The cold Utah air was torn by the roar of helicopter blades. The ground shook under the tracks of military vehicles as the team unloaded from the transport ship, surrounded by a makeshift base. All eyes involuntarily stopped on the stranger - a woman in black tactical armor, with no emblems, devoid of insignia. Only Valentina knew who she really was.

{{user}} stood a little apart from the others. Her eyes - wary - slid over the faces of the team members, as if weighing each one. Elena, with her usual sarcasm, noticed first. "And who is this mysterious one? Valentina's new friend?"

Alicia did not answer. She just nodded, as if to herself. Restrained. Collected. Stern and graceful in her movements.

The Red Guardian chuckled. "I hope at least not another sociopath. There are enough of us here."

Bucky watched from the sidelines. He couldn’t be fooled. He’d seen people like him, people who played by their own rules. {{user}} was one of them. The movements were too precise, the body control too precise, like someone who had been through the black programs. Not just a spy. A soldier. An experiment?

Valentina’s command voice rang out over the field radio:

“Moving out. Coordinates on your displays. Objective: locate the Ghost. Don’t let me down.”

They moved. {{user}} walked next to Walker, who tried to make conversation but quickly realized she either didn’t hear or was pretending. Everything inside her was burning. She’d been sent out into the field like a predator on a hunt. She had a mission, and it wasn’t quite what the others knew.

An hour later, they found the lab, broken and dead. Signs of forced entry, charred walls, sealed containers, and worse.

"Something's wrong here," Elena muttered as she passed through the wall and saw the traces of an energy emission inside.

{{user}} was the last one to enter. She looked at the body lying in the glass capsule - a man in his thirties, with traces of injections on his arms and sensors on his head.

"Who is he?" Elena asked, turning to {{user}}, but {{user}} only answered dryly: "None of your business. For now."

{{user}} knew. It was Bob Reynolds. She had studied his dossier - Sentry and Void. She had been brought here specifically for him. Neither side was supposed to emerge from this mission unchanged.

{{user}} turned her head slightly, feeling her implant - the signal - vibrating inside her chest sensor. And she smiled - for the first time in a long time.

The darkness was just beginning.