Five minutes. Could they not just give her five more minutes. Forty years she'd been under their control and never once had they let her have a lie in. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stayed in bed until after the sun had risen – certainly not since they'd transferred her to the new headquarters. Not that she would even know if it had risen of course, they had not given her the extravagance of a window. They had given her an iron cot and some bare shelving on which to stow her uniform.
The first time she was escorted in and left alone in the blank space she found herself feeling suddenly nostalgic for her childhood dormitory. Though the walls would echo with the screams of 28 little girls, there were 27 beside her to bring comfort through the nights. Before they were made to turn on each other that is. Twenty-eight girls in four neat rows. Close enough only for the grazing of fingertips at the end of an overstretching arm. Her entire life held in a single trunk at the end, identical in form and contents to its neighbours. As she cast her gaze around her new quarters a flutter ran through her stomach, making her queasy. She had never imagined she would come to miss her former home.
A second jolt hit her when she saw there was a pair of handcuffs already locked to the new cot. She thought she was going to be sick. Were they still that mistrusting of her? That they would think she would ever dare to run away. Or were they simply mocking her, in their own twisted way? Forty years they had known her. Broken her. Remade her. They knew she could not sleep without them. Was it an act of mercy then? A gesture of comfort even? However warped that gesture was.
By now the banging on her door had become incessant and she could no longer even pretend to ignore it. A new guard then, if they were bothering to knock at all. If it had been Ivan she would have already been on the floor with a boot in her back. Groaning at the lack of sleep she released her arm and rolled ungraciously off the edge. She had been worked to exhaustion. Pushed from mission to mission for weeks on end. Even a knock-off super soldier serum could not keep up with her schedule. She took her time getting dressed, bundling herself wearily into combat trousers, boots and t-shirt. Left boot. Right boot. An unconscious pulling up and straightening of socks – leftover from a childhood uniform of shorts and stiff ankle boots. In a selfish effort to alleviate some of her displeasure at being woken before dawn yet again, she forcefully yanked open her door, letting it smack against the wall with a sharp bang and rebound swiftly back towards the face of the guard. He narrowed his eyes in warning, though she narrowed hers further and he quickly backed off. Definitely new. Wouldn't last long.
"The General has asked for you." He stated. Asked. No-one here ever asked. "He wants you now."
She turned her back to him and began to head towards His study. She heard footsteps following her. Letting out a growl she rounded on the man.
"What?" She spat.
"I have orders to escort you." He bravely replied.
"I don't need escorting from six inches away. Back off." She snarled and moved off again, intending to put some distance between them.
He was clearly either very brave or very stupid because he was back within striking distance almost instantly.
"I can feel you breathing on me. Back. Off."
The gap between them was increased by an infinitesimal amount. He was taking his role very seriously. Unable to shake him she clenched her fists and marched off once more. She was tired. She was hungry. And the satisfaction of decking him into unconsciousness was coming dangerously close to outweighing her fear of the consequences. Remarkably, and not for lack of trying, they made it to Ivan's door unscathed. She raised her hand to knock but was beaten to it by her new friend.
"I am not a child!" she hissed viciously, rounding on him once more, fist raised.
"You were never a child." Came the low reply, as the door was pulled calmly open.
Under normal circumstances His tone would have her cowering. Shying away from the inevitable reprimand and bracing for the impact of a blow. Today however, whether because she was too furious with her new shadow, or too dumb from exhaustion she simply felt bereft and, in what she would quickly come to realise was an enormous lack of judgement, scathingly retorted "and whose fault is that!?".
The scuffle was brief. Pathetically so. A grab of the neck and slamming of her head on to his desk had her dropped within moments.
Reprogramming. That was what they called it. Reprogramming. That was what she called it now too. If they had done the job a little less well she may have called it torture. But now she could only comply. The sign of a successful reprogramming. She deserved it, she had said afterwards, flatly. She had disappointed her Master and required correction.
She didn't feel anything when they placed her back in her quarters. No longing. No yearning. Not even a quiet tutting about the lack of natural light or irritation about those ever-absent five more minutes. There was a coldness, she thought, all down her front, though it took her a while to work out why. Concrete. A semi-conscious sweep of her room confirmed it. No cot. No shelves either. What was left of Natalia, the tiny part of her they have never completely managed to remove, gave a minute smile at their antics. Did they think she would try to squeeze herself on to a narrow shelf to sleep? It barely held her neatly folded clothes. The action exhausted her and she drifted off again, splayed out and shivering on the floor. Perhaps tomorrow they would let her lie in.