"WE MUST ALL BE INSANE TO RACE RECKLESSLY ABOUT IN A WORLD FILLED WITH WITH SO MANY SHARP AND POINTED DANGERS. THAT'S JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE."
in which valentina popov discovers her true identity and tries to reconcile with her nightmares.
first bo...
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ACT I, part i, chapter nine : 23 names
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11:16 PM. MAY 18th, 2014.
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June Curry Stephan Ziegler Sevastian Baranov Priscilla Stephenson Meinard Baumann Inna Pushkina Fletcher Middleton Lilo Fabian Zinoviya Osipova Leland Walters Maximilian Arnold Yuliya Sergeeva Imogen Shillingford Karlene Beck Maksim Makarov Harold Blair Rolf Feld Marfa Egovara Thelma Joseph Reino Kruger Kapeka Fedoroa Whitney Field Erica Holstein
23 names. 22 of them are probably at home still tending to some serious wounds. Valentina (and sometimes, Rick) had paid each of those 22 people a visit throughout the past weeks. Some were late on payments. But all were H.Y.D.R.A. That was enough for Val.
She had a collection of H.Y.D.R.A. rings that she planned on melting for extra money. Each one was a painful but important reminder of where she came from. At least a part of where she came from.
Sometimes her brain felt like a wet mirror after a warm shower. It was foggy, and very few parts were clear but only somewhat. When she tried to wipe away the sections that were blurry, they would start to fog up soon after. Valentina doesn't remember a day in her life where that mirror wasn't foggy, and she doesn't know if it will ever clear up.
For every person, her and Rick crossed off the list, they all called her the same thing: Karakurt. Black Wolf.
Valentina had been called many things other than her full name during her lifetime: Val, Tina, sestra, malyshka, a liar, a bitch, a thing, and more unfavorable things. But never has she heard karakurt. A project, nonetheless. A project that none of the people she's encountered seem to know about. Vadik sounded like he was going to say something but all she could see that night was red.
Flat on her back on the floor, she tried digging through her mind to see if there was some hidden memory, a conversation even that dealt with the word "karakurt". As usual, nothing came to the forefront. Her mind was just a sea of pain with spots of bliss. It wasn't until she truly got out into the world during missions, that she realized the constant abuse she was put under wasn't normal.
It was almost pitch black in her room, but the moonlight managed to create a sliver of light between the curtains on the window. Her unruly hair laid out around her head, like a very tall crown. Valentina sometimes wondered where certain features of her came from. Did her naturally curly, dark hair come from her mother or father? What about her blue eyes? Her height?
Or maybe it's from neither.
Maybe she was made in a test tube. Maybe that's what Project Karakurt is. Something engineered. Something fake. Something without a soul.
