Project M, Discontinued
Dr Arnold Whateley was generally not a tardy man, and also one possessed of good judgment, if not in the ethical or moral sense then at least insofar as to preserving himself. But everyone has their off days. It was nevertheless decidedly unlucky for Dr Whateley that his off day had to coincide with the Winter Soldier finding him.
Dr Whateley had held out longer than was in hindsight advisable. He'd thought himself safe, being the head of a sidelined HYDRA research division, highly covert and highly illegal, of course. He'd been so assured in his assumed security that the exposing and subsequent fall of HYDRA just two months prior had done little to unnerve him, much less abandon the project he'd so carefully built up over the past four years of his life. It was only after the funding had dried up that Dr Whateley saw himself inclined to secure his assets, activate his fake identity and jump ship. It was a shame for all that research, but his findings (though not what they had set out to achieve), he consoled himself, had been promising and could open up many doors for him, not just with HYDRA. The fact that the current subjects had had to be discarded weighed almost nothing against the plethora of possibilities Dr Whateley saw opening up for himself.
Despite the fact that during the course of his research he had handled sensitive materials relating directly to the asset codenamed 'Winter Soldier', Dr Whateley had never considered that the assassin would come after him specifically. Like most, he had assumed that the Soldier had gone down with the Helicarriers or otherwise been taken care of afterwards. HYDRA didn't like loose threads after all. It came therefore as a rather exponential shock to him to find said Winter Soldier seated comfortably at his kitchen counter, leafing through his research files. His hair was shorter than it had been the previous year, when Whateley had extracted the genetic material required for his research project from the man himself, and his beard was denser, and also he was now undeniably awake and alert, staring Whateley down with cold eyes that betrayed no sign of weakness.
"Oh," said Arnold Whateley, "Damn."
"Yes," The Soldier replied calmly, "You are. And since your fate is sealed, you won't mind answering a few questions, and truthfully."
At this he pushed himself up from the seat and produced a blade from his sleeve. Whateley quickly discerned that there was no way on earth that he could outrun the Winter Soldier, let alone fight him and hope to live to tell the tale. With a heavy sigh, he slumped back against the dinner table, leaning onto its edge. The Soldier would kill him, which would be unpleasant. On the off chance that he did not, Whateley's involvement and methods would be exposed or stray HYDRA contingents would wipe him off the face of the earth. None of these options was in any way appealing. Locking eyes with the man whose DNA he had handled so confidently and freely for the past year, Whateley resigned himself to the only option left to him, poked loose the cyanide capsule hidden in his tooth, and bit down hard. What happened from now on was not his problem anymore.
The Winter Soldier looked down at Whateley's slumped corpse disdainfully. There was nothing to be done about it now, but it annoyed him to have been thus outmaneuvered. At least this gave him access to a fake ID, credit cards, stack of cash and a large dark grey SUV. Not to speak of the volumes of files the man had stored in his house, all neatly packed away into briefcases. Not that he wouldn't have gotten all that anyway, but he had hoped to get a few answers out of Whateley first. With a sigh, he set about the next steps of his plan, moved forward now that his planned interrogation fell flat.
Almost three hours later and he was driving down the freeway in the late HYDRA scientist's car. He'd scrounged what else he could from the house, some clothing, blankets and even decent amount of food, repurposed Whateley's fake papers to suit him instead, and from the files he'd gotten the address of the place that had served as the research facility - a private fertility clinic. He wasn't quite sure what to expect there. The files at Whateley's house had been rather vague on that. All he knew was that this particular division had been tinkering with his DNA somehow, maybe trying to extricate Zola's formula from his cells to make more like him. Perhaps they had aimed to improve upon the serum, even. Surely a whole army of genetically enhanced fighters could be useful to HYDRA in some way.
The place was uncharacteristically remote, and though not completely abandoned was empty due to the late hour. Dismantling the security system and sneaking inside didn't prove difficult, and he found Whateley's office quickly. While searching the room for hidden drawers he chanced upon a door instead that led to the part of the building that was concealed from the general public, the part where HYDRA had conducted their no doubt unethical experiments under the name of Project Minotaurus. He inched forward slowly, ready to take on anything or anyone that might attack him. The way led him down and underground. Nobody seemed to have been here in the last few days, at least not long enough to keep the dust from collecting on the surfaces. He found no further files in any of the rooms, but kept looking into each one, until he heard a noise.
He could have sworn he heard a ...sniffle. His enhanced senses definitely picked up on something, and he moved cautiously toward the door from behind which the sound originated. The door budged easily after he'd picked the lock, and inside he was greeted by a dim greenish light and a row of half a dozen boxes pushed against the far wall. The boxes were transparent, about the size of two shoe boxes placed next to one another and each was outfitted with its own IV lines and a slim manila folder tucked into a holder on the side. Suddenly anxious, he lifted his flashlight and stepped closer.
Only to physically recoil. Lying in the boxes were infants. Six tiny human babies, unmoving with papery, translucent skin, IV needles sticking out of their little arms. He had to suppress the urge to retch, heaving a number of deep breaths while trying not to collapse on the floor. The room was momentarily spinning around him and the six little boxes containing dead babies.
And then there was that sniffle again, and a very quiet rustling sound, and he willed his heartbeat to slow and steeled himself. The sound came from the second box to the right. Inching closer, he found big blue eyes staring up at him warily. The baby's eyes were glassy, but followed his movements closely. He snatched the file from the side of the box and flicked through it. Female, born almost five months prior to that day, which put her birthday at December 18th 2013, subject number 823746#5, some pages worth of medical data that he could not make sense of. She was clad only in a thin diaper, and it wasn't precisely warm in those underground rooms. She sniffled again and shivered, and before he knew what he was doing he had shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her small, frail body. The baby was too weak to even cry out as she was lifted and nestled into the crook of his arm, the IV needle swiftly pulled out. Having seen enough, he checked that the five other infants were indeed no longer alive and stuffed what little files he had been able to recover into his backpack, made sure the baby was still breathing, and took off.