verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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Four treatments deep – practically the halfway point – and Katrina was no longer permitted to train with Josef. His behaviour towards her was too volatile, and he had been withdrawn.
She had considered asking, once, about the Soldier as a potential partner, but he was rarely present in the facility now. As the political situation in Moscow grew increasingly unstable, it seemed his influence was required considerably more often. It was very easy for troublesome figures to suddenly vanish during periods of upheaval.
Still, her work was all-consuming during this period. Karpov had ordered five new cryostasis chambers to be built, in preparation for the end of her serum trial. Josef's team would become the next generation of Winter Soldiers, an asset that HYDRA could rely on, no matter what outcome emerged from the Kremlin. Regimes rose and fell all the time – the Nazis, the Soviets; HYDRA outlived them all. Maintaining the balance of the world from the shadows, as they always had.
The decommissioned missile silo within the Siberian facility was chosen to house the new chambers – their structures considerably larger than the Soldier's as Katrina strove to improve the design. More efficient temperature drops, slower returns to body temperature to avoid cryostasis shock, safety measures that would kick in in the event of a power outage – backup generators that could run for years, promising that the assets within would remain safe. Still, as she oversaw the construction team putting the chambers together, she couldn't help but think they were too cumbersome. They could never be moved from the base in the way the Winter Soldier's could. If given time, she was sure she could design something better.
It was her father who encouraged her to do so, allowing her to make use of the lab connected to his office – the only other room where there was enough power flow to support an additional chamber, besides the room where the Soldier was housed. The reason for such a significant power flow being required in that lab was because it was the location of Zola – the AI that informed much of her father's work.
Zola was little more than a grey plastic monitor with a surveillance camera and hand scanner attached – as clunky and awkward as any other computer in the facility – but she understood that his true bulk was housed in a SHEILD facility in the United States. Smaller monitors like this existed throughout HYDRA, all connected, all able to provide reams of sensitive information to intelligence agents around the globe: and all very happy to converse with anyone that happened to have clearance to be in the room with them.
Katrina didn't mind – in fact, it was useful to be able to work away on the new chamber and double check her metal calculations by calling them out to the AI. He would dutifully rattle back in his tinny approximation of a German accent; it didn't seem to matter what time of the day it was. Zola was always awake. It seemed Katrina often was too, her hours of rest disturbed by thoughts of tormented blue eyes. It was easier to simply hide herself away in her work.
The Soldier showed no signs of breaking his programming again. Their interactions were limited anyway, to her routine checks of his arm after a mission – silent moments passing as she polished out scuffs from the shining steel, not asking what had caused them, not wanting to know.
