A/N: This chapter is set during 1941-1942 and covers Ada's background and how she came into the custody of the SSR. This chapter isn't necessary to read but it will provide context as to the ongoing conflict between her and Colonel Phillips, as well as her family background.

This story is 90% canon compliant, however it will be an au in the sense that Hydra and the Red Room collaborated prior to the outbreak of WW2 and this is how she received her dose of the serum. I've recently binge watched Agent Carter and so Leviathan will be worked into this as well.

Next chapter will jump to 1943 where she will meet Howard and Peggy before a chance encounter with Bucky at the end.

~

DECEMBER 6, 1941 | PEARL HARBOR

The skies are clear above the harbour, of all the places my line of work's brought me to this is by far the most beautiful. The fellow nurses I walk alongside during our recreational break agree.

"This is a welcome change from New York," Minnie says while I observe the planes running drills above. "I don't think I want to go back."

"California's nice but I couldn't pack fast enough when I received my papers," Betty replies and turns her head to me. "Where are you from Ada? You're always so quiet I swear we know nothing about you."

"Washington, D.C," I answer, my American accent perfect down to the dialect. "When I enlisted my Dad asked for me to be brought here where he's stationed."

"And your Mom?" Minnie asks with good intentions. "Does she still live in Washington?"

"Yes," I lie, but manage a smile with the next words. "With my little sister, Katie. She's just turned five and I miss her terribly."

"I don't have any brothers or sisters, but I can't wait to have my own kids," Betty tells us and my smile falters slightly. "I want two girls and two boys."

"I'd like just one of each," Minnie replies. "Ada?"

"I think I'd be happy with any," I find myself saying despite the knot in my chest, my hand resting over my lower stomach as we walk. The ringing in my ears drowns out the rest of their conversation and the rest of the day is spent in a state of numbness until I find myself in my father's office.

My fingers skim over his name at the top of the letters addressed, Colonel William R. Morgan. I know that it wasn't coincidence that I was transferred to Pearl Harbor when I enlisted, just where he happened to be stationed. It was with equal relief and apprehension I received my orders, relieved that I wouldn't be following the Red Room's orders to infiltrate the SSR, but my mother's nothing if not an opportunist.

And so now I read through his letters and recent files; troop movements, artillery catalogues, intelligence. Everything I was sent to report on. The Soviet Union may be at war with Germany, but still I wonder where Hydra truly stands since I've learned enough to know its branches extend beyond just the Nazis. They may strictly serve Hitler now since he broke the non-aggression pact with Russia, but the history of their collaboration with the USSR cannot be erased. Even now I wonder where my mother stands since she put her faith in Hydra before the alliance was broken despite still serving Stalin.

She knows very well that even suspected, or imagined, treason is a death sentence under Stalin, but she isn't willing to let go of the work between the Red Room and Hydra.

Me.

An incomplete experiment.

While this assignment is far more pleasant than what I carried out in Russia I've never been put in the position of betraying my family, of manipulating my own father for intelligence. He's spent the last fourteen years believing that I've been enrolled in an elite ballet academy, blind to the truth of it.

My eyes fall on the photograph he keeps on his desk, an almost complete family portrait of the only family he can stand to be in the same room with. Although ever since my mothers permanent return to Russia it's no longer an issue.

In the photograph I'm fourteen and standing beside my father with my newborn sister in my arms. Even with the discolouration of the photograph it's clear that I inherited my father's features, his dark eyes and hair along with his bone structure and undertones of olive skin that had paled through the harsh Russian winters.

Now that Katya's grown from a newborn to a five year old it's clear that we don't share the same father. Although that's no secret considering he hadn't been in the same country as my mother for two years when she had been born, but for my sake he pretends otherwise - especially since he knows he's the closest thing to a loving parent that she has. Even if she's spent most of her life within Russia.

My fingers brush the photograph, heart wrenching as I remind myself why I'm doing this. Some days I truly believe the only reason my sister was brought into this world was so my mother had something to hold over me whenever I'd rebel... whenever I'd long to escape.

Even now, an ocean away, she still has her hand around my throat. As long as she has Katya with her I can't disobey orders, and so I return to the files. Searching for anything of significance, any important correspondences with Washington, that is until I pick up footsteps from down the hall that the ears of an unenhanced individual couldn't.

When Colonel Chester Phillips opens the door I'm seated in my father's chair with my hands in my lap, the file closed and placed where it was when I entered the room, a pleasant smile across my face.

Yet he does not trust me. Not when he knows what my mother was when she married my father. Not when he thinks he knows what position my mother holds in Moscow, even if the truth is far worse than anything he could imagine. Something far worse than a Bolshevik spy who'd run back to Russia in disgrace when my father threatened to have her deported from the country.

"Colonel," I greet politely, everything from my accent to my posture nothing less than perfect. "It's been lovely weather today."

His voice is gruff as he acknowledges me. "Are you allowed to be in here?"

"I'm just waiting for my dad," I say innocently, utilising every bit of absent-minded youthful charm I still have. "Should I have waited outside?"

"Yes," he says and I look down in perceived embarrassment. "I need to have a word with your father."

"Can I help you look for him?" I offer and he only eyes me with scrutiny.

"No, but while you're here," he begins and shuts the door behind him, stepping forward for what can only be called a thinly veiled interrogation. "I suppose your enlistment means you've finished your schooling in Russia?"

"I graduated from my ballet academy at the end of the spring," I answer without missing a beat. "He encouraged me to take it up professionally but I decided to enlist in the Nurse Corps considering how tense everything's become with the war in Europe."

He nods before giving a restrained huff. "It's funny you say that because your mother... back when she married your father after the war she always said she was part of some Imperial ballet academy. She put on a hell of a show too, the desperate daughter of a murdered Russian aristocrat seeking refuge in America after the revolution. Turns out she was a damn Bolshevik spy so forgive me for calling bullshit."

"It's bad manners to curse in front of a young lady," I chastise, but he just stands there and waits for me to catch myself out in a lie, so for once I only tell the truth. "I don't like to speak of my mother... she's a cruel woman. Are you not aware Colonel that my father tried to have her arrested for her cruelty towards me before she returned to Russia?"

"And yet you kept going back there didn't you?" he remarks and nods towards the files I was studying. "What's in there?"

"I wouldn't know," I say, feigning confusion before leaning over as if it's the first time I've so much as glanced at them. "Forgive me, I'm not quite familiar with paperwork."

"No, but you're familiar with this name aren't you?" he accuses and I watch as he throws a file down on the table, but my perceived confusion fades the moment I see its label.

THE RED WIDOW

My blood runs cold and there's a glint of satisfaction in his eye. "I'd invite you to look inside but you and I both know what's in there."

My hands remain in my lap as I look up at him, knowing I've been compromised. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" he repeats incredulously.

