Chapter 25

Daisy was still in bad shape, and she slept most of the time. Everyone seemed to leave her alone, or, if they did not, they came in while she was asleep. Daisy didn't exactly know how long she'd been recovering, but she knew that, besides for her broken wrists, her injuries had healed enough that moving didn't hurt, so it had to have been a number of days.

Even once Daisy felt well enough to get up and move she did not. Dr. Whitehall had said he couldn't run tests on her while she was injured. If he knew she was no longer injured… while her chances of survival would decrease exponentially. She was much safer if she lay very, very still, though it was increasingly difficult. Daisy was not the type to remain still. She was a mover and a shaker.

A shaker. That was the best word Daisy could come up with for what she'd done to Pietro. She'd had a lot of time to think about what happened, and as she went over things in her head, she began to understand. She remembered feeling the vibrations and using them to push Pietro off of her. Even now, as she thought about it, she could feel the vibrations around her. When she closed her eyes she was doing more than pretending to sleep; she was doing recon. She could feel the vibrations all around her, and she got a better understanding of where she was.

The few planes that she heard were all to close, so she knew she was at a high altitude. It also explained why, even as she healed, her breathing seemed strained. She was somewhere in the mountains, though where she could not know.

She was being left alone for the most part, but the complex she was in was bustling with people. Daisy had been stupid. Daisy had been naïve. She'd honestly thought that there couldn't be more than a dozen Hydra agents left. Clearly she'd been wrong. There had to be at least a hundred people in this base alone. Daisy could feel their steps, their movements. It was a bit overwhelming honestly, trying to get a picture of it all in her head. She knew there were lots of people here though. If she had to guess the base was full of soldiers, scientists, and yes, even a few other enhanced. Once or twice Daisy would notice a strange feeling, the sense of someone running at breakneck speed. She could only assume it was Pietro. He'd have to have been enhanced for him to come at Daisy the way he had. He had super speed. Steve was fast. The serum had given him super strength, and that extended to every muscle, including his legs. He could run far faster than a normal human. Pietro was leagues beyond that though. With proper training Daisy could only imagine how fast he might be able to go. He could reach the speed of sound for certain. Perhaps he could even run at or close the speed of light, effectively stopping time around him. Daisy wanted to know. She wouldn't experiment on him the way Dr. Whitehall would. She wouldn't want to find out in that way, but she wanted to know. She wanted to see him reach his full potential. Until he'd brutally attacked her he'd seemed like a nice guy. Daisy couldn't even really blame him for attacking her. They'd all been on edge. They didn't know each other. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know what had happened to them. All Pietro had known was that Daisy was a Stark, and that Tony Stark had killed their parents.

Daisy frowned at the thought. She didn't really think of her father as responsible for their deaths, though she understood how Wanda and Pietro might see it that way. It had certainly been wrong for him to make a fortune off of weapons. War profiteering… it was a tricky slope. Yes her father had always used their excess money to help people, often the people affected by the wars his weapons were used in, but that didn't make up for it. He was quite possibly the most brilliant man alive. The technologies he'd created had launched warfare into a new century. Yes, he'd only sold that technology to the United States military, but that didn't mean others didn't have it. Hell Daisy had been on the receiving end of the Congress's 'justice'; she didn't trust the military only to use weapons for good. Besides, Wanda and Pietro had sounded Eastern European. Daisy knew that the C.I.A, and S.H.I.E.L.D for that matter, had been in the region in masses since the end of World War II. Wherever there were rebellions against Communist governments, there were rebels given weapons by the U.S. It was a dark period in history and certainly not something to be proud of. Her father's role in it was certainly not that of savior. She could understand why Pietro had freaked out at her name. It didn't justify attacking her of course, and Daisy really hoped she'd thrown him against the wall hard enough for it to hurt, but it made it easier to understand. It made her sympathetic enough to Wanda and Pietro that she kept tabs on where they were in the building. Wanda was hard to find, her vibrations were no different from everyone else's, but Pietro was moving at such speed that he was like a beacon of light in a dim room. With a little effort Daisy could always find him, and it was reassuring to know that whatever experiments he was undergoing, they hadn't killed him at least. It gave Daisy a little hope too. She knew that sooner or later Whitehall would realize that she was okay. Once he did she'd be undergoing the same experiments Wanda and Pietro were now.

