Deep Cover, Chapter 4
The Asset had been out of storage for more than a month now, and it was beginning to feel a sort of restlessness itching beneath its skin. At first, it had dutifully reported these feelings to Designation!Karpov, but the punishment hurt, and nothing else was done; after the third Recalibration in the space of three weeks, one of the laboratory technicians (Designation!Semenov; unremarkable, slight, and nervous) had pulled Designation!Karpov aside. The Asset should not have overheard the conversation that followed (it was none of its business what its Handler and Chief Technician discussed) but it had been told to stay put where it was, and it had not been told to plug its ears. While the Handlers always took note of the Asset's enhancements when they were of use in the field, few noted that its enhanced strength and heightened senses were not removed with his mask and gear. Even had they, it was not likely that they would have cared, on the grounds that the Asset was programmed not to question its orders or undermine the Hydra Mission.
"Herr Karpov, sir," the technician began, fiddling with the pad of yellow paper in his hands in a manner that suggested unease. "We can't wipe the Asset again."
"What the hell do you mean, Agent? The Asset will be inoperational soon; it is already reporting anomalous feelings, and the cams show that it is constantly restless in its containment chamber. We can't not wipe him!"
"Sir, brain tissue is a delicate matter. Just because the Asset's increased healing rate and metabolism have thus far prevented damage doesn't mean that we can keep wiping it at this rate; another month and it'll be a vegetable, Super Soldier or not. Send it on more missions, or give it some sort of enrichment; if it gets really bad, we'll have to wipe it, but we can't do it for at least another month. No matter what."
Designation!Karpov took a step in Designation!Semenov's direction, closing in on him. The look on Designation!Semenov's face was something the Asset had only seen on targets he'd had cornered, about to be killed.
"Despite what you…scientists seem to think," he said, putting extra emphasis on that fourth word, "We can't spend all our time babysitting the Asset. Unless you'd like to take that job? Go on, say you will. I could use the entertainment. Wonder how long it'll take before the Asset tries to break you in half. Enrichment! Nesusvetnaya! Either you recalibrate the Asset, or you mind your own blya business!"
Designation!Semenov shrunk back. "I will not be responsible for breaking the Fist of Hydra," he said, but his tone and his words seemed to be different from each other.
Designation!Karpov snarled, then turned away, boots heavy and sure on the dull concrete. "Soldat!" he bit out, and the Asset tensed just as the technician had, although it made certain not to show the response. "Come with me!"
The Asset followed in perfect silence as it was led back to its room.
"Mission tomorrow," Designation!Karpov told it tersely, throwing a momentum-less kick at the Asset as he departed. He had not fed the Asset, or given orders that it might sleep or relieve itself. That night, the Asset slept despite the lack of orders, and woke with fragmented images flashing behind its clenched eyelids. It was trying to be good, it was, but it couldn't stop thinking about what it had seen, the people that seemed almost familiar and the places that made its throat clench up against any conscious thought.
Then it was fed and collected for its mission, and, for a moment, the buzzing noise and chaotic color in its head just faded away. Everything happened with the same comforting familiarity of a well-loved pistol grip sliding into hand, the buckles and straps of its uniform sliding into place, the mask slipped comfortably on, its favorite VSK-94 strapped on close, and knives slipped into more than 20 sheaths. HYDRA agents gathered around it, and Designation!Karpov gave it last minute orders, before it was bundled into a nondescript car for transport to the place of deployment.
The mission itself though was a colossal failure, despite the Agents around it conducting themselves perfectly. The Asset just could not concentrate! It missed its target for the first time since its initial deployment more than forty years ago, distracted by a butterfly, a beautiful shining thing that the Asset did not quite know how to describe, except that it was a color between the brass fittings of a good pistol and the pale color of a bruise which has almost healed. It turned back the target only moments later, but the man had already moved, and had the rifle not jammed the Asset would have missed the shot. It was probably the first time in the Asset's experience that it had been grateful for a jammed weapon, for though it knew of its failing, the Agents did not—to their unenhanced senses, it must have looked as though it had taken the shot at the proper time, and had been foiled by the weapon malfunction. It did end up locating the target and killing him with a single headshot, but it was still brought back to Designation!Karpov for discipline when it was discovered that it had taken the initiative to clean its weapons itself, as it had finished its mission with plenty of time before the extraction and it had had too much adrenaline buzzing in its veins to stand in parade rest the entire time.
