Hydra Mutant Division – Chapter Four
Spectrum stared at the ceiling, trying to get her whirling thoughts in order. It had been almost a week since they had been rescued from a terrifying situation by Hydra and she knew that Herr Becker would have one question for her. Would she be staying here? She thought that Mass probably wanted to stay, and Daydream had seemed perfectly comfortable with the new lodgings, whereas Nightshade hadn't shown a preference either way, although the fact that she hadn't had a nightmare last night might mean that she was calming down enough to feel comfortable here. But she knew that this was a decision that she would have to make on her own, for herself.
She lifted a hand above her face, concentrating for a moment as she felt her eyes adjust, changing from her usual sight to heat sensing. The thermal image was beautiful, her hand was a rainbow against the darkness. She had been so ashamed of the way she looked; of the changes that her mutation had wrought on her body that she had never even thought that she might be able to do more. The last few days had changed that, one of Hydra's scientists had sat down with her and talked about light waves, and how vast the light spectrum was, then he had devised some exercises for her to do that would strengthen her gift. He had also given her a notebook, suggesting that she document her experiences, and make notes about how her mutation felt when she used it. For now, this was all she could do, and she had practiced moving from normal sight to thermal imaging until she could do it without thinking about it.
When they first arrived she had not wanted to stay, she would have had to force herself to enter the building under normal circumstances, but she had heard the police sirens in the distance, getting ever closer and so she had entered without hesitation. She had not known what Hydra would do to her, but she had known full well that the police wanted her dead. Her grandfather had told tales of Hydra, stories that had given her nightmares for weeks, stories that had been told with such conviction that she had not doubted them for a second. However, lying in a warm bed, feeling safe and well fed she wondered if her grandfather had been mistaken. Not only had they welcomed her with open arms, but they had also helped her take the first step to fully understanding her powers, and not once had they treated her as though she were a freak; something that most other people out there could not say. She could leave, go back out into the cold and wet, homeless, and hungry situation that all four of them had been in before but she knew that it was something she never wanted to do again. Not when she could stay here, she pulled the bed covers up slightly and smiled. Herr Becker had impressed upon her that she would be most welcome here, and she would not have to fight, not if she didn't want to. Which she didn't.
She relaxed, allowing her eyesight to return to normal before closing her eyes. She would stay here; this was where she belonged.
Shadow filed into Herr Becker's office and stood at ease in front of the ornate wooden desk. Aeolian stood next to him mimicking his stance with Ragdolly, the Gruppenleiter of Dreikader next to him. At the very end of the line was Sigil, Gruppenleiter of Zweikader, the only one of them who was not a mutant. Sigil could have been Aeolian's sister, with tanned skin and shoulder length sun bleached dreadlocks. She looked as though she should have been on a sunny beach somewhere, keeping the sand clear of rubbish and selling seashell necklaces. She wore a black Hydra t-shirt and shorts, but her feet were bare, she utterly refused to wear shoes or boots no matter what the situation was. The left sleeve of her t-shirt was ripped, showing what appeared to be a tattoo on her shoulder, a circle with odd symbols on the outside of it. She could draw sigils within the circle using her fingertips and turn into the most bizarre monsters. Rumours about her powers ranged from demon possessed to being Satan's bride but how someone as calm and relaxed as Sigil had the ability to change into the most vicious and ruthless demons was beyond anyone's guess.
Ragdolly was a bit of an oddity, being a mutant in her thirties. Most mutants didn't live that long due to hatred towards them, and the fact that killing a mutant was seen more as self-defence than an actual crime. She had only been with Hydra for a few years, which made her age all the more impressive within the ranks of the division's mutants. That wasn't the only odd thing about her for, as her name implied, she looked like a rag doll. Bright red woollen hair was pulled up into bunches either side of her head, poking through a straw hat. Her face had two pink patches of felt sewn into the almost clothlike skin of her cheeks and she wore a black, gothic dress, with black and white stockings, and prim looking boots on her feet. Usually she wore a pair of glasses that looked like buttons, but these were perched on the rim of her hat out of respect to the man behind the desk. She could manipulate cloth and thread, something that sounded a lot less useful than it actually was.
