For what seems like the one-hundredth time since I first woke up in the bare room, I wrench my hand-cuffed hands hard and fast from where they were previously resting on the arms of the chair, in an attempt to try and break them. The movement only causes pain to flare along my wrists where the metal dug into my skin, causing me to let out a huff of annoyance before I dropped my hands back down in defeat. The pain subsides slightly, though it was still there.
Prominent, throbbing, stinging pain.
Something that I had grown accustomed to in the past ten months.
Growing up, being a SHIELD agent had been something that I had always dreamed of. My great-grandmother had been both an agent of SHIELD and a founder of the organization, with my grandmother and mother soon following in her place when they were both old enough. My Uncle had quickly joined after my mother had, and his best friend happened to be a spy for SHIELD as well. All my life I had been surrounded by talented spies with certain abilities that had always left a good impression on me, having me hoping that I could be like every single one of them once I was old enough.
When I was old enough, I finally enrolled in SHIELD's academy and a quickly worked my way through every assignment, every drill, every single part of my training that my tutors threw at me, resulting in promising and incredible results. I quickly outgrew my then tutors, resulting in none other than legendary SHIELD field agent, Phil Coulson, becoming my supervising officer. Phil had pushed me, working me harder than any other SHIELD agent that he had taught personally in the past, though I was far from ungrateful. While the extra work may have pushed me perhaps too far at times, I knew that what Phil was teaching me was going to benefit me in the long run.
After a few years I finally graduated becoming a full level one SHIELD agent until, by the age of nineteen, I had managed to work my way up to level seven. Though not unheard of for agents to reach level seven at such a young age, it was uncommon. According to my uncle, Clint Barton, it was something that hadn't happened since my mother first joined. A gifted and skilled agent, she had also been someone to quickly move up through the ranks of SHIELD when she was my age-some even called her the best agent of her generation. But to me, she was just Stacey Hathaway.
Being the best of her generation hadn't apparently helped her in the end, however. When I was twelve years old, the Director of SHIELD Nick Fury had sent her on a mission to Russia. We had been living in San Francisco at the time and with no one able to take care of me, she had left me in the care of our next door neighbour Scott Lang, before taking off and leaving me behind. When I woke up the next morning, Clint was the one to come and pick me up and I knew instantly just looking at him that something was wrong. His eyes were red, indicating to me that he had been crying, and he looked like he had barely slept a wink. Thanking a confused Scott and assuring him that he would fill him in on what had happened later, Clint had gently told me to grab my suitcase so that he could take me back to my house. There, we had sat down on the couch and tearfully, Clint had told me what had happened.
Your mother's not coming back, Lyd.
I had been an only child growing up and I had no idea who my father was. Whenever I tried to discuss it with my mother, she would either blatantly tell me to drop the subject or would avoid answering the questions altogether. It had caused a strain on our relationship, with me constantly wanting answers that she refused to give. Now that she was gone, it seemed like I would never get the answers that I so desperately wanted either.
With the identity of my father unknown, the only other person that could have taken me in, was my uncle Clint. He had been happy to do so, with his then-pregnant wife Laura also content with me moving in with them. So I had packed up my belongings, said goodbye to my friends, Scott and my life in San Francisco, before I had then moved with into Clint's hidden farmhouse. Soon baby Cooper was born, followed by Lila a couple of years later-but by then, I was fast on my way to becoming a SHIELD agent.
Every single mission that SHIELD threw at me I completed with ease. Sometimes they would be solo, other times I would help Nat and Clint with theirs-every now and again I would also complete tasks with my then boyfriend Grant Ward. Whatever the case, and whether or not I did it with others or alone, I always succeeded. Never once failing.
It was because of this, that Alexander Pierce thought that I was best suited for a task in Greece. He had insisted that it was me who completed the mission and I hadn't fought him on the matter. I mean, the head of SHIELD insisting that you single-handedly complete a mission? You'd be idiotic to say no. So I had gladly accepted, before heading off to Greece to do the job.
