About You

My terrible Madame, did you know that the Vikings had a peculiar way of dealing with their enemies? According to these stories, the victim was opened from the spine, the ribs cut so they resembled bloody wings, and the lungs were extracted to create the shape of a bird. They called it: The Blood Eagle.

Interestingly, our person of interest, the Rus king Kjartan the Bold, was offered as a sacrifice and ended up flying to Valhalla after Harald "Fairhair" defeated him in battle following a failed invasion. And can you guess which god he was honoring?

I'll give you a hint: The trickster who led us here.

Unfortunately, upon investigation, it is said that he gave the crown to his wife, but the man had many wives. I guess polygamy left us at a disadvantage, huh? Anyway, I'll return to Norway and look in the archives at the University of Oslo. They must have something in the Museum of Cultural History. Harald I was a very prominent king and mentioned in ancient chronicles, but his wives, not so much.

Bad luck, I guess.

F.Z.

"Not enough to stop you," Ophelia murmured confidently as she folded the archaeologist's letter and tucked it into a shelf next to the pair she'd been receiving as informal reports since Zemo left two months ago. The paperwork had delayed them, but once in their field, it was difficult to bring him back to headquarters until he believed he'd actually found something worth seeing.

And Ophelia trusted him on this mission, since he was practicing his specialty: finding things. So it was one less worry for her, and the pain in her neck that tended to appear more often now that she had control of factory production and weapons mobilization, since she had to keep a low profile for the time being. She had to devise new routes or hide the real cargo by passing it off as ammunition for assault rifles.

Although she had to admit that shutting down communications with the Third Reich had been a relief.

"Don't bother answering his letters anymore, Ophelia. Just ignore them and burn them." "I'm sure both Himmler and Goebbels will understand the message," Schmidt instructed one night upon entering his office for some late-night coffee, like a quick supper, and noticing that open cabinet orders had flooded his desk.

"They'll keep coming until they find an answer," the green-haired woman had pointed out, rubbing her face with her hands. That night was one of three sleepless nights, so her eyes burned at the sight of tiny ink letters. "They've never liked waiting. Maybe they'll come here..."

"Well then, let them come. I'll give them a welcome tailored to their needs," she assured him with a serene face that contrasted with a malicious tone in her voice as she handed him a cup of black coffee. It was bitter, just the way he liked it, and had a strong flavor that even rose with the steam.

She had been at Red Skull's side for twenty years, and she believed that time was enough to know the man better than anyone in those mountains. He had seen the worst of their faces—the one most people usually associated them with, that red, deformed, and angry skull that was synonymous with death—but also their most... human sides. Yes, that was the word, because "good" would never be something that could be used to describe him or her.

They had long resented life in favor of caring about the common good; their personal interests were all that mattered to them. And who did they drag down with that? It was a small price to pay if it guaranteed them everything the world owed them for their past misfortunes.

"Did you steal food because you were hungry?" he had asked her the night he met her. She was a little girl dressed in rags, with holey boots and feet frozen by the snow that had filtered through when Budapest was in the midst of winter welcoming in the New Year. Ophelia had been running across the Chain Bridge while fleeing from a pair of police officers when he saw her by the car.

The sound of her worn boots echoed on the cobblestones, barely muffled by the icy wind that howled through the steel cables. Snow, blown by the blizzard, piled up in the corners, glittering like tiny crystals in the flickering light of the lanterns.

"If I take any of their food, they'll be angry. If I didn't eat today, I was going to die," she'd replied simply as she looked at the frozen river. She couldn't lie when her mouth was stained with orange sauce from the handful of stew she'd eaten after crashing a party. "Not that they care. They'd probably be more upset about having to carry another body off the street because the dogs would fight over the best parts."

She wasn't trying to convey anything with her words; she was simply answering a question. After years of dealing with abusive soldiers who might beat her for not giving them the right directions or taking some stale bread from the trash cans of downtown restaurants, she'd learned that it was better to cooperate.