It was sooner rather than later.

Dr. Whitehall came into Daisy's cell with another man, and Daisy didn't care to know who it was. She remained still, pretending to be asleep, until the new man came over and slapped her hard across the face. "Get up," he told her. "I lent Dr. Whitehall my tests subjects in return for access to you. You are well enough."

Daisy's wrists ached as she pushed herself up, but she knew the jig was up. She wasn't getting out of things now. Now she just had to survive, survive and escape. Hopefully it had been long enough that Coulson was suspicious of Ward's check-ins. Hopefully it had been long enough that someone was smart enough to call her dad. Daisy didn't care about how furious he'd be with her; she just wanted her dad. She just wanted her dad so badly.

"You would be wise to listen to Herr Strucker's orders," Dr. Whitehall told Daisy, his voice crisp and clear. He was completely unfazed by the inhumanity of the situation. He was unfazed and yet he'd dared to call Daisy a monster. "He is far less patient than myself."

Daisy wasn't one to hate, but she hated Nazis. She hated every member of Hydra. She hated them furiously. She hated that they'd taken her, not once, but twice. She hated that they'd brainwashed her to kill her family. She hated that they'd experimented on her, that they'd changed her, that they looked at her as a scientific anomaly instead of a person. She hated that they didn't care who they hurt, or how they did it, or what happened. She hated them. She hated Pierce. She hated Dr. Whitehall. She hated the Winter Soldier. She hated this Strucker. She hated Ward the most, because she loved him as well, and the two emotions were far too close for comfort. Daisy hated Nazis.

But she followed them out of the room. She went along with them. She hated them, and she would see them stopped, but she did not have the strength or the power to stop them. Her wrists were still broken. Her bruises were not completely faded. She had powers now, powers that she scarcely understood, never mind hope to control.

Daisy had vowed at age fifteen to never be powerless again, but she'd failed at that. All of her training, all of her powers, all of her skills and her knowledge and her hard work- they were useless. She was no better equipped to break out of a facility with a hundred Nazis now than she had been to break out of a suit at fifteen. She was helpless once more. In fact she was even more helpless than before, because before she'd had people. Coulson had freed her from that suit. Pepper had brought her to safety. Her father had stopped Obadiah. Daisy used to have help, but now she had no one and nothing. She'd run from her father. She'd taken a leave from S.H.I.E.L.D to get her own answers. No one was coming to save her. She had so many people who cared about her, who would help her, and none of them were coming. Daisy had convinced them that she could take care of herself and they were leaving her to do so. If she died, that hubris would be the reason for it.

She was led into a lab, and noticed that she was not alone in it. Wanda and Pietro, looking no better off than herself, were already strapped down to a bed. Daisy's instincts flared up, and she flailed against the two large men who grabbed her from behind. She kicked and punched, but they didn't seem to feel it. It was only when she felt the vibrations urging her on, and let them go, that the men flew back. That didn't seem to stop anyone though. Daisy was too exhausted from the force that had come from her to stop the next barrage of Hydra soldiers from pinning her down and dragging her to a bed. She screamed, in fact she'd been screaming for a while. She hadn't even realized she was screaming. Why weren't Wanda and Pietro screaming?

They weren't screaming for the same reason Daisy eventually stopped screaming; they had no voice left to scream with.

The experiments were mostly a blur. During them Daisy was only aware of three things. The first one was something good- she was still alive. The second one was worse- she was in more pain than she thought possible. The third one, however, was almost enough to break her- Grant was just sitting there, watching, not even making an attempt to save her. Freaking Nazis.