What If...? Rumlow Turned Against Hydra: Book One

27

Screaming reverberated through his mind. It was constant, though ragged, as if the person screaming had been doing so for hours. He tried to resist the constant sound, but it couldn't be ignored. He began to wonder if it was actually real or if he was somehow making it up in his mind. Was the screaming physical or mental? That was a very interesting question, allowing him to contemplate the screams without having to focus as closely on them. He had to conclude the screaming was both physical and mental; the most disturbing part was when he finally knew that he was the one screaming. The detachment ended abruptly as he continued to scream, as he also felt the pain, a never-ending pain that began in his skull, continuing along every nerve ending he had.

The pain ended as if a switch had been flipped. He could not see to understand what was happening around him. His screams tapered to heavy, anguished breathing as he tried to relax but his body was twitching, the echoes of the pain making him feel as if he was going insane. His vision returned slowly, allowing him to understand where the pain had come from. People stood around him, in lab coats, or wearing the uniforms of the STRIKE team. He couldn't understand what the STRIKE team was, but he somehow recognized that it was what they were. He was unable to move; when as he tried, he could feel the restraints holding him down. That was somehow odd, that he was restrained at all. He thought it should have been difficult to restrain him, but since he obviously was restrained, it was possible. Something was tight around his head, but he didn't know it was there until it was removed, as conversation among the scientists or doctors or whatever they were supposed to be continued without acknowledging him. He didn't try to listen to what they were saying, he was too busy trying to find out what was going on. Of more concern was the thought that he had no idea who he was.

He thought hard, going through what he thought he knew, trying to find out who he was. He had brief images of being in battle, some that seemed recent, others that seemed very old. He didn't feel old, so he couldn't possibly have been present in a war that occurred a lifetime ago. Some battle images seemed to have been against aliens, so maybe it wasn't so out of the realm of possibility that he had fought in a war almost eighty years earlier. Such things were confusing; none of them were helping him to find out who he was. He could see faces of people he suspected he should know, to include someone carrying a large, square hammer, a man wearing red and gold armor, a red-haired woman in black, a man using a bow and shooting arrows, a huge green creature. He saw a man who he'd thought was a colleague, trusted, betray him. He saw another man, with a metal arm and cold, dead eyes who had been killed decades earlier, in the war, but Bucky was alive.

"Bucky!" He yelled out involuntarily. That name he knew, but it wasn't his own. The people standing around him had frozen with expressions of concern or fear. The conversation him became audible as he began to focus on it, trying to decide what they were doing to him, how they could do it.

"He shouldn't know anyone at all by now." One of the doctors or scientists said in perturbation.

"Are we sure he doesn't think that is his name?" Another one said shrewdly.

"I know that's not my name," he said flatly. The anxiety among the people around him increased.

"But does he know who Bucky is?"

"My friend." That was an absolute truth, the only absolute truth he had. Other images came to him, of a childhood spent with his friend who had also fought beside him during at least one war.

"What is your name? Who are you?" Another scientist asked aggressively.

He faltered in the face of the vehemence. He knew Bucky was not his name and was in fact a person who was his friend, but he wasn't sure of anything else. He was, in fact, sure he had no name, that his past was unnatural, possibly something he did not want to know about. His certainty that he was surrounded by captors and torturers faded. He had no idea who the people were, or what they were attempting to do. Perhaps they were helping him.