"What do you want in exchange for your silence," I clarify, my voice deepening to its natural tone, with the accent that's become natural to me after spending so much of my life within Russia. "Name your price."

"Unlike some my loyalties can't be bought," he replies and leans forward with his hands on the table. "You're going to stay there while we wait for your father. I've known him for thirty years, so I'm going to give him the mercy of finding out from me that his daughter is a cold blooded assassin planted by the Communists before I have you arrested for treason considering you're still an American citizen."

I debate tears, anything that could make his resolve falter, but there isn't one drop of sympathy in his veins for me. Not when he sees me as a carbon copy of my mother.

And so I reach forward to open the file, finding a roughly captured photograph of myself from 1936 holding a Soviet general three times my age at gunpoint, taken a month before the framed photograph sitting beside it.

"This photograph is five years old," I state before questioning. "What took you so long to come into possession of it?"

He shakes his head in disgust at my disregard. "You don't even have the grace to try and deny it do you?"

"You act as if I'm an enemy of the state, but we aren't at war with the Soviet Union," I remind him. "Not officially at least, not while they oppose the Nazis."

"I don't care what the government says, just because the Bolsheviks are fighting against Hitler doesn't make them our allies."

"Good," I say and he blinks at me. "You can't trust them so that makes you wiser than most of the government."

"Is this some sort of reverse psychology, some mind game?" he spits out incredulously and I shake my head with a patronising smile.

"No, it's a fact Colonel," I say, standing with my hands on the table to even the balance of power. "I've met Stalin personally, along with much of his inner circle, and he has more blood on his hands than either of us could imagine after the famines and massacres he's orchestrated to secure his regime. He's a paranoid man who purged the ranks of his own military and government because of his fear of being usurped, this photograph was taken at the beginning of the purge. The greatest mistake this country could make is trusting him in order to put down Hitler, because we'd only be working in his favour by allowing him to be the dominant power in Europe."

He's silent now, in a state of disbelief and conflict. Not knowing whether to believe any of the words that leave my mouth and not wanting to accept that they're the truth. That despite my actions, my allegiance does not rest with the Soviet Union.

"He's a dangerous man, just as Hitler is," I continue as I flick through the file, the evidence written across the pages. "All of this, everything in here... it's all on Stalin's direct orders. I can promise you that when Hitler is dealt with that Stalin will be next, so it would go against your interests to have me arrested for treason when I'm the greatest source of intelligence that you have."

"Why should I trust a damn word you say?"

"Because you'd be an idiot not to," I state bluntly before taking control of the situation. "You're involved with the SSR." His eyes widen considering that division is classified. "I'm willing to co-operate as a double agent on behalf of the United States government on one condition."

He scoffs now, seeing a petulant nineteen year old girl in front of him and believing that despite everything in that file that I won't kill him where he stands. "This isn't a negotiation."

"Yes it is," I say and turn the photograph of my sister and I around. "I will return to Russia and follow the orders of the United States government in collecting whatever intelligence it wants on the singular condition that safe passage is secured for my sister and I to the United States upon completion of the assignment."

He could say a hundred things, but he chooses the only words that could test discipline. "We both know that girl isn't William Morgan's daughter. She's the full blooded Russian spawn of your whore of a mother and some Communist bastard, and therefore the United States government owes her nothing."

"Alright," I say, changing tactics. "Is the name Abraham Erskine familiar to you?"

The slightest change in his expression gives him away and he realises his error a moment too late. "Is he your target?"

"Ah, your file is incomplete, woefully so," I mock without answering his question. "Sloppy work on your behalf considering your position within the SSR, but then again you wouldn't expect a supposedly German science division to deal with Russians, although I dare say its ambitions reach beyond any mere regime." His lips part now at the realisation of how little he knows. "You'd be horrified if you knew what they collaborated on before Hitler violated the non-aggression pact and relations between the Soviet Union and Hydra broke down."

"Get on with it," he says sharply and I merely shake my head, tsking at him.

"Colonel, considering what's in that file you should be speaking to me with a nicer tone," I say slowly and he purses his mouth. "I know Agent 13 rescued Dr Erskine and that you're in contact with him." He's silent as I step around the table towards him. "Before you put that file in front of my father and arrest me for treason tell Dr Erskine that test subject #11 survived experimentation and she's willing to meet with him."

I hear the steps before he does, moving the file behind my back before the door opens and my father walks in, surprised but glad to see me.

"Ah Ada, I was looking to see if you'd like to join me for dinner," he says and Phillips sets his jaw as he looks down at his boots. "Chester, is there a meeting I don't know about?"

"No, just thought I'd stop by and let you know..." he trails off as I walk backwards with the file hidden behind my skirt. "How glad I am to see that young Adeline has decided to serve her country."

His voice is pointed, something my father misses. I love him dearly, but he fails to pick up on those so crucial details. He's a good man, but he was naive enough to marry a spy, he's still naive enough to believe me when I tell him all I do in Russia is train as a ballerina.

"Adelina," I correct in my natural accent, a conflicting blend of American and Russian due to my split upbringing. "I prefer it to the anglicised variation."

I know I'm only adding gasoline to the fire, testing my last bit of luck, but the blood vessel threatening to burst from his temple makes it worth it.

"Yes, my Adelina, I'm very proud of her," Dad says and I still as he reaches over to put a hand on my shoulder, guilt finally setting in at everything I've hidden. "Although sometimes I think that she would have done better working in one of our more hands on branches rather than the nurse corps."

"Can you fault me for wanting to save lives?" I ask him and Phillips looks as if he could slam his head into the door frame if only to quell the exasperation he struggles to constrain.

"Of course not, I couldn't be more proud," Dad says and nods to Phillips. "If that's all then?"

I don't miss the warning in Phillip's eye as he finds his way out and I watch as Dad shuts the door and notices the frame on his desk out of place. He smiles sadly as he picks it up and I find myself battling tears, knowing that the day I've always feared has finally come.

"Has your sister replied to any of the letters you've sent?" he asks before correcting himself. "She can't write yet can she? She'd only be four."

"She's just turned five, and I taught her to read over the spring before I came back from Russia," I answer proudly despite how my heart aches. "She's smart."

"Just like you are," he says and teases. "Sometimes too smart for your own good, but I hope you do know just how proud of you I am." He doesn't see the way my lip quivers as I try to keep my face set in a pleasant smile. "A prima ballerina and now a nurse who's returned home to serve her country. Although..." I tilt my body to keep the file hidden behind my skirt as he walks back around the desk. "You're too smart Ada, too smart to not think about applying to university. Perhaps even one in England once the war's finished."

"Dad-" I begin but he's not listening.

"I know, I know, it's not what women are meant to do but with the way the world is going you could make such a great contribution," he says, not seeing the tears that begin to escape. "You're only nineteen, I know, but I truly believe if you're set on serving our country that going to university will set you up for the long run. Perhaps even a position in one of our communications divisions."

