Chapter 2

Four am: sixth of May.

Dim light filtered through the blinds, casting dappled shadows across the walls. A strong ray found Chloe lying sweating feverishly, tossing and turning in a nightmare's dark sway. She sat bolt up right, panting heavily, before descending into a fresh bout of pained sobs. She leaned her head against the chill steel walls of her bedroom, trying not to let her last mission replay once again. The station master had been as innocent as they come and she'd put poison in him just because he saw a train.

Breathing heavily, she stood from her dark corner and looked deeply into her fractured reflection. Staring at her cracked mirror, she saw only her psychotic self; the parts of her that had been shattered and broken, then stitched back together into a twisted freak that, savagely, hated her deeds, but loved the feeling of pushing her blade into the heart of a man and watching him die. The parts of her that had been genetically modified to make her an biologically engineered assassin, and the superior version of her kind. But no amount of physical enhancement would make her any better. She was a monster. She stifled an angry sob. She couldn't take the sight of herself another second; she punched the mirror. Again and again she struck the glass, fighting until blood flowed between her fingers.

She splashed her face with water, stinging herself with its bitter chill. A splinter of glass fell from her trembling grasp, clinking quietly as it dropped into the basin next to a hundred others just like it. She pulled on her drab, grey uniform, carefully stitching the fresh scratches and tears from her last few minutes, silently suffering as the needle aggravated her healing wounds. She pinned Hydra's crest over her heart, before turning and leaving, slamming her door behind her.

The cold wall of the complex loomed menacingly over her as she walked the maze of corridors towards the training halls. Shadowed glances were tossed at her from everyone she passed; their judgments already made, her fate already sealed in their minds. To them she was just another dead girl walking. They weren't wrong, that much she knew to be true; however, she knew they placed their attention on her to ignore the fact that they shared the same fate.

A group of guards shoved past her as they walked. She knocked against the walls heavily, sighing.

She turned toward them "People aren't doormats. Step on me and I'll step on you."

The guards paused; they stared down at her, their dark helmets peering through her.

"Who g'ya think you are, kid? Saying things like that." The largest of them shoved her back against the wall "Word of advice, Pipsqueak: Don't make threats you can't follow through on." He pulled back, laughing with his friends about how cool they were ( and not at all jerk faces ).

She grabbed him by his shirt "Who says I can't?" She asked, then smashed his head against the concrete floor, listening as the metal helmet caved under the pressure, and the bones in his nose shattered.

"Word of advice, Douchebag." She pressed her head against his ear "I always follow through. Got it?"

He nodded meekly "good." She hissed. She stood over his quivering form, then turned and walked away, stepping on his back as she went.

She shook herself from her fantasy, highly aware that such behaviour would end with a hole being pierced through her body. No matter how much she wished she really could have smashed her heel on that male's neck.

Hurriedly moving forward to the training hall beyond, she caught a glimpse of her brother heading into the hall next door.

"Hey, Adi! How's the eye?" She smiled to him secretly. Meters away, he had to stifle as gasp.

"Hey, Chloe. It's doing better than you. How are your lungs? Last we got to talk you couldn't br-" he broke off mid thought, struggling to get the words out right "you were having some trouble."

"I'm absolutely terrible! Today is going to be shit!" She laughed internally.

His laugh joined the chorus "Glad your in good spirits. I have to go, sorry. Practice is about to start." Their private line went quiet before she could even say 'I love you'.

The problem with telepathy is that you can't always finish your thoughts.

Today's lesson was target practice, and not the kind where you're aiming at a piece of cardboard, or even holding the gun. The exercise had only one rule: WIN. Failure would be a one way ticket to hell.

Chloe pulled her blades and tightened her Kevlar guards, watching the animatronics prepare to fill her full of lead. These guys were no joke; she'd seen them carry the washouts out from here in body bags.

The start whistle sounded, before being promptly drowned out by the sound of rapid machine gun fire. She dodged the bullets effectively, listening to the sound of metal on metal as her blades ricocheted the ammunition into the mechanical brains and hearts of her preprogrammed assailants.

Dashing forward through the the barrage of death, she ducked through the legs of one of the androids, tearing through it from crotch to forehead. Throwing knifes lodged explosively in crucial circuitry, blades slicing limbs like warm butter. She grew weary of play, a challenge was what she wanted. She sheathed her blades, grinning madly (Cheshire Cat, eat your heart out). Her fists punctured like cannon fire, legs hitting as though bulldozers. By the time she was done, the room was a mess of electrical parts and oil spills. She breathed gently, letting out the week's tension in a single minute.