"I see you understand that you must take what you want or no one will give it to you, huh?" Schmidt nodded, his hands behind his back in a critical tone, his eyes narrowed with a new, thoughtful, almost distant gleam. Ophelia had thought his sudden silence was a signal to leave, and he let her walk a few feet away when he turned and asked with genuine interest, the same interest that had made him stop his car on the sidewalk of the snowy bridge, "You seem like an intelligent girl. Why are you on the streets?"

"They're my home, sir. Where else would I go?" she muttered under her breath as she shrugged off a freezing blizzard that ended with a coughing fit. A sharp pain in her chest made her shudder until she felt a new weight on her shoulders that almost made her sit on the ground. It was heavy, but also slumped.

"This city may have nothing for you, but out there... there's a whole world where you can have a chance." The man, who until then had been a fussy busybody but had saved her from a beating, said interesting things again, making Ophelia stay a little longer to listen to him. He seemed to be showering her with favors, and favors create debts. "I can give you that chance."

After being tutored in the backstreets of misery by a cruel master who taught her to survive by taking what she needed, the Red Skull's tutelage, in comparison, was just a strict hand that sought to mold her with efficiency, judgment, and ambition. Even if that required shedding blood in the process. Her own or someone else's, she sought to please him.

And given that the Red Skull was a visionary physicist, Zola a brilliant scientist, and Zemo an adventurer who seemed to have lived at least a dozen past lives to store so much information about ancient cultures. Alongside three eminent figures, Ophelia had to be more than just an efficient agent, so she set out to find her own field of expertise.

Beyond an identity, she needed something that defined her, so that search had led her to delve into one of humanity's oldest weapons: poisons. There were so many types, from those that had grown on Earth for thousands of years inside innocent plants and animal bodies as an evolutionary defense, to those that required two hands to create.

They were complex to use, as a single miscalculated dose could mean the difference between a lethal dose and a headache. The idea of ​​playing with mortality without the enemy suspecting was something that thrilled Ophelia, because knowing the dangers in a room was what allowed her to stay one step ahead of others.

Strategy avoided damage, and far from the dissatisfaction of defeat, what she sought to avoid at all costs since she was ten years old was pain. There were those who believed that made her less human, but did it? Wasn't not wanting to suffer against human nature?

"Perhaps you and I have more in common, Cornelia," she whispered to her favorite snake through the glass of its container. It was a light gray Black Mamba, though its belly was lighter and more yellowish.

The snake hissed at her, and Ophelia smiled slyly at its twitchy tongue. As it half-opened its mouth, she gave him a glimpse of the deep blue-black inside. It was one of eleven snakes she'd been accumulating in the room next to her bedroom. Schmidt claimed it was her own laboratory, but the few times Zemo had been there, he'd called it a cave.

It had a small greenhouse where she made sure to take care of her crops of belladonna, hemlock, aconite, castor oil, strychnine, and datura. Just like with rows of containers of different sizes to house his snakes, milking their teeth to obtain their toxins, just like the blister beetles or the pufferfish in his tanks. It was an easy way to access the materials he sprayed with the tip of his whip, blades, and for specific missions, he went to the trouble of using bullets.

However, Zola had had a deeper idea when Ophelia had found him in Austria, where he planned to spend some time when the labor force arrived to perform a couple of experiments, taking advantage of the available test subjects.

"And what if you didn't need weapons?" Arnim asked him, his voice genuinely laced with intrigue, his lowercase voices becoming high-pitched and trying to open up possibilities. "What if you were the weapon?"

Ophelia frowned in denial. "My weapons are poisons. How would I carry them without them killing me?"

—But... Do you admit it would be more useful?

—Of course, I wouldn't have to worry about a bit of phosphorus getting on my clothes and ending up without a jaw—he muttered sarcastically, though the nervousness remained in his body as he moved around the room. He had the utmost respect for his tools. —Besides... The probability of failure would decrease, and even the incrimination could become anonymous, because they wouldn't even know when it happened.

—I see we're getting along.

Dr. Zola smiled slowly and took one of his chalks before heading to his blackboard, passing by the green-haired woman, who had crossed her arms, curiously following the man after he had planted that novel seed. That was his talent: Broadening horizons.

