Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you – Part II of Athena! AKA Chapter 24 ^_^
Keep a look out, friends – some new characters are going to be introduced today! That would include original Marvel character Baron Heinrich Zemo, and my original character, Zemo's apprentice and second-in-command, Wolfgang Hofstadter (Mina's father, and Johann's arch-rival)… Suspense!
I want to take a moment to thank all of you who have continued to read this fic and have stayed with me through the long haul – even when it has taken me painful amounts of time to update! I hope you've enjoyed it so far, and I am truly grateful for your touching reviews and wonderful advice!
Enjoy Part II!
Regards,
J.B.
Music that inspired this chapter: Eidola, Originem, The Solace System, Omen – The Ghoulish Malady, Second Stone, Chemical Insomnia,and Unchain Utopia by Epica
*Disclaimer: the original character Wolfgang Hofstadter's appearance was heavily inspired by Darth Vader of the Star Wars universe, and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen of the Hellboy universe. My rendition of the Baron Heinrich Zemo is also slightly different from the original comic version – the hood that covers his face is a dark navy color, lacking eyeholes or a mouth-opening in order to make him appear completely faceless, and he does not wear the original costume that is depicted in the comics, but rather, typical SS uniforms. His overall appearance is heavily inspired by the original film adaptation of The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains, as well as the film Blood and Black Lace.
"Addiction's growing faster, making you go insane. Ivory fangs are smiling, you'll have to break the habit. Imprisonment's approaching, catching the savages. The mirror's magic showing chemical insomnia. Don't give in to all of this, dive into ecstatic bliss. Tame the lion that's hiding the need to be free." - Chemical Insomnia by Epica
Laboratory of Dr. Heinrich Zemo, Twelfth Baron of Zeulniz
Berlin, Germany – 1943
There was a steel gurney that stood alone in the center of the room, the harsh fluorescent lights overhead casting everything in a queer and haunting light. A body lay motionlessly, strapped to the gurney. His chest rose and fell weakly, the movement barely detectable. The oxygen tubes that fed into his nostrils pulsed with the continuous flow of air, and they hissed when the body exhaled. His blond hair was silvery and ethereal in the harsh lighting, contrasting starkly with the plate of steel, chrome, and clockwork gears that turned on their own accord, which was set into his pale, cream-colored flesh. It fit like a glove around the closed left eye, the metal covering the entirety of the bottom eyelid, fused into the flesh. The steel plate began at the hairline and ended cleanly at the bottom of the jawbone. It roughly covered the left half of the face, although it did not encompass any part of the nose or mouth. The pasty flesh of the face was tinted a yellowish hue from the remnants of dried iodine.
The body was missing its left leg – long-healed sutures bound the flesh at the end of the stump tightly, so that only a thin scar was now visible to the naked eye. A metal brace had been expertly fastened to either side of the amputated knee. The right arm, too, had been shortened drastically, and a metal cuff gleamed at the end of the forearm, where another scar marked where frayed flesh endings had once been bound together with precise stitches. A prosthetic arm of steel and complex wiring lay on a table beside the body, the slender, wiry fingers of the artificial hand lying dead on the metal surface – waiting to be carefully set into the metal cuff, so that its owner might reanimate the artificial limb. Two scientists bent over the body, carefully fitting a prosthetic leg to the stump of the body, the metal sliding cleanly into the brace. Over the left side of the body's chest, an enormous piece of steel covered the area of the heart cavity, the pectoral, and the left side of the ribcage, extending over the body's side. However, upon closer examination, there were multiple, small pieces of steel fastened together to form one immense sheet of metal that replaced the flesh that had once resided there. Where the heart would have been located, there was a complex system of turning cogs and gears that ticked and hissed in a pulsating rhythm, mimicking a human heartbeat. A series of tiny plastic tubes sprouted from the whirring cogs, and with each hiss and tick, ruby-red blood was pumped into the veins of the body, just as a human heart would operate.
Along the left arm of the body, two long, blackish lines were faintly visible along the pale flesh, and beneath that thin layer of flesh, a long, silver blade – much like that of a sabre – was concealed, to be released from the flesh layer for use as a deadly blade. A flex of the left hand in a particular fashion was all that was required to release the blade. Likewise, an identical blade was built into the prosthetic designed to replace the lower half of the right arm and the right hand.
These prosthetic limbs were only the latest designs to be applied to Wolfgang Hofstadter. His body – broken and inoperable without the assistance of artificial technology – had long been a toy for the pleasure of the Baron Heinrich Zemo. New and advanced prosthetic limbs, equipped with all manner of hellish weapons, were constantly being fitted to the man's amputated limbs, intended to make him faster, stronger, more agile, and most importantly – more deadly. Yes, the blond-haired man was the Baron's killing machine, designed specifically to be indestructible, un-killable, and invincible to all human weaponry. To the unsuspecting eye, the pale and porcelain-white skin of the body that lay on the steel gurney were the last remnants of his human flesh, unscathed by any imperfections or wounds.
However, this was an erroneous assumption. Roughly ninety percent of the body's flesh was of synthetic nature, designed from a silicon material precisely invented to meld to the human physical form, appearing as natural and organic as was possible for the time. Really, only the flesh of the face was the man's natural skin, and beneath it too, was a hefty layer of indestructible metal. And, in time, that flesh too would be replaced, as Wolfgang's physicality was continuously being improved. Everything else was perfectly artificial, and flawless in its fakeness. And beneath that synthetic flesh lay a steel infrastructure that had been expertly fused with his bone marrow, via a series of lengthy, taxing surgical operations.
Yes, by all accounts, Wolfgang Hofstadter's body was indestructible. Bullets were of little concern to him – they could rip through that layer of synthetic skin, they could try desperately to puncture that steel infrastructure, but never to any avail. That skin could easily be repaired or replaced, and the steel bones beneath were constantly being reinforced, to the point that now, bullets rarely had the thrust to puncture the metal material.
And of course, there was the alien-looking artificial heart that pumped blood and beat life into this body that lay on the steel gurney, appearing lifeless and hollow. The heart was perhaps the only Achilles' heel of an otherwise flawless design – if the complex system of gears that pumped blood through the body was to suffer even minor damage, the mechanical heart would almost immediately stop functioning, and the body would cease to live – just as if a human heart were to stop beating. The singular flaw in Heinrich Zemo's design. Although a steel shield was typically fastened over the heart to shield it from mortal damage, it was not a reliable failsafe – particularly when screws had become increasingly prone to coming loose whenever the body experienced prolonged periods of heightened activity. No amount of welding, melding, or fastening had made that shield totally immune to destruction, especially not when his scientists occasionally required access to the heart, as they did now, to further finesse it and fine-tune it. Very much like a wind-up toy, the heart, too, required cleaning and greasing and recalibrating to make sure that its cogs and gears wound up and released like they should.
The brain and the blood were the only truly organic remains of Wolfgang Hofstadter's physical form, and consequently, they were at once the most important and the most vulnerable. The blood was the fuel that powered the heart; the heart circulated the blood to the brain, and thus allowed for the faintest spark of life to precariously animate this metal shell of a vaguely humanoid body. If the heart stopped working, so too did the blood and so too did the brain. Zemo had long ago mastered the art of keeping the brain on ice – literally, in Wolfgang's unfortunate case – long enough for the artificial heart to be reanimated if necessary. But of course, the brain was an incredibly fragile organ – without the heart to pump the blood, the brain would eventually die, and with it, so too would the body. And the window of opportunity to reanimate the heart was preciously small.
Zemo had plenty of experience reanimating hearts. Reanimation of the brain he feared – the brain being that most elusive of human organs – would forever evade his grasp.
Even if Zemo did finally achieve the prized scientific breakthrough of reanimating a deceased brain, he doubted that the body of his charge would survive another operation of such immeasurable gravity. As it was, he had barely survived the hundreds – if not thousands – of operations he had undergone in the last eighteen years.
Heinrich Zemo stood silently on the observation deck of the laboratory, watching with mild interest as the two scientists below fitted the last of the newest improvements to the unconscious body that lay on the gurney. With a slender, gloved hand, he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, removing a long, thin syringe filled with liquid nicotine. He cuffed the arm of his black suit jacket, undid the cufflink at his left wrist and rolled up the pure white sleeve, revealing pale flesh. With nimble fingers, he uncapped the syringe and sank the sharp tip of the needle into his arm, waiting patiently for the syringe to empty.
Zemo sighed and ran a hand across the smooth fabric that covered every inch of his face and head. A seamless stretch of silken, dark navy cloth that extended from the top of his skull to just below the base of his throat, molding to his head like a glove. It was really such a pity that he could no longer enjoy a nice, leisurely smoke. Sticking a needle in one's forearm whenever the craving hit was efficient, yes, but so very lacking in satisfaction.
He leaned forward against the metal railings of the observation deck.
"Are you quite finished, gentlemen?" His voice echoed metallically against the steel surfaces of the laboratory. It was high, and slightly nasal in tone – pompous, cultured, and meticulous. The words rolled off his tongue with a certain flourish, coldly confident and perfectly enunciated.
The two scientists robotically turned to gaze up at him, their pale faces rigid.
"Yes, Herr Baron!" One of them piped up, his voice still youthful, and heavily tinted by fear.
Zemo smiled beneath the dark cloth.
"And I trust that our dear Wolfgang has not suffered too much damage?"
"He is scheduled to wake from the anesthetics in approximately twenty minutes, Herr Baron. He will be capable of operating at full capacity almost immediately."
"Excellent, excellent. My good men, you are released from your services for the evening. I will watch over my charge, never you fear."
His voice smiled genially – his tone fell lightly, gracefully on the air. The scientists would never be able to see the hungry gleam that glittered so savagely in his eyes – eyes that no one had seen in ages. They would never see the lusty, thin-lipped, and malicious grin. The Baron Zemo stood there, a faceless, well-dressed, perfectly composed Berlin socialite, and his voice dripped with honeyed gentility. Zemo had always regretted his lack of a poker face – a skill that he had failed to master as a budding youngster in the political chaos of imperial Germany. So in truth, the wretched hood that was permanently fused with the flesh beneath it was not all that bad. What might sound to an untrained ear as a sweet and friendly voice was often, in truth, most malicious. And really, it did serve him as his best weapon – a level and restrained tone of voice did not betray the insanity that no doubt danced wildly in his concealed eyes.
So much the better.
The baron waited in contented silence, one hand splayed lightly over the observation deck's railing, the other elbow resting lightly on its surface, holding his sharply angled chin in an outstretched palm. The two scientists dressed the body that lay on the steel gurney in silence, and without a word, they disappeared from the laboratory, leaving the baron alone with his blond-haired, comatose subjugate.
Zemo glanced at the silver wristwatch on his right hand – exactly eighteen hundred hours.
In precisely four hours, Wolfgang Hofstadter and his death squadrons would be dispatched from this laboratory, right on schedule. And, at precisely two hundred hours, they would be arriving in a small and very remote alpine village, consisting of a population of roughly sixty souls. These individuals mattered little to Zemo; he held no particular grudge against them, he did not dislike them. But, quite simply, he required subjects upon whom he could test his latest androids. He required subjects who could be quietly and anonymously murdered, unaccompanied by any sort of media backlash. The steady stream of prisoners that had once populated his laboratories had now dwindled radically in recent weeks and he was in desperate need of human lives. It seemed as though the concentration camps were running out of Jews to send him, and Hitler's advisors had grown weary of the speed with which Zemo was burning through the hefty supply of human subjects they had granted him. The decimation of some nondescript village – blast it, if he could remember the name – with the earliest model of his death-ray had merely been the cherry on top. Of course, he still could not understand why the event had blown up in his face quite so terribly – after all, the Third Reich massacred millions of souls by the week, if not daily. And yet, if he were to harm a single hair on the head of some unsuspecting civilian, it was deemed utterly inhumane.
So it was that his killing machines, led by the newly updated cyborg Hofstadter, would be silently unleashed on a very unsuspecting pastoral village in the dead of night. He had taken care to assure that the village was so diminutive that it was highly unlikely that anyone would bat an eye if they were to discover that its population had been slaughtered. And of course, his death squadrons would be long gone by the time anyone discovered any evidence of a mass killing – thus, no bad blood to be spilt on his good name.
Zemo stood up and stretched languidly before making his way down the spiraling flight of stairs to the ground floor, crossing the room to stand over the steel gurney. He smiled beneath the thin fabric of his hood, reaching out to tap a gloved finger against the artificial heart that lay bare, ticking and hissing.
"Oh, you poor thing." Zemo purred. "I have put you through so much suffering, haven't I?"
He traced the man's steel jawbone, admiring the handiwork of his scientists. "But where ever would you be without me, hmm? Whoever would have saved you from the burning fires of that horrible attack all those years ago, if not me?"
Zemo chuckled to himself. "A pity, though – I'd only intended for you to lose the arm. The leg was really more of an afterthought." He tapped the artificial heart again, watching the blood circulate through the ornate system of tubes with interest. "I'll have to arrange for some sort of diversion so that we might get rid of the left arm, too. You'd really benefit marvelously from another prosthesis."
The body on the gurney jolted upright, eyes flashing open, hyperventilating. Strands of silvery blond hair hung haphazardly over the metal face piece, grey eyes gleaming brightly in the harsh white light of the room.