"Guten Morgen." Herr Becker said, a look of displeasure on his face. The man couldn't help himself, thought Shadow, for all his time in the military, for all his time in Hydra, he still wore his heart on his sleeve. Shadow wondered how that was even possible, watching as Becker fidgeted, his fingers pushing at the edges of a stack of paper in an attempt to get them all perfectly aligned.
"I have important news. We will be having a …" He paused before spitting out the next word with distaste. "Guest joining us in two months' time. The American Division has decided to send one of their operatives here, so that they can see how a proper Hydra division is run. I believe the hope is that the operative will replace one of the deceased Heads of Hydra so that we may work towards regaining our previous strength." Becker's face plainly expressed his anger. They thought they were being so smart, but he knew what they were up to. They wanted someone on the inside to monitor what happened here, they wanted someone to report what he was doing to the other Heads. Shadow, on the other hand, felt very differently and bit his lower lip in an attempt to contain his excitement, he couldn't be this lucky, could he?
"I heard that there were only two members of that Division, Herr Becker." Sigil said, she had a voice that was always relaxing to listen to, and always sounded as though she were smiling, her words were slow and measured. "Surely they don't have the manpower to lose anyone."
"Well it would seem that they have as much choice as we do, the other divisions are demanding this, and we have no other option but to comply. Too much is at stake for us to fight the rest of Hydra on this." Becker snapped, his fingers tightening around the papers he had picked up. Shadow frowned slightly; he could see the reason why the other divisions were concerned about the man. However he wasn't sure if he was happy about the interference, he didn't need people poking around and ruining his plans. Unless… unless it was her.
"Who exactly are they sending, Mein Herr? And how would you like us to proceed with this new arrival?" Shadow asked, doing his best to keep his voice neutral and forcing his muscles to relax. His eyes were so focused on the man in front of him that he didn't see the corner of Aeolian's mouth quirk.
"The second-in-command of the American division. I believe you and Gruppenleiter Aeolian met her briefly when all the division Heads were here." Becker stated, glancing from Shadow to Aeolian. "Evelyn Merchant, English, immigrated to America when she was eighteen, undercover Hydra agent within SHIELD and, if claims are to be believed, was in the Triskelion when it fell." Becker snorted at this, still not believing it.
Shadow felt as though he couldn't breathe, she was coming back. To him. Willingly. With all her fears and secrets. He would pry each and every one from her and, whether she wanted to or not, she would serve his cause. He shook his head slightly, realising that Becker had dismissed them with his usual abruptness.
"Gruppenleiter Aeolian." The four team leaders stopped, looking back at Herr Becker. "I have had various complaints regarding your insistence that there are mutants on the moon. Please keep your wild conspiracy theories to yourself, I do not want to hear any more nonsense." Aeolian gave a polite bow while Sigil smirked and shook her head.
"Now go." Snapped Becker, turning his focus to the papers in front of him.
"Tell me something," Wilson said, walking into the office with a large binder under his arm. Merchant jumped slightly, dragging her eyes away from the monitor where four people were filing out of the Head of the Mutant Division's office. She looked blank for a moment, until her brain caught up with the change of situation. "What's the difference between Tony Stark and every other human being out there?"
"You mean besides his IQ, killer gadgets and overinflated ego that somehow manages to be bigger than his bank balance?" She asked dryly and made a face. She wasn't a fan of the man at all and, now that she was back in Hydra, she didn't need to hide it anymore. "How about the fact that he made and sold horrific weapons, and then had a change of heart when they were pointed back at him. Then he made that horrific AI that levelled a city and ended a country. Sokovia may have been a shithole, but he had the money and influence to make it better. The Avengers didn't even help clean up the mess that they made, they just flew home and pretended that they were the heroes." Wilson took note of the bitterness in her voice and put his hands to his mouth in feigned shock.
