Steve woke up to the rank smell of standing water and damp. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. If he wasn't sure he couldn't get drunk, he'd have thought he was hungover.
When was the last time that'd happened? Steve closed his eyes and for one brief, shining moment, he could imagine he was back in 1941, laid up on his old mattress, trying to remember the previous night whilst Bucky yammered in the background, his thick Brooklyn drawl as grounding as the rough sheets that bunched under his fingertips. Outside his little bubble of comfort, the world shifted and twisted. His gut churned like he'd just gotten off a waltzer.
The feeling lasted until a door banged open above his head, snapping him back into the present. 1941 vanished back into the distant past and Steve tried to look around, to catch a glimpse of anything besides the damp ceiling. The room tilted sickeningly as he moved. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head a little, but the sensation remained.
"Don't get up." His eyes snapped open again. "I had heard you were a man who upheld tradition and propriety, and I am superior, but in this instance, your imprudence is permissible." A tall, thin man stepped into his sight. He had a military looking bearing, wore a dark tailored suit and one of his eyes was obscured by a monocle, flickering yellow as it caught the low light.
"Who are you?" Steve glared at him, trying to move his arms. He wasn't restrained, but he couldn't move. His muscles could barely twitch beneath his skin.
"I think you'll find our paralysis agent a little harder to shrug off than that, Captain." The man said smugly. "As for who I am, you will find out soon enough. Right now it's not important."
"Yeah, you don't look all that important." Steve retorted. What little humour there was dropped from the man's face.
"I am the commander of this base." The man corrected, his voice clipped and low. "I am the man who has profited most from the demise of Alexander Pierce. I am the man you will soon obey without question." The man stalked closer, stopping at his bedside and leaning over. "You may call me whatever dull derogatory term comes to your tiny little mind, for now. But know this; no matter what you say or do, you will end up calling me one thing, and one thing only - Master."
"Not going to happen." Steve said, eyes fierce. The man straightened, his mouth twisting into a smile that looked more like a grimace.
"Baron Von Strucker, the equipment is ready." A young sounding man declared, somewhere outside of Steve's eyeline. Von Strucker was right about one thing, whatever they'd dosed him up with was strong. He couldn't even move his head.
"Move the good Captain into the wheelchair. I think it would be useful to give him the grand tour, before we begin." Something dark glinted in Von Strucker's eyes and Steve swallowed reflexively. "I wish him to see just how futile his petty attempt at resistance is."
"Yes Sir!"
Steve's line of vision tilted violently. He could feel hands on his arms and back, but it was a fleeting sensation, quickly replaced by numbness and nausea again. The room turned, or rather, the wheelchair did, and Steve went with it. The corridor outside smelt worse than the room had, dank and musty. Whatever facility they were in, Steve surmised, it hadn't been used for a long time.
Von Strucker walked with them. Apparently this was to be a personal tour. Steve couldn't do much but look straight ahead as the corridors stretched out before them like a maze. He kept track of the route they took, left turn, left turn, small step, door, double door, right turn; elevator ride down two floors, maybe three. Three doors, four turns and two unforgiving steps later, they arrived at a door with a keypad. Von Strucker stepped up and entered a code Steve couldn't see.
The door hissed open, and Steve was pushed in. Another corridor stretched out in front of them, but this one wasn't bare, like the others. It was lined with doors, some solid, others made of metal bars. They started to move down the corridor with Von Strucker leading the way.
"Hydra has not gone unopposed, Captain, in the years you were asleep. Every so often a person of great intellect, or great misfortune, would happen upon the secrets we hide in plain sight." The first door went by. The barred cell was empty, save for the large, red smear on the wall. "These people, well, you can only imagine the kind of things they thought they could do with the information they found. A few wanted to join us, a few even tried to blackmail us, but most people tried to escape."
Another cell door went by. It was empty again, a rotten chair collapsed in one corner. The back wall was covered in words, each one scrawled scrappily in the rusty brown colour of dried blood. They went past it before he could make any of it out.
"They tried to run and hide, but they were sloppy. Panicking people always are."
"Your place in Kiev sure seemed organised at the end." Steve bit out. Von Strucker didn't skip a beat.