My assignment had been simple: find the target who had infiltrated SHIELD and had stolen valuable files, take the files back and arrest the target, then call Coulson for extraction. It was certainly easier compared to some of my past missions, and I had quickly completed it almost effortlessly. But the night that I was supposed to meet Coulson at the airport after I had handed over the target, I had been jumped. When I was walking out of the hotel and towards my car, eight men-eight trained men- appeared out of nowhere and attacked me. I tried my best to fight and I managed to injure two of them- but it wasn't enough. They easily overtook me.
Not long after I had opened my eyes and found myself in the cell-like room with the bed that I woke up on, with nothing else but a rusted tap jutting out from the wall. There had been men stationed outside my cell, leading me to believe that they were guarding me for some apparent reason when the door suddenly swung open and a middle-aged man with curly, grey hair walked into the room.
He was quite tall, and had been wearing a grey, pressed suit that almost matched the colour of his hair. When our eyes had locked, I saw that his were a light shade of blue. His face was lined with age, and his thin lips had surprisingly been tugged into an amused smile as he had stared at me. His beady eyes had been framed by, thick, gold-rimmed glasses that had made him look older than he probably was. He didn't look particularly fit, and was actually rather round, despite the fact that he was quite tall.
After brief bickering between the two of us, he had informed me that I was to now become part of their human experiment program. According to him, I had a special set of genes that he thought were valuable to their research and experiments, though when I asked him exactly what it was that he meant by this, he had refused to share with me as to why my genes were so special. He had ordered me to get up and follow him, though when I refused, he had only sadistically grinned.
"I wonder then if I were to make a visit to you Uncle Clint's house and have a nice chat with him, would you cooperate with me?" he had sneered.
My blood had chilled at his words. Whether or not he was simply bluffing and he really had no clue as to where Clint's secluded farmhouse was, there was absolutely no way that I would risk putting him, Laura or the children in danger. So grinding my teeth I had reluctantly done what I was told.
Once outside my cell, the rest of the building had reminded me much like a prison of some sort. Multiple locked doors appeared on each side of the walls and sometimes I could hear the sound of people screaming in agony behind them. This had initially freaked me out, leaving me in a trembling state at the sound of the almost animal-like shrieks of pain. They had bounced off the wall and echoed loudly in my skull, though the man in front of me seemed unfazed at the sounds- it was almost as if he hadn't learned to drown them out. It was then that I knew that I needed to get out of here as soon as possible or I would risk becoming like those behind the locked doors.
The man had lead me to what I assumed was a cafeteria. The large, grey room contained small tables and chairs and held about sixty people, all wearing the same plain clothes that I had on. When I walked in, nobody paid the slightest attention to me. They continued to eat their meals in front of them, oblivious to myself and the man who was leading me towards the back corner of the room. When my eyes locked on the table that he was leading me towards, I saw sitting at the table was a girl with long, dark hair sitting with a tall boy with shaggy dark hair. The heavy resemblance between the two of them lead me to believe that they were related somehow. If not brother and sister, then perhaps cousins of some sort.
Once we had reached the table, the man had promptly shoved me into my seat and warned me I had half an hour to eat before he had turned on his heel and walked off, leaving me alone with the boy and girl who were both staring at me curiously. I had shifted uncomfortably under their constant gaze, not particularly knowing what to say to break the silence that had descended over us, which was fast on its way in becoming awkward and annoying.
It was the girl however that spoke first, and I had thanked her silently for doing so as she asked, "What is your name?" In a heavy-accented, clear voice, that had me believing that she was from a Southern-European country.
Swallowing both hard and nervously, I had replied, "Lydia. Lydia Hathaway."
To my surprise, the boy had scoffed in disbelief at this. "American," he had muttered under his breath just loud enough for me to hear, scrunching his face in disgust as he did so.
I couldn't help but frown in confusion at his disgusted tone, having felt a little offended at the way that he was then looking at me. The girl had noticed the expression I wore. Lightly rolling her eyes, she explained, "Excuse my brother. We've had...bad history with the Americans. I am Wanda Maximoff, and this is my twin, Pietro Maximoff."
