The Silver Soldier

VI

"Come with me."

I follow Dr. Fridrik out of the room, finding myself in a dimly lit hallway. The walls are slabs of cold, grey concrete, no pictures, no windows, they are baren beside a few sporadic doors. The hallway seems to stretch on forever, that is until we reach a pair of doors set into the wall. An elevator.

He leads me in, we stand in silence as we are pulled upwards, the mechanisms creaking and groaning. I feel as if we could fall at any moment. Then, after a few minutes, it stops.

"Fix your hair." Dr. Fridrik says. I turn to look in the reflective metal lining the elevator, I lick my fingers and run them through my hair. I didn't realize it had grown so much over the course of a fortnight, two weeks. It isn't unnecessarily long, maybe three inches from the top of my head.

The doors slide open, revealing a large room with pristine marble flooring, clean walls, and a beautiful crystal chandelier hanging from the tall ceiling. Straight in front of us are set of revolving doors, people hustling in and out constantly. It is busy, men with briefcases and fancy suits walk by, talking to each other in a language I can't understand, then a lady passes shortly after, carrying a coffee with her phone up to her ear.

This looks like a lobby of some sort.

"Where are we?" I ask, stepping into the large room.

"The American embassy in Moscow. Quite ironic, isn't it?"

I pull my eyes away from an intimidating looking man that just passed us. "Ironic?"

"We are right under our enemies noses, and they don't know a thing." He smiles.

"America is our enemy?"

"The world is our enemy, Mr. Stilinski." He meets my eyes. "They just don't know it yet."

He leads me through the maze of people, towards the doors. No one pays us any attention, they seem to have better things to do.

Outside is even louder, cars are honking, people yelling in Russian. And I thought the States were bad. The streets are packed, busy with hundreds of people. I am guessing we're downtown, the building are nice, nothing like New York or Los Angeles. I feel a hand on my shoulder, I turn to see Fridrik. He seems to have noticed the awe on my face, he smiles. "Welcome to Moscow, Mr. Stilinski."

He directs me to a black car on the side of the road, not a scratch on its shiny paint. "Where are we going now?"

"Malgasco Island."

"I've never heard of that island." I love geography, I have a map of the world in my room, if asked to, I could name every single country and point out its location. Yet I am not familiar with Malgasco Island.

"I would hope not. Technically it doesn't exist. We use it to train our agents..." he opens the car door for me. "The Winter Soldier, have you heard of him?"

I nod, getting into the car. I've read articles, watched him on the news. The Winter Soldier was an assassin who had one of the highest kill counts of any special agent in history. He fought with Captain America in Washington D.C. I did a project on him last year for world issues.

The Doctor gets in on the other side, once his door shuts, the outside world goes silent. "We trained him. Along with others, and now I intend to train you as well." I lean back in my seat, suddenly tired. I have just slept for two weeks, I shouldn't be tired. Fridrik notices my heavy eyes. "Go to sleep my boy, it will take a few hours until we get to the dock anyways. Get some rest."

I drift in and out of consciousness, one moment we're speeding by tall buildings and traffic, the next we're passing trees and wilderness. I wake to a hand on my shoulder. I sit up and look out the window to see clear blue skies, a long sandy beach, and a harbour docking nearly a hundred boats.

We make our way towards one of them - a piece of crap motor boat with no cover. "Just try not to fall out." Is all that Dr. Fridrik says as he helps me aboard.

We don't sit and talk, he immediately starts up the motor and begins to pull out of the docks. Soon, we are roaring across the water, seawater splashing my face with every wave we hit. I push my wet hair out of my eyes.

After an hour and a half of speeding along rough sea, we come up to a cluster of islands. The Doctor directs us towards the largest of the pack.

Malgasco.

I feel excited, but I'm also sick to my stomach. I'm nervous. That part is a given. My stomach is twisted in a knot, my throat feels tight. I don't know what I will endure on this island, I don't know whether I will make it off. And that scares me.

The doctor has told me that I will have a schedule, telling me where to be every second of every day. I only have Sundays off, but I can't leave the island. Not until I have proven myself, not until I am given an assignment.

And that assignment will be to kill someone.

I don't know who it will be, but it will be someone who deserves it. The old me would have thrown up at the thought, but now? I don't see anything wrong with murdering someone. It doesn't bother me like it should.

As the Doctor drifts the boat up next to the pier, a gunshot echoes across the island. Then another, and another, one right after the other. I look to Fridrik for an answer. "Target practice." He says, unbothered. "You'll get that tomorrow."

He gets out to tie the boat to the dock, leaving me to figure out how to get off the unsteady boat without falling in. Once I do, I follow him off the pier, towards the thick forest separating us from the training facility. We walk along a rocky path through the trees, it takes quite a while to reach a large stone wall, not a door or gate in sight.

"This is where I have to leave you." He turns to me. "Consider this as your first test, finding a way inside."

"That's it?" I ask, eyeing the trees surrounding us. Getting inside will be no problem, at least not for me now. Two weeks ago I would have given up right here and now.

Dr. Fridrik shrugs. "Any questions?"

"Yeah." I wipe the sweat off my hands on my pants. "When's lunch?"