The Winter Wraith

Chapter 3

The odd assortment gave her a once over, and turned back to their own fights. Adina needed to figure out her bracelet issue fast because Hydra was losing to the group, and once they defeated the Hydra agents, they would probably go after Adina next. After all, she still possessed the blue vial. As she watched a blond man wearing a red, white, and blue uniform throw a shield, she developed a plan. She noticed that his shield had dented Hydra’s armored trunk, so it could possibly damage her metal wrist band. Well, it’s at least worth a shot, she thought.

With her new plan in mind, Adina finally jumped down from the truck she landed on. Her legs felt a bit funny after that three-story jump, but she’d be fine soon. She needed to somehow get to that blond man and then get him to hit her bracelet with the weird shield. If she was successful, she would finally be able to get away from Hydra after being there for four years. Four years of constant torture, experimentation, punishments…Yeah, no pressure, she thought, as she began to weave her way through the battlefield. 

She was quickly interrupted by a kick to the back of her legs. Adina spun around to see a red-headed woman. Sensing a fight, Adina pulled out a knife from her tactical vest. The woman took advantage of this delay to punch Adina in the face. Adina returned the hit with a roundhouse to the woman’s midsection. Punches and kicks were traded back and forth as Adina realized the woman was far more skilled in hand to hand combat than she was. Tired of the pointless fight, Adina teleported to a random part of the giant parking lot where the fight was taking place. She could’ve teleported before, however, she needs to reserve her power for emergencies. Adina’s teleportation had a limit, and she could only do it a few times before it ceased to work. 

Adina had teleported in the middle of a gun fight between a metal suit levitating a few feet off the ground and a group of Hydra agents. She ducked to avoid getting her head blown off, and started to go the other way to find the blond man. 

“Hey, where are you going?” the metal suit said, which made Adina believe that there had to be a man in the red and gold metal suit.

“Uh, definitely nowhere,” Adina hesitantly replied in a scratchy voice as she continued to back even farther away.

As she turned around to find the blond man and his shield, she could hear the metal man’s weapons firing up with a mechanic hum. She quickly sprinted away, but not before her leg was shot by a repulsor.

Ouch, that will definitely also leave a bruise, Adina thought. She knew she needed to pick up her pace to get to the blond man due to the increasing number of Hydra agents lying still on the ground. She half-ran half-limped her way over to the place where she last saw the blond man. Luckily, he was still there delivering a beat down to some Hydra soldiers. Her handler, Bryan, was nowhere to be seen, which made Adina slightly happier. Now, to fix the bracelet problem.

Adina ran up behind the blond man. Just as she was about to launch herself at him, she heard someone from the air warn the blond man.

“Hey, Capsicle, behind you!”

Adina was then met with a shield coming towards her. She raised her right wrist, but the shield hit her in the face. Adina felt her mask fall off, but she was solely focused on getting the metal band off to process that. The man with the shield looked slightly shocked to see her face, but he had to put that aside as Adina wouldn’t relent with her punches. She threw punch after punch at the man, but her plan wasn’t working. He was only using the shield to defend himself, which meant that the metal band was not taking any damage nor coming off soon. 

Time to change strategies, Adina thought as she grabbed the small handgun that was in her holster. Shooting at him may force him to throw the shield at my hand to knock the gun away from me, then I could use that opportunity to make sure it hits the metal bracelet. 

With the new and improved plan in mind, Adina fired a few shots toward the blond man. He easily blocked them with his shield. He still didn’t seem to be using the shield as a weapon, instead using it as a defense, so Adina fired at his legs, which the shield could not protect.

One of the bullets grazed his lower leg, causing him to yell out in pain.

“Hey, Cap, you good?” yelled the metal man from across the parking lot.

The blond man grunted in response and finally threw his shield at Adina’s gun. Adina quickly shot up her right wrist to be in the trajectory of the red, white, and blue shield and flinched back as the shield split the metal band in two. Adina was thrown off balance and fell to the ground along with the now broken bracelet. She was free. Well, almost, she still had to get away. Adina scrambled up to her feet with a small smile on her face, which really confused the blond man. She gave him a nod as a way of thanks and started to sprint away.

“Wait, who are you?” the blond man called after her.

Adina was too preoccupied to answer his question, not that she herself even knew the answer to that. She could already feel the raw power coursing through her veins. It felt like she was truly alive for the first time since getting that silver bracelet. Her energy was renewed, and she was ready to get out of here as she was still injured. As she surveyed the battlefield one last time before she teleported away, she saw her handler for the first time since she had arrived here. She smirked at him, knowing there was nothing he could do to her without the bracelet. However, she was a bit wrong on that statement, as Bryan was concealing a gun behind his back. 

The blond man had taken a pause in the fight to observe the situation at hand. He wondered if the girl was another ‘Winter Soldier’ or if she was just truly evil. He watched on as the Hydra agent walked up to her.

“You can’t hurt me anymore. I’m free, and I’m leaving,” Adina told Bryan in an instance of bravery.

“Oh sweetie, you see, that’s where you're wrong,” he replied as he pulled out the gun to shoot her.

Adina barely had time to react, and she quickly teleported away without visualizing where she wanted to go.

~~~~~~

A girl with brown hair appeared in a flash of blue light in a dark alley. Where she was, she had no clue. But she did know that she needed to bandage the bullet hole in her leg fast or else she’d die of blood loss. I can’t have come all this way to die of blood loss, Adina thought as she started to take off her tactical vest. She swiftly took off all of her combat gear that would look weird in public. Although she didn’t remember much about her life before Hydra, she did know that wearing a combat vest with visible knives would be frowned upon. Adina stashed her knives in more discrete places, and dumped her bloody combat clothes in the alley. She took a deep breath, and joined the mass of civilians walking on the crowded sidewalks.