Not The Only One - A Winter Soldier Story

Chapter 9

    I woke up to seven men in SWAT gear opening the door. After undoing my restraints, two of the men locked their arms under my armpits and dragged me into a huge room with five golden chambers along the outside and metal railings around some type of device in the center.

     The man with the metal arm was fastened into the strange metal chair and the man in the beret stood nearby. Men with guns surrounded the railed area around them. Machinery whirred and two metal pieces made contact with the metal armed man's head. A painful electrical zapping forced horrible screams from his throat as I looked on, unable to do anything else but watch him writhe in pain.

     A dark red book held the words the man in the beret read aloud to him. "Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Грузовой вагон."

     He closed the book and set it down. "Доброе утро, солдат."

     "Я готов отвечать," the metal armed man answered and was released from the torture chair.

     The man in the beret ordered, "Зимний Солдат, обезопасьте ее."

     Zimniy Soldat came from behind me and grabbed my left arm with his left arm, making it his metal against my flesh. I knew somewhere deep down inside that I could overpower him, but I did not-

     Before I finished my thought, he pressed a gun to the nape of my neck. It was as if he could read my mind and was challenging me to give him a reason to pull the trigger. I bristled at having a weapon turned on me like this, especially by him.

     "Полковник, разве вы не хотите, чтобы некоторые из нас пошли с вами?" one of the men in SWAT gear asked.

     "В этом не будет необходимости. Зимний Солдат обеспечит меня всей необходимой защитой, пока ее не казнят," replied the man in the beret.

     So I was to be executed. Somehow this thought filled me with relief rather than dread. At least it would all be over soon.

     Zimniy Soldat followed the man in the beret as he left the huge room. We walked through a series of hallways until coming to a room with a large metal door. Inside was a laboratory, a man in a lab coat, and a sizable machine in the far right corner.

     "Зимний Солдат, отпусти ее," the man in the beret commanded and Zimniy Soldat let go of me.

     The man in the lab coat handed me a bodysuit made of what appeared to be a specialized material.

     The man in the beret barked at me, "Надень это."

     After removing my old outer clothing, I suited up in the new garment.

     The man in the lab coat directed me to lay down on the table in the far right corner. He typed away at a computer making thick metal clamps come around both my arms and my legs. This man then came over to me, sweating and trembling. He struggled to put a mask on my face and attach wires to various places on my bodysuit. The man in the lab coat returned to typing at his computer causing the table to begin tilting upwards until I was vertical.

     "Спасибо за службу и счастливого Рождества. Я надеялся, что все пойдет иначе," the man in the beret stated before shooting the man in the lab coat twice in the head.

     A moment later a large glass and metal tube came down around me. Frigid white fog descended and everything went dark.