Kapitel 7: Chapter 7
February, 2001 (14 Years Old)
HYDRA Facility, Québec
"Hey!"
The hissed whisper sent the Wyvern leaping from her bed, instantly awake, and she dropped into a fighting stance to face her attacker.
Her attacker, who was… Marino. The weedy scientist had backed into the corner at the Wyvern's whirlwind of movement, his hands up. "Whoa!" he whispered, his breath short. "Just me!"
The Wyvern hesitantly straightened, lowering her arms and wings. She slept most nights with the wings now – the Project Leader encouraged her being "the Wyvern" at all times, and she was better able to defend herself. It also meant that she occasionally cut herself in her sleep.
The Wyvern silently watched Marino as he pulled himself out of the corner. She'd been woken in the middle of the night for missions before, but never by the scientists. She waited for an order.
"Come with me," Marino hissed, pulling the door open and ushering her into the corridor. The Wyvern followed, though she kept Marino in the corner of her vision.
She had learned to be wary. A few months ago a soldier with a curved scar under his left eye had approached her in an empty corridor on her way back from a mission. He had ordered her to accompany him to his room. Once she'd realized his aim the Wyvern snapped his neck, and calmly explained the situation to the Project Leader when he stopped short at the sight of the Wyvern dragging a limp corpse through the facility's tunnels. He had allowed her to toss the man's weighted corpse into the ocean. Despite the multiple wipes the Wyvern had been through since then, the memory remained – she supposed they wanted her to remember.
Marino didn't seem the type, however. He wasn't looking at her body, but at the tunnel around them, checking for people.
"Come on," he whispered, beckoning to her as he jogged down a tunnel that led to the elevator to the launchpad. "I'm getting you out of here."
The Wyvern had been programmed to follow all orders from HYDRA operatives without question, but it was getting very hard to not question these ones. All the same, she followed silently; padding bare-footed in her under-armor jump suit. She wore it to bed, as they'd stopped giving her non-combatant clothes years ago. She stepped on the balls of her feet, to avoid tapping her metal heels against the concrete ground.
On the elevator to the launchpad, the Wyvern stared straight ahead while observing Marino from the corner of her eye. He was fully dressed in jeans and a jacket, and had a bag pulled over his shoulder. He was fidgeting, shifting his weight from foot to foot and biting his lip. Was he going on the mission with her?
Finally, he spoke: "I've got a little girl about your age," he murmured. "Haven't seen her in seven years, but… she's a year older than you. When they brought me here, Peters said you weren't a child, you were a weapon." Marino shook his head. "It was easier to believe that, but I've seen you remember. You had a family, once, didn't you?"
The Wyvern didn't know how to respond. Families were… social units that targets were a part of. Weaknesses. Weapons didn't have families.
Seeing her furrowed brow, Marino sighed. "They take it all away from you, don't they? I might still be with my daughter, if I hadn't worked out how to make Adamantium. Of course, I doubt HYDRA offered you a whole bunch of money to abandon your family and join them. I wonder how they got you."
A moment later, Marino broke the silence again. "I heard Peters say that they're thinking of… of doing it all over again. The kids, the procedures… but it won't work, not without the serum, and I can't… I can't do it anymore." His voice was low, and broken. He sounded like a target.
The elevator reached the room below the launch pad, and the Wyvern followed Marino into the room and up the stairs to the cold air above. It was a blustery night, the wind blowing the ocean spray up over the cliff and into their faces.
Marino shifted the bag on his shoulder. "Go on, you need to go."
The Wyvern clenched her fists by her sides. "Go… where?"
"Away from here!" he said, flapping his hands at her. The Wyvern took a step back. "Fly away, get away from them."
The Wyvern's hair blew in her face. "What's my mission?"
Marino stopped flapping at her, and sighed. "To be free," he told her, his eyes earnest behind his enormous round glasses.
