This is a new fandom for me to write in (which means I'm nervous! I've had this chapter ready for awhile, but keep talking myself out of posting it). This story won't be following canon exactly, but will be loosely in and out of events through Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War.
I have a loose plot, but it is wide open to suggestions and requests, so leave a review and let me know your thoughts. Thanks so much for reading!
Prologue
No thought could make it all the way through. Nothing made sense.
His chest heaved with every breath. Every time he sucked in air it burned its way into his lungs, then rushed out before he could pull enough oxygen free.
His hair, damp with sweat, hung in his eyes.
The men who were supposed to tend him had mixed with the overwhelming…memories? Whatever it was, it only came to the surface of his mind before blurring and evaporating. Like trying to grab onto fog.
One of the techs leaned in closer to repair his arm, a small sizzle of electricity as the wiring within the soldier's arm was rewired. The shield had struck his arm, tearing through wiring and electronics.
The sizzle and hiss, the smell of burning electricity mixed with memories of being strapped to a table, a bone saw slicing off what remained of a bone and flesh arm. Then a new metal arm.
More recent memories of the crackling and snapping of lightning in the chair that erased memories.
When the tech shifted slightly to adjust his view, the face in front of him mixed with the face from the past and the soldier threw all his weight into a deadly punch, launching the man across the room.
The other attendants scrambled away, their feet clattering as metal tools clanged and crashed to the ground in the near silent room.
It had been instinct to throw all his weight into a deadly punch and launch the man across the room. That made sense. That's what he was trained to do.
But the memories didn't scatter the way the men around him did. The past still tangled with the man on the bridge. The one who had leveled the shield at him.
"Mission report."
The soldier's eyes didn't see anything in front of him. There was no rhyme or reason to what he was seeing. He only saw the flashes of people. People he thought he was supposed to know.
"Mission report. Now."
The strike came from nowhere. He didn't care. He barely felt it. Not over the confusion twisting through him. But it dislodged one question
"The man on the bridge. Who was he?" the soldier asked quietly.
He didn't know why he asked. He wasn't supposed to ask. Asking meant thinking and he didn't think. He was blank. A blank slate didn't care.
But his chest was burning, his mind was a noisy mess, and he just wanted to turn it all off. But…he wanted to know. He needed to know. Fragments—an image, a sound, not quite memories—were flooding over him and he needed to know something.
"You met him earlier this week on another assignment," Pierce said firmly.
The soldier tried to turn that answer around in his deteriorating brain. "I knew him," he said, trying out the words, seeing if that was an answer that made sense.
"Is he…like me?" He didn't know what he was. He was nothing more than a weapon. But…these thoughts. He was more than a weapon, or had been at one time. Was that man a weapon? Nothing but a means to an end for an organization? Was there someone like him? Someone who had been made into…whatever Bucky was.
The soldier shook his head. His eyes were struggling to focus. The pain behind his eyes grew. The piercing ice pick of pain in his temple pounded sharper and harder the more he tried to think about the man he had seen. The man he had tried to kill. The man who knew him.
Pierce was telling him he had shaped a century. That he was doing what the world needed, pushing the world toward the order it needed.
The soldier knew that was more important than whatever his feelings were. Helping people, saving society. He tried to listen to what Pierce was saying.
"But I knew him," the soldier said quietly, more sure now that was the truth.
"Get the girl in here," Pierce said, not taking his eyes off the soldier.
The soldier barely heard what his handler was saying. He barely registered one of the military men leaving the room and the door whooshing shut behind him.
He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to make of the information that had blindsided him. He was only given information specific to each mission. Not…anything extra.
The door slid open again. The soldier kept trying to find one thought he could latch onto. Just one that made sense.
A small whimper made its way through the whir of the machine behind him. He looked and saw her.
Her eyes were wide with fright. Every step the man holding her took, she winced with pain. And then she was handed off to Rumlow.
The soldier pulled his thoughts together enough to watch the way she cowered when she was handed over to Rumlow. Rumlow's dark eyes looked down on her and she bit her lip.
"Fix him," Rumlow said, jerking her forward.
She fell forward, but his hold on her stopped her from crashing to the ground. She was physically weak compared to the men in the room. Her jaw was purple, a welt the shape of a fist there. She met the soldier's eyes.