"Evelyn Merchant! How the hell did you maintain your SHIELD cover with an attitude like that?!" He laughed as she swore at him, and he hefted the heavy binder to his other arm. "The answer to my question is that if any other man pulled the shit that Stark did they'd be arrested, shot, or committed to an insane asylum. The fact that he is allowed to walk around after all he has done, that he is a free man after all the death he has caused proves that the world needs Hydra more than ever. Which is where the Sokovia Accords come in."
Merchant eyed Wilson, waiting for him to come to the point. He was a practical man and left the scheming to those who could do it. He had led a team of field operatives back before SHIELD realised it had been compromised, taking assignments and doing whatever needed to be done to smooth Hydra's rise to power. She didn't know why he'd joined in the first place, but she was pretty certain there had been a dishonourable discharge in his past. He was great at what he did, and thanks to him the American division was starting to get back on its feet, although she was pretty certain that the other divisions still thought it was only the two of them here. However, Wilson had managed to get in touch with several operatives and, while very diminished, the American division was starting to look a little less empty than it had. He was no Rumlow but only because he had issues with authority, something that was obvious in his everyday attitude. She found it ironic that a man who didn't like to be told what to do was working for an organisation that wanted to tell everyone what to do. She frowned at him.
"The what now?" She eyed the binder that he was holding up and winced. She knew where this was going, and she didn't like it. Due to the fact she would be moving to the German division sooner than originally planned, she had been putting a lot of work in to being prepared at the cost of her precious sleep. Wilson let the binder drop onto her desk, making her jump again.
"The Sokovia Accords, a pretty little piece of legislation that will level the playing field between Tony Stark and the common man." He sounded satisfied and his lips curved into a smile. "One of our pet politicians in Europe is going to start pushing the law, ensuring that The Avengers can't piss without Hydra's permission!" Merchant opened the binder to see pages upon pages of political and legal jargon which she knew was going to make her head hurt. However, she agreed that it was a tidy idea, The Avengers would be held in check, the UN and the countries involved would think they were in charge, and Hydra would be behind the scenes, pulling the strings with no one the wiser.
"Maybe you could get Stark to shine your shoes." She suggested, her eyes flicking over a few more pages. Wilson laughed and tapped the page she was on.
"Tell you what, you finish this before you leave for Germany, and I'll give you Captain America for your birthday!" She groaned, looking up at him with a pleading expression as he laughed and ducked out of the door.
Mass stood in the door of the gym and rubbed her hands together with glee. Aeolian had suggested this place to her, after regaling her with stories about previous missions. Details had been heavily edited as she was not a member of Hydra but there was still plenty of excitement and daring escapades in the tales. She wanted that so badly. To go on missions, to sneak through the city leaving no trace that she had ever been there, and most of all she wanted to fight whoever got in her way.
But to do that she needed to be stronger and faster. She needed to learn how to fight properly before she could even leave the building. She had no doubt that the Bundespolize wanted another shot at her and she felt the same way. She would take them all on, she would prove that she was someone to be feared and then they would never bother her or her friends again. She looked around at the equipment and wondered if anyone was about. Should she wait for someone? Almost as though he had heard her thought, a man entered the room from the opposite side of the gym and beckoned for her to come over to a weights machine. He walked her through how to use several of the machines before suggesting that she take self-defence lessons from one of the other trainers. She nodded to him, but her thoughts were on the decision she needed to make. It had been an easy choice to make, one that she did not realise had been made the night of the police raid. She would stay, it was as simple as that.