"Kiev was a mistake, but not a harsh one. For all the damage our former asset cost us, he did galvanise our efforts in placing our research materials in one location." The next cell slid by, empty again bar the blood stained floor. Steve began to sense a pattern. "This facility once housed political prisoners, exiled by the Soviet regime. It was abandoned in 1992, whereupon it was seized by our agents. It was here that phase two of our Winter Soldier project was first trialled."
"Phase two?" Steve frowned. "But you already had Bucky, why would you need to-"
"Do you know what Hydra is, Captain, what it represents?" Von Strucker interrupted. Steve glared at the back of his head.
"I know exactly what it is, and I don't care what you think it represents." Von Strucker ignored him again. Another cell drifted past, and Steve started at the sight of a man sat on the floor rocking, staring out of the barred door. He didn't seem to notice the little group passing by.
"Hydra is order from chaos, peace from war, wisdom from the minds of the greatest, shared only with the mighty few. It is the only way for humanity to exist in a state of harmony with itself. You give the people freedom and they give you petty squabbles about rights and religion. Pathetic! You gave your life so that other may never know war, and what do you wake up to? War still rages, no lessons were learned and the past is doomed to repeat itself. Hydra could stop it all, if we remade the world in our image. The worthy would live in peace and those with power would wield it in defence of honour and justice. Is this not a world you would like to see? Are these not the ideals you strive for?"
"Nope. Not even close." Von Strucker stopped at that.
"I thought that might be your answer. You are not easily persuaded Captain. I'm glad." Von Strucker started walking again and the endless parade of doors continued. Empty, occupied, occupied, empty, occupied. "It is a promising. It helps us to have a firm foundation with which to begin." They came to a halt by a solid metal door. The guard who'd been pushing Steve stepped forward with a key and the door swung open with a creak like a scream. Steve half expected the hinges to collapse any second.
He was pushed into the room.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place, cut off one head, two more shall take its place, cut off one head…"
"This is subject 53. A skilled inventor once, but a drunk. We picked him up in Michigan, using an agent disguised as a priest. The dear fellow wanted to get well so he could create again. We gave him the chance to go to a place with all the resources he could want, and no temptations."
The prisoner was filthy. His hair hung around his shoulders, twisted into thick tendrils. His eyes bulged and his teeth clacked as they repeated their steady rhythm. It was only when the man finally noticed he had company and twisted towards them that Steve choked back a horrified gasp.
One hand and forearm were completely metal. The fingers grasped at the floor, cutting tracks in the dust. His other arm ended in a stump. The palm of the man's hand was there, but his fingers were ragged, blunt stumps.
"Subject 53 did not appreciate our hospitality. He tried to kill himself twice, but we would not allow it. So, the next time he was alone, he bit off his own fingers. Can you imagine it Captain, it must have been so very painful. We cut off the hand and replaced it, as you can see. We moved him into mental testing, as he showed such remarkable resistance to pain. We began the trials before we recovered the component, and his mind was destroyed. We did not waste our efforts on him when he ruined his other hand."
"Hail Hydra!" Subject 53 said, his bulging eyes wide, his pupils destroyed. "Hail Hydra, hail Hydra!"
He was still shouting when Steve's chair was wheeled away and the door was sealed again. The next door was barred again, and a dirty looking woman sat inside. She was perched on the edge of a low metal framed bed, completely still. Her gaze was fixed firmly on the far wall.
"This is subject 64. She uncovered an operation of ours in Kosovo. She tried to hide from us, promised she'd never tell a soul about what she had learned, but Hydra is thorough Captain. There is no place to hide from us. Our eyes are everywhere. Despite her initial cowardice, she held up remarkably well under the program. It was only when we recovered the component that we abandoned her conditioning. Sadly the component is incompatible with our previous methods."
They started moving again. Von Strucker walked in front of them again, a little spring in his step.
"I don't care what you do to me. I will never help you." Steve said. The rank smell was so thick he could practically taste it. Would it be worse to live in a place like this, or die in it? He'd probably find out.
"You're right. I could show you failure after failure, but you aren't a man to be scared into submission. Perhaps what you should be afraid of are our successes. And we have had success Captain." The corridor turned, and a new steel door loomed at the end of it. "Tell me, how well did you know Agent Jasper Sitwell?"
"Sitwell?" Steve's eyes widened. "I knew of him. Then I found out he was Hydra."
