1945 - Location Unknown
"Nice try. I ain't that gullible." Bucky manages after a few seconds, lip curling with disgust. "You think I'd be dumb enough to take your word for anything?"
The chilly smile doesn't flicker. This bastard is really enjoying himself. "Of course not, Sergeant. I hear you are a clever man, and clever men are always expecting the trick, the sleight of hand. No, you and I are not so easily swayed by words alone." The man tugs a newspaper out of his labcoat and tosses it onto the wooden bunk beside Bucky's leg. "See for yourself."
It's a copy of the Washington Times, though how they got ahold of it out here, he's got no idea.
Captain America Lost In Action! Country Mourns Fallen Hero! the headline reads.
A big photo of Steve in his Captain America get-up sit squarely underneath, followed by a lot of political fluff about how this person and that person mourns this terrible loss, etc. He skims across it, heart in his throat,looking for crucial details that will either debunk or confirm the story. There isn't much besides some general wailing and gnashing of teeth. The story's too vague and too puffed up to tell him much. A tiny flood of relief washes over him. He almost fell for it, too.
Bucky defiantly raises his chin and crumples the paper in his hand.
"Bullshit." he spits, and throws the paper on the ground. "Gonna have to make a better fake than that, asshole."
The man across from him just smiles and says something to the guards, not even glancing down at the battered newspaper at his feet. There are instantly two uniformed men hauling Bucky to his feet and out the door. His hisses sharply when they manhandle his still-tender shoulder, but neither of them seem to notice, and they certainly wouldn't care even if they did.
"I assure you, Sergeant, I could produce a much better false newspaper than that, should I desire to." The unsettling man is strolling along behind them, unhurried as ever. "But why should I bother, when the real thing is available to me? I'm sure you will feel more cooperative after a treatment."
They drag him down a hallway and through a reinforced door, into a room with what looks like an electric chair settled in the center of it. It's the first time of many that he will see that chair.
They press him down to the seat and wrap thick leather restraints across his arm and chest, pin his legs down with similar straps. So they're going to torture him again? Nothing new there.
He's waiting for someone to start hitting him -bracing for the crack of a fist across his jaw- so it takes him completely by surprise when someone pulls a switch instead and electricity arcs through his body like a club to the brain.
He screams without meaning to.