Chloe's time impressed; her time always did, but today was her best yet. Her handler nodded curtly in her general direction, more acknowledgement than some agents got in a lifetime. She grabbed a seat up by the window, eager to watch her classmates take their lessons. She knew she was the youngest in the class, but that didn't stop her from being light years ahead of her competitors. The other girls knew the same, and hated her guts for it. She pulled the grenade out from under where she'd just sat down and forced her hair pin into the empty space where the pin had stoppered the explosive. She tossed it over to Kim (the world's most pathetic arch rival, if ever there was one) sitting a couple rows behind her "Try harder where it counts, and you won't need that for me anymore." Kim blushed furiously, murder etched on her brows and shining as a promise in her gaze, shoving the grenade into her bag before their handler saw it. Chloe shook her head sadly, yearning for a life where she could be laughing with the girls around her instead of fending off murder attempts; That life would never happen.

The next few girls limped out, nursing fresh wounds. One of the girls didn't come out at all. The grim sight of the body being dragged from the room made her stomach churn faster. The churning lurched to a stand still all at once. Across the room sat a young girl, about three years younger than her, who wasn't supposed to be a part of this class. Her heart pounded at the sight of the girl; the girl whose name was Bianca. Chloe had known her since a few years ago when she'd started training alongside Chloe in and effort to accelerate her training process. Bianca was one of the rare few she actually cared about, rarer still was the fact that she actually had a family.

She was the child of Captain Patrick Harping and Sargent Lu Peng, two people who lived their lives solely for the purpose of raising their daughter. The sad truth was that protocol dictated that they could see each other only once a year, with permission from the higher ups. The loyalty complex: a strict system to keep people in check by restricting the access of parents to their children, meaning that the parents will remain obedient or else they see their child in a different form.

The form of a corpse… or worse.

The family only (officially) got to be together once a year; however, she knew for a fact that they had more contact than The Barons would ever know. An underground system existed to combat this issue, by covertly swapping shifts and name tags to get the family together in the same place at the same time. They would subsequently disappear for a short while, before reappearing again with no one the wiser. All unofficially of course (so shhh!).

She tried desperately to work out what was going on, even trying to contact Adi to no avail. The Handler directed Bianca into the lesson room, giving a brief explanation of her task, before shoving the door closed on the now panicking girl. Chloe tried to offer some encouragement from her side of the glass, hoping that the child could survive the next few minutes.

The exercise stared surprisingly well, androids fell steadily as Bianca navigated the space between the bullets. After a few minutes, half the bots were parts on the floor. Then The Handler turned up the difficulty level to a place only Chloe had ever been able to successfully survive. Bianca began to falter, narrowly avoiding getting clipped. Her Kevlar guards gradually began to fill with shattered lead. A simple misstep was followed by a sudden burst as one of the machines nailed her in the shoulder.

Chloe could take it no longer! The girl was no match for the onslaught that was coming down on her! This was madness, pure and simple. She would know. Nobody could in good conscience call her a friend and sit idly by… no matter what the consequences might entail for her.

"Handler!" Chloe was well aware that reason would fail to reach him. Still, words first, as Adi likes to tell her (and she likes to ignore in favour of shooting her problems in the femoral artery).

"You don't get to talk," He whirled on her, a harsh slap colliding with the side of her face. "Do I make myself clear!" She nodded. There was no way she could talk him into anything.

Time to solve this her way.

She pulled her blades and pushed from the bench, propelling herself through the glass into the battle zone. The Handler's protests were heard and ignored. She deftly deflected the bullets away from Bianca, throwing herself into the moment more than she'd ever done before. Time slowed as she tore through the metallic ranks, splintered parts ignited in her fury, falling in cascading sparks.

The robots fell to pieces spontaneously under her touch. Her heavy pants were the only thing pervading the new silence. She ran to Bianca, throwing her arms around the smaller girl protectively "Hey, Bibi. I'm going to fix this, okay. Hold still and this will happen much faster." She pulled a needle from her belt and quickly threaded it. The smaller girl whimpered, but held her nerve. Chloe knew a lot of things, but the thing she knew was how to stitch a wound. The stitches closed instantly under her steady, experienced hand. A smooth piece of gauze wrapped the wound carefully, absorbing the remaining blood. "There we go." She said gently "all better. Up you get now, there's a good girl." The two rose unsteadily.

