Hydra Siberian Facility Zeta-9 // January 18, 2001 – Night
The air in the ducts tasted like rust and forgotten fear.
Chimera crawled through the ribbed steel intestines of Zeta-9, naked and shuddering, each movement a symphony of agony. Dried hydrogel cracked like eggshells on his silvered skin, peeling away to reveal raw, scraped flesh beneath. The cold wasn't just an absence of heat—it was a predator. It chewed through his atrophied muscles, gnawed at his synthetic bones, and coiled around his spine like frozen wire.
His Stark-born intellect, once a scalpel that dissected reality, now echoed only primal commands:
Find heat. Hide. Don't stop moving.
Silent Corridors
The ductwork around him groaned like the dying lungs of a metal beast. Condensation wept from corroded seams. Dust, thick as a grave shroud, clung to every breath.
Each sound became a threat.
Thump-thump-thump.
Distant boots. Rhythmic. Heavy.
Skitter-scratch.
Rats—or worse. Drones with needles.
Woop… woop… woop...
The Omega Lockdown siren. Zeta-9's heartbeat, panicked and cold.
He paused at a junction plate, pressing his frost-bitten cheek to the steel. Voices bled through the walls.
"Thermal bloom in Sector 7-Gamma. Possible trace!"
"Negative. Ice rat. Sweep again."
Then the voice he dreaded: Petrov.
"He's weak. He'll leave a trail. Find it."
Chimera recoiled in instinct. A trail. He turned and looked at himself—at the blue hydrogel streaks glistening on the duct floor, glowing under emergency lights.
Breadcrumbs. For wolves.
He wiped what he could with a trembling arm, peeling away skin in the process. Futile, but it was all he had.
The Fall
He found a vertical shaft. No choice.
He dropped. Gravity did the rest.
The final meter he didn't catch in time—he hit the platform below with a bone-shaking thud. Pain exploded in his hip. He bit back a cry, tasting blood from his split lip.
Above, a thermal sensor blinked on. Its red lens swept the space.
He pressed flat to the icy wall. Held his breath.
The lens blinked. Paused. Then powered down.
Core Temp: 33.1°C
Hypothermic cascade imminent.
Neuromuscular failure: 68% probability within 30 minutes.
The diagnostics in his head read like a death sentence.
III. Memory Static
He limped into an old, forgotten substation, wires snaking across the floor like veins in a corpse. Cracked monitors flickered faintly. Most were dead. One still lived.
As he touched the terminal, a sudden wave of nausea and heat rushed over him. Not sickness—something deeper. Something else.
Memories. But not from this life.
Blueprints. Screams. Blue skin. Fire. A man's laughter—too arrogant to be anyone but Tony Stark.
And her voice. Soft. Sharp. Shifting.
Mystique.
"You were built from the ashes of two legends. Now rise, Chimera."
His body trembled. His identity slipped like static across a screen.
Identity Glitch
He saw his reflection in the glass of a shattered monitor.
At first—a boy.
Then… someone older. Different. His eyes darkened. Jaw sharpened. For a moment, her face—Mystique's face—surfaced in his own. As if her DNA was crawling to the surface, trying to overwrite him.
"No. Not now," he whispered.
Muscles twitched. Hair lightened, then darkened again.
He slammed his forehead into the metal wall.
Pain. Focus.
The change stopped.
He panted. Silent. Broken. Whole.
For now.
Discovery
He accessed the command console. Static cleared. Text scrolled across the interface.
[HYDRA NETWORK – ZETA-9]
USER: ██████
STATUS: OMEGA LOCKDOWN
SUBJECT: CHIMERA
STATUS: ESCAPED
GENETIC TRACE:
— STARK GENOME: 87.2%
— MYSTIQUE GENE INSERTION: ACTIVE
PROJECT: CHIMERA
PRIORITY: RECAPTURE – CRITICAL ASSET
He stepped back. Breathing hard.
He wasn't a clone.
He was a weapon.
Voice from the Dark
Static buzzed across the room.
Then came Petrov's voice.
"Found you, little ghost."
Chimera stiffened.
"You thought Zeta-9 had blind spots. That no one watched the graveyard tech? You're not the first to try. But you are the only one that matters."