"I would say it's nice to meet you, but under these circumstances, not so much," I had flippantly responded, watching in surprise as Pietro had snorted in what I had assumed was amusement at this. "Do you have any idea where we are?"
Wanda had shrugged. "When we volunteered for this, they came and collected us. Then they blindfolded us. We have no idea where we are. We could be in Sokovia, or we could be somewhere else entirely."
"You're from Sokovia?" I had asked, and when they had both simultaneously nodded their head in confirmation, I continued, "What exactly did you volunteer for?"
Pietro had grinned, flashing his pearly white teeth at me as he had done so. "The program is said to make us strong," he had explained with a new found enthusiasm in his voice that hadn't been there moments before. "We volunteered to protect our country from any more American attacks."
"How long have you been here?"
"Three weeks. We have...already been experimented on," Wanda had answered with a slight frown on her face.
"Experimented on?" I had asked. I had seen that they had been easily getting tired of my constant questions but I had needed to know what I was in for. The more that I could get out of them, the more that I could figure out what exactly was going on here-including where exactly it was that we all were.
Wanda had let out a weary sigh, running a hand through her brown locks as she did so. Tugging thoughtfully on her bottom lip as she had briefly pondered to herself about the best way to explain her answer to my question, before she had finally elaborated, "To make us strong, they must use extreme measures for us to evolve. They do...tests- each different depending on each person's program. Some are more extreme than others."
She had been right-others experiments that were conducted on the hundred of people that they were holding in here, were more extreme. I had learnt this the longer that I had stayed here, and I soon found myself falling under the category of the utmost, agonizing and torturous experiments, that had left their scars on me to this day.
They had put me in an electric chair and I had to endure getting volted by electricity for hours on end until they had had enough. They had locked me in some form of a chamber and had used some sort of ventilation system to leave me gasping for air as they had taken the oxygen away or screaming in pain as the air pressure increased. They held me down in water until I was struggling for breath or would lock me in a freezing room, while I shivered and got used to the temperature, my body slowly freezing as they left me in there to freeze. They had thrown rocks and other sharp objects at me that would cut into my skin, and I was told to either stop the rocks with the air surrounding me or I would get pummeled with them. They would burn my hands and other parts of my skin while I screamed in agony, desperately trying to escape the heat from the fire as two men held me in place. The only experiment on me that was bearable was when I got to shove my hands in some dirt and play around with it-though this experiment lasted for fifteen minutes at most before we then returned to the other experimental afflictions.
As well as the experiments, they were constantly injecting me with needles all the time as well, pushing the purple serum into my skin every day before we began the experiments. It had taken me only four weeks after their tests had first begun, to figure out what exactly it was that they had been trying to do:
They were trying to get me to control the elements.
Time passed slowly from the moment that I endured the never-ending torture. All I knew was the pain, my cell, the cafeteria, and Wanda and Pietro to keep me company whenever I found the strength to leave my cell and join them in the cafeteria for food. Over time, I grew close to them. They were in different programs than me. They were making Wanda telekinetic, as well as giving her the power to go into people's minds and do all sorts of things with them. The last part creeped me out slightly, but I didn't let Wanda know this. Pietro, on the other hand, was in a program that would make him run faster- faster than a bullet. Pietro was very excited about it- in fact, he was excited about the entire program. He seemed very intent on protecting his country from us Americans. I had never seen anyone so driven until the day he had told me why.
There was one particular day about four months after I had been kidnapped. I had slowly trudged into the now familiar cafeteria only to find that it was just Pietro at our normal table, with Wanda nowhere in sight. I reached him, but he hadn't looked up at me as I lowered myself slowly into the chair opposite him. He had only stared down at a small photo in his hand, the corners ripped and frayed slightly, leading me to believe that he had had it for a long time.
"Where's Wanda?" I had asked him, reaching for the bottle of water in the middle of the table.
"She needs some time to herself. The experiments from last night- they took their toll on her," he had answered, worry in his voice. It always amazed about how much he and Wanda cared about each other. I was an only child so I had no idea what it was to have a sibling, despite the fact that I had oh so desperately wanted one growing up.