He didn't understand. Not the memories—shadows really—pushing forward in his head, and not the reaction he had to the fear in her eyes. But she had grown more familiar to him than the men in the room. In spite of the confusion roiling like thunderclouds in his head, he knew her. She was from this life, his time with HYDRA, not whatever dream was haunting him from the distant past.
As soon as Rumlow released her arm and shoved the rolling stool forward for her, the terror in her eyes lessened.
She swallowed hard, but picked up the supplies left on the tray table near him by the man the soldier had tossed across the room a short while ago. She ignored the soldering irons and equipment meant to repair his arm that had been strewn across the ground, and instead reached for the first aid supplies.
She kept her head down as she worked. Her hands were just as sure as the scientist who worked on his vibranium arm, but her touch was lighter, gentler, on the overheated flesh of his other arm.
His racing thoughts slowed enough for his eyes to stop darting around the room. His breathing eased some, less labored. She glanced at him and met his eyes.
Few people actually looked him in the eye.
His shoulders slumped forward, his head dropped.
She finished cleaning the last of his cuts, checking for anything that was deep enough to need more than just a bandage. She was hauled away from him, knocking against the tray table with a loud clang.
The soldier tensed, watched her get yanked back toward the wall, Rumlow keeping a firm grip on her arm.
"Watch," Rumlow said to her.
Pierce stood to the side. The soldier dropped his eyes and stared blankly into space. It didn't matter what thoughts and memories had been pushing into his head. They were about to be lost again.
One of the men pushed a mouthpiece at the soldier. He opened his mouth and took it, anger at what he was doing, without knowing why he was doing it, making him snap his teeth down on the piece.
The metal clamps came up over his arms, jerking him back against the chair. The circular headpiece orbited overhead, came down toward him, wrapped around his temples, one eye.
He could hear the woman's sharp intake of breath. Heard her soft whisper.
"No."
He wrapped his fingers around the arm of the chair as the currents started vibrating against his temple, then through his skull.
The screams were ripped from him as every memory was torn away. Again.
#
Chapter 1
Three months earlier
The soldier strode down the hall of the facility with his handler and two other combatants. He didn't review the mission. He knew what he was supposed to do, the target and how to take him out. His mind was empty, except for the mission.
Breathing.
His step didn't falter, but he attuned his hearing to listen more closely.
He could hear gasps for breath. A whimper.
This facility wasn't used for interrogations. It was used to house combatants, equipment and supplies, and to coordinate missions.
Harsh lights lit the underground tunnels, adding no warmth to the cool air that was a constant.
He turned the corner, on his way to the hangar and the jet they would take to the target.
A woman was being hauled down the corridor. Her breath came in frantic gasps, occasionally choking into a whimper.
Brock Rumlow held one arm and another operative had hold of her other. Not that she looked strong enough to resist even one of them.
The soldier watched dispassionately as she was dragged past him.
Her dark eyes darted to his and he saw her recoil farther into her panicked fear at the sight of him.
He took in a small frame, dark hair falling in her face. She wore civilian clothes, no sign of weapons on her.
He didn't know why they would be bringing a prisoner here, but he didn't question. He wasn't designed to question. He was created to serve the mission.
He got into the jet with the pilot and the other three men. He buckled in, ignoring the wisecrack one of the men made to the other. The soldier didn't engage in small talk, in humor.
He was nothing more than the mission.
#
Elia Anderson couldn't fight. Even if she had been strong enough, she couldn't get a movement coordinated. Not like this. Not when she had been drugged and dragged out of her apartment.
But however sluggish the drug had made her movements, her mind was whirling.
Her shoes scrabbled for purchase on the floor as one of the men pulled her from the vehicle in an underground garage.
"I—please—what's—" she didn't even know what she was trying to say.
His grip on her arm tightened and a small cry escaped.
Her breath was coming too fast, her heart skipping around like it was going to leave her chest. Her limbs shook violently in the men's grip. She couldn't catch her breath. Her lungs pushed out another whimper.
There were more men approaching. She had the irrational thought that maybe they would help her. She looked to them. The one in the center, long dark hair around his face. He was huge. Dominating the wide hallway just by walking down it.
Her eyes darted from his silver arm to his eyes, above a black mask that covered the lower half of his face.
Blank eyes.
He quickly assessed her and then looked forward, passed her by.
Relief flared in spite of the terror, relief that he had passed by. That man wasn't someone who would help. And he was even more terrifying than the two men dragging her deeper into the building. Away from her home. Away from everything.
