Hhhheeyyyy...
So I know this fic has slowed down a little bit, but I assure you, it's about to pick up again in the next few chapters, so just bear with me
Thank you to Perith99, leeny lenn, carolbarros2001, WhiteRabbit1231, reddani15, and mgben for joining the adventure and also to my reviewers :)
Enjoy
xo
Chapter 16
Undesirable
Back in her hotel room, Lex went through all her notes, examined the files given to her by Nick Fury, and then went searching for anything she could find on the internet that was available to her, but still she could not find the identity of the slimy looking man who had jabbed her with the serum.
Feeling slightly dejected, she started replaying videos from Project Rebirth.
It was an array of videos, including Steve Rogers in training with many other prospective candidates, of Dr Erskine researching the serum and Steve's biology make up and the actual operation involved in transforming Steve. Part way through the video of Steve undergoing the change, Lex's eyes drifted from the screen and lingered on the Royal Bluebell sitting on the window sill of her hotel room directly behind the laptop. Although it had been nearly 24 hours since she had picked it from the ground, it hadn't wilted or died at all.
She thought about the strange circumstances surrounding the flower, wondering if her hunch about the teenage girl she had met was true. The girl looked vaguely familiar, but not in the sense that she'd ever met her before. She just had a feeling that she knew her, or had known her, at some time in her life. She had felt comfortable around her, aside from the girl's strange thoughts about the Red Room.
A gunshot on the video brought Lex's attention back to the screen and she watched as Erskine fell to the floor. The camera filming the operation had captured the assassination, and Lex watched to see the ensuing mayhem. A man ran to the shelving to one side of the operating area with a gun in hand, grabbing a small blue vile, before turning to leave, his face captured on camera.
Lex's eyes widened, she moved to sit forward in her seat and paused the video, rewinding it a few seconds. The image wasn't great, and he looked slightly different, but the similarities were noticeable. She pulled out her phone, bringing up the image she had taken at the bunker beneath The Red Room Academy, holding the phone up to the screen.
It was the slimy man.
She continued to watch the video, as the man escaped the building, Steve and Peggy chasing after him, while the camera continued to film the aftermath inside the lab.
As the video cut, she was quick to go back through the notes regarding Project Rebirth, searching for the after action report of the operation and of the assassination of Erskine.
The notes she found revealed that he was Heinz Kruger, a former Nazi Gestapo officer, turned HYDRA agent. She was disappointed to see he had committed suicide when captured by Steve immediately after his transformation.
"Bugger." Another dead end. She sighed, beginning to think perhaps she may as well give up. She looked back at the files open on the screen and a name stuck out at her.
Arnim Zola.
The doctor who had worked on Bucky, had experimented on him, brainwashed him and Shuri believed he must have used a similar serum on him prior to his fall in 1945 for him to have survived it, so that means he must have known about the original formula... or had the original notes.
She sat up quickly, looking at the files from S.H.I.E.L.D to see if there was anything available on Zola.
'OPERATION PAPERCLIP'
Realising she hadn't read it yet, she opened the file.
In it were journal entries, formulas, weapon designs and videos. She began reading through everything she could find.
She found entries regarding Zola's work post capture, but not much in the way of work before his capture, like on Bucky. And there was certainly no admission that he had, but of course, because he wanted to return to the soldier waiting in cryo-stasis once he was given his freedom from Operation Paperclip.
She felt a pang of disappointment, she was interested to see if her and Shuri's theory was correct. It would have to wait though.
She continued reading to discover Zola had been instrumental in the fall of the original S.H.I.E.L.D and rise of the modern HYDRA, reading into everything she could find, watching videos on his work within S.H.I.E.L.D, as well as some small propaganda videos that were found from his time in Nazi Germany.
One particular video caught her attention. It wasn't about him though, it was about the capture of the HYDRA headquarters in the Bavarian Alps by the SSR, where Zola and Schmidt had been doing most of their work for many years before Steve began to destroy the organisation.
She sighed, pulling a face. "Looks like I'm going rock climbing."
Lex stared up at the huge metal doors of a castle nestled into the biggest mountain of the Bavarian Alps. The castle and the roads leading up to it had been left to go wild after the war. The road was completely inaccessible except on foot, and she had been required to do some climbing, as predicted.