He leans against his desk, looking at his own qualifications hung on the wall in wonder rather than at me as I breathe "I-"

"I'm sorry for getting carried away," he says, dreaming more in a few seconds than I've ever allowed myself to. "It's just hard to believe that soon enough you'll be getting married and making me a proud grandfather-"

"Dad." This time I can't contain the sob that catches in my throat and he finally looks over in concern. "I can't have children."

"What do you mean you can't-" he begins dismissively before falling silent as I half collapse into his chair, the file hangs from my hand but that's not what catches his attention as he panics "Ada, are you alright? Do you need me to bring you to the nurses station?"

"They did something to me," I sob. Now that the heavy door I've kept all this locked behind is cracked open it all comes flooding out. "Dad-"

I can't finish, instead choking on the words.

"What do you mean?" he asks, crouching down in front of me to see the tears I try to hide and I realise no one's ever seen me cry since I was Katya's age. "Who did what to you?"

I can't breathe, can't form any words, and he watches incredulously as I pull my lighter and a cigarette out of my pocket with shaking hands, the file's dropped on the floor beside me, but still he doesn't reach for it.

"Adelina," he says, his voice more serious than I've ever heard it. "What haven't you told me?"

I take a moment to compose myself, the cigarette between my fingers my only lifeline as I detach in the manner I've spent years perfecting. Bringing myself into the state of mind I always enter when I have a smoking gun in hand- except until now it's never been pointed at my own head.

Wordlessly I take the file and push it forward towards him, unable to look him in the eye as he opens it, but still I catch the way his face falls and the defeated breath that escapes his mouth.

"The ballet academy is a front for an espionage branch of the NKVD," I begin and his head's in his hands. "The Red Room... there were maybe fifty of us in my class when Mama brought me there in 1927. Five of us survived the training." He leans against the desk, eyes pressed shut as I recount it. "They trained child assassins, spies... I was sixteen when I graduated, part of the first class to finish the program."

It's then I hesitate before bringing the lit butt of the cigarette down onto my knee. He protests, looking on in horror as I smell the burning nylon of my stockings, but the pain pushes me through.

"After the graduation ceremony they strapped me to a table and wheeled me into a lab," I continue. "They opened my legs and-" I open my mouth but the words don't come, so I have to force them out. "They didn't even give me any drugs. They just put their tools in me and then- then they started cutting." My legs are pressed tight together now, able to feel it even now as I quake "They cut something out of me and then more. They kept cutting away and wouldn't stop. There was so much blood, I thought I was going to die."

And it's not even the half of it. I don't even touch what Hydra did to me when my mother handed me over to them for experimentation. Their collaborative project before politicians declared war.

There's tears in his eyes when I finally dare to meet them. "Phillips brought that file to give to you. I persuaded him otherwise but it's only a matter of time before I'm extracted by the Red Room when they discover I'm compromised, or arrested by the US government for treason and espionage if they decide to abandon me. It's why I was allowed to return to the United States to enlist, direct orders from the top of the NKVD in the hopes that I'd be recruited to the SSR to obtain intelligence regarding Dr Erskine's research. When I was stationed here instead they instructed me to collect data on US troop numbers and armaments, communications with Washington. All of it."

He's at a loss for words, but something in his eye tells me that he knew more than I've given him credit for. He can't be that naïve to have never suspected anything. Even so, whatever role he believes I had in the NKVD - from the sheer horror that's taken hold of him - it's clear that he never thought it was this dark. He must have believed that it was a short lived willing involvement of a manipulated adolescent that I'd abandoned when I returned home to enlist rather than the lifelong horror that refuses to end.

"I- " he begins before reaches for my hand with tears staining his face and a trembling voice. "I am going to speak to some colleagues of mine and ensure you have immunity from prosecution, then- then we will deal with this." He grips my hand tight and looks me in the eye as he says "You are my daughter, and I love you, and I swear to you that you will never have to step foot in Russia again. You are safe now. Your mother won't turn you into what she is."

"She has Katya," I breathe and he hangs his head. "I'm not free until she is."

He gives a stiff nod and swears "I will find a way to get her out of Russia, I promise." I return his nod and he brings me into his arms, promising "They won't hurt either of you again, as long as I'm breathing I can promise you that."

~

The following morning I walk the harbour alone before my duties start at nine, my lips red and my nurses uniform pristine, daring myself to ask if the end could be in sight. After all these years, can I play this part just long enough to bring Katya to the United States?

Logistics will need to be thought out, a coordinated effort made to extract her, but if I return to the Soviet Union I know that I can smuggle her across borders as long as we have passage out of Europe. My entire life I've played a part, like an actress in the American films they'd force us to watch, but soon it may just finally come to an end.

For the first time in my life I dare to hope as I breathe in the fresh air of the harbour. Phillips will be a problem, but as long as my father is on my side then he can be managed, and if he can't be then making him disappear will be easy work.

Until then I just need to keep performing, faultlessly and seamlessly. To be a double agent means that I've got a firing squad waiting for me no matter which way I look, waiting for me to make a mistake, but failure is not an option.

The sound of planes in the distance draws my attention and I look down at my watch to see it reads 7:55, confused since drills scarcely start this early on a Sunday, but at the markings on the planes my blood runs cold and the first bombs fall.

Chaos follows, crowds running from the spitfire that chases and smoke consumes the harbour along with the screams that are barely drowned out by the sound of the planes above. My hands automatically reach for the side arm that had become so common to me during my assignments across the Soviet Union and the front lines I've crossed only to find nothing, but no weapon could help me now.

A sharp scream nearby catches my attention and I look to see Minnie on the ground, clutching her bleeding side. Without a second thought I run to her, pulling her roughly behind the cover of an abandoned jeep to find shrapnel lodged in her abdomen, but my stomach sinks when my eyes rest upon Betty's body nearby, scarcely recognisable.

"Ada-" Minnie cries out as I sling her arm over my shoulder and look up, waiting for the planes above to pass before pulling her out from behind cover and dragging her to the hospital, placing her inside the entrance and shouting orders at the nearest able bodied medic to take her.

"Get the wounded in!" I yell to the few nearby officers that have run for cover, in the distance finding personnel gunned down by spitfire with bombs leaving scattered remains in their wake. Smoke rises from the airfields, but it's the sight of the explosions in the harbour that truly makes the realisation sink in.

Today is the day the United States enters the war.

The attack would last until mid morning, but the chaos that ensued would continue into the next few days that passed. Bodies piled to the side and lipstick marks on foreheads determining who was too far gone to save. Blood and dismembered limbs and blackened flesh everywhere I turn. Sights that leave me horrified despite all the violence I've seen and enacted in my life.

Innocent women who've never seen blood come from anywhere but between their legs run with splattered faces and stained hands, desperate and scavenging for basic medical items as the wards are overwhelmed by the sheer influx of wounded.

