2

When the new jets touched down and dozens of agents came flying out of the large doors, Torrance took off. She weaved in and out of people, dodging questions as she tried to look for a familiar face.

Fury found her before she found him.

He stood at the base of the ramp leading into one of the jets. He stared directly at her, arms crossed and looking more than confused. "What the hell happened here?" he asked once she approached him. "I let you go on a fun little scouting mission and everyone ends up dead?"

"Hydra," she snapped, ignoring his questions. "It was all Hydra! They sent one of their operatives to infiltrate our systems. She came on the mission and destroyed all the evidence." Torrance felt the burn of the lie leaving her mouth when she told him everything had been destroyed, because not everything was gone. She had the tapes, but she couldn't bring herself to tell him. He couldn't know...at least not yet. She wanted a chance to look a them herself.

She did this constantly and has still yet to be caught. And what's wrong with a little deep dive by yourself before projecting it to everyone? There was a chance the tapes were fried, busted, broken, whatever, so it wouldn't even really matter if she got a glimpse at them first.

"Figured," mumbled Fury, walking through the snow and towards the smoking building. There was a group of agents huddled around the exterior with hoses of hot water. She followed closely, wanting nothing more than to go home. He continued to speak through a cough as they neared the smoke, "So, the Hydra agent killed everyone?"

Torrance nodded, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "Tried to kill me too."

"Where is she now?" Before she could answer, Fury groaned and pointed to the smoking hole in the ground where the plane had once been. "Let me guess, she's in there?"

She nodded, looking to the ground as she murmured, "I kinda-sorta-killed her, sir."

"Not surprised."

"What are we going to do now?"

"You're going to go fill out a report and then go home," he told her. "And I'm going to make sure everyone is doing their job right."

"But I should stay and help--"

"You've done enough, Avery. We got this here."

She nodded, turning on her heel and going in search for someone to file a report out for. The closer she got to the jet that could take her home, she let the thought of filing a report leave her mind. It was an accident of course, she didn't mean to get on the jet and tell the pilot to take her home. 

She was in shock, obviously.

~

She got home later that night. She opened the doors to the bar, barely acknowledging Donnie and Santiago who were chatting at one of the tables. She passed them without a second thought as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. But, once she got halfway, she abruptly turned on her heel and jogged back down to snatch the basket of tortilla chips on the counter the men were eating from.

She gave them a grin before running back up the stairs.

She unlocked her door and pushed her way inside, dropping the coat she took from the basecamp on the floor once she closed the door. She plopped the basket of chips on the table, stuffing a few in her mouth for good measure. Gathering her old tape players, along with an extremely old walkman, all from her closet, she slipped the tape inside and slid her chunky headphone into place on her head.

With nothing but crackling voices playing, her heart began to beat in her chest with anticipation. She wanted to know who those people were, she wanted to know everything about all of it.

She grabbed a jar of salsa from her fridge and shuffled over to the couch where she sat down with a heavy groan. She hadn't put that much energy into the job before and getting tossed around had left her joints feeling achy.

She dipped a chip into her jar and ate hungrily as she listened to the voices that grew louder.

"Anastasia, who do you work for?" said a man in a very thick Russian accent.

A woman, with a similar accent replied with, "Hydra."

"Good," the man responded, followed by the scratching of a pencil on paper. "What is your mission?"

"Locate files on the super soldier serum."

Torrance sucked in air, nearly choking. She hit her chest, coughing and swallowing thickly. She had been apart of trials referring to the Project Rebirth, the one Steve Rogers took part in. The serum the woman mentioned in the recording was what the scientists used in the project. The one that modified her body and saved her all those years ago.

The one that doomed her to eternity.

"You have done an extraordinary job on this one," a new voice came in. "You've truly outdone yourself this time, Zola."

This time, Torrance really did choke. 

Arnim Zola had been the scientist working with Hydra who had developed many of the weapons used in the war. It was said that he even experimented on the Winter Soldier when transforming him into the 'fist' of Hydra. He was long dead by now, at least his body was, she had heard rumors his mind still floated between hard drives and mainframes from time to time.

"She's one of my finest works," murmured Zola, fascination lacing every word. "You hear that, Ana? You're my favorite."

"Don't patronize me," Anastasia said, her voice sounding familiar. "You love the Tesseract more than me." 

Torrance remembered reading about the Tesseract. It was said to be Hydra's secret weapon during the war. Johann Schmidt and Zola had used it to transform its power into weapons. It hadn't gone that far though, because Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos defeated Hydra and the Tesseract was later found and put in S.H.I.E.L.D possession. Which, now that she's thinking about it, has technically been in Hydra hands all along.

"Ah, young one, we haven't yet found the Tesseract," Zola corrected her. There was a shuffling of papers and the tap of a pen or pencil on something metal, a table perhaps. Torrance dipped another chip into the salsa, licking the salt from her fingers and wondering where these tapes were being recorded. A compound? Warehouse? A lab?

"All you do is talk about it, that's all I hear. Talk, talk, talk," said Anastasia, annoyed. "Doctor, have I not proven myself to you yet? You continue to perform experiments on me, am I not ready?"

