Buzzkill: The Reckoning

Chapter 9

Wanda couldn't comprehend what she saw. Ruth's fear slowly became ingrained in her memory. Dazed, she walked back into the living space where everyone still engaged in a heated discussion.

"I saw her fear," Wanda said quietly.

"What?" Bucky questioned, turning to her.

Everyone looked to Wanda now.

"I saw her fear," Wanda repeated.

An anger rose in Bucky, his tone dangerous, "You looked inside her mind?"

Wanda nodded.

"What the hell?" Bucky exhaled, running off to find Ruth.

"You think that a fear that she has is going to stop me from calling the Secretary of State right now?" Rhodes countered.

Conversation erupted again. Tony entered the room with a purpose in his step.

"We have it all wrong," Tony spoke loudly, a tablet in his hands.

They all turned to him.

"What do you mean?" Natasha asked.

Tony held up the USB for everyone in the room to see.

"Last night Ruth came to my lab and gave me this. She told me that this had all of her personal data from the facility she was raised at in Sweden. Every mission, every file, everything."

"Like an assassin's portfolio?" Sam asked.

"A bit more complicated than that," Tony replied.

"Why did she give it to you?" Rhodes asked skeptically.

"She came to me, by herself, and told me to look at anything I wanted to within these files. And if I thought that, after seeing all of the things she's done, that she deserves to be here, she would stay. If not, she would leave," Tony explained.

"And what did you find?" Steve asked.

"After going through some basic encryption softwares, I found reports. A whole section dedicated to the reports of every single test and mission Ruth has ever done. I started with the ones from a couple of years before she left the place, at eighteen years old," Tony explained with his hands. "I could scroll down and just look, seeing the stamp at the top of each report that read 'COMPLETE'. From the ages of sixteen to eighteen alone there were...dozens, hundreds, even. Each one marked 'COMPLETE', most of them assassinations."

"So she's just as bad as we think she is?"

"That's what I thought." Tony paused, looking down at the USB. "Then I scrolled all the way to the bottom, the most recent mission, finally seeing a bold red stamp across the top of the report that read FAILURE. So I opened the file, and the picture of the target was at the top of the page." Tony set the tablet down on the kitchen island, projecting a picture for everyone to see. A picture of Ryker.

"It's a kid. How old is he?" Sam asked.

"Same age as Ruth at the time, twenty-one." Tony motioned toward the picture, "His name is Ryker. Of course I wondered why, out of the hundreds of missions Ruth had done in her young lifetime, each of them completed, this one would be a failure."

"That's him, the boy I saw in her fear," Wanda spoke up.

"So she couldn't kill him?" Rhodes asked.

Tony shook his head, "No. I looked back into her previous files, seeing if I could find anything with the boy to see who he was. Turns out, they were raised together in this place basically from the beginning. 80 percent of the missions Ruth went on, this Ryker was right with her." Tony paused, looking to the floor. "Ryker was targeted because he gave top secret information about the facility's projects with Russia to SHIELD."

Everyone in the room went silent.

"But Ruth couldn't kill him. So the leader of the facility killed him instead," Tony continued. "Based on the fact that this was the last entry into these files, and with the timeline of Ruth's experimentation, I can guarantee you that this is why Ruth left this place."

"And does this place still exist? Does it even have a name?" Rhodes asked.

"I couldn't find anything that gave details about the facility. From the files on this USB or any other searches. Every time the place is mentioned in a file it just says, 'facility' or 'headquarters'," Tony explained.

"What about the leader? Who's running the place?"

"I don't know," Tony replied. "There's nothing here for a name from what I can bypass. I'll have to talk to Ruth."

"So based on the fact that she didn't kill someone, probably only one person, that she cared about, you think that she should stay here?" Rhodes asked, filled with sarcasm.

Tony turned to them, void of expression. "No, it's because of this." Tony plugged in the USB, scrolled through and found a video, placing it on the projection. "This is from March 2nd, 2002. Ruth was 10 years old." Tony hit play, everyone's eyes glued to the screen.

"Shoot him," The Woman's voice commanded.

Rhodes eyebrows furrowed, looking close at the screen to make sure he was seeing things clearly.

"I can't," everyone heard a little girl's voice say. They could see her, watching from the camera's footage that angled from the top right corner of the room. She was standing, her left arm outstretched, her other tied up to some contraption.

A shiver went through Wanda's spine as the contraption seized the little girl. They all heard the strong zap of electricity.

It continued on like this, the commanding woman yelling, cursing, shocking the young girl every time she refused to comply. The girl grew more into hysterics, screaming for the shocks to stop.

Sam looked away. Steve closed his eyes. Rhodes looked down. Natasha, in shocked stillness, couldn't take her eyes off the screen.

"Come on, how hard is it to pull the trigger? Exhale and shoot!" The Woman commanded.

A gun shot echoed, and the man sitting at the end of the room toppled to the ground just as Tony turned off the video.

"There are hundreds more videos exactly like this. Worse, even. And I didn't even look at a fraction of the things they did to these kids," Tony continued, taking the USB out of the tablet. "Any of this familiar to you, Romanoff?" He hinted to the commonality between the two of them, hoping Natasha would understand deeper.

Natasha avoided eye contact with him.

"The bottom line is, Ruth doesn't want to be here. She gave me this USB to find damning evidence of her past that would make me want to throw her to the wolves and never see her again. But she needs help. If Ruth is this aware of the things she has done in her past and is actually trying to change, how is she any different from the rest of us?" Tony questioned to everyone around the room. He turned to Rhodes, "Sure, this will probably cause a shit load of problems with the public for a minute. But we need her on our side, and she needs us."

Rhodes nodded solemnly, everyone else silent as they took in what Tony said. Rhodes turned to Wanda, "What was her fear? The one that you saw?"

"Her fear was killing someone," Wanda replied.

"Anyone in particular?" Rhodes asked.

"Barnes."