Hydra Base
Location: Siberia
2008
"Она уже готовилась к инъекции. Бак готов к работе?" (She's already been prepped for the injection. Is the tank all ready to go?)
Emma opened her eyes, trying to make sense of her vision but everything was blurry. Her eye lids felt heavier than normal as she fought to keep her eyes open but she just felt so drowsy. The voices she heard sounded distant so she could barely make out a word they said.
"Да, сэр. Все системы готовы к инъекциям. Мы просто ждем мистера пирса." (Yes, sir. All systems are ready for the injection. We're just waiting for Mr. Pierce.)
Emma felt sickly as she laid there on what felt like a bed. She thought she may have been dreaming at first because the bed felt like it was moving. She strained her eyes to make something out between the blurriness but all she could see were deformed shapes and lights that were only a little too bright. Emma coughed before she tried getting up from the bed only to find out that she couldn't.
The seven year old then tried getting up again but to no avail. She attempted to lift her arms up but she found that they were stuck. Her arms were pinned above her head and the small girl struggled with all her might to break free from whatever was holding her down but she just couldn't move.
"Поторопись. Девушка становится слишком тревожным." (Hurry up. The girl is getting too anxious.) Emma felt a tear stream down from her face in frustration as she began to squirm around in the moving bed. It was then that her sight began becoming clear again and she was able to make out the deformed shapes she had seen before.
Some of the Russians she could recognize, having seen them around the base. She saw Karpov as he talked with the German man known as Strucker. At least, that's what Emma knew him as but she had only seen him briefly in the labs whenever they were injecting her with the needles. She hadn't understood German at the time but now she did. He, however, wasn't speaking German but instead Russian which made Emma wonder if the base was located somewhere in Russia since the majority of the people in the base spoke Russian.
No one would ever tell her where the base was situated.
Emma was always on a need to know basis.
Emma met Strucker's eyes as he looked down at her and she realized that she liked him even less than she liked Karpov. Karpov was a military man with anger issues but he wasn't sadistic like Rumlow or Strucker. She heard rumors around base that Strucker had a sick fascination with experiments of the unnatural kind. Emma had a feeling that Strucker wasn't beyond experimenting even with the likes of someone as young as her. At least Karpov, even with all his beatings, never used violence beyond what he thought was necessary.
"Mach dir keine Sorgen, Kleine, alles wird klappen. Du hast keine Ahnung, was du für unsere Sache machst, aber du wirst perfekt sein."(Don't worry, little one, everything will work out. You have no idea what you're about to do for our cause but you'll be perfect.) Strucker told her in German as he stared at her in what could only be described as an expression of pure awe.
"Das perfekte Exemplar. Besser als der Winter-Soldat und Captain America zusammen." (The perfect specimen. Better than the Winter Soldier and Captain America put together.) He remarked with a soft tone.
Emma stopped struggling, becoming very still as she stared up at the face of Strucker in confusion. What did that mean? Before she could think anymore on the subject she was released from her restraints. She immediately sat up in the bed and felt a little light headed as she did so. It seemed like she may have gotten up a little too fast.
"Где я? Что это?" (Where am I? What is this?) Emma said in Russian, completely expecting to receive a slap across the face for her directness but she was taken by surprise when Strucker just grinned at her and Karpov didn't make a move.
The room was an altogether different room than what she had been in before. Emma didn't recognize it with its openness and darkness but she realized that it was even colder than "The Cold Room"...if that was possible.
The room was so cold that she could see her own breath.
Scientific equipment and machinery filled up the large, spacious room and there was more people there than she could ever remember meeting. Small looking men with white lab coats and glasses, thinning hair that they tried to comb over their bald spot. She saw some of the men, and women too, standing near the entry point of the room dressed in black combat gear and large guns in their hands.
Guards.
Rumlow was standing in the back, right next to an older looking man. It was the older man that grabbed Emma's attention right away. He was much shorter than Rumlow but something about him practically breathed authority. The man's skin was weathered, possibly from much time spent under the sun. His hair was a much darker blonde than her own that was obviously dyed due to the obvious gray roots. His were eyes a dark blue that were also much darker than her own eye color. His eyes chilled her to the bone because they seemed be locked onto her in that very moment. He looked at her as if he knew her which struck Emma as odd. He was incredibly familiar to her for some reason but she didn't think she ever remembered meeting him.
