Respect | S. Rogers [1]

09 | LECTURE ROOM

July 1944
Hydra's Headquarters, Swiss Alps

The remaining agents from the mission were gathered in a closed room. The ones with more experience were poised whereas others who hadn't encountered the leader of Hydra before were, in simple terms, shitting themselves.

For the past fifteen minutes, although for Echo it had felt much longer, they had been cornered by the Red Skull who was angered at the lack of productivity of the agents and their failure of capturing Captain America. He had to settle with capturing another average soldier, again. His speech suddenly came to an end when he grabbed a gun and started shooting at some agents indiscriminately dissolving them into nothing.

The ones that were left standing lived to hear the last of his tantrum.

"You are failing!" he drawled with anger. " Get out! Now!" In his rage, he didn't even call out their salute but they still screamed with their arms pointing in his direction.

Hail Hydra.

Dr Henryk motioned to his subordinates who followed him towards his office. He gave a speech of his own and how he expected better work on the next mission dismissing everyone except for Echo, Matteo and two other agents.

Swallowing his pride, he spat the next words: "Schmidt's is right. Now, which one of you will explain what happened?" His tone was harsh.

Echo was the first to speak. "They got a hold of our guns, we were overpowered."

"Your mission was to capture Captain America at all costs." Dr Henryk hand struck the table with force knocking down a few items.

"If we hadn't retreated, they would've killed us, and he would've escaped anyway," she argued, her eyes full of determination whilst keeping her tone submissive.

"At. All. Costs, Beatrycze," he turned around.

"Sir, if she had attacked when she was supposed to—" Matteo had a very complete skill-set, but what he had on wits for fighting he lacked on self-control and Rosemary wasn't about to let him denigrate her.

"And you think that because...what? I'm surprised you remember something considering you were too occupied being unconscious on the ground."

"The Echo would've captured Captain America," he finished, holding back his anger.

"There were shots being fired at me."

"That's convenient."

"Perhaps if you didn't have a bunch of incompetents as a team, I wouldn't have had to handle a militia of men in addition to the superhuman on my own."

"Du dumme schlampe." (You stupid bitch). Oh, she pushed a button.

"But with the man in charge, it is no surprise," she retorted in German easily.