Why was she still alive?
Surely death should have come for her by now.
Amy found living an increasing struggle. She could never quite seem to catch her breath. Her shoulder was on fire. And her leg, well, she couldn't really feel her leg anymore, which should have been terrifying, but was actually kind of a relief.
She was given a bowl of mush and a beaker of water once a day. She presumed it was once a day. It was still impossible to keep track of time in the windowless cell. And her jailers seemed to vary when they fed her just to add to her disorientation. The hunger she could endure, for the moment at least, but the thirst was driving her insane.
Dehydration would have set in by now, of that she was certain.
And she knew she was starting to lose her grip on reality, because she hadn't even noticed Kraus's arrival today.
He had brought a chair. Amy watched him settle onto the seat through half-closed eyes. She had dragged herself into the corner and was using the two walls to keep herself sitting upright. The guards stayed outside for these 'visits' now. Well aware that Amy was too weak to pose a threat to their HYDRA superior.
"I know you think we cannot hurt you anymore, Agent Thomas," said Kraus. He was staring at something that he held in his hand. "You are wrong, incidentally. But your own pain does not seem to motivate you." He rubbed the side of his nose. Amy waited, drew a few shallow breaths, tried to stop shivering. "So I have been thinking, whose pain can we use to motivate you?"
She found the question more frightening than anything that had happened so far.
"Not talking today?" Kraus smiled. "I am not sure of the answer myself. Your ex-husband, I considered. Or perhaps your parents? They are doing missionary work in Uganda, yes? Such a dangerous calling." He paused for a moment, let the weight of his words crush Amy. "But then this idea struck me."
He tossed a piece of paper in her direction. She moved her eyes rather than her head to look down at it. No, not a piece of paper, a photograph.
Amy's brow furrowed in confusion. Had the hallucinations finally started then?
She hoped that's what it was- hoped she wasn't really looking at a photograph of Josh, her eight year old neighbour, playing on his front lawn.
Amy leant her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Afraid if she left them open they would betray the fear that was seeping into her heart, a heart that she had worked so hard to numb since waking up in this hell.
"You still have nothing to say?"
Antagonising your captor was not something that you should ever do. Someone had told her that once.
"You sick son of a bitch."
The insult hung in the air between them.
She wanted Kraus to lose his temper. Lose control. Kill her. Because if she was dead she couldn't put anyone in danger ever again.
But she didn't get the response she'd predicted.
Kraus's laughter turned her stomach.
"You amuse me, Agent Thomas," he said. "Do you truly not see? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. We still have Zola's algorithm. We simply need a new launch pad."
Amy willed her eyes open and stared at him in silence. Telling him no without words.
"Do not make me kill this boy to prove my point."
"Stop it!" She heard her voice break, felt something inside herself snap. "Josh doesn't have anything to do with this."
"He does now. Unless you start cooperating."
"I- can't."
"You know you have to say yes."
Amy was a ball of string, unravelling. Josh was just a kid. Just a sweet innocent kid who had the misfortune to live next door to her. She squeezed her eyes shut, felt she deserved the stab of pain that came with every breath.
"Anything you make me build- it won't be enough- they'll find a way to stop you." She kept trying to fight. But now she knew the battle was lost. She wasn't strong enough. Maybe she had never been strong enough. But there were others who were. "There are too many heroes in the world these days."
"Heroes?" he said. "Their time has passed."
No. That wasn't true. Couldn't be true. Amy still believed in heroes.
They didn't even have to be 'super'. She believed in people. Decent people. Good men and women.
And one man who had been good and could be again.
She shouldn't have let her heart thaw. Because now the real pain started. She prayed that Bucky had already forgotten about her. Captain Rogers would keep him busy. Occupied. Surely there would be no time to recall the short days that they had shared when he had a whole lifetime to remember?
Because it would hurt him, if he ever found out about this, and Amy never wanted anything to hurt him ever again.
"It is a childish fantasy to which you cling."
Kraus's voice sliced through her thoughts.
"Hope isn't childish," Amy whispered.
"What hope do you have, Agent Thomas? Your life is a series of failures. You should thank me for giving you the opportunity to be part of something greater." He paused, regarded her. Amy knew she was betrayed by her own wounded expression. "Yes, I have looked into your life in more detail since you became our guest. There was one element of success that I found intriguing."
Amy couldn't imagine what that might be, but she knew it wouldn't be anything good.
"Your encounters with the Winter Soldier. Most curious. Our reports state that his arm was working at sixty-seven percent capacity when he first escaped from us. When our men engaged him two weeks later, when our data predicted a drop to thirty-eight percent capacity, we were surprised to find the function of his arm had been fully restored. How do you think that happened?"
Amy tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
"You miscalculated?"
"I think you fixed him. I do not think you could help yourself. I think it is what you do." Amy didn't much care for the way he looked at her as he made that deduction. He leant back in his seat and rapped his knuckles on the door of the cell. One of the guards appeared. "Bring her to the workshop."
