"Riley...? Are you okay?"
Is that even a question Maria?
Standing up on my feet, I face them with a blank expression. My emotions are shadowed. I can't feel anything.
Slowly, I reach over my halter, I put up the hood, clipping on the built-in mask that shielded my mouth and nose, leaving my eyes clear.
I always do this before a mission.
Before I kill.
Old habits die hard.
The ship rocks heavily beneath us as wave after wave of energy pulsates through me. There's something building, something dangerous.
It feels wicked, it feels powerful, it feels... familiar.
Nick glances over at Natasha. "Natasha, watch you six, Something's up--"
Before he could continue, I curl my hand forward and smack him against the monitors.
Fury couldn't avoid it. His body hits the side of the desk loudly and he groans from the pain, muffling curses beneath his breath.
Natasha is on me instantly. She punches me in the gut, but I easily deflect it with a kick to her side and abdomen.
I react quicker than she does and it doesn't take a genius to see I can easily overpower her.
They are nothing compared to you.
The voice was hypnotic. It was like a comfort from an old friend.
Maria comes up behind me and tries to knock my head, I fold onto her and push her over to Natasha with enough force that it causes both women to stumble backwards.
I branch out the blue green lights, letting it spread across the Bridge, attacking everything and everyone that was unlucky enough to remain where they were.
"Everybody out!" Nick shouts out to the Agents who are trapped in the crossfire as they struggle to leave the area.
Just moments ago I had saved them, but now what was this? Why was their saviour killing them instead?
As the bridge begins to clear out, Nick comes towards me with a stern expression, palm out, his one eye darting sharply at the way the gold light weave in between my long brown hair.
"Stand down, Riley." His command reaches deaf ears. "We don't want to hurt you."
I tilt my head at that. "You already have."
Natasha lunges from my side and Nick uses the distraction to attack head-on.
"Snap out of this, this is the Tesseract!" Both of them worked together to take me down, their punches and blocks packing power.
While Natasha goes for my chest, Fury is dead set on knocking me on my ass.
Maria who had been momentarily dazed by how I threw her across the desk, shouts something to her comm. "The enhanced is out of control, I repeat, the enhanced is out of control! Tony, Steve, get your ass over here!"
Stupid people, they can't beat me.
I could blink an eye and have everyone dead in an instant.
Igniting a swirl of blue and green, I flushed it to Natasha, keeping my hand on her chest and making her gasp as the electricity scrambles her lungs.
She drops at the intense pain, teeth gritted.
"So much for the Black Widow." I snarled darkly, towering over her bent figure, the voice not my own.
Fury whips out a gun and I closed my fist before he could shoot. It crumbles as he fires, the bullet uselessly hitting the ground.
He drops it, instantly.
"You..." My voice is inhuman.
Kicking Natasha to the side, I turn my full attention to the Director of SHIELD, to the person I trusted, to the person I thought would give me the answers I needed.
"You lied, you lied to me!" My anger from before has returned full force.
"I did what I had to!" Fury yells back, ducking under an array of computers at my incoming blast of attack.
One after another, my abilities explode everything in its way, zapping the ground, the metal, the walls, the ceiling, the glass.
"You said you were helping me, you said you were going to find out what happened to me! But you knew! You knew and you didn't tell me!"
Each step I took towards him, the ground beneath me shook and my powers crackled.
I trusted him.
He broke my trust.
He was planning on using me. He recorded my past.
And he kept it a secret.
There was a loud crash behind me followed by the tell-tale sound of Tony's repulsors.
A beam shot out, barreling towards me at light speed. I deflected it, allowing it to land somewhere beside me in a pile of rubble.
My brown hair blew around at the impact, masking a part of my face.
Red and gold appeared from my peripheral vision, floating mid-air.
Iron Man.
"Uhhh, girl with the freaky eyes, stop blasting blue green gold thingies." His voice says over the robotic suit sounding muffled as he raises his thruster to me.
The ground trembled.
Iron Man looks around to see things shifting around the room.
"Okay... I just got trampled by the engine, I'm not going out there to fix it again."
Before I can face him head-on, a whirring shield moved fast in the corner of my eye.
