Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 18 - Realization

Keira was pacing around the small cell, the tip of her finger trailing the grooves in the worn-out stonewall beside her as she did so. She hated being locked up, her body craving so much more exercise than what was given to her. The walks out of her cell to either train or be a lab rat made her feel like she was losing her mind.

If only she could get out. Just to feel the sunlight on her skin, to feel the fresh air in her lungs and not the damp, heavy air that hung around the building. And the window on the opposite wall of the cell door didn't give her the sense of freedom she was craving.

The rays of sunlight could barely fight their way through the grimy glass, and even with her attempts to wipe it clean, the window remained filthy. And the small lightbulb in the ceiling didn't exactly lighten her mood either. Its constant flickering made her want to crush it, and she had been close to doing it a couple of times.

But at the last minute, as she had grasped the fragile glass in her hand, she had managed to talk sense with herself and refrained from giving in to the temptation. Neither glass shards in her hand nor being descended into total darkness as soon as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon was something she was keen on.

"How long... How long..." She kept muttering to herself, brushing her fingers against the rough stone. It was torture, not knowing how much time had passed, or what was going on in the outside world. To be cut off from everything, from her friends, that was the real torture. Physical pain, she could handle. But the mental battle was so much more difficult.

She shouldn't be here. She should be out there, helping people.

During the few hours she managed to sleep, if she slept at all that is, her dreams were twisted and weird. Old memories twisted into horrific scenes that all ended in blood and flames. She saw the life drain out of her loved ones, all dead by her own hand. So, even if she managed to fall asleep, her nightmares would jolt her awake.

She wasn't allowed a mirror, but the brief glimpses she caught of herself in the silver instruments in the lab, or her grimy window, told her that it had been quite some time since her capture. Her hair had grown beyond her shoulder blades by now, almost touching her tailbone.

But considering that she wasn't allowed to brush her hair, it mostly consisted of tangles, as her fingers combing through the greasy hair didn't do much. On top of that, she could feel herself thinning out and growing weaker, courtesy of the crap food that HYDRA offered.

Her finger sunk into a small cavity in the wall, which caused Keira to stop dead in her tracks. She didn't even have to glance back at the small crater in the wall to know what it would look like. It would be in the shape of a fist.

Her own fist.

It hadn't even been a day. Not even twenty-four hours before she was back on the metal table, strapped down like an animal. When she had been escorted back to her cell for the first time, they had put on power-dampening cuffs on her, and sad to say, they worked.

So, she had no other choice than to allow herself to be escorted from her cell to the lab, the threat of being electrocuted hanging over her head in case she tried to disobey. She could already guess what this session would contain. No doubt it would be an attempt to get information about the Avengers, about SHIELD and their schemes.

"You're never gonna get anything out of me." Keira said stubbornly, her gaze firmly on the ceiling. By now, she had already given up her attempts to try and break out from the metallic restraints. Without any sort of momentum, she was stuck. Stuck like a fly in a glue trap.

The fact that the restraints were able to hold her, worried her deeply. She didn't want to think about what or who HYDRA would be able to contain with these. A normal human would have no chance whatsoever. An enhanced however, might have a chance.