[Hydra agents Kessler and Donner have a fatal encounter with the family of assassins.]
Alaskan tundra - 1400hrs local time.
Monitor duty was boring, but considering it was in the warm where you sat on your ass and ordered other people about all day it was a highly coveted assignment.
It was a good assignment. The base was too far out into the icy tundra to really be stumbled on by accident and the many, many cameras scattered around the corridors and research labs made it easy to keep tabs on the comings and goings of the regular staff as well as security.
HYDRA were beyond paranoid about keeping their research secret and protected after all and who could blame them? Donner and Kessler had watched some projects being assembled during one or two of their monitor room stints. Futuristic weapons, clones - one gruesome experiment to recreate the Iron Man suit.
Kessler and Donner had essentially won the base-wide lottery in landing Monitor Duty and, as such, were currently lording it over the others - telling them where to go, to move their ass - to check out "suspicious" packages in the trash which, inevitably, would be last month's rotten and decayed cafeteria lunch - badly wrapped and disposed of. The trick was cruel to their comrades but was still nevertheless hilarious to the two men sitting in control and eating junk-food as their colleagues retched and cursed them out.
Not technically regulation and definitely something that should not have been there was a small, portable television perched on the desk beside the monitors. It was playing American football.
Kessler and Donner were almost completely focused on that or on the monitors but occasionally one of them would turn around to stare at the vent across the small, cramped room as sounds emanated from it.
'Damn rats.' Donner growled. 'They're in the vents again.'
Kessler rolled his eyes. 'What're you going to do, shoot them? They've already laid poison.' He grunted and turned back to the game just in time to see a fumbled pass. 'Goddamn what are those boys playing at?'
Donner tutted at the shameful display himself before he turned to the monitors. Everything looked normal. He settled back with a bag of Cheetos and grumbled at the occasional noise that came from the vent.
Was it his imagination, or did the noises seem to be getting….louder?
'Damn, those are some big rats.' Kessler muttered but wasn't taking his eyes off the game.
'I don't get how they can live here, I can barely live here.' Donner groaned and attempted to pull his regulation parka up just a little bit further. HYDRA had pumped a lot of money into this facility and on the temperature control for their experiments but the same niceties had not been extended to the security staff - they had to suffer. It didn't help that the portable heater had broken last week, either. At least HYDRA paid well. Very well, for the right skill sets.
The two men became engrossed in the portable tv and tried to ignore the noises coming from the vent. They hardly noticed when the security cameras - one after another - fizzled for a second and then righted themselves.
'Security check in team one.'
'Check in two.'
'Check in four.'
Kessler groaned and grabbed his radio. 'Team three, you missed check in. You're not still barfing into the snow, are you?' Silence. 'Check in assholes or you'll be on trash duty for a month!'
Nothing. Donner looked up from the tv as Kessler swore and began to look through the many security cameras for team three's location. 'They're probably still pissed about seeing the wrong side of Tuesday's meatloaf.'
'The cameras aren't responding.' Kessler frowned. 'I can't pan or zoom.'
Donner cursed the interruption to his football game and slid his chair over. 'You've probably still got them stuck on fixed or they've frozen in place again.'
'All of them?' Kessler demanded.
'What - even the ones in the nooks?' Donner frowned. The outer cameras had been known to short from time to time in the immense cold, or end up getting frozen over completely but several were under things that should have protected them from the worst of the weather.
'All of them!' Kessler hissed. The sounds from the vent were back with vengeance. The noise rattled the cover across the room. Kessler threw up his hands. 'That's all we need.'
'Sounds like they're doing maintenance on the vents. Could be the reason the cameras are down.' Donner hazarded. 'Wouldn't be the first time they've cut the wrong wires.'
'Useless idiots in construction.' Kessler mused, turning over the statement. That wouldn't make this glitch their problem and anything that wasn't security's problem would mean they couldn't be held accountable - Right? Nevertheless he frowned. 'Did you hear anything about maintenance in this morning's briefing?'
That was the point in which the cover for the vent was thrown off, impacting the monitors with enough force to smash at least a half-dozen and something much bigger than a rat launched out of the wall.
Before Donner had a chance to get to his weapon, the little red and green blur was up on his back with a piece of cable wrapped around his neck. He was turning purple as she hauled on the garrotte.
'Donner - damn man - stay still!' Kessler demanded, pistol in hand - but his partner was not listening and was flailing, trying to throw his attacker off.
Kessler glimpsed a pale little face surrounded by thick ginger hair. Judging by the length - a little girl. She was smaller than them by at least half - but was also strong for her size. Enough to keep herself on Donner's back and keep the garotte taut as he fought for breath.
Kessler had no choice. He couldn't let the girl continue to try to kill a grown six foot man. He fired, aiming for her but hoping that the shot would be enough for her to disengage. It missed and impacted the wall behind her. She flinched away from the bullet's trajectory but kept on the pressure.
Donner was going white now. Pale and sluggish.
Kessler shot again and this one sank into Donner's shoulder as he moved. The little girl's arm snaked down and managed to pull Donner's gun out of it's holster while the other maintained a good grip on the garotte - god, how strong was she?!
'Shit, shit, shit!' Kessler snarled and fired again, but this one pinged harmlessly on the wall again as Donner slumped to the floor, his lips blue and his eyes a bulging red.
The gun came up under the man's armpit and fired. The shot hit Kessler square in the kevlar vest and threw him back with all the air driven from his lungs.
He lost his gun in the fall but scrabbled across the floor to get to it as the intruder put one round in the back of Donner's head. She was marching across the room and pistol-whipped him hard. He was pretty sure he'd blacked out for a few minutes.
When he came to, she was sitting in one of their chairs, monitoring the feed and eating Donner's chips.
On the inner monitors, two other people were swiftly moving down the corridors, a man and a woman.
'I haven't been here in over two years!' The little girl was seemingly arguing with herself. Was that what had dragged him back into consciousness? 'I'm trying to find the right project location but this is a security terminal!'
They were looking for something. What were they looking for?
There was a beat of silence. 'I don't know where my uncorrupted files are! They could have been scrapped - destroyed! They could be in storage somewhere else. This is where I was made, there has to be something here!'
The little girl was swiftly moving through the computer's files, reading a few lines of documents before discarding them. Kessler reached up and pressed a panic alarm on his radio which triggered an alarm throughout the upper portion of the facility.
The little assassin whirled around on him and snarled, cheeto dust clinging to one side of her mouth. 'B'lyad'! Should've hit you harder.'
'Hail Hy-' He began as she pulled Donner's gun from her jacket and shot him - this time in a place without kevlar.
'We've got a problem.' She growled as Kessler bled out on the floor. 'They know we're here.' She listened for a moment before she picked up the bag of cheetos and spun the chair around. 'Understood. Rendezvous in five minutes.'
She left him bleeding out heavily - left him to die - staring at Donner's blue and purple face.
What was she? What were they?!
A/N: Request chapter! Nobodythestormcrow requested an enemy POV of everyone's favourite assassin family. I love doing request chapters. This one was a challenge - I'll admit. I hope I did the prompt justice!