"Good evening, Wolfgang." Zemo said amicably. "Did you enjoy your little siesta?"
The blond-haired man was breathing heavily, the artificial heart hissing and ticking with renewed vigor. "My head feels like someone took a battering ram to it." He groaned, clutching the back of his skull with artificial fingers that moved smoothly and fluidly.
Zemo rolled his eyes beneath the dark fabric. "Your intolerance for pain is absolutely disgraceful. The most powerful weapon in all of the Reich, and here he sits, complaining about a little headache."
"I did not ask to be a weapon, Zemo." The blond-haired man muttered darkly. "You tend to forget that."
"You had no right to ask for much of anything, my dear boy." Zemo hissed. "You were a massive failure, a stain on my once flawless reputation. Your only saving grace was Johann Schmidt's arrogance. If he hadn't managed to fall so magnificently out of Hitler's favor, you'd still be chained to a desk filing the man's tax returns."
The grey eyes flashed at him. "And I was quite happy to fill his position when he did fall, Heinrich. Only that wasn't good enough for you. If you hadn't been so eager to send me on a wild goose chase to the Sudetenland that achieved absolutely nothing other than having fifty percent of my limbs blown to smithereens, I would still be happily fulfilling my duties to the Reich as head of Espionage and Sabotage."
"You would have had an equal chance of having those limbs blown off had Hitler sent you to the Russian front. You speak rather boldly for a man who will forever be in my debt. If it were not for my inventions, you'd be a rotting corpse six feet underground right about now. You certainly wouldn't be complaining then, now would you?"
"Oh yes, because death is such a terrible prospect compared to the positively wonderful existence I lead now. Languishing as a freakish cyborg for your personal pleasure. If you had just let me die out there, I might've been able to see my family again."
Zemo sighed, irritated. "Are you still talking about them? I told you, Wolfgang, they died. Get over it. An assassin who insists on obsessing over petty sentimentality is a distracted assassin. And a distracted assassin is an altogether ineffective assassin, and I have absolutely no time for ineffective assassins. I implore you to get these childish emotions out of your head. You've become so utterly depressing to be around – hell, I'm getting depressed just listening to you."
He glanced absently at his wristwatch. "Why, look at all the time we've just wasted talking about this nonsense. It's already half past 18:00 and you, my good man, are due to be departing in three and a half hours."
The blond-haired man stared at him in disgust. "Would it be so easy for you to 'forget' about your wife and child if they were to be torn from your grasp, without even being able to say goodbye to them? Would it really, Heinrich?"
Zemo laughed harshly. "Are you actually asking me that, Wolfgang? Have you even looked at my wife, recently? The woman's an absolute wreck and my son is a spineless disgrace to my lineage. Believe me, dear boy, I would kill them myself, if I could. Alas, someone has to take on the name when I pass on from this world. A pity, really – Helmut leaves so much to be desired."
The blond-haired man raised an eyebrow, his thin lips pursed. "I forget how compassionate you are." He muttered.
Zemo chuckled lightly. "Remember not to bite the hand that feeds you, Wolfgang." He said lightly. "If you'll remember, that was your rival's greatest flaw."
"If I recall, Johann Schmidt is leading a very comfortable existence at his facility in the Alps."
Zemo grinned wickedly beneath the dark fabric that masked his face. "Oh, not anymore. Haven't you heard? The Red Skull has been vanquished."
The blond-haired man blinked. "The Allies finally caught up with him, eh?" He rose from the gurney and walked to the table that held the rest of his uniform – the prosthetic leg ever so slightly jerky in its movement.
"They swarmed HYDRA's headquarters last week. Effectively obliterated his air-fleet. It was only a matter of time, really. HYDRA's numbers were impressive, but not nearly enough to evoke a large-scale apocalypse, let alone sustain one. Johann Schmidt was doomed to fail – everyone in the Reich knew that. The only people who really gave a damn about him were the Americans."
"Johann had weapons of extraordinary capacity. Whatever that Norwegian artifact was that the SS was so incensed about him running after – it was rumored that its strength far surpasses any traditional explosives." Wolfgang remarked quietly.
Zemo snorted. "Oh please, you don't think the Allies are tinkering with alternative energies? Atom bombs and the like? The Americans compensate for their lack of intelligence by importing the world's geniuses. Erskine, Einstein – isn't it amusing how our own best and brightest are flocking to the 'New World'? If Johann had his sights set on annihilating the United States, he'd be in for quite the rude awakening. The Americans would and will likely still strike back with a vengeance. It's only a matter of when."
"And what of Johann? Did they kill him?"
"Apparently not, although I still can't quite fathom how he would have survived. The man fell some thousands of meters out of an aircraft. Contrary to that evidence however, it's been discovered that the Allies have taken him into custody. Whether or not he was in a body bag has not been disclosed."
The blond-haired man whistled softly. "That's rather impressive, all things considered."
"The impressiveness of the feat will be short lived. No doubt, Johann will be spending the rest of his days languishing in a maximum security prison on the opposite side of the Atlantic. A pleasant thought."
Zemo raised his wristwatch to eye-level. "Enough chatter. You're expected in the armament room. The androids are eagerly awaiting your orders."
Wolfgang sighed deeply and pulled on the slick, silvery leather coat that lay on the side table. "Sounds like a smashing time." He muttered.
"Oh, I trust that it will be." Zemo chirped gaily. "It's really quite a quaint little village – very picturesque. Of course, I suppose it won't be when you're finished with it. Hmm, pity."
"You've got a sick mind, I hope you know that." The blond-haired man said pointedly.
Zemo laughed – a harsh and high-pitched noise. "Oh come now, don't be so melodramatic, Wolfgang. This entire nation is comprised of picturesque little villages. You've seen one, you've seen them all. What's the harm in removing one from the map then, eh? We're making the cartographers' lives easier."
The blond-haired man glared darkly. "Oh, I'm certain we are." He said, and left Zemo alone in the laboratory.
XXX
Approximately Thirty Kilometers South of Erding, Germany – 1943
The sky was a dark navy, punctured here and there with the sparkling light of tiny stars. The clouds were thick and heavy, and the air was still. The rumbling of Luftwaffe cargo planes was absent – only the light whispers of a cold breeze. The dampness of the ground was beginning to soak into the fatigues of the American troopers, laying on their stomachs or crouched in the grass. They were perhaps five to ten strong, binoculars slung around their necks, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. Some of them dozed – others were rigidly still, waiting. They did not know what to expect, or what exactly it was that they were lying in wait for.
Rural Germany, with it wending grassy hills, snowcapped mountains, and wide open pastures, was rife with POW camps, Nazi base camps – but this grassy knoll, overlooking a pastoral village, was decidedly absent of military presence, and pristine in its silence.
In all, there were no more than ten chalets, roofs sloping with age, sides bowing out. A sleepy little settlement, pristine in its simplicity.
The soldiers wondered why this sleepy little village would ever have reason to be a target of interest. It held no strategic value whatsoever.
Yet, dozens of these seemingly dull little alpine hollows had been disappearing over the course of several months. Houses and huts were left mangled, the frames of old farmhouses left in smoking ruins. But no bodies. No corpses – no mangled body parts, not even the carcasses of livestock were left to be scavenged upon by hungry vultures. Just empty buildings – veritable ghost towns.
Whole populations, regardless of their small size, had been wiped out across rural Bavaria, Northern Germany, along the Austrian border – even Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Geographic location varied with each target, and no village was ever less than forty kilometers apart from the last. Yet, the population of each village – too small to even warrant a place on the most current maps of Germany – ranged consistently between sixteen and sixty inhabitants. Never more than ten to twelve households in total, and never fewer than two.
But no evidence was ever left, and not even native civilians had witnessed the events firsthand. At dusk, an unassuming, uninteresting little village would be actively closing up shop for the day – shepherds locking up livestock in their pens, bringing horses to the stables, collecting firewood to stoke up the stoves into the coming day. Children were called in from play or chores – windows gradually went dark, and the village became quiet as it settled down for the night.
According to the handfuls of civilians that had been quietly rounded up and questioned, depending on the location of the latest occurrence, not a sound ever passed in the night. There were no screams, no children cried, no mothers wailed, no men bellowed. The shrieks of the dying were never heard. The only evidence of the carnage left over lie in the smoking ruins of huts, and the blood that stained that ground. No shells of fired bullets, no spilt gunpowder.
The Nazi regime had neglected to publicly address the mysterious killings – no German newspapers made any mention of the massacring of nameless pastoral villages, no intercepted radio waves suggested any evidence or intentions of future attacks.
With absolutely no evidence to glean from, and not even the slightest inkling of where to begin surveilling, dispatching a reconnaissance team into the depths of rural Germany to determine the cause of the killings – if indeed they were killings, as no bodies had ever been left behind in the wreckage – seemed pointless. But with Johann Schmidt in custody and HYDRA now defunct, Chester Phillips had been tasked with bringing down yet another Nazi-prodigy-gone-bad – or worse, given that all of Hitler's protégés to date had been particularly unstable.
The prime suspect at hand was some German baron of particularly esteemed lineage, and a prominent member of the Nazi party. And, it was speculated that said baron was in possession of an experimental death ray with the capacity to annihilate anything and everything that fell into its path, and that that same baron had already utilized his weaponry on innocent German civilians. If indeed the reports of his status within the party were true, the lack of media coverage regarding the recent killings would make perfect sense. Even Hitler recognized the dangers of his regime being exposed to the German public as a hierarchy of mad scientists who killed with reckless abandon, and all for the sake of racial purification. If a high-ranking member of the party were to be exposed as one such killer, even a regime that had demonstrated the utmost care in concealing its crimes would struggle to find a convincing cover-up.
The soldiers lie restlessly on the damp grass, the air silent and cold, waiting.
One of the troopers spoke up in a husky whisper. "Anyone got the time?"
"Three thirty." One whispered back.
"How long we gotta stay here till we can call it quits?" One mumbled, yawning.
The group's commander raised his hand, signaling for silence. "All of you shut up!" He hissed. "I hear something."
A strange rustling whispered along the breeze.
"I don't hear nothin'." One griped.
"I said, shut up!" The commander rasped. "All of you knuckleheads keep your traps shu – "
A distinct, metallic clanking echoed across the air – rhythmic, as though a march were taking place.
It grew louder as every second passed, concentrated and dense – it rode on the wind with a strange heaviness.
The group commander signaled for the troopers to hit the deck, pressing themselves flat against the grass. Raising a hand slightly, he pointed to the east.
The clanking grew steadily louder – a deafening, pulsating wave that washed over the meadows with tremendous force.
And just on the horizon, they appeared.
A line of tall, slender figures of shining silver and chrome. They pushed forward as one body, lithe and languid – humanlike in both appearance and movement.
But they were clearly not human. They were unnaturally tall – perhaps seven or eight feet – and their limbs consisted of gleaming metal plates, like armor, connected by thin blue and red wires – almost resembling human veins. Their faces were long and narrow, and their eyes were impossibly wide, glowing bright red.
The line undulated as hundreds more of the strange robotic creatures surged forward, as though preparing to swarm the pastoral village that lay some yards ahead.
A sharp noise sliced through the heavy air, and the robotic figures immediately disassembled in a fury – like humanoid waves parting to allow a new figure to enter onto the stage.
He surged forward, covered from head to toe in scaly silver leather that glimmered in the eerie red light that pulsated from the metal creatures. But this figure was distinctly human in his proportions – tall and broad shouldered, stockier and thickly muscled. He radiated power as he moved forward, sharply angled chin thrust outward, shoulders back, head held high and proud. In the moonlight, his skin shone pale and porcelain, nearly translucent. A shock of white-blond hair peaked out from beneath a silver military-style cap, the eponymous death's head grinning wickedly from its brim.
The lanky robots stood at rigid attention before him as he stalked forward, coldly surveying their ranks. There was no feeling in the grey eyes that looked upon the rows of metal and chrome – no haughty determination, no lust for destruction, no hateful rage. Merely an empty hollowness, void of empathy or emotion.
Without a word of command to the rows of androids, the figure turned slowly to face the tiny pastoral settlement before him. He raised his left arm towards the moon.
With the same sharp, metallic noise that had sliced cleanly through the air only moments ago, what appeared to be the blade of a narrow, gleaming sabre released from the man's wrist.
The metallic creatures swarmed forward – a pulsating, undulating wave, surging and pushing and writhing, like a singular being that had been encaged for far too long, yearning desperately to break free.
The American troopers pressed themselves flatter against the ground, the tall meadow grasses blending with their green fatigues. One whispered, awestruck, "What are they?"
"Looks some kind of android." The group commander replied.
"And what about the leader? What the hell is he?"
The commander shook his head, biting his lip. "Binoculars." He rasped, sticking out a hand.
An explosion shook the ground –
The screaming started.
The commander yanked the binoculars from his comrade's hand, his own fingers trembling as he pressed them to his eyes.
The village had started to burn – hundreds of silver androids swarmed the thatched houses, bursts of light shooting from their wrists and eyes – like laser beams, they incinerated everything they touched. Men, women, and children flooded from their homes – some half-dressed, as though preparing for the dawn; others in only their nightclothes. Children screeched and wailed – only to have the screams ripped viciously from their throats by an android's deadly fire.
