A/N: Hi again everyone! So, quick update this time – I'm basically procrastinating all my schoolwork (lol) and thought this would be a good time to wade through more of the backstory before we get to the good part (not going to give anything away here, so you'll just have to come back and find out what happens (: ) Thanks to those of you who have favorited/ followed this fic – it means a lot to me that someone it reading it!
Two
Two years later
She is itching, for two different reasons. A bead of sweat rolls between her eyes, over skin already chalky and stinging with salt. She wipes it away, annoyed.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she shouts, in Russian.
Three men converge on her. She ignores their faces – their identities are insignificant in a fight. It was one of the first lessons she learned. She falls into fighting stance, hating the subtle shaking of her fists as she brings them up to protect her face. She doesn't dare glance at her handler. The second lesson she learned: never, ever turn your back to an enemy.
She throws a punch at the weakest link, unsurprised when he blocks it, grabbing hold of her fist with his own crushing grip. She throws herself forward, tucking into a roll that he is unprepared to follow. Swearing, he crashes to the floor, but not before aiming a well-placed kick that hits her on the back of her left knee. She grits her teeth, turning her attention to the biggest of her opponents, whose boot is poised to crush her skull if she doesn't move.
She rolls away just in time, wincing as the mat dips under his heavy tread. Some part of her remembers that they were authorized weapons for this exercise, and pulls a knife from the belt around her waist just in case. The thin metal feels light and comfortable in her hand, and she almost smiles as she jumps to her feet, dancing nimbly around the three men that track her closely.
The middle-sized one pulls a gun from its holster and shoots, the bullet tearing through her shoulder. This time, she does smile, the warm buzz of her skin confirming what she and they already knew. She is untouchable.
"Is that the best you can do?" she taunts them, flinging the knife in one motion. She trusts that she will not miss. The largest man drops with a pained grunt, a pool of blood already spreading across his upper thigh, while she turns to her two other targets.
One – the weakest link – continues to fire at her. She ignores the bullets that fly around her, sprinting at him. When she is mere feet away she jumps, legs wrapping tightly around his neck. She swings herself up so she is sitting on his shoulders, and, listening carefully, raps the top of his skull sharply with one clenched fist. He drops, predictably, and she swings herself off, landing on her feet with only the slightest of sounds.
She is breathing heavily, sweat pouring into her eyes, but she knows she is close. The last man regards her warily, his hand straying once more to the comfort of his pistol, strapped securely against his waist. She smiles, full of scorn.
"Your weapons will not save you, Feigling." He lunges at her with the force of a mad man. He manages to cuff her left ear, and the subsequent ringing throws her off-balance for a minute. He pulls her hair; she snarls in response. She feels her anger begin to simmer.
His hand comes around her throat, gripping tightly. Her nails come up to slash at him furiously. Her body thrums… from oxygen deprivation, from her anger, she isn't sure. She forces herself to focus it. She remembers the second knife, barely larger than a razor blade slipped up the sleeve of her shirt. Clenching all her muscles tightly, she wriggles her right hand into the sleeve.
She watches him whimper, fingers pressed against the gaping wound in his throat that seems to pour blood. The red doesn't phase her – if anything, she enjoys the stickiness against her skin. It reminds her that she has succeeded; she has passed another test.
She jumps when a hand comes down to clasp her shoulder tightly, then relaxes at her handler's voice: "What a good little Mausi."
The Viper allows herself to close her eyes, leaning into the man's touch. The praise is like an elixir – suddenly, she feels as if she could fight a thousand other battles.
The Asset stands a few paces behind the pair, surveying the bloodbath before him with quiet eyes. He feels a flicker of something(would pride be the right word?) when he looks at the child. Child is barely the right word to use, he reminds himself. She, like he, is something less than human.
Their handler speaks to him without turning around: "finish her mission." He raises his gun and fires, three times.
