The Mechanic || 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳¹

one

  It's late afternoon and you guess that the sun has to be high in the sky by now. You have no way of knowing though, because you've only ever operated in the dark and busy hallways of your base.

  You still remember the warm sun rays on your arms as if it had been yesterday when you got out last time. It hadn't been yesterday. And not the day before, either. You'd stopped counting by now but estimated it to be around four or five years that you've worked here. Maybe even six. Time doesn't seem to pass at all down here. And if it does, nothing changes for you.

  The same routines for years have numbed your brain. In the beginning, when you still were young and lively, it had been harder to do everything they asked you to do. But now you just follow the orders. And you're good at it. While losing hope of ever getting out of here, you've learned lots of new things, especially in mechanics. Whatever broken machine they bring you, even if they don't give you any explanation about its purpose, soon you'll have figured out how it works, what's wrong, and how to fix it.

  That's what you've been doing for at least two years now: Taking the special weapons in, examining them, and repairing them. Repeatedly. Over and over again. Sometimes you find out new things. You realize how to build different mechanics so that they do exactly what you want. But it won't help you, so you stopped caring. Turned off your thoughts.

  You are lost.

  Trapped.

  You would have to spend the rest of your life down here, in the dirty dungeons of a Hydra base.

  There was nothing interesting about your life anymore.

  That was until a soldier was moved into your department. You are the head mechanic by now, even being assigned to invent new weapons every once in a while. Recruiting as well as teaching new mechanics is part of your job.

  They told you to craft a chair. A chair to set someone on when they must not escape. A chair to control someone. A torturing chair. You didn't even hesitate.

  So, it is late afternoon when you've finished building it, and you think of the sun and the past years. You're standing in front of the chair, admiring your newest creation as they carry in a tall and muscular man with short, dark hair on a stretcher. His eyes are closed, and he isn't moving until they set him on the chair you built for this occasion. You frown in confusion when he slowly lifts his head. His gaze flickers all over the room and he doesn't seem to hear or see anything. His mouth moves slightly as if he's trying to say something. You don't react until you look at his upper body.

  His left arm is missing.

  You don't flinch. You've seen way worse injuries than this. And you know exactly what's going to happen. This chair was built for him. It had taken you two weeks to figure out how to build something like this and several months to finish it.

  Your boss comes in right after the men with the stretcher. He pats your shoulder in a friendly manner and leans down to whisper in your ear.

  "You see his right arm? Well, we need one. Except, we need a left one. Because he doesn't have one. You've never done anything like this before. But I believe you're up to the challenge. What do you think?"

  "Yes, sir," you reply because it's the only right thing to say when your boss wants something of you.

  He nods and smiles and then waves to the man for you to inspect his arm. Only a few guards and him are left when the medics leave, and the doors close with a metallic bang.

  You don't say anything as you bend down to the unknown man and examine the place where the arm was severed from its body. It's a clean cut and you assume that it didn't get ripped off like you thought at first. Your boss probably got a medic to cut it off. But why would he do that? It couldn't have been that badly broken.

  The man flinches when your fingertips slightly brush over his skin.

  "Who... are you?" he asks with a strained voice. You don't answer and only continue to think of how you'd build an arm. Your mind has already started combining different parts to a draft, but you estimate that it'll take at least three weeks to build anything that would suffice.

  "What does he need the arm for?" you ask.

  "Fighting, mainly."

  You nod, as if that was the answer you'd expected. And it was – deep down in your gut you knew what this man was going to be. They would numb his mind as they'd done to you but in a quicker and more effective way. And he would be a soldier.

  Glancing at his dirty uniform, you see a single symbol on his chest. It's a white snowflake. Below it, you see two words stitched into the fabric, but you can hardly decipher them. The second one is probably "commando".

  You touch it carefully, the white flake reminding you about your life before. Snow, cold, winter.

  "The Winter Soldier," you whisper. Your boss chuckles and you quickly turn around.

  "That's perfect," he says. "Perfect..."