XXVI. Emris

Something stings at the back of my throat. Acidic. Bitter. Like chemical smoke and old blood. I taste it before I can even open my eyes.

The world swims in and out, thick and slow like oil. I feel weightless—but not in a peaceful way. More like I'm floating inside my own skin, disconnected from it. My limbs are being moved, but I'm not the one moving them. I can't tell if I'm walking or being dragged.

There's a thud. Something hard bumps into my foot—my boot? I think I'm wearing boots. It echoes down a corridor. No, not a corridor—several. Every step they take with me rattles in my skull, bouncing off the metal walls. Or are they concrete? I can't tell. My vision won't focus. My brain's trying to reboot but there's static on every channel.

Everything hurts in the way things do when you've been unconscious too long—muscles like deadweight, breath coming too shallow. My head lolls back, hits something solid. A shoulder? Someone's carrying me.

No—two someones.

I try to speak, but only a croak comes out. My tongue is dry, stuck to the roof of my mouth. Chloroform. That cloth. Nataly.

She covered my face. That's the last thing I remember. The sharp stench. Her voice, steady and cold: "Shhh. Go to sleep."

I blink hard. Light above me buzzes—overhead fluorescents, humming like angry insects. My eyes squint against the sickly green glow. It burns. Every flicker scrapes the back of my eyes.

"Still breathing," one of the guards mutters. Male voice. Low. Bored.

My left arm swings uselessly between us. I try to lift it—nothing. Nerves won't respond. They've pumped me full of something else, not just the chloroform. Muscle inhibitors? Nerve blockers? My thoughts are molasses.

I taste blood. Not much—just a metallic smear against my molars. I must've bitten my tongue. My jaw aches like I clenched through something.

A memory flickers. Brief. Disjointed.

Steve's shield. Sam's scream.

A flash of red and gold. Fire in the sky.

I try to latch onto it. The fragments flutter away like ashes.

I'm back in the hallway, or maybe a stairwell. The walls are dull gray—lined with rusted pipes and flaking paint. The air smells like mildew and sweat and cold metal. One of the guards shifts his grip and my boot scrapes the ground. The echo sounds distant, wrong, like it's underwater.

"Not far now," the other one says. I don't recognize his voice either. Maybe that's the point.

I force my fingers to twitch. Just one. Just the pinky.

They ignore it. Maybe they didn't notice.

I feel everything and nothing. I exist in pieces—eyelids, aching ribs, the slow creep of awareness in my gut telling me this isn't over. This is the beginning.

A door groans open. Heavy hinges. My body jerks as they drag me over the threshold. Carpet now. Plush under my boots. That means only one place.

Dragunov's office.

I try to lift my head. It falls back. My chin hits my chest with a dull thump.

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

The smell shifts—leather, cologne, a hint of cigar smoke. Old world, authoritarian comfort. The room is too warm, too quiet. A predator's den.

The guards don't speak. They don't need to. Their hands let go all at once and I hit the floor hard, knees first, then my shoulder, then the side of my face. Carpet doesn't soften the impact.

I stay down. There's no point struggling yet. I need strength. I need clarity.

A chair creaks. Footsteps approach. Slow, deliberate. Each step controlled. I don't have to look up to know who it is.

Dragunov.

I try to brace for his voice, but even that feels like too much.

All I can do is lie there, breathing in the scent of carpet fibers and failure.

The carpet burns against my cheek. It's rougher than I expect—fibers stiff, bristled, like it hasn't been cleaned in weeks. My face is pressed into it at an angle that makes my neck ache. The guards didn't just drop me—they threw me. My knees slammed first, then the shoulder I landed on before. The same one that still twinges from one of my recent missions. There's a sick sort of symmetry to it.

I don't move. Not yet.

The light in the office is too sharp. White, clinical, artificial. It cuts down from overhead in slats through the blinds, painting harsh stripes across the floor. Across me.

And then I feel it—that presence. Heavy. Unblinking. A silence that wraps itself around my throat like wire.

He doesn't speak at first. Doesn't have to. I hear the faint tapping of his fingers on the arm of his chair. Rhythmic. Precise. Measured. Like he's setting a metronome to the pace of my humiliation.

When he finally speaks, the voice is smooth. Unbothered. "I expected more from you."

My muscles contract instinctively. I try to lift myself onto my elbows, but my limbs still feel too heavy, like sandbags strapped to bone. I shift enough to raise my head slightly, just enough to see his shoes—polished, black, gleaming. The contrast between us is comical.

He stands.

The taps stop.

A slow creak of leather as he rises from behind the desk. His footsteps are soft, cushioned by the rug, but I feel them, each one a quiet countdown. I keep my head low until I can't anymore.

A hand wraps in my hair.

