A Day in the Life
The hum of the electrified gauntlet was all around me. I tried to pay attention to the sound of my attacker's scuffling feet, but he was quiet as a mouse. I clenched my fists and resisted the urge to pull my blindfold off.
"Well… Fortis, I'm waiting. Just strike already," I cried impatiently. "Are you scared?"
"No… I'm not scared." I immediately lunged toward the voice. My right fist hit first. I felt a burning sensation as electricity run up and down my forearm. With my left I reached up and grabbed the cuff of his gauntlet.
"Hey!" Fortis cried as I grabbed the gauntlet with both hands and ripped it off his arm. A great force hit my temple and through my across the small arena. Reached up to my temple blood was already oozing out of a cut on my forehead. I was got to my feet and prepared to launch myself in his direction. I wasn't really mad at him. More… I don't know… Excited? I was glad sparing had finally gotten interesting. Right before we entered into another brawl a voice cried out.
"Stop! We're done for right now." I huffed and pulled off the blindfold. Dr. Lehrer stood behind a wall of glass on the opposite end of the room.
"Come on," I half-whined half-yelled, "after months of training, he finally lands a good hit and you call off the fight?"
"Yeah," Fortis echoed while tugging at his own blindfold. "I might not be at Fawn's level but I need practice, too." Dr. Lehrer might not have looked like he could intimidate a gaggle of armed superpowered children, not that there were that many of us, but most of the time we complied. Today was different though, I was hyped up, I was in a rather rebellious mood, I wanted a real fight. I gestured to a short blond boy in the corner.
"If you don't want anyone to get hurt make us fight Jason," I said.
"Hey!" Jason cried indignantly; and then more quietly said, "I would get hurt."
"Sorry, had to," I called back to him. I knew it wasn't really time, but I never passed up an oportunity to bug the boys. "Anyway, why can't we actually fight each other? It's not like we will hurt each other more than these would!" I held up my wrist to remind the doctor of the handy discipline band that had found a home on each one of our wrists. Those things hurt like hell when activated.
"I wish I didn't have to make you wear those," Dr. Lehrer said. He didn't mean it. The bands made him feel safer around us. The boys came to my side. Their mere presence made me feel stronger. Years of training together had formed an unshakable bond between the three of us.
Oh! I haven't given a proper introduction yet. My name is Fawn, I'm a genetic experiment gone wrong. I was an early attempt at cloning the winter soldier. Short version, it sort of worked but not really. Now that I think about it my name is a cruel joke; naming me after his old nickname, back when he had a life and knew who he was, was just downright mean. People say I look a lot like him, but unlike him, I'm a girl, I have green eyes, and my hair is just a bit lighter than his.
Then there are the boys. Oh boy, the boys! Fortis is like me. No, he isn't a clone, but he grew up in Hydra just like me and is my age, 12 years old. His parents pretty much forced him into this top-tier training program, but since there aren't many kiddos in Hydra he got shipped off to Oregon to train with Jason and me (we are in Oregon by the way). Fortis is a sort of American mutt. You can see traces of pretty much every ethnicity when you look at him. He has shaggy black hair and tanned skin. His eyes are a deep shade of brown and show distant asian ancestry.
Jason. He was kidnapped. Not really. Well, kind of. He was an orphan. No one wanted him, so when the poor four year old ran into a couple of Hydra scouts they had no problem taking him. He is a sweet kid. He is ten years old and is blond with blue eyes. He, like me, is a supersoldier. When he was brought into Hydra they experimented on him. I think they injected him with some stolen Captain America DNA (that might be where he got his flawless moral compass… well, not quite flawless. He does enjoy pranks) or maybe it was just a new super soldier serum. He isn't as strong as me, but that kid can run!
Anyway, we were all ready to yell at the stupid doctor about his stupid safety protocols. But he spoke first (He also has a stupid voice). And you wouldn't believe what he did. I guessed he sensed our aggression, but he took the remote for our discipline bands and yelled (guess what?).
"GO TO YOUR ROOM!"