Shadow had settled himself in the recreation room, brooding over the meeting with Becker. As much as he wanted to figure out the greater ramifications of Becker finally having a second-in-command, or someone to monitor him, his mind kept going back to the brown-haired woman. She was coming back here, where she would find him ready and waiting to explore her fears and unravel her secrets. How delicious! He wasn't sure that he could wait two months, anticipation already crawling through his veins like a drug. A quiet cough drew his attention away from his thoughts and he looked up to see Aeolian, sat a couple of chairs away from him, looking at the doorway. A young woman was hobbling in on crutches, her ice white eyes focusing on one mutant, then the other. Her skin was as black as night and her cropped hair was the same colour as her eyes, looking like Shadow's opposite in almost every way. Aeolian beckoned her over, looking concerned.
"Hey Dusk, come take a seat and tell us what happened." Aeolian smiled at her and she made her way over, sinking into the chair across from him with a sigh of relief. Shadow had only seen her in passing, and not very often at that. He had the feeling that she had only been with Hydra for about 6 months but, what with everything that had been going on, he had not really paid as much attention to the newcomers as he should have.
"Mission went tits up last night." She said with a shrug and a closed off expression, as though she didn't want to talk about it. Shadow and Aeolian glanced at each other before focusing their full attention on her.
"Must have done more than that if you wound up with a broken leg." Aeolian stated wryly, he turned to Shadow. "Dusk can manipulate light and darkness to create illusions. She's in Zweikader and she's usually at the rear of the team providing support, not in the line of fire." Shadow nodded and then paused, remembering something.
"Don't you have a telepath in Zweikader?" He asked, remembering that he had wanted to speak with him. Dusk froze for a moment and Shadow could feel her fear rising.
"TP? What do you want with that little prick?" She asked, her face mirroring her fear and wariness for a moment before she schooled her expression into something a little more neutral. She held up a hand, palm towards them. "Actually, I don't care and it's safer if I don't know. Do yourselves a favour and stay the hell away from him." Shadow studied her for a moment. She was not afraid of him, which was unusual, but she was terrified of this telepath. He found that he needed to know why.
"What happened? You can tell us, you know." Aeolian felt the same way that Shadow did, he knew Dusk well enough to know when something was wrong, and something was very wrong. "I know full well that you can hide yourself with ease if there is trouble so if you've got a broken leg something went badly wrong. Wrong to the point that it could well affect every mutant here." Dusk gave him a look that suggested she thought he was being overdramatic and then sighed, rubbing the base of her skull gingerly.
"The guy you are asking about is Verstand, but Zweikader calls him TP, short for Thought Police. He used to be in Dreikader, but we had to swap a team member with them when they refused to work with him anymore." She said, her eyes moving to the top of the cast on her leg rather than look at either of them. Shadow frowned; he had never heard of a team doing this before. Outright shunning one of their own? Things did not work like that for the mutants in Hydra, you kept in line, or you were made to keep in line by whatever means necessary. Usually mutants were so happy to have a safe place to be themselves that they eagerly integrated with the others here.
"We didn't understand why at first, the guy seemed ok." Dusk continued, oblivious to the frowns directed at her. "Quiet, reminded us of one of those office guys with five pens in his shirt pocket and his tie tucked into his trousers. Yeah, he was quiet alright." She stated that with some contempt. "He was quiet because he was reading our thoughts and tattling to Becker on us."
Aeolian's outrage was drowned out by Shadow's roar of fury. The pair of them leapt to their feet, their furious demands to know more intertwining until she could not figure who had said what. Dusk ignored the throbbing that started in her head and slapped the table next to her to get their attention, knowing full well that they would not be able to hear a thing she said if they kept on like this.
"Sit down and keep quiet." She snarled, her face a mix of fear and anger. "The last thing we need is any attention on this conversation. TP likes to sit with the techs and watch the camera feeds, if he sees you two like this he'll want to know what is going on." To their credit, neither mutant glanced around the room, instead sitting down, and attempting to look as though they were not ready to commit murder.