The Wyvern considered this. Free was something that HYDRA was trying to take away. That was the mission. How could she be free, if her mission was the opposite?
She was still considering this, motionless on the launchpad while Marino watched her, when the hatch to the staircase opened. Marino recoiled, gasping, as the Project Leader, Chief Scientist Sanders and ten soldiers climbed out onto the launchpad. The Project Leader, for the first time the Wyvern could recall, wasn't wearing a black suit. He had on long, flannel pajamas, and a look of stormy fury clouded his face.
"Where are you off to at this time of the night, Marino?"
The scientist seemed to have folded in on himself. His face was grey. The Wyvern blinked in the ocean spray, waiting for an order.
Marino clutched at his bag. "You… you can't keep her like this. She's a child!"
The Project Leader's eyes widened, and he looked to the Wyvern. "That hasn't been a child in a long time, Marino. That's a weapon."
There was a long silence.
"I can't… I can't do this anymore," Marino said, his voice breaking. "I can't take children and hurt them, I just can't any more. I never should have been able to, and I'll always regret it." There were tears pouring down his cheeks.
The Project Leader considered Marino for a long moment. Finally, he pulled a gun from his waistband, lifted it, and shot the scientist in the head. The Wyvern watched the blood spray onto the damp launchpad.
"Well," the Project Leader said, handing his gun to a nearby soldier. "It seems we won't be experimenting with Adamantium any more." He sounded truly disappointed. "Come, Wyvern."
She complied. Even as she sat in the chair, waiting to be wiped, she considered what Marino had said. You had a family, once, didn't you? He had sounded so sure.
But then the metal plates connected, and Marino and all thoughts of families were gone.
November, 2001 (15 Years Old)
HYDRA Facility, Siberia
The Wyvern glided through the frozen Siberian sky behind the Project Leader's helicopter, looking down at the endless terrain of rock and ice.
I want you to make an entrance, the Project Leader had said. She was dressed in her combat suit, which kept her mostly warm, but cold seeped in through the metal moorings in her back, forming a bone-deep icy ache in her spine.
But her mind wasn't occupied by the cold. Instead, she was thinking about a file the Project Leader had made her read before they left for the Siberian facility. Projekt: Zimniy Soldat. [Project: Winter Soldier.]
This is your opponent, had been the first thing the Project Leader said after reciting her trigger words. Read this, so you can defeat him with your mind as well as your body.
She had furrowed her brow at the picture on the front of the file: a man with long hair and closed eyes, his face frozen. You faced him five years ago, the Project Leader explained. You failed. You will not fail now.
She didn't know what he expected her to do with the information. The file was mostly redacted. But she had studiously read about his cybernetic arm, his enhanced strength, his unparalleled sniper skills. The file didn't list any particular weaknesses or things she might say to distract him. It seemed, from the section about the Memory Suppression Machine, that he was an opponent much like herself: empty of ego and weakness, with only the mission left behind.
But her eyes had caught on a section early in the file, that seemed to be about asset attainment. It was entirely redacted, but her keen eyes noticed flaws in the black marker lines – Barnes, she made out. There were other words missed, words like ravine and Soviet, but Barnes seemed special. She had flipped the file closed, considering the word.
Barnes, she thought, as she hung in the cloud cover, waiting for the helicopter to land at the Siberian bunker. It landed, and a group of men in green uniforms emerged from the rock. Make an entrance.
The Wyvern complied. She plunged from the cloud cover like a stone, easily slicing through the cold air before she pulled up at the last second, blasting her audience with a wall of churning wind and the whine of her engines. She landed lightly on her feet, wings out, and looked to the Project Leader. He gave her a minute nod.
A man in a green Russian Armed Forces uniform, wearing a red Colonel's hat, eyed the Wyvern with something like horror. "Itak, eto monstr, kotoryy srazhalsya s bitvami HYDRA. Chto vy s ney sdelali?" ["So, this is the monster who has been fighting HYDRA's battles. What did you do to her?"]
