RABBIT HEART || MARVEL (1)

FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PRODIGY

MAY 1ST, 2010

65 YEARS LATER

FREEDOM.

The one thing Maggie had asked for 6 decades, it was freedom. After 65 years of being separated from her family, being experimented on, brainwashed into being a weapon, and coming in and out of cryo-freeze, she wished for the taste. Either that or the sweet release of death, tired of living to fight every single day of her life.

Ever since she woke up in Hydra's base in Siberia, she had to fight to survive. To survive the torture they put her through. The more the years passed by, her hope for freedom slimmed.

Maggie knew she should've died when she fell from the train. Instead, Hydra soldiers pulled her from the water. And the man they tried to catch on the train, Arnim Zola, was her tormentor. When she woke up in that lab, his face was the first thing she saw. The face that belonged to such a horrible man.

They never wiped her memory, but they did brainwash her into being their weapon. Because of Hydra, she was trained to be one of the world's best assassins. He prowess earned her the alias from Zola, the Prodigy. A name that filled Maggie with even more hatred. And when she was need for mission, she was put in cry of Reese until they needed her services again.

The year was 2010, and Hydra's new leader Vasily Karpov had pulled Maggie out of cryo once more. She looked in her mid 20s, but she was much older than that. Maggie was awoken for an important assignment, one that determine whether or not Karpov would let her live. It was simple: Kill Nick Fury.

Of course, things don't go as they plan. All Maggie had to do was find a high enough place to hide and kill the target. Yet, she was knocked out before she could even pull the trigger. Maggie blamed herself for letting her guard down and she was going to die no matter what happened.

Maggie heard several voices when she stirred, especially one of a man arguing with another. She tried to regain consciousness, feeling restraints around her wrists and ankles. The assassin was strapped down to a chair along with a metal collar around her neck to restrict her powers. She didn't show it, but she was terrified.

"Your goal was to eliminate the shooter, Barton!" Fury scolded, crossing his arms.

"Don't you see her?! Don't you know who she is?!" Barton asked. "She was a hero!"

Maggie slothly lifted her head, squinting her eyes as she looked up at her target. He was arguing with another man outside the interrogation room. Beside the target was a woman with long, curly red hair.

"Margaret Barnes has been on our radar for years now. She is someone who needs to be elimin-ated," Fury said. "No matter what history she has with Rogers.

"Well, so was I. Yet, here I am. Alive and working for you," the redhead reasoned.

"Barnes is more of a threat than you are, Romanoff. She's an enhanced super soldier, someone none of us could control."

"That doesn't mean we have to kill her!" Clint argued.

"She's older than she looks. Hydra has kept her alive for 65 years as their personal weapon. She will kill is all."