"He reported something I thought to Becker. Becker dismissed it as trivial, which it was, so TP decided that if Becker wasn't going to reprimand me then he would punish me himself. We were on a mission last night when some asshole attacked me from behind. I'm not much of a fighter and he had the element of surprise. He whacked me on the back of the head with a pipe and when I fell he aimed for my leg, breaking it. Fortunately the rest of the team arrived before he attacked me again." Dusk paused as a breeze ruffled her short hair roughly, her face blank for a moment as she processed where it could have come from. She looked up at Shadow, she expected the furious expression on his face, but she refused to look at Aeolian, she didn't want to see his usually happy face marred by such anger. She looked a little guilty as she confessed. "I managed to roll over to defend myself, but I panicked when I saw the guy, I'm really not a fighter, I'm a behind the scenes gal. So I froze. It wasn't until later, when I was waiting to be released from the medical wing that TP took credit for it, said if I had had Hydra's best interests at heart, it wouldn't have happened. See, he was supposed to be on lookout, or listen out, or however his stupid telepathic powers work."
"He deliberately didn't warn you that there was someone creeping up on you." It wasn't a question it was a statement and Dusk winced at the venom in her friend's usually calm voice. She could deal with this from Shadow, although she'd never spoken to him before he was well known for it, but Aeolian was not.
"What I want to know is why no one from Zweikader or Dreikader came to me about this." Shadow's voice was dangerously quiet, and Dusk lowered her gaze back to her cast.
"I can't speak for Dreikader, and I don't know why they didn't speak up after he was moved but we couldn't. Every time someone decided to speak to someone about it he knew, and he was there, threatening to report us for 'Treason against Hydra.' He has Becker's ear, who is going to believe us against him?" A pale hand slipped under her chin, lifting her face up so that she could look into pure black eyes.
"We do not turn on each other here. The fact that he has is unforgivable." He cupped her cheek in his hand for a moment, he was not usually given to physical contact but this had been important and he felt that she might need more than just verbal reassurance. "Thank you for trusting us with this, we shall ensure that he understands the error of his ways." Shadow looked at Aeolian who nodded grimly.
"You can count on me." He told Shadow before giving Dusk a wolfish grin that looked so out of place on his face. "Don't you worry, we'll get this sorted."
Shadow gave a smirk that boded ill for the telepath and beckoned to Aeolian with two fingers as he walked to the door. Before he could open it, the door was roughly shoved open, the sorcerer from Vierkader rushing in, his face pale and eyes wide.
"Gruppenleiter Shadow, you're needed in the medical centre urgently!" He gasped. "It's Nightshade …" Shadow didn't wait for him to finish his sentence but rushed out of the door, all thoughts of anything else banished from his mind.
"This is it?" Daydream looked at the machine with disbelief. It looked almost like an upright sarcophagus but made out of metal strips like a medieval torture device. Or maybe a skeleton, she thought, one that wrapped around the outside of the skin rather than being on the inside. Tech nodded, she was a member of Zweikader who was skilled with machines and technology.
"Oh I'm sure it can be improved a lot more but working with what I have at the moment, this is the finished product." Tech looked human, no unusually coloured skin, no wings, no horns. Nothing that would make her stand out if she were on a street. She had been picked up by the police for making a flying car, after finding an article online about an old design by Howard Stark. She had figured that she could do better, and she had. They had had to shoot the car down to apprehend her and, by the time they had reached the crash site the car had gone up in a ball of flames, leaving behind an unsalvageable hunk of metal. Hydra had come along and hushed up the whole incident, offering Tech a job with them. Freedom to design whatever she wanted as long as she made whatever they needed for them, it had seemed like a bargain at the time and it still did. She loved her work, whether it was a private project or something Hydra required, as long as she could create she didn't care what it was.
"I thought it would be just a headpiece." Replied Daydream, she fought the temptation to touch the odd-looking device, her hand hovering over the metal. "It's so creepy, it looks like a gibbet."
