Initiation ▷ BUCKY BARNES

EIGHT

THE PAST TWO DAYS HAD BEEN CHAOTIC and Avery could barely get her head around everything that was going on as it was all happening so fast.

After the attempt on Director Fury's life, the man had been sent to hospital where doctors had tried to stabilise him.

Unfortunately, their attempts had been unsuccessful and the man had passed away — breaking the hearts of several agents that had been stood outside waiting for good news.

The only good thing to come out of it all was that Avery had remembered some important information regarding her past. It had come back to Avery when Steve had been explaining his brief encounter with the shooter to her and Natasha Romanoff — whom Avery and the majority of the world knew as the infamous Black Widow.

Avery liked Natasha.

The woman was extremely funny, sarcastic and reminded Avery an awful lot of someone she'd met recently. Not to mention, she was a bad ass superhero.

All in all, Natasha seemed like good company and Avery had enjoyed the time she'd spent with the redhead so far.

Steve had been telling the two about how Director Fury's shooter was extremely strong and had a cybernetic arm. It was this particular revelation which made Avery realise the man that Steve was describing was the man that she'd met at the Hydra base. The brunette hadn't realised until it was too late, but she'd let slip something that she'd been trying desperately to hide.

Avery remembered being in the Hydra base and being tortured by someone — whom she now knew was the masked man. But she hadn't told Steve.

She wasn't trying to be secretive but Avery knew that if she told Steve that she remembered what she'd been through, she'd have to get into the details of it all. And she didn't want that because she knew that it would break her. The experience had traumatised her enough as it was, she didn't need to live through it a second time.

But after she'd slipped up she'd been forced into telling both Steve and Natasha about what had happened to her.

Surprisingly, they hadn't pressed her with questions. Plus, Steve had assured her that he wasn't mad at her for keeping the memory a secret as he would've done the same thing.

Shortly after Director Fury had been pronounced dead, Steve had been called in for questioning with Alexander Pierce. Pierce was a highly ranked S.H.I.E.L.D operative and a member of the world council.

After the meeting, Steve had been attacked by the S.T.R.I.K.E team in the elevator. Their attempts to subdue him had been useless and fortunately, Steve had managed to escape. The blond man had then called Avery and informed her of what had happened before instructing that she meet him at the hospital so that he could get the flash drive back.

The last thing that Steve wanted to do was drag Avery into what was happening but right now, he didn't really have a choice.

The assailant was working for Hydra and he was the one that had tortured Avery all those weeks ago. Hydra hated loose ends and that's exactly what Avery was to them, nothing more. If they managed to get their hands on her, they'd kill her and Steve wasn't going to let that happen.

Right now Avery, Steve and Natasha were in the midst of obtaining information from the flash drive in the Apple Store.

Despite Natasha's best attempts at hacking the device they hadn't managed to get through the coding as it was so advanced. The only thing that they had managed to obtain was the location where the USB could be unlocked — which was where they were headed now.