The Project Leader smiled, adjusting his heavy coat. "We made her superior, Karpov."
The Wyvern powered down her engines and folded the wings into her body. The residual warmth from the engines eased some of the frozen ache in her back.
Karpov was now looking at the Wyvern with a curled lip. She'd seen that look before: disgust. The man to his left, who was bald even in the bitter cold, wore the same expression as he beheld the Wyvern.
"She will be wearing… those?" Karpov asked, his accent thick.
"They are a part of her," the Project Leader said, cocking an eyebrow. "As your Soldat's arm is a part of him."
"Do not compare this… merzost' [abomination] to the asset."
"Oh, I'm sure today will prove that there is no comparison needed." The Project Leader did not seem disturbed by the glares from Karpov and the bald man.
The descent into the bunker was familiar to the Wyvern. She supposed it must be, if she had faced this Soldat before. The cold concrete walls were familiar, the hanging lights, the squashed elevator. And a chill of familiarity ran down her spine as she saw the blank-faced man with the metal arm, waiting for her in the cage.
She walked into the cage without having to be told, not removing her eyes from the Soldier. The Project Leader and Karpov were still bickering, exchanging rapidly more grievous insults.
"I'm sure you've noticed that the Director has approved the Wyvern's more comprehensive role in HYDRA's missions," the Project Leader said lightly.
"We noticed," Karpov spat. "But the Soldat remains HYDRA's fist, instead of a suka [bitch] one sends to do errands."
"Well she's clearly achieved more than your frozen serum recipients, and the unfortunate Borya here."
The Wyvern tuned them out, instead analysing her opponent. The technicians at the Québec facility had said that she had almost stopped growing. She was about a head shorter than the Soldier, but he was much larger than her, his imposing bulk and heavy armour posing a challenge. She eyed the cybernetic arm, recalling the stats she had read about its strength and manoeuvrability.
The Soldier mimicked her stance: feet spread, arms apart, casually neutral. Looking into his blank gaze was shockingly familiar – for a moment she had double vision of seeing this man, exactly as he was now, when she was much smaller. She wanted to shake her head, to push away the vision, but she couldn't move. She was waiting for an order.
The air around the cage was prickling with tension, while Karpov and the Project Leader continued to taunt each another and the soldiers of both groups eyed each other warily. But inside the cage, the air was frozen. The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier didn't move, barely even breathed, waiting for their orders.
Finally, Karpov seemed to have enough. "Soldat! Sokrushit' yeye." ["Soldier! Crush her."]
The Project Leader didn't have time to issue an order to the Wyvern before the Soldier was upon her, throwing a metal-armed punch at her face. But she was programmed to defend herself. She threw up her hands and caught the punch, though it sent her sliding back on the concrete floor. The Soldier's eyes flicked to her face, widening, and she pressed back against him, using his arm to swing her feet up and slam her heels toward his stomach. He twisted aside, dodging the lethal snick of the Adamantium spurs as they jabbed out of her heels, and tossed the Wyvern to the ground. She rolled, retracting her heel spurs, before rising into a crouch and snapping her wings out, baring the deadly Adamantium spines.
Normally the Wyvern's targets were startled by the sight of her black metal wings, and she could use the few seconds of hesitation to leap toward them and eliminate them. But the Winter Soldier merely adjusted; he pulled a knife from a holster at his back and flung it at the Wyvern. She deflected it with a snap of her left wing, but the movement obscured the Soldier from her view – in a moment he had descended on her, driving his knee toward her face. She threw herself to the side, snapping out her heel spurs and spinning them toward the Soldier, who dodged them in his turn. They both regained their feet and circled each other for another second, eyes focused and arms raised.
The taunts outside the cage continued, the atmosphere growing steadily tenser as the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier circled one another. The Soldier pulled out another knife, spinning it over the top of his hand in a flash of light.
