This guy?

We Were Soldiers

33. The Price of Success

Subject #29's agonal cries reverberated around the cold stone walls of the poorly lit laboratory. Dr. Arnim Zola tried not to hear them. Tried to ignore the piercing wails as the subject's limbs began contorting in spasm, wrenching into bone-snapping positions. Tried to pretend he couldn't hear the whistling, wheezing gasps as the subject's trachea closed up. And when the subject's death throes ceased in a sudden, violent scream, he tried not to let the fear and the nausea rise up from the pit of his stomach.

As the subject's broken body finally began to relax, as electrical impulses faded and chemical reactions began to slow down, Dr. Zola turned to his medical journal and picked up his pen.

'August 4th, 1943. Subject #29 did not survive the transformation process. Death occurred at 3.37pm local time. I will begin the autopsy immediately.'

With a deep sigh, he set down his pen and sank defeatedly onto the stool behind the workbench. Each failure brought valuable insights, but he was still no closer to replicating Dr. Erskine's serum, and Schmidt was becoming more and more impatient. Each new death brought a deepening scowl to his stony countenance despite the knowledge that was reaped from the autopsies.

Not for the first time, Dr. Zola wished he'd paid closer attention to what Dr. Erskine had been doing, tried harder to get access to the geneticist's research. But Dr. Erskine hadn't trusted Zola with access to his lab, and most of his formulae had been stored in his mind rather than committed to paper. It wasn't possible to steal another man's thoughts.

Unfortunately.

Now, with Dr. Erskine gone, Zola had once more been pulled from his wonderful projects and assigned to work on the serum. That serum, he suspected, would be haunting him to his grave and beyond. He'd tried—God knew, he'd tried his hardest!—but he was not a biologist by trade. Physics was his forte, coupled with a brilliance for mechanical engineering. His exoskeletons could have ended the war by now, if he wasn't constantly pulled aside to work outside of his field on projects which were Schmidt's mad pipe dreams!

What did he have to show for his work? Twenty eight—no, twenty nine, now—dead subjects, and twenty nine test tubes of something that might find use as a biological weapon, but would never successfully create enhancements in the human body.

The door of the laboratory swung open, admitting Schmidt himself. Zola scrambled for his pen, pretended to be finishing up his note, but from the canny gleam in Schmidt's eyes, he suspected the man knew he'd caught his senior researcher in a moment of lazy introspection. Fortunately, Zola was still on his good side… for now. There was no rebuke as Schmidt strode into the room, two armed guards behind him.

Zola shivered at the sight of the guards. The helmets they wore obscured their faces in a way that prevented identification. Zola had no idea what the men beneath the masks looked like. Maybe even the men didn't know what each other looked like. Perhaps they woke and put on the helmets right away. Perhaps they even slept in them. It made them fearsome to be around. It made them something other than human. Maybe even something less than human. They certainly didn't show fear, like any normal human would, and they jumped to carry out orders with an obedience that was almost mechanical.

Drones, he thought to himself. And then his thoughts raced away, on to potential new projects to replace the failing super-soldier project. Drones, like worker ants or bees. If men could be somehow indoctrinated to obey, they would make a much more efficient fighting force. But how to implement such a thing? Chemicals, pheromones, subliminal hypnosis… perhaps something introduced into their food rations, to make them more malleable. But then—

"Doctor," said Schmidt, pulling Zola's racing thoughts back to the confines of the cold, damp lab. Laboratory, they called it. Once it had been the prison's torture chamber. It was bare, unpleasant, and lacked many of the basic amenities Dr. Zola had come to expect in a proper, respectful laboratory. No wonder his work on the super-soldier serum was failing! How could he be expected to work in such primitive conditions, especially in a field outside his expertise?

"I see Subject #29 has been another failure," Schmidt continued. His beady eyes danced over the corpse slowly loosening up on the table. "What was the cause of death this time?"

