Private James "Jim" Morita got tapped for cleaning detail a lot later than any of the other guys who had been at this fucking prison for the same amount of time. His ranger unit had been almost entirely Nisei with a few Issei in the officer roles. Almost all of them were put on the cleaning detail. Jim supposed HYDRA made the same assumptions about his unit that everyone seemed to make: they'd be more susceptible to having their allegiance turned.

If anything, knowing their captors had that belief pissed Jim and his unit off even more. They'd been feeding a gold mine of information from the HYDRA officers' desks directly into the hands of their fellow prisoners. The guy who seemed to be leading the resistance effort among the imprisoned was always happy to take their intel. After the guy got busted with a map, the rest of the prisoners seemed to grow frosty and wary toward Jim and his unit.

Things didn't get any better when they shuffled up the cage arrangements. Jim wasn't in with any of the Nisei anymore. He had a mix of English and white American troopers that had the fuckin' balls to think Jim was the guy who squealed to the guards about the map. He was insulted. Maybe he felt a little betrayed. And it bothered him that he felt that way, because that meant that he'd been putting some stock in these guys in the first place. Some part of Jim was thinking that he was in this together with all the rest of the prisoners. That he wasn't being "othered."

Jim didn't bother trying to share any information after that.

The night that the doctor came down to personally claim his next victim, one of the guys left in the victim's cell kept the whole damn place awake screaming and banging on the bars. Some huge guy with a real, honest-to-god bowler hat would just not shut the fuck up, cursing the doctor and all of HYDRA until the sun came up. Jim was really annoyed. He had a job to do in the morning, and he didn't want to do it on zero sleep.

What he couldn't puzzle out was why no one else told the bowler hat to shut the fuck up all night long. They just let him do it. They never allowed it when some other sad sack started crying.

Anyway, the point was that Jim was dead tired the next day when the guards came to get him and another one of the guys from his unit that was on cleaning detail, Private Suzuki, to remove another corpse. The guard led them to one of the weird cells in the isolation ward. These cells were weird mostly because of their construction. The doors were thick as hell and had heavy seals around them. Jim supposed they were airtight when the door was closed. Whatever they coated the interior walls with was suffocating. He'd hate to have been locked up inside one of those. The smallest sounds echoed in there, but other noises seemed to die before anyone got to hear them. Would drive a man absolutely insane.

The corpse was a medic. American. Bullet through the head from one ear to the other. Based on the pool of mostly-dried blood on the floor beside a sorry excuse for a sleeping pallet, Jim guessed the body had been in this cell overnight. A sorry companion for whoever had to sleep on the pallet.

"Draußen," the guard said in an almost soft-sounding tone of voice. He must have remembered himself, because he cleared his throat and said in a much more deliberate voice, "Outside."

Jim and Suzuki hefted the body between the two of them and carried it out of that smothering room. Their boots made heavy sounds as they carried it the short distance to the door which led to the courtyard. There was already a deep trench started. Jim and Suzuki didn't need to count it off or coordinate anything. Jim had learned quick from Suzuki's lead; the body was laid in the pile. A sardine nestled tight amongst its fellows.

The guard escorted them back in and had them collect the cleaning cart. They scrubbed at the bloodstain until it was naught but a pale, rusty memory on the floor. They'd just finished up and were headed to the storage closet to return the cart when the latest victim was frog-marched past them in the opposite direction. Jim hesitated, watching the procession. He recognised the doctor's choice: that sergeant that kept stepping in front of blows meant for stupid, clumsy privates. Jim had heard from Suzuki that this sergeant had taken a baton crack to the knees for one of theirs, Private Iguchi. The story had always stuck in Jim's head because Iguchi was a dumb idiot and one of the only guys in his squad who was younger than Jim.

The sergeant's gaze slid over to Jim and Suzuki as they passed each other. There was an uncomfortable moment where Jim couldn't get himself to look anywhere else. The sergeant seemed to be staring straight into Jim's mind.

"He—" the sergeant started to say, but the words were busted up by a coughing fit.

"No talking!" barked one of the sergeant's guards.