Heavy boots echoed beyond the door. Getting closer.
"You feel it, don't you? Your body breaking down. You weren't made to survive outside your cage. Come back, Chimera. You belong to us."
Chimera turned to the console.
EXIT ROUTES:
WASTE DUCT BETA-7 (LOCKED)SHAFT 9-C (SEALED)EXPERIMENTATION WING Z-3 (ACCESSIBLE)
He didn't hesitate.
A metal rod. A pry of strength. The rusted door to Z-3 cracked open.
Behind him, pulse shots shattered the console.
He dove through the gap just in time.
VII. Ghost Wing
Wing Z-3 was dead.
The walls were stained with age. The labs empty. Only remnants remained—tanks with failed mutations, twisted limbs frozen in ice. Surgical chairs that looked more like altars.
On the floor: a child's drawing.
A sun. A woman with blue skin. A man with glowing hands. A child with no face.
His heart lurched.
And then—
Breathing.
Not his.
He turned.
In the shadows, buried under old thermal blankets, was a girl. Small. Thin. Her eyes barely open.
"You're bleeding," she said softly. "You're real."
He knelt beside her.
Before he could speak, alarms rose again. Footsteps. Petrov. Closer.
He wrapped the blanket over both of them, pulled her close, and held his breath.
The door opened.
Flashlights swept across the room.
"They're gone," a voice said.
"Let them think they are," Petrov replied. "He'll come back. They always do."
Bootsteps retreated.
The door sealed.
VIII. Echo
They stayed silent until the echo of boots faded.
Then he whispered, "What's your name?"
The girl blinked. "They called me… Subject Echo."
He closed his eyes.
Of course they did.
Escape Plan
From the shattered lab systems, Chimera traced one last route. One last hope.
"The cryo-drop," he muttered. "Still open. Barely. But we'll need to pass through Testing Range Sigma. It won't be easy."
The girl stared at him. "Will we die?"
He looked into her tired, ancient eyes.
"Not today."
A lie. Maybe.
But for now, hope was a rebellion.
And Chimera was ready to burn.
Sanctuary: The Warmth and the Rot
He found it like a dying pilgrim stumbling upon an oasis—an alcove tucked behind a web of insulated coolant pipes, barely big enough to fit his trembling body.
The junction box was ancient, forgotten by modern blueprints. Behind it, one of the pipes pulsed with faint, throbbing warmth—a thin vein of lifeblood still flowing from the abandoned Level 4 server grid.
Chimera curled around it, pressing his back—scraped raw and bleeding—against the heated metal. The contact sent fire through his nerve endings. Agony and relief collided. Muscles spasmed. His breath hitched. Then slowly… warmth began to sink in.
Alive. Still alive.
Fingers caked in blood and dried hydrogel scraped mindlessly at the grime on the pipe. Not to clean it—just to move, to ground himself. The motion became a rhythm. A heartbeat. Something to remind his mind that the body still functioned.
And that it was failing.
His thoughts, now semi-coherent thanks to the heat, began to dissect the terror around him:
Petrov.
Eyes like black stone. Surgical. Calculating. Always watching. Always two moves ahead. Chimera wasn't just another escaped experiment to him—he was the anomaly. The impossible.
The Net.
Drones sweeping infrared fields. Air-sampling sniffers identifying skin particles, sweat, pheromones. Motion trackers calibrated not only for human gait—but for erratic, sub-human movement. Hydra had turned the entire facility into a hunter.
And Chimera… was the prey.
The Clock.
Every second he spent here, his body deteriorated further. Muscles cramping. Stomach gnawing itself from the inside. Thirst carving trenches down his throat. The pipe's warmth was a reprieve—but no salvation.
Hallucinations crept in.
Flickers of a world long gone.
Noah's bedroom. Posters of Iron Man and the X-Men peeling at the corners. Cheap LED lights overhead. His mother's voice—calling him to dinner, light and tired. The sharp pop and acrid smell of a phone charger burning out mid-charge.
No.
He clenched his teeth. Shut it down. Slammed mental doors one after another.
Noah was ash.
Only Chimera remained. Weapon. Ghost. Failure. Miracle. A science fiction Frankenstein hiding in the ribs of a dying war machine.
