Old Ghosts

Chapter 6

More than ghosts waited for him in the darkness, more than guilt. Missions came back in splintered fragments, flashes of the horrors wrought by his hands. But there were other memories, moments that had come in between. Other hands – piercing, cutting, opening his flesh. Cruel tools and glowing monitors, straps cinched tight around his arms, blinding light and faceless voices. A lifetime of pain igniting behind his eyes, searing through his skull, coursing electric through his body until every muscle was rigid and contorted, his lungs burning with screams that he barely recognized as his own. The memories had been waiting for him, a lifetime of agony crashing back all at once.

They'd taken who he was, again and again and again, ripped it out of him and cauterized the wound. And when there'd been nothing left, they'd taken that too.

"...Most importantly, we erase the memory of the procedure." More jumbled voices, voices of men long dead, speaking above him as though he wasn't there. "The human mind is not equipped to recall its own destruction... comprehension of the paradox... fragmentation of an already damaged mind..."

The cold terror of the words burned away as the pain ripped through him again, memory after memory after memory. When the ghosts came for him, he could tell himself that he had earned this, that the pain visited back on him was a mirror of the pain he had caused. Was this any different? He should have remembered, shouldn't have been allowed to forget. That weight was his to carry. But Hydra had stripped it all away.

He'd fought them, once. So they'd found new ways of making it hurt, new ways to unmake him, ways that his body would remember even after his mind was lost. When had he stopped fighting? He remembered the man in the suit, remembered sitting obediently in the chair, letting them tighten the straps, biting down on the mouth guard as they lowered the machine that would set a fire in his skull. Even an animal knows to shy away from pain. But they had made him into something even less.

There were more voices in the fog now, different, closer. The pain was receding, fading back into memory. His head still throbbed, but it was a new ache, solid and sickeningly real.

"Are we ready?"

"Nearly. But the scans... we actually see evidence of regeneration. I can't explain it. The procedure may not be as effective."

Hydra. They'd planted an operative in the park, someone to drug him and bring him in, someone who could change their face and twist his mind.

"Then try harder. Go deeper."

"The risks—"

"Wipe his mind or liquefy it. If you fail, we've been authorized to scrap the project and start over."

He could feel the chair beneath him, cold and familiar. The pain whispered again, echoing behind his temples. He knew what came next. The memories were a torment, but they were his. He might wake screaming, might see things that weren't there... but that was more than he'd known about himself in a very long time. It was something. And they wanted to take it away again.

Or kill him. The procedure might be all it took, but he couldn't take that chance. It might work. He would forget again, be sent back into the cold – or worse, into the field. How many more ghosts would he make? How many more times would they make him forget? He couldn't let that happen. He'd make sure they killed him first.

He tensed, testing the straps binding his arms, his legs. His years of obedience had made them sloppy. One good push would free his left arm. But he forced himself to go still, to listen. The room was large, open and drafty. He'd heard two voices, but there were at least three sets of footsteps moving around him, more some distance away. He could hear the shift of a weapon in someone's hands, probably a watching guard.