"I hope she's OK." I had said softly, before then clearing my throat. "So what's the photo of?"
Pietro's eyes had flickered to me, and I had been surprised to see how much pain that they held in them. "My family. Me, Wanda and our parents."
"Do your parents know that you're here?" I had asked, though when he remained silent at my question, my heart had clenched as I had suddenly realized why he looked as sad as he had when I had first asked him what the photo was of: his family or his parents at least- were dead.
"I'm so sorry," I had sincerely said to him, unsure what exactly to say other than those three simple words.
"We were ten years old," he had said thickly. He hadn't looked at me then and thinking about it now I realize he had probably forgotten that I was there, while he had recounted his story. "We were having dinner, the four of us. The first shell hits two floors below us and it makes a huge hole in the floor." He had then paused to take a deep breath. "Our parents go in, and the whole building starts falling apart. I grab Wanda and I roll us under the bed when the second shell hits, but it doesn't go off. It just...sits there in the rubble, three feet from our faces. And on the side of the shell, is painted one word. Stark," he had practically snarled the name.
Stark as in Tony Stark.
As in Iron Man.
He was a billionaire/playboy/genius and his company, Stark Industries once made weapons for the USA Defence Force, which they had used in their war against Afghanistan. This all changed about two months before I was kidnapped though. While Stark was in Afghanistan demonstrating his new missile, his group was attacked and Stark was taken hostage for two months. The group that held him captured were known as The Ten Rings and they wanted Stark to make a replica of his missile that he demonstrated to the Defence Force. Having been given supplies, Stark made a suit of armour and destroyed any other missiles The Ten Rings had before escaping. A rescue team found him wandering in the desert and took him back to America where the next day, he announced to the world that his company would no longer manufacture weapons. Something that had taken the entire world by surprise. For years the company had made weapons-it had done so since Howard Stark had first created the company. Yet here his son was, decades later, changing this tradition and turning over a new leaf, to instead use his company for good.
Though something told me by the thunderous expression that was plastered to the features of Pietro's face, that he would have had a hard time believing this if I had told him.
"We were trapped, for two days," Pietro had venomously spat. "Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, 'this will set it off. We wait for two days, for Tony Stark to kill us."
"I'm so sorry, Pietro."
He had shrugged and sniffled before he had then gently tucked the photo into the pocket of his pants, blinking away the tears that had formed in his eyes as he had spoken. He had taken a moment to compose himself, before he had then explained to me slowly, "That is why Wanda and I are here. We are here so that they are able to make it so that we can stop anything like that happening to other families in Sokovia. But I have to ask why are you here?" He had asked unexpectedly.
"To eat lunch?"
He had rolled his eyes, but a small smile appeared on his lips. "No, why are you here? What drove you to this?"
I had laughed dryly, with no humour in my tone. "I was kidnapped and dragged here, while out on an assignment."
"An assignment?" Wanda had suddenly appeared behind me. I turned around to face her and was a little shocked at how pale she was.
"Wanda, you should be resting," Pietro had said, scolding his younger sister.
She had only given him a dismissive wave of her hand, however. "I needed something to eat. I feel better anyway," Wanda replied before she had sat down next to me. "Now what's this assignment?"
I hadn't responded to her question at first, having known that I had needed to be careful here-I couldn't exactly reveal to her that I was a spy for an intelligence organization. Nick Fury would have thrown a pink fit if I had done so. So after considering other answers to her questions very very very quickly, I had replied "Just something my boss wanted me to do. I was in a business conference in Greece when they came for me," the vague lie having easily rolled off my tongue.
"Will your boss come looking for you?"
I had shrugged. "Maybe. I think that my uncle will be. He practically raised me."
The door to the small room now suddenly opens and I turn towards it at the sound, though when I see who it was, I can't help but bare my teeth in anger. It was whom everyone in here knew as The Man, as no one knew his real name. He was one of the people in charge here and had been the first person to greet me when I had woken up in this hell hole in the first place.
He says nothing to me as he closes the door behind him, not even looking at me as he moved to take a seat in the chair opposite me.
