𝑭𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒏 𝑨𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒔 𝑫𝒐𝒏❜𝒕 𝑷𝒓𝒂𝒚 |An Avenger/X-Men Crossover|ON HOLD

I - Standard Protocol

United States of America, 1983

Sitting silently on my stool, I could hear the ear splitting alarms going off, and flashing red lights regularly flooded the hallways of a bright red glow, yet I didn't move. I stayed sitting straight with my hands on my lap, staring expressionlessly at the room in front of me. Standard protocol.

A single guard was posted by the door, constantly watching me. It was very unnecessary since I wasn't going anywhere or doing anything unless my handler - which at the moment was Colonel Stryker - ordered me to. I was trained to follow the orders of my handlers.

I'd been their mindless weapon, their tool. I had been ordered to take countless lives, do treacherous things to people, and I'd never questioned it.

Until now.

Because now, people were doing treacherous things to me. And I suddenly got a glimpse of what my victims felt. I did not like it.

Though I'd been hurt badly with my previous handlers, nothing compared to what I felt with this one. They injected me with strange and painful serums, cut me open, they even heated my blood to near boiling temperature. Really, all those procedures were a bunch of blurs in my mind. However, I remembered the pain very clearly. I could still feel myself helplessly gasping for oxygen in vain, the stinging burn of drugs and serums seeping into my skin, needles pricking me down to the bone and sharp knives slicing through flesh.

It was supposed to help them understand my condition. Colonel Stryker apparently had 'experience' with people like me, mutants.

His experiments might hurt a bit, my previous handler had said. But soon enough I would be back to my old life, killing people, planting some bombs here and there, interrogating - torturing - prisoners, nothing I couldn't do. I was literally made for it. Then I would be frozen again.

But it hurt terribly more than 'a bit'. I expected it, but it was worse than I thought it would be.

For the first time ever, I questioned my orders, HYDRA's mission. Was I in the right camp? I'd always seen HYDRA's enemies as the bad guys, but recent reflection made me not so sure anymore.

I didn't know how to have an opinion, but some kind of voice in my head was guiding me. I assumed it was simply human nature that my handlers tried to crush. Could I be considered human, with the things I'd done? No, I was a soldier, an asset.

I was raised and trained by HYDRA so they assumed I would never betray them, and they were right. They were my family, my home, my purpose in life, and the only thing I'd ever known. I would never have thought of them as 'evil'. But because of their confidence in me, I once had access to the small library in the facility, and that was a mistake on their part.

There weren't many books, but I was able to piece things together fairly well. Based on my reading, I learned that to be what was seen as a 'good guy' , you had to try to be just and use as little violence you could, but given there were some exceptions, I assumed HYDRA was one of them. They always said we were making a better world for everyone. Therefore I didn't think any more of it.

However, I had a lot of time to think, sitting here in my cell. I had no way of telling the time, but I guessed it had been a few days, maybe a week since I'd arrived. A week of sitting still, saying nothing, being fed by an IV in my left arm. That is, when I wasn't being experimented on. It wasn't the first time that had happened, but it was definitely the most painful.

I was not granted permission to sleep, and so I didn't, even if I was tired. The voice in my head urged me to get some rest, but I ignored it.

A week. 168 hours to think. And during that time, I thought of the books I'd read. How the 'good guys' never hurt one of their own, but it wasn't an uncommon thing in the 'bad guys' camp. I was one of HYDRA, yet they hurt me. I was harshly punished the first time I failed a mission. It never happened again.

They still hurt me though.

I didn't even have a name, other than 'soldier' or 'asset'. The book characters all had a name. Then again ,they were book characters, not real people. Was I even a real person? I didn't think so.

And so there I was, ignoring the regular panicked glances my guard was giving the door ever since a man at the other end of the radio said something about 'Weapon X' being loose.

I wasn't used to thinking for myself, and kept wondering if I should just stop and ignore my gut feeling that there was something I didn't know. The voice kept telling me to go with my gut.

It was so confusing, trying to make an opinion.

My chain of thoughts was interrupted by the door being blasted open and three young adults entering the room. 

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A/N: I'm sorry for this horrible first chapter, but I had to introduce her somehow. I'll probably edit it even more later. I hope you liked the prelude though!