She would've remembered him if she had.
Emma tore her gaze away from the old man and sought out one person in particular. She scanned the room quickly and quietly as she tried to pick him out from the other imposing figures. There was no way she could have missed him with those cold looking blue eyes and his shaggy looking brown hair. She felt disappointment surge through her as she failed to find the Winter Soldier in the midst of all the others.
Emma had trained with him for only six months but he had become more than a mentor to her. No, he was the only one she could call a friend in this dark and cold place. It had been a year since she had last seen him and she missed him so much. Rumlow was never careful with her or precise like the Winter Soldier was and his advice was never rational either. Rumlow sparred with her for real and she ended up aching and sore every time.
The Winter Soldier never talked much but she appreciated his silence unlike Rumlow who talked too much for her liking. Rumlow was also a little too easy to read and most of the time Emma didn't like what she saw in his eyes.
There was something very sinister that rested in those dark eyes of his.
"Mr. Pierce, it's time!" A Russian scientist called out to the older man who had been watching Emma earlier.
Pierce?
No, Emma couldn't have possibly known that man. She had never heard the name Pierce in her short life. The man named Mr. Pierce gave a sharp nod to Rumlow, causing the man to smirk. Whenever Rumlow smirked it almost always gave Emma an uneasy feeling since nothing good ever came out of Rumlow smirking. Rumlow stalked towards Emma with a delighted gleam in his eyes before he picked her up and started carrying her in his arms much to Emma's surprise.
"Come on, princess, you're just going to have a little medical operation. Nothing to worry about." He said in a smug tone and Emma wanted to wipe the conceited smirk off his face. Her father used to call her princess. What gave this man, her parents killer, the right to call her by the same exact name? Before Emma even had time to voice her thoughts, her attention was captured by an odd looking contraption.
It looked to be some kind of water tank, not too different from the dunking tanks she used to see at the county fair her parents used to take her to when they were still alive.
It stood at the height of a grown man but almost twice as high as Emma's height. The tank was completely glass and round, much like a giant glass cylinder, and had small plastic tubes sticking outside the tank and hooked up to another contraption. The contraption was mechanical looking with smaller glass cylinders sitting on top of it, pumping what looked to be like some sort of blue substance. Numbers were flashing on the screen connected to the mechanical contraption but Emma didn't understand what any of it meant.
There was a set of metal stairs next to the glass tank that led up to a platform at the top of the tank.
A man stood at the top, he looked to be one of the scientists who were now all crowded around a computer looking at numbers. Rumlow set her back down on the ground at the bottom of the small, make shift staircase. His smirk was now gone and was replaced with a serious looking expression. Rumlow was always so smug and sinister looking around her that his serious expression almost frightened her.
"Go up the stairs." He told her in a firm tone. Emma gave him a confused look as she looked between him and the glass tank.
What was going on?
"Why?" He glared at her, wrapping his hand around her wrist before squeezing.
"Because I said so. Now go up the damn stairs and do as you're told." He said and Emma knew that this would be a fight she wouldn't win. His tone told her that he wasn't fooling around this time so Emma decided to comply. She had developed enough self-preservation skills to know that it would be better for her and everyone else if she just listened and did as she was told.
So with that Emma began to walk up the stairs to the creepy looking scientist. He didn't smile at her in that sinister way Rumlow or Strucker did but he just looked at her in an almost calculating way. That seemed to make her more nervous than anything else.
"полоса" (Strip.) The scientist told her in Russian but Emma was afraid she may have heard him wrong.
Strip? What did that even mean?
"Excuse me?" She replied in English but the scientist only glared at her in annoyance. He gestured to her body before answering.
"Газа! Сними одежду! Все это! Сейчас!" (Strip! Take off your clothes! All of it! Now!) He said in a frustrated tone and Emma nodded, quickly doing what she was told and taking off her clothes.
As a seven year old she wasn't quite embarrassed to take off her clothes in front of adults. She may have talked and acted like an adult but she was still childlike in mind. Her mind was too innocent to not fear taking off her clothes in a room full of men. When Emma grew up she'd be old and wise enough to be afraid.