The Wyvern, deducing that the Project Leader wanted her to defeat the Winter Soldier as badly as Karpov wanted the Soldier to defeat her, made the next move. She reared her wings, gunning the engines and blasting the Soldier with a gust of exhaust. He stepped backward, his hair flying, and she sprang at him, landing an uppercut to his jaw before he started fighting back. His knife was an extension of his arms, flipping and slicing at her so quickly the Wyvern barely had enough time to register where it was going in order to avoid it. She tried using her wings to beat the Soldier but he was too close to her body, and the cage didn't offer the right terrain for her to use the wings to her full advantage. They exchanged blows for a few more moments before she finally managed to seize his metal wrist and twist it behind him, straining with all her enhanced strength to keep him on his knees. The knife clattered to the ground.
She sensed the tension outside of the cage spike when she gained the advantage over the Soldier, until he managed to pull yet another knife from his combat suit and drag it along the exposed carbon fiber of her wing. Flinching, the Wyvern loosened her grip for a fraction of a second. The Soldier spun, seized the arm she'd pinned him with and crushed her wrist in his metal grip.
The Wyvern did not scream. There was a knife lodged in the joint of her left wing and the bones of her arm were grinding together, but she had fought through worse. She sliced the spikes of her undamaged wing at the Soldier, giving herself some space, and re-centered herself.
In seconds they were together again, throwing fists, elbows, and knees into each other's bodies. The Wyvern was only aware of the flurry of limbs, the sharp blooms of pain across her body, and the Soldier's narrowed grey eyes, dead even in the heat of the fight.
The Soldier tried to rip her wing off, but the Adamantium held and the Wyvern broke the Soldier's nose with her elbow. She followed it up by kicking her heel spur into his calf – the barb slid into his flesh, knocking the Soldier onto his back with a pained grunt. Heart pounding, the Wyvern threw her weight onto his body, pinning his arms by covering them with the weight of her wings and thrusting the spikes into the concrete floor. Crouched over his body, the Wyvern gripped the Soldier's neck with her right, uninjured hand and squeezed.
His face was screwed up with the effort of trying to throw her off, but one of his legs was impaled to the floor by her heel spur, his arms were pinned by her wings, and her Adamantium-reinforced body was centered over his chest. His right leg kicked helplessly, trying to find some purchase to put her off balance. The Wyvern shuddered with the effort of pushing back against him, but her entire focus was on his face and her hand around his neck. The carbon fiber of her right wing started to crumple against the strength of his cybernetic arm.
He gritted his teeth, groaning as his face started to go red. The Wyvern, eyes wild, watched it happen with fascination.
The anger started to creep in, and her fingernails pressed into the Soldier's flesh. He still stubbornly fought, throwing his knee into her hip, jostling her slightly.
Fire and tears bloomed behind her eyes.
"You're my mission," she hissed, under her breath so only he could hear. She saw his eyes widen, and knew she hadn't imagined the flash of recognition there. He stopped struggling, his lips starting to go purple.
She was vaguely aware of shouting outside the cage:
"… tell her to stop!" Someone was shouting – but not her handler. It wasn't an order, so she could do this. She could carry out her mission. She squeezed harder, feeling the tendons in the Soldier's neck flex under her hand. His eyes were fixed on her face, flickering with an unreadable emotion.
"Ty ne smozhesh' eto sdelat'! Ostanovite yeye!" ["You can't do this! Stop her!"] Karpov was shouting.
She was so close, just a few seconds more…
Suddenly, thunder echoed in the enclosed space: a gunshot. The Wyvern didn't falter, but then Project Leader cried "Wyvern, defend me!"
The Wyvern took in a shaky breath, her hand convulsing on the Soldier's throat. Just a moment more-
"Wyvern!"
With a frustrated cry she sprang from the Soldier, and turned to the Project Leader's voice.