His thumb came down on a yellow button on the remote. I had a second to suck in a breath before electrical currents coursed through my arm and the upper left side of my chest. The three of us groaned and dropped to our knees. Currents of electricity were shooting up and down my body, stabbing randomly wherever they could. And that was only on the lower setting. I screamed, my heart's beating quickened. Finally, the bands shut off and I inhaled sharply. I looked at the boys and found that they were worse off than I was. I was on my knees panting, but they were still curled up on the floor. I ran to check on Jason. He was curled up on the ground. Not crying or whimpering, but fuming. I understood why. The feeling of indignation. We both hated the things they did to us but we knew we were powerless to stop it.
"Come on," I said to him; and then in a whisper, "We'll get our chance to show him what we're capable of." He sat up and looked at me.
"Blue socks?" he asked with a smirk. That comment Fortis heard. He looked at us slack jawed.
"No, no. Not blue socks." he said.
"Why not?" I asked with a frown as we began our trek through the research facility, toward our rooms. "It'll be fun. We never get caught anyway."
"Because, red socks would be funnier to watch." I smiled as we talked about blue socks and red socks. We earned a couple weird looks from agents patrolling the halls when they heard things like "red socks at pancake hour" or "the fabric is in the waffle room". Yes, these are all codewords.
I only had 10 minutes before I needed to go to my class on battle strategies. So once I got to my room I began to prepare for operation "red socks." My room is a small and grey. It has a little bookshelf and a dresser on one end and a bed with metal railing on the other side. I grabbed my hairbrush from my dresser and hastily ran it through my long hair. And I don't mean long like mid back. No. My hair is over two feet long. When I was younger I never let anyone touch my hair. Funny story actually, when one of the agents decided to mess with little Fawn he told me that if one of the scientists ever got ahold of me hair they could clone me. Little Fawn wasn't too happy about that. I guess I was afraid of the scientists possibly making ten of me and then not remembering which one I was. But anyway, I developed this phobia and have never let anyone touch my hair since I was six.
I tied my hair into a high ponytail and grabbed my backpack. I looked warily through my window. Still peering out the window, I reached one hand under the bed's mattress and lifted it. I grabbed a few see-through orbs and loaded them into my backpack. I sat down on my bed and re-tied the laces on my combat boots. I stood up and checked the time (the tiny torture device on my wrist doubles as a watch!). It was pancake hour. I smiled and walked out the door toward the waffle room. Operation "red socks" was a go!
Honestly, the end result of "red socks" is much more entertaining than the prep process. I strode down the hall toward the war strategy room. It was time for our daily lessons. Yes, Hydra schools us. We get taught all the normal stuff like, math, biology, language arts, computer sciences, manipulation and decapitation, and battle strategy. We take education very seriously here at Hydra Middle School! The boys and I all had different classes at different times, but the current schedule put us in the perfect positions for "red socks."
The strategy room was a short walk from my cell (Sorry. I meant to say bedroom), but whenever I walked the hallways I couldn't help but wonder what lay behind each locked door. The building was very different from your typical "dank, evil, warehouse." As a whole, the underground Oregon base looked more like a very suspiciously closed off hospital with a paranoid head of security. All the people in the halls were either dressed in lab coats or carrying a gun, or both. Men and women milled about in the halls with expressions of either disdain or indifference on their stuck up faces. I'm sure that, throughout Hydra, the words "you're being promoted to working in the Oregon base!" were widely interpreted as "congrats we're forcing you to babysit!" The whole irony of this particular building was that it was so clean and bright. It was as if Hydra was trying to bleach out their evil deeds and intentions with the interior of this one base. Of course at that time I didn't really know much about Hydra's wrongdoing outside of the facility; it wasn't an immediate concern.
Anyway, once I got to the "classroom", It was time to begin operation "red socks." I had the easy job: retrieve certain chemicals from the cabinet in the battle strategies room, fill the see-through orbs (they have a more cool sciency-sounding name than that but we never used it) with the chemicals, and roll the orbs through the ventilation shafts. Jason had a similar job, he retrieved small charges and remote detonators. Fortis had the hard job. He was allowed more freedom around the base so he was supposed to plant the chemicals and the charges in strategic positions and set them off. Don't worry we didn't blow up the building, the bombs we use don't cause that much damage, what happens is the heat from the (small) explosions triggers a chemical reaction and the chemicals expand and mix creating a sticky red liquid that covers the halls and gets a great reaction out of the troops. Don't ask me about the science behind it, because I don't know. Fortis is the chemist in our group.
