KillSwitch ─ s. rogers ✓

six

early 1956

FOR OVER a month, Alexandra did not leave her cell. Twice a day, someone would come by and shove a meager tray full of food through the slot in the door, usually a cup of thin soup and a piece of bread. She would devour every last crumb, but the pains of hunger never went away. Some nights, as she struggled to fall asleep on the cement floor, surrounded by puddles and dried drops of body fluids, she swore she could hear her bones shaking. At first, those nights were spent banging her arms against the thick wall, but Alexandra quickly learned that no one could hear her. Or, rather, no one cared. After two weeks of this, she took to breaking off pieces of the cement and drawing pictures on the wall; one for every night she was locked away.

There were twenty drawings on the wall the day the bars to her cell were opened for the first time since she got there. Alexandra was braiding small pieces of her hair when the door opened, and she jumped when she saw a man unlock the bars too. He motioned for her to stand, grimacing at the floor in disgust.

"Come with me," the man said. Alexandra did as he told her and rose to her feet. She trotted about a yard behind him, and just behind her was a second guy brandishing a gun. Her eyes flitted from door to door as she walked by, glancing at the labels on each one. The door she remembered as the soldier's was ajar, revealing an empty room. Alexandra wondered what they had done to the masked man; she had not seen him since her arrival. She was curious just how many people this place had captured. So far, he was the only one she'd seen, but something told her that she wasn't alone.

When Alexandra reached the outlet of the hallway, she felt a jab in between her shoulders.

"Right!" one of the men barked. She made a sharp turn into a big room, at the center of which stood one of the scientists she'd seen her first day there. He was positioned in front of some sort of control panel, only a few feet away from a large chair. Alexandra scanned the room, jumping back a little when she saw a pile of lifeless bodies not far from the scientist. The scientist only looked at her with disappointment.

"Podtsepite yeye k stulu. Prigotov'tes' uderzhivat' yeye," he said. Hook her up to the chair. Prepare to hold her down.

Alexandra didn't understand a word they were saying as she was pushed onto the platform and into the chair. One of the men pried her mouth open and shoved a mouthguard between her teeth. She bit down on it angrily as she writhed around, but someone was pinning her down. Restraints clicked into place around her wrists and her ankles, holding her limbs to the chair. Slowly, some sort of black metal lowered onto her face, covering her left eye and the right side of her head.

"Shag nazad. Gotovo," the scientist said. Step back. It's ready. Alexandra watched as the men who apprehended her backtracked off the platform, never once looking away from her. Her skin tightened over her muscles as she tried to escape the chair to no avail. The scientist put his hand on a small lever and looked at her quickly. Then, his fingers yanked the switch, sending an electrical current through her brain.

"Stop!" Alexandra managed to yell. Her top teeth gnashed against the mouthpiece, tearing right through the rubber. Every single muscle in her body tensed as her screams bounced off the high ceilings. She was too focused on the pain to realize that her whole life was being erased, draining from her head like sap from a tree. The creature in the chair was not a person anymore, not truly alive, not anything but Hydra's pawn in a much larger game. Alexandra Carter was gone now, and at this the scientist smiled. He retracted the apparatus surrounding the girl's head and unlocked the restraints. He then walked around the platform, stopping directly at the center of her line of vision.

"Look at me," he said. She did. "Your name is KillSwitch. You will train for Hydra. You will work for Hydra. You will kill for Hydra. You will do exactly as we say. And if you ever step out of line, the barrel of that gun over there will be halfway down your throat before you utter a word. Do you understand?" Silence. "I said, do you understand."

"Yes," KillSwitch whispered. Her voice cracked halfway through the word, and tears began to well in her eyes. She didn't know who or where she was, but somehow she knew that she was broken. KillSwitch must have been nothing, the kind of person you step on without hesitating, she thought. She was nothing.

The scientist took a few steps away from KillSwitch. "Good. Now, go to your cell. Guards!"

A guard grabbed KillSwitch by the wrist and pulled her upright. Her head swiveled back and forth atop her neck, taking in the unfamiliar room. It was high-ceilinged, made of solid metal, and it appeared to be some kind of epicenter, with hallways leading outward like the arms of a starfish. She was pushed down one of the hallways, at the end of which sat a small room with liquid pooling in the craters of the uneven floor. Without being ordered, KillSwitch entered the cell, bars slamming behind her. Her legs, which she noticed were long and disgustingly thin, gave out, making a nauseating sound as her kneecaps cracked against the cement.

"KillSwitch," the girl whispered to herself. "My name is KillSwitch."

KillSwitch. Her name was KillSwitch. She had no idea what her own face looked like, but something told her that if she glanced into a mirror, a face less than human would stare back at her. She wished she knew what she'd done for this to happen. Who had she wronged, who had she been that she deserved this? And why did her voice sound like that of a child? These people couldn't possibly be turning a child into a killer. Unless, of course, she had done that all on her own. Her name was surely KillSwitch for a reason. She sighed, knowing only one thing for sure: whoever she had been, she would not be a murderer now, and there was nothing anyone could do to control her.