"Evil is a point of view"

-Lestat de Lioncourt

Six Years Later

1943

"Please!" she begged, she screamed for mercy which was not something new to her. She was still young and she had been tortured as far back as she could remember, it still terrified her. The fear instilled in her would remain for as long as she lived, but this time it was deeper. In front of her was Red Skull herself, and she had her first failure, and it had been such an important task. "I tried... I tried so hard..."

"You failed to achieve your target." Red skull grimaced down at her. He was not wearing his human appearance, and so the blood-coloured face staring down at her was far more disturbing. He made her feel so powerless, HYDRA made her feel so powerless.

She fought the restraints to no avail; they had strapped down her wrists and her feet. Even though she was covered in sweat, she still could not slip free and she was not strong enough to break the restraints. The human instinct of being scared of pain was what made her fight against her bonds, but even if she managed to break free she would be caught and punished further.

With that in her mind, she took a shuddery breath and stopped fighting even if her whole body wanted to; they would only make it worse for her if she fought. They brought the metal device over her head, her brown hair stuck to her damp forehead as she writhed instinctively. Her lips shook as she tried to plead, but no words came out. The cold metal was not touching her skin, but she could feel its presence. Daunting and dangerous.

"Next time you will retrieve your target. If not, you will pay the price with your life." Red Skull nodded towards one of the HYDRA men and left them to deal with Ophelia. But even as he left, Ophelia knew that this had been her chance to prove herself, and she hadn't. Her chance to show HYDRA that she was capable of more if they just gave her a longer leash. But she had failed, and she knew she would never leave this base alive.

"Where is Zola?" she cried before the man started the process of booting up their favourite form of torture. She has been exposed to so many in her life, but this one scared her the most. Zola had almost treated Ophelia with care; more like a dog-owner who felt obligated to make sure the dog was still alive every now and then. That was still more than she received from anyone else.

"Captured," he told her, then brought the rubber mouth guard to her lips. "Bite."

She bit down on the mouth guard, which prevented her from biting off her own tongue. She wondered why they cared; they never listened to her. Whenever she got back from a mission she was given her drugs, put in her room, sometimes gassed with various toxins to see what they would do to her. Then, she was given a serum that would keep her strong, or at least strong enough. She rarely slept, all the chemicals bouncing around in her body as it decided whether to fight what she had been given, or accept it. When her resilient body accepted it, there was always the possibility of death. More than once she had come close, but the serum that they gave her kept her alive. The pseudo-Super Soldier serum gave her abilities she could hardly fathom. The serum that HYDRA had created was not as powerful as the one Captain Steve Rogers was given; it was a poor attempt at the same thing, and she had been the lab rat to test it.

The shocks began and she screamed through her mouth guard, her cries not breaching the thick, desolate concrete walls that kept her detained. The pulses came at random intervals, so she could never prepare for the electric shock. For what felt like an hour but was no more than a few minutes she suffered this torture. When they stopped, she was no longer crying, no longer fighting, more determined to do what she was created to do. Find. Hunt. Kill. She had to show them what she was capable of, she refused to die in her cell alone.

Two guards under each shoulder brought her down to her cell with her feet dragging on the ground. Her cell was a concrete walled room with a toilet, a moulding mattress and only enough light coming from the flickering bulbs in the hallway that would shine through the metal bars of her door. Sometimes they allowed her to read select books, even HYDRA didn't want illiterate soldiers.

They kept her thoughts of the world outside the walls at bay, only on her missions did she see the sun, breathe fresh air. The sun bothered her, and during her missions she had to cover her body in dark clothing, and goggles that covered her overly-responsive pupils. Though she could hunt even blinded, they saw no reason to break her more than they already had. HYDRA's methods brought people to the breaking point, broke their humanity and somehow managed to bring forth a soldier who would not question.

***

"Ophelia, your mission." The Russian words hung in the air; she had another mission, and she could not fail this one. It had been two weeks since her last mission ended in failure. A HYDRA guard opened the door and tossed the file at her. Seeing a human face, despite the stoic and unsympathetic expression, brought joy to Ophelia. It had been a long time since she had seen anyone come near her cell; her food was often brought in when she was asleep which was more often than not, and was cold and hardened by the time she could eat it.

In her padded cell with no comfort and nothing to do, she was more than grateful to have something to do again. For two weeks she had been locked in her cell, given her pills, daily gassing, three stale meals a day and no human contact. Her eyes were black underneath, her pupils dilated.