"Do you know why you're here Lydia?" He asks in the same soft tone that he also spoke in once he's settled, his voice almost like velvet as the words moved past his mouth.
I don't immediately respond to his question, and instead briefly look around the room that we were sitting in. Other then the two of us and the chairs that we were sitting on, the room was relatively bare. There was nothing out of place with the four, bare, even walls that boxed us in, and there wasn't anything on the table that was separating the two of us. When my gaze returns back to him, I see that he was watching me curiously, tapping one of his splayed out fingers on the table beneath them.
I drum my own fingers against the arm of the chair, trying to think if there may have been something that I had done that he resulted in me being locked in this unfamiliar room. But as far as I knew, there wasn't anything that I had done recently that would have been out of place of my usual, hellish routine. So the answer to his question was a relatively simple one: no.
"Haven't got a clue," I snap angrily, noting the way that the man leans back and lets out an amused chuckle, causing me to want to lean forward and punch the smirk straight off his face. "So why don't you enlighten me with that piece of information?"
The man laughs, his chest heaving up and down with the sound. "I see your temper has managed to stay with you all this time."
I roll my eyes. "Well, what were you expecting? I've been kidnapped, held captive and tortured for your own sick experiments for the past ten months and-" I cut off, wrenching my arm up from the armrest of the chair, jingling the handcuffs in the process to indicate them. "I've been handcuffed all the time and was forced to change into this hideous grey dress. Were you expecting me to be grateful?"
He clucks his tongue at me and shakes his head in disappointment. "Sick experiments? We're trying to make you strong-"
"I was a level seven agent of SHIELD. I was strong," I snarl, my lip curling as I did so. Whoever these people were, they knew exactly who SHIELD was, and had since I was first dragged back here. How they knew this I didn't know, despite the lengths that I had gone to try and figure it out. Them knowing about SHIELD wasn't a good thing. In fact, the fewer people that knew about the secret organization, the better it was for SHIELD.
He lets out a weary sigh and shakes his head once more, before he then finally explains, "You are in this room because you've been able to control the elements for about two months now. Do you know what this means?"
I shrug, knowing that he was speaking the truth-I have learnt how to control them now. The needles that the scientists had been injecting into me every day for the past couple of months somehow made it so that I could control the elements. Suddenly I could control electricity and I could produce some from my body. I could control the oxygen pressure level in the room and could create a small bubble filled with oxygen to surround my head when there was none left in that god-awful room. Being held under water didn't affect me anymore, as I suddenly found that I could breathe underwater, much to my astonishment. As well as this, I could also draw moisture from the air to keep me cool on the hot days stuck inside my cell (And I could change the temperature of it too, meaning I could have a decent shower for once). The temperature didn't matter to me any more: I could change it and had recently discovered that I was also cryokinesis-my ability to manipulate water, had also given me the ability to control its component of ice.
The rocks they used to throw at me never hit me and were flung back at them as I learnt to control the air, meaning I could move objects without touching them. The fire that used to scorch and blister my skin no longer hurt- I could create fire out of thin air and throw fireballs. Even just shoving my hands in the dirt had helped. I could grow things, and move slabs of rocks from the ground. But the best part was, was that I could use the air to levitate me off the ground and make me go as fast and as high as I wanted.
I. Could freaking. Fly.
You'd think that me being able to control these abilities would make me able to fight my way out of here. Well, the Sons of bitches realized this too and once my training was done for the day, they stuck another needle in me, that weakened my abilities. I couldn't escape during the training either. They had tripled the guards and their weapons, promising me that they would put a bullet in my head if I tried anything.
Yet, something didn't quite add up here. If me being able to control the elements was the true reason that I had been bought back here, then why was I only meeting with the man now? Like he had said, I had been able to manipulate and control my abilities for two months. So why hadn't this meeting occurred earlier? Unless...
"Sorry, but no," I said dryly. "Though I guess it has something to do with the others."
He raises one of his eyebrows. "Others?" He inquires.