My uniform's blackened with soot from piling the men into the ambulances and commandeered jeeps to transfer them from the burning harbour. It grows bloodied and dishevelled in the hours that follow in the wards as we try to save who we can with dozens of men to each nurse. I thought I knew what it was to have bloodstained hands, to have seen death, but I was wrong.

On the third day I'm given reprieve from my duties, Betty's remains having been collected and piled with the dead whilst Minnie recovers in the ward alongside the civilian women, and the few children, that had been caught in the attack.

In the chaos I'd never feared for my father's life, never had a second to consider that he could have fallen victim, not until Colonel Phillips approaches where I lay by the still burning harbour.

My legs are tucked beneath me as I prop myself up, the lingering smoke blurring my vision as he places in my hand a shattered photo frame and my head falls when he informs me "He was in his office attempting to get a message to Washington when the building was hit... his body's been recovered and will be returned to the mainland to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery to honour his decades of service."

In the frames cracked reflection I catch a glimpse of myself, blood and tears staining my hollow face as true despair overcomes me. My father's dead. The only person on this earth who would protect me is gone.

I meet Phillip's eye, and my voice is numb as I ask "Will I be arrested?"

"Not yet," he answers stiffly, looking at the ruins of the harbour. "You'll be transferred back to Washington where I'll inform the relevant authorities of the information the SSR's received. From there they'll decide what to do with you."

At the forefront of my mind all I can think of is how easy it would be to kill him now and put his body amongst the dead, or throw him in the harbour that's become a graveyard, but if he has this intelligence then so do others. I've been operating on stolen time as it is.

"I made you an offer," I remind him. "I suggest you take it."

"And I suggest you cooperate with legal proceedings, because if you run any leniency will be off the table."

He leaves me with that warning, and it's still on my mind a week later when I'm sitting in my father's home in Washington, a drafted letter to his lawyer on my desk. In the background the recording of the President's address plays on a seemingly endless loop from the radio as I clutch his medals in my hand.

"December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked-"

It wasn't supposed to end like this. I was almost free.

Now it seems that my last chance at freedom died in that harbour along with the only true parent I ever had.

Dad...

When the door breaks open and I smell her perfume my body seizes and immediately my posture corrects itself. My tears stop but the dried remnants on my cheeks betray me.

I refuse to flinch as she grabs my face in her hand, taking one look at me before letting go only to land a viscous blow across my face with the back of her knuckles.

"Don't cry for that old bastard!" Mama scolds before pulling the tear-stained cigarette from my fingers and putting it out on my collarbone, the heat searing straight through to the bone. "The helicopter will be here in ten minutes to extract you so pull yourself together!"

"My father is dead. Will you at least let me bury him in peace!" I finally snap at her and she actually laughs. Somehow after everything I've seen, she terrifies me more than any army ever could.

"He was a fool," she dismisses coldly. "And now it's time for you to leave this godforsaken country."

"And go where?" I ask, my performance faltering. I'd come so close... too close to go back.

"Russia," she says and I pick up footsteps in the hallway, footsteps I'd recognise anywhere. "Stalin needs you now that the Americans have entered the war. The Red Room needs you, and your sister."

Katya. She's here.

Which means hope isn't lost. Not yet.

I want to scream, to beat her bloody, but it's not just my freedom on the line and so I nod stiffly, knowing this has to be quick in order to escape. "You're right Mama, it's time to go home."

And so I bend down behind the desk, reaching for the purse on the floor as if all that could be in it is lipstick and a compact of powder. The moment my hand closes over the loaded revolver inside I feel the sharp blade of an envelope opener at my neck, pressing right on my artery.

"Think very carefully about your next move," she advises as I slowly straighten my back, revolver still in hand. "Place it on the table." I refuse and she lifts an eyebrow in intrigue before warning "Even if you kill me you have nowhere to run. You have no place in this world."

It's then I hear the march of soldiers and know time is up.

The first shot I fire shoots straight through her foot and it shocks her enough that I can put distance between us with only a nick as consequence. She dodges the second shot that follows, the bullet landing where her head had been the second before. She swings at me with the blade at the same moment I go to fire a third shot and cuts through my wrists in an attempt to disarm me but I twist before she can make contact with the revolver and fire two shots at the NKVD agents who storm in with guns raised.

The headshots are clean and it's then I hear Katya screaming from the hallway. The sound causes me to abandon the fight and dash out, firing the sixth bullet without hesitation into the head of the soldier who's grabbed her. He hits the ground and she stares in wide eyed horror as a needle's plunged directly into my neck.

"No," I protest even as the paralytic agent takes over; a dangerous dosage that borders on fatal, high enough that my enhanced nervous system can't resist it,

The hallway's stormed by agents and my sister screams my name as they grab her, but I'm helpless to stop it as my body hits the floor and my mother stands over me, shaking her head in disappointment.

~

JANUARY 1942

My wrists are bound above my head, my beaten body half hanging from the suspended chains while my feet drag on the ground. My eyes are pressed shut as I feign unconsciousness, struggling to pick up on the conversation outside.

"Hydra had promised us that their methods of mind control would work," Mama says to one of the NKVD's top officers. "She was supposed to be the first of their Winter Soldier program since the Americans had taken Erskine."

"She underwent years of experimentation before he was taken, she-"

"Erskine's enhancements have made her the most efficient agent we have, yes, but it is not enough. The experimental serum worked well enough to enhance her physiology beyond anything we could have wished for, but as I feared her time in America has rendered our methods of subliminal control obsolete. We need Hydra's methods of mind control or else we cannot send her back into the field."

"Any chance of further collaboration with Hydra disappeared when Hitler attacked, as long as Hydra serves the Nazi's we cannot work with them. We must rely solely on Leviathan's scientists-"

"Hydra extends far beyond the Nazi party," Mama argues. "If we speak to Zola-"

"No," the officer says firmly. "Agent Vetrova, you were appointed as headmistress of this academy because you promised us you could break those girls and make them worth something. If you cannot control your own daughter-"

"She will be dealt with," she says curtly. "And I have two if the first will not comply."

When I think the conversation's done the man lowers his voice. "Ekaterina's father... we've received word that when his regiment was captured by the Nazis someone outed him as a Jew." My stomach churns at the realisation of what this means for my sister. "He was shot dead along with the other prisoners."

"Well," she simply says coldly. "He should have known better than to get himself captured."

"Does your heart not bleed for our fallen comrades?" the man exclaims and she just scoffs. "For your daughter's father?"

"My heart does not bleed," she coldly states. "Especially not for fools."

"And I know some that would call you a Nazi sympathiser with all this talk of working with Hydra," he spits back and I hear the strike of her hand across his face.

"If I was a Nazi sympathiser my daughter wouldn't look like she does," is all the dismissal she offers in return for the truth he states. "And you should know such accusations are death sentences."

"You're right, they are," he says and even as he storms away I know he'll be dead by the day's end.