And the leader – languid and graceful in his movements, he seemed to twirl about amid the din, silver blades glimmering at both of his wrists, deftly slicing out the jugulars from anyone and anything that dared cross his path.
An elderly man, looking pathetically frail and drawn in his nightgown, grey hair sweat-slicked and pasted to his forehead, charged forward with a yowl at the leader, an ancient looking rifle brandished in his white-knuckled hands.
Several shots rang out, tearing across the black night air that already hummed with the crackling electrical currents of the androids' lasers.
But the leader merely spread out his arms, sharp blades seeming to grin in the firelight, as though welcoming the old man's bullets with zeal.
The commander's eyes widened and his fingers trembled, causing the binoculars to momentarily lose focus. The bullets seemed to clatter against the man – slicing through the silver, serpentine leather of his jacket, they should have punched through layers of flesh and muscle – but instead, the deafening roar of metal colliding with metal, ripping through sheets of chrome and shrapnel, echoed on the heavy air.
The old man stood at the center of the little village, desperately clinging to his gun, firing through the entire magazine – but the leader merely walked forward, in seemingly no rush. Bullets tore through his coat, accompanied by the deafening noise of metal being shredded by metal, of like meeting like – and all the while, the blond-haired man stalked forward, arms spread, palms facing upward, the blades glimmering in the light of the burning village.
He stood mere inches away from the old man now, the rifle's muzzle nearly touching his abdomen. The old man stood wide eyed and deathly pale as he fired numbly, desperately – but no bullet coughed its way out of the rifle – the magazine had emptied.
Through his binoculars, the group commander could have sworn that he saw the leader's mouth quirk in the faintest of smiles.
With a single, well-aimed stroke of the left blade – he sheared the old man's head clean off of his shoulders, leaving a gaping, bloody stump in its stead.
The leader stepped back, allowing the body to fall forward into the dirt.
The commander gripped the binoculars tighter, swallowing hard. The troopers around him struggled to maintain composure – some of them sucked in their breath, others audibly yelped at the sight of the old man's beheading.
The leader stood still at the center of the din, wiping down his blade with a black polishing cloth, clutched daintily in his silver gloved hand. Around him, the androids swarmed – lashing out with their wicked laser beams, blades extended from their wiry limbs – slashing, burning, stabbing, destroying everything in their path.
Yet, the blond-haired man looked the very picture of nonchalance, standing in the middle of a nearly decimated village, surveying the wreckage with a cool, even arrogant, gaze. He seemed utterly disinterested with the scene that unfolded before him. The wind had picked up – cold and sharp, and it beat at the leader's back. The silvery leather of his long trench coat was in tatters – beneath it, a gray uniform, also in tatters, revealed wide gashes and gnarls in what appeared to be steel. But no torn flesh, no blood stains – just gleaming metal, where the old man's bullets had punctured.
The commander set down his binoculars. "Corporal, I want your sights on him." He rasped.
The trooper to his left gaped. "Sir?"
"You heard me, Corporal. Get that bastard in your sights, stat."
"But sir, we're just here for recon – we have no orders to shoot, sir," the trooper balked.
"Corporal, shut the hell up and listen to me, damn it." The commander's eyes were steely, glaring from beneath the brim of his helmet. "You look at that guy, Corporal – what do you see? Do you see blood? Do you see skin? What are you looking at, Corporal?"
"I see – I see metal, sir."
The group commander stared out at the burning settlement grimly. "Do you know any humans with knives that just come out of their arms whenever they damn well feel like it, Sergeant?"
"N – no, no sir."
"I want to see what the hell that guy is."
The corporal gulped next to him. "What do you want me to shoot, sir?"
"Aim for the head." The commander answered sharply.
"Sir – sir, they'll kill us. They'll kill all of us – even if I can take the bastard out, what if it just sicks the androids on us? They'll destroy us, sir – we don't have the men, we don't have the weapons to…."
"You don't think they're gonna kill us anyway, Corporal?" The group commander glared at him darkly. "We have a mission to deliver intel to Phillips. But what intel do we have? Sure, we can tell him that a bunch of robots massacred a village too small to even have a name. But what about the leader? What do we know about him, other than that he blades come out of his arms and he might be indestructible? Phillips wants intel, Corporal. He doesn't have the time to give half a shit if any of us die in the process of getting it."
The group commander looked grimly ahead, eying the back of the blond man's head with uncertainty.
The corporal sucked in his breath, numbly setting up his rifle. "Aim for the head, sir?"
The group commander nodded silently, his gaze fixed dead ahead.
"Rifle ready, sir. I have him in my sights. Fire on your command." The corporal whispered.
The blond haired man was still polishing his blade, as though without a care in the world for the carnage that was seemingly in its final stages around him. The androids had made quick work of the tiny village's inhabitants – now only the sound of crackling flames eating away at the thatched houses echoed ominously on the smoky air.
They hummed and buzzed audibly as they darted about – twitching, pulsating, fidgeting – as though possessed by some sort of otherworldly force, their eyes gleaming red.
"Shoot for the back of his head, Corporal." The group captain murmured.
Almost simultaneously as the trooper pulled the trigger, the blond man whirled –
Time seemed to stop. It was as though the group commander could physically see the bullet hurtling towards the man in silver leather – could physically see the gleaming grey eyes that peaked out from beneath the silver brim of his cap, his pale, thin lips just slightly twisting into a cool smirk.
With a deft flick of his right hand, the blond haired man caught the bullet.
The group commander felt his heart jump into his throat.
The corporal lowered his gun, slack-jawed.
"Mary, mother of Jesus Christ," he whispered hollowly.
Far below, the blond haired man smiled coldly up at them and winked. He raised a silver fist into the air, and let his gloved fingers unfurl, revealing a shell – perfectly intact, as though it had never been fired.
He spoke – projecting his voice up and over the embankment – with the posh and cultured tone of an upper-class beau, altogether bored with his surroundings. He spoke in English – flawless English, with only the slightest hint of an accent.
"You can run on home now, boys. I think you've seen enough."
The group commander went rigid.
The trooper beside him whispered tentatively. "Sir?"
"Wait." His tone was flat.
Another trooper whispered, "It's a trap."
The group commander stared grimly at the blond-haired man, who, for his own part, did not waver from his position. He merely stood there, grinning coolly, tossing the shell up and down in the silver-gloved hand. No blood. No torn flesh. Not even the leather of the glove had been torn by the impact that the bullet had undoubtedly made as it collided with the man's hand. He glanced at his left wrist nonchalantly, as though peering down at a wristwatch.
The grey eyes glanced back up, towards the grassy embankments, where the troopers hid.
"Don't think I don't know you're up there, now. I know your exact location, your exact coordinates. I could obliterate all of you where you stand – or crouch, I suppose."
He cleared his throat, still smiling genially at them. "However, I'm feeling rather generous today. I'll give you sixty seconds to mull over your options and if you haven't retreated by that time, my good friends here will force your hand." He gestured to the androids that surrounded him, their red eyes gleaming hungrily. "I don't think any of you particularly want to die today, do you?"
He winked at them again. "Now, be good boys and run along home. I'm sure you have lots to tell your commanders."
The American troopers looked at each other, aghast. The group commander still stared straight ahead, rigidly still, gripping his binoculars with white-knuckled hands.
"Sir," The trooper beside him whispered, "Sir, we need to leave."
Far below, the blond-haired man held up his wrist, inspecting his watch. "Tick tock, tick tock, my good men." He called out in a singsong voice. "Thirty seconds."
The group commander suddenly dropped his binoculars – they hit the ground with a solid thud as he stood up, making himself visible to the blond man below.
The troopers at his knees remained pressed to the ground, desperately waiting for orders.
The group commander stared grimly down into the shining grey eyes of the blond-haired man. "Who are you?" He called down, careful to match the blond man's cocky tone with one of rigid defiance.
The blond man smiled. "A very sad and unfortunate man."
"I suppose it's pushing my luck to ask who you work for?" The group commander kept his tone level.
The blond man let out a harsh cackle in response. "I'm letting you go with your lives. That isn't enough for you? Clearly you don't understand the rules of quid pro quo."
The group commander remained steadfast. "It isn't quid pro quo unless you get something out of it. So what do you get out of letting us go?"
The blond man smiled again, but it lacked its earlier cockishness. Now, the action seemed forced – thin, pale lips rigidly jerking into the expression.
"Heinrich Zemo." He answered finally – his voice so soft that it was barely audible to the American troopers that crouched above him. "I work for Heinrich Zemo."
The group commander stood still, keeping his gaze riveted on the blond man.
The blond man's lips twitched, and the smile disappeared from his face. "Now go. Quickly." He commanded, his voice cutting through the heavy air like a blade.
The group commander inhaled sharply, and nodded at the blond-haired man in silver, as though conveying his silent thanks.
He turned to the troopers at his back, and harshly rasped, "Retreat."
XXX
American Barracks
London, England – 1943
0500 Hours
Images. Thousands of them – floating in and out of his mind at their leisure, slowly, rich and vivid. They did not whirl in frenzied mania, they did not scream or shriek or cry out or set his head to throbbing. They did not intend to torment or taunt, they did not intend to elicit grieving, or mournful sorrow. They did not bring contentment – but they did not bring torment or anguish, either. It was as though thousands of memories – thousands of individual realities, each imprinted on his mind's eye with the utmost care and detail – were merely meant to travel forward on their course, bringing with them only a sense of – fulfillment. A sense of closure or completeness, perhaps. They did not offer praise or consolation, but they did not scream condemnation, either. They offered solitude and a longed-for sense of quiet.
And, for perhaps the first time in the entirety of his existence, Johann slept restfully – ensconced in the gentle drift of a long, unhurried dream.
Plummeting – falling, falling, falling – faster, faster, faster – clouds enveloping them in an icy embrace – hurtling towards the earth – he held her tightly in his arms, her skin deathly white, her hair glowing golden, shot through with rays of sunny light – so peaceful, so serene and unburdened in death – the sadness that had become so omnipresent in her tired gray eyes was replaced with quiet emptiness –
A brief moment of darkness passed, before the next memory glided across his mind's eye, in no apparent rush –
Laughing – a child's cheerful, happy laughter ringing in his ears, a chill winter's breeze twirling crystalline snowflakes about on the air. A young girl – tawny curls, freckled cheeks rosy-red from the cold, beaming as she presented her creation – a rather scrawny snowman, wearing a very familiar dark leather trench coat and black cap, with a crooked coal-dotted smile on its snowy white head.
As though he were present in the memory himself, present in the moment right then, he raised a skeptical eyebrow at the snowman that slumped before him, to the young girl's apparent delight – she laughed and laughed, smiling gaily, as though thoroughly amused by her creation.
"It does seem to be missing something," His own voice echoed in his ears.
He strode forward to the snowman, which offered him a lopsided grin, and rifled through the pocket of his coat, reaching with slender fingers for a long obsidian cigarette holder. With a ginger touch, he stuck the cigarette holder into the snowman's mouth, positioning it ever so delicately so that the holder might stick out at a jaunty angle.
He stepped back, admiring his handiwork, while the young girl with tawny curls writhed in the snow, her laughter echoing on the icy wind.
Her laughter still echoed hollowly in his ears as the wintery white scene faded away, ushering in the warmth and yellowish light of a bedroom, and the sound of rain beating furiously against the windowpanes.
The young girl sat on the edge of her bed, swathed in blankets, her slight frame trembling and quaking beneath them. She was weeping, and a tall, gaunt man in black leather sat beside her with long, slender arms holding her delicate shoulders, as though to comfort.
He remembered the scene well. It had been late evening, hours after Angelica's funeral ceremony. A miserably cold, wet day in October of 1936. Only thirty-three at the time, he had looked decades older than that tender age – old enough to be convinced that he knew all of the world's secrets, yet still young enough to give into the nagging voice in his conscience that made him hesitate.
He had looked so terribly uncomfortable, so terribly nervous, so terribly afraid – sitting beside the young girl, helplessly patting her shoulders as she wept, looking on with glassy blue eyes, as though in a daze.
Mina looked up at him with wide, tear-filled eyes, her slight frame quaking and trembling as she wept.
"How come you aren't crying?" She asked. "Don't you miss Mama?"
He smiled sadly, still absently rubbing her shoulder with a gloved hand. "Yes, I do miss her. And if I could, I would be crying too, right now." His voice had sounded hollow and faint. He cleared his throat and cracked his jaw, his gloved fingers pushing the seams of his mask back into place. "But one of us has to be strong, yes? Otherwise, we wouldn't be good for very much, would we?"
The young girl sniffed and wiped her eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that we have two choices at this very moment. The first one is the easy one – we can continue to cry and feel sorry for ourselves and spend all of our time being sad. Or, we can pick ourselves up and be strong. I have to be strong to take care of you, because your mother trusted me to look after you and to care for you."
He lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger, looking down into her grey eyes. "And your mother would not want either of us to mourn for her, Wilhelmina. She was a vivacious spirit. I imagine she's looking down on us right at this very moment, and no doubt she's furious that we're just sitting here looking at each other and feeling glum."
The young girl lowered her gaze, staring into her lap. "But I'm afraid." She said softly, her voice breaking just slightly, as though she would cry again.