When Jim and Suzuki were left mostly alone at the end of their shift to finish up what was left of the guards' laundry, Jim said in a low voice, "What was the guy's name who covered for Ich?"

Suzuki didn't look up from the hole he was darning in a pair of trousers but his brows drew together. "Barnes, I think it was."

"That was him in the corridor?"

"Hmm." Suzuki nodded his head once.

"That's a shame," Jim said.

Three days later, a guard found them in the laundry and told Jim to deliver a new set of recycled American fatigues to the doctor's laboratory. The blood ran quicker in Jim's veins when he heard the orders. No one except for the medics had ever gone into the doctor's lab before. The medics that went in there had a good shot of winding up dead a few days later. Jim knew because he'd seen all the red crosses on the corpses out in the courtyard.

Suzuki went to the pile of drab green clothes that had been salvaged from prisoners that had come and gone before them. He picked the usual trousers, undershirt, and field shirt and handed the bundle off to Jim. With them clutched to his chest, Jim took his time on the trip to the lab. Despite having never been inside the place, he knew exactly where it was. Knew the way like the back of his hand, if only because he knew that he never wanted to go there.

The door was open, so Jim went inside without trying to announce his presence. The two guards stationed beside the opening did nothing to help or stop him. He was sure his heart was pounding loud enough for anyone inside to be aware of him anyway. There was a flash of light as the sun reflected off of the doctor's glasses as he looked up. He was sat at a black-top table deep within the lab. Apparently surrounded by samples of…Jim didn't try too hard to see what.

"Yes, come," said the doctor. He made a dismissive wave toward the centre of the room and the table there.

Jim stared at that table and the horrifying arrangement that was directly above it, mounted to the ceiling. It was the entire catalog of torture equipment up there. Had to be – what else could that shit be used for? That wasn't any standard surgeon's operating theatre. There were tubes and mechanical arms with tapered instruments fitted on the ends. About two dozen different hoses of different colours, their nozzles of varying shape and size. The mind could only imagine to what they were meant to attach.

The centre of all of this madness was a heavy-looking piece. It had several shields around its tapered nozzle, which came to a very fine point. Whatever came out of that nozzle was precisely directed. Just the shape of it, the unusualness of it, told Jim that this was a tool to be feared. It was a means to ruin, not heal.

"Dress him," said the doctor. And then his head went down, and he began to tinker with his tubes and dishes of god-knew-what.

Jim approached the table with his arms knotted together as tightly as he could stand it. The spare clothing that was compressed into his chest was effective at hiding his trembling. He had to be careful not to knock any of the wheeled trays full of fuckin' knives and syringes that almost seemed to be glowing. What the fuck, what the fuck! The victim – James Barnes, the thin metal dog tag around his neck confirmed it – was lying there on that table with the most oblivious look on his face. Pupils absolutely blown. Drenched in sweat. Jim wouldn't have been surprised if this guy couldn't see a damn thing that was going on around him. Probably had no idea that he was lying there in naught but his underpants and socks.

With one shifty look around the room, Jim reached a hand out and snapped his fingers in front of the guy's face. "Hey," he said. "Hey, Barnes?"

Flickers of recognition rippled across his face. He turned toward Jim. "Huh?"

"My name's Jim."

Barnes mumbled, "Don't call me that."

"No, my name is Jim."

"Oh."

"You gotta get some clothes on, ace."

"Huh?"

"C'mon." Jim held out a hand and waited while Barnes remembered how to control his own. When they finally grasped hands and Jim pulled the sergeant upright into a sitting position, he had to swallow down some bile. Little bruises and needle marks littered the sergeant's inner arms. There was a small incision, maybe five centimetres long, on one side of his abdomen. More puncture wounds on his lower back.

What the fuck.

Jim tried to be careful as he helped this strung out sergeant to get dressed. Barnes kept wincing and flinching away with certain movements. His legs were mostly compliant though, so getting his trousers on wasn't too difficult.

"That will be all," the doctor called once Barnes was decent again. "You are dismissed, private."

Jim hesitated. A guard stepped forward. There was nothing for him to do but go.

