Discovery Requires Experim- [GUNSHOT]

Chapter 4

“What do you want from me, Reinhardt?”

He stared at the man who was walking in circles around him with his hands behind his back. “Please, do call me Daniel Whitehall. We are in a new era, so we have to change with the times, including me.”

So much for evolving across generations when their main goal didn’t change a bit: world domination. Same old HYDRA with their ‘cut off one head, two shall replace’ motto. He wished he could sniff out any infiltrators back in the day and have them executed by the law.

Since HYDRA was in his mind, he wondered how Whitehall managed to survive all these years. And he also had preserved his youth. Did he take the super-soldier serum? That can’t be the answer since the serum only could slowly age someone’s length of life. But this, the man standing in front of him was seemingly immortal.

The doctor must have noticed his gawking eyes and let out a chuckle. “I’m sure you are surprised to see me again after almost seven decades. I will tell you how I got here. But first.” Whitehall signalled his assistant to step forward. “Let’s take a stroll down the memory lane, shall we?”

Hauer clutched onto the board’s handle and pushed it along with the super-soldier, who was still strapped to the panel. Whitehall followed shortly and when he was in Steve’s sights, he brought along another assistant. From what he could observe, the assistant was holding a foot-long baton prod in his right grip. Steve became doubtful with the rod, fearful of what it can do to him. Possibly to cane him, he thought.

In a split second, that man shoved the prod at his torso and he felt a sudden electric jolt running through his veins. It hurts like hell. Every inch of his body was screaming for help. He had never suffered being electrocuted in his life, so this experience might scar him in the future.

He wished Tony was here to end his misery. The misfortune of being kidnapped unconscious by HYDRA. The torment he was going through at the moment.

“Looks like the Captain America couldn’t handle a bunch of watts.” Whitehall said and he no longer felt shocked. The man in front of him put down his prod and continued to walk.

“You sick, twisted HYDRA monster.”

“Ah ah ah.” He made a ‘no’ sign with his pointer finger, as an indication for him to shut up. “If you dare interrupt my upcoming storytelling to you, I will ask my assistant to jolt you again.”

Steve nodded unwillingly. Although he believed he could withstand a hundred more of those jolts, he didn’t want to waste his energy just for resisting. He should save his strength when he could find a chance to escape, even just a tiny one.

“Now, I’m going to tell you about me.” He stated and they were heading towards a place Steve assumed to be another section of this HYDRA lair. “Back in 1989, there was a young woman who had amazing powers. She looked so young that her gifts were similar to one of the super-soldier serum’s abilities: longevity. As a matter of fact, I had met her back in the ’40s, the day I found out the Red Skull was dead because of you. The woman appeared to be ageing at a slow-moving rate.

“For almost a year I had been researching about an object named the Obelisk – believed by Schmidt himself that it holds the key to something I fully didn’t understand because everyone that touches it dies. I experimented with the Obelisk’s powers on different types of people, ranging from gender to race; they all gave the same, lethal result. Until I met this woman. My men forced her to touch it and she wasn’t affected. On the plus side, the Obelisk glowed for the first time, in front of my own eyes.”

They arrived in front of a locked bunker-style door. Hauer unlocked the door and revealed a room he always avoided stepping foot in. An operating room. There were six people in the room, all of them wearing white scrubs and face masks; probably doctors and surgeons. He felt anxious about HYDRA’s upcoming plan on him and didn’t like it, one bit.