The room had devolved into mayhem. Karpov must have fired the shot, because his gun was smoking as he stalked after the Project Leader. The Project Leader had his own gun out, seeking cover behind a desk against the wall. The rest of the soldiers had turned on each other, pulling out guns and knives and brawling around the cage. Gunshots and screams echoed in the room.
The Wyvern, wings damaged and one arm near-useless, complied. She ran for the unlocked door of the cage and flung it open. Defend the Project Leader. That was the mission, not… not what lay behind her in the cage.
The Wyvern didn't make it. Karpov and Peters both stood from their covers at the same time, and fired. The Project Leader's shot struck Karpov in the right shoulder, knocking him back. The Wyvern had just reached the Project Leader, wings outstretched, when he clutched at the wet stain blooming from the stomach of his dark suit. The Wyvern caught him as he fell, lowering his shoulders to the ground. His face was already draining of color, and his hands scrabbled at his abdomen. The Wyvern didn't know what to do. She was trained to cause death, not to reverse it.
"Wyvern," the Project Leader spluttered, blood seeping from his mouth. His ice-blue eyes, normally so calm and calculating, were filled with panic. "Help me."
But they both knew that the Wyvern had been programmed to recognize an impossible mission. She watched the life slip out of the Project Leader's cold eyes. She removed his bloodstained hands from her combat suit.
Another shot rang out, and fire tore along the Wyvern's ribcage. She hissed through her teeth, standing, and turned around. Colonel Karpov was propped against the bunker wall, his gun shaking in his right hand. His other hand was pressed against the bullet wound in his shoulder.
Karpov's face paled when he saw the Wyvern's focus turn on him. He fired again, gritting his teeth, and cursed when she blocked the shot with her tattered wing.
The Wyvern paced toward Karpov slowly, moving through the all-out brawl around her as if she was underwater. She felt unmoored, empty. She had no handler, no mission. Her programming had caught onto the threat to her life that Karpov posed, and that was the only reason she was moving.
"Pomogi mne, Soldat!" ["Help me, Soldier!"] shouted Karpov, firing another useless shot at the Wyvern as she stalked toward him.
It wasn't the Soldier that came to help Karpov, however. It was Borya; the Wyvern only just spotted him from the corner of her eye when he leapt at her, and spun around to block the knife strike he aimed at her chest. She fell back under his furious onslaught. He was fast, throwing punches at her face, chest, and injured arm. He landed most of his blows on her wounds, making her groan and flinch back, despite her training. She remembered him now: he was one of the Batal'on smerti, [death squad,] chosen for the serum before the Wyvern had gotten his share. She could see the hatred in his face as he rained blows on her, seeking out her weaknesses and dodging her enhanced limbs. His teeth were bared in a snarl, and his pale eyes were narrowed on her face.
"Ya ub'yu tebya, suka," ["I will kill you, bitch,"] he spat at her, pushing her back toward the crumpled body of the Project Leader. He spun, kicking at her face and making her stumble back, and in the same move swiped the Project Leader's gun from the ground.
The fury that had been simmering in the Wyvern's chest since she almost killed the Winter Soldier flared. She spun into a roll, dodging Borya's shots, and sprang up to knock the gun out of his hand. He hissed at her strength, clutching his hand, and she used the hesitation to shatter his knee with her Adamantium-reinforced heel. He crumpled to the ground, and she planted her foot on his chest, over his heart.
"Net, vy ne budete," ["No, you won't,"] she told him, resisting his efforts to throw her off. She activated her heel spur, feeling the blade slice through rib and muscle and pierce Borya's heart. He went slack under her foot.
Wiping blood from the corner of her lip, the Wyvern retracted her heel spur and stepped back. The soldiers were still brawling, though it seemed that the fight had spread from the room. She could hear gunshots echoing throughout the bunker.