Strewn around the front of the castle were remnants of the war. Barbed wire, disintegrating sand bags, rusted weapons and broken vehicles littered what should have been the castle courtyard as she dropped her large pack to the ground.
She pulled out a small pack, a holstered handgun and torch, attaching the holster to her thigh and dropping the torch into her small pack. She dropped the heavy jacket she was wearing and threw the beanie into the large pack too, instantly feeling the cold air around her in her bodysuit.
She didn't know what to expect inside the castle, but thought it best to be able to move around freely and not be encumbered by a heavy jacket and pack.
Shuri had insisted on making her a new bodysuit before she left, similar to the one she had been given by Clint and Wanda for the fight against Iron Man and his cronies, but with the hopes it would offer her more protection in a fight. It was made with the same Vibranium material as T'challa's. It certainly wasn't any more comfortable than the old one though, as she fidgeted with it slightly.
She slung the small pack onto her back and made a move to the castle entrance, slipping inside silently.
It was dark and smelt damp. Seeing only from the light streaming through the door, she could make out discarded weapons and equipment littering the floor amongst some dried blood stains on the disintegrating carpets and rugs. Of course, the castle had been infiltrated by SSR, so there would have been a lot of action in here.
She reached back into her pack and pulled out the torch, turning it on and shining it around the entrance hall. She was honestly surprised she didn't see any skeletal remains scattered around, they would have looked very at home. She began walking further into the castle, noticing the images on the wall.
Red Skull. Seemed he really liked the look of himself, as his image seemed to feature a lot. She looked up at him thoughtfully. She wondered what the difference was between both their serums. Was it as Erskine suggested, they were each the difference in their results?
Lex continued on through the hallway, looking from side to side carefully, checking around a corner, while shining her torch down the end of the hall, and seeing it led back outside. She turned to the opposite side and saw a staircase that led down and further into the mountain.
She headed down the stairs, keeping a wary eye to the surrounds. The paint was peeling, stones disintegrating and falling from the walls, chandeliers had disconnected from the ceiling and glass beads were scattered across the floor. While she tried to be silent, it was actually quite hard in the old castle, but she pushed on.
The deeper she got into the castle, it became more noticeably modern, the old stone walls changing into a sleek metal, although it too was falling into disrepair and starting to fall apart. She saw many scorch marks along the walls and floors, as well as blood. The metal floors echoed the sound of her feet as she walked deeper into the castle, the noise unnerving.
As she approached a bend in the corridor, a strange mark on the wall caught her eye. It reminded her of a chip in concrete, but this was more like metal meeting metal with great force. She ran her fingers across it. These corridors appeared to be made from titanium, so it had to be an extremely strong metal to graze it like that.
She smirked when she realised what she was looking at. "Captain America," she murmured. She continued walking along the corridor, following the marks, and came across a closed door. "Well, this is inconvenient." She frowned.
Looking around, she found a large slip of metal that was pulling away from the wall, it was thin but strong. She managed to pull it the rest of the way off the wall with a bit of force. She slipped it in the gap between the doors, before pushing against it with all her strength. The gears of the doors began to grind free, allowing the doors a little freedom to move. But not enough.
She shoved a bit more, before slipping her hands into the small gap created. She pushed against the two doors with her arms, straining against the gears and springs that apparently still had some life in them.
"Come... on... aaarrgghh!" Finally, there was a crunch and the left door slid back enough for her to fit through. "Ah, nice."
She slipped through the door, finding herself inside a lab with a wall of windows that overlooked the Alps, but they were shattered with ropes hanging through them. The entry point for the assault, it would seem.
She looked around the lab, it looked like it had been tossed pretty well by the SSR. Any tech in the room had been stripped and only scraps of paper were left lying around, but she began to pick around the room, looking at anything she could find.
The sun was starting to set under the mountains when she finally sat down on a stool and considered the lab completely searched. There was nothing of value to be found here.
Frustrated and angry, she picked up a broken beaker, throwing it across the room and it smashed into a wall. She didn't even notice that she was bleeding from the glass cutting into her skin.
She sighed and stood, beginning to walk back towards the door, knowing she should start setting up a camp for the night before the frigid temperatures got out of hand for even her. She wasn't even half way towards the door when she heard a clicking sound coming from a wall.
She turned, unholstered her hand gun, and aimed it towards the sound. The clicking sound continued, before a projection of Zola appeared from the wall.
