Some Things Never Sleep

Chapter Five

Hydra Base

Location: Siberia, Russia

2009

She was finally privy to Hydra base information or that's what Karpov told her at least. Not that she really believed anything he ever told her. Apparently she was finally acting like an adult so she got to know some of the things that adults at the base got to know. It had been a long nine months of training since the injections but Emma was finally being put through the final trials. It made her the slightest bit excited just because she had worked so hard on her training and she was about to be recognized for it.

Spending so much time training with Winter had made her admire him...it made her want to be like him in fact. How could she not want to be like him? He was full of grace and power, everyone feared him...even Rumlow and Karpov feared him on some level. Emma wanted them to fear her just like they feared him but unfortunately Rumlow and Karpov were immune to the same kind of fear that the majority of the Russian scientists held for her.

Her days at the Hydra base in Siberia, were she had grown up, consisted of fighting in hand to hand combat that wasn't just limited to Winter anymore. Karpov had her fighting real Hydra agents and she defeated them all with little to no effort given her enhancements. Hydra had her trained in weaponry...from shooting anything from a .22 magnum pistol to a bazooka as well as everything in between. Emma learned how to drive a car in the circumstance that she might have to drive a getaway car...they even taught her how to steal one in case of a bigger emergency. She took lessons from several of the explosives experts, at the base, on how to make bombs. They were a little disturbed at just how excited Emma got over the explosions and made an effort to hide all explosive equipment away from the now eight year old girl. Hydra gave her advanced swimming lessons that were really just lessons on deep sea diving and a test to see how long she could hold her breath underwater. The answer was thirty three minutes and twenty seven seconds.

Hydra prepared Emma for every possible situation and every possible outcome. A lot of the time they were sadistic in their methods. They laid out scenarios in which Emma would be tortured like water boarding which was how they learned she could hold her breath that long underwater. Electrocution. Knives. Pliers. Poisoning. And of course Emma just had to learn what it felt like to be beaten within an inch of her life or shot a couple of times. Emma watched as Strucker and Rumlow stabbed her countless times with knives of different shapes and sizes because they were curious how fast her healing factor was. It was fast, they found out, but not fast enough for Emma.

She wasn't immune to pain and sometimes the young girl was glad that she could feel the pain because the pain only continued to fuel her hatred for Rumlow. She was getting stronger every day but she knew now was not the right time to end him. Eventually but she was going to wait until she was much older. Old enough that she could come up with an elaborate plan of his murder and how to get away with it without Hydra finding out. It seemed almost impossible since Rumlow was one of Hydra's top agents but Emma knew that she could pull it off if she was patient enough.

Her ability to fly, which had been discovered nearly a year ago, provoked Hydra into trying to improve the ability although they were clueless how. It wasn't like there was anyone else that could fly at the base. Winter didn't seem to have that ability although it often made her smile when she would try and imagine him flying. With time she was able to control her flying a lot better and be able to direct herself towards more specific locations rather than flying every which way. It was a nice ability to have especially when she needed to have some time to herself. She could just hang out around the ceiling whenever she tried to avoid Rumlow. There was always the fact that she would have to come down eventually but at least she got an extra fifteen minutes to herself.