Belarus, 1995.
"Again." Her teacher instructed, disdain clear on her face. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her lips were drawn so tight they were almost invisible. The final girl stepped up to the mat where Elena already stood, waiting for her last opponent. Her fists were bloody through the white bandages tied around her knuckles and sweat dripped from her skin. Her vest stuck to her back awkwardly and her hair had fallen loose and caught in the corners of her mouth. She had already beaten seven girls who now lined the far edge of the mat, nursing their various wounds, their punishment having been decided that they were unable to see the nurses to have them treated. Elena raised her fists again, the weight of her tired muscles pulling down on her arms. Her breathing was shallow and slow and her eyes were narrow as she maintained eye contact with the girl in front of her. The skin on her lips was pulled tighter with every intake of breath.
The scientists had taken sudden interest in her sparring sessions as soon as her abilities had become apparent. It was clear they had an agenda for her, they wanted to know exactly what she could do so they could know how much they could use her. What they weren't aware of was that she had an agenda of her own, she had begun to listen in on their thoughts as soon as she had learnt how to control her abilities. She taught herself not to rely too heavily on her telepathy, it was exhausting being in the heads of others, especially when their minds were so warped.
Elena no longer encountered Montgomery, she hadn't even seen him wander the halls of the academy like the other scientists did. It had been six years since she'd arrived in Belarus and the older girls were gifted the privilege of walking where they wanted, within reason. The library for extra reading, the dance studio for extra practice. One of the last things Montgomery had said to her was something a philosopher had said that had influenced the program that would mould her into the assassin she would become.
"They are a horrible plague, poisonous like snakes, except they inflict a worse torture by dispatching their victims with a lingering death lasting three days…Their tail is always engaged in striking and does not stop practicing at any moment, lest it should miss an opportunity."
She had tried to disregard his words as soon as he had finished them but she hadn't been able to stop herself dwelling on their message. She would be like a Scorpion, always poised and armed for a fight, she would not miss a single opportunity… against anyone. She had noticed that the soldiers had begun acting wary around her since the night her abilities became apparent and she couldn't deny it gave her a sense of power.
The girl fell at her feet, the blow that had ended her fight had been a heel kick to the jaw and Elena had felt the bone crunch on impact. Her abilities had made sparring easy, she'd been listening on how the girls planned to beat her before each of them had even stepped onto the mat.
The teacher moved from her position at the edge of the mat and approached Elena as she lowered bloody fists to her side and tried to conceal the relief she felt that it was over. Disdain had been replaced with a look of dignity, as if Elena was now worth something to her and not just a breathing punching bag that could be disposed of if unfit for purpose.
"Unbreakable." She commented, addressing it to the scientists as a soldier entered the room. The two who had been guarding the door saluted him and Elena found herself curious as to his identity, feeling like she had seen him before.
"Unbreakable." Her teacher repeated. "Like steel." The scientists nodded and compared notes whilst the other girls were dismissed. The soldier approached her and looked down with disgust that she was so used to seeing, there was no fear in his eyes, either because he did not know what she could do or because she was not worth his fear.
"If you compare steel to steel, of course it is unbreakable. But the strongest steel will become brittle and break under the forces of Winter." Elena was too exhausted to figure out what his riddle meant but she could sense that her teacher knew exactly what he was saying.
"There has only been one before her who showed as much promise and she is now pride of both this Academy and the motherland. Marakova will follow in her footsteps, of that I have no doubt. The marble survived the Winter and so will the Steel." The soldier huffed in disagreement but retreated regardless. Elena felt a hand on her shoulder and instinct took over as she flinched heavily and stepped away, clenching her fists. Her actions didn't shock her teacher, she seemed to be almost proud of her. She instructed Elena to attend the nurses station, have her wounds tended and be ready for her ballet class. She left the room without another word.
Elena knew to expect another sparring session the next day and true to routine, the girls changed for their session straight after ballet. The teacher was waiting for her outside of the communal dorm and Elena expected to be led to the normal gym but instead she was separated from the other girls and taken down an unknown wing of the Academy.
"You have performed beyond expectation." Her teacher said, deadpan voice bouncing off the walls. "You are unbreakable, I mean this. But people insist that you can be broken and they will try and do this your whole life. You must not let them. You must be steel."
