Years Beyond - Old Soul Sequel

11

<Narrator's POV>

People all react differently to death. Some cry, some babble senselessly, others internalize the reaction and try to forget what they saw. But with the amount of death the Avengers have dealt out, neither Wanda, Natasha, or Sam reacted any of these ways. Instead they gagged.

The stench of the decaying bodies flooded their nostrils as the door flung open, finally release after being trapped behind the steel. Now, the three stand with their arms raised to their noses, their eyes crinkling in the putrid stink.

It was a room completely filled with bodies. Some big, some small. Some old, some young. And despite her fair share of kills, when Wanda's eyes landed on a boy who couldn't have been older than eight, she released a sound from the back of her throat.

"What is this?" Sam said. His tone was tight, his face drawn. He took a step forward and his boot skimmed the arm of a body. He looked away.

Natasha was the only one with the stomach to closely examine the bodies. She knelt, not daring to touch, but allowing herself to see. She frowned. "Some bodies are fresher than others." She rose to her and took a scan around the room for the first time. It was hard to look at anything else than the dead bodies. "Looks like some kind of lab."

"Hydra had many testing facilities," Wanda murmured. Her face was very white.

Natasha glanced over at her. "Testing for what?"

Wanda returned the stare, and her gaze was so haunted and shadowed, Natasha shivered. "Human experiments."

With a swallow, Wanda stepped into the room. She looked down at the body of an adult male, gray but mostly whole. "Hydra would move from facility to facility so no one could catch them. This one looks like it's been abandoned for a few years now."

"Some of these bodies look only weeks old," Sam pointed out.

"They could still use it as a dumpster," Natasha said. "What kind of human experiments are we talking about here, Wanda?"

Wanda shrugged. She lifted a hand, and her red sparks danced between her fingers, lighting up the dingy room. "Experiments like me and my brother. Like Daphne."

"And I'm willing to bet money," Sam said, "like Avalie."

Wanda gave a grim nod. "Brunsen must've wanted her to come here while the lab was still in use. To find her full potential."

"We should split up," Natasha said. "In case they left anything behind. I'll take left."

The three branched off, careful to step around the bodies, and rummaged through the underground lab. They searched through empty examine rooms, menacing-looking medical tools, vacant jail cells, and other questionable spaces. Though when they gathered again, the most anyone found was a notebook Wanda held.

"Found this behind some bricks in a cell," she said. "It's a journal. Belonged to a test subject, I think. It was hidden well. Whoever had it last didn't want it to be found."

Natasha nodded. "Good, let's bring it back with us. Anything else?"

At Sam's feet, there was a meow. He looked down at the cat making a figure 8 between his legs, and then started to glance up at Natasha. "Maybe--"

"You're not keeping the cat, Sam," Natasha said.

"But Nat--"

"Tony won't want that in the tower," she told him. "He has flees."

"I'm sure the cat won't mind the bugs," Sam quipped. He spread out his palms. "We could use a team mascot."

"I am not cleaning up after that," Wanda snarled, who was surprisingly bitter about the animal. Not everyone was a cat person.