I'm going to die!
This wasn't supposed to happen. This shouldn't have happened, none of this should've happened.
Every moment spent in this room was doing nothing except stripping me of my denial. I couldn't cry because I still couldn't believe this was real, I couldn't curse because there was nobody here to curse at but myself.
I crouched at the corner of the room, holding my knees as I kept thinking of what went wrong but I couldn't come up with anything plausible. The day proceeded like any other.
There was no event happening to my notice nor did I have any plans made out for the day: it was just a normal day like everyday before.
I woke up, went for my jog, had some bread and egg toast for breakfast before going to the gym. I spent my usual extended hours there working my routine over before I left around 1pm and that was when it happened.
I was barely 5 minutes away from my house before I got dragged into the back of the van. Before I could even register what happened I was knocked out.
When I woke up, a lot of thoughts cascaded my mind; was I just kidnapped? Why was I kidnapped? Who kidnapped me? Did I wrong someone dangerous? Will they ask for a ransom?
These were all thoughts that plagued me for a while before my assailants came into my room. The moment I saw them I had a sinking feeling in my gut.
There were two men and a woman, all of them seemingly in their 30s. They wore black-themed soldiers combat gear with daggers strapped to their sides and military-issued semi-rifles in their hands.
No matter how much I looked at them, they didn't look like ransom-asking kidnappers. They didn't even look like criminals. They clearly had high-leveled military training that even a rando like me could tell. I wasn't involved in any government conspiracy as long as I could remember and I doubt the Army or whatever military division they were from were into nabbing unsuspecting civilians.
… These guys are terrorists right? God! This was much worse than I imagined. I could feel myself choking and tearing up as I came to that conclusion.
This WASN'T supposed to happen!
I shivered as I saw the gaze they leveled me – it was disconcerting. Pure apathy emanated from them. As I was sinking into a quagmire of despair, a much older man who I had no idea how he got so close to me spoke as he gave me a studying look.
"Mr. St. Cross I presume?" He asked, more like said, as he continued his studying of me.
I couldn't even form coherent words so I just nodded my head as the sinking feeling grew.
He wasn't American, that much was apparent from his accent. His accent was too natural to suggest otherwise. I couldn't really put my finger on it, even as I tried to remember which country had that kind of accent. It was right there on the tip of my tongue, too familiar even, but I was too scared even remember it.
"Now now. Don't be scared, I haven't even done anything to you… yet."
Oh Lord! Are they going to torture me?
"P-please I don't know a-anything, please!" I choked out in between sobs.
"You truly don't?" He asked, amused by my reaction.
I shook my head with desperation.
"No matters. When we are done with you then maybe you'll have an idea. But then again it still wouldn't matter at the end."
"W-what.."
"Oh where are my manners. My name is Volker Olav,and I'll be your supervisor for the foreseeable future as we work together for the glory of the Reich!"
Wha…
"Hail Hydra!"
"Hail Hydra!"
"Hail Hydra!"
I could feel my face pale at the realization of my conundrum.
Before I could pull myself together I lost consciousness with the stump of a gun being the last thing I saw.
======
The past few days I've spent here has been a roller coaster of emotions, and none of the positive kind. From fear to anger, to anxiety and depression, then defiance and acceptance.
My mental state was in constant disarray.
After Olav's less than ideal introduction, I woke up in another room with my body feeling stiff allover which made me think I spent more than just a few hours passed out. As someone who exercised and worked-out regularly even if it was a recent thing, I knew how long and on what types of conditions it took for my bones to get cranky and from the way I felt sluggish moving, it would suffice to say I've being out for at least a whole day.
The room I found myself in when I woke up was different from the former room I was in when I was abducted. If the former looked like a warehouse, this one looked like a prison cell for life rejects and experimental subje… yeah let's not think that much.
It only contained a bedframe with wood as the bed and iron as the frame which made it looked like they had poor room service… probably. With the sole addition of a toilet at the side of the wall, the room was… lacking. It didn't even have a light bulb.
With such a depressing accommodation, my thoughts couldn't help but find solace in exploring possibilities and it's consequences. The first thought that came to me was one I had since the beginning: Why me?
No matter how and from whatever angle I looked at, there was no reason for me to be abducted. As far as a person could be, I was pretty normal by every standard.
I wasn't a government agent, nor was I undercover. I was too weak for that and nothing from my records showed anything indicating such. I was not a mutant – that much was pretty clear – nor was I in the scenes of political powers. So unless Hydra was into the business of abducting unsuspecting randos and indoctrinating them into their ranks, then I had the shittiest luck.
The second thought that frequently came to me was one every abducted victim had: What were they going to do to me?
This was the thought that had me panicking and into a spiral of fear and anxiety that no Juice Wrld song could fix. From whatever meta-knowledge I had of Hydra, their go-to therapy guide was 6 volumes of 'Brainwashing Techniques for the Elite' acknowledged to none other than Hitler, and a reference training routine scripted from 3 volumes of 'Get your Homemade Suicide Soldiers' written by Edward Hunter and revised by Bin Laden.
In layman's terms – I was 50 shades of fucked.