"I could create a chemical shield that would remain neutralized against your skin composition. It would be like strategic mapping to obtain biological markers and then alter the... poisons, yes, so that they are lethal only to others upon contact," Zola explained, continuing to write as the idea took shape in her head. "Perhaps the compound could be attached to clothing; gloves would be a good option. They've been used before, but with a limited usage rate."

Ophelia pursed her lips in silent protest, because if the intention was for it to be something unnoticeable and inconspicuous, it would have to be normal. In the fashion of recent years, gloves were no longer so common, not even among the upper classes. Much less on military bases.

"And what about makeup? Maybe lipstick?" Ophelia suggested in a determined voice.

Arnim raised an eyebrow and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Would you kiss your targets to send them to Saint Peter's, Ophelia?"

"One last kiss for an eternal farewell," she chuckled at the thought, a hollow and distant way as she massaged her temples before leaning against the wall, her lips pressed together in a rictus. "It would be a very elegant goodbye, Zola."

And sophisticated things led her back to her mentor; she knew Schmidt would be amused by the idea. That was how what Zola called their joint project began: VIPER.

The experiments began with the doctor requesting blood samples and taking dead skin to study under his microscope, to extract the unique characteristics and enzymes, ensuring that the toxic agents would be completely inactive upon contact with her, but destructive to anyone else. A week passed before he had the results ready for Ophelia to give him her first mixed sample of arsenic and hemlock to make a syrup that would have to be diluted daily with materials that would neutralize it so she wouldn't die.

Zola had taken Ophelia's suggestion and found inspiration in mithridate, a potion made from different pastes of drugs, medicines, and poisons combined with honey that helped immunize its user against poisoning. It was an ancient method dating back to Roman times and later perfected by the physician Claudius Galen through microdosing.

"The taste will be sour and there may be nausea. You must take a spoonful daily in the afternoon; you can't overdo it, or the results would be disastrous," Zola had warned her while she had been working on the lipsticks based on the Swiss scientist's creation: Viperase. The chemical compound worked as a chemical filter through a specific neutralization and stabilization of the poison in her body.

The first time, she would have sworn she was going to die and cursed Armin for encouraging her to do something so stupid. She swore she could hear Zemo's laughter as the opaque yellow liquid ran down her throat, and she began to feel a burning sensation. The burning made her hallucinate for a second, followed by the disapproving look from the Red Skull, which forced her to breathe deeply and sit on the edge of her bed without panicking.

But she had survived, and her little tests assisted by applying lipsticks that turned green no matter what color they chose had been mostly successful, with only a slight irritation that left Ophelia with the bad habit of pinching her lips when she felt a tingling sensation.

The almost imperceptible creak of the door opening didn't take her by surprise. She didn't need to look to know it was Johann Schmidt; no one else would dare enter without knocking. The sound of his boots echoed against the marble floor, as he paused a few steps into the lab. Ophelia, leaning over Cornelia's container, offered a live mouse to the snake, which, with swift, almost imperceptible movements, caught its prey.

"It's the fastest snake in Africa," Ophelia told her with fascination, still facing away.

"You've always had a fixation on these creatures, ever since you were a child," Schmidt observed, extending his hand to the level of her ribs to indicate how tall she was. The gesture was accompanied by a tight, fake smile that seemed more like mockery. "I remember that well."

Ophelia, without taking her gaze off Cornelia, gave a slight smile as she watched the snake devour the rodent, which had already stopped moving. "People fear them, but they're calm animals," she said calmly. "They only attack when provoked."

Red Skull took a few more steps, his shadow stretching over her. A flicker of something like nostalgia appeared in his eyes as he took in the scene. "Remember when I found you playing with one of them back there on that farm outside Warsaw? You had that snake coiled in your hands like a toy. What was it?"

"It was a dice snake," Ophelia recalled as she turned slowly.

"Yes, and you told me you weren't afraid, that you were just... playing." The HYDRA leader clenched his jaw to readjust his mask before taking two steps toward her so they were face to face.

Ophelia finally lifted her head and turned to him, one eyebrow raised in interest. "So? So you understood why I was kicked out of the orphanages?"

