THEY CALLED HER SIREN.

But that wasn't always her name.

Once — before the tanks, the experiments, the torture — she had another name. A real one. It had meaning. It had warmth. It might have even been spoken with love, once. But names are fragile things. And under HYDRA's hands, everything breaks eventually.

HYDRA — the infamous shadow in history's timeline. A cruel whisper passed down in secrets and classified files. Only few might've heard of them through the tales of broken legends: the Winter Soldier, once a gentle-hearted soldier from World War II, now a ghost with a metal arm and a heart caged in ice. Or the Maximoff twins — fierce, tragic volunteers turned weapons — one a silver streak of vengeance, the other, the Scarlet Witch, glowing with untamed magic.

But few ever speak of her.
The girl in the water.

She wasn't born with fins or fangs. Once, she was human. Entirely, beautifully, painfully human. She had lungs that sang and a heart too soft for war. But she was chosen — no, taken — for something else. HYDRA didn't want a girl. They wanted a myth. And so they made one.

They mutated her skin and twisted her bones into something that could survive at the ocean's darkest depths. Flooded her bloodstream with an experimental serum — something derived from a formula long thought lost to time. The kind of science that should've stayed buried. The kind of science someone might've died to protect...

And so she became something... other. She breathed water like air. She could hear the song of a whale from miles away. She could feel the magnetic pulse of a ship's engine before it ever crested the waves. And her voice — her voice was a weapon, a siren's wail that could bend the minds of men or break them entirely.

They kept her submerged when she wasn't working. A shimmering tank, dressed up to look like a sanctuary, but it was nothing more than a cage. A cage for something they didn't understand — and feared too much to let go.

She was their favorite experiment.

But even the most obedient creatures yearn for the shore.

There were nights — rare and quiet — when she floated to the top of her prison and closed her eyes, pretending the ceiling above her was a sky. That the hum of the lab machines was the rustle of leaves. That the taste of salt in her mouth came from a sea breeze, not the chemicals that clung to her skin.

There were flashes, sometimes. Memories she wasn't supposed to have. A man's laugh. A piano playing far off in another room. A journal with strange sketches of stars and cells. A silver pen engraved with an initial she couldn't quite recall.

But they always faded, those glimpses. Like bubbles rising to the surface only to pop.

She was not meant to remember who she had been.

She was meant to serve.

But fate — cruel and poetic — has a way of turning the tide.

And it would only take one spark, one touch, one look from the right person to remind her:

She was never meant to be a monster.
She was never meant to be caged.
She was never meant to be theirs.

✧˚ · .

A harsh voice crackled through the underwater speakers, shattering the stillness like a rock dropped into glass.

"Siren. To the surface."

The lights embedded in the walls of the tank flickered to life—clinical, cold, and blue—as if mocking the ocean depths she once called home. The water around her shimmered in ripples, and with a weary flick of her iridescent tail, the girl obeyed.

She broke the surface in silence, her eyes narrowing at the men watching her through the thick glass. Her long hair clung to her shoulders like seaweed, and the saltwater clung to her lashes. Her heartbeat stuttered.

"We have a surprise for you," came the voice again, distorted through the static, but unmistakably smug.

She said nothing. She never did. Not unless she had to.

Baron von Strucker appeared behind the observation window—hands clasped behind his back, his cold eyes devoid of anything human.

"You'll be useful again. We lost Loki's scepter, but we've found something else... something ancient, sunken. They call it the Cosmic Cube." His voice dropped an octave, like a priest speaking of holy things. "It's said to hold the power to destroy entire galaxies..."

Her blood turned to ice.

She had seen what they made her do—seen it from behind glassy eyes and trembling hands. The memories lingered like oil on water: thick, suffocating, impossible to wash away.

"No," she whispered, the word breaking from her lips like a shipwreck surfacing. "Please... don't make me do this again."

His mouth twitched into something that might have been pity, but more likely was boredom.

"You know the price of disobedience, my dear."

Before she could slip beneath the water and vanish again, rough hands seized her. Brock Rumlow and Grant Ward—HYDRA's dogs. Their hands were calloused, clinical. They dragged her out like treasure from the deep, leaving glimmering trails of salt and sorrow behind her.

She didn't struggle. Not this time. She knew what would come if she did—electricity arcing through the water like a thousand knives, slicing into her nerves.

They threw her into the steel chair bolted to the ground, the cold of it biting into her skin. Her gills twitched against her neck. She hated them. Hated the way they smirked at her pain, the way they looked at her like a specimen in a jar—some pretty, broken thing to be prodded and used.

Strucker stepped forward, cradling something in his gloved hands.

A book.

Indigo leather. A black anchor embossed on the cover.

She flinched. Her breath caught in her throat.

"No..." Her voice trembled now. "Please... don't. Don't so this please."

Her plea dissolved into panic, her tail thrashing against the floor, leaving a smear of seawater and anguish in its wake.

"Longing. Anchor. Beauty. Twenty-four. Daybreak."

The words spilled from his mouth like poison.

They entered her mind like knives—sharp, ancient, irreversible. She screamed, her hands clutching her head as if she could claw the syllables out.

Pain seared through her body—hot and merciless, like being burned from the inside out. Her heart stuttered, her lungs heaved. It felt like drowning without water. Like fire where there should have been waves.

The commands were ancient. Carved in blood and science. The same kind they used to break the Winter Soldier.

She was no stranger to this feeling. The agony. The helplessness. And worst of all—the guilt afterward.

When it was done, you were hollow. A marionette with no strings left to cut.

"Family. Mercy. Nine. Homecoming. Ocean."

With the final command, a scream tore from her lips—not human, not animal. Something deeper. Something ancient. The walls trembled. The lights above flickered. Scientists scrambled for cover, hands clamped to their ears.

Rumlow bled from his nose. Ward from his ears.

And still, she screamed.

When silence finally returned, it fell like snow—quiet, cold, and unnatural.

She slumped forward in the chair, her body still trembling, her eyes dimmed—but burning with something behind them. Something that refused to die.

Strucker approached her again, cautiously now. He studied her face with detached curiosity, as if she were a songbird refusing to break.

"Siren?" he asked.

The girl lifted her chin slowly, defiantly.

Her voice came out soft but steady.

"Ready for mission."