February 18, 2000
Kiev, Ukraine

Alexander Pierce wrinkled his nose in annoyance upon seeing the swaddled infant. The newborn was red and wrinkled as it cried at the top of its little lungs for a mother that would never come. She was small, not quite full term and a bit underdeveloped, but she screamed as though she had the strength in the world. But no matter how young or vulnerable she was, it couldn't distract him from the fact that she was not what he had wanted at all.

Hydra had wanted to recreate the super-soldier serum, and they had seventy years ago. But it had escaped in the form of James Buchanan Barnes, and it seemed as though all of Zola's work had been for nothing. Then something truly miraculous happened. Sergeant Barnes had fallen into their arms, quite literally. His fall from the train might as well as have a gift from God himself as it gave them exactly what they needed to finish their work. They had forged him into the perfect weapon, the literal fist of Hydra.

But even weapons were susceptible to damage. They had realized their mistake in not attempting to recreate Zola's serum when the asset had nearly expired during a mission. It was a miracle that he had survived and it had made Pierce realize that they needed to recreate the serum at all costs. Before, the asset had been invaluable and he still was, but he was not immortal and Hydra needed to ensure that if something were to happen to him, they would have another to continue their work.

It was after that ill-fated mission in August of 1998 that Pierce had dug out all of Zola's files from storage and began the tedious task of sorting through it all hoping to find an inkling of how the serum could be theoretically replicated. Pierce couldn't help but be disturbed by what he read in those journals, but there was no denying that Zola had been a man far ahead of his time. His serum was almost exactly like that of Erskine's and had produced the same results, save for the dramatic change in appearance. But there was one draw-back; the Tesseract.

There was no way for them stabilize the serum without the cube. Gamma radiation was out of the question and Erskine's formula had died with him, and subsequently with the Captain. Even Zola had tried unsuccessfully to recreate his serum, but the exact formula he had used on Barnes had been lost in the destruction of the camp. Left behind to burn in the fire, lost to them forever.

It was at that point that Pierce knew they would have to get creative. Cloning was a relatively new field of science and Dolly the sheep gave them hope that they would be able to clone a human easily enough. But the results were flawed and all the clones died shortly after birth, forcing them to return back to the drawing board.

It had become apparent by then that the only way to recreate the serum was to breed it out through the assets offspring. It had seemed like a good idea and it seemed only logical that aspects of the serum could be passed on from father to child, or so they thought.

The pregnancy and the birth of the first child had been normal with no complications, but it became apparent in the latter half of the second trimester that the fetus had no discernible heritable traits that indicated the presence of the serum in her genetic makeup. She hadn't inherited the serum nor her fathers enhancements, much to their disbelief. It was then that they discovered that Zola's serum had no effect on the gamete cells, which meant that the serum was not a heritable trait. No matter how many women they inseminated with the assets sperm, none of them would be enhanced. It was maddening, to say the least, and Pierce had been livid when he found out that the baby would be perfectly and annoyingly- normal. Nothing special about her and completely useless, but even then, he could not bring himself to terminate the pregnancy.

And now staring down at the infant, he could not bring himself to end her life either. He had no idea what to do with her or what use she was of to him now, but he could tell just looking at her that she was a fighter. Premature and underdeveloped and yet she screamed as though she wanted the world to hear her.

He reached down and took her into his arms and began to rock her back and forth in an effort to quiet her screams. The weight of a baby in his arms was familiar to him as he remembered holding his own daughter like this.

"What will you do with her?" asked one of the nurses who had been silently observing from the corner of the room. Pierce continued to rock the baby girl in his arms, her cries finally starting to subside as she reached up with her tiny little hand and grasped his finger, wide grey eyes settling on him as she continued to hold his finger in her surprisingly tight grip.

"We'll keep her for now. She may be of some use to us in the future," he said as she blinked up at him. "After all, she in the Asset's daughter."