He chuckled quietly. "You don't think I'm afraid, too?"
Mina frowned up at him, perplexed. "You're not supposed to be afraid of anything. You're an adult and I'm just a child. I'm supposed to be afraid and you're supposed to tell me that everything will be alright."
"Would it make you feel better if I were to tell you that everything was going to be alright and that I wasn't the least bit uncertain about anything?"
Mina lowered her grey eyes. "Only if you mean it."
He smiled slightly. "Then I won't, because I don't."
"Don't what?" She looked up at him, grey eyes questioning.
"I don't mean it. I don't know if everything will be alright, and I'm not certain of everything. I won't make you any promises I can't keep, and I can't promise you that the road ahead of us won't be long or difficult."
He stroked her cheek lightly with a gloved hand. "However, I can promise you that no matter what happens, you will never be alone. I will protect you and I will care for you, always."
The young girl leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around her. She looked up at him with wide grey eyes. "Will you always love me, too?"
He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "Yes, Wilhelmina. I will always love you, too."
At once, the warm light that emanated from the room was extinguished – like the dwindling flame of a candle being blown out – and darkness swallowed up the tall, gaunt man and the young girl.
A cold, bitter alpine wind whistled shrilly in his ears and the biting chill of mountain air seeped through the fabric of his clothing.
But this was not purely a memory, nor even a dream – but, a vision. Shot through with a strange mixture of images he recalled all too clearly, set across a backdrop that was at once foreign and strikingly familiar.
He was surrounded by blinding white – pure alpine snowfall, the sky a solid grey. The wind howled mournfully. Thousands of crystalline snowflakes danced and twirled on the wind, peppering his face with their light, cool touch. The gusts of snow embraced him like an old friend – comforting in their pure familiarity. The wintery landscape of the Alps had welcomed him in exile when the human world had rejected him, given him solace as he paced back and forth in the dead of night, wracked with insomnia, the white moon sneering at him and his misery.
He was so tired – he longed for sleep, to be caressed in the feathery softness of snow, to collapse, to give in – to relinquish the burden of guilt that had held him captive for so long.
Laughter echoed on the icy wind – bright and singsong.
Children's laughing – not just one, but perhaps two or three, joined by a woman's contented giggling, and then a man's raspy chuckling –
The blinding white gave way to glimmering sunlight, lush green grasses, and sprawling willow trees – a landscape so utterly different from the alpine scenes etched on his retinas. A warm breeze set the feathery branches of the willows bending and bowing, their long, drooping branches swaying to and fro. The sun was setting – the sky ahead was a pleasant orange shade, shot through with streaks of violet and red and the wispy white of scattered clouds. Crickets chirped here and there, and the grass was dewy and damp, as night fell upon the land.
It was a scene unlike anything he had ever witnessed before – the trees, the tall grass, the heavy, humid air. The meadows before him stretched out for miles, giving way to water-logged rice paddies, and even farther beyond that, the ocean crashed against sandbars – the tide was coming in.
This was nothing like the mountainous landscapes he had grown accustomed to, nor the quaint medieval villages of his youth, or the vast and undulating pastures of Regensburg.
And the children whose laughter had echoed so pleasantly and so peculiarly on the warm and gentle breeze now appeared, running and tumbling and skipping through the grasses, which were almost as tall as them. There were two of them – two little girls, one slightly taller than the other, perhaps the elder of the two, and both with bright red hair and bright green eyes and freckled little cheeks and wide, ecstatic grins on their faces.
They were laughing and squealing with delight, while a woman's voice called out, chiding them and pleading with them not to get their dresses dirtied – both matching, navy blue sailor dresses.
And they were chanting – most peculiarly – "Daddy! Daddy's home, Daddy's home!" And they were racing each other, laughing gleefully, and they ran into the outstretched arms of a very tall and very gaunt looking man with dark brown hair and brilliant blue eyes.
And the tall, gaunt man was laughing with them, and hugging them tightly and kissing each of them, gazing at each of them with the pride and serene contentment that only a father could possess, gazing at his darlings with warmth and love.
And the voice of the tall, gaunt man, teasing the two little girls as they giggled and squealed with glee – was his.
The woman's voice called again, clearer now – "Cynthia, Abigail, where are you?"
Her voice was so achingly familiar – so warm and wonderful –
"I have them, Victoria, not to worry." The man called out to the girls' mother. He then looked upon the little girls with an arched eyebrow, piercing blue eyes glinting at them mischievously. He whispered to them, grinning, "Quick now! Hide – before she sees you!"
The girls erupted into giggling as they scurried off into to the meadow, the tall man shushing them once or twice as their mother approached.
A petite woman with fiery red hair that matched that of the little girls' stood with her hands on her hips, her loosely woven braid tossed over her shoulder in a carefree manner. Her green eyes were narrowed as she came to face the tall, dark haired man. Her gaze shifted to the meadow, her lips quirking in a smile.
"Playing hide-and-seek, are we?" She asked.
The tall man shrugged casually before taking the woman into his arms, leaning in for a quick kiss. "I needed a diversion," He replied, smirking. "I'll never get a moment alone with you, what with the hellions running about." He cast an amused glance towards the tall meadow grasses, where the little redheaded girls were huddled, not far out of sight, giggling as quietly as their little impatient bodies would allow.
Their mother smiled up at him. "They missed you." She said quietly, green eyes flickering downward. "You know, you aren't home very often, nowadays."
The tall man reached out with gloved hands to hold her chin, tilting her face upwards. "I had some business to take care of in Germany – that's why I was delayed."
"Mina is doing well, I hope? And Angelica and Wolfgang?"
"Yes, yes, all well. Unfortunately, I could only afford to stay a few days with them – best to not draw too much attention to myself while I'm there – given the state of things."
The redheaded woman averted her gaze, sighing. "I'm afraid we won't be able to go to Germany anymore – I have a feeling we'll be at war with the Nazis, soon. It's only a matter of time – FDR's itching for a fight." She glanced up at the tall man, her brows furrowed. "What's that on your neck? Did you hurt yourself?"
She reached out with a delicate hand to touch his neck, but the tall man caught her hand with his own gloved one, gently pushing it away from the reddened, puckered line that peaked out from his collar.
"Just a scratch, darling, nothing to fear. A lightbulb, if you can believe it, exploded at the laboratory – rained a bit of broken glass." He smiled at her coolly and kissed her forehead, ignoring the apprehension in her green eyes. He raised his voice, looking out towards the grasses that bent in the warm summer breeze, "Now, wherever could my little darlings be hiding? Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
The little girls erupted into laughter as they scurried farther into the meadows, the tall man and the petite, redheaded woman laughing with them as they chased them through the grass. Fireflies winked and sparkled, and the sky grew darker and darker –
It was as if the sunset, tinted such beautiful shades of orange and blood-red and violet, had been swallowed up by a thick and impenetrable darkness.
Silence. It weighed heavily upon his chest, and it rang in his ears, void of the pleasant warmth of the little redheaded girls' laughter. The air was no longer heavy and damp with the humidity of a summer's evening in the American South – but rather, it was bitterly cold, and smelled of recent snowfall.
The black – a heavy blanket of darkness that pressed in on him from all corners – was pervasive, a solid wall of colorless, unfeeling dark.
A voice – rich and multilayered, a thousand varying tones, from highest soprano to deepest baritone – sliced through the deafening silence.
"Do you look upon the daughters you might have had with affection, Johann Schmidt? The daughters you might have had, had you decided against holding Victoria Bradleigh at knifepoint, lo those many years ago? Or do you look upon them with scorn and hatred, as you once did Wilhelmina Hofstadter, for she so very much represented the memory of your past foes?"
His own voice echoed hollowly in the back of his mind, as though miles away, disconnected from his being.
"Why do you show me these things? Why do you show me things that never were, and never will be?"
The voice chuckled lowly, but not with malice. "Johann Hermann Schmidt, you are a man that has spent his entire existence mourning the life that he believed he should have had, instead of being grateful for the life that he was living all along. You are a man that has striven so diligently for perfection that you have overlooked the contentment and fulfillment that was already within your grasp. You are a man that has fervidly believed that he was denied happiness, when happiness has always been at his fingertips. I show you now the wife and children that you could have had, in the hopes that your greed might be satiated, if only for a moment, so that you might not forfeit yet another chance for happiness, driven onward by your lust for the unattainable and the unnecessary."
The voice paused, and the silence weighed heavier down upon his chest.
"Tell me, Johann Schmidt. Seeing your wife and your little daughters – tell me, how did it make you feel?"
"Happy." His voice was a hollow rasp. His throat felt raw.
"Good. But take heart, Johann Schmidt. Do not sound so mournful. That life would have been short-lived."
He felt his frame shudder. "What do you mean?"
The voice chuckled again. "Never fear, Johann Schmidt, I will show you exactly what I mean."
Thunder cracked the solid wall of black before him, shot through by blinding tendrils of white light – electrical currents crackled as shards of blackness fell away, revealing a room –
Bright white electrical lights, bright white walls, steel surfaces, glass cases holding pristine vials of electric-blue liquid, bubbling, hissing –
The tall man lounged in a chair, long legs crossed nonchalantly, smoking a cigarette held in an elegant black holder. He absently inspected a silver pocket watch emblazoned with a grotesque skull-headed octopus. Carefully clipped and pasted to the inside of the pocket watch was an ovular photograph of two beaming little girls in matching sister dresses, their mother, with her long and lustrous hair draped over her shoulder, sitting behind them with her arms around them. A pendant that mirrored the skull-headed octopus glittered at her throat, emphasizing her delicate collarbones.
The tall man ran his tongue along his teeth hungrily and snapped the pocket watch shut, tucking it into the breast pocket of his stark black suit.
"A beautiful family." A mournful voice spoke over his shoulder.
The tall man arched an eyebrow, his thin lips twisting into a scowl. "Why thank you, my good doctor." He replied, turning in his seat to face the man that stood behind him, forcing his mouth into a menacing smirk.
"Do they motivate your actions?" The man asked, puttering about the laboratory, absently moving from beaker to beaker of bright blue liquid. He wasn't particularly tall, and the long white smock that he wore only made him seem smaller, swimming in the loose fabric. A grey film of stubble covered his cheeks and chin, and his hair, also grey, was tussled and matted, as though he seldom thought to groom himself.
The tall man let out a harsh cackle. "But of course, Dr. Erskine. Surely you do not think that I would want my girls to grow up in this hellish place, now do you?"
Dr. Erskine grimaced. "And may I ask how my serum would aid you in creating a better place for your children to grow up, Herr Schmidt?"
The tall man chuckled quietly. "Need I explain to you, Dr. Erskine? You and I are very much alike – superior men, each with his own desire to preside over a new and glorious world order."
Dr. Erskine returned the tall man's grin with a bitter scowl. "I suspect that your world order is governed by lust and greed, Herr Schmidt. Not the benevolence with which one might nurture his children."
The tall man maintained composure, but his ice blue eyes blazed. "Your version of benevolence and mine might be very different, Dr. Erskine, but I would kindly beseech you not to accuse me of neglecting my own blood." He answered icily.
Dr. Erskine bowed deferentially, but added softly, "Do you delude yourself accordingly when you go to sleep at night, that what you are doing is for your children's sake? Or do you unabashedly admit that what you are doing is for you and for you alone, and that your wife and your children are merely convenient decorations that complete your public façade?"
"What do you think the answer is, Dr. Erskine?" The tall man raised an arched eyebrow, long cigarette holder held taut between sharp white teeth. A black revolver gleamed in his right hand.
The scientist eyed the tall man levelly. "I truly believe that it is the latter, Herr Schmidt."
The tall man smiled coolly. "Then you will have no qualms in giving me that which I desire, will you, Dr. Erskine? Given, of course, that you have concluded that I am not deluded by petty sentimentality."
"No, Herr Schmidt, I have concluded that you are driven by selfishness. Not compassion."
The tall man still smiled. "You have not answered my question, my good doctor."
"And you believe that the revolver in your hand will persuade me to answer in your favor, yes?" The scientist replied darkly.
"I am an excellent shot, Dr. Erskine." The tall man replied serenely. "Trust me when I tell you that I will sleep peacefully tonight knowing that your dead corpse is rotting on this very floor, when the serum is coursing through my veins."
The scientist stared at the tall man for what seemed like ages, his features wrinkled and worn down by a deep and aching sadness. At last, he addressed the tall man, who smoked leisurely, as though without a care in the world.
"I will give you my serum, Herr Schmidt. And I sincerely hope that it kills you. For the sake of the ones that you pretend to love."
Without a noise, the room and the two men within it disappeared into instant darkness.
Now, the vision of a man – tall and slender, pale and dark-haired – with long, cream-colored sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing pale flesh. His ice-blue eyes gleamed with hungry lust at the glass syringe of bubbling blue liquid that he held, delicately poised above his forearm, ready to plunge the needle tip deep into his flesh.
Johann was aware enough of his presence in this strange and sickening dream state to harshly whisper to the godlike voice that presided in his brain: "Please stop."
The deep voice chuckled. "I am not finished yet, Johann Schmidt. You must see your undoing in all universes, in all that could have been, in all that has been, in all that might very well still be – "
"I know my sins, I have relived every mistake I have made for years over in every dream, every sleepless vision. I will not stare blindly into these revelations and deny their existence." His voice was louder now, but still so pitifully weak – it was broken and choked, as though he would weep.
