Distortion

Lauren, arms crossed over her chest, watched as Barnes tried to kick the frozen door off its hinges. The lock was already open, but the cold that had gripped everything stood in their way. She let her gaze sweep over the snow-covered hills, coated in ice, stretching all the way to the horizon. “Don’t you have some kind of strength there?” he asked, bracing his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Yes,” Lauren raised an eyebrow. “The Shard is right behind this door, and its effect on me is stronger. Want it to end like it did in my stories?” “Why didn’t you use your power when the Shard was far away?” Barnes looked at the dented door, ready to give way. “In Laos, for example? Instead, you killed that guy by falling on him from above.” “Gravity won,” the girl shrugged, stepping closer. “You just need to finish off this door.” “Don’t bother,” a familiar sharp voice made them turn around. *Valentina*. “There’s something better.” “Could warm you up too, if needed,” Yelena winked at Lauren, gripping a flamethrower tightly. “Watch you don’t get knocked out by that tank,” the girl stepped aside, pulling James with her, as Yelena, with a gas tank on her back, directed the flame at the frozen door. “What are you doing here?” James addressed Valentina, standing not far away. In plain sight, but not taking part in the dirty work. “Came to retrieve the Shard,” she smirked, putting her hands in her pockets. “Thought I’d trust you two to transport it? A half-crazed girl and a tin can opener?” “Thanks,” Lauren muttered through her teeth, flinching slightly as the door crashed down with a roar. “You could have just written to us, saved us the trip out here.” “I still need you,” the woman followed Yelena into the opened space. Lauren burned James with a look, as if he were to blame for this delegation’s arrival, but the man, taking the girl by the elbow, dragged her inside. “What is this place?” he asked quietly, leaning close to her ear. “I gather it’s one of HYDRA’s former bases,” Lauren, still feeling his strong grip on her arm, slowly walked down the dark corridor. “This way,” Yelena gestured, and the light from her flashlight slid over the uneven wall. Craning her neck, Lauren tried to see past Valentina’s shoulder what was ahead. Achieving her goal, she abruptly stopped on the threshold, unexpectedly placing a palm on the cold fingers of Barnes’s bionic hand. “This is the room from my memories,” the girl whispered with her lips alone, so no one else would hear. “This is where I found the Shard.” “You talked about a desert,” James, shielding the girl with his shoulder, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the glass cube where gray smoke drifted slowly. He didn’t want to, but his vision highlighted for him three people tied to chairs, their heads unnaturally thrown back. Gaping, ragged holes in their necks, large enough to fit a hand inside, and the blood around them had frozen, never having had time to spread. “Darling,” Valentina crouched down, and only then did they notice the dark figure curled up against the wall. “Get up.” “It… touched me,” a quiet, hoarse-from-cold voice sliced through the silence. Lauren, holding her breath, silently exhaled. The puzzle pieces in her head were falling into place. “The Shard.” James looked at Lauren, pale, almost dead from the soul crumbling inside her. He noticed the tension in her jaw muscles, but her eyes stared at one point, unblinking—at the Shard. “You used me,” her voice was steel, devoid of any emotion, simply stating facts. “Implanted memories about the Shard in me to make sure, upon real contact, you could control it?” “Notice how well I did it,” Valentina stood up, nodding for Yelena to help the other girl up. “It even managed to induce hallucinations in you.” “What was the point of this race?” Lauren shifted her gaze to the woman’s smug, habitually smiling face. “I needed more time for trials,” she let her gaze wander around the room. “Yours and hers. Did you think a couple of days were enough to confirm you truly believed the Shard memories were real? Well, a couple of months, while you were busy being all business-like at exhibitions and meetings, while you chased modules and killed, definitely showed that all my settings worked.” “Why am I here?” Barnes took a step forward, releasing the girl’s hand. “Just for company. She needed a partner to tell her weepy, fabricated stories to,” Valentina waved dismissively, turning her attention back to Lauren. “I’ve wiped you, and I’ll keep doing it until your body turns to dust. And I’ll wipe you again.” Lauren pressed her lips together, not even having time to react before the woman pressed a button on a small remote. She wouldn’t have been able to see it in the gloom of the concrete shelter, wouldn’t have been able to stop it. Never manages to. Something clicked. Not from outside, among the cold stone, but inside Lauren herself, standing on the threshold and still not daring to enter the room. It felt as if she had experienced it thousands of times, but could never understand what caused that feeling of light euphoria, blurring her consciousness. She swayed to the side, pressing her shoulder against the doorframe, realizing her legs were treacherously refusing to obey. “What’s wrong with her?” Barnes caught the girl as she quickly slid down. He tried to set her on her feet, but Lauren went limp in his arms like a rag doll, resting her chin against his chest. “She’s become a blank,” Valentina hid her hand in her pocket. “An empty shell, ready for a new personality.” “We need to get out of here,” Yelena interjected, supporting the other girl. “Sheila is starting to get frostbite.” “This is the real Shard-bearer, Barnes,” Valentina nodded toward the shadow that could barely stand, which had once been a person. “Lauren was just… a virtual projection of this, so to speak. I needed to be sure this game was worth the candle.” “What will happen to Lauren?” James brushed the hair from the girl’s face, and for the first time, her face was truly calm, free of all the anxious thoughts imposed on her. “I’ll rewrite her,” she shrugged. “Lauren really did handle her job well. She’ll keep pulling up your reputation until she’s needed for the cause.” “That’s illegal,” he snarled, holding the unconscious body tightly. “Is it?” Baring her teeth in a grin, Valentina turned her head to Yelena. “What do you think?” “I don’t care,” she shifted Sheila’s arm over her shoulders. “Are we going?” “You see? No one loses anything,” Valentina walked past him. “Let’s go, or we’ll get frostbite too.” James, clenching his jaw, shifted Lauren into his arms and followed them. He heard the echo of footsteps ahead in the corridor, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 'No one loses anything'? Not quite. He had lost the person who, with her persistence, had managed to challenge him at the very beginning, and then had proven that people can change. Even if Lauren’s memories were fabricated, borrowed, he had liked getting under her skin, watching the ice melt from her soul. She hid all her feelings inside for a reason—they were echoes of her past wipes, leaving scars on her heart, even if she didn’t remember them. Someone bumped Barnes’s shoulder, and he looked up, realizing a cleanup crew was passing them, tasked with returning the Shard to the Tower. James exhaled, emerging into the frosty air, having clearly decided to bring Lauren back.