It was sent out again very soon after that, to kill a Polish politician who must have had second thoughts about allying with HYDRA. It finished the mission as smoothly as usual, using a capsule of some untraceable poison cracked into the target's tea, but there was something curiously familiar about the part of Poland which it had been deployed in. It had four hours before extraction, and though it knew on a subliminal level that its Handler probably had trails on it, it felt that there could be no harm in scouting the area for a short time. It wandered through a market, wondering at all they sold there, for it didn't normally get a chance to explore unless it was required to blend into its surroundings for a reconnaissance mission. There were men and women playing instruments, gathering coins in cans or containers at their feet, and street artists (a flash of blond hair and paint stained hands, accompanied by a blistering pain shooting through its skull). It stumbled, swaying, and upset a basket of some sort of fruit, so that the seller barked at it in Polish, and it haltingly tried to gather up the fruit until the woman waved it away, still jabbering.
It retreated to a side alley, only to realize it still had a few of the fruits clamped in its hands. It looked at them for a moment—they were dark, like dried blood, one of them had been crushed, revealing a hint of sunshine-colored fruit inside. The Asset hesitated. Glanced around. It was hungry, and although it had been forbidden to eat during missions, there was no one to see…
They tasted like sunshine, too. The Asset gulped them down, suddenly ravenous. It tasted bright and sweet on its tongue, and the Asset ate the first one in three bites, starting in shock as it encountered a woody something at the center of the first one, then realizing that it could chew around it and that all the fruits contained one. A pit, it thought, in a flash of color and sound, and wondered how it knew that word. The first fruit was a bit tangy, but the next one was sweet, and the Asset had tasted sweetness only once before, when it had pleased Designation!Kant and been offered such as a reward. Normally it had only the thick tasteless fluid that was its ordinary fare, or the foul-smelling blue gel-packs it was given on extended missions.
The fruits were not enough. The Asset slunk back, light-footed and silent with its training, and managed to catch hold of a crate of the same fruit and vanish with it down the same alley. It gulped down the entire crate in mere minutes, wiping the sticky evidence of its subversion from its face as it might warm blood, then returning to the extraction point and waiting for its team, but it was futile, because the fruit seemed to sit oddly in its stomach and it was unable to keep them down. Designation!Karpov administered immediate punishment for both the unauthorized action and the souring pulp which had contaminated its gear.
Things continued on like this for another month. The Asset was put under direct guard once, but the inept team of agents it was with ruined its mission, and after another equally disastrous attempt, the Asset was once again ordered to complete its missions alone, save for the agent shadowing it to cover its tracks and make any footage or news stories unceremoniously disappear. It managed to complete the next few missions with reasonable haste and minimal malfunctioning (although if it spent a few minutes afterwards looking at the sky or the foliage around it as it returned to the extraction point, who would know?) and only earned itself discipline once, after a difficult mission where it had been required to stake out a resort in the snow. The target had not appeared, so it had used the unoccupied space of time to construct a replica of the Siberia base in the snow and improve an imagined security system, as it was too cold for its normal down time exercises, and it had been unable to force itself to stay in the snipers' blind unmoving for three long nights.
