So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
This story is part of several prequels leading up to That Which Wanders is Unaware. The sequel to TWWiU will be updated every week, but the prequels will be updated is I get to them.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name.
Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album by searching the title of this story and my user name.
CHAPTER ONE
MONDAY JUNE 15TH 2009
0322 HOURS
S.H.I.E.L.D HEADQUARTERS, THE TRISKELION AIRFIELD
WASHINGTON D.C.
CLINT
Visiting the Sandbox is usually fun, both the visit itself and the missions which usually precede it. The Sandbox is after all the S.H.I.E.L.D research facility that we 'bury' all our really hazardous discoveries at, and as a general rule, any mission that leads to those discoveries is usually pretty exciting. Plus I get to see a giant hydraulic door open up in middle of the Sahara desert, it's like the spy version of Aladdin's Cave of Wonders. If it wasn't sure to get me court martialed I'd love to record it just once for Cooper. I'd win best dad ever points for that one, guaranteed.
This time though, there was no exciting mission before my visit, because it looks like, at least according the the vague mission briefing packet I got once I was airborne on my way to Africa, my mission is at the Sandbox itself.
My reading material for the flight was tucked neatly in one of those manila folders with the S.H.I.E.L.D logo in the center and the words CLASSIFIED and SECURITY LEVEL (7) OR ABOVE occupying the top and bottom respectively.
Then once I cracked it open, beyond the limited details I read, these were what stood out the most. My assignment at the Sandbox came with an EFFECTIVE MISSION LEVEL: SEVEN. Now that is more interesting to me then you might think, given the folder required a level 7 clearance just for me to be allowed to read it. An agent's clearance level, and the effective mission level more often don't match. All the EFFECTIVE MISSION LEVEL really means is how much combat training is recommended for an an agent to have, and that only becomes mandatory when you reach level five.
There are a few reasons for me finding the mission level so eyebrow raising. 9/11 was a goddamned catastrophe, and that was only a level 6 incident. But but last I heard the Sandbox was still standing or should I say sunken? and according to the part where it says AGENT(S) ASSIGNED: BARTON, CLINT I am the only one they are sending on this mission.
So I had an entire plane ride, from the U.S to Africa, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and wonder what the hell TARGET CLASSIFICATION: 0-8-4, SENTIENT, HUMANOID really meant?
MONDAY JUNE 15TH 2009
1340 HOURS
S.H.E.I.L.D FACILITY: THE SANDBOX
(LOCATION CLASSIFIED)
CLINT
Watching the 'tigers mouth' close and taking the elevator down below the sands of the Sudan wasn't as enjoyable as I would have liked given that I spent the last ten hours trapped in the cargo bay of a Quinjet, without any way to distract myself by learning more about my mission. Hell they could've at least let me fly the damn thing since I know how, but I still haven't gotten the doctor to sign off on an all clear for field duty sheet. It's not like I'm pretending the wound from that chain knife wasn't serious, but I know my body and if I can stretch in every direction without much pain, I'm healed.
I think that's why I'm on this mission in the first place. Something 'dangerous' enough to be a level 7 threat, but only potentially because it's actually contained and completely harmless. They're just throwing me a bone so I am a little less stir crazy and behave. It's annoying, and I make the mistake of not hiding that annoyance when the security doors open and the few scientist collecting the arriving samples from the delivery bay chance the first glimpses of my face.
Its actually impressive that all but one of them resisted the urge to shift back. I'm told I have a very unpleasant resting face, which leads people to assume I'm always in a bad mood. Then when you add that to the fact that I'm an assassin for S.H.I.E.L.D, an occupation that tends to make most of the non combatant S.H.I.E.L.D agents very uncomfortable when they are around me, when I am actually in a bad mood I seem to make them outright concerned for their safety. It's a bit of an accustomed too annoyance when I don't even mean to.
Thankfully the person who I'm supposed to meet after I check in is familiar enough with me on a professional level not to be bothered by my reputation. It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes the people S.H.I.E.L.D sends me out after become a target in the first place because they got there hands on something too dangerous for the average agent, and whether we can figure out where it comes from or its an 0-8-4, I end up bringing it back to doctor Goodman.
She's one of those you can tell has been in the agency for a while, just from the unshakeable and focused edge to her demeanor, which I suppose she needs in a place like this. Though I never have quite figured out if the platinum shade to her hair is from stress or she is just really punctual about re dyeing her short strands and not letting the brown show on anything except her eyebrows.