Children had thrown rocks at her, calling her a witch, and in the streets, they chased her with live pokers, but he... He'd only watched. For many years, Ophelia had hoped they'd cower around her until she discovered the people in that world were worse. She was still a child in a crime scene.

Schmidt narrowed his eyes with a faint smile. "A normal child would have run away, but you're not normal... Something we, of course, have in common."

The silence that followed wasn't awkward, but laced with understanding. There were things that didn't need to be said between them. Schmidt reached out a hand, placing it firmly on Ophelia's shoulder, his eyes scanning her figure with a mixture of assessment and pride. Her emerald green suit was fitted, neat, and shiny, contrasting with the tall, darker green boots and the silk gloves that extended to her elbows. Flawless, as always. It was the perfection he expected of her.

“We have visitors,” he finally said, withdrawing his hand and taking a step back. His tone was neutral, but his expression remained calculating, as if gauging her reaction to that simple statement.

Ophelia tilted her head slightly, her curiosity piqued. “Who?”

Schmidt didn’t respond immediately. Instead, his eyes flashed with cold satisfaction, almost as if he enjoyed prolonging the suspense. “You know who.”

"The Führer isn't used to being ignored, Herr Schmidt," Alaric Schneider bellowed in annoyance, and Ophelia could only grit her teeth, glancing in disgust from behind at the three SS officers Hitler had personally dispatched to HYDRA headquarters to get to the bottom of the matter regarding the communication cutoff with the Cabinet Office. But what Ophelia saw as a joke was the fact that these officers were defending the Chancellor's honor as if he were going to give them a promotion for their trouble. "He's funding your research because you promised him weapons."

"You're at his service," Stefan Roeder emphasized reproachfully. "You gave him these facilities to compensate for his injuries."

Schmidt deliberately slowed his pace as the SS officers followed behind him, their tense gestures and distrustful glances betraying the weight of their discomfort. Despite their arrogance, it was evident they knew they weren't in friendly territory, but they tried to maintain an appearance of authority, as if they didn't sense the danger lurking in every shadow of the barracks. Ophelia raised her hand, and the group of six HYDRA soldiers stopped, awaiting further orders.

"Better say it like it is: Exile!" the Red Skull spat angrily. Ophelia could be sure that humiliation still battered his ego. His resentment was only comparable to that he had felt for his rival Ernst Kaufmann, the same man who had succumbed on the Night of Knives. "I no longer reflect your image of Aryan perfection."

Falk Hutter paused to stare at the HYDRA banners hanging in every corner of the complex: a red circle enclosing a red skull with six outstretched tentacles on a black background. It was still held aloft by the golden eagle of the German party. A detail Ophelia longed to discard.

"Do you like them?" Ophelia questioned in a velvety voice at her side. "They're a new design."

"They look expensive," Hutter said disapprovingly, the younger officer.

"Oh, they are. Natural silk and gold thread," he indicated the skirts hanging from the banner. "And the badge? Pure gold."

He frowned, his jaw clenched, and looked her up and down. "And may I ask where they got it?"

The green-haired woman laughed with a wider smile. "The same place where you get the funding for this war."

Their conversation had reached the ears of the other two senior officers when they noticed their absence.

"We've heard from local intelligence that you mounted a large-scale incursion into Norway," Schneider recalled, raising an eyebrow to question the move. "Has HYDRA become a raiding party?"

"I wouldn't be surprised by the presence of that Sokovian scum," Hutter hissed as he drawled. Ophelia clenched her hands and narrowed her eyes slightly against the back of the man's head, quickly turning into an attractive target the more he exhausted her patience. "Is he in charge?"

"If he were, perhaps he would be present," Ophelia interrupted sharply.

"The Führer thinks... How do I explain it?" When Roeder's shrill voice crept into her ears again, she could see the tension in Schmidt's shoulders, a clear indication that things were not going well. The Red Skull had too much freedom!

Schmidt stopped dead in his tracks, so Ophelia did too. When he turned around, his grim gaze quickly twisted into a face of indignation: furrowed lips and brows simmered the demonic embers of his eyes, spitting out a first sentence that would be served as a warning to the world of his intentions.