It wasn't long before she was completely nude and Emma tried to cover herself, not out of shame but because the room was so cold.
The man then began to analyze her as he looked her up and down with that same cold look as before. He lifted up her arms, paying close attention to every detail, before pushing her blonde hair to the side and staring at her neck. The scientist seemed satisfied with whatever he was searching for so he dropped her arm and her arm fell to her side.
It made her uncomfortable the way he had scrutinized her but she knew better than to speak aloud about her discomforts. He turned to look at the others who were watching from down below.
"Все выглядит хорошо, полковник Карпов, думаю, она готова к уколам. Всякий раз, когда вы готовы, сэр." (Everything looks good, Colonel Karpov, I think she's ready for the injections. Whenever you're ready, sir.) The scientist said to Karpov who only nodded as he glanced back at Pierce. Karpov then looked back up at the platform, looking between the scientist and Emma.
"Вставь ее." (Put her in.) Karpov said and the scientist nodded.
Emma looked between Karpov and the scientist, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
She didn't understand.
What was happening?
Before Emma could think any further about the situation, the scientist shoved her hard and she lost her balance, falling into the glass tank. She moaned in pain, the floor of the glass tank was padded but it was still a high fall. Her expression of pain quickly morphed into one of anger as she glared back up at the scientist who had pushed her. She quickly stood up from the floor of the tube.
"What was that for?!" She yelled, glaring at the man in question.
She sounded much like a normal seven year old who might have said the same thing to a boy that was tugging on her pigtails. This, however, was a much more serious situation than the small girl could ever imagine. Her complaints went ignored as the scientist climbed back down the stairs and joined the other scientists who were all huddled around the computers and the odd mechanical contraption she had seen from before.
"С этими расчетами мы договорились?"
"Можете ли вы дать мне показатель выживаемости, и я сравню его с другими предметами?"
"Какой процент формулы Эркскина в настоящее время в ее системе?"
"Когда мы добавляем сыворотку, какие побочные эффекты мы можем ожидать?"
These were all the questions she could hear the scientists rapidly firing off at each other as they fumbled around the lab in the midst of all the computers. They weren't even paying her the slightest attention.
Emma padded her way over to the glass and pressed her hands against it. She spotted Rumlow watching her with the man named Pierce, both of their eyes focused entirely on her. Strucker was hovering over the scientists as they tried to figure something out but Emma couldn't tell what they were trying to do. Karpov stood off to the side, quietly observing the situation before him, sometimes glancing at the scientists but also sometimes looking at her.
What were they going to do to her?
What was her purpose?
Emma didn't have the slightest idea about what her purpose or worth could be to everyone. It wasn't a question that she had thought about for a long time but just the past few months.
It was always quiet at night, right before she fell asleep, and she couldn't help but let herself think. Her thoughts soon drifted to what Hydra wanted from her. She hadn't questioned anything when she first arrived because she was practically a baby back then and she had spent her time crying for her parents. Hydra's intentions were no concern of hers back then. It wasn't until one of those quiet nights that she replayed something that the Winter Soldier had once told her during one of those rare instances where he actually talked.
"У каждого есть мотив. Гидра ничего не делает бесплатно. Если у вас есть цель, они позволяют вам жить. (Everyone has a motive. Hydra does nothing for free. If you have a purpose they let you live.)"
The Winter Soldier had whispered that to her one day when no one was listening. Karpov was too busy overlooking paperwork to pay them much attention that day and the Winter Soldier's voice had been so quiet that even Emma had barely heard it.
Maybe he was onto something, Emma thought.
At the time his advice had seemed random and senseless but now she understood it a bit better.
Why would Hydra keep her around?
They spent time teaching her and training her but it couldn't have been out of the goodness of their hearts. Rumlow murdered her parents but he didn't kill her.
Why?
He just took her and brought her to the Hydra base.
What did they want with a seven year old girl?
"Заполните бак." (Fill the tank.) One of the scientists said and Emma was broken out of her thoughts.
She suddenly felt a coldness around her feet and looked down only to find that water was quickly entering the glass tank. The small girl watched as the water pooled around her feet and started to move up to her ankles.
She didn't understand.
The blonde girl looked up at the scientists in confusion.
"What is this?!" She called out to them but they ignored her. Emma glared at their backs because she was beyond tired of being ignored.
