Chapter One: The Daughter
The large gilded bank loomed heavily above making the teen feel so very small. She thought she was going to the doctor that's what her parents had told her, maybe they had to make a stop at an eerily creepy bank that they had never been to before. She followed her crisply dressed father as he walked through the foyer like he owned the place. He had picked her up from school insisting he take her to her appointment. She thought they would go to the tellers once inside, that's what her mother does when she goes to the bank, but her father steers her off to the side down a long hallway where the only thing to see are cold walls and even colder armored guards. The guards nod at her father and give her knowing looks. Instantly she's uncomfortable. Together, father and daughter reach the end of the hall and enter what appears to be a service elevator, the older man using an identification number to open and close the doors. The young girl can feel a chill as the lift takes them underground. Curiosity and fear swell in her chest. Hesitantly she closes her eyes softly reaching out to her father searching for her purpose here.
He whips his eyes onto hers feeling the probing fingers in his mind. "What did I tell you?" He snapped angrily. His hand wrapping around her bicep with bruising force shaking her roughly.
"Shit sorry. I just, I want to know why I'm here." She stammered out instantly regretting using her gift.
"Well I can guarantee it isn't bring your daughter to work day." the man said cruelly. The girl stared confusedly, she had thought her father worked for the government, not a weird bunker like bank. "If you ever attempt to use your little demon powers on me again you will wish you had never been born." He spat at her turning to face the doors once more.
"I already do." She muttered so low her father couldn't hear, her voice filled with venom and resentment. Ever since she was fourteen and started showing signs of her powers her father had changed. He became colder and distant as though trying to sever whatever bond the two had. He forbade her from ever using her powers on himself and her mother, to the point of extreme physical punishment. As a result she learned to repress her gift early on, four years later she strained heavily whenever she tried to use it.
The elevator doors finally opened up and she was pushed out into a hallway very much the opposite of the clean brightly lit bank interior. These halls were made of concrete with flickering ominous fluorescent lights. Screaming could be heard in the distance a raw agonizing scream that rattled the girls very soul. She wanted it to stop she wanted to be far away from that sound and this place. She could almost feel the pain of the man as his cries echoed down the hall, imprinting itself into the girl's ears.
An armed guard walked toward her father. He was young and not unattractive but he gave of a menacing aura that had the girl attempting to step slightly behind her father but his grip on her arm pulled her back to the front. "Agent Peters." The guard said in recognition before eyeing the girl with an odd glint in his gaze that left her squirming.
"Agent Rumlow." responded her father.
"This the enhanced?" the strange man, Agent Rumlow, asked nodding at the girl. Her father's grip tightened as he shook his head in affirmation.
"Is the asset causing problems?" her father asked as the three of them began to walk down the long hallway, the two men flanking her as though she were a prisoner.
"No more than usual sir."
The further they walked the louder the screams seemed. The girl wanted to reach out to her father for comfort but she knew there would be none. How could her father work here? How could he so willingly and nonchalantly listen to the agonized screams of a tortured man? How could he bring her here? Before she even realized what was happening she was being ushered into what appeared to be an examination room complete with a two way mirror. The guard stood by the door hand casually resting on his holstered gun.
The girl looked around the room in a mounting panic. There were medical tools some familiar some foreign laying on a tray next to an examination table. Everything was sterile and everything was bright. The girl looked into the mirror, hoping no one was looking back, but knowing someone was. She looked at herself, small, still in her gym clothes from school. Her blonde hair pulled up into a messy ponytail, her chocolate eyes wide with fear. She stood surrounded by white walls and pain filled screams. "Dad, what is this place?"
"This, Anna, is The Vault, you're about to become very familiar with it."
Agent Charles Peters sat in a chair by the door, while his daughter paced, refusing to go near the examination table. She knew this wasn't normal, she knew something was wrong. She knew it the moment she went downstairs for breakfast that morning. Her mother, always kind but never overly affectionate, went above and beyond for breakfast showering her with new clothes and gadgets. Her father who would normally brush her off insisted that he drive her to school and pick her up. Anna was worried, she wanted to believe that it was because it was her 18th birthday, but now she knows that isn't the full story and she was very, very worried. Anna Peters could sense the two men coming before they walked in the door. If she had known what was in store for her she would have run right then and there.