"You have proven yourself worthy, yes," Zola told her, the sound of chairs moving across the floor echoed in the recording. "We just need to make sure you don't..."

"Don't what, doctor?"

"Just lie down, Anastasia, we have work to do."

The recording ended leaving Torrance with more questions than answers. The voice recording was shorter than she thought it would be, but it was better than nothing. She ejected the tape and held it in her hands. The small writing on the card outside of the tape read: Anastasia Moroz: Number Six.

She grabbed the next tape which was labeled Anastasia Moroz: Number One and slipped it inside her walkman and waited for it to play. She listened to the tape wind and before a small click sounded in her headphones that made a small chill go down her spine.

Torrance was eager to learn more, to understand this woman and her purpose. Did she and Torrance share a history? Was this someone she had met during her blurred time?

"Test, test," a small voice said and Torrance's heart skipped a beat. He sounded young, too young. 

"Stop that, Leon," an older voice snapped and the rustling of papers was heard. "Go back to your mother, you know how important my work is."

The shuffling of papers was now heard and the recording left a sick feeling in Torrance's gut. She had no idea what secrets were in the tapes and she knew she had to go to Fury, tell him all about it. Instead, she continued to listen carefully.

"What is your name?" the man's voice said after a long beat of scratching noises and tapping of buttons.

"No," a woman snapped, her words spoken in a thick Russian accent. There was a struggle on the tape and the woman's screams sounded. "Mama! Where is mama?!"

"She's not here sweetheart--"

"Don't you dare call me that," she hissed. "I want--" The woman screamed and the sound made Torrance jump slightly in her seat. The noise was unbearable and she knew only one thing could bring pain out like that. 

Torture.

She didn't know who the woman was but she felt for her and almost wept. It wasn't fair what they were doing to her and Torrance knew that, but it had happened years before and there was nothing she could do now to stop it. But that didn't stop the ache in her chest. 

She knew what it was like to be strapped down, to be ruined and destroyed over and over again in the name of science. In the name of saving the world, in order to create something so far beyond what people were capable of. To be made anew. 

"Stop!" the woman howled. Her screams echoed and it made an awful ringing noise in Torrance's ears. "Please--" She panted. "--just stop this! I'll-I'll do anything--please--"

"Administer another," the man snapped and the woman screamed again. The scratching of a pencil on paper chimed and then the man spoke again, "Test subject fails to cooperate and has gone through tests four and five with no success or change. Afraid that the test subject is defective and won't make it through the procedure."

The woman's wails didn't let up as the man continued to narrate his finding into the recorder. "Test subject seems to be irritated by my findings and is trying to escape it's restraints--hey! Stop that!" The man's voice drowned out and Torrance heard the sound of skin hitting skin and a boyish cry for help. "Administer another dose! Quickly, quickly!"

The voice became clean once again and the man was speaking rapidly, "Test subject has developed incredible strength. We are giving it another dose of the serum to complete the next round, stage six."

"Don't you dare put that in me!" the woman screeched, pleading. "I don't want it! I don't want it! Get away from me! Somebody help--" Her voice cut off completely and the man returned with, "Test subject has become unconscious from the dose. The intravenous medication will be in its system by the end of the night, but with the outbursts the subject has produced, the medication might take longer to absorb into the blood stream. Anything is possible at this point. Stage six administers three full two hundred and fifty milliliter bags, all containing the serum."

"Heart rate is going up," someone said in the background.

The man hummed. "Yes, yes, right on track." He cleared his voice and spoke smoothly, "The serum has been modified with each stage, allowing more of a powerful dose each time it is administrated. Stage six involves extensive care, followed by hourly checkups and scans. According to the data received by this project, no subject up until now has made it past stage four." He cleared his throat. "We were unable to record our findings from the beginning of testing, subject destroyed them in an act of defiance, which was unrelated to the effects of the doses."

"We really are blessed, sir," a different man said, voice lighter. "Imagine what we can conquer with this project. America will never know what hit them--" Beeping rose from the back and the man with the light voice turned dark as he shouted, "--dear God! Her body isn't accepting the serum--hey!"

"Subject has failed to accept stage six serum and heart rate is dropping by the second--" The beeping continued for a few more moments before it returned to the normal sound of a heart monitor. "--heart rate is normal and the serum is going in smoothly."

"How much more will we have to provide?"

"Six hundred and seventy-one milliliters."

"She's already taken in seventy-nine milliliters? How is that humanly possible?"

"It's all part of the project," said the man, a smile in his voice. "She's slowly becoming inhuman."

"How much longer until stage six is completed?"

"Not long now, maybe an hour or so." 

Torrance ignored the men's useless chatting and focused her hearing on the background noise. She could make out the scratching of a pen on paper, the rattle of wheels being pushed across the floor, and a different conversation being had beyond the experiments recordings. If she listened even more, she could hear the constant, quick drip, drip, drip of the serum. Thankful for her abilities and the parts of her that had been modified, aka her excellent hearing, she could hear the new conversation faintly.