The Wyvern was malfunctioning. Her left wrist was mangled, unusable. The carbon fiber of her wings was riddled with rips and bullet holes, and several of the engines had been crushed. There was a bullet wound along her ribcage, and multiple contusions marking her body. Worse, her mind seemed to be malfunctioning as well. The Wyvern was feeling: anger, confusion, pain. Her head was throbbing.
And the mission… her mission was… She clutched her head, squinting around her, and saw a trail of blood leading from the room. A red hat had been discarded by the door. Something about that seemed significant, so she staggered toward the door, following the splattered blood. It led to a set of stairs, which she climbed with gritted teeth, then through a hangar, and out an open metal door to the swirling snowstorm beyond.
The Wyvern, one wing now dragging on the ground, stumbled outside and shielded her eyes with her uninjured hand, squinting into the snow. There: lights! But she realised the lights were the beacons from a helicopter, one that was already twenty feet in the air. She ran toward it, trying to fire up her engines, but she only made it a few feet before she crashed back into the hard, frozen rock. The helicopter's downdraft pressed her into the snow, and her ears rang with the loud whirring of the propellers. She rolled onto her back, groaning, and watched the helicopter lift away. Tears were spilling from the Wyvern's eyes, and freezing on her cheeks. She was so confused. She had no mission.
She lay bleeding into the snow, watching the helicopter disappear into the white sky.
Once the noise of the helicopter faded away, the Wyvern registered a metal clang from the bunker. She sat up, wincing as her wounds protested, and saw the Soldier. He was leaning against the metal slab door, dark hair blowing in the snowstorm, looking right at her. Blood leaked from the open wound in his left calf, and his face was bruised. There was a red handprint around his throat, already starting to darken.
The Wyvern remembered. Or… she remembered some of it. Enough to know that he is my mission, and that there was no one standing in her way. She was strong now.
She pulled herself out of the snow and strode toward the Soldier with shaking hands. He stepped out from the doorway and planted his feet in the snow. The wind was shrieking and snatching at their clothes, their hair, but the Wyvern could see the Soldier's eyes. They weren't blank. He was looking at her, seeing her, and he knew she was going to kill him.
He didn't raise his arms when she leapt at him, knocking him back against the black rock. He just toppled like a felled tree, and watched her.
The Wyvern snarled and raised her fist over her shoulder, telegraphing her move. He saw it, an idiot would have seen it, but he made no move to stop her. She threw her fist into his face, screaming, and relished the sound his head made when it slammed into the rock behind him. She kept punching, and the sight of his blood brought back memories, terrible memories, of when she was weak and scared. She still felt scared, even though she was strong now.
The Wyvern didn't know what she was doing. She punched, and screamed, but she still wasn't killing him. She wanted to, but her body didn't seem to remember how. He's my mission. Finally she reared her wings back, baring the Adamantium spikes, ready to plunge them into the Soldier's body. But the sight of him, lying in the snow with his beaten and bloody face, made her pause. He closed his eyes, and she remembered the picture of him on the file. His lips were purple, and his eyelashes were frozen.
Barnes.
The breath gusted out of the Wyvern's chest, crystallizing in the winter air.
Before she could consider her next move, soldiers spilled out of the bunker.
"Verre!" ["Glass!"] one of them cried, and the Wyvern sobbed. "Transmission! Affamé!" ["Transmission! Starving!"]
As the soldier in the white uniform called her words, another in a green uniform shouted Russian words that must have belonged to the Soldier: "Zhelaniye, rzhavyy, semnadtstat'!" ["Longing, rusted, seventeen!"]
The soldiers shouted over one another, a chaotic mess of trigger words that washed over the assets as they lay in the snow. The Winter Soldier's eyes opened when he heard his words, and he met the Wyvern's gaze. One of his eyes was half-closed with a bruise, but the Wyvern could see the man inside the Soldier as she looked into his pale blue-grey eyes. This was not the weapon who'd fought her in the cage. The emotion in his eyes echoed her own; sad and tired and losing control. She didn't look away, until:
"Gruzovoy vagon!" ["Freight car!"]
