3

"Torrance open the damn door! I know you're here!"

Torrance tossed off her headphones and quickly ran to the door. She peered out the peephole and found Santiago looking mildly annoyed. She unlocked her door and threw it open with a smile. "Look what the cat dragged in."

He walked sluggishly into her apartment, rolling his eyes. "I barely even saw you when you ran into the bar. It was like you flew." He looked around for a moment before saying in an annoyed tone, "And you stole my damn chips."

She grinned. "And those chips were delicious." She gave him a good look over, he was wearing a hoodie underneath a large, army green jacket. He looked exhausted. "I had to finish some things for work," she said, closing the door behind him and carefully locking up. "And speaking of work, I still need to fill out a report--"

"A report?" Santiago smiled, the ghost of sleep deprivation leaving his eyes. "What type of report?"

She hesitated to answer and he quickly filled the void with his usual questions: "Was it bloody? Did you have to kill someone? Did that big, bad boss of yours kill someone? Please, please, babe! Tell me everything!"

She rolled her eyes. "You know that I can't tell you it's--"

"Against policy. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that bullshit countless of times. But has that ever stopped you from telling me the juicy details?"

Laughing, she nodded. "You have a point there." She walked around him as he threw his bag on the table and she plopped down on the couch and told him everything. 

"Hydra?" he gasped after she had told him what had happened when she found the ship and what had happened to Carly Porter, the Hydra agent she had killed. "How in hell are they back? Didn't they all get killed?"

"Oh, please, don't you know the old saying?" she grinned. "Cut off one head, two more shall takes its place."

He groaned. "So you killed one of their agents, do you really expect two more to just jump out of nowhere?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they did."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, offering her one that she gratefully took. He lit hers and then his and soon enough, her apartment was filled with a haze of smoke. 

"Tell me one thing," he murmured, pointing to the mess of tapes on her couch. He even grabbed a few of the chips she hadn't finished and dunked them heavily into her nearly empty salsa jar on the couch besides him. "When did you become obsessed with cassette tapes?"

"I'm not," she said, picking up one and tossing it to him as he licked his fingers, greedy for more. "I found these in the Hydra war plane."

"Whoa," he whispered, holding the old tape in his hands and asked her, "Who's Anastasia?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out."

"Why didn't you just search her? There has to be articles about her somewhere on the web."

With his cigarette playing on his lips, he opened his bag and pulled his laptop out. She scooted closer to him as he pulled up his search engine. He typed out the name Anastasia and Hydra and they watched the articles load. 

The articles came up quickly and they didn't stop. She frowned, pointing to one of the top articles that read 'Agent Killed in Freak Accident.'

Her eyes continued to follow the articles, her mind trying and pleading with her to understand what she was reading. 

'Forty Dead in Explosion.'

'Man in Charge of the Captain America Experiment is Killed.'

'Venus Strikes in Rome.'

'Assassin Kills Three in Berlin.'

"What the hell are all of these?" Torrance murmured as Santiago clicked the one titled with 'Venus Strikes in Rome.'  The article began to load and her eyes were going over the words quicker than Santiago could read them.

"Mystery woman hits Rome on July thirteenth, nineteen-thirty-seven. Seen in several parts of Italy and around the coast of Greece, she struck again on July seventeenth. Killing two in Rome and one in Italy, she added three bodies to her growing number of kills," he said, turning to her and frowning. "Who the hell is this woman? Does this seem like the woman on the tapes?"

She shrugged, reaching for his laptop and pulling it into his laps. "Have a go at the tapes, I want to take a look at the article about Berlin."

Santiago took hold of the cassette player and slipped the headphones on. She watched him find tape one and slid it into the case as he sat back. She turned her attention back to the computer, finding the article on Berlin and watching as pictures loaded.

They were blurry and in black and white, but it was a woman. Her hair was messy around her face and you could barely tell what she looked like, her face smeared and bright like someone had forcefully removed her face from the photograph. Or, she was just that skilled at avoiding cameras. 

