𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 - 𝐖. 𝐌𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐟𝐟

five

                           KATERINA Sylkov was always a promising girl. From the ripe age of one she had been able to do things others couldn't; fully understand what others were saying, how things worked, and more. Her brain just worked at a faster level. She knew what was happening the night that she was ripped out of her warm bed when she was three years old. She had slowly put the pieces together, overhearing snippets of her parent's conversations as they whispered to each other worriedly before they fell asleep. She heard her older sisters, Natasha and Yelena, talking when they thought she was asleep. She knew that the bad men who ripped her from her bed were the ones her family was worried about.

HYDRA and the Red Room had always shown an interest in the toddler, knowing that when the time came, they would take the girl. They knew what she could become, and her young age only made it easier. Even though her brain processed things quicker, she was still only three, untrained and unable to fight back with her weak body. They didn't care as she kicked and screamed for her family, throwing her into the back of an unlabeled, black, truck and plunging a needle into her neck, administering the sedative that knocked the three year old out cold for the following thirty-seven hours.

They didn't care as they tested and assaulted the small, trembling brunette. They simply didn't care.

Katerina grew into what they had always hoped she would become; their weapon, their assassin. She was better than the Winter Soldier, she didn't have flaws, she didn't have feelings, she didn't have thoughts of her own because of how extensive her brainwashing had been. They had made sure that any mere presence of her history was obliterated, including her favorite pink stuffed animal, rabbity babbity.

She was no longer Katerina Sylkov, she was the Shadow. An enhanced individual with the ability to manipulate the shadows and darkness to her will, read thoughts as well as control others minds; what they saw, felt and heard. She was perfectly trained in all forms of martial arts, weaponry and fighting skills. She was the perfect killer.

Of course, she had her flaws. During her early days in the program she was found muttering to herself about her family life until she was dragged to the room with the electricshock chair and it was wiped from her brain. As she grew, her mutterings turned to random stray thoughts about her time before HYDRA and the KGB, because she knew she had to have had one. It was once again shocked out of her, her mind being wiped each and every time she showed any signs of the life she held before.

Somehow, that wound with her sedated on the cold, hard cot in a cell at S.H.I.E.L.D.s headquarters. The glass surrounding her was bulletproof, reinforced by vibranium, the strongest metal on Earth. While the glass was extraordinarily thick, she could hear everything that went on outside of the cell, and anyone outside of the cell could hear her, although she didn't say anything, she never said anything.

It had been twenty-three hours since she had awoken from the sedative Natasha Romanoff had given her. She remembered the fight and cursed at herself in her mind for not being able to will her body to fight against the pain that Clint Barton's electric arrow had caused her. She had a deep flesh wound on her leg that had been patched over and taped with gauze, and her head was pounding, but she never let anything show. Her face remained the emotionless mask, no thoughts or feeling evident in her body language or expression.

Her mask had been taken off, and she could only assume that one of the Avengers had taken it off of her. She knew they were watching her, the seven security cameras pointed in her direction were a very clear indication of that, yet nobody had been in to speak with her. Her body itched to move, to train, her routine so engraved in her mind that her body knew what time it was before she even looked at a clock. They had taken all of her weapons, not a single one left on her person and she had to give it to them, they managed to get all thirty-eight concealed daggers and knives she had on her person.