The ghosts we hide (Winter Soldier x OC)

Thirty eight

I try to scream, but the rubber between my teeth blocks the noise.

Sobs shake my shoulders, my throat convulsing as it battles against a backlog of tears and phlegm and the urge to vomit.  A cruel coldness nips at my bare torso, the freezing air rushing against my skin only worstened by the heaving of my chest. Snot dribbles from my flared nostrils, yearning to be wiped away by hands that are chained painfully far away from my body, forcing me into a 'T' on my knees.

I watch through blurry vision as a man walks forwards and crouches down to my height.

Maurice Mengele reaches a gloved hand towards my tear stained face, smiling as I flinch away. He captures a lank clump of loose black hair in his finger tips, feeling the sweat slick strands with sickening satisfaction. I try to contain my breathing but fail, instead my cries deepen and pitiful squeaks escape my mouth.

Reptilian eyes engulf mine for a long moment. Then the scientist lets out a small sigh and returns to his normal height. I watch his legs as they walk carefully around my restrained form, straining to hear his footsteps over my own laboured breathing.

"Today Onyx, we're going to try out something I like to call a blocker. It's something I've been developing to combat your transformation, to make... handling you a little easier."

I flinch as something cold touches my exposed back. The breath hitches in my throat, another tiny whimper escaping around the mouth guard. I strain against my bound wrists as Mengele draws a small cross between my shoulder blades with a felt tip pen, trying fruitlessly to break the ropes tying each wrist to a solid iron post.

The door to the metal box Hydra calls a testing suite bangs open, sending shockwaves through my veins. I watch as two men walk in, both dressed in the normal black attire. Both salute the scientist behind me before standing to attention on the side of the room, chins high and eyes trained unseeing on the opposite wall.

But while their mere presence is unsettling, it's what one of them holds in his hands that really scares me.

A long silver rod sits in one of the agent's gloved palms. Much like a cattle prod, the shiny length of metal has a rubber handle at one end, adorned with what looks like a thermometer and multiple black buttons. The other end of the rod finishes with the Hydra seal, attached perpendicular to the actual iron shaft.

"Start." Mengele orders, his presence behind me causing my neck hairs to stand on end.

The agent clicks something on the piece of metal, somehow triggering the tip to glow. The Hydra seal is dull at first, but gradually gets brighter and brighter until it gleams a molten orange.

Primal fear forces more tears from my already stinging eyes, the raw emotion sticking in my constrained throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. I yank desperately at the ropes on my wrists, my mind finally stumbling upon the terrifying truth of what the metal is:

It's a branding iron.

The panic in my chest only thickens as Mengele starts to talk behind me, his sickeningly smooth voice directed at the dictaphone in his callous hands.

"Subject 184 - Onyx Nelson, age ten. Test substance B1N7 in first human trial. Subject will be injected with B1N7 then exposed to triggering stimuli. If successful, substance will inhibit metamorphosis."