girl ― saved by captain america

[one] just a little girl

[Steve]

"Holy shit!" the charismatic voice of Tony Stark exclaims through my earpiece as the bottoms of my boots hit steadily against the uneven ground beneath me. "How many Hydra freaks are in this place? Did we know we were hitting a total jackpot?"

Huffing out a large puff of air, I try to steady my breathing, focusing on the single task of running through the halls of the mysterious underground site while keeping an eye out for possible targets. The entrance to this place was difficult to crack through. In a little mountain preserve right outside of Seoul, we were finally able to shift the boulders around in the correct manner to reveal the secret door.

We've been storming the place for about an hour now. We've already rounded up dozens of high-ranking Hydra officials, and about twenty or so "experiments." I've only dealt with three them so far; to say it's a devastating situation is an understatement at best. While we've all grown to know the evils of Hydra, these prisoners seem to have had it particularly rough. The worst part is that they can't recognize we're here to help. All they know how to do is fight, which leaves us with no choice but to take them by force.

"We've hit gold," Nat responds to Tony over our interconnected wire. "None of the other locations were ever this huge."

I continue to dash around the huge main room, watching as my teammates destroy the enemy. At this point, I've learned that Hydra isn't necessarily hard to fight. The most challenging part is the sheer number of guards and other members they have stocked here. Nat, Clint, and Thor are all in the main segment with me, mostly tackling guards and shuffling survivors out to the entrance where Hulk and Tony are waiting to throw them onto our ship.

Suddenly, an angry-looking man with slick black hair and icy blue eyes dressed in a crisp white lab coat charges at me, catching me off guard. I quickly brace my shield and grab him by the wrists, hurling him through the air. Stumbling back, he bumps up right against Thor. "Ah, another one. Thank you my friend," the large man chuckles casually as he grabs the Hydra scientist and tosses him by his hair to Clint, who ties his arms and throws him by a few others who are dressed and bound just like him.

"Hey guys, how many prisoners was it?" Clint asks.

"Just grab as many Hydra members as you can. This site should have twenty-four experimental prisoners. How many do we have now?" Tony yells, clearly wrestling with something (or someone) as he replies.

"We've given you twenty-three!" Nat chimes in. "There's just one more. Someone should go look for him and the rest of us can finish up these bastards."

"I'll go," I offer, making my way to the holding cells. They're pathetic little rooms with glass doors, no more than a handful of feet both wide and deep. Each has a metal bed topped with a thin mattress and sheet, thick padded restraints tied to all the corners. The rooms are empty besides that. I sigh, making my way down the hall of the sad and depressing cells. Coming up to the final door, I notice that a white curtain has been draped over the glass, almost appearing to offer some privacy to whatever's being held inside. I look back at the other doors and see that above each, there's a plaque with a number and letter coding on it. Looking back at the door in front of me, I find a similar plaque, only there's no identification code. Just a single word: girl.

"Uh- guys?" I buzz in over the earpiece. "Why doesn't the last prisoner have a code?"

"What do you mean?" I hear Clint responding, "they all have codes. They serve as their names."

"I know, but this one doesn't. The sign above the room just says 'girl.'" There's a long silence before I hear someone turning on their microphone to speak.