I was fourteen when I busted into a North Korean prison, and going on fifteen when I had been kidnapped and sent off to Russia, for what purpose, only God knows, other than the puppet's master. I had knocked the puppet out with a heavy full-leg side kick that cut right across the back of his neck. I didn't have to proceed to punch his lights out, because as he fell, his forehead smacked dead on the smoldering piece of equipment behind the chair that I had been strapped down in.

A lot of you are probably wondering how these sorts of things get covered up. How a daughter's absence from home for a week can go without reprimand. That's what SHIELD does though. They cover things up, burying things that shouldn't have been found in the first place, keeping the secrets that no one else would dare to keep. There was always opposition, there was always another ugly fanged and scaled head of Hydra sticking its winding neck out, daring us Agents to cut it off. Mythology made it quite clear that the only way to kill a hydra was to burn it to poisonous ashes, casting its essence back to Tartarus. In our case, we had to decapitate the hydra branches by cutting out their source. Unfortunately, this was the one thing that SHIELD had some trouble finding, and by the time that the Hydra center was found, it had moved once again. Always on the move, which made it hard for people to settle down, for long experiments to be run. Less time for civilians in the area to get hurt.

I don't know exactly what SHIELD did in order to cover my disappearances. The same way, I suppose, they did with all of the other Agents that harbored at SHIELD Headquarters. Secrets, loopholes, secrets. This was how we were protected.

After the puppet had been knocked out, I had stolen most of his outer clothing, along with his boots and something that resembled a security pass, and a small handheld gun. The alarms for fire were still blaring. I still felt like some idiot had rubbed my naked body over a rough bed of hot coals, but the clothes, although smelling of un-showered man (a highly unpleasant odor, thank you very much), were warm and enveloped me in heavy fabrics, something that seemed almost foreign to me. The security pass that had been in my pocket was my key to getting out of the building. Surprisingly, no one came after me. It was like the rest of whatever facility I had been in was completely evacuated. All that led to the outside from my experimentation room was a long corridor painted bright red. How fitting. At the end of said corridor was a heavy metal door with only a small slot to the right that gave any indication of a way out. The small pass slid inside to fit perfectly.

I was free. The door was opened, and I was greeted by cool sharp air that bit at my lungs and a rocky path that winded down from whatever compound I had been in, built into the side of a cliff. The door was small compared to the sheer mass of the flat-faced rock, impossible to climb on foot. One would have to either fly, or take the long way around, unless they found the path. Sweaty and woozy, I stumbled slowly down the path, stolen over-sized boots kicking away stones in front of their square steel toes. The scuffed leather was dusty with dry earth as I went along, the rocky path giving way to a little back road through a thick lining of trees that rendered the compound virtually invisible.

My ears were still ringing. I was having the mother of all migraines, and I didn't have any flipping Tylenol. My eyesight was strangely fuzzy, because I had always had 20/20 vision. Spot on. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting back to headquarters. I was just a kid on the back country roads of rural Russia. Oh what had I gotten myself into?

I could see the tip of the cliff, a jagged shark's tooth peeking over the tops of a seemingly endless row of bottle-brush pines. The sky was a grey tinge that warned me of coming snow. The road before me was a thin one, dusty as my boots, small piles of snow tossed from driver's wheels thrown into the drainage rivets lining the asphalt. Tire tracks were visible, printed out in nice clean white lines made out of road salt and slush dried by the sparse sun. People came down this road recently, and I was willing to bet that if I kept heading in the direction that most of the traffic had be flowing, I would eventually find a city and a mode of transportation or a way to contact SHIELD.

Darker swirls of cloud peppered the lightened ones, reminding me of a cookies and cream bowl of ice cream. Shut up, shut up, and don't think at all about food right now, I scolded myself. Get to a phone. Find someone with a phone that is trustworthy. Remember what Nat taught you. You know enough words to make it without the government breathing down your neck, and if all else fails, just pull the best accent you've got. You can fool computers with your voice. Now all that you have to do is pull yourself together—and forget everything that happened until you're brought in for questioning. Yeah. Good plan.

With my hands slid deep into the pockets of the overlarge jacket and toes curled to accommodate space in the boots that clomped like small pony hooves down the side of the road, I headed off into the direction of what appeared to be the slowly setting sun, the glowing orb sending the horizon from lifeless grey to a purple and orange that seemed to bleed out of a rift in the cloud formations. My body felt like it was bleeding, bleeding, burning again, over and over. All of the sedatives that I had been injected with and the drugs made my reactions slow and clumsy. This was why I hated drugs. They slowed down and inhibited my brainpower. Slow. I hated being slow, especially when I knew that I could be fast.

It was nearly sundown when I came across something resembling civilization. It was a tiny town, made of squat cheerful-looking buildings. The streets were lined in shops that were plastered wall-to-wall in a friendly manner, all of the windows lit up like small pinpoints of candlelight against the dying sun. Cars in foreign models painted in blacks and reds and greys were sparse, as most of the people that I could see were walking to and from the shops. One woman was carrying a handbag bulging with a large cookie tin and a few scented candles. Cinnamon, vanilla, and roasting chestnut were written on the half-concealed labels, glossy pearl with gold trim, in swirling black calligraphy. Wait, how…how did I know that? I then noticed that some of the pressure behind my eyes had been relieved. The headache had lessened somewhat, and the piercing ringing that had been rattling my eardrums had been subdued. I could hear the muttering of the pedestrians as though they were right next to me. Unfortunately, everything was in Russian, and only a few words were actually understood. But I could hear them. There was a young couple whispering sweet nothings to each other outside of a little restaurant, and there was a small smudge of some chocolate dish on his cheek that his lover was attempting to wipe off with her thumb.

I smiled softly as I approached the town. Maybe whatever they had done to my vision and hearing wasn't bad at all. Perhaps this unexpected experiment would turn out to be a gift. Whatever power this was, it wasn't of this world, but I made myself a promise right then and there that I would never abuse it. This thing inside of me was like a knife. It could be used to protect or to harm. The one thing that I did know about it though? It was going to stay a secret.