MANIPULATING THE MANIPULATOR

CHAPTER FOUR

The experiments taken almost seemed like I was stuck in a continuous time loop, like it didn't even happen, like they were playing with my mind and twisting it into believing it really happened. That, or I was starting to go off the deep end in this place.
There were several injections and withdrawals of blood, filtering into tests they didn't explain why or how. I hated it, how they kept the information safe in their calloused hands, looking it away in a titanium gated vault.
They didn't want anyone to know anything they were doing, the thought alone made me wonder how they even trusted each other. They made me run physicality tests, running, jumping, punching, hearing.
They tested all my human abilities to exploit them and see just how good my brain managed to function each one. Zola must have written notes and notes in his notepad. He scribbled aimlessly without taking his eyes off me, I wasn't even sure what he was writing was truly decipherable.
I didn't make a move to try and resist, either.
Truth was, I was terrified. Alexander had made this big, egotistical picture of myself that I could handle anything, that I wasn't scared of this place or the soldiers within, especially The Winter Soldier.
It was all lies, really. Sure, I could pretend, paint a fake mask and wear it. All that was is a mask, the person underneath was terrified out of her own sanity. Acting that she was flowing on paper thin ice, knowing that even the softest blow of air could cause the ice to shatter into millions of fragments. Almost like she was waiting for herself to slip up, because she knew what was waiting.
I knew what was waiting.
Now, I was sitting on the grey dentist-like chair, my breaths almost heaving as my heart was finding it difficult to keep up with my racing brian after all of the agility performances and tests.
Alexander and Zola stood in front of me, their faces both doomed with ugly smirks. I knew they found pleasure in my struggle, and this was light years away from the real things, from the real hard tasks that would set for me. This was only testing, and I already felt like I was dying. Like someone was physically inside-outting my guts from stem to stern and squeezing them just for good measure.
"We have one last test for you, my girl."
Zola spoke over the silence that was currently only being filled by the sounds of my heavy breathing. One last test? God, these guys were really on a mission to kill me weren't they? Maybe I could handle one more agility test, or blood test. Just not where I didn't need to put in heaps of effort.
I was starting to think 'heaps of effort' was this places's tagline
They ended up taking me to a hidden room in the lab. It was a large, cylinder based room. The walls were high, going up so much I couldn't see the top thanks to the room also being dimly lit.
Tidal waves of tension clenched my jaw as I scanned the room. There were five cylinder-like pods with an orange hue light inside. I didn't know much, but they looked like Cryo-preservation pods.
We had studied those in History once in highschool, for what I remembered from those years. They used them to preserve alive bodies, freezing them to stop their ageing process.
All the pods were empty, which made it all the more startling. And in the middle, a chair. Not just a wooden, simplistic chair that you would sit on. A bulky, metal chair that sent my instincts on an all time high.
It was black coated, and had rusted railing around it in a circle, leaving only the front and back a pathway to leave, including a computer setup to the side.
It was like nothing I had even seen before.
The front legs of the chair had large metal clasps, which I could only guess was to hold a person's legs in place. On the armrests, the same metal clasps just where your wrist would be.
There were all sorts of coloured wires attached to the sides of the chair, all leading to a large power bank just beside the chair. The back of the chair had two mechanical pole arms sticking out of either outer side of the chair, metal as well.
Those arms had weird ends, like they framed a face, fitted right on either side of a face. I narrowed my eyes enough to realise that inside those ends had electrical power volts. In the middle behind the chair, a large metal arch that split into two and held to circular lights on either side of the ends.
The electric volt system.
The ends that framed a face.
The metal clasps.
The power bank.
Volts.
Torture.
I swallowed hard enough to inhale my own breaths. I stumbled back slightly, close enough to almost make contact with my back and Alexander's chest. Was I about to be tortured? Alexander wrapped his hands around my shoulders and directed me to the chair, and I had no choice but to let him, despite the waterfall of emotion succumbing to my bones and threatening to drown me with them.
"Now, we call this The Chair. Really, it's a Memory Suppressing Machine. M.S.M if you like acronyms."
Alexander jokes.
How in the flying fuck can one joke after soon being tortured?
As soon as he gets me and him close enough to the chair, he spins my body around, enough to make my head lightly spin. He pushed me down into The Chair and Zola helped him lock the clasps over the correct places on my body.
After that, I tried to pull out, but the metal was everything against my body. I looked up to Alexander and Zola with wide and very fearful eyes, the composure mask cracking and shattering to the point I would most likely never be able to wear again. Despite my tempest of emotions, I manage to choke out a question, my voice slightly more shaky than I intended.
"You...You want to take away my m-memories?"
Almost immediately after I asked, Alexander doubled over in a loud laugh. He seemed to find heavy amusement in my fear, like he fed off it in a twelve course meal.
Motherfucker.
He slapped his knee a good few times, taking a second to recover and recollect himself. When he did, it was like it never happened. He used the back of his hand to smoothen out the creases in his suit that had just been made before speaking again.
"No, not currently. This Chair doesn't just wipe down your memories, it also tracks DNA courses. That's what we are doing for you."
He says. He reaches into some hidden compartment and takes out a grey rubber mouthguard and grabs my chin and pries my jaw agape and sticks it in with force. I almost gagged at the sudden force but I try not to, not wanting to give off the fact that it startled me, even though my wide eyes were not helping in that factorisation. I didn't understand why I needed a mouthguard. Was the impact of the volts really so bad that I could break my jaw? I doubt that, right?
"Just do you know..."
Zola finally speaks up, but trailed off near the end of his sentence. I watched as he walked over to the power bank and kneeled to its level. I wanted to yell, to use words of protest, but the mouthguard would have made it come out all muffled.
So I watched.
It was all I could do, watch.
"This may sting."
Zola says as if he was my doctor and I was about to get my bone jolted back in place, or my dentist about to extract one of my teeth. It was utter bullshit. He flicks on the power button on to the power bank, a devilish smirk following shortly after.
My head snapped upwards as soon as the two arms whirred and moved down, the electrical volts ends of the metal arms moving to frame my face and keep my face still, just like I thought.
I feel myself die.
I felt electricity seep into my veins, but not just my veins. My bones, my blood, my heart, my soul.
It was everywhere, every sensation and every nerve ending I could feel, every neuron firing off in my brain. And, fuck fake, to was like being killed, over and over until I was simply boneless.
It was like being given a surge of power, only for it to be drained milliseconds later. It ripped through me like hastily winds pushing my body further and further down into the ground until I was burrowed deep. Like I was a delicate balloon, and the volts of electricity were the continuous pins, causing me to deflate.
My body convulsed, even with the heavy metal clasps keeping my body still. Scream after scream broke through me, even when I was breathless. No matter, you could barely hear it thanks to the mouthguard. My hands clenched to try and out way the clashing waves of pain rippling across my grave. I felt my knuckles boring white in the process.
Truth be told, I had never felt worse than I had at this moment.
I felt the life being sucked out of me, like the volts were coming and leaving, and taking my essence with them. It felt like it was stretching for hours, when it was only seconds, minutes.
It stopped.
It stopped and I was gasping out of pain, my breathing so ragged I could barely draw in a proper breathing rhythm. The arms moved back to their original position and I could still feel the electricity pulsating my muscles. My head lolled forwards in a movement of weakness, not being able to hold my body upright.
My ears caused a high pitched ring, everything else felt blurry. The world was closing in on me and I was planted in place. I was aware enough to notice Alexander and Zola going over to the computer setup, the sound of the keyboard being pressed at a rapid rate.
"I knew it."
I heard Alexander say. Hell, he sounded proud, excited, riveted by his words. What did he know? I wanted to be more curious, I wanted to find out what he meant, but unconsciousness started to thread through me and hold me down. My eyes began to flutter until I heard one last word from Zola.
"Vampirism."