The door to the cell opens and her voice is harsh. "Open your eyes Adelina." When I keep them shut I receive a blow to the face before she grasps it in her hand, her nails biting into my skin. "Will you continue to defy me, or do you need to spend another month in here?"

I want to scream at her to go to hell, but I've screamed enough this past month, and so I give a stiff nod and she brings out the key to unlock the shackles above my head.

"You will be cycled through the Red Room once more before you are allowed to return to the field," she says before correcting "If you are allowed. You shot dead three NKVD agents, you are lucky that your experimentation means that you are too valuable to be executed."

My body hits the concrete ground and the weeks that follow are a blur. Nights handcuffed to bed posts and my days spent in the ballet studio. Here I don't have to think, I don't have to feel, I can simply be until my body gives way to exhaustion. Here I can pretend that nothing is real, that I'm simply an actress in a film- a never ending film.

And when night falls they bring us into the projector room. The young girls watch Snow White when they're brought here, but us older girls receive far different content.

"For the average women sex is an immoral act, permitted only for reproduction," Mama tells us, a room of the eldest girls. Fifteen of us sit here now, including the girls I graduated alongside, but I know half of the girls from the younger class will perish before their own graduation ceremony.

Weeded out through natural selection.

"But, for you it is a tool," she continues. "A means to an end which you will not suffer the consequences of as other women do. The eldest of you know what the graduation ceremony entails, and those of you who make it to your own will soon learn." My eyes glaze over, but I don't let my face betray me. "Men are sexual creatures, and as women chosen for your genetic potential you will have little trouble acquiring the information required for your assignments once you learn to exploit this."

The video she plays is graphic, but I can't pull my eyes away from the screen. In my time in America I've heard stories of encounters, but nothing so plainly graphic as this.

"Desire is a weakness, for men and women alike, and a weapon," she continues and I find my eyes fixated on the bodies of both the man and the woman in the film. "It is an emotion that you cannot be susceptible to, but you must understand it in order to wield it to your advantage. Nothing disarms a weak man like an attractive woman."

My legs press together at the sounds emitted, for a moment wishing I'd taken greater advantage of my freedoms in America, but the film ends and I'm left hot beneath my clothing.

"Adelina," Mama says and I struggle to meet her eye. "Come with me."

I keep my eyes lowered as I follow her from the room into a private office and sit as instructed, finding an American newspaper on the table.

"We believe the SSR are working on an improved supersoldier serum with Doctor Erksine's assistance," she tells me and flips through the newspaper. "We've received intelligence that Howard Stark is part of the project. Is that name familiar?"

"He's a millionaire, inventor, but more importantly he's a weapons dealer contracted by the United States Government," I answer, having been unaware of him until the fawning of the nurses I served alongside. "By all accounts he's a genius."

She nods but there's a look in her eye that I don't like. "He's a man, a man with connections and classified information." My stomach churns at the realisation of what she's going to ask of me. "Your assignments until now have consisted of assassinations, torture, espionage. You have an established identity as an American citizen, an advantage our other widows don't, and I have no doubt that you will find a way to put yourself in the sights of Howard Stark." I look at his photograph in the newspaper, he's an attractive enough man and not much older than I am, but it doesn't lessen the disgust. "Are you still a virgin Adelina?"

My throat is tight. "Yes."

"Good," she states. "Rich men appreciate such things." Still, she sees the way my jaw clenches and scolds "I could sell you out to old men that would brutalise you in ways you could not fathom, but here I am instructing you to seduce the most eligible bachelor in America. You should be grateful you spiteful little shit."

She grabs my face and I remain silent, my eyes fixed on the newspaper. She doesn't know I've been compromised, if she knew she'd never let me step foot in America again.

"Thank me," she instructs, moving her hand down to my throat. "Thank me for being a good mother."

"Thank you," I say, the words rotting in my mouth. "For being a good mother."

She releases me with the order "You are going to learn everything Erskine is doing, along with the greater plans the SSR has. If Stark gets bored of you then move onto someone else. You cannot fail." She observes me carefully before walking to the door. "Follow me."

Reluctantly I follow her through the academy until we reach the ballet studio, she invites me to look inside and my stomach drops at the sight of her.

Katya.

"She's only five years old-" I begin to protest and there's a spiteful gleam in her eye.

"So we were you," she reminds me and stands close enough I can feel her breath. "You leave in the morning and if you go rogue, if you embarrass me again... it's her life you're sacrificing. That's if she survives the winter."

Tears well in my eyes as she looks over and gasps out "Lina!"

Panic pounds in my chest as she breaks formation to run to me and straight into my arms, a mistake worthy of more than a beating. I cup the back of her head, smoothing a hand over her hair as if I could shield her from the abuse to come. She's too good, too hopeful. Mama and I both know it. We both know she won't survive the winter. Even if I make it back to her after the assignment in America it may be too late.

Which is why I have to get her out. No matter the cost.

~

It's three am when I reach with my free hand for the hair pin I'd tucked inside my brassiere to unlock the handcuff that restrains me to the bed. Four other girls sleep in the room, each fully trained, each deadly. Girls I was raised alongside. Five of us survived out of fifty. Each of us survivors have the blood of the girls that didn't make it on our hands, and so I know they won't hesitate to bury me with them.

Once I was naïve to feel a sisterhood with these girls, akin to what I'd had with the nurses at Pearl Harbor, but any illusion I have that they'd protect me died with the forty five others who didn't survive. Once the Red Room knows I'm gone it's them they'll send after me, and I cannot fail.

And so I take the sharpened nail file that's been tucked inside my mattress for the past three weeks. My feet are light as I approach the bed of the girl closest to me with the thin pillow each of us is issued in hand. The pillow covers her face at the same second the blade cuts through her carotid artery and I quickly reach for the handcuffs, pulling them taut to keep them from rattling as she struggles. Silently I count the seconds until she falls limp, blood staining the white sheets beneath her.

Slowly I look about the room, finding each of them still asleep and in the pale light from the window I catch the blood staining my hand, but that's nothing new.

The next two girls I take out the same way, but just as I turn to the last I hear the slightest rattle of handcuffs against a bedframe and I'm dodging a blade, but she's not fast enough to avoid my own being buried in her neck. She chokes out and slowly I lower her to the ground with the blade still buried until she's in no position to make any noise. It's not until her eyes go still that I remove it, blood pooling onto the concrete.

I wipe my hands clean on my nightgown before removing it and changing into the cold weather gear that's stored in my trunk before stealing a second jacket that belonged to the first girl I killed, repeating the words to myself like a prayer.

I cannot fail.

I cannot fail.

I cannot fail.

The words are all that fill my mind as I make my way to my sister's dormitory, hesitating by the door knowing that at her age there are two rooms which host twenty five girls to each. It's a gamble as to which she'll be in but it's one I'm willing to take and so I crack the first door open with another prayer, this time to the mother whose image I became acquainted with on Sundays in America. If our own mother won't protect us, perhaps she will.