"Что это?! Пожалуйста! Смотри на меня!" (What is this?! Please! Look at me!) She started calling out in Russian but it did little to gain their attention.
The water was about waist deep this time and it didn't look to be stopping anytime soon. She watched as a scientist climbed up the stairs in what looked to be a diving suit before climbing down the ladder of the glass tank.
There was a ladder?
Then why did that man throw her in?
Emma didn't feel relieved that this scientist was climbing in the tank with her because she honestly doubted that they intended to help her.
The diver had a plastic contraption in his hands.
It looked to be some sort of mask connected to the plastic tubes that went through the glass tank. The diver, without missing a beat, grabbed Emma by the back of her head and put the nozzle over her mouth. The plastic tubes, that were attached to her mask and the glass tank, were then subsequently shoved up her nose with no mercy. She yelped in pain and felt the water coming up to her shoulders. Emma could feel the air from her nose go down through the plastic tubes, entering the nozzle, before traveling through the other larger plastic tubing that went through the glass tank.
The diver, with their job completed, went back to the ladder before climbing back out.
Emma tried to remove the nozzle or do something but it was really stuck.
She heard a distant beeping noise and watched as couple of the plastic tubes, not connected to her nozzle, started moving on their own further into the tank. Emma looked at the tubes in horror as they seemed determined to make their way towards her. She tried to swim away from the tubes but the glass stopped her.
Emma could only watch as one of the tubes stopped once it reached one of her arms, it seemed to hover there for a moment, before it suctioned its way onto her arm. The water was now past her nose and in less than thirty seconds she would be completely submerged in water.
Emma let out a loud scream from beneath her nozzle as the tube punctured her skin and began to dig its way into her body. She lurched forward as she tried to grab onto something to pull herself free but it was useless.
Emma was about to reach over and pull out the tube but her other arm was attacked by another plastic tube. She soon felt the same sensation happen to that arm as well.
It wasn't long before the other plastic tubes found their way to other parts of her body.
Her left leg.
Her right leg.
The left side of her abdomen.
The right side of her abdomen.
The left side of her neck.
The right side of her neck.
Her left hip.
Her right hip.
The tubes were suddenly everywhere and caused the seven year old to scream out in agony but no sound could be heard from under the water, the bubbles could only be seen as evidence of her pain.
Emma watched the plastic tubes as she was completely submerged underwater. She could hear the top of the glass tank closing as the water neared the top of it but she was too occupied with the tubes to pay any attention.
The tubes were empty, the cuts that the tubes made were so clean that no blood escaped from her body. Emma didn't dare move or struggle because the more she moved, the tighter the tubes grabbed ahold of her.
They were a lot like snakes in that way, constricting just like she had read about in the books that Hydra made her read. They wrapped around their prey, tightening their hold more and more until the prey's bones started shattering and they suffocated. It was then that the snake would eat them, entirely consume them without even taking a bite. It was surely a painful way to die and Emma could relate to the prey in that moment.
She watched everyone going about their business outside the tank although she couldn't make out their faces very well with the water in the way. Emma could hear their voices but they sounded distorted from underwater.
A flash of color captured her attention as she glanced to her right, spotting the plastic tubing that was latched onto the right side of her body and ran through the outside of the glass tank. It was the same tubing that was connected to the mechanical contraption she had seen earlier that was pumping the mysterious blue substance.
Her eyes widened as she spotted the blue substance begin to enter the plastic tubing and it seemingly made its way towards her. Emma felt her heartrate climb as she started to panic, the blue substance entering the glass case from inside the tubing. She could see the vivid blue coming closer and closer, causing her to try and move away but the tubing only constricted around her more.
There was no escape.
When the blue substance first entered Emma's blood stream she felt nothing.
However, the feeling of numbness didn't last long.
It was only about five seconds later that she started feeling a burning sensation.
The burning sensation only increased as time went on and more of the blue substance was pumped into her body. She tried screaming but it was muffled from underwater. Emma no longer cared about the tubes constricting as she continued to struggle to break free but there was no point. Emma had never felt such pain in her life and she had experienced a lot of pain so far.
