They were quick about it. They searched the mercenaries, they were armed and armoured too disparately to be anything else, and left them kneeling in lines, hands tied behind them, Barton and three others watching them. They had eleven prisoners, they'd killed five. There were probably more guards somewhere. Rogers split the rest of the squad in half to search, Romanoff stayed with him. They went quickly and quietly, listening hard. Their chances were much better if they saw hostiles before they saw them. They checked every doorway for signs of life, most rooms looked as though no one had set foot in them for weeks. One of the first that looked occupied was a room about twenty feet square with a single bed in it, an empty plastic cup beside one of the bed legs.
"This is where I was, isn't it?" He asked Romanoff. She nodded and pointed to the shaft.
"They found the bodies, they're not there any more." Something up ahead was making a lot of noise, mechanical noise, like hydraulics, pulses getting gradually faster. The corridor turned left, then right. Two guards levelled P90s at him. He raised his shield and charged them, they were only ten feet away. Romanoff followed him. One of them managed to shoot at him, but hit his shield. He hit one, Romanoff hit the other. Both went down. Rogers pulled the gun out of the guard's hands and kicked it back. Romanoff did the same.
"Up." Rogers said. Both men got up, hands raised. "Ahead of us, go." They went, heads down. Whatever was making that noise was getting closer. They opened the door at the end of the corridor.
"Hands up, nobody try anything clever." Rogers called as they crossed the threshold. Only two armed men, who dropped their guns when they saw that two of their own were prisoners. Four others in the room, three men, two of them about thirty-five, one pale and red haired, the other a similar age but sandy haired, the third probably ten years older, bald and heavy set, and a woman, a slender woman of about thirty with long, dark brown hair and wide brown eyes. She looked absolutely terrified. She raised her hands and dropped to her knees quicker than anyone else did. The room looked as though everything electrical had been stripped out in a hurry, cables lay everywhere. Whatever was making that noise was somewhere to the left.
"Romanoff, go see what that noise is." Romanoff walked off to the left and cursed.
"It's an MRI machine, with every damn computer on the base in it. They just burned their records."
"Nobody say a word. He only knows which of us is which by voices." The oldest doctor said, with a deep voice and a slight southern accent. Ryman. Romanoff stared hard at him, then turned on the red haired doctor.
"Name." He didn't reply. Romanoff bent her knees and punched him in the guts. He moaned and doubled over. "Name." She kicked him. "I can hit much harder than that."
"Doctor Samuel O'Brady."
"Thank you." She moved on to the next, the sandy haired man. "Name." He drew breath, looked at Ryman, then looked at Romanoff.
"Jason Michaels."
"Thank you." She turned on Ryman.
"I know who that is." Rogers put in. Romanoff passed him and stood in front of Grogan, who was gasping with fright.
"And you?"
"Lucy Grogan. Captain, I had no idea what was going on here, you have to believe me." Romanoff shushed her. She fell silent. Romanoff was being very rough. These were civilian prisoners. Rogers picked up his radio, steadying his breathing as best he could.
"Alpha one, what's your status?"
"Found eight more mercs here, half asleep by the look of them, and a load of stored food. There's nothing more to search our end."
"OK, head back outside, we'll follow you out."
"Copy, over and out."
"Who's in charge?" Rogers asked the room at large. Nobody answered, but everyone at least glanced at Ryman. Ryman stared at the floor. Easy enough. He looked around the room slowly. There were machines lying everywhere, some of them overturned. Romanoff was looking at them too. "Any idea what these are?" He asked her quietly.
"Some." She replied. "Ultrasound, X-ray tube, centrifuge," She nodded at some of them. "But not all of them, not by a long shot." Rogers nodded and turned back to the captives.
"Cuff them and get them up in file."
Back in the courtyard, the SHIELD soldiers obviously knew what they were doing. They had all the prisoners kneeling in ranks, except two who were being treated by first aiders and three were standing up.
"These three have identified themselves as mercenary captains, Sir." A SHIELD guard said as he approached. He nodded, breathing hard.
"Run the surviving mercs past them, let them pick out their own."
"They'll lie." Romanoff muttered to him.
"I know, but we'll get some truth." The SHIELD soldiers did that quickly and efficiently, marking their foreheads with a felt pen A, B or C. Romanoff marked all three doctors and Grogan with the letter I. "No injuries to ours?" Rogers asked the squad commander.
"None, Sir."
"Good. Load up the mercs, not in their groups, don't let them talk on the road, leave the place empty; we can't spare the men to garrison it properly. Leave the I group to me and the other Avengers, plus one of your drivers. Hood all of them on the road, we want them disorient. And tell your troops I'm impressed." The commander smiled. Rogers looked away. He missed his Howlin' commandos, troops he'd known backwards and inside out, troops he would only have needed to nod at to order, troops he'd trusted with his life so many times it hadn't even occurred to him that they might fail him by the end.
"Yessir."
Rogers, Romanoff and Barton loaded the three doctors and Grogan in to one of the smaller jeeps, Barton and the driver, Parkhurst, in the front. Rogers looked round at the four prisoners. Ryman was sitting with his hands on his knees, apparently completely calm. The two younger men were tense, sitting stiff, twitching when something brushed the bags over their heads. Grogan looked even more frightened. She was breathing fast, swallowing often. She seemed to be shivering a little. She sniffed now and then too, was she crying? Rogers looked long and hard at her. He'd though he'd know her, the girl from Connecticut who liked fixing what people did to each other on purpose, who'd worked so hard to keep him comfortable. She'd been keeping him prisoner with the rest of them. Unless she genuinely hadn't known, unless she'd genuinely thought that he was blind, had nearly died and could not bear his eyes to be touched. He breathed out hard, then breathed in again involuntarily. His breathing hadn't settled. If anything, it was getting worse. Romanoff met his eye.
