Chapter Text
You felt the cold grass under you as you looked up into the many faces of the giant Rock Hydra looming above. All of its eight heads were watching you carefully, like they were trying to sort out what your next move would be.
You pulled yourself to a standing position and took a fighting stance before a Fireball came out of nowhere, landing right beside you. You tried to scream, but no sound would come out of your mouth as the fire began to overtake you. This was the end, and you knew it. You steeled yourself for death, but from somewhere in the distance, you heard a low growl and a voice coming from some unseen source.
“You should wake up little bird. Having nightmares ain’t gonna do no good.”
Opening your eyes, you found yourself lying on a cold concrete floor instead of grass. There was no eight headed Rock Hydra waiting to kill you, and you were certainly not on fire. Curling up to a sitting position, you blinked in the lights and tried to quickly take in your surroundings.
You were in a cage. An actual cage with bars on all four sides. There were two more cages on either side of you. One was empty, and the other contained the source of the growling. You blinked repeatedly as you looked at the man who had moved to the edge of his own cage to look back at you.
“Such a tiny little thing you are. I wonder why they carried you in here like you were the second most dangerous thing in this room?”
He was looking you over carefully, and you were sure that he meant himself as the first most dangerous thing. Observing him, you had no problem believing it. He was tall and looked very strong. He had short cropped hair, a beard that left his chin mostly bare, and actual claws curling out from his fingers. You always thought that your dad had a feral quality about him, but this man, he was an absolute beast, right down to fangs protruding from his teeth. “Where are we?” You asked him, trying to sound braver than you felt.
“Hydra base. Not sure where. How did you end up in that cage, little bird? Where did you come from?”
You instinctively knew that you shouldn’t antagonize this man, but you couldn’t stop yourself. “I have a name.”
“And it’s better if you keep it to yourself. You’re better off not tellin’ them anything. The more they know, the more danger you will be in.”
“What do they want?”
The man shrugged. “To study you, if you are lucky. To experiment on you or dissect you if you’re not. You’ve heard of the Weapon X project I assume?”
Of course you had. Your father and other mutants were involved in it. The government and CIA wanted soldiers with special abilities and they intended to use people with the X-gene to make it happen. Some mutants, like your father, volunteered to take part, but he and the others had no idea how far the program leaders were willing to go, and it ended up a disaster.
At school, stories of Weapon X were told like boogey man stories that were whispered and traded between kids late at night, and most kids didn’t really believe them. You knew the truth though, and it scared the hell out of you. You nodded to the man in the cage beside you. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, these Hydra guys seem to think that it was a great idea, and want to recreate it.”
An involuntary shiver ran through you. “How long have you been here anyway?”
“Been here two days. Bastards called me for a job then trapped me. Took two of them out before they got me unconscious.”
“Do have any clue how we might get out of here?”
“The bars are vibranium, or I’d already be out of this cage. There is an electronic lock on the door as well, so even if we get out of here, we wouldn’t be able to get through there without the code, because I’m willing to bet that it is vibranium too. Once we get past that, there are more than a few soldiers here, all very well trained and some with extra abilities.”
You looked over at the door and could see the number pad on the wall beside it. “I might be able to…..”
He cut her off. “Don’t you dare tell me what you can and can’t do. They already know me and what I can do, I don’t want them to try to force me to tell them what I know about you. I already know too damn much.”
The door to the room opened, and he fell silent, looking away from you and toward the men who were coming into the room. There were four of them, and the man walking in front was clearly in charge.
He came right up to the front of your cage and looked you over. “What is your name?”
“Delilah,” you replied.
“Why don’t I believe you, Delilah?”
You shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because you are an idiot Nazi following some messed up dream that a red dude with a face like a skull had?”
The smile slid off the man’s face for just a second before he managed to fix it back on again. “Well, Delilah, you know my affiliation, but now I would like to know yours.”
“Female, white, Canadian, ‘eh?. I’d say that it was nice to meet you, but my momma taught me never to lie.”
The man raised an eyebrow toward you. “But we both know that Delilah isn’t your real name, so apparently you don’t listen very well to your mother.”
“Well, that’s the problem, see? While my momma taught me to never lie, my daddy taught me that lying could be pretty useful, so I’m usually a little confused sometimes.”
“Your name is surprisingly not important to me. If you wish to be called Delilah, then that is what we will call you. Your affiliation, however, is critical. We know that you were with the Avengers. My men say that for someone small and young, you fight very well. How is that?”
“Training. Lots of it. I also drink my milk and eat my vegetables, and try to get at least eight hours of sleep every night.”
Pain suddenly shot through your entire body and you had to struggle to remain standing. When a second jolt hit you, you fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Every part of your body felt like it was on fire.
“We can hurt you, and we will. Answer my questions, and things will be less painful for you. I am looking for people with a certain physiology. If you don’t conform to my needs, I have no reason to keep you. What is the source of your power?”
“What power? You said it yourself. I can fight. It doesn’t require a science experiment gone wrong or alien intervention. You practice, you learn.”
“I don’t believe you.” Yet another wave of pain hit you and in desperation, you looked around for the source of it. One of the men was holding his hand up, and something like lightening flew out of his hand toward you. This time, you could barely lift your head because the pain was so bad. Tears were now falling from your eyes to the floor of your cell.
“Please,” you begged. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want the truth. Are you a mutant? Did a Terrigen cloud interrupt a day at the playground? How is it that you, a child, took on and defeated two of my men?”
“You need better men,” you managed to respond before the pain hit you one more time. You doubled over, but managed to find your voice. “It was three, by the way. Not two.”
“We are getting nowhere. I will leave you here to think about what is in your best interest. When I come back, you better be ready to talk, or let’s just say that things will not go well for you.” He turned and headed for the door, his men following behind.