"Ah, Agent Peters, Agent Rumlow, The Asset is ready for you, I assure you, Dr. Collins and I can handle a teenage girl." Anna turned to look at the pair as they stood before her father. The unnamed man who spoke was shorter but all the more sinister for it. He wore a foreboding smirk that left one feeling open and vulnerable no matter how many walls were put between you. Dr. Collins was a grandfatherly looking man with a balding head and dead eyes that could swallow you if you looked too deeply in them.
"Very well Dr. Shultz." Anna heard her father speak to the Doctor before turning to his only child. "Anna, you will listen to Dr. Shultz and Dr. Collins. You will do as they say, or your screams will join the Asset's." Anna's eyes widened in shock as she stared horrified at her father not believing this was happening. With that Agents Peters and Rumlow left the examination room.
"Now Miss Peters if you would disrobe and lay on the table so that I may begin with the physical examination." Dr. Collins spoke, his voice monotone and unattached.
"What? Are thou kidding me? No I'm not taking anything off." Anna yelled crossing her arms and backing herself into the far wall.
"Tut tut. That is not how your father told you to behave, young lady. You wouldn't want us to make good on his threats now would you?" Dr. Shultz said his slight German accent coming through as he taunted her stepping closer in an almost predatory fashion. "Do not make us use force."
"I'm not doing anything, I don't know you. I'm not getting on that table and I'm sure as shit not stripping down in front of you old farts." She spoke confidently but as Anna looked around the room desperately for an escape her mind was reeling with panic and adrenaline. Seeing a taser and a gun strapped to the waist of each doctor. Why would doctors need to be armed, what is this place? The blonde swallowed thickly eyes rapidly moving about the room, only seeing one door, the one she came through. "Do you have a changing curtain and a hospital gown or some shit?" She asked nervously trying to bide her time still looking around frantically.
"There won't be a need," Dr. Collins spoke as he filled a syringe eyeing the dosage carefully, "we'll all see everything eventually." Anna looked back and forth between Collin's uninterested and bored face to Shultzs gleeful grin. The young girl's heart pounded in fear.
"You can't do this, you could get your medical license taken away for shit like this." She argued holding her fists tightly at her sides.
"I haven't had an operable license in almost two decades." Collins droned wiping down all his tools.
"I'm considered dead, I don't need a license." Shultz shrugged. "Enough chit chat mädchen, strip or we will use force."
"I don't believe you." Anna tried to sound strong but her voice wavered. She doesn't know who these people are and she certainly wasn't going to let them do whatever it is they were planning. With a sudden burst of stupidity Anna lunged forward and tackled Dr. Shultz to the ground quickly scrambling off of him and toward the door before he could use his taser. Ripping the door open she came face to face with a tall angry man with a military style buzz cut dressed in fatigues and loaded down with an intimidating array of weaponry.
"Ah Agent Willcox, just in time. Apparently she is not as compliant as her parents would have us believe." Dr. Shultz said picking himself off of the floor and dusting himself off. The man pushed Anna back as she shook with fear, adrenaline pumping through her veins. There was no way out, she could take on the old doctors but no way she could take down this obviously well trained and solidly built man. "Now, Miss Peters I will say this once more, strip down for your examination or we shall have Agent Willcox do it for you." Dr. Shultz spoke. Anna looked to Dr. Collins hoping maybe he would be her out, but he merely looked inconvenienced as he pulled on his latex gloves. Anna looked to Agent Willcox and he smirked down at her. As a last ditch effort, the young blonde slapped her hand on Agent Willcox's forehead and closed her eyes the world around her going dark as she delved into the mind of the soldier.
Images flashed through her mind moving so fast she thought she might be sick. Stolen files, bullets flying across a desert, conference rooms, assassinations, a muzzled man with long hair and dead eyes. Her parents flashed through his mind and she dug and dug finding their purpose. Hydra. Sleeper cells, Winter Soldier, S.H.I.E.L.D. an onslaught of information yet nothing concrete nothing helpful. She needed to hone in on her powers.
