Rogers wandered back to his quarters. He should probably try and sleep for a bit. This stuff made him really uncomfortable. He'd done take-downs loads of times, catching an enemy soldier, getting them on the ground, blindfolding them, shouting questions at them, hitting them once if they didn't answer. It wasn't fun, but it worked. When you needed specific information quickly, like where the prisoners were in a base or where the command centre was, it worked, it was your only option really. Having four civilians completely under your control for days on end, stripping them of their humanity, using things only made to make someone else's existence miserable, that was what the Nazis did. If they were supposed to be the good guys, shouldn't they hold themselves to higher standards? Shouldn't they be fair to their enemies as well as their friends? It did seem to be Fury's plan to leave Grogan alone at least, she probably knew very little, Rogers couldn't help but wonder how much. There was something very aversive about the idea of torturing a woman, more so than the men. Grogan seemed so scared, so vulnerable, surely Fury would realise he didn't need to hurt her to make her tell what little she knew. Even if she'd known he was being lied to, she'd been good to Rogers, she'd done what she could to keep him comfortable. Maybe he should go and check on her, make sure Fury hadn't done anything to her.
The cells on this base were barren and exposed, not as much as the one Loki had been kept in, but still. The front walls were bullet-proof glass from below hip height upwards, the only furniture was a low, bare cot at the far end. Grogan was pacing hers, eyes down. She jumped and backed away when Rogers opened the door, hands raised as if to fend him off. She looked at him uncertainly. He closed the door behind him and spread his hands.
"I'm not gonna hurt you." She breathed in, the backs of her legs hit the cot.
"You I kind of believe." She breathed out, as though forcing herself to be calm. "Why are you in here then?" He shrugged.
"To see if you're OK."
"We've changed round." She shook her head, looking down. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what they did to you, I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
"How did that happen? How did you get caught up with them?" Grogan sat down and set her head in her hands.
"I told you my Dad was a lab tech, didn't I? When I was half way through college, he was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. Suddenly he couldn't work, he needed looking after, it bled us dry. I was already in a lot of debt because of college, but suddenly my parents couldn't help me. Dad was insured, so that helped, but I still had two years of school to go. That's a lot of money." He leant against a wall. This felt like it might be a long story. "The thing with debt is, once you're in it, you're in it. Getting out is really, really hard. Graduating and getting a job helped, but it didn't help enough. Interest was out of control by then, I couldn't keep up. One month, I couldn't pay the rent, I was about to get evicted, then I did something really stupid." She glanced up at him. Her eyes were shining with tears. "I went to a loan shark. He paid off a fair chunk of my debt, but then I owed him too, and his interest was… I couldn't pay. I couldn't even begin to pay. He said that if I didn't pay inside a month, he'd come and find me and sell me, as an organ donor or a prostitute, whichever got him more money." She sniffed quietly. "I was terrified, I couldn't go to the cops, I'd been to a loan shark, then about a week later, Ryman contacted me. He said he needed a nurse who'd work antisocial hours in an antisocial location and not ask any questions. He said he'd pay off my debt to the loan shark and half the legitimate stuff, give me bed and board while I was working, plus six hundred dollars a week, which really isn't bad. I'm ashamed to say it, but I didn't ask any questions. I didn't feel like I had any choice." She looked up at him again. Tears were running down her face now. Rogers looked away from her. He could have said she'd done the best she could have, but she hadn't and she knew that, she knew she should have gone to the police. Life hadn't been kind to her though, losing a parent is always tough, he knew that, and he'd heard of loan sharks doing horrible things to their debtors, in 1930 at least.
"So you met up with Ryman and he took you to Mexico."
"No, he sent a guard. I met him that day. He told me there was a patient waiting for me, gave me a medical history, three days of extreme ocular pain, meningitis causing various neuropathies, now under control, still blind, still presumed ocular pain." Rogers took a minute to work that out. It was his fake medical history. "He said you'd been restrained for the reason I told you, violent seizures. They told me to tell you it was a SHIELD facility, and gave me reasons various people couldn't be there."
"Did you know it wasn't true?" She clenched her jaw, still looking down.
"I didn't ask. I didn't make up any lies, I just repeated what I was told."
"Why did they bother with the pretence? Why didn't they just leave me blindfolded and tied up?" She shrugged.
"I guess they were scared they wouldn't hold you. I don't know how they caught you in the first place, but I guess they didn't want to have to do it again, or they thought you could do enough damage that they didn't want to risk it. They had a file on you somehow, they knew you'd respect a superior's orders. And I guess if you're after medical data, it's useful if the patient's on side. You wouldn't have told us when you felt different if you hadn't thought we were trying to help you." She paused. "Is Barton OK, by the way?" Rogers laughed quietly.
"He's fine. I was talking to him an hour ago." There was a silence. "Did they tell you to… make a pass at me?" She bit her lip.
"No, that was just me being… Not quite as in control as I'd like." She looked up at him questioningly. She smiled. He shook his head.