Ophelia read his intentions in his eyes and merely connected their gazes for a moment. It was a discreet signal for their prepared ambush, for if Hitler had sent them to learn of the effectiveness of his weapons, that's what they would give him.

"Gentlemen, you have come to learn the results of our work," Schmidt's voice became soft and kind as his face relaxed. "Fräulein Sarkissian and I will show them to you."

"Open the door," Ophelia ordered in a whisper, so two soldiers hurried to clear the entrance to Zola's laboratory, where four other assistants were accompanying him, studying tests and adjusting the Tesseract's stabilized machine.

"Hitler talks of a 1,000-year Reich, but he can't feed his armies for a month," the Red Skull criticized with disappointment, frustration seeping from every syllable. "His troops shed their blood across the fields of Europe, yet he's still no closer to achieving his goals."

Ophelia let the three SS men enter, too confident and self-centered to suspect they were walking into the lion's den. She remained right at the exit, dividing her soldiers into two groups, three covering her right flank and three on the left, a good distance apart to cover the room.

Then she waited, because she could be patient when required. That was something her mentor had indirectly instilled in her.

“And I suppose you still hope to win this war with magic?” Schneider sneered with a cynical smile. Red Skull had walked over to one of the already functioning mountable cannons to fire it. It would be the first time they would experience its effects and destructive capacity, and although the HYDRA soldiers were trained to maintain their composure, Ophelia noticed some of them exchanging quick glances, their hands tensing slightly on their weapons. Fascination and fear coexisted on their faces, witnesses to something that surpassed conventional weapons in scale and power.

This time she was glad she wasn't so close in case of an accident, but Zola had assured her she was reliable.

"Science," Schmidt clarified with a tired sigh, continuing to operate the cannon before standing behind the controls to wait for the charge, "but I understand your confusion. Great power has that effect on primitive men. HYDRA is creating an arsenal to destroy my enemies in a single blow, wherever they are, despite all the strength they possess"—he snapped his fingers and smiled enthusiastically for a second—"in a few hours."

Ophelia enjoyed the way Schneider's smile faded, so she slowly reached for her whip hanging from her belt on her right hip.

"Your enemies?"

"My weapon contains enough destructive power to decimate any hostile capital on Earth," the Red Skull explained proudly. In short, gentlemen...—he turned and quietly counted his targets before waving his hand to get Ophelia's attention, signaling that the charge was ready to be fired—I have acquired the power of the gods.

"Madame," one of his soldiers to his left muttered and pointed at Hutter, who was snooping at the map near Dr. Zola.

Roeder cleared his throat. "Thank you, Schmidt."

"For what?"

"For making it clear to us that he's obviously gone mad."

"Berlin is on this map!" Hutter shouted outragedly as he pointed it out on the table, but other than the Nazis, no one in the room was startled.

"Arnim, I recommend you step back," Ophelia whispered as the man passed her, so she quickly took cover behind the soldiers.

Schmidt calmly stated, "That's right."

"You will be punished for your insolence!" Hutter asserted angrily, his eyes widening in an attempt to look intimidating. He was used to prisoners of war and anemic civilians in concentration camps, so his tone surely worked, but here, he was just a tiny insect that didn't even notice the barrel pointed at him from above. "You will be brought before the Führer himself!"

And when the blue beam hit him, he was vaporized. Not even a scream, just ashes reviving before falling to the ground as if he had never existed. That's how tiny they were compared to a colossal power.

"Close them!" Ophelia ordered when the other two men tried to flee. Seeing the lab being sealed, Schneider's desperation forced him to reach for his pistol, but as soon as he pulled it out, he screamed when the green-haired woman's whip struck him in the hands, and a second later, the Red Skull had vanished.

The first shot at Roeder missed, as the Nazi had run through the lab trying to escape the blue executioner. However, as soon as Ophelia had her sights on him against the doors, she didn't hesitate to shoot him between the eyebrows. Producing a mess of brains and blood that stained the metal.

"Coward," Ophelia muttered with disdain as she saw the body a few feet away.