And it seems my prayers are answered when I spy Katya handcuffed to her bed, still awake and in a panic. My footsteps are careful as I weave through the room to get to her, the moment her eyes catch me I bring a finger to my mouth and she gives a nod of understanding.

Again, I hold the handcuffs taut to keep them from making any noise as I carefully pick the lock and remove her hand. Her mouth moves to make my name and I bring a hand to cover it, thankful she can't see the red that stains it in the low light. Slowly I remove it before I carefully lift her from the bed to keep the mattress from squeaking and set her on the floor, keeping her hand tight in mine as I guide her from the room into the hallway.

"Lina-" she whispers and I hush her as I wrap the second jacket around her, knowing we're about to make the most treacherous journey we ever could in the dead of winter and I don't even know where the hell we're located in the Soviet Union, only that we need to keep going west. If it were summer I would take her east, try to make the crossing into Alaska and down into Canada, but I'm not foolish enough to believe we could survive such a trek in the winter.

Carefully I unpick the lock to the door that leads outside, to the wall that stands between us and freedom, but stop at the sight of an armed guard with his back to us. Again I bring a finger to my lips, letting go of her hand to reach for the blade inside my jacket pocket. The wind covers any sound my boots make in the snow as I approach from behind, taking him out in the same manner as the others, a quick death.

Slowly I lower him to the ground and take his rifle before looking back at Katya who stares with wide eyes and motion for her to come over. She does so without any words and I keep her behind me with the rifle drawn as we make our way to the wall. Now that we're far enough away from anyone who could possibly hear us I bend down to her level.

"We are going to escape this place, but in order for us to make it out you must do as I say without any argument, and you must be absolutely silent unless I say it is safe to speak," I instruct. "Do you understand?"

She nods and I kiss her forehead, holding her hand tight as I look at the obstacle in front of us, the half moon casting enough light for us to try to work out a solution. Nearby I'm able to find a pair of spare flag poles with half mast soviet flags, and using the strength the serum's given me I drag them to the wall. Whilst the serum's greatest feats have been invisible, enhancing my hearing, reflexes, sight- it's also given me the strength of an above average grown man, which isn't much, but it has to be enough.

Katya watches as I struggle, but manage to make something almost resembling a ladder with the two poles positioned on an angle, the tops of them resting on the barbed wire that covers the wall. There's no rungs to climb but the incline slope will be enough to help us shimmy to the top.

"You must be brave," I tell Katya as I help her get a grip of each of the poles, slinging the rifle over my back. "I'll be behind you so you won't slip off, and when we get to the top I'll put my jacket over the wiring so we can climb over. It's just like climbing up a slide in a playground."

She nods, and after checking over my shoulder to make sure we're in the clear I follow her up and throw the jacket over, her breath hitching when she takes in the drop.

"Hang onto me," I instruct her, and she wraps her arms around my neck before I push myself off, taking the brunt of the landing and find myself uninjured despite the impact. Despite all Erskine's assurances about the serum I've always been hesitant to test the extent of it.

"Now," I say as I set her down. "Now we run."

~

Morning light is just peaking through the trees, her feet ache and I know she's in pain after the hours running through the woods but we need to put as much distance between us and the Red Room as possible.

"Why did Mama do this?" she asks me, as distraught as I was at the same age. "Why-"

"Because she is an evil woman," I state, the censored description for the psychopathic bitch. "Who works for very bad people."

"But she works for Stalin?" she says and my stomach sinks at the realisation that she didn't have an American upbringing to contradict the propaganda she's been fed. In her entire life she's spent all of six months there. "He's the father of the nation."

"He is a murderer and a very bad man," I correct with little censorship. She's seen enough violence by now that I don't need to sugarcoat it. "Who has had many, many, people killed, and he has put all those little girls into that academy so they can learn to do it for him."

She stumbles slightly now and stops in her tracks. "Were you one?"

"Yes," I breathe and only now in the light does she see the blood staining my hands. "Which is why I will not let them hurt you as they hurt me, but we need to keep moving."

But it's then I hear the sound of an engine and motion for her to stay behind me as we approach the sound, slowly drawing my rifle as we near the side of a road.

"Lina?" she asks but I keep my eyes focused on the truck in the distance as I crouch in the bushes, lining the windscreen up in my scopes and firing a single bullet that sends the car screeching into a ditch with a clean headshot.

Katya looks on in horror as I approach the car, finding the damage thankfully minimal, and pull the driver's body out into the ditch before going to the front of the car and putting all my strength into pushing it back onto the road.

"You killed him," she gapes and while I want to curse myself for exposing her to such violence I know it's nothing compared to what she'll experience if we don't make it out.

"I did."

Except even now I wonder if it's hopeless. Europe is completely and utterly occupied, either by the Nazis or the Soviet Union. If we could make it to France I could get in touch with the French Resistance, but even then...

I return to the man's body, searching until I find a wallet in his jacket. Knowing by now not to spare a thought to who he was I avoid the photograph he keeps there of a woman he'll never return to and take what little currency he has.

"He could have helped us," Katya says, but she doesn't know what some men would do to little girls like her if given the opportunity, and that is something I will not risk.

"Or he could have hurt us," I say, knowing that she will never see me the same after today, but I can live with her horror as long as it means she's alive. "The entire continent is a war zone, occupied by the Nazi's, and now Stalin will be sending soldiers after us. We are fighting for our lives, for our freedom. We can't afford to give people the benefit of the doubt, now come on, we need to keep moving."

I drag her to the truck and place her in the passenger's side, buttoning up her jacket to protect her from the cold but I can't keep my hands from shaking while I second guess what I've done, if the Red Room would be more merciful than what lies ahead.

My hand smooths over her black hair, finding snow in her curls, battling the sickness brought on by fear. While our mother's as blonde as possible we both take after our fathers, myself with hair and eyes of a lighter brown along with features that would easily identify me as being of Western European descent, however the features Katya inherited from her father will make the journey ahead dangerous.

She's my half sister, and while I doubt there's any documentation to prove who her father was, those features and her accent alone would be enough to have her killed if we cross into Nazi territory and strike the wrong soldiers. Traditional customs of matrilineal descent don't matter to the Nazis, not when they're taught to identify Jews by features many don't even possess and pass laws declaring who they deem worthy of liberty based on blood. Although America treats their own not so differently, it is still the safest place she could be.

I'd once heard Erskine remark upon the similarities as nonsense theories of racial superiority and I'm in agreement. I don't know if the world has always been this way, or if it's just gone to hell in recent times, but I have to take her somewhere she has a chance of a future. We don't know where they've taken the dwindling Jewish population across Europe, if they've been shot dead on sight or imprisoned, but I will not let her suffer that fate. Not when the same policies could so easily be enacted within the Soviet Union the moment Stalin feels cause to do so.