↠

Alexander and Zola were supposed to take me back to my cell, but something happened that needed immediate attention. So, they told me to walk back myself, and that there would be a guard waiting there for me when I got back.
Basically saying I shouldn't try a Tom Cruise act.
After The Chair, I didn't want to disobey their commands. I was starting to feel like a lap dog, staying in line with their owners and not daring to cross it. As soon as I got out of the labs, I was directed to a wall out of sight, pinned to the wall by my shoulders with two calloused hands. One flesh, one metal.
The Winter Soldier.
He was close, our bodies practically one, pressed directly together. His face inches from mine, the heavy breathing from under his muzzle brushing my face. I grunted softly at the slight impact my head made to the wall, but he didn't care. His liquid ice eyes taped onto mine, his emotionless gaze never once faltering to show any hint of emotions.
"What are you doing here?"
He says it so coldly it managed to creep under my skin and create tingling formations.
"What the hell?"
My voice was strained from his sudden movements. I didn't say anything else before he loosened the pressure, letting me stand upright before slamming me back into the wall. I grunted again.
"I said, what are you doing here?"
He repeats. He seemed rushed, desperate to know. Please, I knew as little as he did. He kidnapped me? I thought he knew. Did he not?
"The project."
I said strained, referring to 'The Necromancer Project'. That was all I knew, the rest was background noise to me, whether I wanted to know or not.
"Bullshit."
He speaks through clenched teeth. That was until he looked so deep into my eyes I felt the stare, the gaze, it was both tantalising and terrifying all in one.
"You don't know."
It's not a question, it was a statement. He was right, I really didn't know. If I did know, I would be busting my ass trying to get out of here. I tried to remember the last words I heard from Zola before I passed out, but I couldn't. That or at least my mind wouldn't let me remember.
"You don't?"
I asked, turning his question onto him. I was almost surprised, him not knowing. I thought he was in the higher ups of HYDRA. The elites, or something. He shook his head firmly.
"You're special to them, to everyone here. You're special but know one knows why. Not even you."
His words are rushed, as if his inner turmoil was spiralling out of his control, trying to figure me out.
"Zola is my handler, he knows."
I thought of the first person that might know what I was really here for. If anyone really knew, it would be him.
"What did they do to you?"
He asks, completely disregarding the other topic and moving to what happened to me in the labs. I didn't want to talk, but I felt I needed to.
"Testing."
I said, my eyes darting around to try and find a way to escape, but there was none.
"They used The Chair, I should have known."
He says gruffly and annoyed, as if he read my mind in a single glance. It was almost unnerving, him reading me so well.
"Do they do that often?"
I asked, having a good feeling it was some kind of infamous object inside of HYDRA's walls.
"They use it on all their assets."
He doesn't specify who, but I had a good feeling that he was included. That's why he was tired, he was in The Chair before me. I knew it was for a completely different reason as well.
My gaze plateaued on his face, taking in his expression, how there were light bags under his eyes, barely noticeable. How his grip on my shoulders occasionally faltered.
"They're killing you."
Shit.
That wasn't supposed to slip out from my better conscious, but it did. There wasn't really any going back now. Again, it was only the truth. He leaned closer to my face, taunting me. I inhaled sharply, trying not to gouge on the sudden tension bouldering on the both of us.
"They already have."
He says like a harsh whisper, as if the words physically hurt to leave his lips. He hadn't physically died, by mentally seemed to be a different story.
"And they'll kill you too."