"You OK?"
"Yeah." He said, though his long, drawn breath. Like before, it wasn't that he couldn't breathe, more like he couldn't breathe enough.
"Oh, so it is you I can hear gasping, Captain Rogers," Ryman said, he sounded as calm as he looked. "I thought it might be Grogan." She flinched at the sound of her name.
"What's it to you?" Romanoff said, motioning Rogers to be quiet.
"You feel it, don't you?" Ryman said, as though Romanoff hadn't spoken. "Eating away at you, bit by bit." What was he talking about?
"Shut up." Romanoff said, motioning Barton and Parkhurst not to interrupt her.
"You know by now, don't you? Day by day, you're getting weaker, it's stripping your life force away." Rogers's breath caught. They'd done something to him. They'd done something to him to stop him fighting them and running away.
"Shut up." Romanoff repeated, more loudly.
"You've caught us, well done, but we're no use to you once you're dead." He was dying? He couldn't know that. These people had lied every step of the way, but something was wrong with him, very wrong. "In exchange for our freedom, we can tell you what we did and how to reverse it, though in a couple of days it won't be reversible, we can still tell you how to stop it before it gets any worse. If this goes on, Captain, by the end of next week you won't even be able to climb the stairs." Rogers looked sideways at Ryman. That was as terrifying a thought as being blind. "Let us go, and we'll tell you how to stop it." Romanoff caught Rogers's eye and mouthed
"Liar." She raised her voice again. "You'll cheat us. We know the kind of men you are. We let you go, you disappear." She sounded choked.
"Keep Grogan as a guarantee or something." Grogan cowered back, whimpering quietly. "What choice do you have? You're the US government, how far will you dare go with us? Stress positions, cold, heat, hunger… We can endure that for a while." Romanoff lifted a finger to her lips again. "Will you electrocute us? Waterboard us?" He chuckled. "I'll be surprised if you dare to do as much as stick a hand down Grogan's pants." Grogan pulled her knees tight together. "For our freedom, we can tell you what we were trying to do, and what we did, before it's too late."
"We know what you were trying to do." Romanoff said. "You were trying to replicate Erskine's success. People have been trying ever since." Ryman laughed softly.
"Why would we create something we can't destroy if it turns on us? Why would we make a weapon we can't unmake?" Romanoff grinned and tossed her head back in victory. Rogers leant forwards, elbows on knees, still panting. They'd been trying to revert him. Was that even possible? Could he be shrunk and weakened again? Shrunk maybe not, but weakened, it felt that way. He wasn't right. He really wasn't right.
Back at base, Romanoff told Rogers to go and get the medics to look at him, insisting she and Barton could deal with the prisoners. The medics didn't keep him long, they shot him with something to bring his heart rate down, which worked, watched him for long enough for him to be really sick of sitting still, then sent him off to Fury, who was waiting to talk to him. He found Fury with Romanoff and Barton, watching cell cams for the four I group prisoners, the doctors and Grogan. Romanoff and Barton apparently hadn't been there long. Romanoff was speaking when he walked in.
"The mercs are cooperating, they know we'll send them down for way worse than having illegal guns if they don't, they know they're not POWs. There are four groups, all but one has done exactly as we asked."
"How big is the difficult group?"
"Only three guys, all young, I don't think they know what we can do to them."
"Barton, once we're done here, go and… inform them of their position. Get them on side." Barton nodded. Those mercs were in for a rough time. "This I group, what's been done?"
"Strip searched, then given their clothes back." Romanoff replied. "Kept blindfold as much as possible. Ryman was forthcoming in the jeep, but a lot of it was crap."
"Such as?"
"Tough guy talk, he said Rogers was dying, so we need to get him on side fast"
"He give a time frame?"
"Fury, he's bluffing."
"Did he?"
"Ten days or so. He also said he could hold out against us that long and that we wouldn't dare waterboard or use electricity." Fury leant back and folded his arms.
"Did he now?"
"The only thing he said I really believe is that they weren't trying to copy Rogers, they were trying to undo what was done to him." Fury nodded.
"Rogers, what can you tell us about them?" Rogers told them what he could remember, who'd seemed to be in charge, what little background he knew, or had been told.
"Grogan said she knew nothing about what they were actually doing, I think it's at least possible she's genuinely a civilian who got mixed up in this somehow."
"Also an easy way to protect yourself." Romanoff said. Fury nodded once.
"I'm wrapping this up. Barton, you know what your job is. Romanoff, you're with me, front line interrogation. We start this gently, vulnerability, restraint, but we make it clear it will get worse. We don't want to lie about how we did this if we don't have to. We take them in turn, the three doctors. Leave the girl for now. We give it 24 hours, then we meet back here and review. All dismissed. Romanoff, I'll see you down there in fifteen." The three Avengers walked out together.
"At least he let me try Ryman my way." Romanoff said. "I guess the intel we want is too specific for that." Barton murmured in assent.
"Now I gotta go and rattle mercenaries for two hours."
"Oh, you've got two hours of rattling peoples cages." Romanoff scoffed. "I've got 24. We'll do two hours of each, then the next, then the next, we get no sleep, they don't either… Not my idea of fun."
"You're a good interrogator though." Rogers said. Romanoff sighed.
"I like it when it's freehand, when it's just your mind, your will against theirs, you win by misleading them, outlasting them, being braver, being stronger. Then it's an art, it's skilful, it's satisfying. Once they're nerves are shot and they're exhausted…" She shook her head. "Not my idea of fun."
Just to make it clear at this point: not everything any narrator of mine says is to be trusted.