After killing three in Italy and Greece, Venus moves to Berlin to add three more to her list. Mysterious woman whom the people have called 'Venus' was seen leaving an office building in Berlin, Germany. Police arrived on the scene and discovered the bodies of Julius Schreiber, Sonja Gearst, and Lenore Nagel. The three bodies were found mutilated in their offices and was later discovered missing files from project unknown. 

The assassin caught on camera exiting the building late on August first, nineteen-thirty-seven. She is seen leaving with a briefcase, which was later recorded as missing from Schreiber's office. Venus has been seen on multiple occasions in the capital, including times in nineteen-thirty-six and five. She is almost always seen as shown above. 

If seen or know anything about the Venus-Berlin killings, please contact the police.

Torrance ignored the rest of the article describing the capital and the police, and went back to the search bar. Instead of searching for Anastasia, she went with an obvious question.

Is the assassin Venus connected to Hydra?

Almost instantly articles began to appear. Some in foreign languages and the other's in English, which made her question whether when this great assassin had time to come to America.

'Hydra Exposed, Venus Missing.'

'Has This Dangerous Killer Finally Been Stopped?'

'Where is Venus?'

'Hydra Gone, What Happens to Venus?'

'Twenty Killed in Bizarre Shooting.'

'Captain America: Dead?'

The majority of the articles that showed up were about the destruction of Hydra and how the great Captain America had put an end to their reign. So her best option would be the bizarre shooting or the very helpful Where is Venus?

She clicked the Where is Venus article and watched it slowly load on her page. There were pictures, but they were the same as last. Venus's face seemed to be digitally edited out of everything, as if Hydra wanted nothing to do with her now. She was an enigma to the world. 

Anastasia Moroz, or more infamously known as Venus, was an assassin for the corrupt organization, Hydra. She worked closely with Arnim Zola and was even said have known Johann Schmidt, the enemy of Captain America during World War II. She had been an asset to Hydra, killing and stealing for the organization as one of the highest ranking assassin's in Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. history. Having over one hundred kills in her book. 

But where has she gone? With Hydra dismantling and the great Steve Rogers having ended the rivalry with Schmidt, where will she go? Will she be found? Will we ever know her true identity, if Anastasia Moroz isn't her real alias? Sources have been told that she was apart of a special secret project that helped invent the serum for the experiment Rogers went through to become the great Captain America we know today. But others have said that her experiment lead to the tragedy that was once the Winter Soldier, wherever he may be. 

Will this deadly assassin finally come out of hiding and strike again? Will Hydra rise with their original fist? Or is Venus finally dead?

It's known that Venus has been connected to over a dozen unknown murders and tragedies throughout the years. Her ledger has continued to build, her own reputation becoming one of fear. With the dismantling of the Red Skull and later the deadly return Hydra a few short years ago, must the public begin to fear there will be a resurrection of this great killer? Or is the world finally free from this assassin's fist?

Torrance sighed, sitting back further on the couch. She looked over to Santiago and he was frowning, already on tape four. She nudged him and he took off the earphones, asking her, "Any luck with the articles?"

She shook her head. "Her full alias is Anastasia Moroz, but other than that? She's a complete mystery. She has over a hundred kills and has been all over the country working for Hydra, but it's not like there's any true evidence against her. Only faded photographs with her face chopped out of it, we've got nothing."

"Why were these tapes in the Hydra plane, though? What has she got to do with anything?"

"She was apart of the experiments that lead to the creation of Captain America, so maybe Hydra was using her to take back all the information? In one of the tapes, you can hear the doctors talking about her missions and what she has to do. But it's not like she succeeded."