"Quatre-vingts!" ["Eighty!"]
As one, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier's eyes glazed over and their bodies loosened, waiting for an order.
"Soldat?" ["Soldier?"]
"Wyvern?"
"Ready to comply," they said in unison.
The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stood on opposite sides of the bunker's enormous silo-like chamber. There was a memory suppression chair set in the middle, and four unlit cryo-chambers. The Wyvern noted that there was a person in each of the cryo-chambers, their vitals monitored by linked up computers. She kept an eye on everyone in the room, but didn't move a muscle. Her orders were to stand and wait, so she complied. She estimated she had at least seven hours before her body could no longer sustain her many injuries and collapsed. She estimated that the Winter Soldier had less time than that – he was leaning dangerously to the side, one half of his face entirely swollen into a bruise. The Wyvern did not wonder about the Soldier's injuries. He wasn't a part of her mission.
After four hours, footsteps rang out from the chamber's entrance. A well-dressed man with strawberry blonde hair and a lined face strode into the chamber, flanked by seventeen guards. He came to a halt just inside the entrance and took in the scene before him. His eyes flickered from the bruised Winter Soldier to the bloodied Wyvern, and then around at the varied injured guards who were shooting each other uncomfortable looks.
"Well," the man said. "This is one hell of a mess."
"Director," said Chief Scientist Sanders, who was pressing gauze to a bullet wound on her thigh, "Colonel Karpov initiated an unprovoked-"
The Director glanced at one of his guards. "Shoot her."
The man whipped out his gun and fired at the Chief Scientist, putting a scarlet hole between her eyes. Sanders's blood misted on the Wyvern's face, but the Wyvern didn't flinch.
The Director turned to a junior-looking soldier in green uniform. "You. Report."
The soldier blanched, but snapped his heels together and spoke. "The assets were fighting sir, to see which was the superior weapon."
A muscle jumped in the Director's jaw. "And?"
"And, sir… Colonel Karpov and Project Leader Peters started shooting at each other. I… I think Karpov wanted the Wyvern to stop, but Peters wouldn't give the order, a-and Peters got shot, but the Colonel got away, sir." It all came out in a rush, the soldier's voice high and shaking.
The Director folded his hands behind his back and started pacing. "How did the Colonel get away?"
"I… I didn't see-"
"Helicopter, Director," said another soldier, a little more senior. His face was stony. "There's a helicopter missing. And the Winter Soldier book."
The Director looked up, still pacing back and forth, and cocked an eyebrow. "He has the book?"
"Yes, sir."
The Director ran a hand over his face. "Can the Soldier still be controlled?"
"Yes, sir. We have the trigger words."
Nodding, the Director then ran his eyes over the Wyvern. He turned to a soldier in a white uniform, one of Peters' men. "And the Wyvern?"
"We have her words too, sir."
The Director stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips. He looked over the survivors of the fight, a mix of bloody HYDRA operatives from Karpov and Peters' factions, and the two assets. The muscle in his jaw was still jumping.
"The competition was useful," he eventually said, the force of his tone making a few of the soldiers step back. "It was important for the progression of the weapons. It was Peters' pride, and Karpov's petty jealousy, that did this. HYDRA is meant to be more than this." He shook his head, glancing around the room. "HYDRA's goals are growing closer. We need to use our weapons against our enemies, not against each other." He looked from the Wyvern to the Winter Soldier. "We're done here. Put him on ice and ship him to the US. He will remain useful, but the weapon we'll need most in the coming years is a refined one. A subtle knife." His eyes flicked over the Wyvern's shoulders, over her wings. "Wings or no, she's a formidable instrument. Wipe her and put her back together, and start her off in Yemen."
The last the Wyvern saw of the Winter Soldier was the back of his shaggy head as he was marched out of the room, heading for his cryo-chamber. But then there was the chair, and the sparking metal plates, and it was all wiped away.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein