Chapter 3

A/N - I still don't own any Marvel related things. Thanks to everyone who has favorited and followed the story so far! If you want to drop a little review, that'd be SUPER cool - but if not, that's okay too!

Just so you know, Italics is generally thoughts or dreams for this. There are going to be some flashbacks in the forms of dreams for a bit to explain some back story!

The Soldier sat by the bed watching Eight sleep for a few hours, flinching to attention at each noise he heard. Theoretically, he knew that they were safe here - the girl on the bed had told him as much - but that didn't stop him from sinking deeper into his paranoia. Everything he knew had changed in the last day and he wasn't in a spot to start taking any unnecessary risks. He played with the bullet he'd pulled from her leg, analyzing the caliber and the rifling that he could see - or the lack thereof. He wracked his battered brain trying to remember any little detail, but his brain just played static.

Frustrated, he stood up and checked Eight for a pulse again, just to make sure. Like every other time he had checked, he still felt the steady beating of her heart thumping under his fingers - but something was different. He raised his flesh hand from her neck to her forehead and he felt himself wince. She was running a high fever and felt clammy, her body shivering slightly. Their enhanced bodies should have been able to start healing from the wounds she suffered already, but here this girl was getting worse on him instead of better. The Soldier grabbed a rag from the bathroom and soaked it in cool water from the sink. He placed it over her forehead, feeling her move her head in the direction of the cool feeling.

"What is wrong with you, Vosem?" he asked himself, knowing that the unconscious girl wasn't going to answer him. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees as both of his hands grabbed his face. This wasn't supposed to be this complicated. He wasn't sure of much at the moment, but he knew in his bones that healing was supposed to be much easier than this for them.

In her fevered state, Eight was dreaming or hallucinating...remembering more things about her past that involved the man with the metal arm.

A six year old Eight sat at a typical kids desk in a classroom of an underground compound. She knew it was underground because it was almost always cold and had no windows. There were 14 kids total in the program, a special learning facility for gifted kids. Looking around, Eight saw 8 boys and 6 girls. They were each named in the order that they arrived at the boarding facility - One through Fourteen or Odin to Chetymadtsat'. She remembered being told that the numbers were assigned to eliminate any peer teasing on the basis of names or parentage.

For as long as Eight could remember, she had been with her classmates. This was a multinational immersion program designed for the gifted children of politicians and world leaders. They were all sent to the facility to learn the skills to needed to be productive members of an ever-changing and multinational society. The students were a wide mix of ethnicities and backgrounds, illustrating the widely cultured reach of the program.

All of their lessons were taught in both Russian and English, the adults at the facility all being addressed as "Ser/Sir" or "Sudarynya/Ma'am". She could recall learning to read and write in both English and Cyrillic alphabets, able to switch easily between the two languages by the time she was 5. On this day in her memory, they were assembling and disassembling 9mm handguns - working toward completing it in a set amount of time. Days where they played with the guns were some of the students' favorites, like a game. Ser enjoyed making it into a race to see who could do it the fastest. Pyat/Five, a boy with darker skin, had come in first on this day, Eight finished in 3rd place.

After they put their guns away, the students were told to line up and follow Ser down the hall to their gym area. Normally, this was the time of day where they'd run or wrestle - but today there were more adults crowded in the room. Eight counted 6 people in workout gear on the mat and there were a large number of others in lab coats and guards in full riot gear.

"Today, you all get to watch the best fighters to graduate from this program," Ser announced before telling the set of 6 year olds to sit at the edge of the mat. "Soldat...spar with Josef." Two men walked out onto the mat. One had longer, dark brown hair and was wearing black pants and a black top, covered by a fitted jacket. The other had cropped light brown hair, his muscles bulging out of his gray tank top. They both had a menacing look in their eye as they squared off.

Eight sat with her legs crossed, watching the two men. Their sparring looked like an intricate dance, each one blocking and parrying like a professional. It was a treat to see for the students, the fighters hardly missed any blocks and when one of them landed a hit the students cheered. During one exchange, Josef had caught the edge of The Soldat's jacket and got him tangled. With a smoothness that amazed Eight, the Soldat shrugged and spun out of his jacket and got Josef tangled in it in the process. He landed a few hard punches to Josef's face before he locked the man in a headlock.

Ser called off the fight then and the two men needed to be separated by the armed guards waiting at the opposite edge of the mat. The student's clapped excitedly, but Eight got distracted by the one Ser called "Soldat." She found herself fixated on his arm, his left arm. It was the prettiest, shiny metal that she had seen. It practically sparkled in the harsh lighting of the training gym. She wondered what had happened to his arm - Did he get hurt in an accident or maybe fighting in a war? She knew that the world could be a harsh place - that's why she and her classmates were in the program. They were going to grow up with the skillset to survive in the dangerous world they lived in.

Ser paired up the rest of the fighters - a blonde woman fought a man who looked asian and then a darker skinned man fought the largest person Eight had ever seen. He looked tall enough to touch the ceiling and he was the only fighter with a full beard. Each one had a unique fighting style which made each sparring match different and entertaining for the students. They all clapped when they were done before they were instructed to stand up and get back into line so they could get escorted to their next lesson. As they were walked out, Eight looked back at the metal armed man again - her eyes meeting his. He looked away first as he was shoved toward another door by one of the guards.

Eight shifted on the bed, causing The Soldier to look back at her. Her cheeks were flushed and her breaths were coming in shallow pants. He leaned his head down and placed his ear on her chest, hearing a faint crackling as she breathed. She had fluid in her lungs, which added to his worry. He took the rag away and re-wet it again, intending to place it back on her forehead, but The Soldier found himself gently wiping away some of the stains of blood on her face and her arms. He heard her whimper quietly before settling back down.

A few weeks later, the students were getting escorted to their lunch when Eight saw him again. She could hear the loud grunts of fighting coming from the gym as they passed and she slipped out of line to investigate. Eight was always one of the lightest on her feet and had already managed to sneak away from her various Sers and Ma'ams on a few occasions. She opened the door slightly and poked her head into the gym to see who was making the noise.

This time when she saw him, The Soldat was in a full black leather uniform and he was fighting a group of armed guards. The metal arm that still fascinated her was on display in his uniform, crashing into the helmets and faces of the guards. She could tell it was a spar because The Soldat was pulling his punches enough to not cause any serious harm. She creeped further into the room, ducked behind some equipment, and watched him fight.

Eight was unable to stop a quiet gasp when she saw an overzealous guard land a hard hit to the Soldat's face as two others took hold of his flesh arm and twisted. The Soldat's bright blue eyes immediately found her own, hiding in the shadows. As he lost concentration, the guards got the upper hand and landed more hits to his face and torso. Her view was blocked by the white fabric of a doctor's coat who had found her hiding spot when he followed the Soldat's distracted gaze. He grabbed her shirt roughly, tugging on the shoulder and dragging her out of the room and down the hall.

She could feel fear gripping her tiny body as Ser appeared a few feet ahead of them, a familiar disappointed look on his face. The doctor and Ser conferred quickly in what Eight recognized as German, but didn't understand. Still - she didn't need to know the language to understand what the punishment for disobedience was. She was going to The Room.

Eight had been sent there once before, after she went sneaking around the facility after light's out a few months earlier. She should have known better than to sneak off again - but she wanted to learn more about the metal armed soldier. Now, Ser was pulling her toward The Room, yanking roughly on her small arm.

The Room was more of a closet or a crawl space, pitch black with a ceiling low enough that the 6 year old students needed to squat to fit inside. The floor was a freezing cold metal that was covered in a film of frost or ice. This made it impossible to sit down inside, but with the low ceiling she couldn't stand up either. She felt tears well in her navy blue eyes as Ser opened the door and pushed her inside. She slipped and fell down onto the freezing metal hard, springing back up to a squat as he shut the door. Eight shivered in the pitch black, hoping she wouldn't be left in there for long this time.

"Kholod...led...led…" Eight whimpered, loud enough for The Soldier to hear. "Slishkom kholodno." She was whining about being cold and ice, being too cold. He went back to the bed and saw her shivering more vigorously now. He felt her forehead again and she was burning up still, yet muttering about being cold. Her breathing was more labored now and he could tell that she was slipping into a panic about something. The Soldier shook her as gently as he could, trying to rouse her from her dream.

"Vosem'...wake up, you need to calm down…" he tried, pleading quietly with her. Her breathing grew more ragged, wheezing painfully through the room as The Soldier watched a tear slip down her bruised cheek. He felt utterly helpless, watching her suffer through whatever nightmare she was reliving.