Disappear.
The thought hit him like an order.
Not just to hide.
Transform.
Not just to blend in.
Become.
Part of the landscape. One of them.
The Mystique legacy stirred within his cells—terrifying, alien. A sleeping dragon shifting under skin and bone. He had avoided it until now. The last time his body had tried to shift, he'd nearly lost control. His eyes had flickered. His bones had moved.
But the warmth was already fading. The tremors returned—violent, full-body. His core temp was dropping again.
Do it or die.
He curled tighter against the pipe. Closed his eyes.
And let go.
III. The Bait: Voice as Snare
He moved like a shadow stitched into the seams of the facility—thin, cold, silent.
Chimera followed the hum. Not the alarms or boots, but the deeper resonance: the 60Hz thrum of the facility's power grid. Transformers. Old server bays. Maintenance hubs untouched by years of upgrades. The kind of ancient systems Hydra forgot to secure tightly.
His body screamed. Bones ground against themselves. Every step was a battle between movement and collapse. But the Stark focus returned—ruthless, mechanical. He translated the vibrations into mental topography:
Left at the rust bloom. Down the chute where water slicks the wall. Into the conduit that vibrates like a living artery.
There. A service chamber.
A lonely outpost of flickering light beneath layers of industrial rot.
One bulb buzzed overhead. A Hydra diagnostic terminal blinked steadily, displaying its coiled serpent logo like a vulture grinning.
Empty. Isolated.
Perfect.
He crouched above the old wall-mounted comm panel. Fingers caked in grime reached into the vents, brushing against the audio pickup with surgical care.
This was the trap.
And he had done this before.
Voice mimicry.
He'd used it on Krukov last week, imitating a guard's groan to divert a patrol from a sealed corridor. But this time, it had to be exact. Perfect. No emotion. No breath out of place.
He accessed the memory—weeks ago, from a coolant leak repair outside an upper vent crawlspace. A technician had complained aloud, unaware of the quiet ghost listening above.
"Loopback test on Grid 5-Foxtrot. Again? Useless bureaucrats..."
That voice.
Nasal. Slightly congested. A weary, mid-level tech. Faint Ukrainian lilt curving the vowels.
Yegor Rostov. Badge 7743.
Chimera exhaled. Slow.
Cricothyroid muscles tensed, shifting his pitch upward. Soft palate dropped. Tongue aligned to create the coarse 'kh' sound in "bureaucrats." He altered his breathing, masking rasp with practiced whine.
Then he spoke. Low. Into the panel.
"Krukov. 9B service hub. Relay array's throwing phantom signals. Need a second pair of eyes. Now."
Silence.
Then static. Like coiled snakes hissing through the wires.
Then—
"Copy. Five minutes. Don't touch anything, Rostov."
Got you.
Chimera leaned back into the dark, breathing shallow.
The game had changed.
He wasn't just running now.
He was hunting.
Hydra Siberian Facility Zeta-9 // January 18, 2001 – Late Night
Violence as Sacrament
Chimera braced himself in the narrow duct—feet pressed against one wall, shoulders wedged against another. Every trembling muscle felt like it would snap from strain. His skin peeled where it touched the frozen steel. Breath came in tight, painful rasps.
One chance.
No room for a second.
He pictured it with surgical clarity:
The hatch would swing inward.
The technician would step through, eyes still heavy with sleep, expecting Krukov.
Annoyed. Distracted.
Unaware.
Footsteps approached.
Boots over steel grates.
Each step matched Chimera's heartbeat.
Then—
The creak of rusted hinges.
The hatch opened with a whine.
Light flooded the duct.
"Krukov? Took you long en—"
Yegor Rostov stepped into the service hub, toolbelt rattling, rubbing his eyes. The glow of the monitor made his face ghostly pale. He didn't even glance up.
Chimera dropped.
It wasn't a calculated strike. It was gravity weaponized by desperation.
A collapse given purpose.
They crashed onto the console. Keys flew. The monitor shattered in a burst of sparks and glass. Rostov grunted, air crushed from his lungs beneath Chimera's falling weight.
"Oof—!"
"Shto za—?!" (What the—?!)
