The wind shrieks against the ruined stone façade, the mouth of the bunker yawning open like the last breath of a dying beast. The snow on the Carpathian mountains outside has melted in streaks of red and black, staining rock and frost alike. Smoke clings to the treetops above, drifting in spirals from the smoldering Hydra transport trucks now flipped and crushed along the slope.

Inside, the base still hums, not with purpose, but with the muscle twitches of a corpse. Sporadic gunfire has ceased five minutes ago. Most of the active guards have been neutralized, either dead or unconscious in the narrow, metallic corridors that stretch like veins through the mountain.

Steve Rogers presses forward through the debris, shield in one hand, a blood-smeared Hydra insignia plate clattering beneath his boots.

"We've cleared sectors Alpha through Delta," Sam's voice comes over the comm. "South corridor's full of burned records and one sad excuse for a data server. Nothing recent. They were purging fast."

"Which means they were hiding something," Natasha mutters as she steps beside Steve, her sidearm still hot from earlier rounds.

Bucky comes up behind them, face tense, eyes sweeping the carnage with silent calculation. His metal fingers flex, twitching once. Something about this place is wrong — not just hostile, but too clean. Like it had been staged.

Tony's voice crackles into their comms, half static and half cynicism.

"Just scanned lower levels. There's a heat anomaly in sub-basement 6. Not the fun kind either. Reinforced vault, deeper than what this dump should have. Sending you coordinates now."

Clint exchanges a look with Natasha.

"Lab?" she asks.

"Or something worse," Bucky answers quietly, already moving.

Sub-Basement 6 — Fifteen Minutes Later

They pass rows of empty operating tables, restraints snapped or sliced. Dried blood paints the floor in old arcs. The walls are lined with surgical diagrams, half-torn and curling. Wanda trails a few feet behind them, her expression taut, as if the building whispers to her.

"It's... sick down here," she says softly, the words barely audible. "Old memories. Screaming. Someone was always screaming here."

Bucky doesn't reply. His eyes are locked forward. Something tugs at the edge of his memory, not a place he knew, but one he understood.

At the end of the hallway stands a thick door sealed with an old keypad and biometric lock. The Hydra insignia has been etched into the metal, then violently scorched. Someone tried to destroy the room, and failed.

Tony speaks up once again, quieter now.

"Guys... we're standing in front of the main cryo containment unit. This wasn't for medical storage. That's something else. Only three facilities like this ever existed. Siberia, Alexandria, and this one. And this one was off every record we had."

Natasha steps forward. Her gloved fingers dance across the keypad.

It beeps red.

Bucky moves past her and slams his metal fist into the lock once, twice, on the third strike, it cracks open with a hiss of frost and escaping pressure.

Inside the room, the temperature drops ten degrees.

Lights flicker.

A single containment chamber stands in the center.

It isn't a room built for storage. It's a shrine.

The pod is vertical, encased in metal plating and old-world steel, not StarkTech, not even SHIELD-grade. This is older. Soviet-Hydra hybrid engineering. Primitive and brutal. A line of green-coded monitors flickers beside it, displaying vitals still active.

Steve steps forward.

"Someone's in there."

The frost on the inner glass slowly clears, revealing a figure suspended in translucent fluid. Her body is eerily still, arms at her sides, head tilted slightly as if she'd merely drifted into sleep while standing. Her face is delicate. Too young. Braids float like ink ribbons in the fluid, framing skin touched with shadowed scars. Her eyes are closed.

But even now, she looks alert.

Not peaceful. Not dead. Just... waiting.

Thor speaks up this time reading off of a placard, "Subject 47." A hint of confusion in his voice.

"She's real?" Steve asks, eyes narrowing.

"Was supposed to be myth. Hydra's last shot at making a perfected super soldier. All internal records were coded in ghost networks. She's not just enhanced — she's built. Raised in-lab. No civilian identity. No world outside theirs."

Wanda takes a step closer to the glass and winces. Her hand reaches up, trembling slightly.

"There's something in her mind. No... around it. Like... teeth."

Bucky steps forward now, shoulder brushing Steve's. He stares at the pod, unmoving. "I've seen that look before."

Steve glances at him.

"Where?"

"In a mirror," Bucky murmurs.

Behind them, Natasha runs a hand across the exposed console panel. There was no clear deactivation switch. Just one phrase blinking in pale green Cyrillic:

"SUBJECT 47 MANTICORE: STASIS ENGAGED. AWAITING REACTIVATION BY PRIORITY CODE."

Natasha's eyes narrow.

"Manticore. That must be what they called her."

Steve's voice is low.

"Can we wake her safely?""Define 'safely.' But yeah, I can disable the locks from here." Bruce answers but not long before Tony makes his usual comments.

"You better be ready for anything. We don't know what version of cryo-popsicle this one's gonna be." The man of iron himself had quipped, his suspicion and wariness palpable.

Steve steps forward.

"Then we give her the benefit of the doubt. Until she gives us a reason not to."

"...I hope you're right," Tony says, but doesn't sound convinced.

Both Tony and Bruce work together to disable the locks and disengage the cryostasis, using the technology and computers already in the room, along with scanning through them.

It isn't long until the chamber hisses open and the fluid begins to drain, awakening what Hydra had called Subject 47 and Manticore

The room falls completely silent.

Wanda's breath hitches.

"She's not just waking up. She's... watching us. Like she already knows who we are.