I offer him a brief shrug of my shoulders, before I then further elaborate, "When you've been stuck here for almost over a year now, you tend to notice things. Every time someone in this Hell hole is able to master their abilities, you relocate them to another facility of yours." This had happened to Wanda and Pietro about three months ago. I missed them, but I was glad that they weren't here, still getting used like a guinea pig for someone's own twisted agenda.
"Clever girl."
"It's called being observant, not clever," I snap with a light eye roll. "So if that's what you bought me here for, then you can skip right to the end and tell me that I'm being moved off." He laughs at this, however, the sound causing for me to shoot him a confused look. Alarm bells started ringing in my head, signalling to me that something just wasn't quite right here. That there was something that I was missing, and whatever it was, it seemed to amuse The Man.
Having been here long enough, I long ago learnt that whenever he found something amusing, bad things tended to follow. While most people would find funny things amusing. this guy found people squirming or shrieking with pain entertaining-he was that much of a sick bastard.
He now grins, practically bearing his teeth as he does so. "Yes, that's true. But that won't be happening to you," he says gloatingly, my stomach churning at the delight that was easy to detect in his tone.
Something isn't right here.
"Why not?" I ask cautiously, silently hoping that he wouldn't be able to tell how nervous I truly was. "It's happened to everyone else, so why not me?"
"Because we're going to kill you."
After ten months of pain, torture and torment, and after all the hell that I had given them, I sort of saw that one coming. However, that doesn't stop my heart skipping and my stomach to drop with dread.
I'm only twenty years old. I had barely lived. There was still so much that I both needed and wanted to do, things that I hadn't been able to accomplish before now. Yet here this man was, willing to take everything from me-my life included, when all I had done wrong was be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I had been a SHIELD agent for a year now, having graduated high school early along with my friend Jane Foster, before we had studied astrophysics together while I had also studied at SHIELD. Though young and knowing the risks, I had chosen to work for SHIELD regardless, thinking that it was what I was supposed to do with my life.
Never though had I actually considered that I would be one of the unfortunate agents that would never return home from a mission.
But now...I was.
He squints at me. "You don't seem surprised."
I roll my eyes, trying to hide the quaver in my voice when I speak:"Well I wasn't bought here by choice. There was no way you were going to let me go when all I was going to do was bring SHIELD back to you and kick your arse."
"Not only that but you haven't been the most cooperative," he replies dryly, the smirk returning to his lips once more. "Mr Davis is still in the coma by the way."
"Poor him," I deadpan: I felt no remorse for hurting that man. He had been a guard that had decided to get a little too 'hands on' one day. If I was being quite honest, then I was rather glad that he was in a coma. Not only did it keep him far away from me, but from the other girls that were in their facility.
"Miss Henderson lost three teeth."
"She'll live."
"They managed to sew Johnson's finger back on."
"Good for him."
"And Mr Low is unable to have any kids in the near future."
"That moron had it coming. You don't try and handle a job that way, OK? Not my fault the idiot's groin got in the way of my foot."
He smiles tightly. "Either way Ms Hathaway. Tomorrow, we're evacuating all of the people in this facility to another, seeing as we have some unwanted parties on our tail. Everyone except you. You will remain here alone and will be blown up with the rest of the building. If anyone does find you...well. There won't exactly be much left for them to find."
I flinch at his words. Tomorrow? No! "I think you're being a little hasty," I try to reason shakily. "I mean, blowing up the building?"
"We wouldn't want to leave a scent for SHIELD to come and find us, now would we?" he explains calmly. "We don't need you any more Lydia. Now that we know that the experiments worked on you, we can now apply them to someone more willing. We believe that we now have enough data to replicate what we have done to you, even if our test subjects don't have the same set of genes."
"How do you know the experiments will work on the others?" I ask quickly. I need time! Time to plan an escape! I hadn't counted on the sudden death sentence.
"It will work. We have some of the best scientists in the world in here. Try all you want, but nothing is going to change our minds. You're dying tomorrow."
I didn't sleep well that night. Once I had been returned to my cell, they had instantly injected the needle to limit my elemental abilities. The guards then shoved me into my cell, laughed at my clumsiness and slammed the door behind me. Once I was alone, I crawled up into a ball in the corner and let silent tears fall down my face.