A flash of blue, red and white nearly collides onto my still figure, but I flipped over to my side, landing perfectly on my hands and knees.
The super soldier steps forward, catching the shield just in time as it rebounds back to him.
Both attacks had been warnings.
Not meant to harm, but meant to subdue.
I eyed Tony's suit, taking note that it looks like shit while a quick check on Captain America's emotions allowed me to see he was beyond tired.
The both of them surround me, ready for my next attack.
"Classy guys, real classy," I grumbled, weaving my hands around to perfect the right amount of energy I needed to take them down.
With Tony, I was going to have to use my abilities since he was in the air but with Steve, I'd have to rely on my assassin skills.
Before I could even throw the next punch, Natasha sneaks up from behind me having recovered.
"Riley, come on!" Natasha sounded annoyed as she wraps her legs around my neck and tries to pull me down. "Snap out of it!"
Scoffing, I landed an uppercut and we both land on the table. I flip us over and we fall backwards but before she hit the ground, I flicked her body upwards so she hit Iron Man instead.
"Ah damn, Romanoff!" Tony had shot out a repulsor beam but Natasha crashing onto him had disoriented his balance.
The beam hits Steve's shield instead, instantly throwing the super soldier against the wall.
He wheezes at the attack. "Goddammit, Stark!" He growled.
"She's playing you guys! Dark Riley is a pain in the ass!" Natasha is back on her feet and she isn't giving up. She sidesteps Tony's figure and gathers herself to fight again.
"Did you know?" I demanded, halting her in her tracks before she got too close. "Did you know what they did to me? Did you know Fury knows who I am?"
She stops moving and looks over to Fury who regards us with an almost guilty expression.
I am unsure if she knows just what I'm implying, but Natasha chooses to ignore it, instead opting to reach the calmer side of me. "Riley, I swear, whatever it is you know, we'll fix it."
Liar.
"You're all liars!"
"Okay hey, I didn't even know you existed until I heard you over the comm!" Tony interrupts from his position on the floor sounding annoyed.
"Tony, your timing is impeccable." Steve glowers, jumping on the table with his shield in front of him. His punch comes out of nowhere. It throws me off guard and I land a few feet away.
Damn his super soldier strength.
Out of breath, I start to laugh. "How does it feel huh? Battling a war once again? Must feel real good being back out there huh?"
My taunts are meant to hurt.
I grip the side of a railing as I rose, the dark energy eating me alive.
Steve narrowed his eyes and ignores my jab. He focuses on trying to knock me out by being on the offensive but I decide it be much more fun to play around for a while.
With a wave of my hand, the shield is knocked out from his hand and Tony who is mere inches behind me, hoping to catch me off guard--is the target practice.
He spun around to avoid Cap's shield but I punched him in his metal mask, making sure my powers backed me up, not caring if my knuckles screamed.
"JARVIS, how did I feel that?!" He says, his breathing laboured in pain.
"Sir, it seems she has used her abilities to supercharge the punch."
Deflecting another one of my punches Tony ducks low and blasts a pulsar beam that bounces me back into numerous monitors.
Sizzling heat erupted on my chest and I hissed.
"Eject the sonic cannon."
His hands transfigured into a powered cannon and loud swirls of energy waves began to hit me furiously.
I clenched my eyes in pain, feeling it grit my brain like a power drill.
Powering up my kick, I gutted him in his suit so quickly that he knocked into Steve-who just happened to rise up-not before ripping off my mask on the way.
The both of them fall side by side with a groan.
"These are earth's mightiest heroes? Pathetic."
Tony rolls up to his back behind the super soldier, metal mask sparking. It pops open with a metallic clang, revealing bloody cuts that line the entirety of his face.
There's blood leaking from the corner of his mouth and he blinks to get rid of the glare from the light above as he refocused.
"Listen, freaky eyes--" He is cut short.
Those brown orbs look back at me and his mouth hangs open.
Silence wrap around us. Deafening and quiet.
Natasha and Steve both pause in their attacks, realizing that the air has changed.
The Iron Man is gazing at me, brown eyes holding an emotion I am unable to fathom.
Steve taps Tony's suit to get him to react but Tony doesn't even flinch or blink.
