1| Silver & Gold [Pietro M.] ✔

04. Recounting History

"Can we trust her?" Stark asks seriously, looking me up and down.

"With your life." Hill promises before she and Steve leave the jet to continue their talk. It leaves me behind with the ever suspicious Tony Stark, much to my chagrin.

"So...you and Hill." Tony tries to spark a conversation from across his lab. We're both working on uploading the information obtained from the HYDRA base. Many of his files are corrupted, but few of mine are. I was able to begin my download process before he did, allowing me to obtain more intact files than him. So, being the ever gracious person, I offer to upload what I have onto his mainframe.

"Me and Hill." I quickly remove my drive before Stark gets the idea of planting something on the device he could possibly use to track me in the future.

"How'd that happen?" Stark wanders in my direction, pretending to be interested in the tools on his workbenches.

"Long story. She was in charge of making sure I could kick a man's ass. Look, do you want me to help you with these new enhanced or not? I've got other business I could be looking into right now." I swivel on my chair to face the billionaire. He holds his hands up in surrender before handing me a tablet. "Okay. From the information we've gathered, we know Strucker was utilizing the Scepter...but I'm 100% sure it was NOT for human experimentation." I stand up and move towards where Tony has the weapon hung.

"I agree. There was advanced robotics down in that lab, but what they were looking for —"

"We don't exactly know since they nixed the data and all we could recover was a technical garbled mess..."

"But it points very specifically to artificial intelligence." Stark finishes our collective thought. I nod in agreement as I walk around the Scepter.

"But how? With a Scepter? Loki used it for mind control...we must be missing something. It must have something to do with that." I point at the blue gem encased within the blades. "Maybe you should—"

"Run a scan on it? JARVIS."

"Right away, sir."

"Mmm, nice. Your own personal digital assistant. Don't trust a human assistant, hm?" I narrow one eye before turning my attention back to my tablet. "Anyways. The enhanced. The program Strucker must've used was based on the first clinical trials."

"First clinical trials?"

"Ended up as a disaster. The study was stationed in Russia, imagine that." I roll my eyes with a subtle shake of my head. "They had two factions — subjects and experiments. Experiments were disposable, normal, branded like cattle." I tug up the edge of my shirt to expose my right hip where in bold black lettering rests the tattoo 'E: A17.' "Existed only to test theories. They were the ones that died in fiery, explosive deaths because they couldn't handle the serums giving them abilities. Experiments didn't contain the Mir gene — a very specific genetic abnormality that very few have. It allows a person to physically be able to handle extraordinary abilities - flight, elemental manipulation, portaling, telekinesis...you name it. Subjects had the Mir gene, they were the hopefuls. Nothing ever came to fruition with them either though...until me. They recoded my genes to transplant the Mir gene from an expired Subject. I was chosen for the genetic splicing since my parents already had altered gene structures. They hoped it would make me stronger, hoped I'd be the first success. And I was." Tony and I share a long look before I feel many eyes watching. I turn my head to find the rest of the team standing behind us on the stairs listening to my riveting tale — including Maria. She'd never heard this tale either. Only four people know this story, one of which was Fury. 

"Who are your parents?" Natasha asks skeptically.

"I...don't know. It was never recorded in my file and I didn't get the chance to ask. I'm just an orphan, I guess." And that's the truth. I don't know who my parents are. I don't know anything about them, absolutely nothing, which stings. It's made me question who I am, who I should be. "Anyways, I won't go into any of the really gritty details—"