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𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨: 𝐀 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬

HYDRA Base

Austrian Alps, 1943

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Who came up with the word cold?

It's just a bunch of random letters put together to represent a feeling of being devoid of warmth. Why did they decide that the word cold best described the feeling cold? Or did the feeling just become synonymous with the word? Do some people never experience cold? Or is their level of coldness just warmer than Allie's?

But seriously, being cold sucks.

And Allie has had hours to contemplate the feeling of coldness and it's English origins.

She has been chained to a brick wall and had ice-cold water being trickled onto her for what is it, 3 hours now?

And despite the long period of time that she has been suffering for, she has still not become accustomed to the frozen touch of the water that chills her bones. The bitter cold embraces her lithe frame like a long lost friend that she wishes would remain long lost. It freezes her body to the core, making her feel more like an ice popsicle than human.

And Allie only has one question. And it is 'how the hell did she end up here?'

(Well aside from all those questions about the word 'cold'. She will investigate that later.)

Obviously, she knows why she is here now. Herr Schmidt deemed this as an acceptable punishment for her cruel actions of cutting stupid Gerald on the cheek. She didn't even do it! Gerald had been making snide comments at her all day during training about how "there are no women soldiers for a reason. They all had to be home to do a woman's job."

That really riled Allie up. She told him it was because "if all the women enlisted in the army, men would become redundant due to their apparent lack of thinking and not know how to function in the real world.'

Their bickering somehow resulted in a battle of who has the better aim when throwing a knife, and obviously, Allie won. Gerald would have known that from the start if he had the ability to think because she had been training at HYDRA since she was five. She had years of knife throwing under her belt whereas he had 6 months and the support of his nitwit friends.

Then, because Gerald was a giant baby and lost his fragile masculinity in front of his friends, he had cut himself on the cheek and blamed Allie for it.

Schmidt was livid when he found out and he didn't have a problem with shoving her sorry ass in the torture chamber.

"Next time I really will show him how good my aim is," she murmurs under her breath, shivering as more ice-cold water falls down her naked back.

Thankfully, he let her keep her pants and bra on. If he didn't she would have matched Schmidt's own anger and probably got herself into even more trouble.

But the real question she has is what single event in her life sent her here to HYDRA. How did someone deem her worthy of being here? Yes, she has made her fair share of mistakes but it's not as if she birthed a child and taught him it was normal to disrespect women (ahem, Gerald.)

She doesn't even know how she ended up here. All she has been told is that she was dropped off at Zola's doorstep when she was five years old and since he didn't have the resources (or the will) to look after a child, he sent her to HYDRA.

She was then placed in a children's training program called 'Projekt Fenrir' since she showed signs of 'having great potential and she excelled in her training.' Projekt Fenrir aimed to train young children and build them up to be the next leaders of HYDRA. They would quote, 'be feared by many and could bring the end of the world if they decided'. Much like the monstrous wolf Fenrir himself which sounded absurd to young Allie. Wolfs weren't monstrous or demonic, they were cute and fluffy.

But, HYDRA used Projekt Fenrir to strip away as much humanity from them as possible.

First, she saw it in the other children. They became ruthless and cunning, willing to cut someone off at the knees so that they could win the race. When someone was down, they didn't offer them a hand to help them stand back up. No, they would kick them to make sure they stayed down.

Then she recognized the signs in herself. Every week they pushed her slightly further until not only did she have little to no morals left, but she thought that HYDRA's barbaric deeds were a necessary act to create a new world order. And Allie used to think she wasn't susceptible to bullshit.

She was just an innocent child with no awareness of the evil that had corrupted her world.

Now she knows that she is being guided by the devil that is concealing himself as a saint.

But sometimes, the devil does make some good points.

People are stupid, every single one of them. They make stupid mistakes and turn to others to fix their fuck-ups. That's why the world is currently being ruled by power-hungry politicians who live off wealth and women instead of protecting their people.

There would be no wars, no famines, no poverty and no imbalance of power if people just trusted the right people to rule. And maybe that could be HYDRA?