Tearing open the folder, she studied it; no more than three hours ago a man had fallen from a freight train. It was up to her to find out where he had landed, and bring him back; alive. He had been a prisoner at another base not long ago; tests had been run on him. She studied his face, and imagined the cries of pain and agony as he suffered whatever HYDRA did to him. Her imagination was not too far off point, because she had twenty-one years of experience with what HYDRA did to people. She understood his pain, but that was not what she was made for. She was made to find him, not to sympathize with him.

The door unlocked with a loud clank and she stood up, her legs cramped from sitting for so long. They never let her out without good reason, but she was not as frail and fragile as one might think. Alone in her cell, Ophelia did what she could to remain strong, and most of all, warm. Grabbing the folded clothing that had been left out for her, she slid into the fresh clothing and a sense of warm relief flooded her. When you were a prisoner like she was, you learned to appreciate the littlest of things. A change of clothing, a new book, a voice speaking to her from the outside of her cell. All of these things, all the things that brought her some joy in a life of agony, she could recall every good memory and almost count them on one hand.

It was winter, and the snow was deep. With waterproof, insulated black pants, large boots and a black parka, Ophelia was sent out to find the American soldier named James Buchanan Barnes. They drove her out as far as they could, and from there she was on foot. As the outdoors wrapped her in a blanket of bitter wind and sharp snowflakes, she pulled down her goggles, and lifted her face mask on. Instantly her breath caused it to dampen, making it colder on her face than it would have been if she didn't have it. However, it prevented the snowflakes from hurting her pale skin, and the goggles prevented snow blindness.

There was a snow storm on its way, threatening to cover and kill the man she was meant to retrieve, so time was draining with each delay. The snow itself could not slow her ability down, but it could slow her body down. She trekked through the snow. They gave her no weapons to protect herself with. The man was likely wounded, perhaps even fatally, but still she had to be mentally prepared that he might attack.

She shut her eyes and tried to focus on Barnes, remembering his face from the image, trying to locate him. The mental bridge she could create was mostly in tune with one sense; feeling. Her mind merged with his after some focus, and for a moment she almost stepped out of the link due to his agony. He was in so much pain and she felt it.

Trained to handle just this, Ophelia held her ground, shaking slightly as she searched his mind, trying to locate where he was. Once she found where he was in his mind, the coordinates would come to her, and his scent would overwhelm her. Like a hound, she would be able to sniff out the man, finding him hopefully before the frostbite ate away at his flesh, or the cold stopped his heart. She could taste the blood upon her tongue, feel the pain he was in, and she knew that he was almost dead.

"He's lost an arm," she told the HYDRA base through her walkie-talkie.

"Find him, you have an hour." They were always strict with their time, mostly because they knew what she was capable of under pressure.

"If he's not dead by then," she muttered to herself as she walked on, disappearing from the HYDRA eyes as the flurries covered her like camouflage.

The path before her was white, the sky around her was grey. It was nearly impossible to see anything, but for her, it gave her cover from threats, and did not alter her path finding abilities. They were well beyond that of smelling out and spotting tracks to follow. Her powers went deeper, to a supernatural level; she was able to locate anyone. They told her it was in her head, and that the brain was a muscle and it could be strengthened like any other. She had worked for so many years on her powers. She would not fail them, not again.

The hour was ticking by slowly, but Ophelia was close to her target. She could smell the iron-filled blood now, and feel his pain in almost verbatim levels. When her green eyes locked onto his body which was face down in the snow, she walked over to him. Her first rule was to contact the base when she found him, but she wanted to get a good look at him first.

Kneeling down beside his body she felt the length of this spine, checking that he had not broken it. Flipping him over when it was safe, she studied his face; he was pale, he was hardly breathing. If she had gotten there any later, he may have been a corpse and Ophelia didn't want to think of the trouble she'd be in, the torture she would endure.

Barnes clung to life like the brave soldier he was, Ophelia was able to remember the sounds of his screams when he has been a prisoner of HYDRA before Steve Rogers freed him. She had not been there and it was not her memory, and yet it was prominent in her mind since infiltrating his. The snow around him was bloodied and had melted slightly at the warmth of the fluid. Ophelia lifted her goggles and looked down at the short haired man. He was.... She struggled to find the word. Her vocabulary was limited. There was something about him that she liked.

Handsome.

That was the word.

"Ophelia to HYDRA. I have located the target," she said through her walkie-talkie. They would be there soon; she had a tracker implanted in her arm, it was likely that they had been only minutes behind her the whole time. She reached up and touched the man's frozen hair, brushing it out of his face. His skin was almost ice cold, but he stirred underneath her touch. When his eyes opened, there was nothing less than panic.

He didn't know if he were alive or dead.

He was probably better off dead.