She stands under a lukewarm shower, shivering as the water hits her back and runs over her oversensitive scalp. Her enemies' blood covered her hands and forearms, and splatters across her round face. She scrubs hard, willing the stains to wash away before the doctor becomes annoyed and starts to yell at her. This time, the blood hadn't had the chance to dry – she is clean within minutes, and sent to the Pod.
She doesn't know the Pod's real name – just that she and the Asset are sent there every once in a while. Him after a mission, and her after she passes a test. The doctor stands beside it with her handler; both turn to face her as she slinks in, bare feet barely making a sound against the cold concrete of the floor. She sinks into the cool white, watching as the lid slides closed with a hiss above her. She closes her eyes, welcoming the weightlessness that surrounds her.
The Viper, when asleep, does not look dangerous. She doesn't even look intimidating. Her face, round and pale, is smooth, freckles standing out starkly. She's a cute kid; Strucker knows, without a doubt, that she will become a beautiful woman. Good. Beautiful women are more deadly.
"Report," he orders, though he can see most of her vitals and basic information on the cryochamber's display. She is barely ten years old, small and compact, with the heart rate and blood pressure of an athlete.
"No signs of trauma. No scarring, even. Her metabolism is higher than normal." He expected this. Her metabolism raises every time she is injured, her cells working overtime to replace what was lost.
He watches her skin flicker like static. "Is it enough?"
"Enough?"
He sighs, his patience wearing. "Will she survive the injections?" This is what he has been waiting for – the answers he's been dying to discover since Arnim Zola's protégé synthesized the protein that would make even blood deadly.
The doctor consults his notes. "We will start on a low dose, and increase as we go."
The Asset regards her quietly. Her regeneration time means that they can spar for hours on end, but even the Viper has her limits. He can see in the subtle shake of her fists as she brings them, clenched, into fighting stance, that she is tiring. He looks at his handler, who nods back at him. He must complete his mission.
He falls easily into his own stance, his eyes void of expression because he knows that only eggs her on. She has become a fierce fighter, quick-learning and ruthless for such a little thing, but she wears her emotions in her eyes. Every time.
She feigns to the left, but he's expecting that – he's the one that taught her, after all. He dodges the fist she throws at his face, using her momentary imbalance to throw his own well-aimed kick at her ankles. She falls, tucking into a neat little roll when she hits the ground, and jumps to her feet, somewhere behind him. His enhanced hearing picks up the high whistle of her next punch, and this time he grabs her hand in mid-air, turning so she is tucked tightly against his chest.
She remembers the careful instructions her handler had left her – wait until you have made contact. She hopes she isn't too late – sparring with the older assassin always pushes her to her limits, and she spent so much time dodging his manoeuvres and trying to land a few of her own that she barely remembered the purpose of this session. It is not until he holds her tightly against him that she has time to consider what her next move will be.
As if on cue, her upper right arm throbs in time to her heartbeat, dancing just under her skin. She feels hot all over, knows that this is the moment she needed.
Wriggling against the Asset, she is able to disentangle herself enough to carefully slip his knife from his utility belt. He notices immediately, loosens his grip on her and goes to retrieve his own weapon, but she is quicker than he, slicing deep into her palm and pressing the rapidly-closing wound to his thigh.
The pain is intense. For the first time in a long time, he feels himself begin to slip, his mind wandering back to days before he became a machine, days that he isn't sure have ever existed. He recalls a burn like this one, but slower, longer, and deeper within him, like a fever burning him from the inside out. He drops the child, sinking to the ground in a daze.
The Viper stares in horror at the machine before her. In the years she has trained with the Asset, she has known him as many things. He has been her mentor and her tormentor in turn; he has held her captive and set her free, letting her take out her anger on him. He has never been weak. She did not even think it capable of him, not even once.
As he clutches his thigh, the fabric burnt into the skin, eyes wild and unfocused, she looks down at the long-closed slash across her palm and wonders, what have they done to me?