Watching her parents die had been painful and then all the training sessions with Rumlow had also caused her pain…not to mention Karpov's beatings but none of it could even compare to the pain she felt in that moment. It felt as if her entire body was on fire as the blue substance entered every part of her body. It even entered through the tubing that went up her nose.
The substance was everywhere.
It wasn't long before Emma had passed out from the pain and everyone on the outside of the glass tank could only watch in fascination as their little project was in progress. It made them wonder whether or not they would be successful with this subject unlike their work with the previous subjects.
Only time would tell.
"Good job, Dr. List, I have a good feeling about this one." Strucker told the scientist. It was the very same scientist that had analyzed Emma before throwing her into the tank. The scientist seemed a little less confident than Strucker was. They had never used the serum on a subject that was as young as the Project before.
"Don't get your hopes up, Strucker. She may not even survive the injection." Dr. List told him honestly but Strucker only smiled. He watched the blonde girl submerged in the tank. She had long since passed out from the pain but the serum was now within her body. There was no going back for her now. When she awoke, she would be a new and improved human being. Far more advanced than even Captain America.
The girl would be the next step in Hydra's progress in creating the perfect super soldier. Or rather...super assassin. The Winter Soldier wouldn't even stand a chance against the young girl when she became of age. The blonde would be stronger, faster, and better in every way. She would be the perfect specimen but she would also belong to Hydra. The girl would be Hydra's property forever.
"I don't think so, Doctor. She's special." He smirked as he thought about the future that the girl was going to set up for Hydra. "You're looking at Hydra's most powerful weapon."
When a certain genius billionaire playboy philanthropist was kidnapped and kept imprisoned in a cave in Afghanistan, Emma was already on her third anniversary of her kidnapping while being kept in a cold and dark Hydra base in Siberia. Although...he wouldn't know about that. Like everyone else, the famous billionaire thought that she, like her parents, were dead. Hydra made it look like a tragic house fire but that was far from the truth.
The billionaire would sit in the cave at night and remember a small girl with blonde pigtails and an adorable smile. A cute little toddler who used to smile at him and cheer him up in a way no one else could. She was the daughter of someone who was a friend, father, and brother to him. A combination of every male figure that he severely lacked in childhood.
The man in the cave remembered going to that small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and spending time with that family that seemed to welcome him into their cute little quiet life in the country even if he didn't always deserve it.
Most of all...the man in the cave remembered having somewhere to go for the holidays.
As he thought about the cute blonde girl, the girl he forced himself not to think about for the past three years with the help of a lot of scotch and beautiful women whose names he always forgot in the morning, he realized how good it felt to have someone in his life that was happy to see him. The feeling then faded as he remembered that he'd never have something like that again.
Emma used to remember the man with the odd facial hair and expensive clothes.
She thought of him often during those first few days at the base after her kidnapping. The blonde hadn't understood death at the time but she understood that her parents were gone and weren't coming back. However, she also held hope that maybe her Uncle Tony would find her and rescue her from the very cold and dark dungeon as if she were a princess locked in a tower and he was her knight in shining armor.
That was just the thing though.
He never came and she soon lost hope.
Her uncle never saved her nor did anyone else for that matter. It was almost like Emma was a forgotten footnote in history. Like she never existed at all. People went about their lives after the supposed death of the Rogers family. The people who were the closest to the family would always carry pain with them wherever they went but they still moved on.
The world went on too for that matter.
It didn't take long for Emma to forget her uncle either. His face, much like her parents' faces, became an empty space in her mind. She soon forgot his name as well. Emma could still remember the idea of him but she no longer remembered him as a person. Her young age and not to mention Hydra's very subtle and discreet brainwashing seemed to erase more and more from her former life in Oklahoma. Soon Emma would no longer have any attachments to her previous life and she would be committed to her purpose in Hydra one hundred perfect.
That's what Hydra hoped for, at least.
More Russian Translations:
С этими расчетами мы договорились: Are these the calculations we agreed upon?
Можете ли вы дать мне показатель выживаемости, и я сравню его с другими предметами: Can you give me the survival rate and I'll compare it to the other subjects?
Какой процент формулы Эркскина в настоящее время в ее системе: What is the percentage of Erskine's formula currently in her system?
Когда мы добавляем сыворотку, какие побочные эффекты мы можем ожидать: When we add the serum what side effects can we expect?