She fought to keep her thoughts. Thoughts that always too easily got away from her, that overwhelmed her, made her lose sight of where she was. She couldn't let that happen. Not now.
"What are you doing?" she managed to gasp out a full thought.
And just like when they had entered her apartment and injected her with whatever was numbing her movements, neither man answered. They dragged her until her arms felt like they were going to tear free from their sockets. The pain was dull, somewhere under the panic washing over her.
They stopped in front of a door. One of the men pressed a finger to a keypad and a door unlatched with a sharp click. He pushed it open.
They finally let go of her arms and she was sailing forward until she landed on cold tile, hitting her head with a sharp crack.
The door closed and she was alone, the only sound her sharp breaths punctuating the silence of the room.
The cell.
Elia pushed up to sitting, her arms already aching, her shoulders burning. She looked around. A single cot. A sink. A toilet. One fluorescent light bright overhead.
She had to—had to—to think—to keep her mind—keep it from—from being overrun—she had—had—to—
Her lungs shoved air out in short puffs, dragged in too little air. Her heart hammered painfully against her sternum, echoing in her ears, pounding in her head. Her vision blurred…refocused…blurred…
The panic took over.
#
The soldier sat alone in a well-lit room far beneath the earth. They had returned in the early hours of the morning, their mission successful, another target neutralized.
The higher ups were increasing the frequency of their attacks. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on the defense, always more than two steps behind them.
He hunkered over his tray of food, eating methodically. Food was fuel for the mission.
He was aware of the other tables in the room filled with people sitting in pairs, small groups. Quiet conversation, the occasional comment that brought quiet laughter. He was never at a table with another person. He would eat his meal in silence and leave the room, a hush falling over any table he passed by.
He finished the high protein, high calorie meal and stood. He was expected in the training room. They had another mission tonight. The assassination of a high ranking member of Congress, followed by framing a member from the rival party. They were going to go over the layout of the building they needed to enter, make sure every member of the team knew their part.
Their part was to clear an escape for the soldier.
The two missions back to back meant he hadn't had his mind wiped yet. The chair would most likely come when he returned tonight after he gave Pierce the mission report. Although, his time out of the chair, and out of cryofreeze, was lasting longer and longer as he was utilized more frequently during the escalating activity.
The soldier scanned the hallways as he made his way to his required tactical meeting.
He didn't see anyone. At least, not a terrified woman with dark hair.
He entered the training room, half the room an open floor covered with mats, the other half punching bags, weights, sparring weapons.
The dark haired woman.
The soldier eyed her without reaction, going to join Rumlow and the others on the mat.
The woman was being held in place like she had been brought down the hallway yesterday, firm hands gripping her arm, keeping her upright.
The soldier stood, a short distance from the other men, at rest, waiting. Waiting to be told what the expectation was, then to carry it out without question.
The woman was pale, she was practically dangling from the hold the other two men had on her, not struggling like she had yesterday. Her head drooped and her face was hidden behind her long hair.
"What's she for?" one of the men asked.
"Access," Rumlow said succinctly. "Senator Fields' home is a fortress. She has access to the location. Her retina scan."
The soldier looked at the woman. There was nothing remarkable about her that said she would have access to any high security location. He narrowed his eyes slightly when she lifted her head.
She was drugged. That's how they got her cooperation. Her eyes were hazy, blinking like she was trying to clear them.
She didn't look like the mistress of a leading official, but it was hard to see past her wrinkled clothing and tangled hair. She had a bruise on her forehead, dried blood from a cut there.
Her head drooped forward again. The soldier turned his attention back to Rumlow. He listened to the plan, the contingency plan. He looked at the schematics of the home. His mind worked linearly, tracking everything he was expected to know, turning over angles that could be exploited by unexpected security, every exit plan.
The plan solidified, Rumlow gave them a nod. The man holding the woman propelled her along with them out to the vehicles they would be taking. Weapons and equipment were already selected and stowed. The soldier took the back seat, nearest the assault rifles hidden beneath the seat that could be used if they were stopped while in the large Suburban.
The handler shoved the woman into the back seat and closed the door.
The soldier spared her another look. Her eyes closed and she lolled against the door, her head against the window.
The soldier idly thought it was easier that she was drugged. If she knew the last step of the plan was a bullet to her head before they evacuated the target house, she wouldn't be nearly as compliant.