Suddenly agony ripped through her head feeling as though her skull was being split in two a mans screams could be heard on the ground next to her mingling with her own. It took several long moments to feel the crushing weight of a knee pushing into her stomach and the cold metal of gun being held against her brow.
"What is the meaning of this?" A familiar voice rang throughout the once sterile room. "Agent Jarrod I demand you release my daughter at once." A sharply dressed woman in her mid forties strode into the room with fire in her eyes. Jarrod rolled off of the enhanced and moved to flank Agent Willcox who was struggling to his feet with the assistance of two more agents.
"Mom?" Anna asked weakly from the tiled floor.
"Oh darling, I'm so sorry. They were supposed to wait for me. I was held up at S.H.I.E.L.D." The woman spoke soothingly to her teenage daughter pushing her hair from her face cradling the young girl's head to her chest.
"Alice, I see you have arrived." With a scowl, the mother stood to face her husband. Charles Peters stood with Agent Rumlow and Alexander Pierce.
"I specifically requested that a female doctor be brought in. You assured me that my daughter would be taken care of." Alice said standing between the men in the room and her daughter who dizzily sat on the floor.
"And she is, Alice. She's being taken care of just like any other asset of Hydra." Charles spoke condescendingly to his wife. Anna pulled herself up standing behind her mother for protection.
"Charles have you no decency left? This is your child." Alice shouted angrily.
"She's property of Hydra now." He sounded so nonchalant, sending a sideways glance at his daughter. "You knew the stakes when you agreed to this."
"You-" Alice Peters made to spit fire, but was interrupted by the unsure voice of her daughter.
"Mom, you agreed to this?" Anna asked shaking heavily. "You both agreed to this?" The blonde teen backed away from her mother slowly bumping into the table of surgical tools the feeling of betrayal spreading through her like wildfire. "Mom, you're a Nazi?" It sounded ridiculous when saying it outloud, the teen almost wanted to laugh. Her father she had no problem believing, but her mother? No. She had learned about Hydra last semester in World History, the Nazi scientists. Her parents gave her to Hydra to do experiments on her.
"Darling it's not what you think. This is for the greater good. You can help the world." Her mother insisted reaching toward her. Anna put her hand down on the table slicing her finger on something, but too afraid to look down. "Look into my memories darling. You won't get in trouble. Just take a look, I'll show you."
"No, they'll grab me while I'm out."
"No one will touch you dear, just look." Anna nodded slowly wanting to trust her mother, but she didn't move. She didn't need contact to see her mother, she was far too familiar with her parents. Closing her eyes she breached her mother's conscious. Her mother was pushing a specific memory forward . A memory of when Anna was fourteen and first met Alexander Pierce. He had come over for dinner. Father said it was about work, but it was more about her. Pierce had come to assess her. Had her parents sign a contract. But Anna wasn't interested in the memories her mother wanted to show her. She wanted to know the secrets. It was like trying to watch thousands of movies and read hundreds of books all at once. Information just kept flying at her in waves.
Anna searched deep down when her parents were young they were on a team together, with the Winter Soldier. They were assassins. They were murderers. Her mother became pregnant, her father became the Handler for the Asset. They did terrible things and came home to live in suburbia with her. They cheated and lied and stole for their supposed greater good. Anna searched and searched through her mother's mind, and then she heard it. The screams. The screams of her parent's victims as they were tortured and killed. Soon red was the only color Anna could see it consumed her it buried her. It was suffocating. Panic bloomed in her chest once more and she fought her way out of her mother's subconscious. She fought to find the light the good anything to get the images out of her head, to get out of her mother's mind.
With a gasp Anna pried her eyes open to see her mother holding her head kneeling on the cold white tile.
"ANNA WHAT DID YOU DO?" Her father screamed marching to her mother's side. Anna couldn't respond she could only retch to the side vomiting her half digested school lunch onto the pristine white floor, before sinking down next to it. The smell mixing with the metallic scent of blood from a nosebleed she didn't realize she had.
"Sedate her and get on with the physical examination." Pierce spoke, before turning on his heel and strutting out of the room. Anna didn't have the strength to fight anyone off. She merely faded out as Dr. Collins stuck a needle in her neck.
Disclaimer I do not own any Marvel works, I do not take credit for any Marvel related things in this story. I only have the unknown.