verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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There wasn't time for sentimentality. There was barely even time for practicalities.
The act of rinsing away the ash of Stage Two seemed to bring the clarity that Katrina so desperately needed. The lines that had been blurred in her mind were sharpened - she only wished she had seen them sooner. If she had, she may never have crossed them.
She had to act quickly, subtly. Karpov would be watching her, now that he knew what she had seen. Now that she had very openly voiced her distain for him. Now that she had made it clear where she was drawing the line.
Mercifully, an agent carrying a duffle bag through the facility wasn't an uncommon sight, with three days to go until complete evacuation of the base. She didn't let herself stop to revisit the small pockets of comfort she had found in the facility - they only served as cold reminders now, of her losses and faults. Of how she had been set up to be used by this organisation from the moment of her father's last breath. She only carried with her what she could, some clothes, meagre food rations, her folio of tools and a battered thermal flask.
She prayed no one had noted that she was wearing her thickest coat, that her snow boots were laced tightly and there was a stolen pistol holstered at her hip. None of the operatives she passed on the way to the transportation level looked twice at her anyway. It was too early in the morning for anything other than bleary, tired nods, though Katrina's eyes were bright. Her heart was racing - she had never felt more awake, more on edge. Her very blood seemed to be singing with high-pitched terror. She was sure it had to be visible on her face, yet no one looked twice.
Sub-level 2 housed the workshop she had once frequented as a young Maintenance Officer, where she had spent her first days within HYDRA repairing trucks and all-terrain vehicles. Shivering as the external doors to the echoing warehouse were hauled open occasionally to let one or the other roll through. She didn't shiver now; she didn't feel the cold as acutely as she once had. Whether it was nerves or the serum, she couldn't tell. Those doors opened onto a slope on the mountainside - a snaking, icy road that ran down to the plains below. Trucks had been coming and going for weeks, one more vehicle passing through wouldn't be cause for alarm.
Swallowing back the anxious dryness that crept up her throat, Katrina stepped into the cold warehouse, her eyes settling momentarily on one of the sleek black motorcycles parked against the far wall, before she shook her head. Preferences should be laid aside when there was a Siberian winter to contend with outside the doors. Instead, her bag was flung into the back of an unassuming flatbed truck, a swift dash across the warehouse opening the rolling shutter to the outside world before she pulled herself into the driver's seat, her breath misting before her face as she groped for the key.
She couldn't help but wince at the grind of the steel door rolling up, the choke of the engine as it spluttered to life. It all felt too loud, at any moment she expected a guard to run across her path or worse... A guard she could handle, maybe talk and smile her way past - if she encountered the Soldier though, that would be a different matter entirely.