"Yes, he was, wasn't he? Amazing how he managed to fool so many people about his loyalties. He was even one of Agent Coulson's close friends, I believe. Did you know Agent Sitwell disappeared for a month on a mission last year? He was supervising junior field agents on a low risk operation in Bogota, when his location was compromised and he was captured by a local militia. They held him for ransom for a month, before he managed to escape and rendezvous with another agent at a SHIELD safe house. Wonderful little story, isn't it?"
"It was Hydra, you picked him up." Steve felt a hot flush of anger. It balled up inside and at near his sternum in an angry knot. If he could have moved his arms, he'd have torn Von Strucker apart.
"Of course. He put up such a fight. You'd have been proud. He was everything you'd have admired. That was the reason why he was chosen." They stopped in front of the new door as Von Strucker entered another code. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges.
"So you brain washed him. Why didn't the programming degrade like before? You weren't keeping Sitwell on ice." Steve was pushed into the room and finally got a good look at the Hydra equipment, and its new component. Oh, that'd do it. There, sat on a pedestal, hooked up to a hundred different monitors and trackers, was Loki's sceptre. He'd seen the photos of Hawkeye under its influence, his eyes icy as he slaughtered innocent people for an alien tyrant. Comprehension hit him like a fist and he sucked in a harsh breath. Torture, brainwashing, he could probably handle that, but this? What possible defence was there against this?
"Do you recognise it Captain? You and Miss Romanoff handed it into SHIELD custody personally, did you not? I should thank for placing it into our hands. It has proved to be the key to solving the degradation problem." Von Strucker gazed at the sceptre almost tenderly. "It carries a fragment of the power of the Tesseract, the power of the Gods. Unlike our previous machinery, which supressed and overwrote memories, this has the power to remove and reconstruct them into whatever we like. For someone like you? We would take you apart, piece by piece. You are a loyal man, so we would make you loyal to us. You are a principled man, so we would adjust your ideals until they reflect our interests. The rest of you? Your personality, memories of friends, family, lovers – we have no use for that."
Steve's heart pounded in his chest. He needed to be out of here now. He couldn't go in the machine. Hydra couldn't use him as a weapon, he'd be too effective. He tried to think back, figure out if there was a way to tell how long he'd been kept unconscious – could Natasha or Sam be coming for him? Had there been enough time to plan a rescue mission?
Sam – wait, had he even made it out of there? The last he'd seen of him, he'd been flying blind into a fire fight with no back up. All for what? So Steve could go chasing after the ghost of man despised him? Bucky had left him there. Bucky hated him. He should have helped Sam. He shouldn't have left him alone. What if he was dead? No, Sam was better than that. Sam wouldn't go down so easy. But what if he had?
Steve took a deep breath and tried to move again. He focused on something subtle, a fingertip, maybe a toe. He had to move.
"Has the specimen been prepared?" A short man in a lab coat strode into Steve's line of vision. Steve's big toe moved.
"The specimen is ready." The young soldier behind Steve piped up. The world tilted crazily again as Steve felt himself being manhandled into a creaky leather chair. He could twitch his thumb. Von Strucker looked down at him.
"I am curious to see the results of this little test. There is no one else like you in the world, and your serum could make the process volatile. I don't know what will happen to your brain should you resist."
"Looks like we'll find out." Steve spat. Von Strucker smiled. Somewhere behind him, someone was attaching electrodes to his head.
"Excellent. I don't know which result I'd prefer. You would be a truly valuable asset to us Captain, but should you prove unsuitable, I would enjoy killing you. I imagine your autopsy report would be fascinating."
Steve just glared at him. He had nothing else to say. Unless someone came through the door before the procedure started, granting him some stay of execution, this was it. His brain was probably getting fried here.
He wasn't the kind of man to beg, or plead, but his mind was racing. Sam, Natasha, anyone. He'd even take Stark walking through the door, annoying and loud, but always able to keep him grounded in this century. His fingertips curled around the edge of the armrest. It wasn't enough.
"Don't keep us waiting Doctor," Von Strucker said. His monocle caught the light, flaring yellow and blank. Steve heard a switch being thrown, an electrical sounding hum.
"Mr Trevor, make sure you keep abreast of his brainwaves. I want the specimen monitored at all times."
"Yes sir."
Natasha, Clint, Tony, help me, someone please…
"The Sceptre has activated. Beginning initial overload."
Bucky…