The deep voice boomed loudly in his mind now, setting his skull to throbbing. "Johann Schmidt, you have known your sins all this time, and you have been given every chance to repent. Yet, you have always let your selfishness prevail over what sense of humanity is left within you. You condemn your own remorse as weakness, when in fact, it is your righteous conscience desperately pleading with you to turn back, to right your course. Now, the time has come for you to learn the error of your ways."
The needle plunged into the tall man's pale flesh – he grated his teeth, licking his lips with raw lust.
A gold wedding band glittered on the ring finger of the hand that curled tightly around the syringe.
The deep voice that echoed inside his conscience seemed to hum with raw electricity. "I have shown you time and time again the error of your ways in the past, and the present. Now, you will look upon your ruin in what might have been. It looks familiar to you, does it not?"
Bright flames writhed in vivid hues of orange and scarlet – the body of the tall man was engulfed in fire, but his screams were silent, his ice-blue eyes were void of feeling. The wedding band glimmered in the firelight, as the tall man's flesh seemed to flake from his body in papery sheets.
A new scene now –
A darkened room, rain beating against the windowpanes, lightning coloring the dark purple sky with its icy white tendrils – like the roots of new plant-life, shattering the atmosphere, blooming and growing and spiraling out –
A tall, thickly muscled figure stood with his hands pressed flat against a wall, a slight and small figure pinned beneath him, trembling. Long red hair was fanned across her shoulders – her porcelain skin stood out, deathly white against the darkened figure that pinned her down. His long and slender fingers were splayed across the papered wall at her back, and a crack of lightning illuminated the room for but a moment, revealing blood-red flesh.
His face was gnarled, his ice-blue eyes hooded by thick, crimson brow-bones. A taut layer of blood red skin was pulled tight over his skull, smooth and matte. His nose was angular and flattened, his cheekbones were sharply chiseled and gaunt. His lips were flat and thin, and they peeled back in a menacing scowl to reveal sharp white teeth.
He spoke in a lilting, singsong tone, but it dripped with hunger. The woman beneath him stared into his eyes, silently weeping, her slight frame trembling with fear and remorse.
"Why do you cry, my love?" He purred. "Aren't you happiest when you're in my arms?"
Those words – why did they sound so familiar?
"I am happiest when I am in my husband's arms." The red-haired woman whispered, her words choked by tears.
The hooded eyes of the crimson creature narrowed. "Am I not your husband?" The lilting purr had dissolved into icy malice. He pressed against her, his slender crimson fingers grasping her arms tightly, pinning them above her head.
Her vibrant green eyes stared up at him defiantly. "No." She whispered. "You are a monster."
Rage flashed in his hooded eyes, but he forced his thin lips into an awful smirk. He let out a harsh cackle.
"Come now, darling," He purred, lifting slender crimson fingers to her cheek, caressing her porcelain skin. When she reeled back, he grabbed her face with a deft flick of his wrist, tightly grasping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. "You'll get used it to it with time. And until then, I have the mask."
"Are you insane?" The red-haired woman gasped. "You just think I'll get used to it, you really think it's that simple? Johann, you have – you have destroyed yourself, you've – why, Johann? Why did you do it? I – I don't understand."
The redheaded woman had dissolved into tears beneath him, trembling and shaking.
She only wept more bitterly when he pressed his gnarled red lips against her skin, kissing her hungrily, pulling her tighter into his arms.
"Darling," He whispered into her hair, "Victoria, my love, don't you understand? This was merely the first step towards creating a new world, a better world – a world where our girls can grow and flourish, and never be tainted by the imperfection of this hellish place that we live in. My physicality was a small sacrifice, compared to the superiority that I have attained."
The redheaded woman stared up at him with tear-filled eyes, her breaths shallow and choked. "You promised me, Johann." She gasped. "You promised me that we were going to create a life together, that you were going to let go of HYDRA, that there would be no talk of some new world order. You promised me that you would give it all up."
"Darling, I do this for you –"
"No, Johann!" She cried out. "None of this is for me, none of this is for the girls – for god's sake, do not make a mockery of my trust in you."
She trembled with a mixture of poignant grief and deepest rage. She stared at him levelly. "You've lied to me all this time, haven't you?" She whispered. "Being away for months on end, all of this 'official business' in Germany – you never gave up HYDRA, did you? You've been hiding it all this time – "
"HYDRA is righteous, Victoria!" He hissed. Seeing her tear-filled eyes, however, he softened slightly. "Darling, you understand my vision better than anyone in this world – I told you that I would change this world, and you trusted in my ideas, you believed in them. Won't you trust me, again?"
Her tear-filled eyes stared up at him miserably. "I thought that you were happy." She whispered. "Am I not enough? Are Cynthia and Abigail not enough? Is none of this enough for you – the life we've made together, the happiness we bring each other? Is that not enough for you?"
"Darling, what are you saying?" Slender crimson fingers glided over her porcelain face. The touch was gentle, but there was rage in his tone – so quiet, so coldly indifferent –
So painfully familiar.
The crimson creature smiled down at her. "Of course you are enough, Victoria, you are everything I have ever sought for." He kissed her lips – she resisted his touch, but he forced her tighter into his arms. "But is it a crime that I ask for more? We could have perfection, darling."
"I don't want perfection. I want the man that I married, with all of his imperfections. Not a monster." The redheaded woman whispered icily, her voice void of its earlier, tearful grief.
"Why do you insist on calling me a monster, my love?" He purred liltingly, and offered her a devious grin. "Perfection is finally in my grasp, Victoria. I can feel it coursing through my veins, through every inch of my person – a better man, a stronger man, a superior man. Would you not want that for your husband?"
"I do not see a better man, Johann." The woman answered him, her green eyes flashing defiantly up at him. "I see a selfish man. I see a man with a very unhealthy obsession and I want it to end, forever. Johann, look at what you've done to yourself – you have destroyed yourself and all because you couldn't be satisfied with what you have, you wanted more. And who is to say that you will ever stop wanting more? Who is to say that you will ever be satisfied – what if you just keep going with this rampage, destroying yourself, destroying everyone in your path – "
The redheaded woman was near hysterical, shuddering, trembling, weeping –
The tall crimson figure lashed out at the woman with his fist, striking her jaw – the sickening crack of bone shattered the silence of the room. Blood – warm and thick, was smeared across her face, and across the knuckles of the hand that had struck her.
She sank to her knees, clutching her face in agony, tears streaming from her wide, shocked eyes.
But the crimson figure had hauled her up by the neck, holding her above him – she sagged in his grip, blood dripping from her mouth. Her green eyes were dull – as though all feeling, all vision had been sucked from them.
Present enough in that hellish dream state to hear his own voice echo hollowly in his ears, Johann cried out in a mixture of horror and heartbreak as the crimson creature beat the red-haired woman with a savage, animal fury.
She crumpled beneath him, collapsing on the floor like a broken china doll. Blood trickled from her split lip, and angry welts had already begun to form on her perfect, porcelain flesh where the crimson figure had struck her over and over and over and over –
A piercing scream sliced through the terrible quiet of the room.
A little girl in a pale pink nightdress, her bright red hair tussled from slumber – she ran towards the woman, who lay limply on the ground, unconscious.
"Mama!" The little girl darted past the crimson figure, falling on her knees before her mother, screaming and weeping hysterically. "Mama, Mama, Mama!" She screamed over and over – her voice so beautifully innocent, so perfect and so very, very afraid –
The crimson figure stood frozen, as though entranced – as though the gravity of his actions was only just registering in his mind. His hooded eyes no longer held hot rage, but rather an empty and hollow… fear.
He seemed to forget the way he looked, the creature he resembled in the cold moonlight, and he rushed to kneel beside the little girl, pulling her into his arms –
"Cynthia, Cynthia please –"
The little girl's green eyes went wide when she looked at the hideous beast that was endeavoring to hold her, pleading with her to quiet down – her shrill screams tore apart the air and she dissolved into hysteria, screaming and weeping, "Let me go! Let me go!"
She struggled and thrashed and kicked at the crimson figure, crying out in desperate, heart-wrenching fear for her father, who was seemingly nowhere to be found.
"Daddy! Daddy, where are you! Daddy, Daddy help me! Help me!"
She finally worked her way free of the crimson figure, whose arms had slid limply to his sides, and he knelt before the redheaded woman, his jaw slack, his blue eyes dazed –
The deafening crack of thunder shattered the scene, and darkness once again blanketed everything before his eyes, thick and heavy.
Johann's voice rang hollowly against the heavy silence – "Please," he moaned bitterly.
The godlike voice echoed in his mind, accompanied by a throbbing, miserable pain that pounded in his skull.
"Yes, Victoria Bradleigh professed correctly – that your unhealthy obsession with attaining inhuman superiority would destroy not only you, but all that surrounded you, and all that you loved. Your bloodlust would poison your wife and daughters against you. And it would poison your own mind, driven mad by the underdeveloped serum."
The scenes that floated before his mind's eye now were blurred and foggy, and they raced before him with a dizzying fury –
His laboratory – a young girl strapped to a gurney, myriad tubes and sensory patches covering every inch of pale, sickly flesh. Beside her – the tesseract, in its steel holding device, pulsating and throbbing with its incessant, blinding light.
But her hair was bright red – not the caramel-colored waves of his beautiful, dear Mina.
The godlike voice boomed. "Just as your niece Wilhelmina has tirelessly endeavored to do, your eldest daughter Cynthia hoped in vain that her devoted love and kindness would drag you out of the depths of your selfish obsession, and redeem you of your sins. And you would subject your daughter to your cruel experimentation just as you have subjected your niece. But while your niece had the great fortune of possessing impossible strength from her early dose of the serum, your daughter had no such protection against the strength of my jewel. In your lustful attempts to imbue young Cynthia with the tesseract's forces – "
The girl shuddered and convulsed on the steel gurney, her bright green eyes rolling back into her skull, revealing only the whites of her pupils –
"You would kill her."
The crimson figure knelt over the white and lifeless body of the young girl – her lips and fingertips were gray, her green, wide eyes staring up at him emptily – his wretched screams of agony drowned out by the howling wind of the blizzards that raged beyond his laboratory –
"And only then would you realize the error of your ways. Only then, when you had successfully destroyed that which you loved so dearly, would you understand that you, Johann Schmidt, are not a god, but a human man."
A new image – Mina, standing at the edge of the fighter craft's gaping maw, the wind beating at her back – a gun, poised at her temple, her fingers trembling at the trigger.
Gunshot – it reverberated over and over in his mind, the crimson blood that spattered from the wound, the dead, glassy eyes of the young woman before him –
Falling, falling, falling –
"Wake up now."
Johann shot upward, blue eyes wide, oxygen hurtling through his long dormant lungs –
Leather straps dug into his bare chest, constricting him – a tangle of tubing jerked and resisted at the sudden movement.
Ice blue eyes darted about frantically, trying in vain to adjust against the blinding fluorescent light of the strange chamber.
A lanky scientist dressed in a blinding white smock was supporting himself against a white table, littered with vials and beakers. His innocent brown eyes stared wide. His lips moved, and Johann, his brain only just beginning to slow from its frenzied hyperactivity, could just make out the man's words:
"Get Phillips. He's awake."
XXX
The interrogation room was dimly lit – a cinderblock cell with a singular one-way mirror, a steel table with two chairs, and a doorway of reinforced steel, flanked by two American soldiers, clad in beige fatigues. Colonel Chester Phillips sat pensively in one of the chairs, his weathered hands leafing through the files within a thick orange folder. With careful fingers, he slipped a photograph from the folder, and set it down before him. The photograph depicted a gaunt and sickly looking man, dressed in stark black SS fatigues, the eponymous death's head insignia of Nazi Germany grinning macabrely from the brim of his cap. The man's hair was dark and his eyes, though colorless in the black and white photograph, seemed to glow with cold arrogance.
"I've waited a long time to be sitting here in front of you, Mr. Schmidt." Phillips was still sifting through the thick stack of paperwork before him when he spoke, but his tone was steely.
The crimson figure that sat opposite him did not stir; hunched, with his elbows rested on the table's surface, and his slender red fingers steepled before his lips, he resembled a gargoyle more than a man – so gothic and almost majestic were his features. His crimson lips seemed to jerk into a half-grin, and his ice-blue eyes flashed against the red backdrop of his skin.
"Yes, it would seem that I'm very popular at the moment." He answered softly, in a tone that matched the arrogance in his gaze.
Not missing a beat, Phillips slid the photograph towards the crimson figure before him.
"I do apologize that your makeover didn't work out the way that you'd imagined." He retorted wryly. "That must have been one hell of a morning after."
The crimson figure chuckled quietly, his slender, crimson fingers lightly glossing over the photograph.
"The overeager are always punished." He answered, his tone suddenly losing its cold arrogance, and taking on a solemn, sorrowful weight. "I was, and am, no exception."
He met Phillips gaze, his ice-blue eyes piercing in the dim light of the room. "I suspect you have brought me here because you have a proposition to make. I cannot see as though you would be speaking to me now simply to gloat over your victory in apprehending me."