If that happens... no amount of potential or training will spare her from it. Especially if her father in any way betrayed the Soviet Union before his execution. Still, it may be our own mother's vendetta that gets us both killed if she continues to express loyalties towards Hydra.

If we made it to America, or even England, if we made it off the continent then we'd be out of the Red Room's reach, away from Hydra and the Nazis. She would be safe. I know in my heart that this has to be the right decision, because when the Red Room begins culling her class she'll be one of the first to go, or if she survives... she'll be a child assassin as brainwashed as the others.

With quick hands I braid her hair back and promise "We will make it out of Europe."

There is no alternative.

~

MARCH 1942

A month has passed since our escape, during which I've shed more blood than I have in a lifetime, but the end is finally in sight. Katya is nestled in my arms, hiding onboard a supply train to France. It will be months before the Allies are in any position to make any attacks against the Nazis within Europe, or god forbid even longer, so I know we cannot wait on a miracle liberation, but France will be the safest place for us in the meantime.

The Allies will have agents within the French Resistance, and from there I can strike whatever bargain I have to in order to get us out. Even if it means operating as an Allied agent within France until they can land troops. I'll do whatever it takes to be on the right side of this war and to keep Katya safe.

During the past month I've taught her all the French and German I can, enough so that she's been able to blend in without setting off alarms. We've had close calls, but we've made it this far.

"Remember, until we are on American soil your name is Katherine and I am your mother," I tell her, knowing by now that enough exhaustion has creeped into my bones that I can pass for the mother of a five year old. "Speak in whatever language you are spoken to, and keep your head down wherever possible."

She nods, familiar with the routine by now, and tucks her head into my shoulder. Braver than any five year old should ever have to be while I wince, hiding the still healing bullet wound I'd received a fortnight prior. The scientists said the serum should heal wounds at the very least twice as fast as before due to the cell turnover rate, along with general increased durability, and it must be true because if it wasn't I'd be dead.

Her voice is quiet, melancholy. "I wish that you were my mother."

Tears fill my eyes and I kiss the top of my head. "So do I Katyusha," I murmur and manage to smile. "I remember when you were just a baby, so small. You're growing up so fast." I smooth a hand over her braided hair. "Faster than any child should ever have to."

"What will happen when we get to America?" she asks and for a moment I let myself dream, just as my father would want me to.

"I've made some enemies in America, but I have services I can offer them," I say, prepared to do whatever it takes to strike a deal with the SSR. "Then I'll enrol you in a proper school, where the only things you'll have to learn are how to read and write and add numbers together. You'll never have to learn the things I did, I swear it."

The train skids to a sudden stop and immediately I push her behind me, knowing we have another hour at least until the next station. When the door to the carriage is thrown open I prepare to be met with Nazi soldiers, but instead I come face to face with American uniforms.

"Oh god," I rasp out, the relief so violent I forsake any pretence. "We're Americans trying to get back to the States, please-"

But before I can finish a rifle is aimed at my head. "Are you the Red Widow?"

"Pardon?" I ask, blindsided and horrified before trying to play dumb, trying to be just another stranded American making it home. "The what?"

A warning shot is fired beside my head and Katya's scream's muffled by my coat as I spit out "Please, I have a child-"

"Is your name Adelina Viktorovna Vetrova?" I'm asked and never before have I ever been referred to by my mother's surname outside of the Soviet Union.

"My name is Betty Walsh," I insist, keeping Katya firmly behind me as I feel for the blade strapped beneath my jacket. "I'm a nurse-"

"Put your hands up," the soldier orders and for a moment I question if these are even American soldiers, or if they're Hydra in disguise despite their accents.

"I was taken prisoner by Soviet-"

"Hands up!" he repeats and slowly I comply at the sight of more soldiers appearing. "Adelina Viktorovna Vetrova, The United States Government has ordered your arrest on the grounds of treason and espionage."

For a second I'm willing to comply, to step into shackles if it means Katya will be given passage to the States, but it's then hell rains down on us.

The soldier hits the ground as bullets ricochet through the carriage, his head a mess of blood and brains as I shove Katya down before taking the fallen soldier's rifle and opening fire, unable to take the time or risk to distinguish between the American soldiers and the new attackers. Katya's screams are drowned out by the gunfire until the last bullet case falls at my feet and a battle rages outside.

"Lie down, don't move, don't speak. Just lie down and I will come back," I promise her before forcing her to the floor and using the soldiers body to cover hers. Blood and tears stain her face, but we aren't making it out alive unless I take them out. "I'll come back for you once it's clear."

It's when I run out of the carriage that I recognise the Hydra insignia on the attacker's uniforms and take the loaded assault rifle from a fallen American, firing without hesitation and perhaps even satisfaction.

The uniforms of the Hydra soldiers leave nothing exposed with masks shielding everything but their mouths and therefore give me very little that I can cut open with fatal precision, and whilst I'm not overly familiar with the durability of their uniforms it's a safe bet that their elite task force can withstand a blade.

In the chaos all I know is that somehow the Americans and Hydra both got intel that I'd be on this train, and they're both after me. At the sight of a dozen more Hydra soldiers unloaded from a truck I immediately seek shelter between the train carriages and reload, having been trained as a field soldier upon the outbreak of war, and open fire with the assault rifle.

Bullets are indiscriminate and men on both sides fall in the crossfire, but just when victory is in sight that's when the truck rolls in with a mounted machine gun.

And my bullets aren't the only ones that don't discriminate.

I launch myself into the enclosed train carriage, throwing the door shut and hitting the ground the second before that machine gun tears the metal wall to shreds. A cry of pain catches in my throat as I'm hit with a round that tears clean through my abdomen - with two more scraping the top of my hip and thigh. I look back at the sound of Katya yelling my name and find the bullets landing in the body lying atop her and struggle for the rifle I'd thrown to the floor only for American troops to approach after taking out the operator of Hydra's machine gun.

"Get her and retreat!"

I'm dragged from the train, fighting against them as Hydra closes in with assault rifles only to be tossed to the ground as gunfire again breaks out, and I'm dragging myself across the snow to one of the fallen bodies for a weapon. My hand closes around a pistol and I fire three shots into the heads of the Hydra soldiers that rush for the machine gun before spotting something fortunate.

A hiss of pain makes its way through my teeth as I reach for the grenade, without hesitation pulling the ring and throwing it beneath the truck holding that damn machine gun before bracing myself in the snow.

The surrounding soldiers take the brunt of the explosion, but just as I put pressure on the entry wound and begin to push myself from the ground I hear her screaming my name in the distance.

"Lina- Lina!"

Out of my peripheral vision I see Hydra soldiers dragging her from the train, kicking and screaming and helpless to break free.