Elena kept her eyes trained on the canvas shoes on her feet as she trod down the unfamiliar hall, the air felt colder with each advancing step. The teacher stopped outside a set of double doors and turned to look down at her protégé, affection was strictly forbidden in this place and she knew that. Not that it mattered, it wasn't affection she felt, but concern as if a pet was about to run in front of an oncoming car and she had no way to stop it. She placed a thin hand on Elena's shoulder and opened her mouth to try and offer some words of comfort, but they failed her and so she resumed her deadpan stance and opened the doors in front of them. Freezing air rushed into the hall and encircled them both, she saw Elena tense out of the corner of her eye before sighing and resuming a calm and collected posture.
Elena followed her teacher into the room and examined the people waiting there. Two soldiers guarded the far door and another, the one who had commented on her sparring the previous day, was conversing with a scientist who looked distinctly out of place. Elena hadn't seen him before and guessed he wasn't residing in the Red Room but when he looked up it was clear he knew all about her. An identical sparring mat to the one she was used to sat in the centre of the room and an unfamiliar figure stood at the far end, partially shrouded in shadow. A shiver ran through her as she examined his face, his eyes were fixed on the floor in front of him and his arms were behind his back, like a soldier stood to attention. His mouth and jaw was covered with a black mask, preventing him from talking. It reminded her of a neighbour she'd met once in New York, he'd had an aggressive black dog that he had to keep muzzled every time he went outside, her mother said it had bitten other children before. Elena knew from the layout in the room that she was going to have to fight the stranger and her teachers feeble attempt at reassurance in the hall suddenly made sense. Concern had been clear and it made her nervous, an emotion she was not comfortable with.
She reached out with her mind, getting broken conversations from the others in the room but when she focused in on her target she was surprised, there was no thoughts in his head at all. He wasn't thinking about how he was going to beat her, how to catch her by surprise. There were just words repeating, they didn't make any sense to her, they seemed to be completely unrelated but they were always in the same order.
The soldier from the previous day turned to Elena and smirked and stepped forward.
"According to your teachers, you are the best the Red Room has to offer." He gestured to the muzzled man behind him. "This is the best HYDRA has to offer. If you can prove yourself, we may have a place for you with us." Elena scowled slightly, refusing to give away the fear she felt, she hadn't felt scared in a long time and it was both terrifying and exhilarating.
Elena turned to her teacher who nodded sternly, silently telling her not to let them down. She stepped to the side of the mat and Elena stepped into the middle, the figure mirroring her movements. He was much taller than her, and she thought, he was even taller than her Father had been. But then again, he could have seemed so tall because she never grew to be above his waist. The man assumed a fighting stance slightly different to hers, there was no defensive fists raised, like he knew Elena wouldn't have a chance to hit him. Her stomach turned when she spotted that his left arm was not of flesh like a normal man, the metal of it glinted under the heavy lights.
…does not stop practising, lest it should miss an opportunity.
"Fight." The soldier instructed.
She managed to block several hits and got a few good kicks in on his ribs – she knew she'd fractured at least two. But when it mattered, her opponent was highly effective. He managed to strike the back of his hand to her ear causing her ear drum to scream and ring, disorientating her hearing and compromising her balance. A punch to her chest in close succession knocked the air clean out of her lungs, and she coughed and gasped for air that wasn't allowed to enter her body whilst still trying to duck from his continuous strikes. She stood too quickly after slipping under one arm and he quickly jabbed his elbow back and she fell to her hands and knees as pain shot through the back of her head where he had made contact her skull. Her traumatised lungs still refused to inflate as she gasped for air and a kick to her back, right between her shoulder blades forced her to buckle under the force and her body hit the mat.
"Enough." The soldier instructed and her opponent backed away instantly. A cough brought up a splattering of blood as her lungs finally relaxed and Elena felt the soothing sensation of air in her chest. She forced herself to her feet - vision blurry and mouth tasting of metallic - and wiped the blood dripping from her ear away on her shoulder, glaring at her opponent who once again stared at the floor like he was in a trance. She retreated to the edge of the mat where the soldier was still smirking and her teacher sighed, Elena decided it was a sigh of both disappointment and relief.
