𝚂𝙴𝚅𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙴𝙴𝙽 - 𝙱. 𝙱𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙴𝚂

Chapter 7

The Devil In Disguise

Lois walked into her apartment. She dropped her keys and phone on her kitchen counter and pulled off her scrubs. Looking around her apartment in the dark she analyzed the room.

She felt different. She couldn't really feel anything.

Her eyes caught onto the painting of the white cat on the wall. Alpine. Lois walked over to the painting and pulled it off, resting it gently against the wall. She looked back at the hole in the wall and grabbed what she saw. A picture and two vials of tranquillizer.

She put the tranquillizers in a coffee mug that had a cute little cat on it and put it back in the cabinet, then she sat down in front of her photo on a chair.

The photo was of her father and her. Her father's husband took it on an old disposable film camera for them. That was days before they both died in a helicopter accident. They never got to see her graduate nursing school.
She remembered losing this photo.

Lois sat back on the chair confused.
Where was the file?
Who were her targets?

She looked down at the white tile floors, straining her brain to remember anything about how she had been living the past few years.
Had she moved it or had someone taken it?

She noticed something dark against the white tiles and leaned over to pick it up.  It was a strand of hair too dark to be her own. Throwing it in the garbage she thought about how that might've gotten there. She had no boyfriend or girlfriend to her recollection, barely any friends either.

With her head aching from being activated and slammed into an elevator today, Lois got off the chair. She made sure her door was locked, then went to bed without a moment to spare, or care.

Lois woke up the next day with a massive headache and took an Advil. She put on some fitted black clothes, things she would wear during training and prepared to search the SALA for the missing file. She kept looking back at the photo of her and her father.

Why was that photo hiding in the wall and not the file?

Taking a load of clothes down to the washer, she ran into Mrs. Vulpe who she knew as the landlady. It seemed like a normal conversation until she said something odd.

"Are you going to market with Mr. Barnes today?"

"Barnes?"

"Number 20. Bucky."

Who the hell is Bucky?

"Right. Bucky." She said slowly trying to figure out where she knew that name from. "That's a good idea. Is there anything you'd like us to pick up for you?"

"No." She shifted and looked back at Lois with those fox eyes of hers. "He likes you."

"Oh...I don't know about that."

She didn't know. She couldn't remember who Bucky Barnes was and what their relationship was. Mrs. Vulpe smirked as she walked away.

Lois hauled her laundry back up the stairs. She didn't want to do it anymore as an excuse to roam around for the file, she wanted to see this Mr. Barnes. Dropping her stuff off in front of her door she quietly continued up the stairs to Apartment 20.