Bianca looked up at her with big pink eyes "Thanks, Chloe. I'm glad you're here." She slumped into her strong arms, unable to proceed any further.

"It's okay now," She trailed her fingers across her friend's cheek, the way Bianca's mother did to soothe. "I'm so sorry, Bibi. You should never have been here." She placed the girl on the bench before the window, tucking her bag under her head as a sort of makeshift pillow.

The Handler's eyes bore into her from behind "You're gonna pay for this! YOU LISTEN TO ME! I SAID NO TO GOING IN THERE, AND YOU BREAK A WHOLE WINDOW INTO SHARDS! EXPLAIN!"

"No. I'm not going to explain anything to you. Children aren't meant to get shot, so you're going to explain why you sent her in there, or I'll turn your head into a broken window!" She spat, plunging her fist through one of the remaining panes of glass.

"Because you care. You're not supposed to do that, Kid. I give an order, you listen. It's THAT simple."

"well, maybe, you're orders are dumb! And, maybe, I shouldn't care, but you and I both know that me caring is the only thing keeping you alive right now," her blade called enticingly to her, begging her to let lose her fury against him. The instinct she'd fought her entire life seemed to good in that moment to resist… "so tell me, should I stop caring now?"

She helped Bianca through the halls towards her bedroom. She wished Adi was there to help them through, carefully supporting them in his powerful arms, his sweet voice giving strengthening words of encouragement. Adi wasn't there; they were on their own. She winced suddenly as a sharp pain erupted from her abdomen. She let her free hand rest across her side, silently cursing as her fingers found fresh blood. Adrenaline had coursed through her body, acting as a sedative of sorts; the pain was hindered no longer. To fall was always to be a death sentence, the weak would be shed as easily as dead skin, so she kept walking.

"Bianca! Bianca! Bianca, Wake up!" Chloe clapped her across the back of the head. The girl flew to consciousness, babbling about robot-alien-ninjas trying to steal a magic, singing grapefruit. Chloe laughed, but passed as her young friend winced as she put herself to rights, nursing a fresh bump forming on the back of her skull.

"You do realise you hit like a truck, right?" Chloe shrugged "Glad you're so self aware. You do that to your brothers?" She asked crankily.

"Like Makoto could take it; he wouldn't last ten minutes with a knife lodged in his throat. Then again, I'm not sure people are really supposed to…" she replied thoughtfully. Bianca noticed the fresh stream of red flowing steadily from Chloe's side.

"You've been shot." She pointed out, getting up to grab a needle, beginning to sew the holes in her uniform.

"Yeah, well, so were you. Any chance you could pass me the pliers?" She caught the tool as Bianca tossed it over to her. She pushed the two points inside the wound, pulling out a small piece of metal casing, before pulling out several more. Quick stitches pulled tight the opening, repairing the busted renal artery before she could bleed to death (again).

"Sorry you got hurt, Bibi. Handler is a jerk. Next time, I'm going to put my knife in his heart and just carve." She paused before adding "if there is a next time. I'm probably gonna get blown over this."

She ran her fingers over the tight steel collar running the length of her neck, nervously pulling at it in some vain attempt to make it miraculously give, and let her breathe. Her eyes fell upon the other girls neck; the same story, only the book had more pages left. She sighed, plopping down on the sparse wool blanket next to Signor Butterscotch. The wise, old donkey deflated comfortingly, as though trying to offer reassurance of some kind. She fingered his buck teeth, running her fingers over the familiar grooves, coming to rest on the tiny, indistinguishable, latch that concealed her darkest secrets.

"How's Adi? Haven't seen him for a couple of weeks now, his shoulder growing back okay?" Bianca burst her quiet thoughts like a balloon.

"He's cool. Got a black eye. I hid it for him…" she mumbled, acutely aware of the great disapproval her friend held in regard to her constant camouflage.

It was so easy for Bibi to forget how it felt to look in the mirror and see a tapestry of scars disfiguring your body. Sometimes it was just easier to pretend.

The girls said their goodbyes at the bedroom door. The next training sessions were due to start in the next few minutes, so they hugged and ran.