"Ah, Ophelia, you could have waited." Schmidt feigned pity before aiming at the body, which also disappeared when the energy beam hit it, leaving only the scarlet stains as evidence.

"They've deserved it long ago."

No one contradicted that, so Schmidt sighed, arms behind his back, much more relaxed and at peace with the effectiveness of his arsenal.

"A thousand apologies, Doctor, but we knew HYDRA would never grow in Hitler's shadow." His face tightened, and he swore his oath. "Hail HYDRA."

"Hail HYDRA!" the three aides and soldiers present shouted with harmonious uniformity.

"Hail HYDRAH!" Zola shouted when Schmidt raised an eyebrow, questioning his loyalty at that crucial step, where the tides divided and the Reich was just another enemy. However, as soon as his leader's enraged eyes left him, his face twisted into a grimace of horror as he looked at the ashes left behind by his former allies.

Red Skull turned to Ophelia and looked at her sternly. "I think I'm missing a sound."

"Hail HYDRA, Obergruppenführer," Ophelia sang, no doubt like a bird following its owner's note.

There was something ceremonial about the way she'd been summoned; the soldiers guarding the door snapped to attention as she approached. Ophelia said nothing, merely nodding briefly before turning the handle and entering. The air inside the office was thick and cold compared to the warmth usually maintained by the presence of the personnel in the barracks.

Strategic maps, military medals, and framed HYDRA symbols hung on the walls over the years, but what dominated the room was a large, newly hung portrait that stood in front of the main desk. Ophelia paused when she saw it. Schmidt was depicted in his black uniform, trimmed in red, and accented with silver hardware, with a special emphasis on his belt where the cadaverous hydra could be seen on its buckle. And yet, what captured the first glance was his face: bare, without the mask. The red, bony skin of his face contrasted with the perfection of his attire, a blend of the human and the monstrous, merging into one.

Schmidt stood before the portrait, admiring it as if it were a masterpiece. His gaze shifted to Ophelia when he heard her enter, and a slight smile curved his lips as he turned to her.

"It's imposing, isn't it?" His voice, deep and controlled, filled the space. "I had it painted to remind the world who I am."

Ophelia studied the portrait for a few seconds before answering, choosing her words carefully. "It is... just as you are, Herr Schmidt. Intimidating. Powerful. Reckless."

Schmidt's smile widened slightly, as if those words had been exactly what he'd hoped to hear. He took a step toward the portrait, his hands behind his back. “Zola mentioned glorious before you, though from the way her heart was pounding, she probably thought I’d snap her neck if she didn’t, but reckless? Yes… I would use that word for what I’m about to ask you to do, Fräulein Sarkissian.”

Ophelia raised an eyebrow curiously, tilting her head to signal that she was ready to listen. Schmidt walked over to his desk and picked up a small file lying on the surface, handing it to her as he regarded her with a mixture of assessment and expectation.

“You’ll need to travel to New York,” he informed her, returning to his position next to the portrait as if seeking inspiration from his own image. “You’ll be meeting with our undercover agent, Heinz Kruger. He’s undercover as a government official in national defense.”

The green-haired woman took the file without opening it yet, her eyes fixed on Schmidt. “And what should I do once I get there?”

Schmidt looked at her with an intensity that almost burned, his tone turning darkly playful. “Oh, nothing much... Just retrieve Erskine’s super-soldier serum and... assassinate him.”

The words seemed to echo in the room, laden with a weight that couldn’t be ignored. Ophelia nodded slowly, as if processing every syllable. Then she opened the file, noting the passport with the false identity, as well as the preliminary details about Kruger and Abraham Erskine’s location. A dangerous task, yes, but danger had never stopped her before.

“Understood, Herr Schmidt,” she said finally, closing the file with a confident motion.

Schmidt watched her for a few more moments, as if sizing something up, then nodded approvingly. “I knew I could trust you, Ophelia. You have my permission to use any resources you need for this mission... But don’t you dare let me down, or the next time we meet, it won’t be a pleasant conversation.”

Ophelia returned a small smile, controlled and full of determination. "HYDRA never fails. Hail HYDRA."

"Hail HYDRA."