Everything was set up and I had just sent the chemicals off. My teacher then came into the room. He, like everyone else at the base, hated me, but there was one thing he, and everyone else at the base hated more than any freak they could ever hope to create. The original freak, Captain America. That was half the reason I existed. I was being raised as an assassin. I was to kill Captain America should the original Winter Soldier fail. I was plan B. I was still training to be an assassin and apparently that meant sitting through these mind numbing lectures. My teacher was currently comparing Hydra's long-term goals to a game of chess.
"... Captain America is the queen." I silently laughed. "The king: the world's governing powers. In order to take out the king, the most powerful piece, the queen, must be eliminated." I never really listened to the lectures. I had heard all of these lectures before and at this point I was really beginning to doubt their teaching strategy. Besides it was still possible to win a game of chess without taking out the queen, but I knew better than to argue this point. Rather than listen to the repetitive "Kill the Captain" messages I thought of other things; like what Fortis would look like with a buzz cut and how I could get my hands on more geography, historical, and fantasy books. Some of the soldiers pitied us and brought us gifts.
"NW42, are you listening?"
"No," I answered honestly. I hated when people addressed me by my project name.
"You insolent child! I ought to tell your supervisor about your delinquent tendencies." I rolled my eyes. "No one else has caught on yet, but I know that it's all you kids, all the problems with the vents, the goo, the malfunctioning weapons."
"Innocent until proven guilty." I smirked.
"You stupid child! What gave you that idea? I should..." He stopped abruptly and I could hear a faint murmur coming from his earpiece. He sighed and glared at me. "Several guards will be arriving in a minute to escort you to the hangar. Officer Bruhl requires an audience with you and NW43."
Internally I began to panic. Officer Bruhl, supervisor of project CHILD OF WINTER, has immense amounts of power within Hydra and only came to check on us if it was very, VERY important.
"Why is he here?"
"If it was my business they would have told me," he replied coldly. I hate it when people reply coldly. "Now, about your behavior…"
My escort arrived about five minutes after I was notified and I eagerly followed them out. My teacher had been trying to use my discipline band, but luckily he was not authorized. I had tried to lighten the mood with a couple witty remarks and he tried to hit me with a chessboard. If I ever got my chance I would make him regret that.
My escort, two Hydra troops armed with syringes of heavy sedatives, flanked me as I walked toward the hangar. My nervous heart went from a nervous canter to a panicked gallop. I could feel tears welling up. I felt sick. The huge white door at the end of the hall swayed back and forth. I could hear every panicked breath that left my lungs.
"Just keep walking. Just keep walking," I told myself. I knew that if I tried to run it would guarantee punishment. If I just corporated things would be better for me. "Don't run. Please don't run." With my eyes cast downward I couldn't see the doors open but I heard them. It was then the urge to run was strongest, but I fought it. I was directed to the largest aircraft in the hangar. Jason was already there. Officer Bruhl, thankfully, wasn't. I took that opportunity to speed walk away from my escorts toward Jason. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"What do you think he's here for?" Jason asked me. I shrugged.
"Maybe it's just a check up?" I replied. "Y'know to make sure we're behaving and that our training is going well." I looked at the floor. "Yeah… training. That's all it is."
We sat there in silence for awhile and I began to relax a little. I stared at the cement floor of the hangar and thought. I thought of the outside world. Of the sun. Of the sky. Of snow, animals, the ocean, trees, normal people. Of music and movies. Of things I had only ever read about. I was so lost in my impossible fantasy I didn't hear the door open and officer Bruhl walk in.
"There are my prized lab rats." officer Bruhl said. This jolted me out of my fantasy. I quickly jumped to my feet.
"Hail Hydra!" I squeaked and jumped into a salute. Jason did the same.
"NW42, darling, we need to talk," officer Bruhl said coldly. Like a chastized dog, I looked at the floor and avoided his eyes.
"Yes sir." Whenever someone of Officer Bruhl's rank is in the room I suddenly have a one track mind. There are many things that I forget about or miss. Such as Officer Bruhl's socks. "Why his socks?" you might ask "what's so important about them?" Well, they were spotless. Super clean. I'll bet they smelled nice, too. Things that Operation "red socks" would definitely ruin.
Well... There's the second little segment. Any critique is welcome.
Byeeeeeeee,
Nightwhip 13