Santiago tossed the cassette player to the side and took his laptop from her, murmuring, "Maybe she wasn't just getting the information back. Maybe she was killing the people who knew about it, limiting the sources and making sure the experiment vanished. Because she obviously didn't get it all, but collecting information wasn't her only job. She was sent out to kill people for Hydra, take down the competition. So, instead of looking for what she took, we she look at her kills. See if they correspond with anything with S.H.I.E.L.D."

She watched him type furiously on his keyboard, and she furrowed her eyebrows, saying, "Stop, hold on, wait--"

He froze and looked to her to explain.

"Go back to that last page you were on a second ago," she said and he followed her instructions and she pointed, angrily, at the screen. "There! Do you see that?"

He clicked the article and his eyes went wide in realization. "That's the complete list of her known kills, Tor. She wasn't just Hydra's fist, she was also S.H.I.E.L.D.'s."

"It makes sense," she groaned, rubbing her forehead. "S.H.I.E.L.D. was technically Hydra all along, so I shouldn't be surprised that she worked under Hydra's name to kill for S.H.I.E.L.D."

She pointed to a name on the list and she caught her breath, "She worked on the experiment that created the Winter Soldier. There are names under that, names of kills--"

"She killed people in the trials."

They already knew this, from the tapes. They had both listened to how Anastasia wordlessly murdered the men conducting the experiments on her. Torrance nodded, rubbing her face again and sighing. "Who the hell is she anyways? Why would Hydra hide her away? Why would her tapes be in a Hydra war plane in the middle of nowhere?"

"They were probably trying to destroy all the evidence, keep her a secret."

"Pretty stupid considering she was all over the tabloids back in the day."

Santiago shifted in his seat, placing his laptop on the table and turned to her. He looked nervous and Torrance almost wanted to slap his words out of him. When he did finally speak though, his voice was low and concerning, leaving a cold chill down her neck.

"Do you think you could have known her during the period of your life that was--" He paused, nervous. "--missing. The time you can't remember?"

She shrugged. "I mean--maybe? But nineteen-o-six to nineteen-forty? That seems like too long of a time, Anastasia looked young, she had to of been a teenager, maybe even a child at the time of nineteen-o-six. Why would I have anything to do with a child during that time of my life?"

"Maybe she wasn't a child," Santiago mumbled. "Maybe she was like you."

Torrance sat back on the couch, taking in the possibility that there was another one like her out there. Someone who had gone through the same trauma, but instead of helping others they were created to kill. 

It made sense, though. The tapes gave that all away. Anastasia Moroz, the great Venus, was forced to participate in an experiment that sounded frighteningly similar to the one Torrance had gone through. The serum, the testing, the hope in gaining new abilities all sounded far too familiar to be a coincidence.

"It's definitely a possibility," she told him with a curt nod. "She was apart of an experiment similar to mine and even has ties to Project Rebirth, like me, but this all seems so staged. Why did I find these tapes that hold a not so similar experiment like mine? It all seems so--fake." 

Santiago laughed. "Fake? If it was fake, then why did we just look at over a hundred documented kills and articles about her?"

She groaned, looking up at her peeling ceiling. "I don't want to think of the experiment that initially saved me to be one made to create trained killers. But I can't just--not take that into consideration. I need to accept that she could be like me, but it's Hydra! They're evil, I don't want to be related to something evil."

But wasn't Torrance evil, in a way? She had killed for her agency. She had killed in the war, supposedly. Weren't all killers evil?

"Do you remember who the doctors were who experimented on you? Do you remember what the exact experiments were? The trials? The people in the room?"

She thought for a moment, opening her mouth to response but closing it, confused. I can't even remember what the doctor's looked like. I don't even remember if there had been people in the room besides me. If there were people, all I can remember is blurriness, nothing clear. All of it is just foggy. 

Everything from that period of her life, no matter how hard she thought and racked her brain, it all came back glossed over and gone. Like someone had forced her under the same very memory suppressing machine as Anastasia to wipe away her identity. To erase everything that made her who she was before. Torrance forced a sigh past her lips, rubbing her forehead.

"I don't remember."