MONDAY JUNE 15TH 2009
1423 HOURS
S.H.I.E.L.D FACILITY: THE SANDBOX
(LOCATION CLASSIFIED)
CLINT
It took a little less than a half hour to go through all the necessary security checks before I was cleared for access to the main part of the facility, it's annoying but I understand why they do it, and it's not just this facility either. They want to make sure you aren't carrying contaminants or contraband into the facility. The latter is the bigger concern at all S.H.I.E.L.D bases because even a loyal and skilled agent can still get a bug placed on them by someone more skilled, and as rare as it is sometimes even people in S.H.I.E.L.D have a price.
It took another twenty or so minutes to track down and get a quick debriefing from Doctor Goodman.
She told me that the 0-8-4, despite having several anatomical differences has the same external appearance of a human female, and as far as they have been able to determine given she is the only subject they have found of her 'species', seems to be a female.
She also told me that this 'woman' has been in a coma since they liberated her from the hands of a HYDRA splinter group back in 1952. Her official designation is SUBJECT: 103671, though they have also tacked on CODENAME: NORA. In the last 60 years there have been several recorded incidents of what seems like speech, and the syllables 'nor' and 'ah' were 'spoken in the greatest frequency.
Then we moved onto the incident that brought me here. Shortly before 0300 hours one of the technicians was performing a routine sample collection update when, the doctors are still refers to it by its serial number but I mentally amend that into 'her', regained consciousness. They are currently back tracking all the recordings leading up to the incident to see if they can find anything that triggered the event but so far they haven't found one. Given the fact that the tech was in the middle of taking a blood sample 'she' reacted with frightened aggression, and by the time help arrived and were successful in securing and sedating 'her' she had managed to leave the man with a compound fracture.
That's why they are concerned, and though I haven't had a chance to read the rest of the files she says are waiting for me in my quarters, I can't really blame them. They have some unidentified species of humanoid that suffered clear experimentation by HYDRA and has been sleeping for the last 60 years. Normally a person under those circumstances should have muscles about as strong as pad Thai noodles, but she was still able to fight back several men and break bone in her first few seconds awake.
I'm not going to lie, I can see why that's got them wetting their pants a little, but personally I'm impressed and am a little more interested in meeting 'her' then just fulfilling my mission requirements. However that is going to have to wait until the morning. Right now they have 'her' sedated, but the scans of 'her' brain show strong activity and makes the chances of 'her' falling back into 'her' coma very unlikely, but they want to transfer 'her' to a more secure environment before they let me see 'her'.
TUESDAY JUNE 16TH 2009
0552 HOURS
S.H.I.E.L.D FACILITY: THE SANDBOX
(LOCATION CLASSIFIED)
CLINT
When the Doc said the rest of the files would be waiting for me in my room, she forgot to mention it was more along the line of tomes. That's the first thing I noticed on the set of draws right inside the doorway, a pile. And it wasn't just the stack of six inch 3 ring binders filled with plastic sleeves that made me sigh in frustration, it was the box of what looked like 50 slim cd cases because apparently they hadn't gotten around to transferring all of the hard copy documents and data into the mainframe yet. Which I suppose I should have guessed given the fact we had 60 years of data on her, not to mention what they probably found with her.
Needless to say the first thing I did was start a pot of coffee because it was going to be a long night.
It didn't take me more than the first page in and I was already glad I worked with a spy because they get all the cool toys. Natasha may be able to speak a whole bunch of different languages, a lot more then me for sure, but for those that don't, S.H.I.E.L.D has what I am fairly confident is the world's greatest translator. Not only can it translate someone's speech in live time, but it can also analyze handwriting, determine the language, and create a visual overlay in the user's selected tongue. Its awesome because I suck at German.
I started with the HYDRA files first, despite the fact I knew they were would probably be incomplete. At the end of the war after all, with the death of the Red Skull, the smaller heads of HYDRA were really just tucking and running. I'll give it to that lady Peggy Carter, she turned that heartbreak into one hell of an all consuming fire and she knew just where to point it.
The files were at least sorted by date, even though I'm sure some of them were based on a guess given there was none written in, but it took me less than five pages to know whatever records HYDRA had about where they found her were missing if they ever existed at all. I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D already checked for those and knew this detail since they would have tried to look for others like her once they realized she wasn't human, but as for me I was sort of hoping it would give me some sort of a cultural clue to build off of.
The clues I found weren't exactly factual so is much fanatical. There was single reference to Heinrich Himmler, just a letter between the Red Skull sent to Himmler, which boiled down to looking into 'other options'. Other then the fact it was dated shortly after the Dr Erskine rescue mission though, it didn't really give any specifics about what. There were probably other letters preceding that one that would have cleared it up but they were lost in the war.
