IN BETWEEN IT ALL?? BARNES?

The longer we walked the more fearful I became. I got lucky that we only encountered about one guard on the way. Melina had some special type of jurisdiction here. If I was with anyone else I wouldn't have been able to walk around as freely. Even with Melina as my shield I saw the man do a double take on me. Maybe he was a veteran and had been working here for years. Maybe he was one of my abusers. But really, there were too many of them and I wouldn't be able to recall their faces even if I tried. Beside Bucky, I couldn't remember any specific faces. 

I followed her into a small space with a lot of controls panels. There were buttons all over the wall in the small space. If I was taking a guess I could imagine that all of these buttons had something to do with keeping this whole thing in the air. I would think that maybe it would be way more secure than it was. No one stood on the outside to guard it. 

Melina seemed to know exactly what she was doing. It seemed like Alexei was being used as a distraction while Melina hacked into the control system. I didn't know what my mom or Yelena was doing or what I was supposed to be. 

I lifted my eyes to Melina and took a step closer to her. "Where is my mom?" I asked while watching her fingers move across a clear screen. She didn't take her eyes off of it to respond to me. 

"She is with Dreykov," she told me dismissively. That wasn't a comment that should have been dismissed to me. My eyes drew wide and I had to do a double take to make sure I understood correctly. 

I narrowed my eyes and took a step closer, getting my face into her line of sight. "Why would she be with him?" I asked, trying to get a better understanding. I was assuming this had to be part of the plan but it was still way too dangerous. 

Melina shook her head and let out a deep breath. "You and your mother worry too much," she said, continuing to shake her head. "You do not trust each other to do anything. You need to trust your mother," she told me almost accusingly. But she never met my eyes. 

It was a funny thing to hear from her, seeing as she staged being My mom's mother for two years. There was almost no personal trust between her and my mom. I found it odd for her to tell me such a thing. And I had already trusted my mom for these nineteen years of my life. Maybe sixteen of them, since that was when I first met her. But when she finally came to get me from Wakanda, and after I had spoken to my real father, she lost those sixteen years worth of trust. I didn't know how she would get it back. 

"I already tried that," I muttered bitterly before directing my eyes toward the ground. "Maybe I get it from her; not being able to trust my mother," I added sarcastically. Melina rolled her eyes as soon as the words came from my mouth. 

She shook her head again. "You don't know me, Zola. And I don't know you," she said almost like some type of warning. I couldn't help but roll my eyes in return. 

"But you sure knew that I was stuck behind those bars with Mama and you did nothing to change that. You knew that my own father was beating me and you did nothing to change that. You could've saved us. You have probably brought us back here to die aga-"

My body jumped when I heard a crashing noise coming from the small entrance we'd used to come in here. My head jolted to look in the direction of where I heard the noise come from. By the time I had looked, there was a steel door trapping us in here and blocking any way out. 

I turned back to the control panel and it was decked out in red, replacing the green color that it was before. I felt my heart drop. We were stuck in here. I would have rather been stuck here for the rest of my life and die a slow death instead of being taken to Dreykov to be killed or tortured by him instead.