There was no way she'd be able to tell you were she was. Somewhere down South. Somewhere remote. Somewhere eerie. Somewhere far from Avengers Tower.
Somewhere far from home.
They'd been doing this for months. Catching up on trails. Keeping up on leads. Following wherever those leads took them, only to come up to a dead end. They never found anything. but they kept looking. She felt like she owed her father that much. After everything he did for her, this was her repayment. But she was still in the middle of nowhere.
She was still very far away from home.
In all honestly, this wasn't how Katie had thought she'd repay her father for everything. But one night, it just came to her. She had a dream. A memory. She could remember Stucker and List talking. One of those are moments when they thought Katie was completely unconscious .
"He may be lost, back the asset always comes home. The asset always goes back." They would say.
Katie lifted her flashlight. Like she'd said before, this place was eerie. And dark, very dark. It was so damp, she could hear the steady rhythm of a water drip from somewhere inside. Ever so carefully, she took a slow step inside. The handle of her electro-sword beating against her leg.
"You know, I was never to fond of the dark."
Katie couldn't help but roll her eyes at Sam, who was just a few steps in front of her. He had his own flashlight held up, shining it off the dirty, rock walls around them.
Sam was more of a friend at this point than a therapist. She finally saw the real Sam. But she still went to him. Like when she got that dream about Strucker, Katie went to Sam. She had no clue what the dream meant, but he got it right away. It seemed like the word asset meant something to him. And even more so to her father.
After a few information sessions and a lot of training, Katie and Sam were off. Traveling to all the places the asset would consider home in America, while the rest of the team set off to look for Loki's scepter.
"There are scarier things than the dark, Sam." Katie shot back. She continued walking down the very wide hallway. A rat ran out before her, causing Katie to take a small step back before continuing on.
Katie heard Sam mumble something under his breath that was too low for even her to hear. Then silence fell around them. Sam kept one hand on his gun, the other holding up the flashlight Katie kept both hands on her flashlight as she followed behind him. She didn't touch her sword. She had yet to use it. It was an Avengers weapon. Katie didn't know if she was an Avenger anymore.
They walked down a flight of stairs. The air around them got damper and darker as they went down. The place looked like an abandoned lab of some sorts.
Why anyone would want to come back here was beyond Katie.
Some time passed by and they had yet to find anything. The place had to have been abandoned for at least a few decades. Which made sense. They'd found this place deep in one of HYDRA's old files. It was only mentioned twice, but it was worth a shot to give it a look around.
"Katie," Sam let out a sigh of defeat. She knew what he was going to say. "I think we should head back to base."
Katie wasn't listening. She kept on looking around. She didn't know why. Maybe it was the fact that this place looked so much like the lab that she was experimented on in. But this place felt different. All the other times they'd looked through old, long abandoned HYDRA bases, Katie always felt defeated at the end. But this time, there was almost like a buzz in the air. This time was different.
Then she saw it. In the darkest corner on the room, she saw it. An old, narrow hallway.
"Katie." Sam tried again, but Katie was already making her way towards the hallway.
It was a short hallway. Katie could hear Sam lightly calling out for her before the sound of his boots thumping across the floor filled her ears. But Katie didn't stop. That feeling got stronger the further she moved down the hallway, until she reached the end.
She was suddenly standing in a very small room. It was almost like a cell. Her eyes and flashlight did a sweep of the room before they both stopped on a figure in the corner, and she froze.
"Katie." Sam came up behind her. "What are you…"
Sam trailed off as his eyes and flashlight moved to the far corner. Katie heard Sam swear under his breath. But she still couldn't move. She couldn't move her eyes away from the broken figure in the dark room, her flashlight dancing off his metal arm as she let out a breath.
"We found him."
I Hold On.
Part lll.
Coming October 21st, 2015.