Rogue Shadow

Chapter 14 - Silence

Chapter 14 - Silence

11:52 Monday, 16th October 2017

Slade slammed down his hands in frustration and shoved his keyboard against the wall. There was nothing on these people. Nothing! No matter where he looked there was never anything to bring him any closer to finding them.

On the desk in front of him, files too corrupted to read filled two of his monitors. It had been five days since the kid's last episode (if you could call it that), and he had not yet found anything linking to her case. The longer he took, the more time they had to slip away – again. But there was nothing to go on. Hydra never left a trace.

And if he couldn't find them then he didn't have a hope of finding her!

Slade stood up abruptly, his chair scraping along the concrete floor, and began to pace. So many questions and never any answers. After all the times he'd failed them, why did this mistake have to haunt him? Why did Tash have to be a constant reminder of everything he'd lost... and everything he could never have.

Knitting his fingers together, he brought them up to rest on the back of his head as he paced the length of his room. Breathing in deeply over and over again until the immediate anger faded from his mind. That wasn't going to help her. Instead, he cast his mind to the past. The times before all this pain and torment, and the destruction of his family.

All those missed moments and forgotten memories... he'd lost so much time with them. And then because of his actions, his... mistakes – mistakes that he would live to regret every second of every day – because of his failures, everything had gone to hell. So many lives lost, and families torn apart. So many good men had sacrificed their lives – all for nothing.

And it was all his fault.

This attack on Tash's old foster family had been the only glimpse of activity from Hydra for months. And now that their trail had run cold, there was absolutely nothing to go on. The only clues he could possibly get now were from a traumatised eleven-year-old kid. Rephrase: an abused, tortured, traumatised, amnesiac child.

Strength, defiance, and a burning desire to accomplish what others have said she could never do. That seemed to be all that there was to that kid sometimes. Since her incident last Wednesday, the kid hadn't even spoken to Slade. Just a small nod or shrug here and there. Tash almost completely kept to herself. She didn't come out to eat every meal, and Slade couldn't find it in himself to force her to; she seemed to prefer being alone and barely even ate when he made her to.

Tasha seemed content to read the days away. She had already gone through half the books in her room. He'd need to replace those soon.

Coming back to his desk, Slade leant one hand against the surface and reached for his mouse. He brought up the security display of the training room. If the kid wasn't in her room she'd be down there. He rested there for a while longer, simply watching the child cartwheel and flip across the room. Slade wasn't sure if she was angry, bored, or going stir crazy. Perhaps a bit of everything.

She didn't look physically upset, then again, the kid had a history with ignoring her feelings and pretending that everything was fine. The only time she showed any emotion was if it all became too much and just kind of exploded out of her, or after a nightmare. The kid got pretty shaken up after those. She didn't always wake up screaming. Some nights Slade would check in on her and find her passed out with tear tracks staining her face. More than half of the time she wasn't even in bed. He'd considered moving Tash to her bed in her sleep, but the possible backlash of that could turn out to be disastrous. He didn't need Tasha thinking she wasn't safe to sleep at night. So, he left it alone. He could only work on so many issues at a time.