"Super Soldier serum detected. Strain... original. Recipient... Alexia Nikulkin... age at time of injection... 16 ... ordered by unknown HYDRA official in 1922... serum developed by ... Dr Abraham Erskine... results... undesirable."
Lex scowled at the projection as she approached it carefully, still holding her handgun ready for the worst. She moved to stand in front of the projection, looking up at Zola's face. His face reminded her of a bulldog, and that wasn't a compliment.
"Log entry - June 12, 1944. The original strain was considered volatile, after the subject broke free from her escort, killing all personnel present and began hunting further personnel of The Red Room Academy."
Lex grinned at the memory, one of the few of her old memories that regularly brought a smile to her face.
"In November 1940, Herr Schmidt used Dr Abraham Erskine's unstable serum on himself, while effective, it left...side effects. In 1943, I removed the chemical component that triggered the override of pain receptors during high stress situations in the original candidate, to ensure the next subject could not get out of hand again, and ensured that the third subject would be more complicit during my experimentation with my new serum in 1943. Subject three, one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th, would also commence tests for cerebral programming during this time."
Lex clenched her jaw. Bucky.
"Unfortunately, he escaped with the help of Captain America. I have not since been able to replicate the serum again due to the interference of Captain America, nor have I been able to reacquire previous assets to ascertain the success of these experiments. I have noted all these changes in my notes with references and dates. Log end."
Lex pursed her lips as she watched the projection disappear, standing still while she considered what to do next. She looked at the wall carefully where the projection had come from, seeing a tiny lens in the wall, but it was protected by a tile wall and god knows what else behind it.
She looked around the lab, before grabbing the metal stool she had been sitting on. She slammed it into the wall repeatedly, causing the tile there to shatter, revealing a small alcove, where the projector and camera were positioned, side by side.
Lex made her way to Switzerland, being careful to avoid any of the cities she had previously been travelling in with Steve or Bucky, and was currently residing in a hotel by Lake Constance.
Now resting after an exhausting day of travel, she sat by the window, playing with the Royal Bluebell flower in her hand. She was still stunned it had survived so long. She realised it must have had some unnatural properties, but the logical mind she maintained struggled to want to grasp it.
She stared at it, considering the information she now had found in regards to her transformation.
While she still didn't have all the answers she wanted, she certainly had some answers. And she had some for Bucky too, Shuri would be interested in seeing the projection.
As she stared at the flower, she considered what she should do next. She still had questions, but the girl in Belarus' words lingered on her mind.
'It doesn't define us. Our past shouldn't define us'
It was a nice thought, but could it apply to her? Should it apply to her?
Her past had made her. If it wasn't for her parents upbringing in Soviet USSR, her father's loyalty to the regime and her training, and then being administered with the Super Soldier serum, she wouldn't be who she was today.
Then again, she could be that and something else, couldn't she? Bucky was proof. He was a good man, with a good heart, but some bad words in his head that meant he was capable of terrible things at the hands of evil people. He was administered with a similar serum, and trained much the same, but when he wasn't triggered, he was fine.
Abraham Erskine believed that only someone with a good heart could have survived the transformation associated with the early serum that she was injected with, without horrible side effects.
As she thought of what Bucky had wanted to do after being forced to tell the doctor about the other HYDRA super soldiers, she recalled something Steve had said to her during his interrogation of her after escaping the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre.
'Well, that is a long time, you couldn't find something more to do than hide?'
Perhaps answers weren't what she needed.
She looked away from the flower finally, looking to her phone and contemplating what to do next. She picked up the phone, finding a missed call there. She opened it up to see a call from Shuri.
She checked the message left.
"Lex, we've got trouble here, I'm not sure it's a good idea for you to come back."
There was the sound of scuffling in the background of the audio, causing Lex to frown and stare at the phone, concerned about what could be going on in Wakanda. She had only been gone for just over two weeks.
While she took into consideration Shuri's warning, she was also itching for a fight. She looked at the Bluebell in her hand. Her mother had changed her mind. She hadn't returned to the USSR, she refused to be the bad guy anymore. Lex could do the same. The difference was, Lex had the means to stop anyone from stopping her.
She grinned then, before putting the flower back on the table beside her, before moving around her hotel room. She began packing her things in preparation to returning to Wakanda.
AAAYYYEEEE
Bring on the action scenes again, this emotional and thoughtful stuff has been killing my brain cells...
xo
Krayzee