He turned his attention back to the guns.
#
Elia couldn't make out anything besides the hum of an engine. The quiet clicks and sharp noises that sounded almost like guns being loaded. Was there a movie playing? She had never seen a gun outside of movies and cop shows.
She struggled to open her eyes, but couldn't get them to cooperate. Her head rested against something cool. It was refreshing on skin that was overheated, flushed.
Her eyes closed again and the sounds faded away.
#
The soldier took the slight weight against him easily. He slung her over his shoulder, then picked up the rifle he needed.
The rest of the team went silent, eyes alert. With nothing more than a quick motion of his hand, one of the men directed the others where to go to secure the perimeter. They couldn't afford any unexpected interruptions.
The soldier carried the woman towards a side door. He glanced up at the cameras, noting they didn't follow his movements. They were offline.
He lifted the woman's head that rolled against her shoulder and held her face in front of the retina scanner. Her eyes blinked open groggily.
The door unlocked with a soft click and he let her head drop again.
He opened the door, stepped inside. It would be easier to dump her body near the door, but he couldn't risk anyone seeing her and sounding an alert.
He moved through the hall, to a kitchen. Through the kitchen, dining room, pausing when he heard footsteps, but they were overhead and soon stopped.
He heard one of the men outside confirm in his earpiece a visual through the window that the senator was in his office.
He went to the office.
This time he did dump the woman's body.
"Elia?" the senator asked, jumping to his feet. "What are you…What's going on?" Senator Fields demanded.
The name filtered through the soldier's mind. Elia.
He hardened his gaze. Her name didn't matter. It wasn't important to the assignment.
Senator Fields, an older man with a thick head of hair, darted his eyes between the woman on the floor and the soldier.
"Is she…" He didn't seem to be able to get the words out. He squared his shoulders and used a voice that was most likely used when he was demanding answers from an opponent on the senate floor. "What did you do to her? She's my daughter's nurse, she has nothing to do with politics."
Without speaking, the soldier strode toward Senator Fields. He didn't reach for the gun strapped to his leg. Instead, he drew a knife from his vest, twirling it efficiently to flip the blade toward the man he approached.
"I'm calling the police!" the senator declared, diving for the phone on his desk.
The soldier took the phone, ripping the cord from the wall and tossing the phone across the room. He rounded the desk and grabbed the man.
"No. No, don't do this. Don't!" The man abruptly reached for a desk drawer, pulling out a gun.
The soldier reached for his hand, ready to slam the armed man's hand against the desk and force him to drop the gun. But the man squeezed the trigger.
Pain.
But he wasn't supposed to stop for pain. He was programmed to complete the mission.
The soldier slammed the man's hand against the edge of the desk with a sharp crack. The gun dropped to the floor.
A sound of terror was silenced with the soldier's knife, a clean slice across the throat, before his target could raise his voice any more and draw out the short struggle.
The soldier knelt down next to the crumpled figure, avoiding the flow of blood from the slice, pressing his fingers to the target's neck.
No pulse. Mission complete.
The soldier wiped his knife clean on the deceased's shirt, then slipped it back into his vest. He pressed a hand to his side, the powder burn in his leather vest getting covered with the dark stickiness of blood. He shut out the pain. The mission wasn't over yet.
He rose and went back to the woman on the floor.
She stirred slightly. The soldier pulled his gun, affixed the suppressor to muffle the blast.
He aimed it at her.
She has nothing to do with politics.
The senator's words echoed through his mind.
The soldier blinked. That shouldn't matter. It shouldn't pause him. Collateral damage was expected. She was collateral damage.
He pointed his gun at her.
Her eyes fluttered. Dark lashes lifted and she looked at him groggily like she didn't understand what was happening.
The soldier stared at her.
"The wife is on her way home. She's two blocks away. Get moving." A voice came through his earpiece.
The soldier quickly holstered his gun. He grabbed the woman and slung her back over his shoulder, the movement pulling at the gunshot in his side. He moved silently through the house, out the door he had come in.
The man standing watch at the door eyed the woman slung over his shoulder, but didn't comment. He just started moving, leaving the darkened yard, making their way to the vehicle waiting for them.
He shoved the woman in the Suburban and got in after her.
They drove away into the dark night, no one speaking a word.
#
Elia's head throbbed. But the throbbing was muffled by the feeling of cotton stuffed in her head.