Then came the days when it was not required to be deployed. HYDRA was lying low, and the few interventions and assassinations required were to be carried out by more careful hands than its own, as the Asset was a last, most brutal resort plan. It paced in its chamber, night and day, and, when it was let out for training, broke every machine and let the sand out of every heavy bag in the training facility, unable to stop itself and unwilling to take its frustration out on the agents around it. It broke its metal arm smashing its fist into one of those bags, and for this, and the wanton destruction, Designation!Karpov and his men punished it, but it was trained not to flinch at any blows, or anything else, and at length Designation!Karpov called off his agents, and snapped at the Asset to follow him. It was led down to the lower part of the base, and something within the Asset quivered at the thought of Recalibration, but when they reached the door to the Recalibration Chamber, Designation!Karpov moved past it, and led the Asset down to a different room—equally familiar (inasmuch as anything could be familiar to the Asset) but less unnerving. There the Asset endured three hours of several technicians pulling wires inside its arm until at last the pain was reduced to a level which would not impede functionality and the arm could move in its normal rotational parameters without sticking or grinding. As the technicians tinkered, the Asset listened in silence to the shouting match going on outside the door.
"This cannot go on, Semenov! The Asset is getting erratic and dangerous. It'll be slitting our throats before long, unless we have it wiped!" Designation!Karpov was saying furiously.
A shuffle of feet. "Do you want your precious Asset to be a drooling mess on the floor? Cause that's what the Chair is going to do to it if you don't give its synapses enough time to heal. Sir," Designation!Semenov added after a half second, and the Asset felt a flicker of…something…go through its body. One of the technicians remarked that its vital signs were starting to go erratic, and another responded that it was probably just its brain responding to the biofeedback.
"Well what do you suggest, then?"
"Tell me, sir, have you ever had a dog?"
"Don't get cute with me! What does that have to do with anything?"
"If you had a dog, you wouldn't lock it up in the house all day, would you sir? A dog needs exercise and enrichment, especially one of the more intelligent ones, or it will start chewing your shoes and shitting on the floor."
"And?"
"When have you ever given the Asset anything to do that wasn't related to missions or training? It may not be able to be wiped, but you can give it a task to do as a distraction, and that will keep it busy and under control."
"Do I look like I have anything for it to do?"
"Sir, there are probably hundreds of things to do around here. Have it do laundry or chop potatoes for goodness sakes!"
"Are you saying that I put the Fist of Hydra to work doing menial labor?"
"I'm saying that you give the poor thing some enrichment before it goes mad, sir," Designation!Semenov finished with finality. "If you want, I can take it down to the kitchens myself, and have it chop vegetables. That will put its violent tendencies and knifework to good use without causing any damage."
"Don't bother. I'll do it myself, after maintenance is completed," Designation!Karpov grunted, and then there was nothing more than the shuffle of retreating footsteps, marking the end of the conversation. With nothing else to listen to but the occasional "pass me the screwdriver" from the technicians around it, the Asset let its head fall back onto the seat as much as it was able, biting rhythmically on the gag stuffed into its mouth to control the pain. Its arm hurt—maintenance always hurt—but today its head ached even worse.
Only moments after maintenance was over, Designation!Karpov led the Asset up to the kitchens, where he left it with a terse "Soldat, follow Larkin's orders on what to chop," and a quick motion towards an older woman (Designation!Larkin: seemingly older than forty, probably little more than kitchen staff without knowledge of Hydra secrets, a plain face and ginger hair). Then, turning to Designation!Larkin, he added in English "This is the Asset. It needs to have something to do, so you might as well put it to work. It won't hurt you, and even if it tries, all you have to do is hit that switch."
The Asset cringed beneath its mask; it had only taken one repetition before it'd learned to take that threat absolutely seriously, because the switch on its metal arm, when flipped, deadened the arm and flooded its whole body with incapacitating cramping pain, rendering it unable to follow orders or even do anything for hours afterward. By the time it looked up, Designation!Karpov was already gone.
Designation!Larkin hesitated. "Can you peel and chop these carrots for me?" she said, voice raising at the end as if she somehow expected it to resist her orders.
The Asset glanced over at the big burlap sack of fire-colored roots, and nodded."Ya gotev podchinit'sya," it said, in case she wanted a verbal response, and picked up one of the roots cautiously, laying it on the counter.