She began to follow her teacher from the room when suddenly an image flashed in her mind and it caught her off guard, this was a new aspect to her powers she hadn't experienced before. Two men were sat at a table in a dark room. One of the men was extremely skinny, skinnier than she remembered, the skin on his face pulled taut against his bones. Matvei Ivanakov was shaking and his eyes were sunken into his skull. The man opposite him looked considerably healthier, in a neatly pressed KGB uniform, the red star moving on his sleeve as he took notes based on what Matvei was saying. He then picked up a small polaroid from the table, showing Darya and Nikolai climbing into the small plane.
"Paris, that's as far as I took them. They went to America from there." Matvei said with a withering amount of determination.
"Thank you, Mr Ivanakov. As agreed you will be handsomely rewarded for helping to expose these traitors." The soldier stood and Elena saw his face for the first time. Her head snapped around to the soldier who stood at the side of the mat, the one who had questioned her resilience, who was smirking still. He paid her no further attention and she couldn't feel the pain anymore for the rage that burned within.
It took only a day for Elena to recover from her injuries, the injections she'd been forced to endure in the Gold Room had made her more resilient to pain, sending recovery times through the roof and transforming sleep into a choice instead of a necessity. She had re-joined the other girls as if there had never been a break in her routine, her steps in ballet were perfect and she continued to spar with the other girls. Her class lessons had become significantly more advanced in the years she had spent in the Red Room, lessons on infiltration, constant exams on languages, of which she now spoke five fluently. She knew the U.S. government system inside and out and most importantly, she knew how to live in the shadows whilst walking down any street in any country in broad daylight. On the outside, her peers could see nothing different, but on the inside, she was perfecting her abilities, mainly through listening in on the thoughts of the other soldiers who freely wandered the Academy and a list was beginning to grow.
At the top, Matvei Ivanakov. Selling her parents to the government after he'd sworn to protect them and costing her mother and father their lives for a bit of money. Second, the soldier he'd sold the information to, Vasily Karpov. She had learnt his name after having learnt the role he had played in her parent's murder, he had led the operation to New York to kill her parents and it was his actions that still had Elena waking up from nightmares in the middle of the night, soaked in cold sweats. Montgomery found himself at third place, he had exposed a dormant volcano in her and used it to transform her into a machine to do his bidding. Into a girl who at the age of eleven, felt years older and didn't fear death, but understood it as her job to deliver it. Her list continued to grow with every passing day. She discovered that almost everyone in the Red Room bar the other girls had a role to play in her being here in one way or another. Her teacher hadn't. Elena was sure of it, but she had made Elena kill Mara, the one friend and Alyona had always taught 'an eye for an eye' and so she joined the names.
She was left to her own devices, most nights. Ever since an incident where her exhaustion had resulted in an outburst of anger that had resulted in Elena somehow forcing a man to bang his own head against the wall until he had knocked himself unconscious. She used these nights alone to perfect her skills, before long she noticed that white sparks would sometimes jump between her fingers when she wanted one of the other girls to do something, like lightning during a summertime storm. She could only get them to sit up in bed or lay back down. The handcuff was annoyingly restricting.
She sparred with the same strange man again a week after the first time, and again the week after that and though he continued to beat her, she could hold out for longer periods of time and eventually she found herself predicting his moves. He had a sequence and whilst it was long, he eventually repeated it and then she held the upper hand.
It was snowing outside the day she finally beat him. She hadn't realised it was happening until her foot made contact with his ribs and he fell heavily to the mat and didn't return to his feet straight away. As she brought her heel down and shifted her weight back onto the foot, she looked up to the soldiers who always accompanied her opponent to and from the Red Room. The smirking stopped and they looked surprised, even a little impressed.
"Finally." One of them said. "You have become steel. Yes, I think we can find a place for you with us, in Siberia."
Elena's teacher stepped in.
"She hasn't yet completed her training here with the girls…" She was cut off the by the soldier who shot her a stern glare.
"From what I can see, she is fully trained. And we will train her ourselves regardless. Next week. We will return for her then."
Elena lay in her bed in the dark that night, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Her teacher had been silent as she had accompanied Elena back to the dorm. Only muttering something about it 'not being under her control' before cuffing Elena to the bed and leaving. Unable to sleep, she tossed and turned, her mind running wild with anxiety-filled thoughts of the frozen wasteland that was Siberia, being trapped with a muzzled dog and soldiers who killed unborn babies.
No.
I've had enough. I've been stolen and trained like a prized animal to dance at their circus. They've made me into this monster so know they're going to see what she can really do.
My chances are slim but I won't let that stop me. It's escape or death.
And I'm not ready to die.