Once upon a time, actually just a week, but it sure seems like a long time ago, I was a Hydra agent and I was doing great. No one was better that me at my job, I never failed. I had earned my own squad and they were the best after me. Officially, I was an asset recovery agent. What that means is I was the one sent after defectors and other hazards to Hydra's plans. So really I had been an assassin. Note the past tense.

My name is Nathan. Here's what happened starting a week ago.

I stepped out of the helicopter after another successful all night mission looking forward to a really long nap. Behind me, my men were bringing in our gear and a long heavy bag. We never left any evidence. The bag would be sent to the incinerator and just like that, whoever he was had never existed.

"Nate!" Someone was yelling for me. I groaned and turned to see who had called me. It was Alan. I stifled another groan. He was holding a file and waving it at me. I walked over to him reluctantly. Alan was a great guy, I'd trust him with anything. His one problem was his position. He was nobody, just the guy who ran paperwork around and delivered messages. No nap today.

As soon as I was close enough, Alan started talking. "Sir, a person has escaped containment and the brass want your team to get her back ASAP."

I took the file and tiredly flipped through it. There wasn't much and I was too tired to try and read what was there. I turned back to Alan. "OK, who is it? Escaped prisoner? Defecter?"

Alan shook his head. "No, she's an experiment subject. She managed to get out somehow and she may try to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. This is very high priority."

"Oh, ok. An escaped experiment. That's different." I frowned." The team needs rest before we can head out again. We'll start early tomorrow. Say 0700 hours." I walked off to brief my team.

They were not happy about two missions so close together, but didn't argue. I stayed up a little longer to help clean and repack our gear. Finally we all headed to dinner or our rooms. I went straight to my room. Being team leader, I had my own. I took a very fast hot shower and collapsed onto my bed.

I was so exhausted I couldn't remember which nightmare finally woke me up. I glanced at my clock. It read seven am. I was late. Ten minutes later, I was checking make sure the rest of my team was awake. Most weren't and I had to get them up. Thirty minutes after that, we were all loading into the helicopter. The pilot was not happy with our timing. I shrugged him off and stretched out as far as I could in my seat to start reading through my target's file.

We were after a teenage female called Experiment 29, one of the few survivors of Baron Strucker's many experiments. There was a brief description of the target. Dark blond hair, hazel eyes, and a little over five feet tall. Her current location was not certain, but she had last been seen near a riverside cottage in a forest yesterday afternoon. That was where we were headed now. She was to be considered very dangerous and shot on sight from a distance, but there was no explanation why.

So it would be a sniper mission. Once we located the target, I'd have the team spread out around her with their rifles and we'd take her down simultaneously. I passed the file to the man next to me, Janson, and instructed him to wake me when we were ten minutes out. Then I went to sleep.

An hour later, Janson woke me up. I confirmed that they had all read the file and walked them through my plan. I finished just as the pilot called five minutes. We all moved to the back of the 'copter and got ready to jump out. We were inserting onto the narrow riverbank and there wasn't enough space for the helicopter to land. So instead the pilot would hover over the river and we would jump out onto the bank. The pilot gave me the ten second warning and I started countdown.

On one, the first man jumped out and sprinted for the trees. The rest followed, I was last out. I waved thanks to the pilot and jumped onto the ground. I ducked under a low tree branch and signaled the team to start moving. It took us a little over an hour to reach the cottage. Once we did, I signaled the team to move into position along the perimeter.

We watched the building for a while, but there was no movement that we could see. All the curtains were drawn, though. Finally, I signaled a couple guys to come with me and we headed down. We checked the area around the house and then went to the door. It was stuck closed and didn't budge when we tried to break it down. I walked over to a window and broke it in, but there was a bookshelf or something behind it. I motioned the others to help me find a window that wasn't blocked.

Eventually, Janson found a small window that was unblocked. It was really high up and small, probably a bathroom window. I had a guy who could fit through it up with the other snipers. I jogged over to the trees and explained the situation. We started back to the window.

We were still about fifteen feet away when the cottage exploded. I saw it go up in flames and the debris start flying out at me. Then I was slammed against the dirt and blacked out.