The next morning, I awake to the sound of hurrying footsteps and hushed whispering. I was slightly confused until the conversation I had with the man yesterday popped into my mind. Several minutes later, everything went quiet. My blood had chilled at the eerie silence, realizing that I didn't have long until this building blew up, burning me along with it.
I desperately tried to knock down the door. I rammed against several times with each of my shoulders before I realized that it was no use. The door was too thick. I slammed my shackled hands against the door, yelling in frustration. A slight electric volt went through my wrists, but it wasn't as painful as usual.
I pause in my movements, tilting my head down at my cuffed hands in front of me. Having rammed them against the walls enough times in the past in an attempt to break them off, I knew for a fact that the volt should have been a lot more powerful and painful then it had been just then.
To make sure that I simply didn't imagine this, I once again slam my wrists against the concrete wall, suppressing a wince of pain at the impact. This time when the volt went through them, the pain was barely there.
Which meant the drug was starting to wear off.
I could use my powers.
Suddenly an alarm starts to blare through the building. It's loud enough to make my ears sting through the cuffs around my wrists prevented me from reaching up to cover my ears from the loud noise. Not that I would have had time to do so anyway. If an alarm was going off, then it meant that this building was even closer to blowing up then it had been moments before.
I had to get out of here. Now.
Taking a deep breath, I click my fingers hoping that fire would spark up in my hands, only to be met with disappointment when nothing happened. Knowing that time was of the essence here, however, I take another deep breath before I attempted to create the fire in once more. This time a slight spark appeared though it only lasted a second however before disappearing altogether.
Come on! Focus!
I took another deep breath and counted to five slowly before I once again click my fingers a little more forcibly this time. Much to my delight, my fingers suddenly become engulfed in orange flames of a fire, indicating to me that it had worked.
"Yes!" I whoop before I then try to make it so that the fire travels up my wrists to where my hands are handcuffed. The metal starts to slowly melt from the heat of the fire and a couple of electric sparks flare up as the fire damages the circuits though due to my powers, this has no harm for me. A couple of minutes later, my hands are free and I place a hand on the concrete door. I grit my teeth as small cracks start to appear in the door, first small ones, until the door is covered with them. I take a step back, removing my hands from the door to wipe the sweat from my eyes, grinning as I do so.
"5:30."
The sound of the sudden and unexpected countdown bouncing off the walls in my cell instils a feeling of utter and heart clenching panic as I realized that I had little over five minutes to escape the building. Without even hesitating I move my hands forward, pushing a huge blast of wind towards the door which comes apart in a cloud of dust and the sound of metal against metal rings through the room. Quickly yelling with triumph, I rush out of the door and surge off down the corridor.
The countdown still blares in my head as I run down the corridors, with only one thought in mind: get the hell out of here. My heart pumps with adrenaline and my vision blurs a little at the speed I am going but I don't dare to slow down, knowing that if I did then that was it for me: the building was going to blow any second.
"4:56."
"No sign of her anywhere, but we'll find her Sir."
I almost stumble at the sound of a voice up ahead and around the corner, having not expected it at all. The words have my stomach doing nervous flips as I realized that someone else was in the building along with me, and judging from their words, they were looking for me. Something didn't have up, however: why would they still be here two minutes before the building was about to blow? Unless this was them making sure that there wasn't a chance for me to escape?
Pushing that thought aside, I don't break a stride as I feel electricity crack in the palm of my hands and I tear around the corridor, hands raised.
A man stands there in the middle of the corridor, his back to me. He doesn't turn around, not even when I sneak up behind him and suddenly place the hands on the base of his neck and send a jolt of electricity through his body. Not enough to kill him, but more to shock him and prevent him from attacking me.
He yells in pain- a shockingly familiar yell- and collapses to his knees, trembling slightly. I rush around to face him, my fist raised with the intention of slamming it straight into his face. "This is for-" I cut off immediately however and gasp in surprise when I see who it is.
