WORLD'S WEIGHT ▹ tfatws

[ 005 ] chapter five

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WHAT ARE THE
SHADES OF DARKNESS

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content warning:
mentions of torture and gore on the chapter below.

❚ SIBERIA, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011 | HYDRA Facility ❚

There was something about the coldness that surrounded the lands of Siberia. It's not a usual one that the man usually experiences during winter back at the Mansion. It's harsh, vile and unforgiving. Wrapping the whole place into a thick snow that froze everything that it encounters, there was no sun to grace the inhabitants who had been yearning for warmth for a long time. Nor fires strong enough to withstand the icy storms that dominate the land.

But then after all, there was no amount of sunlight or heat of any season that could warm the coldness seeping on his bones at the moment.

The Asset, just like how he was named, is indeed a creature of winter. He is used to the sense of dread and bleakness, only this time the feeling was so great it felt unfamiliar to him.

Four days ago, right after he got back from a month-long mission from Yekaterinburg. News came to him delivered by one of his superiors about the sudden fall of the Mansion and its allies all over the country. They said it was due to the failed extraction mission in America of the two lead agents of the organisation, Nightshade and Wolf Spider. The Wolf Spider falls into the hands of a powerful intelligence community called SHIELD. Leading to an effective capture of the Mansion and fall of its long reigning empire. The Soldier couldn't care less about the death of Niko Petrovich or the many men and agents that laid down their lives just to protect every base and facility they have. After all they are just one on the long list of HYDRA's situational alliances of underground organised crime. Though they have been a very useful one in the past fifty years he doubts that HYDRA would once again waste resources and manpower to help them defeat the enemies they gain for themselves. It already happened once, there won't be another.

What the Soldier was so fearful about since he received the news has something to do with the two lead agents. The last time heard about the twins was about twenty years ago if his memory serves him right, whispers has it they were put in the ice that long because of an extreme illness and both KGB and HYDRA were hellbent in looking for a cure. Perhaps they were already cured recently and their superiors decided to immediately put them on a major mission.

Something he didn't expect considering how young the children still are. After spending a considerably long time with them before, he knows that they are far from being common kids. Both Liev and Czarina are strong and have abilities beyond compare to a common HYDRA agent. But they went into the ice at fifteen years old. What is that to fully grown soldiers that may have been waiting on the other side.

The man has no idea where the Madame or the Elder Guardian found the twins and why they possess such unique abilities. But ever since he met them there was a part, deep inside him, that instinctively tries so hard to protect them (if you can call it that). A part that seems to be so dormant in a merciless, killing machine that it brought some confusing memories the man isn't sure were his. For others, the two may be a distant memory after two long decades, but for him they were the only memory worth holding on to, so those times that had passed without seeing them only felt like a flash in his life.