heartless ; 𝐭. 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐤 , 𝟏

13 - new allies

december 1945

CENTURIES HAD PASSED. Hydra had evolved. Different than the religion-based organization it had once been, but still fighting for the same goals. Knowledge...among other things.

Over the years, one asset had stood out the most. One asset had lasted the changing times, obeying orders and laying waste to any and all people that posed threats to Hydra's existence. She walked in and out of burning buildings, little more than a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She was more dangerous than anyone had ever seen. More valuable than they'd ever imagined.

Asset 53 was the first one. Hydra's first success in the fight to create a weapon more powerful than anything the world had ever created before. There had been experiments before her, attempts before her to make a soldier like this. But they'd all failed. Before her, and now after her.

The asset was the only one that could be relied on to carry out a task so brutal that it could only be meant for the most inept psychopaths. She was not a psychopath, though. She was a machine, used for Hydra's benefit.

Along with the evolution of Hydra, its own Asset 53 had evolved, her personality developing with the new serums that had been perfected. In the beginning of it all, the only way to make a person immortal was the révoltant elixir of life that was stolen from Catherine de Medici's own bedchambers, the sorceress of the French throne. But that supply was limited. Inconsistent.

So Asset 53, numerical value placed in the number of attempts to make a weapon stronger than a ten-thousand-man army, was the first to succeed in their endeavors. Fifty-two subjects were tested with the elixir, but none of them survived. None of them could withstand the power of immortality. No one except for Number 53. She was the first.

The elixir had been used up on their first success, so it wasn't long before Hydra was out of options. Go underground and remain out of the public eye, building its army, or face the extinction of everything it had promised to stand for. Of course, they bided their time, waiting for a new way to recreate their most valuable asset, a girl who eventually turned into a woman with all the time spent out of cryo freeze.

Nothing had worked. For nearly four hundred years, there had been no breakthroughs after the elixir of life was used to the fullest. Though they searched, tearing apart the earth for something, anything to make another soldier as powerful as the one they'd stumbled upon, they came up short, every single time.

Until now. They'd waited for the perfect moment, infiltrating SHIELD for as long as they could, waiting for the day that they could steal what they needed. Finally, in the midst of a world war, they heard news of it. A serum that would solve all their problems. The same serum that turned a frighteningly thin man into the United States military's most useful weapon.

And now, the growing parasite underground had something to latch onto. They had a means of achieving their every goal. It was time for Hydra to rise.

—————

"Wrong. Say it again."

Asset 53 clenched her fists and stared at her instructor, a man who'd been the only other person to receive the gift of the elixir of life. Jacques Dubois had been there from the beginning, teaching her to fight, to manipulate, to be such an unsuspecting force of power that she'd never be caught. And now, centuries later, he was still teaching her to be an expert in language.