The man walked towards Amy. She shrank away from his hands, to no avail. She almost passed out when he pulled her roughly to her feet and the sensation flooded back into her leg. She could only sob in agony as she was dragged through corridors and upstairs.
It looked like they were in an underground bunker. But the impression that Amy got was hazy, she was only just hanging onto the cusp of consciousness. They entered a room and the guard dropped her onto a plastic computer chair, where she sat slumped, all but defeated.
Kraus had followed.
"We can heal you, you know. Once we are sure you are going to cooperate."
He nodded at the machinery that dominated the room. Amy had no choice but to follow his gaze. Not when he grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her to lift her head. She was too exhausted, too out of breath to even vocalise her pain.
But she hoped the machine wasn't what she thought it was- because she thought she was looking at a page out of Bucky's past. No, not a page. A whole chapter.
There was a chair in the middle of the room, a little like something you might find in a dentist's surgery. If your dentist also happened to be some sort of sick sadist. It was a good job her stomach was empty, because the metal restraints on its arms and legs made Amy want to vomit. There were wires too, and some kind of halo device, all connected to a huge bank of computers. Computers from the depths of history, huge machines that occupied at least twelve square feet of floor space, filling the room from floor to ceiling.
Her head started to spin.
"What do you think?"
"I think it's a torture device."
Kraus laughed.
"Some of the men wanted to use it on you," he said pleasantly. "How attached are you to your brain? To your sense of self? I have requested your cooperation up until now, Agent Thomas. I can take the choice away from you."
Amy stared at Kraus, stared at the machine- it was fifty years old, perhaps- she tested her next sentence out in her head before speaking it aloud.
"It doesn't work anymore, does it?"
Kraus's lip twitched. A miniscule movement that Amy would have missed had she not been waiting for it. He covered the slip with one of his smiles.
"It was shipped over from Europe fifteen years ago. You are correct in thinking that it is not the latest model. That model is- well, temporarily out of our hands. I think I would like you to upgrade this machine for your first assignment."
"Why would I do that?" Amy asked.
"Because little Joshua will die if you do not."
"I don't know how." Honesty and fear compelled Amy to speak.
"Then I suggest you work it out quickly."
"And if I can't?"
"People start dying."
Amy thought about Josh. About her parents. Even briefly about Dan. She thought about the things that she knew HYDRA was capable of and didn't see an escape for any of them. Her life had no value, but their lives did.
"What will you do with it if I fix it?" she whispered.
"Use it, of course."
"On me?"
"Unnecessary."
"On Bucky?"
"Bucky?"
Amy flinched, realised her mistake, but couldn't correct it.
"Ah. Bucky." Kraus repeated the name. "Is that what you call him?" He leant down in front of Amy. She recoiled when he reached out and stroked her cheek. "Is that the key to unlocking you, Agent Thomas?" Amy started to shake her head, but Kraus grabbed her by the chin. "Your outlook is much too narrow. I am not interested in one assassin, but maybe, when my colleagues have captured him, we will let you work on him."
HYDRA was never going to get hold of Bucky again, Amy had to believe that… had to hope for something.
But, just in case, if they ever did find him. This machine couldn't be here waiting.
Her chair, she realised, had wheels, she used her left leg to push herself over to one of the huge generators. The guard moved to grab her, but Kraus stopped him. Amy forced her body into action, removed a panel from the back of the generator one-handed. It was a mess inside. Looked like something had nested between the mechanisms and nibbled through some of the copper wire.
Perhaps she didn't know how to fix it, but she could figure out how to destroy it. If she could get the generators to start, well, getting them to explode shouldn't be a whole lot harder. She caught her chapped lip between her teeth. The explosion would be… big.
Dying in an explosion. It was messy.
It was the death she had escaped once. There wouldn't be an escape this time. But if she could take Kraus and his threats with her, maybe everyone else would be safe.
Josh. Her parents. Dan.
Bucky.
Amy was just about to reach inside the generator when a hand clamped hard around her wrist.
"Do you think me a fool?"
She gritted her teeth as her arm was bent sharply behind her back.
"You think I am going to let you tinker around inside this thing unsupervised?" asked Kraus.
Well, that was what she'd been hoping, but yes, she could see that her judgement had been slightly impaired by her imprisonment.
"Do I need to make a phone call, Agent Thomas? Joshua's whole class are going on a fieldtrip tomorrow."
"No-!"
The denial was punctuated by a sharp gasp as Kraus twisted her arm a little tighter. Amy felt her gunshot wound reopen.
"I begin to think you are more trouble than you are worth, Agent Thomas."
He threw her down onto the floor. Amy's chin hit the concrete. Blood pooled in her mouth. The guard reached down and grabbed her by the neck, dragged her back up onto her feet.
"Sir!"
A new HYDRA soldier appeared. Amy caught a glimpse of the angry look that Kraus shot in his direction before her damaged leg gave way and she hit the floor for a second time.
Lights flashed in front of her eyes, her hearing started to fade. Unconsciousness beckoned, but she thought she heard the man apologise, "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but we're picking up something on radar."