The new arm is metal, shining, and the metal catches the light and sparkles in his exhausted eyes like a kaleidoscope, making it impossible to focus on anyone's words even with the way they're slapping at him. When the slapping fails, they zap at him with electrical prods and the metal arm seizes, the pain where it fuses on growing from a dull burn to a conflagration.
They want him to use the arm, pick things up, and his first attempt breaks the table in half. He tenses, prepared for the shocks again, but instead they open up the arm and tinker around with the wiring and gears inside. He thinks of the broken table, thinks of fighting them off, but his arm is numb now and the sight of the machinery within freezes him. This is a part of him now, as attached to his body as the opposite limb made of flesh and blood.
They want to make him a machine and they're succeeding.
The objects they set before him range from as fragile and delicate as an egg—he must crush a dozen of those before the fingers can grasp it without smashing—to a metal beam and when he lifts that one-handed, the arm can support it but the ribs on that side snap from the strain. The doctors note it, confer in Russian and decide to replace those ribs as well. Each motion is accompanied by a whirring, a perpetual reminder of the way they've marked him, transformed him.
The limb's ability to feel texture is the next thing they test, then temperature. Icy water doesn't register, but liquid nitrogen does. He doesn't feel the cold as much as he has a sudden, overwhelming thought of danger, and he jerks away, pain radiating through the broken ribs. Extreme heat feels the exact same as the cold, and the doctors seem satisfied. They stroke his hair, muttering praises, hook the real arm, his arm, to an IV and allow him to lie down and sleep.
When he awakens, his stomach is no longer aching and doubling him over. Steve sits at the foot of the bed, staring at the IV. "That's how they're giving you nutrients," Steve explains. "They don't want you to eat. If you can feed yourself, you're not completely dependent on them."
He nods. He would speak, but his voice has been lost since he woke up in the chair. Was that their design as well?
Steve touches the new arm and it doesn't register the sensation. "They want to make you into a weapon. Their weapon. That's why you've been drugged and starved. It's why they're taking away your memories. They want to make you subservient to them by taking everything else."
Another nod. He knows this is a type of conditioning, though he doesn't know where he learned about it. Or who taught him what conditioning is.
"It won't work," Steve tells him. "I know it won't, because I know you, and you're stronger than them."
He doesn't feel stronger now, having rested and "eaten." He can't imagine feeling stronger while starved and exhausted.
But Steve is insistent. "You're a good man. It doesn't matter what they take from you. They can steal your name, they can tear every memory out of your head and I know that won't change your heart. All they're doing now is giving you the means to overpower them. And you will, and once you get out of here we can find a way to repair all that they've done."
He smiles, not because he believes in his ability to do any of those things, but because Steve does. And since Steve does, he will have to do them. To disappoint Steve isn't an option. He can't say why he knows this, but he does.
They replace his ribs next. It was a delicate operation that involved grafting metal into bone, they say—he wonders if a metal spine is beyond their abilities—and they refuse to let him move after. They speak to him in Russian only and let him watch cartoons while he is healing. If he strains he can recall sitting in a theater, laughing with Steve while news reels and cartoons and movies play, but the drugs keep pulling those thoughts out of reach, like a tide.
Their cartoons are all about the West, about ugly American soldiers raping women, killing innocents, and eating babies. Sometimes the stories are set in the USA, and the whole country is full of slave drivers, putting starving masses through hard labor and then taking any profit for themselves. "The Americans abandoned you," they tell him. "They exploited you and left you to die, and we saved you."
They order him to repeat it. When he refuses, they take to beating and whipping at the soles of his feet, far from the recovering surgical sites and painful enough to get his newly regained voice shrieking.
The words come spilling out to make the blows stop. He repeats it once, twice, and by the fifth time they are praising him, allowing him the IV. He continues to chant the phrase once the doctors have left the room for fear of their return. The beatings may continue if they doubt his sincerity. He repeats it to save himself.
Then he repeats it because they saved his broken body, they gave him a new arm and shelter, and they keep him from starving. It begins to sound true, so he says it again, reaffirming.
Steve is with him again and he falters, guilty, but Steve is just one American. Is Steve American? Steve's begun speaking Russian like everyone else. He can't even listen to English without recoiling—each time he tries to speak it, the electrical prods come back—and so Steve has stopped using it. Even if Steve is American, he's different. It's possible that Steve is the only decent American. Likely, because Steve is the only one staying with him.
His body heals and they want him to use weapons again, follow their orders. He does without hesitation, and when he can feel Steve's eyes on him, sad, he tells himself it's the drugs that make him obey. He tells himself he isn't grateful for what they've done, and he doesn't want to follow commands, doesn't want the distraction from the emptiness in his mind that comes with an objective, doesn't want to be praised for leaping to fulfill an order.
Time passes. His body heals, and if not for the whir of the new arm, the way it is always cold to the touch, or the vast expanse of darkness in his mind where there was once a person, he might feel whole again. He thinks maybe being their weapon would not be so bad, maybe Steve will not hold it against him, until the day they take him out and order him to kill.
I am not this person, he thinks, he knows, even before he senses Steve's presence beside him and hears the man say the same.
The refusal earns the beatings and the starvation again. The target is brought to the facility with them so they can give the order once more while he is being punished. Each time, he refuses.
They strap him into the chair, shock him, drug him. He barely remembers he is alive upon waking and he fires without hesitation, only noticing the blood sprayed onto the wall to ensure the success of the mission.
A week goes by, and they order him to kill again.
The longer he spends out of the chair, the easier it becomes to remember fragments of the person who was in this body, the easier it is to hear Steve. He refuses.
The beatings continue. He hears them speak about shocking him again, hears them worry that they will do irreparable damage if they have to shock him every time, hears that it isn't feasible.
Someone sits down beside him, asks softly why he won't do as they ask after all they've done for him.
"He says not to," he responds in Russian. Always in Russian.
Who says not to?
He points to the American, always watching, always smiling at the man even when the smile is sad. "Steve."