DAYWALKER | n.romanoff

FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE
' WE? '

The first thing the Blade noticed was the aching of her body - in particular, the throbbing of her neck at the angle it hung. She winced, a quiet exhale leaving her, and the movement prompted the new realisation.

Air on her face was rare - something she had only felt a few times in the last half-dozen years. The lack of her helmet and balaclava made her head snap up and her body tense to stand. She rebounded as soon as she tried, though, her limbs secured to a metal chair with thick cuffs.

Through the strings of her blood-stained hair, she recognised the grey walls.

Those she would see in her nightmares when she dared to try and sleep.

The Blade tugged on her restraints again, but she wasn't strong enough.

Tutting rendered her still. "Now, now, Elowyn. Aren't you at least a little bit glad to be home?"

Slowly, she turned her head towards the voice, her grey eyes churning with fury. "Je vous détruirai, sale fils de pute! (I will destroy you, you dirty son of a bitch!)"

Pierce stopped in front of her, crossing his hands over his chest. "My French isn't good enough to understand what you just said. But I'll guess it wasn't very polite."

The sight of him sent a rumble through the voices. Shadows curled around his body, crawling up his legs with their faces morphing and snarling. She bared her teeth at him.

He ignored her hostility and stepped towards her chair, leaning on the armrests and pressing his face close to hers. "Cut the attitude, sweetheart. You would have bleed out without me."

"No. I wouldn't," the Blade shot back, accent thick with anger.

"It was a close call, I'll admit. We weren't quite sure whether you'd pull through. The dosage was just a fail-safe. We couldn't lose one of our best assets, could we?"

Slowly, the Blade's face dropped. "You... dosed me again?"

He touched the side of her face, his thumb rubbing her cheek. The skin-to-skin contact made her flinch, and she tugged at her restraints again. It brought searing heat to the surface of her skin, slowly spreading over her body and stabbing its claws into her flesh. Almost instantly, Pierce released her face and stepped away, and like an automatic reaction, the agony exploded through her body.

The Blade's head fell back with a hiss, her teeth gritted, and her lips peeled back into a snarl. Her fists clenched in her restraints, a groan building in her chest.

Pierce motioned with a movement of his fingers, and someone appeared from the corner of the room. Dressed in her white lab coat, she typed at a computer, and several new metal restraints protruded from the chair. They slid over her forehead, chest, thighs and shins, minimising her thrashing to jolting. The doctor forced open her mouth and slid in a shield to prevent her from biting off her tongue.

The agony fleering through her body had been something she had managed nearly to forget. It would plague her for weeks, months and sometimes years later. The first time they'd dosed her, the Blade had been five, and she'd blacked out in seconds. The last time, she'd been sixteen and endured the whole thing awake. And she hadn't been able to sleep peacefully ever since.

A scream tore through her lips.

Somewhere in her subconscious, she heard the door slam, and they left her to suffer alone.

\_|_/\_|_/\_|_/

The Blade's eyes fluttered, her vision obscured by tears and exhaustion. Her body was too heavy to move and throbbed still from the aftermath. The brighter lights stabbed her brain, and her hearing was obscured by ringing. She listened to her abnormally loud breathing, and her skin was hypersensitive, the drool sliding down her chin like boiling water.

Her vision managed to pick up on a figure coming to a stop in front of her.

"There she is."

The compression around her limbs retracted as they released the restraints. The Blade's head lolled to the side, unable to even feel her body, let alone try and control it.

"How you feeling, sweetheart?" Pierce grabbed her chin and pulled her head to look at him. "Oh, let me-" After pulling a stall next to her chair, he tried to pull the tongue shield out, but her jaw had locked with how tightly she had clenched it. Slowly, he eased it open, guiding her limp movements with an unnatural care.

Finally, he removed it and discarded the shattered tongue shield onto the floor.

"It's been a while since we've done this, hasn't it?" He wiped away the drool from her chin and the tears staining her cheeks with his handkerchief. "I used to often reminisce on my time as your Handler. You were such a ferocious little thing. Although, not much has changed, hm?"

The Blade's grey eyes stared at him blankly.

"Your new friends are trying to disrupt my plans. We're not going to let that happen."

"We?" she whispered, voice hoarse and accent thick - her drawl turning more into a slur.

Pierce hummed and caressed her face. "Yes, Elowyn. You're going to stay by my side, you understand? That Romanoff is sly." With one final caress, he rose to his feet and buttoned his blazer. "Get her ready. We launch in three hours."