He's just staring at me with this expression that conveys so much, yet so little. None I could understand.
Steve pushes up, holding onto his side. "Stark-"
"Lorelie..."
It's my name. But it comes from Tony's mouth.
How?
Natasha, Maria and Fury only called me Riley during the battle. So how could he know?
And at the back of my mind,
I'm screaming.
I'm screaming because there's nothing I can do.
The dark energy is too much and I can't focus. I can't snap out of what is happening, I can't make it stop, I can't--
"Soldat!"
My mind blanks at the command. The voice is all I hear.
Natasha stays frozen in shock as I look up to the Bridge.
There is Nick Fury. Holding onto a small tattered brown book.
His eyes are sorrowful.
"Prizrak."
Sharp needles of pain explode in my skull and I scream, struggling to pull out of the dark end.
"Temno."
He continues. His Russian clear as day.
"Stop!" I'm on my knees now. With my hands on the side of my head. "Stop, stop!"
My abilities have ceased and I'm left defenceless against the assault.
"Wh-What?" Tony climbs onto his knees, hesitating at the scene before him. He looks up at Nick, his hands hovering, unwilling to move any further from where I knelt on the ground. "What are you doing..?"
Tony stays where he is, his fists clenching and unclenching. He doesn't move.
His eyes flash with something.
I scream again, louder, so loud the Helicarrier rocks, the monitors shake, the glass breaks. I'm screaming too much to care.
"What are you doing to her?!" Tony yells out, glaring at Nick from where he was.
I'm sobbing. My fingers dig the ground, well aware that they drew blood. Every bruise. Every hit. Every bleed. It catches me whole.
What is happening?
"21,"
Through my blurry tears, my usual brown orbs are back and I look at Fury in anguish.
Fight. Fight it!
Somewhere in my distant mind, I feel grateful. Nick was trying to help me. Nick was trying to pull me out of the deep end.
But the words that leave my mouth are instinct. I'm in pain. It's all I can think.
And all I can think of is betrayal.
"You promised..." I trembled. The dark energy forces me to forget but I can't.
The pain is too much. But I know the pain is what's keeping me from continuing my pursuit of murdering everybody in this ship.
"Nick, enough!" Natasha marches up to Fury and rips the book away, quickly throwing it across the room.
She is breathing heavily and to my surprise I see her eyes water, but they do not fall. The famous Black Widow, a cold-blooded Russian spy, shows emotions.
COMPLY!
The voice roars and it's deafening. The dark energy forces me to ignore Fury's command. To continue my blood lust.
My eyes squeezed shut and I could feel the blood run down my nose as it dripped steadily on the ground at my body's obvious way of displaying my weakening state.
I get up, but Fury pushes on, even without the book.
"Yarost'."
"Nick, stop." Steve's voice is harsh. And the energy he gave off told me he was livid. "Whatever the hell it is you're doing, you stop!"
Steve's face came into view and he doesn't hesitate to grab me, unlike Tony who is frozen solid on the ground.
The super soldier flips me around so I'm on my back and I'm facing the ceiling.
They're strangers. I don't know them.
I don't know them.
Yet my brain screams louder.
I don't know why.
"Tony, snap out of it, we need to get her to the infirmary," Steve commanded his voice ringing in demand.
Tony is quiet. His face is pale like he's seen a ghost.
Breathing a shaky breath Tony mumbles into his suit, without even glancing my way. "JARVIS, take a sample."
But I don't know what for.
The cocky billionaire is silent for once. He doesn't say anything as the pain continues to torment me.
Like before, I felt myself crumble away from the darkness and when that happens, exhaustion peppers everywhere on me.
My body feels heavy at the lack of energy and my eyes droop. I move, struggling to lift myself and away from the watching eyes.
"No, no, no..." I mumbled not wanting to sleep.
I needed answers. I needed to know.
I practically collapse before I could sit up and when I do, my eyes find Fury who is quietly holding onto the railings, his knuckles white from clenching it.
"Gidra."
And that's it. The pain envelopes me whole and I shut my eyes as the darkness bleeds away to a familiar corner in my mind.
Soldier
Ghost
Dark
21
Rage
Hydra
~~@ @ @~~
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