"Katya!" I choke out, firing blinding now as my vision blackens and American soldiers surround me, forcing a mask over my mouth and pulling me to my feet while I fight a losing battle to try to get to her. "No-"

"Get her on the damn plane before more soldier's come! Leave the girl and retreat!" I hear a man order as I rip off the mask and with the last strength I have cut the throat of the man standing between my sister and I.

With hot blood covering me I run forward only to be met with a bullet in the leg as I focus my aim on Hydra's soldiers, taking three down before the handgun clicks and the Americans tear me away from her.

Fists beat me down to my knees and multiple hands force the mask over my face, muffling my screams as some sort of gas replaces oxygen. My body falls limp and the last thing I hear as I'm dragged into their truck is Katya's screams.

~

MAY 1942

My arms are bound by a straight jacket as Colonel Phillips observes me within the high security prison that I'm now held within.

"I didn't think someone with so many bullet holes could incapacitate five guards in an escape attempt, but here you are," he says as I seethe in a silent rage. "But you still failed, didn't you?"

I bite down hard enough on my tongue to taste blood.

"I bet failure's not met lightly where you're from," he says and I expect to be struck but it never comes. "I told you that if you ran any leniency would be off the table, yet you still disappeared-"

"The bullet holes within my father's office would tell you it wasn't a willing disappearance," I counter and his mouth curls into a scowl. "I want my sister."

"Yeah well, the Nazis have her now," he says and my eyes burn. "Crocodile tears won't save you now."

"She's Jewish," I breathe and for just a second his face falls. "Please-"

"Then she's already dead," he says and I look to see Erskine in the doorway with his face drawn in pain. "For that you have my condolences."

Erskine approaches and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder as I break down.

"You were brave to try to spare her from the Red Room," he says while Phillips remains wisely silent. "But not even the strongest soldier could withstand the army that you faced, not yet at least."

I look up in confusion with tears staining my face and Phillips opens his mouth to protest before closing it as Erskine undoes the straps of the straight jacket.

"We were both prisoners, myself of Hydra and you of the Red Room and your mothers ambitions. She came to Hydra when she extracted the information that we were working on a serum to chemically enhance the human form and offered you as a test subject. The serum has been a success for your body type and training, subtle enhancements that increase your basic senses and physiology. But, the serum also enhances the aspects of one's personality, for better or for worse, and it seems now that yours was for the better."

My lip quivers and I'm fourteen again. The same age as I was when I was first brought into Hydra's lab for experimentation, with Erskine the only one I could trust.

"You might not have been able to save your sister, just as I could not save my own family," he continues. "But together we can work to stop Hydra and the Nazis."

"Doctor Erskine," Phillips interrupts. "The US government has given orders that she is not to be released until cleared by psychiatrists and with the explicit permission of the supreme court. That's if she even cooperates."

My heart hardens and Erskine explains. "I, along with other members of the SSR, will work to secure your release. In the meantime I ask for your cooperation in using your bloodwork to formulate an improved version of the serum in order to fight the Nazis."

My tears dry as I remember the years of torture I endured under Hydra in the name of that serum, the experimentation... and blinding anger replaces the grief that had threatened to tear me apart.

And my answer is simple. "No."

"No?" Phillips exclaims and I set my jaw as he marches forward. "We are asking for your cooperation as a courtesy, because in case you aren't aware you are facing a life in jail, or even execution, for treason against-"

"Then execute me," I say and words fail him while Erskine looks on in pain. "I have no place in this world."

I failed. I failed the only mission that has ever mattered.

Now I can face the consequences.

"I recommend a course of psychiatric treatment to remove the psychological conditioning imposed by her mother's academy," Erskine says to Phillips. "I am no specialist when it comes to psychiatry, so I recommend that one is brought in to work closely with her. She has faced a tremendous degree of violence in her life, but she is strong. Give her the chance to recover and offer her services, because I will not allow her to be part of this project without her informed consent."

"Are you aware of the violence this woman has committed-"

"Yes," he states factually. "But I am also aware of the violence that created her. I am aware of the fact that every action she has taken was in the name of surviving and keeping her sister alive, and I know when the time comes she will step up to serve her country and take action against the men responsible for her sisters death."

"My sister would be alive if we weren't ambushed by your men," I say as I meet Phillips's eye. "The only way I will ever serve this country is over my dead body."

A sigh escapes Erskine while Phillips just nods his head, having expected that response. "Then you're going to become very familiar with these walls."

"Doctor Erskine," I say, finding myself utterly unafraid of death whilst I do indeed step up to take action against the men responsible for her death. "Considering the durability and accelerated blood clotting I've received from the serum, how hard would I have to crack my head open on that wall to kill myself?"

He pales and Phillips shouts out for guards to bring restraints, the mistake I was counting on him making, and the moment those armed guards rush in a smile spreads across my face. My hand closes around the side arm of the first man to reach for me and he drops dead before he even realises what's happened, the other two guards following in quick succession.

Phillips rushes to grab the sidearm of one of the fallen men only to be met with a bullet to the leg and Erskine tries to intervene before deciding to keep a safe distance as I force Phillips to his knees and hold him at gunpoint.

"Adelina, these are not the men responsible," Erskine says as I bend down to pick up a second hand gun, aiming it towards the open door in preparation for more guards. "You have never taken joy in unnecessary violence."

"You're right, but this is necessary," I say, flicking the safety off as I stare down at Phillips. "I should have killed you during the attack on Pearl Harbor."

"You should have," he agrees and Erskine moves to keep back the guards that come, giving them orders not to shoot. "And I should have given your father that damn file."

"I showed it to him, and he told me he was going to make sure I was safe from prosecution," I say, even if he'll never believe it. "But you had already given your verdict hadn't you? You hated me for being the daughter of a Russian whore." I tilt my head now and laugh. "Ah, I think I know."

His face is stiff, anger burning behind his eyes. "Know what?"

"My mother would have fucked her way through the ranks before settling on my father, the easiest one she could manipulate," I say and I see it in his eyes. "Don't tell me all of this is because you're ashamed that you fucked a Russian spy?"

He shakes his head in disgust. "No, I was the one yelling what she was into deaf ears for almost a damn decade before your father finally threw her out, and I kept yelling into them for a decade more telling him what you are but he never listened."

"In the end it didn't matter," I tell him. "He chose me."

"And now he's dead like your sister-" he curses out when I fire a shot directly beside his head. "Russian Bitch!"

Guns are aimed at me from the doorway, but I'm not ready to give in, not until I draw this out.

"I told you to speak to me with a nicer tone considering everything you read in that file," I lecture. "But still you make the same mistakes."

"And you deserve a hanging," he spits back and I don't disagree.

"I'll go to hell someday, I'm sure of that," I say, reloading the chamber. "But not before you do."

But before I can pull the trigger a syringe is injected into my neck and Erskine takes the pistol from my hand, lowering me to the ground as the paralytic agent takes over, and I wish I'd put the gun to my own head instead.