Allie doesn't agree with everything that they do. Surely there could be more efficient ways to win this war rather than sending thousands of their men to their deaths every day but she can't change that as she is not a leader.

But sometimes the motive outweighs the means. The end goal justifies the methodology.

Thankfully for Allie, her train of thought is broken off suddenly by the sound of the steel door being opened. She lets out a relieved sigh at the noise, glad that she does not have to bore herself to death anymore.

Herr Schmidt enters the room with two guards at his tail who both try to look frightening but fail miserably. Schmidt's wrinkled face holds one emotion as he strides over to her chained body.

Fury.

His dark hooded eyes are ablaze with the emotion as his body remains tense and ready to strike. The pristine black uniform that adorns his body gives him an even more terrifying aura if that is even possible. A satirical smile spreads over his lips as he watches Allie shiver as she dangles from the chains that bind her body to the dirty walls of her cell.

He walks over to the frozen girl and gently lifts her head up with his index fingers and stares straight into her dark chestnut eyes. "Once again Ms. Williams, here we are with you tied up and me having to remind you of your place here at HYDRA," He spits venomously and drops her head back down so that she is staring at the grimy concrete floor.

Allie knows better than to answer back to Schmidt. You do not take his threats lightly and he is not someone that you want as an enemy.

"Why must you constantly test my patience soldier. You are to keep your head down and complete your tasks without any hiccups do you understand?" He questions spitefully and delivers a harsh slap to her face when she does not answer.

"Do you understand Soldat?!" He yells in anger. His eyes burn with pent-up rage but his face remains stoic yet stern.

"Yes, Herr Schmidt." She replies begrudgingly.

The shackles holding her arms above her head are released and she falls to the ground in a heap. Her shoulders ache from the lack of movement and her bones feel like they are close to shattering.

She nurses her battered body and drops her head in anger. Why does she put up with this? The men aren't treated like this when they commit the same crime that she does. They get a slap on the wrist and go about with their day.

"Report to Zola for your new assignment, but don't expect much. Du bist eine Enttäuschung für HYDRA. / You are a disappointment to HYDRA." Schmidt growls angrily before his footsteps echo down the hallway, signaling his departure from the cell.

"Don't expect much." She says mockingly, drops her tone of voice to a similar tone of Schmidt's. "Must be what he tells all the women." She chuckles to herself, wishing that Schmidt had heard so she could experience some more 'fun' today.

When she stops laughing, she lets out an annoyed sigh. She hastily picks herself off the floor and heads back to her room. Although technically it doesn't really constitute as a room. Rather, it's a place that fits a bed, a small cabinet of clothes and would be no larger than a janitor's closet.

She walks down the bare hallways, leaving little droplets of water in her wake as she makes her way to her room. HYDRA must have noticed her rebellious nature when she was a child because her room is only a short walk away from the torture chambers.

The hallways she goes through are all the same, unwelcoming and bleak. There is nothing there that would indicate any sort of activity takes place at this base. The lights that illuminate the cement floors, flicker on and off every couple of seconds and the dark grey walls are chipped and stained, showing the true age of the base.

Normally there would be a few soldiers that she would pass as she walks around the facility but most of them have been called out into battle against the Americans apparently.

HYDRA hates the Americans. Their whole spiel on 'giving the people the right to pursue happiness' and 'protecting the liberties of our country' makes any normal HYDRA agent gag.

But Allie isn't a normal agent.

She thinks it is commendable to protect the freedom of people. Even though those rights only protect 'certain' people, it is still progressive thinking which is more than what some countries can say.

Allie quickly shuffles inside her room and replaces her soaked rags with her clean HYDRA uniform. As she changes into the black uniform she looks at her beaten body in the mirror.

Purple bruises cover her stomach and thighs, greatly outnumbering the patches of pale skin that should be seen. A bright red handprint stains her clear face and dark bags reside under her eyes from the lack of sleep she has received.