“Sick jerk,” you mumbled, as you managed to get to a sitting position in the corner of your cell. Tears were streaming down your cheeks and the pain was still very strong.
“When I get out of here, I am going to rip their throats out one by one,” the man in the cell next to you growled as the door slammed shut behind the men.
“You won’t if my father gets to them first,” you muttered quietly under your breath. “There won’t be anything left.”
“He’s your father, then? That explains a lot.”
“What are you talking about?” You looked over at him, surprised that he’d heard what you said.
He got as close to the bars beside you as he could, and you noticed for the first time that his eyes were different too. Instead of round irises, they were vertical, just like a cat. “You know what I am talking about,” he paused to consider you. “James. I can smell him on you. Could from the moment they dropped you in here. I’d know his scent anywhere. I figured that you were too young to be his mate, but I didn’t know that he had any more children.”
You were surprised to hear the man use your Father’s given name. It wasn’t something commonly known. That said, you had no idea who this man was, and there was no way that you were going to admit to anything. “You’re nuts. Maybe I’m Stark’s kid or someone completely random who just happens to be good at fighting.”
“You’re not, though. That connection makes it even more dangerous for you, but if I know him, it also gives you a chance to get out of here, as well. The longer you keep quiet about whatever you are, the better off you will be. If I know anything about your father, he’s already lookin’ for you.”
You rested your face in your hands. Partly because you were exhausted from the fight earlier, whatever they injected you with, and the zapping power that was used on you, and partly because you didn’t want this man to see you cry. As tough as you were trying to be, you were scared. You’d heard stories about what people like this could do to mutants. You knew what they’d done to your father and others like him.
“Little Bird?” One more thing. I know something about you, now you should know something about me. My name is Victor.”
“Back off, Logan!” Clint Barton shouted at him and took a defensive position in front of the door that housed three of the Hydra agents from the warehouse base. “You need to step back and calm down.”
“Get out of my way, Barton,” he growled, claws out, ready to fight if necessary. “If this was one of your kids, you’d be in there beating the crap out of them already.”
“Killing these guys is not going to help get her back,” Natasha tried a calmer approach. “We are already down two people who might have known something because you decided they weren’t talking fast enough. If you kill these three, we have nothing left to go on.”
“They weren’t talking at all,” Logan corrected her. He knew that Clint and Natasha were right. When the first two Hydra thugs wouldn’t say anything, and one actually laughed at him, he didn’t hesitate to deal with them. Honestly, he might have admired their bravery if it wasn’t keeping him from finding his daughter. Letting Romanoff and Barton interrogate them was the smart move, but he was fighting against every basic instinct that he had to not bust through that door and deal with them himself. “You think you can get something out of them? Do it now. I won’t be patient forever.”
“We’ll keep you informed,” Clint responded, looking sympathetically at him.
They’d searched every inch of the warehouse that was acting as a makeshift Hydra base. There was no sign of her and nothing to indicate how she was taken from the base and where she might be. They had to practically force Logan back on to the Quinjet to return to the Avenger’s base, and it took most of them to keep him away from the three Hydra thugs that Clint and Natasha were now going to interview.
The only one who hadn’t tried to keep him away was Peter Parker. That kid was almost as distraught at he was, but certainly less murderous. That was okay, though. He was just a kid and he was a good kid at that. He’d spent the entire flight back looking through those Magic card decks that they’d brought with them, before begging Stark to let him get started on the electronics that they’d grabbed. Logan gave him grief for being interested in his daughter, but the truth was that he didn’t mind it so much, even though he’d never admit it. Parker was certainly better than most of the punks back at Xavier’s school, and he was doing whatever he could to help find her.
While everyone else was interviewing Hydra agents or searching computers, Logan had nothing more to do than think and plan. Eventually, they’d get a lead, because they had to. When that happened, there was no doubt that Cap and the others would come up with a plan to carefully go in and try to rescue her with minimal casualties. Well, Logan wasn’t interested in letting anyone involved with taking his daughter live if he didn’t have to, especially if they hurt her in any way. He needed more support.
Taking out his phone, he pushed a button and waited as the phone rang. When he heard the voice on the other end greet him, he cut him off, getting right to the point.
“I got a job for you. Yeah, I’m paying. I just need you to get up here as quickly as you can, and bring as much fire power as you can carry. I texted you the address. Calm down and stop acting like some moron fanboy. Yes, it’s the Avenger’s facility. No, they don’t know that you’re coming, and I don’t care what they think about it. You want the job or not?” Part of Logan’s brain was already regretting having made the call, but he knew that it was the best play. “Yeah? We’re gonna go kill some Hydra agents and rescue my daughter.”
The other line went dead with barely a goodbye, and Logan decided to go check on the interrogation, knowing that his backup would be on his way.
It was almost four hours later and Logan was starting to go stir crazy when Peter came running into the room excitedly.
“We’ve found her! At least we’re pretty sure that we have. Between what Barton and Romanoff managed to get from the agents and a few deleted e-mails that Mr. Stark and I recovered, we’re pretty sure we know where she was taken. Mr. Stark is getting satellite views of the area now. Cap wants you up there to start working on a plan.”
“Thanks kid,” Logan replied before heading toward the door. Before he got there, however, a voice came on over the room speakers. “Excuse me, Mr. Howlett,” the voice of F.R.I.D.A.Y., Stark’s AI, said. “There is a man here to see you. He says to tell you that your BFF has arrived, but he refuses to give me a name, Sir.” Peter looked at Logan, who just shrugged.
“Perfect timing. Go tell Cap that I’m on my way, Parker. Looks like my back up has arrived.”