She lifted a hand that felt leaden and rubbed at her forehead. She squinted her eyes open.
She was back in the cell. The cell that she had been in for the last two days.
But…she had been taken from the cell. One of the men—tall, dark eyes—who had taken her from her apartment the day before, had hauled her from the cell. And then…an injection? Had she been drugged? Again? This time it had dulled her thinking, made her eyes close and her body collapse like dead weight.
Elia pushed herself up from the hard floor. Nothing in the sparse cell gave her any clue to what had happened.
She tried to stand, her legs not cooperating. She clung to the edge of the cot and braced herself with trembling arms, and pulled herself to her knees, then forced herself to standing, swaying slightly. She looked down at the sleeve of her long sleeve t-shirt. Blood?
She frantically pushed up her sleeve, but her arms were smooth, not even a scrape on them. She lifted the hem of her shirt, trying to twist to see her back, her stomach, figure out where the blood came from. But it wasn't hers.
What was going on? What had happened?
Her head was too fuzzy to make sense of anything.
A quiet beep, then a click sounded and she nearly lost her balance turning toward the door.
A grim faced man in the black fatigues everyone in this place seemed to wear was at the door.
Without a word, he entered the cell and took hold of her arm.
Elie needed to get away from him. Her chest squeezed with panic, but she couldn't coordinate her feet to do more than scramble to keep up with him.
He propelled her down a hall, turned down another corridor that looked identical to every other one, and paused at a door guarded by two armed men.
They nodded at her guard and stepped aside as the door opened.
Elia was roughly shoved ahead of the man holding her arm and brought to stand near a rough looking man sitting on a bench, long stringy hair covering his profile.
But she recognized the metal arm. The Soviet star on where a deltoid muscle should be. She had seen him in the hall yesterday. Just being in his vicinity was enough to start her hands to trembling.
"You're a nurse," someone said to her.
Elia hardly dared look away from the broad shouldered man with the metal arm. But he wasn't giving any sign that he noticed her, so she risked looking to see who spoke.
It was the same man who had taken her from her apartment. The man who had locked her in the cell.
"I'm—I'm…" Her voice shook and her words were thready. She drew in what air she could manage and tried again. "I'm a pediatric nurse. Kids. Kids with—with cancer. I don't…I'm not…I don't know who you think I am, but—but I—I—I can't—I'm not—" She couldn't finish. The shaking moved from her words to her legs and she thought her knees might give out.
But what she had said was true. She worked at the children's hospital on the oncology floor. Sometimes she took on private clients, provided nursing care in their home so the kids didn't have to stay in the hospital. She wore pale pink scrubs and comforted kids and their parents when they were in the worst pain of their lives. She didn't even know anyone with a gun. She didn't belong in some high tech prison with soldiers and—and…she couldn't even list off what they might be. It was all too foreign to her.
A man in a suit stepped forward. He was the first man who didn't look like a soldier or an assassin.
"Please," Elia whispered. "I don't know who you think I am, but—"
The man didn't acknowledge her words. He took a few steps toward her, his face impassive in the face of her fear.
"You're dispensable," he said. "It doesn't matter who you are. We've recently lost our doctor." Elia followed his eyes to a broken body, slumped against the far wall. "And a medic." Another body, this one face down with blood coming from his head on the far side of the room. "We have a valuable asset that needs to be taken care of. I'm not losing another highly trained operative or professional trying to do that. You're expendable."
Elia shook her head slightly. That didn't make sense. None of this made any sense.
"Rumlow, if she doesn't comply, kill her," the man spoke quietly to her guard.
"Yes, sir, Director Pierce," the guard said.
The director left the room and the door slid shut with a quiet hiss behind him.
"Take care of him," the guard, Rumlow, said, shoving her toward the man on the bench.
Elia caught herself before she sprawled on the floor. The handful of armed men in the room took a step back when she entered the metal armed soldier's space.
"Let's go," she heard Rumlow say behind her. She hardly dared take her eyes of the still form on the bench in front of her as she listened to the heavy combat boots make their way to the door. The door slid open and closed again.
The room was silent.
The man seated in front of her didn't move.
It was only her and him…and two dead bodies in the room.
Elia tried for a breath. Anything to ward off the tightness that was starting in her throat.
Not now. She couldn't have a panic attack now.