"No. I'm still way too old for you, and I'm your captor. That just shouldn't happen." She dropped her head again.
"I'm so screwed. I don't know what you're gonna charge me with, I guess I'm an accessory to kidnap, but I'll have a record. I'll never work as a nurse again. What the hell am I going to do?" Rogers came and sat down at the opposite end of her bed.
"We're not the police, we can't actually charge you with anything. We can turn over what we have to the police, but we may not. If the people in charge believe you, we'll probably just let you go with a slapped wrist." She looked round at him.
"Do you believe me?" He hesitated.
"Yeah, I think I do."
They were on day two, and still going. Rogers was reporting for vitals checks every twelve hours, though Romanoff was still adamant that it was a bluff, he wasn't dying, Fury seemed less sure.
"We're making progress," Fury said. Rogers glanced at Romanoff. It was hard to tell from her face. "just I've come up with a couple of ideas. Ryman is expecting physical pain now." Rogers felt himself tense. Ryman wasn't a soldier. Whatever he'd done, this wasn't right. "He might respond well to someone who seems to be on his side. Take him food and morphine. There's a tray waiting for him in the refectory, on your way, go to the infirmary and give someone this. Romanoff, go with him and brief him." He handed Rogers a piece of paper, folded over. Rogers turned and headed for the door. If this got Ryman to talk, it was better than whatever Fury would try next.
"Barton, there's a pressure point we want you to-" Fury glanced across at Rogers. He was waiting until he'd gone before he gave Barton his instructions. What was Fury telling Barton to do that he didn't want him to hear? Something very nasty, no doubt, but why Barton not Romanoff? Rogers didn't really want to know.
The doctor in the infirmary, not Doctor O'Malley, read Fury's note with a scowl on his face.
"This should not be allowed." He said as he handed over a syringe full of clear liquid. "you should not be allowed to use prescription drugs in interrogation. This goes in to muscle or you pick skin up like this." He picked up a fold of skin from Rogers's forearm. "Needle goes in longways, not crossways. Keep the needle capped until you actually use it, then re-cap the needle and bring it back here."
"Fury hopes that by doing this he'll avoid worse." Rogers said. The doctor didn't look convinced.
Ryman was lying on his back on the bed when Rogers came in. He sat up when Rogers came in.
"Really?" He said. "Your old one-eye's tried bargaining, he's tried threat, he's tried getting that red-haired hussy to twist me round, hit me, he must be running out of ideas. I doubt he dares go much further, so he's sent me the old soldier, honest and fair, to appeal to my better nature." Rogers set the tray down next to Ryman.
"Fury didn't send me. I'm off duty for observation."
"Ah, of course, the time bomb. How are you feeling?" Rogers shrugged.
"Not so bad. I haven't done much though." Ryman blew out through his nose. "Look, Fury is a long way from out of ideas. He will go further than you know. In half an hour, he'll be back for you. I don't know what he's going to do, I saw something that looked like an electric pig goad and what looked like dental equipment, so I'm betting it's bad."
"So you're doing this behind his back? What happened to the good soldier?" Rogers looked away. He was not good at this.
"What am I supposed to do if I think my superiors are doing something I think is really wrong? I was… made, changed to fight Nazis. One of our reasons for hating them is how they treated their prisoners. They tortured them, enslaved them, experimented on them, killed them… Why do we fight if we're no better?" He picked up the syringe. "This is morphine. I don't know how much it will help you, but…" Ryman hesitated, then took the syringe from him.
"If Fury realises I'm drugged?"
"He'll guess this was me pretty quickly. He knows how I feel about…" Ryman stared hard in to his face.
"Why would you help me?"
"Because I don't believe that anyone deserves to be tortured." Ryman breathed out slowly. He pulled the cap off the needle and held out his left arm.
"Press there."
"The doctor said in muscle or under skin."
"I'm also a doctor, he just thought that you'd stuff up intravenous injection. This works fine." Rogers grasped him firmly round the elbow. Ryman let a blue vein fill up along his forearm. He lifted the needle and shoved it hard in to Rogers's forearm, ramming the plunger down. Rogers pulled back and jumped up.
"What the..?"
"I'm not fooled, Captain. That's not morphine, that's some PAF agonist to make it worse. Enjoy the next hour, everything's gonna hurt." Rogers shook his head.
"That was morphine."
"So why do you look scared?"
"I don't know what morphine does to me, I don't know what you did to me, I have no idea how the two will interact." He let himself out. That had backfired. Ryman was too sly to be caught like that. Romanoff was outside, waiting for him.
'No joy?"
"No, just ten mils of morphine in my arm." Romanoff cursed softly.
"Fury's trying to do it legally right now, very little physical stuff, but they know they're being interrogated, so my usual technique is useless. They're stubborn. They've been trained against legal methods, they just say nothing or give us memorised answers. They're working for someone above Ryman though, we're pretty sure about that. Ryman has orders from somewhere, but I think he'll be the last to break. Fury's getting frustrated, so it's gonna get worse for them."