His fingers twist at the root, and pain shoots down my scalp. He lifts—not violently, but deliberately—forcing my face up toward his. I hiss through my teeth, but I don't fight him. Fighting makes it worse.

I meet his eyes. Cold. Curious. Calculating. The same eyes I've stared into since I was five.

Dragunov sighs, disappointment dripping from every syllable. "You know what hurts me most, little zmeya?" His head tilts, just slightly. "It's not the failure. Failure is inevitable. It's the waste."

I swallow. It takes effort. My throat feels tight. "I'm sorry," I whisper, though it sounds brittle, like it's already broken.

He studies me. "Sorry," he repeats, quietly, like he's testing the word for the first time. Then his grip tightens just enough to make me wince. "Then show me you understand. Tell me, Emris. Tell me all the ways you failed."

I close my eyes. Not to shut him out—but to focus. I reach back, into the memories I wish I didn't have. The pieces I still remember even when I'm not in control.

"I hesitated," I begin, voice thin. "When they said my name. There was a delay. I didn't suppress it fast enough."

Dragunov doesn't speak. His silence is permission to continue.

"I allowed Tony Stark to interfere. I didn't account for aerial disruption. I didn't anticipate him being armed and fast enough to separate me from the target."

My mouth is dry, but the words come easier now. Shame tastes metallic, like blood on the back of my tongue.

"I didn't execute the kill when Rogers was down. I hesitated again. Let my distractions interrupt the directive."

Dragunov's face doesn't change, but I can feel the air shift around him. Sharper. Tighter.

"I let them speak to me," I whisper. "Let the words affect me. I—allowed the extraction."

For a moment, there's nothing. No response. No movement. Just the two of us suspended in a silence that stretches thin enough to snap.

Then, he exhales. "Good," he says softly. He releases my hair, and my head drops forward with a jolt. "You know exactly why you are being punished."

I keep my eyes on the floor. The carpet again. The ugly pattern. My stomach twists.

The door opens behind me. I don't look. I know what's coming.

Two sets of hands grab my arms again. Rougher this time. Less ceremony.

Dragunov returns to his chair, the leather groaning beneath him as he settles in like a man done with his work.

"Take her to Karpov," he says. "Let her learn."

And just like that, I'm being dragged again. Back into the cold.

The walk to the torture room is short.

I don't know how I remember that—how many times I've been down this corridor, how many times I've bled on these tiles—but I do. I know the way even though I'm half-conscious, slumped between the guards like a rag doll with joints that don't work anymore.

The floor changes from concrete to tile. The air shifts from musty to sterile. Cold. It always smells like bleach in here. Bleach and metal and something darker, something burned.

The door opens with a pneumatic hiss. I flinch at the sound—too loud in the silence. The guards don't pause. They drag me inside and drop me into the padded chair like I'm nothing. I don't resist. I couldn't if I tried.

The straps come next.

Thick leather over my wrists, ankles, across my chest. They don't speak. They don't need to. Every movement is practiced. Smooth. This isn't a punishment to them—it's a routine. A task on their checklist.

One of them presses a gloved hand to my forehead and tilts my head back against the rest. The other peels open a small metal case. Inside—electrodes. Padded, but not for comfort. Just to keep them from slipping once the convulsions start.

I feel the cold gel smear against my temples.

Then the click of the pads locking in.

My breathing changes before the current even begins. Shallow. Ragged. My heartbeat speeds, slamming against my ribs like a warning bell, like it's trying to escape my chest.

They leave.

The door seals shut behind them.

Silence.

Complete silence.

It's the silence that makes it worse. No voices, no noise—just the hum of fluorescent lights and my own pulse roaring in my ears. It builds the anticipation until I want to scream just to fill the space.

The chair jolts.

I seize.

It's not like in the movies—no graceful arch of the back, no cinematic slow-motion. It's violence. It's chaos. My muscles snap tight all at once, like someone's lit a fuse in my nerves. My jaw locks. My eyes roll.

But I don't scream.

Not yet.

The second shock comes quicker. No warning.

It's worse. Stronger. Longer.

I can feel the electricity crawl up my spine, spiking in my teeth, rattling inside my skull like ball bearings in a tin can. My body thrashes against the restraints, legs kicking reflexively. The leather digs into my skin.

Still—I don't scream.

I won't.

The sixth time breaks me.

The current floods every nerve. Every cell in me sings with fire. My breath tears out of me in a ragged howl, involuntary, primal. My throat seizes from the force of it.

And I scream.

It rips through me, echoing off the walls. Raw. Animal. I think I hear something crack in my throat—maybe my voice, maybe something deeper.

Then darkness.

Not unconsciousness. Just absence. For a second, I'm not in my body. I'm floating somewhere between pain and memory, somewhere where time doesn't make sense.