Phillips eyed the crimson figure levelly. His tone resumed its iron resolve. "Johann Schmidt, there is nothing in this goddamn world that I would like more than to see you rot in prison. You have killed hundreds of my men – boys, kids who've never held a gun before, kids who've never left home before. I've been in this job for too damn long, and I know better than anyone else that war is hell and that people die. But I'm the one that has to live with the fact that my men did not die for a righteous cause. They didn't die fighting the scourge of the earth, they didn't die fighting Adolf Hitler, fighting the man that vowed to wipe out more than half of the human race. My men died fighting a goddamn nutjob and protecting his goddamn niece."
Phillips slammed his fist down against the table in cold rage.
The crimson figure before him did not blink. Like the gargoyle, he was stoic.
"The only reason that girl isn't dead is because of Steven Rogers. The man that you killed died trying to protect that girl, trying to protect the goddamn world from destruction. Destruction that you would have been responsible for."
"I cannot bring Steven Rogers back to life, Colonel… Phillips, is it?" The crimson figure gazed at him placidly. His tone was cool – not arrogant, but uncomfortably calm.
Phillips scowled.
"I will take your lack of an answer as an affirmative." The crimson figure replied quietly.
Phillips inhaled sharply. "The government of the United States has left you with two options." He said at last. "If you refuse to cooperate with the Allied forces, you will spend the rest of your life in a maximum security prison. If you choose to cooperate with the Allied forces, you will still likely serve upwards of twenty years in prison. But, if you decide to be a particularly good dog for me, my bosses might just throw you a bone and reduce that sentence. And, if you ever want to see that girl again, I'd highly suggest that you cooperate."
The crimson figure sat back in his chair. "Why am I being given these choices? I certainly am not deserving of them. I am no fool, Colonel. I have no cards left to play."
Phillips cleared his throat. "You, Mr. Schmidt, are in the unique position of knowing too much. And what you know is going to be extraordinarily useful to me."
The crimson figure chuckled lightly. "If that is indeed the case, Colonel, I would be absolutely thrilled if you were to tell me exactly what it is that I know that you do not. For, I have no idea what it is that I know that is so valuable."
Phillips replied by slipping yet another photograph across the steel table to the crimson figure before him. He waited for a moment as Schmidt studied the photograph, ice blue eyes gleaming.
"Look familiar to you?"
Schmidt seemed to scoff. He held up the photograph to the light with slender fingers. "This is a man in a hood, Colonel. Not very outstanding, wouldn't you say?"
"Is that just a common thing for the Nazi high command, then? Everybody's got some kinda alter ego that needs covering up? But you probably wouldn't know anything about that, so why am I even asking you?" Phillips retorted.
The crimson figure chuckled again – much to the consternation of Phillips. "I cannot vouch for my former comrades, Colonel. Perhaps I was an innovator in that respect. They were all so very jealous of me from the start – I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they felt compelled to follow my example."
Phillips scowled and shuffled through his files again, retrieving yet another photograph. As he did so, Schmidt spoke up, resuming his earlier solemnity.
"However, if I were to conjecture, I would guess that the man that you are looking to identify is Heinrich Zemo."
Phillips cleared his throat. "So you're familiar with him?"
Schmidt inhaled sharply and shifted in his chair. "Familiar is too congenial a term." He answered icily. "But I am confused, Colonel. Heinrich Zemo is Germany's problem. Why does the United States have any interest in him?"
Phillips raised an eyebrow. "Problem?"
Schmidt offered a coy smile. "I have said too much."
"You made the decision to start talking." Phillips replied. "If you want to start reducing that life sentence, you'd damn straight better keep talking."
"You need not worry, Colonel Phillips, I have every intention of cooperating with you. But I would like to see my niece before I offer you any further assistance. That isn't an unreasonable request, now is it?"
Phillips eyed him levelly. "You think I'm bluffing. You think I'll sap you of everything you've got and throw you in a cell without saying a word to that girl of your whereabouts."
Schmidt smiled again. "And you think that if I am given the opportunity to speak with my niece that I will persuade her to use her powers against you. You know as well as I do that she could destroy you if she so chose."
Phillips sat back in his chair, glaring at the crimson figure before him.
"Alright. Fine. You want to talk to her. But what if she doesn't want to talk to you? Then what?"
Schmidt visibly stiffened, his sharp features jerking into a grimace. He was silent for a moment, but when he spoke again, his tone was firm. "I will cooperate with you all the same."
Phillips raised an eyebrow. "Guilty conscience?" He grumbled, more to himself than to Schmidt, as he sorted through his papers.
"Far worse than that, I assure you." Schmidt answered.
There was something in his tone that sounded distinctly strained. His words weighed heavily on the air.
Phillips collected his papers and rose from his seat, leaving the crimson gargoyle behind him in silence. Yet, as he walked out of the dingy cinder-block cell that served as an interrogation room, he couldn't shake the strange feeling of unease that churned in the pit of his stomach.
He had waited so long to sit before that man – that creature – had waited so long to throw that creature into a prison cell where he could rot for the rest of his days, where the myriad murders he had orchestrated could weigh down on his mind, could close on him like some sort of hellish claustrophobia, could eat him alive.
Chester Phillips had entered that room believing that Johann Schmidt would leer at him with the sadistic pleasure of a seasoned killer, one who relished the opportunity to relive his crimes.
He had not expected to sit before a man who would offer little to no resistance, much less one who would come close to offering an apology.
He had expected to saunter into that interrogation room, lay down the law, and walk out feeling serene with the knowledge that Johann Schmidt would be swiftly dispatched to Alcatraz in a straightjacket.
In that brief exchange, in physically being able to speak to the man, to see the expressions of torn sorrow that shuddered across his mangled face – it left Phillips feeling deeply uneasy. It had been so easy to fantasize about finally confronting Schmidt; to sit face to face with him had left him feeling – speechless. The man was arrogant, yes – but also, disarmingly humble.
He wore the expression of someone who sought redemption – not someone who was looking to strike a bargain or attempt to play the system. Phillips had expected that the carrot of a reduced sentence that he had dangled before Schmidt would evoke a more visible reaction from him – it had not. In fact, he'd appeared altogether disinterested with anything that concerned his future. It was any mention of the girl – of Mina Hofstadter – that had seemed to catch his attention, but only that.
Phillips scowled to himself, shaking his head. This whole thing would have been infinitely easier if Wilhelmina Hofstadter had never, ever wound up in his hands. The girl was emotionally invested in Johann Schmidt. And Phillips, whether he wanted to admit it or not, could not find it in himself to haul off and shoot the red bastard knowing full well that he would have to confront Schmidt's tearful niece after the fact.
The girl's powers alone offered him a weapon of such impossible scope as to be able to wipe out the entirety of Nazi-held territory in one stroke. Combined with (Lord willing) Schmidt's own abilities – and HYDRA's full magazine of weaponry – the Allied forces were finally in possession of a weapon unrivaled by any in the world.
And what of Steven Rogers?
What of the boy who had selflessly sacrificed his own life for the good of his country, who had been willing to sacrifice it all to save a young woman whom he believed was begging and pleading for his help?
To be allying with the creature that Rogers had fought tooth and nail to destroy, the very man that had orchestrated Rogers' death, that had lorded it over Chester Phillips every single day – as though the man lived in his mind, another voice to whisper and taunt of the deaths of the hundreds of kids that had died on his watch.
The very idea left a bitter taste in Phillips' mouth.
But then, there were other voices that warred in his mind, fighting for his attention. Victoria Bradleigh, though she'd long ago given up discussing the subject, had remained unflinching in her belief that Johann Schmidt was a man capable of being redeemed.
And Mina Hofstadter – the girl had gone to such extraordinary lengths to vanquish the threat that HYDRA and Johann Schmidt himself had posed to the world, regardless of how much personal pain and suffering it had caused her.
Her furious screams of hatred and despair and anguish when she had been presented with Johann Schmidt's silicon mask, a face that she had no doubt known as the only face of her uncle – were they not genuine? What kind of man had Johann Schmidt really been to Mina Hofstadter, that the revelation of his alter ego had left her so torn apart by grief?
As much as he wanted to treat her as though she were only a ward of the United States military, a pawn to be played until her usefulness had run its course, the compassion of Captain Steven Rogers had worked its way under Chester Phillips' skin.
And somehow, Phillips felt that Rogers would urge him to give Schmidt the benefit of the doubt.
XXX
Mina lay stretched across her narrow cot, her head throbbing. Her palms covered her eyes, the coolness of her skin easing the pain that seemed to drill into the back of her eye-sockets with a strangely rhythmic beat. The blood that had been caked on her tawny curls had long been washed away; not a trace of blood or broken skin remained on her temple where the bullet had penetrated. Her body ached, but myriad tests and x-rays revealed no broken bones, no sprains, not even bruising. As if that thousand-foot plummet from a hurtling aircraft had never even happened.
The clinking of a spoon against a porcelain cup echoed softly in the background.
A moment later, Victoria Bradleigh was at her bedside, holding out a steaming mug of a tea. Mina moved to shake her head, but the redheaded woman only thrust the cup forward, the look in her green eyes like that of a concerned mother hen.
"Drink it," Victoria said sternly. "You need liquids."
Mina groaned, holding her head, but the redheaded woman stood firm. Mina reluctantly accepted the cup, blowing tentatively at the scalding liquid.
As she sipped, Victoria continued speaking.
"Johann woke up this morning." She said pensively.
Mina felt her heart skip a beat, but she kept her eyes riveted on the caramel colored tea in her cup. "That's good, I suppose." She answered quietly.
"He wants to see you."
Mina raised her eyes. "You spoke to him?"
Victoria's lips quirked into a slight, sad smile. "No. Phillips questioned him. At any rate, I strongly doubt he'd be willing to talk to me."
"Why do you say that?" Mina asked softly.
"Because I betrayed him." Victoria replied.
Mina sighed. "So did I." There was a bitterness in her voice. "In his eyes, everyone has betrayed him."
"Phillips is of the impression that he's singing a different tune, now."
Mina laughed bitterly. "Of course he is. He knows that if he doesn't, he'll only be more quickly thrown into a jail cell."
Victoria looked pained. "Perhaps he's changed." She said.
Mina met the redheaded woman's gaze. "Dr. Bradleigh, I have believed ever since I got into this mess that my uncle would change, that he could be changed." She shook her head. "I admire your persistence. I don't think I could ever find it in myself to believe in him for as long as you have. But my uncle has caused me so much pain, Dr. Bradleigh. Is it selfish that I would like to cause him pain in return?"
"The amount of gratification that you'll receive from causing him pain will be fleeting." Victoria answered. "And I am speaking from personal experience. Stooping to his level will only worsen the pain before it lessens it."
"He'll lie to me again. He'll try to change my mind, to persuade me to believe in him, to trust him again." Mina's voice faltered as she spoke.
Victoria was silent for a moment. At last, she said, "He's run out of cards to play, Mina. The game is over. For the first time in his life, he has nothing to fall back on, nothing to defend himself with. HYDRA is gone. There are no more visions of grandeur for him to conjure up, there is no – there is, literally no mask for him to hide behind. He has no choice but to be truthful to you."
Mina shut her eyes. "Do you think he knows the truth? I think he's deluded himself to the point where his lies have become a reality for him. And I think he'll go mad when he realizes that the delusion is over."
"He has agreed to cooperate with us." Victoria said softly, staring down at the floor. "The Allies, that is."
"Colonel Phillips told you that?"
"Yes. But he is requesting to speak with you before he shares what he knows."
Mina scowled. "And I suppose his willingness to cooperate will go by the wayside should I choose not to speak with him?"
"He said that he would cooperate regardless."
Mina looked up at the redheaded woman. "He did?"
Victoria nodded. "Yes."
"Do you think I should speak with him?"
"That's up to you."
Mina shut her eyes again, leaning back onto her cot. She sighed heavily. "If I don't, it's because of my own selfishness. And to be selfish would be to stoop to his level, wouldn't you say?"
"You don't have anything to lose." Victoria answered quietly.
Mina sighed again and sat up. "I will talk to him." Her tone was bitter, but firm.
XXX
The journey to the interrogation room – all fifteen minutes of it – had become ingrained in his mind's eye. Every detail of the brick and mortar and poured concrete bunker, the strings of dusty lightbulbs, the beaten up desks, the walls of radio transmitters, the flurry of soldiers – men and women – clad in beige uniforms, the cacophony of English and American voices, the scents of smoke, damp and dirt, and human sweat. He had only ever been afforded the journey out of his cell on two other occasions – one, for a physical examination by a particularly peaked looking young doctor, his pale fingers trembling as he'd held a stethoscope to Johann's crimson chest; the other, for a brief and brusque interrogation by the American Colonel Philips.
Of course, he had no particular reason to memorize his surroundings. As it was, he had no opportunity to escape, and even if he had, where would he escape to? His only true refuge was in the Alps; here in the heart of London, the defacto capitol of the Allied world, there was no place for him to hide. And to what end was it, if he decided to chance an attempt at escape? There was nothing left in the world for him – he had fought his battles, cemented his allegiances, lived his life. The very words he had spoken to his own niece. And they were true. He had fought his battles, he had cemented his allegiances, he had lived his life according to his own choices. And all the while, he'd foolishly believed that his niece would succumb, that she would give in, that she would surrender to him. He had believed that he was the only thing she had left in the world. He had forgotten that she was the only thing left in his.