"I will need to perform a full autopsy, to be certain," Zola said, standing and reaching for his surgical gloves, "but at first appearance, it would seem the serum increased the rate of cellular metabolism to such an extent that the cells began to die and the major organs failed almost immediately. There was also an interesting side-effect; the subject's windpipe closed up, as if suffering severe anaphylaxis. It may be that the serum triggered an extreme immune response in the subject's body. If that is the case, suppressing the immune system may be something to consider for the next subject."

He cleared his throat and hurried on.

"Of course, there are other, less lethal ways of enhancing the human body. My exoskeletons, for example, are capable of increasing the strength, stamina and accuracy of a soldier without the need for invasive medical treatments."

"Your exoskeletons, Doctor, are toys." Schmidt turned to him, a hungry gleam replacing the calculated look in his his eyes. Zola had seen that gleam before, when Schmidt beheld the glowing blue form of the Tesseract. "And what's more, they are an advancement that can be taken away. Underneath the metal shell remains a man of weak flesh. The serum will strengthen that flesh, make it harder, more resilient, so that even when unarmoured, a soldier can keep fighting, keep taking punishment that would kill an ordinary man.

"To the entire world, your exoskeletons are a major advancement. They are years ahead of their time. They are a triumphant credit to your unsurpassed brilliance." Zola felt his chest puff up with rightful pride. With his next words, Schmidt smote that pride to ashes. "But to me, they are already obsolete. The future of humanity is not machinery, but evolution. Superior man and superior machine will always go hand in hand, but it is man who controls the machine. Man at the heart of it. And we must make our men the best."

Zola nodded along. Schmidt no longer saw him; his gaze went beyond the walls of the lab, to some far off point in the future, when legions of superior HYDRA soldiers kept order over the whole of the world.

"Very well," he agreed, because he really had no other choice. "I shall carry out the autopsy and make what changes are required to the formula before beginning work on Subject #30. But we are almost out of viable subjects." Perhaps, when they ran out of subjects, work on the project would be halted. Perhaps Zola would be allowed to return to his exoskeletons.

"Doctor Zola, by the time you are ready to work on Subject #31, I will have fresh blood for you to experiment with. Clearly, the local population is proving less resilient than we had hoped."

Schmidt clapped a hand on his shoulder, and it took every ounce of control Zola possessed to stop himself from flinching. The head of HYDRA's grip was like a steel vice. Zola had seen what those hands were capable of doing. The damage they could inflict with seemingly little effort.

"Build me a superior a man, Doctor. With a superior man, we will have the basis for a superior army. And once we have a superior army, you will be free to work on your superior machines. No restrictions. No oversight. Other than my own, of course. Once we have a viable serum, we will no longer need to channel funds into the project; we can invest all funding in your weapons. With your weapons, and my soldiers, we will be unstoppable."

"Hail HYDRA!" Zola volunteered, trying to muster excitement.

Schmidt offered him a wry, humourless smile, and left, taking the faceless guards with him. Once more, Zola sank down onto the stool, heaving a deep sigh of relief. Schmidt was in a good mood today. He'd been in a good mood ever since the assassination of Doctor Erskine. It was an act that had cost him one of HYDRA's best men, and had tipped their hand to the Americans… but the removal of a dangerous liability had made that act worthwhile.

He knew Schmidt's good mood would not last forever. Sooner or later, he would want progress. Real progress, not another pearl on the string of failures. Taking off his spectacles, Zola wiped them on the bottom of his lab coat, and the body on the table swam indistinctly before him. The Austrian man's name was unknown to him, just as were the other twenty eight who'd died before. The men had been rounded up from one of the local villages, some sent for manual labour, others earmarked for experimentation. Perhaps Schmidt believed fresh blood would provide a wider genetic base from which to test. Perhaps Subject #31 would hold the key to the serum.

He returned his spectacles to his face and donned the surgical gloves, pulling them high over his wrists as he approached the metal table. What he wouldn't give for a decent medical assistant! Someone to do all this horrible, bloody, visceral work for him. Twenty-eight autopsies had hardened his stomach, but he still hated the smell.

Still, it was all for a greater purpose. By creating a superior soldier, he would be saving the world, and, more importantly, saving himself. He had to succeed, because he had seen first-hand the cost of failing the Red Skull. And the price of failure was steep.