She tried frantically to remember the steps a therapist had given her years ago when she knew the panic was setting in.
Three things she could feel. Name three things she could feel.
A cool draft coming from a vent. It was faint against her cheeks, but it was there. She rubbed her fingers against her pants, feeling the fabric against her fingertips. Her hair against her neck.
Three things she could hear.
The room was completely silent. The dead men didn't make any noise.
Wrong thing to think of. Her throat started to tighten, like a fist squeezing around her airway, threatening to close off any air.
Three things, she mentally commanded herself desperately. Three things!
The man in front of her was breathing. Quietly. Steadily. But she could hear his breaths.
And she was supposed to…
Elia forced herself to look at the man. There was a pool of blood on the floor near his feet.
She felt her brow furrow as she looked to see where it came from.
She heard the leather of his gloved hand creak as it curled around the edge of the bench and faltered back a step.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, echoing in her ears.
She thought of the men no doubt waiting outside the steel doors, ready to kill her if she didn't do something for this man. Machine, she mentally corrected herself looking at the intimidating metal arm. But then the soldier shifted and lifted his head for the first time.
His eyes were blue.
He was human.
"You—you're bleeding," she said timidly. Speaking to him felt like lighting a match near dynamite. She hoped she wasn't about to set of an explosion.
The man glanced down at his torso.
Elia looked down. There was a hole in the leather vest he wore. Blood oozing from the wound.
There was a toppled table nearby, gauze, needles, antiseptic scattered across the floor.
Keeping her eye on the man, Elia edged away and righted the stainless steel tray. She carefully set the supplies on it.
"I'm supposed to—to help you," she said.
The man stared at her.
She tried not to think of the broken bodies on the floor behind her. Or the men outside the door, ready to kill her without a second thought. Or the cell she would be returned to.
"Please," she whispered. "If I don't do this…"
The man stared blankly at her. Elia didn't dare move. Every muscle in her tensed, ready for whatever he had done to the doctor and the medic to happen to her.
He shifted slightly and Elia reflexively flinched. But he only moved enough to unfasten his vest and reveal the bullet wound in his side.
Elia took a shaky breath. She reached for a pair of gloves and pulled them on, something she had done thousands of times at the children's hospital. She could do this. Even if she had no idea how to suture someone. She drew a shaky breath and reached for the antiseptic and gauze.
He didn't move when she cleaned the wound. Or when she dabbed away the fresh flow of blood. She swallowed hard. Every time she moved, she waited to send him into whatever sort of rage or killing spree that had done in the two men. But he didn't move.
#
The soldier listened to the unsteady breaths of the woman they had sent in to suture him. She was nothing like the doctor. The man who roughly shoved him into a seat and looked after whatever injuries he might come back from a mission with. Or the medic.
He tried to remember what the mission was. He was supposed to take out the senator. He had taken him out. He was supposed to kill the woman. But he hadn't.
He looked at her.
Her hands shook as she pushed the needle through his skin.
The soldier could picture another woman. It was fuzzy. The same way these confusing thoughts always were. They came with a dull ache in his head. And then they would strap him into the chair and he would lose any of those hazy memories or pictures in the blinding pain of the memory suppression chair.
He watched the woman's head, bent over her work.
Someone important to him. That's who had dark hair like her.
She worked quickly, a small line of uneven stitches where the bullet had grazed him.
She tied the last suture securely and quickly ducked away from him.
The soldier stared at her. She met his eyes uncertainly. Her dark hair was messy. Blood stained the arm of her shirt. He idly thought it must be his blood. Her arm had dangled down near his side when he slung her over his shoulder.
She took off her gloves and deposited them on the table. She quickly backed away, towards the door.
The soldier stared at her. He wished he knew who had dark hair and had looked at him with…something besides fear.
The doors slid open and she immediately tensed. The soldier stood. Her eyes went wide, fear growing to terror.
Five guns were trained on him through the door.
The soldier stared at the hard eyes watching for his next move.
He stared back at them.
With deliberateness that showed them exactly how little he thought of their implied threat, he turned his back on them. He crossed the secure room to the chair and lowered himself into it.
He didn't move, waiting for the bands that would lock his arms in place to wrap in place and the memory suppression plates to form a vise around his head.
He took the mouthguard and braced himself.
He heard them escort the woman from the room, the door slide shut behind them, and then the sizzle of the electricity that would fry his brain. Again.
#
