Project 43

Emich.

Trying to stay hidden while traveling from Avricourt to Strasbourg was a struggle even for the trained killer. Before he could even think about his next steps, the soldier had to find someone to fake a birth certificate, passport, and other documents. After a bit of looking, Subject 43 found someone just by the German border and chose his new identity: Emich Schneider, an eighteen-year-old kid from northern Germany.

Subject 43 walked through the dark alleyways careful not to be seen by the odd groups of people wandering around. The whole area looked like it had been abandoned years ago, the bus stops had been trashed, and every street sign, building, and wall was covered in graffiti. The buildings reminded the soldier of the facility he had escaped from just a week earlier, gray, dark, blocks that loomed over the street barely lit up by the few streetlights that were still intact.

It was the first time the soldier had dared to go out of the small attic he had been residing in unbeknownst to the people living in the building. After three days of no food, locked up in that attic, scared of every small sound, Subject 43 needed to get out.

After a while of aimlessly walking around, the soldier found a small store that was still open at three am. 

The boy behind the counter didn't seem to acknowledge Subject 43 as he stepped inside, too distracted with his phone. He had his feet slung over the counter with headphones in his ears, clearly, he wasn't a threat and would leave the soldier to take care of his business in peace.

Subject 43 walked over to the canned foods and started gathering his next meal. He was never taught to cook, just to survive, so he picked up some cans of tuna and beans, enough nutrients to keep himself generating at a relatively normal speed. 

The soldier started slowly walking towards the register but stopped in front of a shelf filled with magazines. He scanned them quickly over, making sure no one was talking about a murderous weapon on the loose when his eyes fixated on a number: 2004.

Subject 43 felt the walls closing in before he pushed them back out. He wasn't used to feeling things, and the overwhelming sense of discomfort that washed over him seemingly daily was something that scared him immensely. Even tho fear was also something completely new for the weapon of mass destruction.

The plaque the soldier had read in Avricourt had the number 1943. The soldier's eyes rapidly scanned over all the magazines only to find the same numbers on each and every one of them. Subject 43 had been locked in that cell for sixty-one years. A week ago Subject 43 wouldn't have been bothered by the revelation, but the soldier was just beginning to understand that it had a life before Hydra. Sixty-one years of his life, with the friends he could faintly remember, were stolen from him.

While his eyes ran through the shelf they caught sight of something that looked weirdly familiar. In an instinct, Subject 43 grabbed the flyer and quickly walked to the register.

Légion étrangère

On the cover was a man wearing an odd white hat and a strangely familiar uniform with red shoulder pads. Subject 43 slowly figured out where he remembered the uniform from.

The French Foreign Legion was interfering with Hydra business in French Guinea. The soldier's master had business with a local organization the Legion was trying to take down. Like always, Subject 43 was sent out to neutralize the group. The men had been well-trained soldiers and fought together well. Subject 43 remembered studying up on the group. They took anyone regardless of nationality, offered French nationality to anyone who fought with them for five years, allowed soldiers to take on new names and identities, and lived off the grid, far away from anyone where no one would find them.