"3:10."
"Uncle Clint?" I ask in a voice barely above a whisper, my voice cracking with disbelief.
The familiar face of my Uncle looks up at me, his eyes slightly dazed and filled with disbelief themselves. When he sees that it's me that was standing in front of him, a slightly strained smile ghosts his lips. "Lydia," he happily groans, the sound of his voice which I hadn't heard for so long causing my eyes to glisten with tears. "What the Hell was that?"
Suddenly tears fall down my face as the events of the past ten months come rushing to me and a feeling of shock washes over me at seeing my Uncle on the ground in front of me. A sob suddenly escapes past my lips and I collapse to my trembling knees, tightly wrapping my arms around his shoulders, not wanting to let go. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know it was you."
He groans again but still wraps his arms around me as well, clinging to me as if his life depended on it. "It's good to see you too kid," he mumbles weakly, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner."
"It's OK," I reply, pulling back and wiping the tears from my face, though his hands remain firmly on my shoulder. "You're here now."
He grins happily at this, but his face soon contorts into a confused frown.
"What did you just do to me? Have- it's like you just used one of Nat's spider bites?"
I laugh sadly and shake my head, knowing that his guess was far from the actual truth. "It's a long story."
"2.39."
"Which I don't have time to tell you now," I say quickly, feeling the relief leave me and being replaced with a feeling of dread once more as the countdown continued. Reaching up briefly to give my still damp eyes a final wipe, I quickly pull myself to my feet and bring him up with me. "We need to get out of here now. This building is gonna blow."
He stands up slowly, worry plastered to every feature of his face. "I sort of guessed that with the countdown and all. Is there anyone else in the building?"
I shake my head before we then start to run in the direction that I had been heading in once more. "They evacuated everyone but me- they were trying to kill me and make it difficult for someone to find them, " I explain my arms pumping by my side as we darted down a corridor after corridor. "
God what if we didn't make it?
"What country are we in?" I ask him, trying to distract myself from unwanted thoughts such as that one.
"France," Clint replied, never once breaking his stride. "We've been looking for you ever since you disappeared. Coulson, Nat, May, Kate,- Fury's got almost every agent out looking for you."
"Why?" I ask him confused. If a SHIELD agent ever goes missing, Director Fury would send a small team to track them down, and we would let our other facilities know. He would never send out almost every SHIELD agent, let alone all of his best ones."
"Because I asked him to," Clint explains. "Fury owed me a favour from back in the day so I asked for this. Nat and I searched by ourselves for the first three months but we couldn't find a trace of you. That's when I realized that we needed more help."
"How are Laura, Lila and Cooper?"
"They've been missing you. Lila especially-"
"1:11."
No, no no no no no-
"How far are we from the exit?" I yell over the still blaring countdown and alarm.
"Just keep running!" he shouts back. I push my legs harder and continue to run, almost crying with relief when we turn around the last corner moments later and are greeted with the sight of the outside world. As we run, all I can see ahead of me is snow covered ground and trees and in the distance, mountains. It was a beautiful sight, though I don't dwell on this for too long as we burst outside, our feet crunching against the snow as we do so.
We continue to run, the alarm and countdown fading into nothingness but that doesn't stop us from running. There was no telling how far would be considered a minimum safe distance, though it was rather hard for me to run properly in the snow due to me not wearing the right boots to do so. Determined to get to safety, however, we continued to press on, not daring to look back as we do so.
We both heard and felt the explosion when it occurred, with the ground shaking beneath our feet and causing us to go tumbling to the ground. Scrambling so that we were putting our weight on our backs, we finally look back to see if we had managed to move fast and far enough to get clear from the blast.
My head falls back onto the snow and I let out a breath that I didn't even realize that I was holding in in the first place as it became clear that we had narrowly missed getting caught in the explosion. Clint does the same, and for the next few moments, the two of us just lay there quietly in the snow, not saying a word to one another as we processed what had just happened. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, however. About what had just happened, Clint coming to rescue me, everything that had happened in the past ten months.
But the one that stood out the most?
I was free.
It was time to go home.