Recognition bloomed in the technician's eyes. Not confusion. Not fear of an intruder.
But horror.
Primal and pure.
The thing from the pod. The prototype. The abomination.
Rostov's hand went for the pistol at his hip.
Chimera reacted. Not with thought. With instinct.
His elbow slammed upward, connecting under Rostov's jaw with a crack that echoed like a snapped branch in winter. Cartilage shattered. The scream caught in the man's throat. His eyes bulged.
Blood sprayed.
The pistol cleared the holster—barely.
Chimera grabbed the first tool his hand found:
A pipe wrench. Fifteen inches of heavy, grease-slicked steel.
He swung.
THUD.
The wrench crashed into Rostov's shoulder. A loud snap—bone. The gun spiraled out of reach.
"Nyet! Pozhaluysta—!" (No! Please—!)
Too late.
CRACK.
The second swing collided with his temple. The sound was softer, wetter. Rostov's head jerked sideways like a puppet's with its strings cut.
SQUELCH.
The third strike—driven by blind panic—landed square atop his skull.
A sound like a melon dropped on concrete.
Then—nothing.
Chimera froze, the wrench dangling from limp fingers. The weight of it felt wrong now—like a sin turned solid.
Rostov lay still. Eyes wide. Empty. Blood seeped outward in a thick halo, staining the floor and mixing with shattered screen glass. A coppery scent filled the room, sharp and metallic. Too much like meat.
I killed him.
Not regret.
Not guilt.
Just... realization.
The wetness of it. The sound. The stillness.
Life—gone. Just like that.
A surge rose in Chimera's throat. He turned, retched violently. Acid burned his mouth. Nothing came out but bile and dry spasms.
His whole body shook. The wrench fell from his grasp with a loud clang, echoing in the cold chamber like a judgment.
No time. Sentiment is a bullet in the brain.
Petrov's voice—imagined or remembered—cut through the fog.
Move.
He staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. The blood on his arms had begun to dry, sticking to his skin like glue. His body stank of fear, metal, and death.
But he was still alive.
More importantly—free.
He dropped beside Rostov's ruined body, suppressing the gag reflex. His fingers moved mechanically, searching. The ID badge. Tools. A thermal battery pack. Clearance chip.
He took them all.
The badge read:
Rostov, Yegor M. // Systems Technician III
Clearance: 2-Green
Not high enough to open everything. But enough to get him past some security doors.
And maybe—just maybe—into a control panel that could open Zeta-9's forgotten escape shafts.
Chimera limped to the console, rebooted the system using the admin override from Rostov's chip. His hands shook, blood smeared across the keyboard. The Hydra serpent logo blinked.
He accessed the comm logs. Wiped the last ten entries.
Erased the bait.
Then, from deep within the code, he left something behind—an echo embedded in Rostov's ID signature:
Grid 9-B: Offline
Relay Array Malfunction Detected.
Routing Technician: Yegor Rostov [DEAD]
A false trail.
Let them search a corpse for answers.
He turned back to the body one last time.
Yegor's face was unrecognizable—blood-matted hair, twisted jaw, eyes staring into the void.
Chimera felt something shift inside. Not guilt. Not grief.
Understanding.
This was what it meant to survive here.
This was what Petrov expected from his monsters.
Violence wasn't cruelty.
It was sacrament.
Ritual.
Birthright.
He whispered—not a prayer, but a warning. To himself.
"There is no going back."
Then he picked up the wrench again, wiped it clean, and disappeared into the dark.
Becoming the Mask: Skin of the Enemy
He rolled the body over, avoiding the vacant, glassy stare.
His fingers, slick with blood and bile, fumbled with the zippers and clasps of Yegor Rostov's uniform. The fabric was stiff with dried sweat, stinking of machine oil and stale breath. Chimera worked quickly, clinically, forcing his mind into a Stark-induced cataloging trance.
Thermal undershirt.
Padded vest.
Gray technician overalls.
Utility belt.
Steel-toe boots.
Helmet – dark blue, visor-equipped, scratched with use.
He dressed in silence, layer by layer, ignoring the cold stick of blood as it seeped into his skin beneath the uniform. When he finished, he turned toward the polished surface of a dark, offline monitor.