There was also an entire thesis on a race from the stars, but once I got to the line about them being blue angels I immediately moved on because no one mentioned 'she' was supposed to be blue and I am damn sure somebody would have told me if my assignment was Smurfette.
The joking mood fizzled off in a flash when I arrived at the next section and realized it was a medical report. The handwriting was very faded but it still only took the translator ten seconds to puzzle it out, and make me cringe. They pulled two slugs out of her stomach, and at least 5 fragments of what was probably a third round. The fact that they listed that under samples collected make me think they shot her just to see what would happen. However she ended up with HYDRA it clearly wasn't by choice.
It kept going with the hours, and it didn't really get any better. They seemed convinced she had some sort of special power and were bound and determined to harness it to improve their own men, maybe a desperate attempt at the super soldier serum that slipped out of their grasp. But what that power is exactly no one knows because its buried under so much cultist fanaticism about her being a VIKING GODDESS of all things, and even I can tell from that watermarked photo of a woman with a black eye and shaved head that there was nothing Norwegian about her.
Eventually I got to the video, and I never thought a grainy black and white film could be so disturbing, but the second I saw them hold a bone saw in front of the camera I shut that shit off.
I'm not green to the horrors of the world at all, but the fact I could make the struggling shape of a woman out, strapped stomach down to some kind of table in the background made me feel like I wanted to make friends with the toilet bowl. They were prepping her for surgery in that video and she was awake! They might be damn right about thinking she was a goddess if she lived through that, it would have been nicer if she just died.
It makes me side with her a little more over the fact she broke that nurse's arm. If the last thing I remembered was being cut apart by Nazis, I would have tried to kill the bastard taking my blood with his own damn needle! No wonder she fought with so much strength.
It makes me continue to feel a little green around the gills as I continue reading the section that is our research. Now sure, I have the comfort of knowing we weren't as bad as HYDRA and didn't poison her or take pieces out of her just for the hell of it. The fact still remains though that even if our tests were non invasive in nature, we still ran them on her while she was unconscious, and I almost think that's just as bad in some ways.
How we found her, or originally a SSR/CIA joint task force found her was due to information from a scientist, who a quick name check tells me was one of the Red Skull's inner circle by the name of Armin Zola who we recruited through Operation Paperclip.
It was early April 1952 and he informed us that a small group of HYDRA scientists that were former colleagues of his had managed to escape to Norway at the end of the war They were planning to rendezvous with their Russian counterparts, because despite being on the opposite side of a war there were those in Russia who shared the Red Skulls insanity apparently. They were going to be traveling under the disguise of several seal hunting vessels and intended to rendezvous with the Russians at Jan Mayen Island before disappearing back into the Soviet Union.
Now naturally there were doubts about the authenticity of his information since we had him locked up before the end of the war. We also didn't know what his intentions really were in giving the information in the first place, but in the end the decision came down to the fact that we had enough to worry about from the Communists without adding a HYDRA splinter group to mix.
What followed is now a tiny piece of history called the West Ice Incident. According to common knowledge on April 5th 1952 several seal hunting vessels vanished without a trace in a storm in the west ice. The storm actually worked to the task forces benefit, because out of the seven ships that went down that night, two were really civilian operated seal hunting vessels. The other five were never found because that's how they wanted it.
This wasn't a take prisoners or recruitment mission. Both the SSR and the CIA agreed that trying to bring that many prisoners back to America so close to enemy territory was too much of a risk, so this was meant to be an extermination mission, and it was. They didn't leave anyone alive on those boats, no matter how many hands were raised or surrenders were spoken. The only person they took alive off the 'Buskøy' was her.
After the last round was fired they started stripping the boats of whatever research and cargo they could take, they didn't want to risk it being found by anyone else, then they started lining the hulls with C-4. That's when the found her. I have a picture, and even though its old, just looking at it I can agree with the original diagnosis that the woman in it was dead at the time. I can see patches of frost clinging to her skin that made them think that, but when they looked closer they realized she was wearing a respirator and the wound on her inner arm which looked like someone sliced off a patch of her skin was still slowly oozing blood despite the temperature of the room they found her in.
Taking the tube they had her laying in wasn't possible because there was no way to transfer something that big by hand even if they unbolted it from the floor, but they were able to take her out of it with the press of a few buttons. The fact that when she was held in one of the agent's arms she hung limply like a human body should and wasn't stiff like a corpse made it even clearer that she was still miraculously alive if she still had enough body heat to hold off that side effect of freezing.
