His world exploded with coughing and gasping, and the sense of falling, punctuated by a hard impact with the floor. He couldn't see at first. His hearing seemed off as well, as if rising out of deep water. For all he knew, that's what he had just emerged from.
Harsh, if muffled voices echoed all around him. The language sounded almost familiar, yet at the same time completely different. Hands and toes of boots roughly flipped him onto his back, revealing blurry orbs of light and larger, moving shadows. Statements were now clearly directed at him.
"I don't…understand…what you're saying…" His mouth felt disgusting when he finally figured out how to work it again. Bile crept up his throat.
A hand slapped his face, burning hot compared to his frigid skin. What was going on? He remembered nothing at all, not his name, how he got here, let alone where 'here' was. Something clamped onto his left arm; he didn't feel it per se, but a buzzing sensation in his shoulder disappeared, and the whole limb went lifeless. Dimly he made out an odd gleam where there should have been skin. That's not right…
He was hauled upright, dragged across an unknown distance, and finally deposited none too gently on some kind of soft, raised surface. Restraints quickly closed over his extremities and torso. Other strange objects were attached to his skin, something pricked his right elbow, bright lights flashed into his eyes and away again.
A strange face leaned in close. "Good morning, Soldier," the man said in thickly-accented English.
"Wh…where am I?"
"Safely hidden away. You were asleep for a while."
"I…don't remember anything…"
Conversations resumed in the language he didn't recognize. After some time, he began to wonder if they had forgotten about him. Then the man who had spoken to him reappeared with a cart and some kind of bulky headset. Something about his smile was unnerving.
"We will help you remember."
The headset fit securely so it covered his ears and blocked his eyesight, not that he would have had the strength to fight it if he wanted. What kind of sleep had they put him in? A second injection went into his arm, and a voice began to speak from the headset. He didn't really make sense of what happened in those sessions, between the effects of whatever they were giving him, and the lack of rhyme or reason to the words being spoken. But the next time he was fully aware, he could understand the men speaking. They talked about surrounding Soviet territory. About an organization called HYDRA, and how they sought to bring great change to the world. The concepts sounded vaguely familiar, so he must have been involved before his memory loss. They explained to him his most important role in this endeavor, how crucial he was to the cause. There was much work to be done.
His senses gradually recovered from his time asleep and the subsequent deprivation (the men called it 'cryogenic stasis,' which allowed him to retain peak physical condition when he was not needed). They began intense training to ensure he could carry out any duties required of him with precision, and without question. The device which disabled his robotic arm was removed for these exercises. He worked with all manner of weapons, some of which tugged at his blank past, hand-to-hand combat, stealth maneuvers, and the operation of various vehicles. He was subjected to further indoctrination sessions to master other languages. They pushed him to the limits of his already exceptional endurance. This was a program for which he was specially tested and chosen, they told him.
Asset 17, he would be called. Zimnij Soldát.
And they monitored him closely for medical effects. Not only to ensure that the cryogenic process didn't present other drawbacks, but because he had to be able to withstand anything the enemy threw at him, whether in battle or if here were ever captured and tortured. Physical enhancement was not enough. He had to have the mental discipline as well.
It started with spikes of fear quite unconnected to whatever present orders he was given, as if he had experienced them before. These internal reactions he could keep undetected. Then he began to see flashes of—were they memories?—which sprang up without warning.
One exercise meant to test his resistance to chemical-assisted interrogation sent him into a panicked rage. He broke free of the reinforced bonds before they could get near him with the syringe, sending two guards to the infirmary. Only an especially heavy dose of sedative was strong enough to take him out, and the refusal to comply landed him in total lockdown for several days. No contact with anyone, left arm disabled, movement severely limited, even remotely-administered IV nutrition instead of meals.
Later on, the engineering team wished to tune up and make upgrades to his prosthetic arm. This made perfect sense, if he was to perform missions optimally. Except as they wheeled the gurney into the procedure room, his mind was overwhelmed with images of someone sawing into flesh and bone, a bloody stump leaving a dark trail in snow, a round face with spectacles that simultaneously infuriated and terrified him.
The ensuing battle took nearly every soldier in the base to bring him down. In the end, they had to use several brand-new electrical charge rounds to slow him enough for someone to headlock him until he passed out. His holding cell became a secure medical ward for a week.
Some of the scientists talked of putting him back into cryostasis, with their improved chamber design and procedure. The project leader insisted that they simply needed to assert control. A mixture of conventional and subliminal conditioning, such as was used for the language indoctrination, that would allow a single person to bring him to heel without compromising him physically or mentally. If necessary, developments had been made in using electroshock technology to wipe short-term memory.
His new training became a cycle of the hallucinogenic injections, and a sequence of specific code words reinforced by physical pain. These were used in conjunction with endlessly repeated forced commands, drawing out the punishment until he complied. Over and over and over again, to the point where the code alone signaled impending orders, ones that must be followed.
His handlers brought in the new machine, with its elaborate console and modified, beefed-up holding chair to ensure they could contain him. A bizarre rig of electrodes was secured around his head and face, and a bite block placed in his mouth. Already his heartrate quickened in anticipation of the unknown. Without warning, energy coursed through his skull, down his spine, radiating out to his limbs. Violent tremors wracked his body, impeded only by the tight restraints. He registered the screams as if they came from someone else. The pain blinded him, overwhelming everything.
He actually didn't realize how soon the electric current stopped, owing to the residual shaking and burning that only gradually dissipated. By that time, one of the researchers had started reading the words, which essentially picked up where the shocks left off, just in a different way.
"…Rassvet…pechy…devyáty…"
The familiar rage boiled up within him, but didn't overflow its bounds thanks to his riveted attention on the words.
"Dobroserdečij, vozvráščenye ná rodinu…"
The rest of his mind, the unnecessary parts, began to go fuzzy, though more like radio static than losing consciousness. The twitching in his limbs finally subsided, but he was still breathing hard.
"Ôdin, gruzovoj pagon."
Everything snapped to a halt, the building energy suddenly locked into gear. Even the onlookers froze with bated breath. All he needed was a direction to point his laser focus. The researcher who had been speaking closed the book in his hands, and tensely set it aside. He stepped closer. "Dobroe utro, Soldát."
He knew the required response without having to think of it, without looking at anyone.
"Ya gotovye do ščats."
"He is ready," the project leader quietly proclaimed.
A/N: So, disclaimer on the use of Russian—I used my best gauge of Romanized spellings because they read easier than Cyrillic (retaining phonetic characters as well as I could), but the pronunciation of some letters are still slightly different than what we have in English. If you want to talk what I know of the pronunciation, we can PM. Also, I had to estimate a couple of the words based on sound, and compared it to what I could research. It's not expert usage by far. Finally, I didn't include the entire sequence because by all appearances, I don't think Bucky necessarily consciously registered the first few coming straight out of electroshock. The effect is still there, though. Sorry for the delay getting this posted! And we're finally going to shift gears into not-so-heavy-depressing events coming up :)
