[Jemma isn't surprised to hear that Fitz's recounting of events is less than coherent, especially to someone who didn't go through it. She was there for the whole thing and she can hardly wrap her head around it sometimes. Her interest is absolutely in getting him out of that dungeon, restoring what good name he has, so she prepares to do what Fitz could not: tell the important parts of the story, as succinctly as she can.]

AIDA started as Radcliffe's digital assistant -- a ridiculously personalized Siri or Alexa. At the time SHIELD was doing further work on Life Model Decoys, which would serve as decoys on missions or whatever else we needed. Radcliffe gave AIDA a body, and when he presented it to Fitz he agreed to help perfect it. It had certain programmed parameters but was otherwise designed to learn how to pass for human. It really was quite remarkable -- for a while, it was a marvel. It fooled some of the best SHIELD agents I know.

[Another time Fitz kept something from her to protect her -- made the decision for her. She continues.]

Around the same time, SHIELD came into possession of the Darkhold, an ancient book of spells and power. It gave great knowledge, but corrupted the reader. No one who tried to use the book could help but go mad.

[As a woman of science she'd always held on to the maxim that magic was science that had yet to be discovered -- and maybe there was some truth to it, but in the meantime she couldn't deny the actual impact as she'd seen it.]

Radcliffe glimpsed the book, and he started making mistakes... really, I should say, poor decisions. He redid AIDA's programming to behave as though it had been corrupted, and other things, including the correct 'human' reaction to pain, and pain itself. It was... honestly horrifying. The Director shut down the LMD program, or at least took it out of Radcliffe's hands, and ordered AIDA be wiped, since it had read the Darkhold, too.

[This is all going somewhere, we promise, Natasha.]