Sam's face flashes in front of me. The way he looked outside the compound. Confused. Hurt. Fighting me without really fighting back.

Then Steve. Hand outstretched. Voice calling my name like it means something.

Tony's voice echoes after—"Snap out of it! This isn't you!"

Another shock pulls me back. My spine bows off the chair and slams back down. Saliva spills from the corner of my mouth. My vision goes white. White. Not black. There's no comfort in it, no fading. Just blinding heat and pressure.

I lose count after that.

Each jolt slices through me like razors, overlapping, stacking, eating away at the edges of who I am. My mind fractures. I'm no longer Emris, or the Serpent, or anything in between. I'm just pain now. Screaming and shaking and burning from the inside out.

I don't remember the end. Only the absence of pain when it finally stops. Like someone cut the wire and I'm left limp, smoking.

The door opens again.

Hands grab me. My feet drag. I don't even try to walk. I couldn't if I wanted to. My legs are dead weight, twitching with phantom currents.

The hall is colder this time. Or maybe I am. I can't tell.

They throw me into my room like a sack of bones. The floor rushes up to meet me and knocks the wind from my lungs. I curl in on myself, shivering violently. My fingers won't stop twitching. My mouth tastes like blood and copper and fear.

I press my forehead to the floor. It's the only thing that feels real.

The floor is cold. Smooth. A little sticky with sweat or blood—I can't tell which. I'm curled in on myself, arms wrapped around my middle like I can hold the pain together, keep it from leaking out.

I can still taste the rubber of the restraints. Still feel the burn of the electrodes on my skin. My muscles twitch involuntarily, like they're trying to finish screams that already died in my throat.

Everything is quiet now. That kind of quiet that doesn't feel safe. It just feels... empty.

I close my eyes and try to breathe through the static in my head.

But the silence doesn't last.

Tony's voice plays over it, again and again, soft and fractured: "Snap out of it! This isn't you!"

I hear it like he's still hovering over me, like the heat of his repulsors is still burning the air. I remember the way his armor gleamed in the sunlight. The way he didn't shoot.

Why didn't he shoot?

Sam's face flickers in next. Bruised. Bloody. His eyes wide with something worse than pain—recognition. "Emris?" he had whispered like he knew me. Like I mattered.

Do I?

Steve, too. On the ground beneath me. Chest rising, barely. He didn't fight me, not really. Even when I held the knife. Even when I straddled his chest and raised my arm to finish it.

Why?

Why didn't any of them stop me?

And why do they know my name?

I shouldn't remember. Not all of it. But I do. I always do. Every moment I'm under the Dragunov's control as the Serpent—every kill, every command, every failure—I remember it. Like a movie I'm forced to watch with my eyes pinned open.

I just can't stop it.

It's like drowning in a sea of myself. I watch my body move and fight and kill and I scream beneath the surface, but nothing changes. No one hears me.

So what does it matter that I remember?

What good is memory when I have no control?

I shift on the floor and pain lances through my ribs. I don't even know if they're bruised or broken again. I don't care. I deserve worse. I screamed. I begged, at the end. Not out loud, but in my head. For it to stop. For someone to help.

Pathetic.

Dragunov was right. I failed. I let Stark interfere. I let the target live. I let them extract me.

And I screamed like a child when they punished me.

I press my forehead harder to the floor. The cold helps. Or maybe it doesn't. But I need something that feels real.

Who were they?

Why do they look at me like I belong to them?

Why does it hurt to remember?

I shove the faces down, deep beneath the guilt and the shame. They don't belong here. They don't belong to me.

I'll bury them with everything else.

My eyelids grow heavier with each blink. I stop fighting it. Let the shadows roll in.

Sleep, unconsciousness—there's no difference anymore.

Everything fades.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The training room smells like sweat, rubber mats, and blood.

The fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting a sterile glow across the floor. Every sound echoes—grunts, breaths, the dull slap of skin hitting padding. My bare feet shift across the mat, muscles burning as I pivot, duck, and twist out of Mark's reach.

He's fast. Taller than me by a few inches, with lean muscle and sharp elbows that don't miss often. He fights clean, calculated. Never reckless.

And he's still losing.

I drive forward, heel-first, aiming for his thigh. He blocks—barely—twisting at the last second to catch my ankle with his shin. The impact shudders up my leg, but I grit my teeth and roll with it, falling into a sweep that almost takes him down.

Almost.

Mark hops over the low strike and lands with a grin on his face. He presses in, fist aimed for my ribs, but I catch it with my palm and redirect the blow, twisting his wrist until his grin falters.

He doesn't wince. He never does.

"You've gotten slower," he says through labored breath.

