august 2016

"WHAT THE HELL is the endgame protocol?" She muttered under her breath. Sat on the edge of a chair in the living space of the penthouse, Jack slid her elbows out to rest on her knees so she could rest her face in her palms, letting her fingers slip into her hair and grip it tightly in frustration. "How the fuck am I gonna get out of this one?"

She kept seeing the last hour on repeat, flashing in the forefront of her mind. Her senses were flooded with every memory from every moment she'd spent with him that night, from the musky scent of his cologne to the shuddering feeling of having his chest so close to hers while they danced. She couldn't stop seeing the way Tony's face fell as he confronted her, realizing exactly what she had been sent there to do.

In all her years on this wretched earth, she'd never experienced something so excruciating as what she'd been put through that night. She wanted to take it all back, to see him look at her with that look one more time, seeing her as someone he believed she was, no matter how big of a lie it turned out to be the entire time.

She wanted to feel like Jacqueline Kingston in Tony Stark's eyes, the exquisite woman he'd come to believe her to be.

Her subconscious scoffed, chuckling darkly. So this is what betrayal feels like, it snarled.

Betrayal. Something she'd taken part in giving out for years, but she'd never been on the receiving side. And oh, how it burned her insides, stung her and paralyzed her, refrained her from breathing. She felt the claws of pain dig into her chest, latching onto her in a place that she'd thought was numb and unfeeling for her entire life.

Jack shook herself out of this head space, suffocating in her own thoughts. Staring at the floor, she gripped her hair in her hands and groaned. She knew what—or who, rather—was coming now. Her assignment's timeline had expired, her two months were up. And Tony Stark was still alive. It didn't matter if he died in his civil war with Captain America, or if he happened to drop dead of his own accord. She was supposed to drive her dagger through his heart, she was supposed to succeed, Asset 53 did not fail, she had never failed.

But here she was, a failure with lingering thoughts and memories tangling in her head. An absolute useless lump of flesh. Hydra was coming for her now, she knew that as much. They would come for her, and quickly find out that she had failed. She could hide things from anyone, but not Hydra. She couldn't hide anything from her superiors, much less something as monumental as this.

Asset 53 may have been docile, but Jacqueline Kingston was not a quitter. She lunged off the couch as a plan began to take shape.

—————

It was raining when they came for her. They arrived at Stark Tower, prepared to storm the building and take what was theirs by force, but they were greeted silently, let in the building and led to the penthouse. When they entered the penthouse, they saw her.

Jacqueline wore a facade as she twirled her knife in her hand, a gentle smirk rising to her lips as she watched the agents come to a slow halt as they laid eyes on her. They had her surrounded. Helicopters had flown onto the landing pad on the roof, and several dozen more had come from the street entrance.

She knew what this particular face looked like. It was hers, but it also was nothing like her. The eyes were cold and teeth sharp, ready to bite anything that dare put a toe out of line.

It'll be fine, endgame protocol will reset and they'll be trapped in here, she told herself in an attempt to calm her nerves. You just have to stall for a bit.

Let me do the talking, a frighteningly familiar voice said in her head, one that was just like hers but held a menace in it like no other. When I talk, things get done.

"Hello, boys," the asset drawled, gripping her knife tightly in her hand. "пора тебе показаться." It's about time you showed up. She knew that her Russian accent was impeccable after so many years of practice and training.

The black-clad men in front of her shifted their weight. "Mission report," one of them said gruffly.

"We don't have time," another one piped up behind him, "we'll do all that later. She's waiting for us, we can't fail her."

She couldn't see beneath the mask, but she could tell the first agent's mouth had curled into a sour scowl. "And we won't," he protested, "she knows this is part of procedure."

Asset 53 cocked her head and pressed the point of her knife against the pad of her finger. "Care to include me in this rather riveting conversation, gentlemen?"

Their heads turned back to hers. "Mission report," she heard again.

She stiffened and spoke monotonously, "Target is dead. Mission successful. Request to return to headquarters." The words rolled off her tongue easier than she wanted to admit, but this was what she had been trained to do.

