD Deputy Director work in a motel rather than on her Helicarrier, eking out moments between developing a cover and submerging herself in it, while doing surveillance work to assess the situation she'd be going into within the next few weeks. Or she just hated long-term undercover. She liked the field, but elaborate covers left her skin feeling tight.
She wasn't hooked up to the supercomputers of SHIELD, but she was firmly in the loop. And a prison breakout in Gotham was firmly of interest; she was always awake at this hour, and fortunate to be on the computer going through emails rather than working out. The notification popped up, and she watched with a tight throat as the prison burst open and all the inmates poured out.
She was on her feet and reaching for the communicator to order the Helicarrier to deploy to Gotham before she remembered. The Helicarrier wasn't going anywhere. It would take the jets precious minutes to get there, and then what would they do? Drop a missile? a squad of agents into the middle of that chaos? It would be a slaughter, and wouldn't do any good. Call for the Avengers? She still wasn't sure if she could, or if this fit their mandate.
She did the only thing she could do, and hated feeling as though her hands were tied. She picked up her communicator and started gathering information from her other agents and coordinating as much as she could.