Chloe wondered if this was what school was like for the normal kids. Intel she'd scavenged in the past led her to believe it would also involve social hierarchy and preying on the weak, but it also seemed to be about protecting children and helping them be the best they could be. She thought how cool it would be to have colourful pens to do homework with; having a meal of her choosing like a queen; to learn about things other than bombs and bullets, like maths and theatre (she was made for drama club) and a locker with things to put inside it. Sure, she'd still need a uniform for school, but she'd get to have days where she could wear whatever she liked, and a free period to chat with Adi over. But the best part of school? Kids don't get hit. Apparently, in the "real world", hitting children was supposed to be tabu, even illegal in places. Here? There hadn't been a day of her life without so much as a slap to the face, or a boxed ear.

To go to school would be cool, she thought, but dreams were never a reality. Not for her at least.

One step out of line here and the collar around her neck would end it all then and there. A fiery explosion would be her end.

Blows rained down either side of her, pummelling fists striking the air her form inhabited merely a fraction of a second ago. Her opponent was a girl almost five years older than her; larger, stronger and more experienced. But slower, and paid more attention to her offensive then her defensive. Chloe ducked a strike aimed at her skull, missing her forehead by a bead of sweat. She looped her leg around the girl's neck, planting her foot squarely against her chest. She pulled the girl down, turning her size against her, throwing her above her head and smashing her head against the ground. Hard.

She disregarded the pooling blood at her feet, ringing the bell to signal her victory. Her's was the first of many, after a short time a cacophony of bells tinged through the air. Chloe braced, turning to face her new opponent.

She made the final two in less than seven minutes and twenty six seconds. Her goal in sight, she lay down the restrains from her efforts, preparing to make the last bout count. The bell sounded to begin, dinging once more before it had even finished ringing. Her dissatisfaction was evident, glaring at her adversary's battered figure as it lay, sprawled, across the floor. Fighting her came with a simple rule: fight her, you die. Run from her, and you die. This was as constant as getting burned if you're playing with fire. The sad part: nobody had heard the rule, and lots of them learned it too late.

"I'm so glad today is over. Seriously, my fractures have fractures, and I think those do too!" Adi lamented from his perch atop her dresser, rearranging the crumpled folds in his overly flexible arm.

"Come on, Adi." Chloe chuckled softly "If you talk like that you'll get your tongue out. Besides, it's not like you're gonna die from a couple hundred broken bones," She added nonchalantly.

He rolled his eyes "Three people died, today alone, due to severe damage sustained to their skeleton. But I think I'll be fine, thanks for the concern, Chloe. So sweet of you." He frowned, folding his arms across his chest.

"Oh please." She smiled at him "You know I love you. Sorry I didn't offer a letter of condolences, I was busy getting shot."

He goggled at her "You got hit! Why did you not tell me sooner! Did you disinfect? You alway forget to clean the injury before sewing shut!" He fumed. She made silent thanks for her timely omissions. Were he to hear the rest of the day's brutality… it would break his heart more then her body's tormented splinters.

She eyed him amusedly, enjoying his overreaction (which was, in fact, entirely reasonable, even with certain omissions having been made).

"Calm down," She crooned. "It was only a little thing." She held her two fingers up to him, trying to indicate that it was nothing of consequence. "You act like we've never had ammo slice us before. Remember the time you got stuck with an ancient crossbow bolt, it was hanging out of your arm for three straight hours. You were so panic-y." She rolled dramatically across the bed, moaning softly about how this would be her end, letting her eyes spin back into her head, feigning death.

"Ha, ha. Everyone is a comedian." He threw Signore Butterscotch at her head. She caught him playfully. She moved him like a marionette, tauntingly forcing him towards her brother.

"Rargh! I'm the EEEVIIL SIGNORE BUTTERSCOTCH! AND I AM HERE TO… give you kisses!" She made silly kissing noises, tapping his soft nose across Adi's face.

"No! Kisses! My only weakness! Oh… ugh…" he splayed across the floor "I'm dead. Very dead."

"Really? Hmm. Guess I'll just have to steal your old blankets, you sure don't need them anymore." She leaned down "Because you're dead. Dead as a dodo in fact."

He laughed; she joined him. The two stayed together, side by side, laughing, until morning came.

When morning comes to most of us, we smile and get ready to start the day, or roll over again and go straight back to sleep. For The Children of Hydra, it brought only tears.