"No no no," Designation!Larkin broke in, and the Asset froze in anticipation of pain. Instead, she just took the root out of its hand. "Sorry, the counter's not clean." She said. "We're kinda short-staffed right now, so you're going to have to use a cutting board," she added cautiously, coming behind it. "Here."
The Asset understood maybe five words in ten, but it was clear enough that it was supposed to cut the root on the plank of shaped wood; the countertop did look rather dirty, and the Asset guessed that it would not be safe to touch with broken skin, so perhaps it was also unsafe to prepare food. It laid down another root on the board, than looked over to her. "What size pieces?" it managed, its English rather rusty after years of speaking Germain and Russian.
"Um, here," Designation!Larkin said. "Can I…" she touched its elbow, motioning it aside, then picked up the root, rinsed it, and then scraped off its skin with a small tool before chopping it neatly into even round pieces. "Like that."
The Asset nodded. "Like that," it confirmed, and then repeated the same process. She smiled at it, and that smile was nothing at all like Designation!Karpov's. The Asset felt something bubbling up in its chest, and suddenly, irrationally, wanted to see her do it again. But that anomalous thought wasn't helping it function, so it pushed it aside and chopped the entire rest of the bag of roots the same way, and, after a few hours of following Designation!Larkin's orders without making any sudden movements, she and the other staff in the kitchen started to relax. The Asset, too, gradually began to find itself less tense. It grew to enjoy the work, gradually became more careless, occasionally flipping the knife, or cutting the vegetables in more elaborate patterns. It liked this, the cool metal in its hand and the satisfactory slice of steel through leaves and roots, and it liked even more the realization that these were not targets, who would shriek in fear or pain, or spray blood on its tac gear, but just plants. It was not hurting them. It knew it should no doubt report this after it was collected, but it didn't want to—this feeling was all for it, and nothing would stop it.
This loss of tensions, and these unsanctioned thoughts, were ultimately at fault for what happened next. The Asset was cutting a large, bulky root which bled a red-that-was-not-red, more of the color of those flowers Designation!Whitehall used to keep on his desk…peonies, the Asset thought. Fernleaf peonies. The Asset was distracted, and the root was hard, like slicing through muscle and bone, and the knife slipped before the Asset realized what was happening.
"Ah, Sir! Asset!" The Asset raised its head, turning to look for Designation!Larkin in bemusement. No one called the Asset sir. "You're bleeding."The Asset grunted. It was, but it was not a bad wound, merely a slight gash and a flap of detached skin. "Here—put that down; I'll get you a bandage." The Asset scarcely registered her disentangling the root from its hand, still focused on the single drop of blood, red and wet and mingling with the dark juice of the root on the cutting board. It felt, all at once, as if it was on the cusp of some momentous realization. It had definitely been wounded before, and it had killed countless targets, blood of just this very same color spilling onto its hands and face at close quarters, or painting the surroundings when it made its kill from farther away. Now, looking at that single red smudge, the Asset was suddenly struck. Its targets were all people. Enemies of HYDRA, yes, but still people. But the Asset's blood was just as tacky, and just as red, and just as wet. So what made it different? It looked like an Agent, and it bled just as red, but even Designation!Rollin's cat was treated better, as it saw Designation!Rollins slipping it morsels of meat and such, and it was never struck. Or Recalibrated, as far as the Asset could tell. These very thoughts were dangerous, treasonous, and it should report them…but why should it? What gave Designation!Karpov and the other Handlers the right to give it orders, or tell it what to think, or Recalibrate it? Why did it have a list of words to make it compliant, and they didn't? The Asset knew everything it was thinking now amounted to treason, but…its Handlers didn't have to know, did they? It could still be a good Asset, even if it didn't share absolutely everything in its head. And in that moment, standing in an enormous kitchen, staring at the knife and the cutting board while Designation!Larkin hurried back with a roll of bandages, the Asset decided it didn't want to be an "it" anymore.
And HE raised his head, nodded to Designation!Larkin, and walked over to the enormous sink to wash the blood and root juices off of the cutting board.