One Wild Ride (A Marvel Fanfic-Complete)

Erik Stevens: A Soldier, Zero Dark Thirty

Thirteen years prior... July 2002

A twelve year old boy leaned against the brick wall facing the back of the tall spired house. His body was swallowed in shadows just as much as the extra large clothes he wore and the skull cap pulled down just above his dark eyes. He was beyond bored and he really did not want to be there, yet he knew better than to take his eyes off the back window or the girl playing in the yard.

Scowling he fingered the chunky ring in his pocket. It was one of the only things he was able to salvage from his father's apartment that horrible night over two years ago. It was literally the only thing he had been able to hold onto as he was moved through group homes to foster homes to juvie and then back again.

The last group home was where Unc found him six months ago. He didn't even know his boss's real name. He really didn't know anything about the man other than everyone called him Unc or Mr Stevens, and if you were a lil nigga trying to come up in Oakland, you wanted to know Stevens and his crew because he could put you on. Drugs, girls, jackin. It all moved through them.

From the start Unc took a particular liking to the kid. The kid was scrawny but after watching him awhile, you'd think he was the biggest kid in the room. It wasn't that he was loud or talked a lot of tough shit, but he definitely had a presence. The other kids around him left him alone, even the bigger ones. His survival instincts were already well beyond most of them. And doing what needed to be done just came easy to the kid.  If there was any guilt behind it, the kid sure did not share it with Unc. This was very useful. And it was also very rare in a kid so young. The kid's baby face made him look even younger. So Unc quickly moved him from a runner like most of Unc's young workers to a lure for his sex traffickers. More recently he decided to take the kid under his wing as a look out for his more sensitive jobs. High level jobs that paid a shit ton of money and required his special attention. Jobs like the current one.

After that, the kid made real money. He finally had enough food to fill his belly and better clothes. He was able to get away from those over crowded group homes and the abusive foster home that he used as his current address. And he even had extra cash in his pocket now. So he truly didn't care what happened to the girls who he befriended and lured into those blacked out cars. He knew it was nothing good. Sometimes he heard the screams as the car drove off. Screams that haunted his dreams and woke him up in a cold sweat at night. But shit. Those were just dreams. Unlike the real life nightmare of sleeping with one eye open afraid to get robbed or worse at night. And whatever happened to those girls was their bad luck.  That was just the savage way of the world as far as the kid was concerned.

He also didn't care why Unc went into these houses that he watched.  He only knew that someone was always dead when Unc left. But it wasn't him. So again. Not his problem.

Besides the kid got to travel on days like this one. To different towns. To places he would never get to see otherwise. Life was a little bit better now. There was a chance he might keep his head above water. And nothing was getting in the way of that.

The morning prior, Unc got a call on his other phone. The phone he never used. He traveled with the kid across country for several days to another town. That afternoon Unc went into a house after instructing the kid to keep watch. Soon he would climb back out of that window before unscrewing the silencer on his gun. Then they would travel back in another car. And on the way he'd tell the kid about his bigger plans for him. If the kid kept putting in work, he'd be in Unc's place one day. Before he dropped the kid off, Unc would give the kid a little extra on his pay. Then they'd never speak about any of it again.

The kid sat hidden in the back alley to watch and to warn his boss if anyone pulled up in the driveway or if the little girl stopped playing outside and attempted to go into her house. He'd been taught the signal among other things like how to load and shoot a gun. How to jack a car.  How to move without being seen.