And he had paid the price for that lapse in his memory. He was now entirely at the mercy of the Allies, but that in itself meant nothing to him. He cared little if he spent the rest of his days in a prison-cell. It was the realization that he would likely spend those days alone, and without his dear Mina to brighten his dark existence, that set his stomach to churning.
The American colonel had taunted him with it – what if Mina did not want to see him? What if she never desired to speak to him, hear of him, see him – what if she never wanted anything to do with him ever again?
For he knew, deep within the blackened crevices of his heart, that he was not deserving of her forgiveness.
The pain he'd caused her, both physically and emotionally – there was no denying it.
And it had begun long before that fateful night in his laboratory.
How many times had he turned his back on her weeping form when she was but a child, recently orphaned, with no one and nowhere else in the world to call her own – how many times, in the middle of the night, had he hastily departed for the far, untraveled corners of the world, in hot pursuit of his one treasure – the tesseract?
Every day, he had told her a lie, he had lived a lie – every kiss he'd pressed onto her feverish forehead with silicon lips that were but a shell of the man he had once been.
He had deceived her for so terribly long that he'd begun to believe his own deceptions. It had been so terribly easy to hide behind that wretched mask, to pretend that without it, he was an entirely different a man, a man that could behave as violently and as wickedly as he pleased, a man that could abuse the one he loved so dearly, and without ever having to suffer the consequences of his actions.
Even now, he could still feel the coolness of her skin as her hands had ghosted across his face – his hideous face – it haunted him to the core.
Her words echoed in his mind over and over again like a siren's chanting – "In your lust for destruction, you have completely destroyed my heart with your endless deceptions."
A shudder tore through his frame.
Instinctively, the beige-clad guards that flanked him simultaneously tightened their grip on his shoulders. But neither of them dared look into his eyes; in fact, no one, or at the very least, none of the individuals he'd had the opportunity to make eye-contact with, had dared look at him. If anyone's eyes had held his gaze for more than but a moment, they quickly turned away, as if embarrassed to be caught staring – or terrified, which was more probable.
They had come to the interrogation room now – the same one as before, although he doubted that it was the only one of its kind.
The beige-clad guards deposited him in the dimly lit cinderblock cell, roughly thrusting him down into the steel chair that sat at one side of a battered metal table, facing the one-way mirror.
He made no effort to resist them, though he could have easily torn apart the metal cuffs that shackled his wrists and handily beaten the two men. Perhaps that was why Colonel Philips had ordered them to be removed during his earlier interrogation – the American man, despite his decidedly boorish manner, was no fool.
With a solid clang, the steel door to the interrogation room was slammed shut, leaving Johann alone with his reflection.
The gnarled crimson façade in the mirror taunted him, staring back at him with bleak blue eyes and slumped shoulders. His gloves had been removed, revealing slender blood-red fingers, heavily veined. His heavy leather tunic was gone, and the black silken shirt that he wore was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing his crimson chest. Black suspenders hung loosely about his shoulder-blades.
The figure in the mirror looked thin and hunched and miserably tired – a far cry from the proud man that had once stood with his head held high, shoulders thrown back, and with a majestic swagger about his step.
So empty and hollow were the hooded eyes that stared back at him – he was little more than a withered skeleton.
The steel doorframe rattled slightly as the door swung open with a resounding creak. The bodies of two burly American troopers filled out the doorframe, flanking either side of it with their rifles slung across their chests.
The hollow clack of shoes hitting the poured concrete floor of the bunker echoed louder as a shadowy figure approached.
A young woman in uniform – trim, beige pencil skirt and jacket, cream-colored blouse and neck tab. Her caramel-colored curls were pulled back into a chignon, framing her pale, alabaster skin.
The woman that stood before him was statuesque and graceful – a far cry from the willowy, gap-toothed little girl that had come into his home all those years ago.
But the grey eyes that gazed at him from afar did not hold the warmth or happiness that he had so often taken for granted. They were cold and unforgiving.
She pulled out the steel chair opposite him and sat down, silent. She spread her pale hands on the surface of the metal table and met his eyes.
"You wanted to speak to me." She said quietly, holding his gaze rigidly. She spoke in German.
His heart thudded solidly in his ribcage. His throat felt dry and his tongue, thick. Her grey eyes bore like knives into him, and he struggled against the desperate urge to avert his gaze from hers.
"You should speak English." He murmured. "For the sake of our listeners." He let his eyes drift towards the silver mirror, imagining the veritable crowds that no doubt stood beyond it, watching, waiting – for a snatch of intelligence, or perhaps, a traitorous word.
"There is a translator present." She answered flatly. Her voice was so terribly cold.
He nodded slightly. "I see." He answered, forcing his gaze onto hers, which had remained unwavering.
She folded her hands, sitting back in her chair. "You wanted to speak to me." She repeated, but she spoke in English now. "So, say what it is that you wanted to say."
"Were I to be a fool, I would ask for your forgiveness." He answered quietly. "But I know that I am undeserving of it. So instead, I will ask you: what would you have me say to you?"
Her grey eyes gleamed in the dim light of the room. "You lied to me. Ever since the day my mother died, and likely long before that. To me. To her – and God knows how many others. Why?"
Her words punctured his heart one by one – sharp, like daggers.
He swallowed, his throat constricting against the action. He let his gaze fall to his lap. "Because I was selfish." He whispered.
A torrent seemed to let itself loose within the woman that sat before him – he could feel her features twisting, could feel the heat rising on her face, could feel her muscles trembling –
"You used me." She whispered, her whole body trembling. "You used me as an excuse for your selfishness. The lies that you told me, Uncle, the lies that you told yourself – your grand vision for a world liberated from cruelty, from poverty, from anguish – every day, you lied to me, you told me it was in my best interest. You hid from me – you hid behind a mask, you lived the lie, you convinced yourself that it was the truth. It was all a game to you – if only I would have played the way you wanted me to, if only I had believed you and worshipped you, if only I had fallen on my knees and praised your name like some sort of god, like a good girl. If only I had understood that your wants, that your beliefs were righteous."
Her grey eyes were bitter. "The only person you ever gave a damn about was you. I was simply convenient. It was easier for you to blame me and to use me than it was to listen to your conscience."
She leaned across the table and let a pale, slender hand glide delicately across his face. He closed his eyes and shuddered faintly at her touch.
When he opened his eyes again, he was gazing into her tear-filled grey ones.
"I believed you, Uncle. I trusted you. This monster that you have created is not who you are and yet you hide behind it as though it is your last defense. You have you shut yourself out from the ones that you loved – from the ones that love you still – because you felt that you needed more. And I know, Uncle – you knew that it was wrong. You knew that what you were doing was wrong, and yet you did it anyway. And you convinced yourself that I was fighting you because I was against you. Did it never cross your mind that perhaps I was fighting you because I loved you so much – because I cared for you so much and I knew that this monster was not my uncle? Was I not enough, Uncle, that you felt that you needed more?"
The tears spilled from her grey eyes as she pulled her hand back from his face, staring at him with empty eyes that were drowning in empty sorrow.
And the hooded eyes that stared back at him from the one-way mirror were also filled with tears, and they stained the hollows of his crimson face. His entire frame trembled – he had been weeping silently as she spoke, and his breaths were shallow and ragged.
She sat down in the chair across from him, and folded her hands in her lap. Tears stained her porcelain skin and her grey eyes were glassy and dull and tired.
She was silent, and she stared at him with eyes that longed for some sort of closure – some affirmation that her words had meant something, that her anguish, her tears – that they had not been in vain.
Johann drew in a shuddering breath, and met her grey eyes with his own sorrowful blue ones.
"I am so sorry, Mina." He whispered, hot tears streaming down the hollows of his gnarled face. He felt his gaze flicker to the silver mirror beyond her, but he cared not if a crowd was gathered beyond the glass, bearing witness to his gradual dissolve into hysteria. He cared not if anyone witnessed his anguish, witnessed his heartbreak. There were no voices in his head now, taunting him, mocking him, crying out "Weakness!"
He sharply inhaled and let his eyes flicker closed for a moment, gathering himself, finding words to articulate emotions that he had struggled for so many years to contain, to never let out of their prison within him.
"I do not deserve your faith in me, your trust." He said quietly. "I was selfish, Mina. I manipulated your trust in me, your love, and I knew that what I was doing was wrong and that I was destroying not only you, but myself in the process. I used you, and as you said, I knew that I was using you. You wonder why I did not listen to my conscience. I did not want to have a conscience, Mina. I did not want to feel empathy. To be apathetic, to remove myself emotionally from you, to ignore the apprehension and guilt that I felt, was to be strong. To acknowledge your suffering, suffering that I had caused and for no reason other than my own wants, was to be weak."
He let his gaze fall to his slender crimson hands, spread across the table before him. "To acknowledge you at all was to acknowledge my own failures, to acknowledge a reality that I did not want to accept. You are one of many who warned me that what I had determined as my destiny would in the end become my downfall. I refused to heed those warnings. I refused to listen to my friends and those whom I loved. I turned against them because I had convinced myself that they had turned against me, that they had betrayed me and made a mockery of my trust in them. They told me truths about myself that I did not want to hear and so I shut them out."
He met Mina's eyes, which gazed at him attentively. "I could not shut you out." He said quietly, shaking his head. "You confronted me with perhaps the most bitter truth. I hid from you. I hid behind a mask because I was terrified of how you would see me then – I could not bear the idea that you would look upon with me fear or anger, that you would reject me as a monster and a madman, as everyone else had."
He sighed deeply. "You brought me something, Mina, that I had never felt before – something that I did not want to feel. Your mother's death was one in a long line of betrayals. The ones that I had confided in and trusted in the most were all gone. When the cancer took your mother, I felt that at long last God had betrayed me – or whatever forces govern this world. The world had taken everything from me – it held a grudge against me, it was bound and determined to see me fail. I was a street urchin, the son of a drunk – I had no education, no money, no family title. I languished in prisons for crimes that I did not commit – because I was easy to blame. I was stepped on and mocked and hissed at by the cream of society, made to be their servant. Adolf Hitler's ascent to power gave me hope that there was yet a place for me in the world – a place where I could avenge with a bitter hatred the wrongs that had been done to me. I trusted in him, I trusted in the men that educated me, that paid attention to what I had to offer, when no one else would even cast a second glance my way. Only to be ousted from the party because I dared to strive for more, because I was ambitious. I learned that to be ambitious in a world of paranoid fanatics was to be a threat, and a threat that needed to be eliminated."
Johann closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling sharply. "When your mother died, Mina, when you came to me – I had been spurned and betrayed by the very ones that had inspired in me some sort of childish hope that there was still something in this world that I could call my own, that I could call success. I was bitter, I was empty, I had nothing left to give to the world, and the world had never had anything of worth to give to me – I did not want to love. I wanted to hate – to avenge, to destroy, to control. The first person to see me as you see me now was your mother. The serum was – "
"Was flawed." Mina spoke mechanically – as though the words had been poised on her tongue for ages.
Johann let his eyes flicker again to his hands. "Yes. But I did not care. I did not heed Abraham Erskine's warnings because I did not care how impulsive the decision was, the consequences that it would have. I was interested in immediate power – I cared not if it turned me into a monster in the process. I was exhilarated by what the serum did to me – I felt alive, I felt powerful – strong enough to destroy the fools that had snubbed me. I was certain that the serum was the answer to everything I had ever desired. But as I knelt beside your mother as she lay dying, she said something to me that has haunted me to this day. She told me that I had been perfect the way I was – why did I destroy myself, when what I had had truly been all that I needed? Why did I feel that I needed more, when I already had enough?"
He lifted his eyes to Mina's grey ones, and he felt a new wave of hot, salty tears overflow and begin to trickle down the hollows of his face. "You, Mina, you gave me a reason to put aside my grudges, my hatred. You have loved me all this time – and yet, I convinced myself that you had betrayed me like all the others, because you saw the ugliness in me that I was not willing to face. You saw the selfishness and the violence within me that I have struggled against for so long, because I did not want to find fault in myself. I convinced myself that you had betrayed me, when in reality, I have betrayed you. You brought me hope when I was empty, when I had nothing to left to give. You brought me happiness when I had nothing but grief and anger. You were only thing in the world that I needed. And I was too blind to see it. And it was not until you had sacrificed yourself that I was willing to see the ugliness of the reality that I had created."
The crimson face reflected in the mirror trembled, his gaunt frame wracked by sobs. His voice was but a shaky whisper when he spoke to her now. "I am so sorry, Mina. And I know that nothing I can say to you now will ever make me worthy of your forgiveness. But I would do anything to try to right this."
The woman that sat opposite him gazed at him with tearful but tormented grey eyes. "I want to forgive you, Uncle." She said softly. "But the people that I have served with, the people that have gone before me, people that were willing to sacrifice their lives fighting you, fighting Hitler – they want to see you dead, or at the very least, behind bars."
She reached out with a slender hand, letting it lightly graze the top of his. "You must gain their trust. And in gaining theirs, you will gain mine. There is still so much evil in this world that needs to be vanquished. There is yet a place in this world for your talents, Uncle. Please help – for my sake."