"It looks like Traces." Said Tech, sounding a little offended. She caught Daydream's confused look and explained. "You've seen a circuit board, right? Traces are the copper lines that the electrical charge goes down. The person is the motherboard, the device is the Traces. You could have just a headpiece but it's not going to be as effective. This baby will work from both ends of a nervous system, as well as the brain, all at the same time. I've found that it works so much better if you block all stimulation to the brain from the body."
"If you can't feel anything then you focus more on what's happening in the brain?" The blue skinned mutant asked. She didn't really understand any of this, but she had been working with Tech on the device in front of them, describing her mutant abilities to her, explaining what she did and how she did it, and how to get the desired results. Tech nodded with a smile.
"Create the equivalent of white noise along the nerves and there's nothing else for the brain to listen to but itself." She sighed with frustration and looked at the as yet unnamed machine. It was not what she wanted it to be, not yet anyway. Oh it was perfect, it worked flawlessly, and it was so much better than the prototype that some daring Hydra agent had stolen, but there was an itch inside her head. The knowledge that it could be so much better, could be sleeker, more compact, more efficient. Her fingers twitched as she fought the desire to tear it to pieces and start again. This device was needed but it didn't mean that she couldn't create a better one. With what she had learned from creating this one she knew she could improve it tenfold. Her eyes glazed over, lost in the new plans growing in her mind. "Maybe I could make it palm sized."
Daydream looked at Tech as she wandered off to her desk, her fingers already wrapped around a pencil and muttering to herself quietly. She was not sure what Tech had meant, but she knew she would not get anything more out of the mutant and figured it would be safe enough to sneak out. She slipped out of the room, knowing that she would not be missed, and headed to the kitchen to get herself something to eat.
Dusk stood by the door that led from the roof to the floor below. The sun had set, and the sky was slowly fading into darkness. This half-light was when her abilities were strongest, and she had always felt that this time of day belonged to her and no one else. It had been difficult to get up the tight staircase with her broken leg, but it had been worth it as the cool evening air filled her lungs and made her feel alive. Her worries dropped away, nothing mattered at this moment except being here, right now. She hobbled forward, as quietly as possible, to the ledge that ran around the roof and peered over. It was so far down, so far to fall, and no one to save you if you did. One thing that Hydra did not have was a mutant who could teleport, if you jumped that was it. End. Of. Story.
Her burst of energy faded as the light did but it was ok. She was tired, tired of being hated by the world, tired of being pushed around by scum, tired of people thinking her powers were pointless. That trash bag telepath threatening her and her friends had been the last straw, everyone was asleep. No one would know until it was too late, it was the perfect night to die.
"It's time to go to bed." She said quietly, looking up at the stars glittering above her. Verstand took a step up onto the ledge, eyes unfocused and firmly believing he was in the Zweikader dormitory. "Sleep well." She murmured; her eyes still fixed on the stars. He did not deserve any acknowledgment, not after everything he had done. She saw movement in the corner of her eye as he stepped forwards into nothing, such a beautiful evening. she thought. A terrified scream started and abruptly ended within mere moments; self-preservation had cut through the illusion but far too late.
Verstand hadn't thought she was a threat, no one did, and it was an illusion that she didn't need her powers to maintain. How could illusions harm anyone? They weren't real, after all. Her lips curved into a smirk at that thought. How indeed?
Clearly overcome with remorse for his past actions he had thrown himself off the roof. Verstand had heard a rumour that Shadow and Aeolian were out for blood, that had probably aided his decision to end his life, she mused. He was dead, she would never be a suspect and she knew full well that she could live with what she had done. Shadow wouldn't mourn the little shit; however she wasn't so sure how Aeolian would take it. She made her way down the stairs and back into the building proper. He'd be upset for a while, she decided but, in the end, he'd move on and wouldn't think about the worthless rat again. No one would. Satisfied, she headed slowly to the dormitories.