Jim thought about the track marks and what it could all mean for days. At night, he stared through the bars of his cage and into the one that Sergeant Barnes had been taken out of. He thought of telling the men in that cage what he'd seen. The bowler hat was being particularly rowdy on the production floor, the other prisoners said at night. Reckless was the most popular word. Jim wondered if news on Barnes would make the bowler hat more or less so.

About ten days after Sergeant Barnes was claimed by the doctor, the guards summoned Jim and Suzuki to the isolation cell with the cleaning cart. More blood needed removing. There was a lot of blood. But no body. The pallet was gone. They spent most of the day scrubbing the tacky puddle until it matched the first one. Something was gnawing at Jim's stomach the whole time, and he couldn't put a name to it.

Not until their shift was almost over and, in the laundry, Jim came across the field shift he'd dressed Barnes in the week before. The lower left sleeve was bloody. No drab olive colour could be seen. It was all rusty red. Suzuki pulled the shirt out of Jim's hands and tossed it into the pile to be incinerated.

"Not worth it to try to save that one," Suzuki said.

Jim was feeling worry.

The next day, he was told to deliver a new shirt to the doctor's lab. Suzuki tossed one of the most damaged sweaters they had to Jim; he didn't want to waste any good pieces on someone who'd be gone soon.

Jim entered the lab the same way he'd gone in the first time.

"Hurry," said the doctor, "we are on the clock for the next treatment."

Barnes looked like a corpse. His eyes could have been in the process of being sucked back into his head. Still sweaty all over. More incisions, bruises on his chest. Patches of skin that looked burned, but the wounds had very distinct edges. Two of those were on either of his temples. Needle marks persisted. Jim scanned the sergeant's left arm, looking for what could have caused the left sleeve of the last shirt to be so thoroughly drenched. But there was nothing there. No wounds or bandages on that arm looked like they could have bled that much.

"Hey, Barnes," Jim said in a low voice. "It's me, Jim, again."

No response. Glassy eyes fixed on the frightening array of ceiling-mounted equipment that Jim tried very hard to ignore when he came here.

"We gotta stop meeting like this," Jim carried on bravely. "My momma didn't raise me to take home people that can't keep their clothes on."

Nothing.

"Let's get this over with as fast as possible, huh? I don't wanna touch you any more than I gotta."

Barnes showed his first sign of life when Jim lifted his head to fit the sweater on him: he flinched away. Jim gave him a moment before he tried again. Another flinch, but this time Jim just kept going. Barnes didn't resist so much, but he started up muttering a mantra. Didn't stop even after Jim was finished. It was his name, rank, and serial number.

The fuck kind of interrogations were going on in here?

"You are dismissed," came the doctor's voice. It was close.

Jim jumped away when he saw the doctor approaching the table.

"Go. I have no further need for you."

Jim was backing away before the guard even started to approach.

Suzuki and Jim had to take another medic's corpse out to the mass grave in the courtyard exactly twenty days after Barnes was first taken. When they were in the medics' quarters collecting the body, Jim heard them muttering about how Barnes had lasted more than twice as long as any guy before him.

The doctor didn't usually call anyone to take away the bodies of his victims. He kept them, and Jim was sure they were eventually cremated. No mystery why, he thought. HYDRA couldn't afford to have the world discover what the hell they were doing.

That night Jim stared hard at the bowler hat and his cellmates. The urge to tell them what he saw was stronger than ever. He didn't even know why he wanted to say something. He didn't have any proof that Barnes was even still alive. Unlikely, based on how he'd looked the last time Jim saw him. There was nothing Barnes's cellmates could do, even if they did know what Jim had seen. But that was it, wasn't it? Jim didn't know what he'd seen beyond some seriously fucked up shit. Maybe it didn't matter what it meant or what the doctor was even trying to do with Barnes and all the other sick prisoners that came before him.

Didn't matter, because it was fucked up shit no matter what the explanation was. Somebody ought to know. It had to be stopped. This was something worse than using prisoners of war to build bombs.

The bowler hat caught Jim staring and contorted his face. "The fuck are you looking at?"

No one wanted to hear what the guys on cleaning detail had to say anymore, Jim had to remind himself. And so he kept his silence. For now.