"Target is dead? Is that so?" The man sneered, stepping forward menacingly with his assault rifle in his hands, aimed at her heart.

She nodded. Held her breath.

"Tell me, 53, why does our footage show your target walking out of this building as you sit on the couch like a common whore?" His tone was razor sharp as he slashed the words in her direction.

She froze as the words sank in. They know. How do they know?

"We know you flushed your cryo pills down the toilet, we know you betrayed your superiors, and we know...we know you are not just Asset 53 anymore."

When Jack looked up, a pit began to grow in her stomach. Instead of the usual silver patch on their jackets that showed the Hydra emblem, there was a red three-headed dog in its place, the metal pin doing nothing to hide the wrecked fabric underneath where the Hydra symbol was torn off.

She didn't know what was happening, but she knew she was in trouble. "What—"

"That's one thing Hydra did well," the man said nonchalantly, as if he was talking about the weather and not holding a gun to a woman's head. "They never trusted you as much as they made you believe. There's a lot of good that a camera can do for us, especially when the wearer doesn't know it exists.

A camera? Where—

She looked around the room, her first outward sign of discomfort, but she didn't care. The jig was up, it was only a matter of time until she was taken in. But now she didn't know exactly who was taking her in.

"It's a good thing you can't feel it in your head, Asset 53," he concluded, "that would blow our whole operation."

"Why aren't we just shooting her?" Someone spoke up, clearly getting bored with all the initial niceties.

"We're not supposed to, Boucher wants us to bring her in!"

That name, she knew it. She had a hard time remembering, as she usually didn't have to, but as she traced the name through her brain, she came upon the impromptu visit she'd had with the woman who'd told her that things were changing.

She supposed these things were those things.

"B-Boucher?" She stammered, "What does she have to do with this?"

"Trust me, Jacqueline," he replied immediately, "you'll find out soon enough." He raised the gun and fired.

—————

I can only imagine what Tony's going to think when he gets to the tower.

He's going to come back, completely drained from whatever he had to do, and he's going to see all the wreckage. He's going to see evidence of my hacking, breaking through the endgame protocol to try and execute my plan.

I may have just executed myself, with the way things turned out.

Tony's going to think I escaped, that I'm running about somewhere, going free in a world I know hardly anything about thanks to my past. He's going to realize he failed to keep me in his grasp.

His driver, Happy, he's going to freak out as per usual, and he's going to want to go after me. He's going to advocate for finishing the job and killing me, like I was supposed to do to Tony.

I hope Tony trusts me. I hope he knows that I would never kill him, not after everything I went through while in his presence. Even if he doesn't trust me, even if he thinks I'm the most despicable thing to walk the earth, I hope he stays at the tower. He doesn't need to come after me. He doesn't need to kill me.

Where I'm going, I'm betting I'll be dead soon.

————————————————————

i was gonna do a point of view change for the last section and do it in tony's pov, but i decided not to cause i thought it would mess up the natural flow of the story(we've never heard the story in tony's pov throughout the book, so there's no point).

wow, that's the last chapter!! but of course, there's a cliffhanger. like usual, i guess. i don't know how to write happy endings. also, i gave the first clue as to who the unknown rogue group is that has jack and bucky in captivity! can you guess what their name is? it's hinted at earlier in this chapter!

okay. there's an epilogue after this, and then i'm going to do a "bonus chapter" type thing to tie up one more loose end that i haven't addressed yet, but it's more for your guys's entertainment because it'll turn out to be a cool idea. that bonus content will be posted in my one shots book after this book is officially completed.

read carefully. there is not a sequel to this book. however, that does not mean that this is the last you will see asset 53/jack! i have more in store for them! plus, i would hate myself for never wrapping up her story and leaving it after this book. there's so much more i want to explore with her character, i feel like she kind of writes herself! UPDATED JULY 25, 2019: A SEQUEL IS IN THE WORKS, I CHANGED MY MIND! 

alright, thank you for reading!! FFH IS OUT AND I HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET SO NO SPOILERS BUT I AM SO EXCITED AND ITS MY BIRTHDAY SOON SOOOOOO

published on: july 3, 2019