I meet his gaze flatly, voice dry. "You've gotten predictable."

We separate with a quick disengage, circling each other again. He shakes out his arm, jaw twitching like he wants to say more. But he doesn't. Neither do I.

We've done this dance a hundred times. No one keeps score. There's no point.

But something about the way he moves today—it scratches at something inside me. His stance, the square of his shoulders, the way he breathes through his nose and not his mouth... it's familiar.

Wrongly familiar.

It stirs muscle memory in me that doesn't belong here. Something heavier. Someone heavier. A bigger frame, older, more grounded. I don't know who.

Or maybe I do.

Steve.

The name strikes like a nerve. Are they making me train with Mark so that I know exactly how to kill Rogers?

I blink, and Mark's coming in again. Jab-jab-fake hook. I sidestep the third strike and land a clean blow to his ribs. He grunts, stumbles a step, then recovers, eyes sharp now.

I see the flicker of challenge.

He comes at me harder, faster, trying to reclaim ground he never really had. Our bodies crash together in a flurry of strikes—fist to forearm, elbow to shoulder. Pain flares in bursts, but it's distant. Like I'm watching it from somewhere else.

I move on instinct. Low block, counter strike, pivot behind him—palm to spine, force him forward. He tumbles, rolls, and springs to his feet again, panting.

Neither of us speak for a long stretch. Just the rhythm of violence. Just the hum of our breath.

Then, between exhales, he mutters, "You're thinking too much."

I narrow my eyes, keeping my distance. "You're talking too much."

His smirk returns for half a heartbeat, then fades just as fast. We circle again, slower now.

I wonder if he knows. If he suspects the crack in me. The place where something used to be—something real—before it was scraped out and replaced with obedience again.

I almost want to ask.

But the speaker crackles to life, and Dragunov's voice slithers through the intercom, sharp and hollow:

"Emris. My office. Now."

Everything in me stills.

Mark lowers his hands and steps back. Doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. We both know what it means when Dragunov calls.

I nod once and turn away, heading for the door without looking back.

The warmth of the fight fades fast, replaced by something colder.

Something inevitable.

The air outside Dragunov's office feels colder than the rest of the compound.

Maybe it's just me.

I stand in front of the double doors for a moment too long, pulse slowing into a rhythm I don't like—measured. Resigned. The hinges groan when I push inside, the sound echoing like a warning through the high-ceiling space.

Dragunov isn't behind the desk this time.

He's standing in front of it, arms clasped behind his back like a statue carved from frost and iron. The Black Lotus emblem glints above him on the wall—silver on black. No guards. No movement. Just me and him and the faint tick of the wall clock that never tells the right time.

He turns slowly when I enter, pale eyes locking onto mine with surgical precision. His voice is quiet, but it slices through the silence.

"You look recovered."

I don't respond. My arms stay at my sides, fingers loose, neutral. My expression is blank, because that's what he expects. What he trained me to be.

A blank slate. A ready weapon.

He walks a slow circle around me, deliberate. I feel his gaze sweep over my frame, calculating, dissecting.

"You've disappointed me too much recently, little zmeya." He stops in front of me again, lifts one hand to smooth a wrinkle from the shoulder of my suit—an intimate, chilling gesture. "But disappointment is not the same as doubt."

He smiles, and the room seems to shrink.

"The Winter Soldier has been seen in Bucharest," he says, tone still soft, like he's telling me what we're having for dinner. "Alone. Vulnerable."

I feel a spark. Recognition. That name. The winter-drenched eyes. The fight in the apartment.

I bury it. Deep.

"He is your objective," Dragunov continues. "Your failure with Captain America cost us a great deal of time. And patience."

He steps closer, close enough that I can smell the cloves on his breath.

"This time, you must not fail. If you do..." He pauses, as if considering something thoughtful, kind. "Your punishment will make the last one feel like a lullaby."

I nod once. I don't trust my voice.

His smile widens—something wolfish underneath it. "Good girl."

He takes a step back. Raises his chin.

Then, with the weight of finality, he speaks:

"Okhota nachinayetsya, zmeya."

I feel it the instant the words leave his mouth.

The edges of my vision blur, color draining. Cold pours through my veins like mercury—metallic, fast, numbing. My thoughts flicker, then still. The small, aching corner of my mind that remembers the compound, the voices, the pain—it sinks beneath the surface like a stone in water.

My breath slows. My posture straightens. There is no tremble in my hands now.

I do not feel fear. I do not feel anger. I do not feel anything.

There is only the mission.

Dragunov's face softens, proud now. "There she is."

He steps aside, and I move past him, heading toward the door. The handle is cool under my fingertips. The hallway outside is waiting.

Objective clear. Eliminate target. Obey command.