Dancing For Demons

No place like Home

The current in the river was stronger than Anastasia had anticipated and she was dragged over the riverbed, bashing into rocks and scraping her body on the earth. When she could hold her breathe no more, she kicked upwards and broke through the surface of the water, gasping and coughing. After a few minutes of struggle against the relentless current, she finally reached the riverbank and lay there for several minutes, pulling out shards of glass from her body to let her gashes close. About two hundred metres upstream, she could see the the roof of the building she had just escaped from, but she was confident they wouldn't find her. They probably thought she was dead.
She made a plan to follow the river until she reached New York and there she would call the emergency number Hydra had given her. They would come and pick her up and everything would be how it was before.
As she walked, she pondered on whether to tell Madame Orlov about what Wanda had tell her and just as she reached the outskirts of New York, came to a decision. She would not tell Madame Orlov, unless she asked.
By the time Anastasia reached a telephone box, she was almost dry. However, she realised she had no money to make a call and so kept walking. After about half an hour, she entered a much busier area of the New York. Trying to blend in as much as possible, she glanced around to try and spot a good target. When she was sure of a target, she walked past them, snatching their wallet and concealing it. The person didn''t even notice and she carried on walking towards the nearest phone box. When she reached it, she put in a few coins and then dialed the number she had memorised a long time ago. It was answered, but no one spoke. Instead, Anastasia spoke the word she had been trained to say in an emergency. "Dock," she clearly said into the phone. There was a voice which replied "Please hold," and then silence.
A few minutes later, Anastasia heard the voice of Madame Orlov speaking to her. "Are you alone?" she began. Anastasia replied truthally. Then Madame Orlov gave her instructions. "Go to the Bethseda fountain in central park. Someone will be there to collect you." The line went dead and Anastasia went to find a bus to Central park.

....................

Madame Orlov paced her study angrily. First, one of the winter soldiers had gone AWOL after being sent after Captain America and now Anastasia had not returned. Suddenly a nervous looking intelligence officer walked in and she snapped at him. "What!"
He looked down at the floor and replied "She has moved. Her tracker is showing that she heading heading down the Hudson river towards New York."
She dismissed him and breathed a sigh of relief. Anastasia would not fail her, she was certain of that.
Madame Orlov was expecting the call and when it came, she had already made preparations. She had informed a group of New York based operatives to go to Central park and pick up Anastasia. Then Anastasia would be sent to the a Hydra base in the Bavarian alps, Germany. This particular base was where she had been trained and conditioned, as well as where she was given her enhancements. It was fully equipped for the full psychiatric assessment Madame Orlov had decided to give Anastasia. After what happened to the winter soldier, she wanted to be certain that Anastasia had not been corrupted.

She walked over to the helicopter that would take her to Germany and climbed in. The doors closed and as the chopper rose up in the air thought about the first time she had met Anastasia, or as she had been called then, Anya.

It had been many years since she had visited Lieutenant Colonel Vorobyez, or as she had known him, the Sparrow. He had been a very successful military man and had fed tonnes of top secret intelligence to Hydra, helping them to thrive. So when her driver pulled up on the street, where it had been recorded he now lived, she was surprised. Nevertheless, she stepped out the car and entered a bulky concrete block of flats, left over from Russia's communist days. She climbed the stairs and as she reached the apartment door, she heard screaming. Cautious, she summoned backup and waited for them to arrive before entering the flat. Lieutenant Colonel Vorobyez lay on the floor surrounded by a pool of his own blood and next to him sat a little girl. She was holding a knife. The soldiers sedated and took the girl on her orders while she said a goodbye to the Sparrow. Then they left the way they had entered, travelling to a Hydra base buried deep in the Bavarian alps.
From a window, Madame Orlov watched as one of the technicians attached wires to her temple and then moved a machine into place. The girl was Lieutenant Colonel Vorobyez's daughter, the DNA test had proved that. But Madame Orlov had already decided she would not punish the child for what they had done. Instead, she had chosen to child for project ghost, a new training program she hoped would replace the outdated winter soldier program. If the child was a success, she would create others like her in the hope of creating an unstoppable force of assassins.

A gentle bump from the helicopter landing, arose Madame Orlov from her thoughts and she stepped out the chopper into the underground hangar. A flurry of technicians surrounded her, waiting to obey her commands.
"Has she arrived yet?" she asked and one of the technicians answered.
"She arrived five minutes ago, Madame Orlov. Doctor Moreno is performing the pyschiatric exam as we speak."
"Excellant," Madame Orlov replied. "Inform we when he is finished. Otherwise, I shall be in my office." She turned down a corridor followed by two guards and entered her office, where she promptly sat down and dismissed her guards.
She had been so stressed when Anastasia had failed to report. If Anastasia failed Hydra then Madame Orlov could lose her respect and power that she had gained over the many years she served their cause. With Alexander Pierce out of the way, she could practically be called Hydra's leader. No one dared challenge her decisions. But she understood that the top rung on the ladder of power was the most unstable. One slip and she would fall to the bottom.

....................

Anastasia had been picked up from Central park by a group of silent people and transported to one of Hydra's bases. Upon arrival, she was escorted to Doctor Moreno for a review. Of what, she was not told.
He asked her countless questions and made her do little tests. At one point she was given cards with shapes on and told to say what she saw. She saw a loaded gun, a squashed corpse of a bug, a dragon and two people fighting. He smiled, as if they were the right responses.
Once Doctor Moreno had finished, Anastasia was summoned to Madame Orlov's study.
As Anastasia entered, she looked around the familiar room and took in its richness and contrast to her room. The dark oak floor gleamed from the light of the crystal chandelier, which illuminated the array of trinkets that were collected in the bookshelves, lining the walls. A russian sable pelt rug was draped across the floor and a marble fireplace stood proudly on one wall.
"You have failed me," Madame Orlov stated to Anastasia. "I sent you to kill Steve Rogers, because you are the best and yet you failed. Tell me what happened."
The word 'fail' was the one thing Anastasia dreaded. To fail Hydra was punishable by death, she felt. Angry with herself she gazed into the fireplace, watching the flames writhe and dance.
Then Anastasia tried to explain. "I had him, but this woman knocked me out of a window. She threw a sofa at me without touching it! When I woke up, they had put me in a cell, however I escaped at the earliest opportunity. I had no time to finish the mission." Then Anastasia fell to her knees. She had never failed Madame Orlov before and the feeling of disappointment in herself and weakness was horrible.
She vowed out loud that she would never fail again.