Those agents, being decent human beings did try to revive her. They bathed her as respectively as they could and even washed her patchy excuse for hair. They gave her their clothes right off there backs so she wasn't naked, wrapped her in as many warm blankets as they could find to try and raise her body temperature back up to a safe level. In the ship infirmary they put a plaster over that gash on her arm, and according to the report they even prepared a simple hot meal of broth and tea for her when she woke up, that they kept reheating until they made it back to American soil and it went uneaten.
The placement of that skinned section of her arm has me flipping back to the German files on a hunch, and because there was no picture of her, pulling up a tab of holocaust tattoos. Having my guess turn out to be true doesn't please me at all. 103671 was the number THEY gave her, and nobody even had the decency to change it! Now I'm definitely never calling her by that, and I think I'm going to have to put in a standing order to make sure no one else does either!
After that bit of knowledge I let the history books about her fall forgotten in exchange for the calmer topic of her biology. My hope that it would bug me off a little less turns out to be spot on because despite the fact a lot of this scientific jargon is over my head and has to be looked up, I can't help but admit that she seems pretty damn fascinating on the inside.
One of the first details I come across seems to explain why she was able to snap that guy's arm. She's really dense, and no I didn't just call a woman I never met stupid. She really is dense, down to a cellular level. Her body, at least in theory, has the potential to achieve a muscular and skeletal density three times as hard as a human's, once she gets back into shape that is.
Her intestines apparently attach to her stomach in two places before it merges into one like a normal intestine, and that lets her break down food better to get much more nutrients out of it, reducing and almost eliminating all waste, it seems only the inorganic compounds and additives we put in our food don't break down. She gets even better at getting everything possible out of her food when you add in the fact that she has a slightly larger stomach than ours and its compartmentalized.
She has two livers, which I imagine if that is a natural to her 'people,' probably means she comes from a race that can really drink. Lucky. She has, I pause for a whistle on this one, she has 23 ribs on each side. Good lord, her chest cavity is built like a tank, we only have 12 on each side, it looks almost impossible to get a blade through that, I'm sort of jealous of her skeletal structure.
Not that it even seems like the armored rib cage is necessary because she also has an eight chambered heart that can apparently close off a damaged chamber and divert blood flow! No wonder everyone is so interested and intimidated by her, this woman could almost be an evolutionary super soldier equivalent.
I'm not even at the end of the list either. Her frontal lobe is somewhat bigger than ours, and contains a section of brain that we haven't even been able to identify the purpose of since it looks dormant. It hugs her pituitary gland though and seems to be connect to what the scientists have lamely dubbed nerve vessels.
Whatever they are, the outer wall of them is built of the same tissue as her nervous system, which they seem to act like a second one aside for the fact they don't seem to be firing. They also are shaped like blood vessels except for the filaments in them, containing an unidentified liquid that they theorize capable of energy conduction, and perhaps offers her some sort of heightened extrasensory perception.
That is if the whole system didn't appear to be affected by what was probably brain damage.
Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that she looks like she is only in her mid twenties! Which when you remember that she SLEPT FOR SIXTY YEARS should not be possible. As near as the scientist can tell from adapting the methods archeologist use to determine the age that a skeleton, we have placed her developmentally at her races equivalent of 26.
So in the morning apparently, I am supposed to meet an 'immortal' woman of unknown origins, who is built like a tank on steroids, might have psychic powers, and the last thing she remembers is probably Nazi's! I only READ comics I didn't want to live in one!
NOTES FOR THE READERS:
Because this is set in WWII i will be using historical events from our history. I apologize in advance on the chance any readers out there have connections to those events. My goal is not to offend, and given that most of them happened almost a century ago, I feel it is safe to reference them for creative purposes.
So far, in this chapter I mention the WEST ICE ACCIDENTS:
The West Ice accidents occurred around April 5, 1952 when the five Norwegian seal hunting vessels "Ringsel", "Brattind" and "Vårglimt" from Troms and "Buskøy" and "Pels" from Sunnmøre with a total of 78 men vanished in the midst of a severe storm in the West Ice, east of Greenland.
Despite search and rescue operations for many days involving planes and naval ships, no traces of the missing boats were discovered. During Easter that year 53 Norwegian vessels were participating in seal hunting in the West Ice. Of these 7 shipwrecked, 5 disappeared without a trace. The first vessel to shipwreck was the Møre boat "Vestis", however the crew of this boat was rescued.