She contemplates slapping the other cheek to even out the redness but decides against it as she chooses to wear the mark as a trophy. She bet Gerald and that's all that matters.

At least she got that out of the series of horrors that today has been.

God, am I too young to retire, she thinks exasperatedly as she turns away from the mirror and walks out of the room towards Zola's office with her head held high. Fake confidence oozes from her body as she is much too stubborn to let anyone see the doubt and tiredness that swims in her thoughts.

Doubt is a word that should never even be uttered at HYDRA. Doubt means questioning and questioning means not believing. And when people stop believing in HYDRA, more often than not they end up dead.

But Allie thinks doubt is helpful. It ensures you are making the right decision. It warns you when you make a mistake.

But this doubt that she feels can get her killed. Schmidt wouldn't understand the internal torment that she suffers from. So she pushes the doubt back down and tries to forget about it.

But who is she kidding, doubt is just like fear. It never goes away without a fight.

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It doesn't take long for Allie to reach Zola's office and make her way inside much to her displeasure. She would have much rather spent time wandering outside in the snow but unfortunately, she has a job to do.

And that job requires seeing her not so fatherly foster father. Technically speaking, he is considered her parent or legal guardian since he was the one that brought her here and put her into Projekt Fenrir. But he is not fatherlike in the slightest. By no means is he loving, caring or even remotely concerned about her well-being at all.

However, he was more present in her childhood than any other adult at HYDRA. He was at every assessment or test that she undertook and was there at every beating that she had to endure. He never smiled when she passed with flying colors and he never winced when she was thrown across the room because she spoke out of turn.

He was always there, but never there for her.

And that drove a wedge between the two, which neither were upset by.

"Ah, welcome back to the world Allie." Zola greets her with mockery dripping from his voice. Zola's beady eyes are fixed on whatever science is laid in front of him, not bothering to give Allie any time of his day.

"You have been given overwatch duty for the next few days as a result of your heinous actions earlier." Zola informs her, pushing his thin wire glasses back up his nose as he continues reading from his paper.

"Yes, Zola." Allie responds monotonously, glaring heavily at Zola. She stays rooted to her spot, awaiting further information that she knows she isn't going to get.

Zola sighs when he notices that she hasn't retreated from the room yet. "You know I can feel your glare right?" He says as Allie lets a scowl slowly overcome her face.

"Yes. I am hoping that it will change your mind and give me a better job." She responds mockingly as Zola still refuses to look at her.

"Well, it's not working."

"I can say the same for all of your inventions." She grins as Zola whips his eyes up and returns a glare of his own which fails sadly, just like his attempt of trying to be authoritative.

"Ever since Erskine left you have been pretty slack, Zola." She says snarkily. "And it really isn't a good look."

"Why don't you try and do what I do then?" He replies, gesturing to the collection of useless junk that litters his room.

A cheeky smile overcomes her face as she winks at Zola. "Not unless I can use you as target practice?"

"Nice try."

"Well, it looks like we have reached a crossroad then, Arnim. But I'm open for negotiations." She says, crossing her arms over her chest. "How about Gerald as a target then?"

"You are excused, Alexandra." He growls and Allie laughs heartily.

"I'm thoroughly looking forward to our next meeting, Zola!" She chuckles as she turns and walks towards the door.

"I'm not."

"Don't say that! It's breaking my tiny, fragile heart," is the last thing that she says before she shuts the door on the small, sulking senior who suffers from a major case of small-man syndrome. This teasing has been their thing for a while now. Zola has never had the guts to reprimand her himself so he has eventually resigned himself to responding to her snide comments with some of his own.

Fully pleased with her conversation with Zola, she strides down to the overwatch room which is unfortunately located at the opposite side of the base.

Despite her elated mood, she almost feels like groaning out loud as she thinks about her upcoming couple of weeks while she makes the dreaded descend to the Southside of the base.

Overwatch duty is the most boring job that she could have been given. All she will do all day is stare at these little televisions that are connected to cameras around the base, making sure that nothing goes awry.