The steel door behind her opened with a rattle of hinges as the silver cropped head of the American Colonel Philips ducked into the room, a slight scowl on his haggard features. "Time's up, kids."
He slapped a thick stack of files down onto the steel table. The man's dark eyes met Johann's with a steely resolve. "Have we come to a decision?"
Johann's eyes flickered to his niece, whose gaze pleaded with him desperately to acquiesce. He inhaled sharply, and met the American's eyes. "I told you that I would cooperate with you, Colonel. I intend to honor that agreement."
The American was grim. "Welcome aboard."
His tone was decidedly unwelcoming.
XXX
Johann rested his cuffed wrists on the long boardroom table before him, grating his teeth and gazing coolly at the band of American soldiers that flanked the table on either side of him. The soldiers were overwhelmingly young – boys, most of them likely in possession of only a high-school diploma, if even that. Their faces were freckled and pocked with acne scars, their hair greasy and unkempt – still in the throes of puberty. But their eyes betrayed the depth of their experience. He wagered that each of them had struggled or struggled still with the psychological affliction of having killed a man. Their eyes were dull and glassy, and they looked far older than their youthful faces suggested. He noted the two soldiers that sat at his left – the two boys that had masqueraded as HYDRA soldiers and had successfully commandeered his fighter jet.
The young man that sat closest to him was different than the others, though – his face, though just as young, held a darkness about it, a darkness that did not originate in the horrors of war. His ranks tabs showed that he was a captain. A closer examination alerted Johann's attention to the boy's scars. A jagged, puckered line peaked out from the boy's hairline, as though he had received a gash to his forehead. It was pale white, suggesting that it had been there for some time. Another similarly shaped line curved along his jawbone and extended down his neck, into the collar of his shirt. The boy's bronzed skin and tawny hair were identical to that of the young man who had presented his niece in the airfield.
"Your German is exceptional." Johann said quietly, casting a sidelong glance at the young man.
The American soldier's gaze flickered to meet his eyes, distracted. "Sorry?" He mumbled gruffly.
Johann turned his head to look directly at the boy. "You speak excellent German." He said, slightly louder. "Your accent was nearly undetectable."
The American shifted in his seat. "You noticed?" His tone betrayed a faint hint of surprise.
Johann smiled at him coolly. "Germans have a very keen ear for accents."
"Well, if you noticed, you didn't do anything about it." The American replied, averting his gaze.
"That is true." Johann said softly.
Johann let his gaze fall upon the table before him, but out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the young man examining him curiously.
The table had been abuzz with quiet chatter as Johann had been – somewhat forcefully – ushered into the room, led by Chester Philips. All conversations were now decidedly hushed and whispered. Yet, while all individuals beyond this room had refused to make eye contact with him, frantically averting their gazes whenever he approached, the young men that sat around this table stared at Johann unflinchingly. Some even scowled at him with hateful eyes. But their exhaustion outweighed whatever resentment they harbored towards him, and their glares were dull.
Philips stood at the opposite end of the table, grimly surveying the table's surface, littered with photographs. Mina sat to Philips' right, silent. Occasionally, her sad grey eyes met his gaze, and though she tried to offer him a smile of reassurance, her lips still quivered as she held her sobs at bay.
Philips' fist struck the table with a resounding 'crack', and the hushed chatter subsided instantly.
The American selected a photograph from the spread and with a flick of his wrist, sent it gliding towards Johann's end of the table.
Johann eyed the photograph as it landed quietly before him. The same hooded figure, bedecked in a grey Gestapo uniform, dripping with ribbons. A grey military cap, the death's head grinning at its brim, sat lightly atop the faceless head, the sharply angled chin held high and proud. The figure's arms were crossed at his chest as he gazed off into the distance – the classic power pose. It was laughably dramatic and utterly characteristic of his old rival.
Philips' steely monotone cut into his thoughts – "So, who is this Heinrich Zemo and why is he Germany's problem child? Because he's about to become mine."
Johann cleared his throat, lifting his eyes to face the Colonel's dark ones. "He is the twelfth baron of Zeulniz, but more importantly, he is – or perhaps was – a high-ranking Nazi scientist. However, he has recently fallen out of favor with Hitler and his entourage."
"And why is that?" Philips interrupted.
"The power got to his head." Johann replied flatly. "Zemo is not interested in the betterment of the Reich, he is not invested in Hitler's visions – he is interested in what Hitler has to offer him, and he will remain interested only so long as being in Hitler's employ benefits him. Hitler and his confidantes are painfully aware of Zemo's – how to put it? – lackadaisical view of the Nazis' operation. And, in almost every other case, an individual like Zemo would be immediately expelled from the party, if not executed on the spot, accused of disloyalty or treason or something of that nature. The Führer's paranoia has no limits. If anyone – even the lowliest clerk – demonstrates so much as a shred of ambition, it is automatically deemed as an ulterior motive, and one that is aimed at Hitler's undoing. And that person would be removed – either from their post, or from the world entirely, depending on the gravity of their misstep. Zemo, on the other hand, is a different case entirely. He is Germany's problem precisely because they cannot get rid of him."
Philips ground his teeth, glaring darkly. He was growing impatient – it obviously vexed him that Johann was in possession of knowledge that he was not, and more still, that he was being held in suspense by a prisoner.
"What do you mean 'they can't get rid of him'? Can't they just poison his schnapps and have done with it?" The American snapped.
Johann chuckled, shaking his head. "If only it were so easy. You see, Hitler is terrified of Zemo because he is completely dependent upon him. Zemo is the last of Hitler's scientists. He simply cannot afford to have him killed off, and he knows that if he threatens him at all, Zemo will turn on him. Zemo is the last of the wunderkinder as it were – nearly every top scientist in Hitler's inner circle has been either exiled, stripped of rank, or executed, if not all three in rapid succession. This is because the power got to their heads, and they knew of their sway over Hitler – or worse, their sway over his followers. Roughly seventy percent of HYDRA's recruits were comprised of defects from the SS or the Gestapo's science divisions. Hitler wanted the greatest of talents to build up his armies, his weaponry magazines, his killing machine. Hitler is no engineer, no scientist – he is a fanatic armed with only his speeches, his parades, his rallies to inspire popular support. He is the public face of the Reich – but he is not and will never be the cogs and gears that bring his vision to life. And Hitler knows this, achingly well."
Johann cleared his throat. "Hitler got rid of me because I made the mistake of letting my ambition take precedence over the work that I was charged with as a servant of the Führer. I made no effort to hide my true intentions, and I paid the price. In my foolishness, I handed Hitler an advantage against me – he knew what I was after, he knew that I had machinations to overthrow his empire."
"So what does Zemo want?" Philips asked.
Johann smiled wryly. "That is the ultimate question. No one knows what Zemo wants, what he's after – I suppose one could say world domination, but that's rather too clichéd for the likes of Zemo. He thrives on chaos, and he creates it as frequently as possible – as you must know, or else I highly doubt that you'd be concerned with him now. But, he does not wreak havoc for any particular reason – he doesn't have any specific desires, he doesn't hold any vendettas against anyone. He simply enjoys being destructive – surely you've heard of the episodes with his death-ray?"
Philips' burgeoning glare turned to ice. "He's using German civilians as his guinea pigs."
"Do you have a better understanding of why Zemo is Germany's problem now, Colonel Philips?" Johann's tone matched Philips' glare.
The young captain sitting to Johann's left spoke up. "He's creating bad press for Hitler – Hitler's got the people snowed about what he's really after. They'll follow his rhetoric without batting an eye because he brought Germany's economy back from the dead. But that's because it hasn't affected them – the ghettos, the death camps – so long as it doesn't personally involve them, Hitler's cover is bullet-proof."
"But Zemo's massacring German civilians now," Philips cut in.
"And I'd wager that the average German civilian doesn't even know who Zemo is – only that he's in league with the Nazis. Any bad press that he causes by murdering German citizens by default becomes bad press for Hitler. A breach in the public's trust in the party." The young captain concluded.
"Precisely." Johann replied coolly.
"So, why the hood? If I may ask." The young captain inquired, casting a glance at Philips, who only nodded grimly.
Johann smiled. "Ah yes, that also adds another layer of 'intrigue' to Zemo's character. You see, he began wearing the hood after the incident with his death-ray in order to assuage Hitler's fears of… guilt by association, as it were. As you suggested, Captain," Johann paused to glance affirmatively at the young man seated to his left, "The German public is largely oblivious to the names and faces of those who occupy Hitler's inner circle. Zemo's mishap was egregious – the death toll that resulted from his experiment was so large and so glaring that any efforts by Hitler to cover it up proved futile. Wearing the hood enabled Zemo to continue his work anonymously and for a time, it provided some reassurance to Hitler that if such a fiasco were to occur again, his reputation would not be immediately tied to it."
"For a time." Philips interjected coldly. "And then what?"
Johann nodded. "Another mishap – and one that haunts the Führer far worse than the last. Zemo had been toying with an experimental adhesive – 'Adhesive X', as he called it. This adhesive was so powerful as to permanently fuse to whatever it touched. If I recall correctly, Zemo had been intending to use it against the Allies – and your Captain Rogers foiled his plan quite magnificently by puncturing the vat while Zemo stood next to it. Alas, the awards he's won for his research fail to compensate for his lack of common sense. To conclude a rather boring, albeit unfortunate, tale – the adhesive poured onto Zemo's head, permanently fused the hood to his face, and Zemo has since gone insane because of it."
Johann smiled at the American colonel. "Now, I realize that "insane" is likely a term that you view with some skepticism, considering that you've no doubt classified myself and the entirety of the Nazi party as such. But Zemo poses a far greater threat. He's unpredictable – no one knows what his plans are, if he has any at all. He kills with reckless abandon, and as you've learned, not for the betterment of Hitler's cause. Although I haven't recently kept up on his developments, the last I heard, he had unveiled a force of prototype androids – he's always been keenly interested in the science of robotics, cyborgs in particular."
"So no one knows what he's after, not even the Nazis – but he's developing an army of robots? Why? You said he wasn't interested in the helping Hitler, he's just interested in helping himself." Philips wore a decidedly troubled expression.
Johann shrugged. "As I said – that is what makes him particularly concerning, especially to Hitler. Zemo hasn't outwardly attempted to usurp Hitler, and he is the last of Hitler's key scientists. So, Hitler cannot afford to get rid of him, for practical reasons more than anything else. The rest of Hitler's scientists – including myself – have been swiftly done away with because we were deemed too powerful for his comfort. I would wager that the only reason Zemo remains in the inner circle today is because he has finessed the practice of pandering to Hitler's ego. Whenever he makes a mistake – such as massacring a German town – he runs to Hitler, apologizes profusely, gushes over his allegiance to the Führer and to the Reich – and almost immediately resumes his activities, with little to no harm done to his reputation or his position. He panders, he gushes, he rubs shoulders, and he has never once let slip his true intentions. And, he is so effective in playing the political game that no one has ever thought to ask him the question."
He locked eyes with Philips. "Which leads me to a question of my own, if I may, Colonel. As I think we've established ad infinitum – Zemo is Hitler's problem. So why is it that the United States is interested in him?"
The American glared sharply at him. "Because it's my job to round up all of Germany's special nutjobs before they become a threat to the rest of the world. And if this nutjob is causing Hitler anxiety, you can bet your ass he just shot up to number one on my hit list."
Johann raised a crimson brow bone. "Is there a distinction between special and otherwise?"
Philips cocked his head. "Considering that I'd been using you as the most extreme spectrum on my scale of normal to nutjob, I'll leave that one to your judgement."
Johann smiled. "You flatter me, Colonel."
Just then, a young man in beige – a corporal, his rank tabs indicated – approached Colonel Philips, feverishly whispering something to him. Philips did not answer him, only nodded silently.
The meeting was adjourned, but while Mina and the other young men that had sat around that table filed off in one direction, Johann was instead corralled and bade to follow Chester Philips and – rather surprisingly – the young captain.
They walked in silence, and Johann was ushered into a much smaller room than the earlier interrogation cell – a dusty hollow, the size of a closet, with a banged-up desk, a dusty lightbulb suspended by a questionable looking wire, and a rusting boiler that dominated much of the room.
Philips sat on one side of the desk, while the young captain silently gestured at Johann to sit in the other remaining chair. The young man, in turn, stood quietly by the door.
"New information?" Johann asked quietly, pensively examining his cuffs.
Philips' expression was a mass of confliction – both troubled and supremely irritated. He was staring at a photograph that had apparently been placed on his desk before his arrival, and presumably at the moment that the young corporal had rushed into the boardroom to interrupt their conference.
"You said Zemo's interested in cyborgs?" His tone was flat.
Johann cleared his throat. "I did."
"Another village has been wiped out and this time my recon team got the full show." Philips grimly slid the photograph across the table to Johann. "Any idea who the hell this guy is?"
Johann leaned in to examine the photograph – and felt his heart leap into his throat.
A blond-haired man grinned in the picture, holding a gloved hand up towards the sky, an intact shell gleaming in his palm.
Of course, the shell was of no interest to Johann – only the man's haunting face.
For it was the face of Wolfgang Hofstadter, Johann's brother-in-law, a man who had been pronounced dead for over a decade.
Johann's voice was but a thin whisper when he spoke. "Impossible."