A reflection stared back—gaunt, silver-haired, sickly pale. A child, swimming in the clothes of a dead man. The sleeves swallowed his hands. The overalls pooled around his ankles. The boots were cavernous. A mockery of a disguise.
A walking alarm.
Fix it.
He closed his eyes.
Deep inside, the volatile legacy of Mystique stirred—no longer a monster bucking at its chains, but molten metal eager to pour into the mold he chose. Controlled. Precise.
He focused.
Bones.
Femurs first. He visualized them lengthening, cell by cell. The growth was agonizing—ligaments stretching like wet rope, vertebrae clicking into alignment, hips widening, joints realigning. It felt like he was being carved from the inside out.
Muscles.
He redistributed mass. Shoulders broadened. His chest filled the vest. Thighs thickened, bulking out the overalls. His metabolism screamed, burning through every ounce of his remaining fuel. He tasted iron. His vision darkened—but he held on.
Face.
Not a full shift into Rostov—too risky. But close. The cheekbones rose subtly. The jawline squared, losing the soft curve of youth. The eyes—still mercury and inhuman—he couldn't change without risking a full mutation spiral. But the sockets narrowed. Hardened. Shadows gathered beneath them, aging him.
When he opened his eyes again, the stranger in the monitor had changed.
Not quite Yegor Rostov. But close enough to pass a tired glance.
A young Hydra tech. Pale. Hollow. Worn thin by night shifts and cold corridors.
He pulled on the helmet. The padded interior pressed down his sweat-damp hair. The stale scent of Rostov's hair oil made his stomach turn. The visor clicked into place, cloaking half his face in shadow. Only the unfamiliar, sharp line of his reshaped jaw remained visible.
He was Hydra now.
The Walk: Among the Wolves
He activated the comm unit on the stolen belt, modulating his voice into the weary monotone of a sleep-deprived systems tech.
"Sector 9B stable. Relay loopback resolved. False alarm. Proceeding to Node Gamma for diagnostics."
Neutral. Boring.
The kind of report command ignored.
He took a breath, tasting the recycled air within the helmet. His hand hovered near the wrench clipped to his belt—his only real weapon.
Then he opened the hatch.
Light flooded the chamber.
Beyond it, the hallway stretched—clean, sterile. White walls. Gray floor plates. The Hydra serpent insignia stamped like a curse on every surface. The woop-woop of the Omega Lockdown siren had faded to background pulse here, replaced by sterile silence.
He stepped out.
The sound of his boots on steel echoed too loudly in his ears.
He forced his shoulders back. Adopted the weary gait he'd seen so many Hydra techs use: head level, eyes forward, posture slightly slouched.
Own the space. Be invisible by being ordinary.
He passed under ceiling cameras without flinching. Kept his stride measured.
Don't rush. Hurry is guilt.
Ahead—
A sealed bulkhead: SECTOR BETA – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Red lights pulsed above it.
Two guards stood at either side, pulse rifles cradled lazily but ready.
Their helmets turned in unison as he approached.
"Halt. Status?" one barked, voice metallic through the speaker grill.
Chimera didn't stop.
He angled his path just slightly to the left—enough to avoid full confrontation. His voice dropped into the cold sharpness of Petrov's cadence:
"Node Gamma. Residual power surge. Requires verification."
Then, irritation.
"Move."
Two seconds.
One heartbeat.
One finger twitch away from death.
One guard shifted his stance. The other's hand floated near the trigger.
Then—
A pause.
A glance.
A nod.
They stepped aside.
Path cleared.
He walked.
Past humming server rooms. Past locked labs with lights still flickering behind frosted glass. Past the blood and rust and broken ducts of his origin.
Under the ceiling's quiet cameras. Past sleeping cameras in shadowed corners. Through the heart of the beast that had made him.
The child who had crawled through blood and frost was gone.
In his place moved something else—calculated. Masked. Methodical.
A shadow wearing Hydra's skin.
His boots echoed on the deck plates with a steady rhythm—too even, too calm.
Not escaping.
Infiltrating.
Toward the armory.
Toward the lift.
Toward the surface.
Toward a world that believed it had buried him in silence.
And now, its ghosts wore the faces of the living.