It's horrid.

And boring.

And it makes her want to carve out her eyeballs with a fork.

But Allie quickly shakes her head as she thinks about all the hours of sleep that she will now be able to catch up on and continues making her way through the base.

Unfortunately, however, she soon reaches HYDRA's prisoner cells.

This is another thing that Allie wholeheartedly disagreed with, the treatment of enemy soldiers. The way that HYDRA treats its prisoners is completely barbaric and inhuman.

She hasn't even reached the door to the chambers and she can already hear the screams of the prisoners which are layered one on top of the other, creating a gruesome choir of pain with HYDRA soldiers as the conductors.

With a sigh, she passes through the prisoner cells. Her footsteps leave echoes pulsating throughout the concrete room, making the hundreds of people who are enclosed there aware of her presence.

Some reach out to her as she walks down the hallway, begging for her to release them from the torture that they are enduring. Some spit at her feet as she continues walking, some just glare at her as if the sight of her actually hurts their eyes.

The prisoner cells are overfilled with inmates, each of whom are completely undeserving of the punishment that they are enduring. There are women, children, and frail old grandparents that call these cells home.

What could they have possibly done that is so bad that they deserve this punishment?

But there is nothing that she can do, there is no way for her to help them.

And with a sigh, Allie leaves the prisoner's chambers and continues down the hallways to the overwatch room.

Thankfully it doesn't take long for her to reach her destination. She flings open the door dramatically and sighs with relief when she sees no one inside. She immediately plops down on the swivel chair that sits in front of the giant wall of tv's that all are playing different footage from all areas of the base.

This technology was a first of its kind in the world and it made security around the base less intense. They were able to watch HYDRA men and prisoners that were located all over the base as well as any intruders who would try to sneak in. But intruders were the least of her worries, because what idiot would sneak into a HYDRA base for secrets when Allie can't even find anything out herself.

Well, that's actually a lie. Allie is a great sleuth but she is much too lazy to find out HYDRA secrets. Secrets are secrets for a reason and once you hear one, you can never un-hear it.

Allie grumbles underneath her breath in boredom as she pulls out her trusty throwing knife and begins carving into the wooden desk that she sits at. The one room in the base that has no cameras is the overwatch room so she can happily get away with whatever stunts she wants.

Allie begins carving her initials backwards into the brown wood because carving them normally would be much to easy of a giveaway.

Allie would gladly admit the Alexandra Williams is a name so infamous that everyone in HYDRA knows of her and her not so sparkling reputation. She is proud of her status as the perfect soldier.

She is agile and quick, able to outrun or outmaneuver any opponent. She can fire any military artillery with fatal precision. Precision that would leave even the best snipers in awe of her accuracy.

Allie can't even think of a soldier that could beat her in a fight. She has been groomed into a lethal killer which is more than what any regular soldier can say. And considering that only 5 kids graduated from Projekt Fenrir and at least 3 of them are dead, she would say that her assumption is right.

Ever since she arrived at HYDRA, she has been turned into a weapon that they could use at their own will. And the training that she endured to be turned into a weapon still gives her nightmares to this day.

At first, she thought the stuff that she was learning was unusual. Who cared for the capital of Belarus or the political structure of Ukraine? But apparently, HYDRA did because she got whipped when she responded with her normal 5-year-old sass.

She soon learned that they did this so that she could become a soldier in a war that hadn't even begun yet. She was no more than a pawn on HYDRA's chessboard that they would willingly give up to win.

Once she finished learning about policies, how the body works and her six different languages, she was drilled in the easiest ways to take down an opponent no matter their size or height.

She spent over a decade learning how to shoot a wide range of artillery from guns to bow and arrows (which were pretty fun she must admit). She excelled at throwing knives which is her preferred method of death since it is silent and effective. She also learnt how to beat anyone at hand to hand combat and she even mastered the occasional martial arts trick.

But not only did HYDRA have a toll on her physically, it also had a toll on her mentally.

