Chapter 6

I was extremely on edge for the next few weeks, even with Christmas and New Year's coming and going. I just tried my best not to think too much about what the Hydra man had said. I mostly stayed in mine and Steve's rooms, but I did venture out to be with some of the rest of the team. Steve did his best to keep me happy and keep my mind off of everything going on, and I did slowly begin to feel better.

But when Nat approached me and told me that it was time I went outside and did something normal, I reluctantly agreed to go get coffee with her. Unfortunately, I had a sinking feeling that something was going to go terribly, terribly wrong.

Sometimes, I really hate it when I'm right.

The day started ordinarily enough, with me waking up, getting dressed in a cashmere sweater over one of Steve's t-shirts. I went downstairs and met up with Nat in the lobby. We walked down through the streets to a cute shop called Bibble and Sip. I got a hot chocolate and a massive blueberry muffin and went to sit at a table with Nat. The whole time we sat, my leg didn't stop moving, and Nat kept giving me sympathetic looks. But I had to admit, it did feel a bit nice to be out and about, even if I was suspicious of everyone in the shop other than Nat.

We had mostly finished up and left the shop, cradling our still warm drinks. We had been walking for a few minutes when Nat stopped.

"I left my phone in the shop," Nat said, giving me a sorry look. "Listen, it'll be quicker for me just to run back on my own. It shouldn't take me more than five minutes. You should be fine alone."

I opened my mouth to protest, then clamped it shut. Nat was really swift and I would just slow her down, and I honestly wanted to hurry up and get home. So I nodded and Nat turned to go back the way we came.

It had barely been two minutes when I began to get a sinking feeling that something was off. I sent a quick text to Nat that I had continued on my way home and headed the direction we had come on our way to the cafe.

I headed down the surprisingly empty street and tugged at my hair. I couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen, and I just wanted to get home. But a moment later, I was yanked into a dark alley and a cloth was placed over my nose and mouth. I faintly remember being thrown in the back of a truck before everything went black.

Nat would see my text and continue on her way after retrieving her phone, but she would stumble across a spilled cup of hot chocolate from Bibble and Sip. And she would return to the tower and I would not be there. The team would panic, Steve particularly so. They would do their best to find me, but by the time they did, I wouldn't be the same Stephanie as before.

When I finally came to, I was definitely not in a place I recognized. I was lying down, face up. The surface under me was hard, and I was high up enough to guess I was on a table. I tried to move myself to a sitting position, but my arms, legs and torso were strapped to the table. I could just barely lift up my neck to take in the dim, dingy room, and really just couldn't move. I put my head down on the table and tried to think. My head was still spinning, and my thoughts refused to click together.

Suddenly, the door opened and a man, dressed in a white coat with a surgeon's mask around his neck, came in. He was followed by two similarly dressed men, one of whom was wheeling a cart. They walked over to me. I could just about tell from what I could see that I was in the center of the room I was in. Once he was next to my table, the man began to speak.

"This'll be easiest for all of us if you just don't move and cooperate." He said as he pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on. The man rolled up the sleeve of my shirt and took a pad, damp with alcohol, and cleaned the area right underneath my shoulder. The man with the cart handed the other man a syringe with some kind of blue liquid in it. I squeezed my eyes shut, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

The pain from the shot faded quickly, but what soon replaced with another kind of pain. One that burned. It began in my shoulder, but rapidly spread through my body. I began to thrash under my restraints as the pain just intensified. I vaguely registered the three men leave the room before everything went black.

I woke up in another room which resembled a jail cell. I was lying on a cot-like bed, and the only other things I could see were a toilet, sink, table and door. The only light came from a small bulb dangling from the ceiling. I rubbed my throbbing head and tried to sit up. Bad move. Almost immediately, all of my organs seemed to fold in on themselves and I curled into a ball to try and decrease the pain.

All of the next few days were spent like that, albeit I had no way to know how long it had actually been. Every so often, someone would come in with a tray of food. Often, they would come in, see the almost uneaten food on the table, switch the trays and leave.

I began to wonder if I was just here because Hydra had failed with me. I knew the story of Captain America. He came out ripped and almost immediately went out to chase the Hydra agent who had killed Doctor Erskine. I couldn't even sit up without wanting to die because of the magnitude of the pain I felt. Plus, as a result of the pain, I felt weaker rather than stronger.

Yet, I felt my strength returning one particular morning when I was able to sit up without any form of pain. I tried to stand and my head swam, but it was a step in the right direction. I also began eating more of my food, but I still never ate all of it. The pain was always there, often a faint throbbing headache, but occasionally in cramps, soreness or a burning pain. But I wasn't dead yet.

The scientists started coming in a little while later. They just did little things, like cutting me to see how fast I healed or had me stand up and walk, or took my temperature, blood pressure, heartbeat and other things like that. The cuts were the worst because despite how fast some of them healed, they still always stung, adding to the seemingly permanent pain.

But the pain wasn't the worst part. The worst part was the dark thoughts that would enter my mind as I tried to sleep. At first, they weren't bad, but the longer I was there, the worse they got. I began to wonder if Steve and the rest of the team even cared, if they were even going to try to rescue me, if I was even worth it. And these thoughts were dangerous because what had kept me going at the beginning was now dragging me down further. I didn't know how much longer I could last this out.

A/N: Whelp, what's gonna happen now? Lol, I really appreciate y'all for reading.