Finding Home

Chapter 1

1982

I was born in the early parts of 1982 in Russia. My family was indebted to Hydra - or, more specifically, Wolfgang von Strucker. The Leader of Hydra.

Because of this debt, von Strucker took me. He brought me to his home and raised me for the first five years of my life.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, for obvious reasons, this was when my programming began. It was small, simple, but it was training nonetheless. Learning to recognize multiple languages, able to speak three by the time I was four years of age. Praising only Hydra and it's work, only allowing approved literature inside the home, minor things most would overlook.

1987

Once I reached the age of five, von Strucker passed me off to another one of his agents. A Russian soldier by the name of Ivan Petrovitch.

Ivan had another young girl, only about two years younger than myself, that he was raising.

Natalia Romanova became like a sister to me. I watched over her. I protected her. She may not have known it at the time, but I recognized, from very early on, we were all we had.

Petrovitch continued with my training and early education, alongside Natalia's. Before long, I was speaking fluently in seven different languages, and able to understand dozens of others through speech and text.

We were taught the basics, reading, and writing, but we also learned so much more. Through the years, as we got to certain ages, Ivan made sure that we were capable of wielding small weapons. Knives, daggers, I was even taught the proper way to handle and shoot a small nine-millimeter Glock handgun.

I knew there must be something to our form of learning, something different from that of typical children. Surely it wasn't common practice for a child under the age of ten to know so much about weapons, language, how to defend yourself, or even how to kill another human being - right?

Not only did I have our regular learning throughout the day with Natalia, but I also was taken each night for more, I suppose you would call them classes, at some strange facility run by Hydra. While here, my training was focused on more specific things - stealth, marksmanship, hand to hand combat. Yes, I was young, but my size and innocence only worked to my advantage in most cases.

1992

At ten years of age, von Strucker informed me that I was going to be starting school.

I was young, not stupid. I knew this wasn't going to be some ordinary school that normal children attended. Hell, I'd already been going to whatever classes and training he felt I needed to attend for the past four years. There was no denying this school would be no different.

Having heard Strucker and Petrovitch talking in the past, I knew I was never going to be an average child. They were grooming me to be something else.

I had it in my head that I was not only going to be whatever they intended me to be, I was going to surpass their expectations, I would be better.

1994

For two years, I had been without my sister. I hadn't seen her since the day Strucker took me from home and dropped me off at the god awful academy. When Natalia walked through the doors with Petrovitch, I felt a short-lived sense of relief, that was quickly replaced by grief.