She eventually became more like a machine than she did a human. People regard her as a robot. That she is incapable of feeling human emotions. Taking away the lives of so many people has contributed to this change of state. Who can commit such horrid acts and still feel like they can experience the highs of joy and love when they denied so many others from ever feeling them again.

At night she wakes from her night terrors shaking in her bed, and she can see the faces of those she has hurt by her actions. She can smell the acrid scent of blood and feel the amber liquid drip down her hands as if it is actually there. Some nights she is so shaken up that she can't even close her eyes again, let alone go back to sleep because their faces play on a loop in front of her eyes. A constant reminder of her transgressions.

Those scars are much harder to see than the ones that litter Allie's body.

Her pale skin is etched with faint white scars and ugly burns that remind her of the control that HYDRA holds over her life. Each one has an untold story with images that are embedded thickly in her troubled mind. They are the physical reminders of the countless times she has been whipped and beaten because she wasn't complicit like her fellow soldiers.

Just thinking about it she can feel the pain and the anguish that she felt in the moment that they dragged the sharp knife down her arm or when they let the whip fly across her pale skin on her back.

But these scars are also her trophies. They show how she can't be completely controlled. No matter how badly she is left from the torture, she is still Allie Williams and she is still the only one who can control herself. This little act of defiance shows that she isn't completely HYDRA's puppet. That she will never be someone that they can control without her consent.

She refuses to be like every other soldier at HYDRA which is why she is treated poorly. She has seen how regular people treat each other, with kindness and respect. But HYDRA treats her like she isn't worthy enough to even be looked at in the eye. But whether that is because she is a woman or because she isn't complicit, she is unsure.

Take Zola for example, he would rather spend an extra few seconds reading over his science then look Allie in the eye when he is speaking to her. But she doesn't let that hurt her feelings.

Her feelings were beaten out of her years ago. She just brushes it off and moves on.

She remains as HYDRA's obedient little soldier that has no family, no friends and no recollection of her past life. Because as much as she doesn't want to admit it, she is nothing without HYDRA. She has no money, no ID, no home and no way to make a living.

She doesn't think that being an assassin is a career that she could magically apply for. And there is no way that she could be a waitress or a nanny.

And even if she did leave, she knows that not only would she be hunted by HYDRA, but by HYDRA's enemies. She would more than likely not be able to last a month out there because she would have nowhere to hide.

Perhaps she could escape to Australia and live in the desert. That's a potential hiding spot as she could up the population to a total of one if she found the right place.

Allie smiles down at her little design on the edge of the desk. It's nothing special really, its just her initials and the HYDRA insignia. But instead of drawing the skull, she drew Zola's face with his big ugly glasses and wrote asshole in Swiss above it.

Maybe one day if he leaves his office he will see it, she chuckles lightly as she spins the knife in between her fingers.

Suddenly, a yawn pushes past her lips which makes her furrow her brows. Fatigue had been ebbing away at her mind ever since she got out of the torture chamber an hour ago. She looks up at the clock and sees that it is only just past two o'clock in the afternoon and a grin overcomes her face.

Good, she thinks. That's enough time for me to sleep and wake up and pretend that I've done something productive with my day. She smiles as she rests her head against the cold wood.

She closes her eyes and drifts off thinking about how not only is being cold horrible, it is inescapable.

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A/N -  Hey guys,

What did you think of the first chapter of TRICKS!!

Sorry that I had to name this chapter zero! I am currently editing and I ended up making a whole new first chapter and then it stuffed up the order of all the other chapters so I just decided to do a chapter zero (if that makes sense?). 

I'm really interested to hear what you guys have to say and I implore you to answer the few questions that I am leaving below. It only takes a minute or two to answer them and it may not seem like much, but to me, they mean the world. Hearing about what you guys have to say makes me want to write and it completely brightens my day!

So, onto the questions!

1. What do you think of this chapter?

2. Do you like Allie so far?

3. Do you have any constructive criticism for me?

4. Where are you guys from?

Until next time!

- Grace xx