"What type of plans do you have for her, doctor?" a new man's voice snapped. 

"This project has failed on many others," the voice of a man murmured and she made it out to be Zola once again. "No one has made it this far and we're lucky she has. But for our plans? It will all be decided once we know she survives. We must acquire a survivor before we go forward."

"She's gaining abilities--"

"Not the ones we were hoping for," interrupted Zola, irritated. "We need her to be at one hundred percent for the project to be a success. Even if she were to make it through all of the tests and not develop the abilities we were counting for, the project would have failed."

The unknown man murmured, "What abilities are we monitoring her for, then? Doctor?"

"Enhanced strength, speed, agility, endurance," rattled off Zola. "We're hoping for a complete wipe of her system, to ensure she is...ours. We're hoping it will even allow for some interesting mutations. We had one subject succumb to his own mutations, he was able to conduct electricity."

"Do you really think it will work, then?"

"I don't know," Zola said, exhausted. "We need this to work or my plans for the future will be ruined."

"Future plans?" asked the man, curious. "What type of plans?"

"Plans for more super soldiers, of course. I've already been developing a program that I believe could work."

Torrance snatched the basket of chips and her salsa off the coffee table and brought it into her lap to eat, ignoring the conversation and falling into her thoughts. 

All of this doesn't make sense. Who is Anastasia Moroz and how did Zola come to find her for the project? Who was she before all of this? I was apart of some similar trails regarding the super soldier serum and the projects they keep mentioning. Do I have a connection with Anastasia? Did I know her before all of this? 

She sat up, finding that the recording had ended. She took the tape out and looked through the others for the second. When she couldn't find it she skipped to number three. The tape rewound and soon voices were filling her headphones again.

Tape three was filled with screams. It was all she heard for a long time. When they did finally stop, the people on the tape were panting and muttering to themselves.

"The patient is going to be accepting stage seven material this evening," the original man who had spoken on the first tape rang out clearly. "The dose's will be upped and she will now be absorbing five two hundred and fifty milliliters bags of the serum. If our calculations are correct, the serum should be fully in her system by the morning."

"But sir, how will she accept this new identity Zola has been working on?" a new voice chirped. 

"We wipe her."

The voice gasped. "What? How?"

"It's simple," the man said, his voice light. "We hook her up to the machine we have been trying to improve for years. You know the one, don't you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I do, sir. The Memory Suppressing Machine."

Torrance's breath hitched in her throat and she forced herself to swallow the salsa in her mouth. She pressed a hand to her mouth, drawing a knee up to her chest.

"Well, once we know the machine is ready, we will simply hook her up to it and the process will begin. We will strip her of her former life and her memories. She will be under our command with ten words and then she will be ours."

"Brilliant, sir. Completely and utterly brilliant."

A new voice perked up. "And if the machine happens to enhance or work against the serum? We've never gotten this far, sir, the results could be ghastly."

A clatter of metal hitting the floor sounded in the distance, followed with an extremely fearful yelp, "Get her off me! Get her off--"

The sound of bones breaking erupted in the recording. Torrance sat back and listened to the killing as people screamed out of fear and terror as the sound of bodies dropping echoed in the room. It seemed that their subject, who was the early Anastasia, had finally gotten her chance at escape.

"Administer another dose! It should put her to sleep--hurry ,dammit!" the man screeched. "Test subject broke out of its restraints and killed not just one but three of our men in mere seconds. It was remarkable, her speed--"

"She's getting out of hand, sir. Her blood pressure has risen and the same goes for her heart rate."

"We can't stop the project," snarled the man. "We must complete it, for Zola."

"For Zola," muttered the other man. Yet it didn't seem like it was said out of courtesy to the man, in fact, it seemed like the opposite. Torrance felt sudden empathy towards the other man for hating the same villain who had nearly wiped out Captain America's army alongside Johann Schmidt, who had been the legendary Red Skull. He had been a casualty to the serum, it tore out the monster from within.

"Test subject has grown in strength and has been developing cat like reflexes," the man who held the voice recording said. "Anastasia is nearly ready for the completion process. OPIP is nearly completed, can you believe it, Boris? We've come so far."

OPIP? Torrance thought to herself. 

Boris didn't say anything for a long time. He was almost completely silent expect for a soft whimpering that come from his side of the room. When he did finally speak, he whispered in  broken voice, "OPIP will go far, sir. Very, very far. Imagine all of the wonders we can do with it...it's the bases for the projects Zola has been planning. It will help us complete everything we've so hard for--"

"The Winter Soldier."

"It's what is going to lead us to that very project, sir. The fist of Hydra."

The tape ended and Torrance's gut dropped at the sound of Boris finally telling the tape what the true meaning of their project was. OPIP was not only a project made to enhance and modify people into Hydra's puppets, but it was set up for the project that shaped James Buchanan Barnes into the killing machine he now is, the Winter Soldier.

___________________

Notes:

The information about the Winter Soldier was taken from countless storylines from the comic books and also the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Obviously some of the information told is not true but it is mere fiction for the storyline and for my character.