I had spent five days in this cell since I woke up and it did nothing to assuage my budding despair which I think was intentional on their part since I was feeling pretty desperate right now. Every morning I woke up with two sets of food and water for the day and nothing else, not even a silhouette of a person.
It wasn't until the seventh day when I was on the brink of insanity that my proclaimed supervisor - Olav - came to visit me.
His face was unreadable, no emotion could be seen. He had those speak-and-a-dash-of-lead expression on his face and that made me all the more terrified.
"I reckon you've had a lot of time to come to your decision, no? The only question you will receive from me is: Will you serve willingly… or will I make you?"
Nice way to start a conversation pal. I looked at him in all his expressionless visage and I just had the feeling that all this was part of a fucked up plan. From the abducting to deprivation of social interaction, deliberating molding the psyche into subservience and a state of desperation but sorry dude, my grandparents and most of my uncles were shrinks so despite how dreadful family get-togethers were, they all taught me something – Psychology itself was just positive brainwashing.
Then again they may very well be the reason why I never saw the government in a favorable light. So when they advised me back then to study psychology, I told them fuck you then and I'll tell you…
"Fuck you!"
I saw his face contort into a scowl and it was a cathartic feeling. He walked up to me and for a moment I couldn't help but think I made the wrong choice but… I've made choices that bore a lot of regrets, this wouldn't be any different.
With a hook to my chin I lost focus for a while before sensations of pain assaulted me and for the next few minutes, I had the most brutal beatings of both lives.
In hindsight, a simple no would've sufficed.
======
[2 Weeks Later]
After me and Olav's falling out, he started coming to my cell everyday and beating the crap out of me. He only gave me the same choice of back then twice; every seven days. The first week, he did his damnedest to make sure I was miserable.
There wasn't a place in my body he didn't hit – physically not sexually. My throat, my eyes, my nuts, my joints, my sternum, my ribs, my spine – pretty much my whole body was reduced to a mushing mess of pain. It got worse to a point that my daily ration was reduced to one serving and that was the point that broke me down to tears. If you're going to give a living man physical and psychological hell, the least you could do was feed him well right? Apparently, someone didn't tell Olav that vital piece of information.
After the first week, either Olav started hitting lighter or I started becoming a masochist. While I could feel he was hitting as hard as ever, for some reason it didn't hurt as much as it did in the beginning. It still hurt a lot but if I had to scale it, the pain from last week was of the 'Fuck! It hurts!' variety while this weeks' was of the 'It hurts like a bitch' variety. Maybe I'm getting used to it due to the constant trashing? God that sounds way worst.
In other words – these past two weeks has been hell.
This week however was different.
Instead of the usual hours per daily curb-stomp from my friendly neighborhood Olav, today however I was led out of my cell for the first time and it felt weird to me. Kinda like I was living the comfort of my home to the dangers of the wild. It made me feel insecure and if I could, I would rather go back to my cell…? Hohoho! Splendidly done Hydra.
Following behind the two mannequins of a guard while unraveling the intrinsic mesh of Hydra's brainwashing, I couldn't help but feel a cold chill run down my spine. What other seemingly natural and logical event had they set up to lower the psychological defense of my mind?
Reaching that point, I stopped my thoughts from going further because I knew if I continued on, I would only stress out my mind by putting it on guard at all times thereby weakening it when I'm faced with my physical hell. If there were going to brainwash me then the least I could do was resist till I no longer couldn't. A testament to how fiercely I valued my freedom.
With a few minutes of walking and turns, I found myself in front of a door to what looked like an office and was led in by another set of guards. The room I walked into was something more like a living room rather than an office.
Straight ahead sat a rather mean looking man with a woman with sharp features at his right and Olav at his left. The moment I was brought to the front of the sitting man, I felt like I just reached a checkpoint in my life.
As I stood before the honestly scary looking man, we all fell into silence while I had to deal with the disgusting feeling of having myself raped by his eyes.
He watched me for a while before he turned to look at Olav and asked, "Is this him? He looks rather unremarkable."
Is that the type of compliment you give someone you just saw?
"While that might be so sir, we ran the tests and it came out positive." Olav responded with a polite and submissive tone that just made my skin crawl.
"Is that so? Then I take it we are now able to proceed without failure of his demise." The man responded without missing a breathe.
"E-excuse me. Demise?"
With my interruption, all three pairs of eyes labeled their sight at me making me quite nervous.
"Mr. St. Cross, from what I've heard, you've been refusing our offer…" I snorted at that, "… and while it is admirable and mildly amusing, it seems you were under the impression that you had a choice. While you would have spent the remains of your miserable life living as a mediocre amongst countless others, with us you actually have the chance to stand for something greater than yourself. So believe me when I say that even if it takes us breaking every single appendage in your body, you WILL fold. Am I understood?"
These fuckers, even though I was seething I couldn't risk an outburst because I know that what he said was true, but then again why me because I don't see them giving Bucky Barnes the same treatment, or maybe this universes' version of Hydra was… more polite? Less violent? I'm not buying it.
"Why me?" Out of over seven billion people on this planet, why me. It was something I could never wrap my head around.
"I guess you would in fact, want to know why you are here." Yes I would, Einstein.
"Don't worry, soon you'll know. All in due time I suppose."