Battle Born

Chapter 1

It has been ages since she last saw sunshine and sky, and breathed fresh air. At times it seems like she has completely made up the life she dreams about at night.

The new cell she is being kept is dank, and moist. She would shiver if she could feel the cold. Her brain registers it's cold but she never feels it. Trying to sleep is a challenge these days, even with how much she gets exhausted her mind just doesn't want to lose its consciousness.

Her body is bruised all over, either from rough beating or keeping too still on the hard ground; she stopped keeping tabs on them long time ago. Sometimes she measures time by the color of her fading bruises. The big ones usually take what she thinks 14-17 days to completely fade. Small ones around week or 10 days. The ones on her back are hard to guess.

The pounding of heavy feet outside the door immediately makes her tense and alert before three guards barge into the cell. Dark leather clothes, black helmets that encompass their heads; these are the only other people she was in contact with other than Dr. Zola. Their hands are rough as the first one grabs her by the bicep and hauls her to her feet that rarely get used anymore. The next thing she knows intimately, after all, she dreads it the most out of all the things they do to her. Shock collar snuggly fit onto her neck, they shove her in the general direction of the door. They never talk, no words unless to raise their fists in the air and shout "Hail Hydra".

They follow along dark grey hallways giving away nothing of where and what year she might be existing. It is a miracle she is not claustrophobic yet, with much of the time feeling like she is a thousand feet underground. At the end is an elevator, more advanced than any elevator she has ever seen, but that seems to be the usual case with her captors. Everything she encounters and sees the doctor using are things she is not sure the rest of the world has discovered yet.

They ride up. The door opens to a large factory, with big round egg-shaped objects littering the ground underneath, people working in between them, inserting heavy looking circles of blue light into a huge barrel pushing it together; it looked like an otherworldly mass weapon. Observing the workers, she sees that most of them have torn and rumpled clothes, and all of them look like they might drop dead any moment. She doesn't know if she should feel relief that she is not entirely alone or panic for the workers look like American soldiers.

Far from the ground, she crosses the bridge with the guards and she sees the night sky from the window for the first time in a long time. The windows are lined together in between brick wall giving her more view. Too soon they arrive to their destination and she sees Dr. Zola behind a glass. But he isn't alone; on the gurney strapped to it is a man, looking no different than the workers on the ground. He tries to look her way but his head is also held tight by the straps across his forehead.

As their custom the guards stand by the only door and keep careful eyes on the girl. Zola turns to her, "Good evening, Little Faust, perform on this test subject." He points to the man.

She knows this procedure well, it has not happened a lot but a few times she was made to inflict as much pain on the "test subjects" as she can.

When she hesitates Zola presses a button on the remote he is clutching, and the collar sends an especially powerful shock through her body. Her body seizes and she falls to her knees.

"Tsk Tsk we do not have all the time in the world, Little Faust. The more you waste my time the more punishment you will receive, so I advise you to move along." The girl rises on trembling legs and moves closer to the soldier as Zola watches her. When she reaches him she looks at him and finds blue-grey eyes that are full of questions and apprehension. Even with greasy hair and clothes that have seen better days she can see that he has a good build and a handsome face. "I'm sorry" she whispers to him, and brings her hand to his shoulders. She thinks he tried to nod or acknowledge that this is not her will.