Collection of Ideas

Ordinary: Prologue (Bucky Barnes)

One year, four months, twenty-seven days, five-hours, six-minutes, and forty-eight seconds. One year, four months, twenty-seven days, five-hours, six-minutes, and forty-nine seconds. One year, four months, twenty-seven days, five-hours, six-minutes, and fifty –

"It's time." The faceless man says. His large body is blocking the entrance to my cell. I slowly, and gingerly stand, unwilling to, but knowingly following him to my daily experimentation. None of them have taken yet. Every single one of the faceless man's experiments have failed. Every time they fail, it gets more and more painful. Each time my body rejects whatever serum or substance injected into my body; I get punished.

I lay down on the uncomfortable table, and barely feel my arms and legs being strapped in before something is shoved in my mouth. To muffle my screams, to keep me from biting my own tongue off, or both? Either way, once the strange object is in place, they start. I imagine it is what being drowned and electrocuted simultaneously feels like. It's something my brain can no longer process.

The pain starts in my head, and it slowly, painfully slow, moves down to my toes. It is paralyzing, a white-hot burning throughout my body. I can almost smell my skin burning. Maybe it really is burning. I don't even know if I am screaming anymore. I don't understand how I couldn't be, but I can no longer feel my throat, my limbs, anything but pain.

I don't register the large needles of the unknown substance being pushing into my veins until the white-hot pain from before changes. It becomes cold. A cold so cold that it burns worse than any heat ever could. The blinding and paralyzing sensation spreads rapidly throughout my blood. I can feel it moving, overtaking my own blood. This is it. Finally. I am going to die. Then everything stops.

All sensation halts, all sound ceases to be heard, all tastes of bitterness and iron melt away into nothingness. I am nothing. Suddenly, it all slams back. More than before. I do hear myself scream now. I can feel my throat ripping itself apart trying to convey the amount of agony my body is going through. I can feel the bones in my arms and legs fracture as I pull on the restraints binding me. But then, I feel everything knit itself back together. Back to normal. Just back.

I no longer have broken bones, a torn throat, burnt skin, and bloody lips. I feel whole. I also feel this energy, this venom, this poison, coursing through my veins, my blood. "What did you do to me?" I ask, my voice a strange sound to my ears.

All the faceless men, men now with faces, smile at me. They smile a wicked, sinister, evil smile. "My dear, we made you better." One finally answers.

I stare at him, memorizing his face. "No. You made me your worst nightmare." All smiles drop, only once before having heard the coldness in my voice. "I will ask one more time. What did you do to me?"

A small man from the corner, the one controlling the substances I was injected with speaks, "We – we ... we injected you with a mixture of various super-soldier serums, a new type of experiment – one that should enable you to control water – and a vial of scorpion venom." His voice is shaking, fearful. Good, it should be.

"What does it do?" I ask, hands clenching the side of the table I am sitting on.

"It – it, um, well we don't know. Like I said before, one of the substances should be enable you to control water. To what extent we don't know. As for the others, all is uncertain. Nothing has ever been tested like this, and most certainly never together." The small replies, voice still shaking.

I nod, "Let's see what it does shall we."