Fear the Fever ⏃ Captain America [3]

prologue

The chilling wind picked up her hair and whirled it around her face. Sighing, she tucked the untamed locks behind her ears. She shielded her eyes from the blinding sunlight with her slender red-polished fingers. Despite the sun shining down upon her, she shivered with cold - something she found herself doing a lot these past couple of weeks in Germany.

She looked at the man in front of her and wondered what it would be like to lose him, for real this time. She thought he had died over seven years ago when his plane was shot down, but he survived and was taken by the
enemy.

It seemed impossible, though she'd seen agents, dozens of agents, be corrupted before him. Sandy brown hair, penetrating eyes and a constant look of contemplation - how could this man ever be unfamiliar to her? How could she stand in front of him now and not jump at the opportunity to talk to him about past missions?

Impossible.

And yet, here they are now; staring blankly at each other and itching to unholster their guns and pull the trigger.

They sit at a round silver table, eyes open, chests rising and falling with soft, even breaths. Both dressed in the appropriate clothes for the grueling winter around them, they looked perfectly ordinary on the outside - some ordinary woman and man sitting at an ordinary table, drinking some ordinary coffee after a long day at an ordinary job, before evil and destruction made it necessary for ordinary people to kill other ordinary people. All in the name of safety.

Some small part of her knew that she should be angry. Make her scream and yell and demand what she had done to deserve this from him. But the greater part was as solid as the rock of the mountains above. Yes, the greater part within her was entrenched in certainty so deeply that she knew what was going to happen to her.
And then it happened.

A whizzing sound was heard and a dart plunged itself into the side of her neck. She sucked in a hitching breath, then made a little moaning sound, shifted her body. She thought for a horrifying second that she might not wake up. But she stilled and resumed the soft and easy breathing and her body fell limp in her chair. Her memories fading like echoes.

She'd said her official goodbyes to her lover before she left, and his words: See you in two weeks still rang in her head. For some reason that had really struck her when he said it, made what was about to happen to her all the more surreal and sad. What had happened to all the past agents, Mary and Scott and Micah and all the rest would be done to her. Being stabbed and prodded and poked at until there wasn't anything left, then sticking something new inside. There was no turning back.

But the drug was like a calm inside her. She was at peace, these soothing feelings keeping the terror at bay. Her thoughts faded then, seemed to float in suspended animation as she waited for the spreading of the drug to be complete. When it finally was, two men came over to help move her.
They lifted her off the chair, hoisted her as if she were stuffed with straw. One had the unconscious woman by the arms, the other by the feet, and they tossed her into a black van before binding her wrists and ankles tightly together. Without so much as a glance back, they filed inside the van and peeled away.

They began to make their way to the outskirts of Nazi Germany where their facility was located. She did not move the entire ride there. When they arrived to the main part of the facility, the men hopped out and grabbed her out of the van. The men carried the same way as before and brought her to one of the many holding cells they had set up. They entered the cell at the end of the hall where the only thing inside was a metal chair; no bed, no sink, no toilet - just a single chair. They placed her down roughly and shackled her to the chair by her ankles and arms.

The men turned around and walked away. From behind them came the distinct sound of metal sliding against metal, then a loud, echoing boom as the doors of the cell slammed shut. Sealing her fate, whatever it may be.