Not strong enough - Abby
I looked down to the woman's arm.
It was now littered with small thin cuts, each the width of an eyelash but about five centimetres in lengh.
When done, I stepped back, dropping my hands in shame as I forced myself not to gag.
She was just one target, one out of hundreds and yet for some reason I still feel sick to my stomach when I do it.
I am weak.
Soft.
Not good enough.
Not strong enough.
I understood why they all hated me, why my father had never named me. I was not a child, I was a tool. And tools are only useful if they do their jobs. And if they break.. well then they're not very good tools are they?
I gulped quietly, refusing to break, not even for a second. "Tell us what we want to know." My voice trembled.
Traitor. So weak I cannot even command my own voice to sound strict when I willed it to.
"Poor thing." Tears slid down the woman's cheeks. "You don't have any idea what's going on here do you?"
"She won't answer." One of the agents muttered.
Way to state the obvious there John.
"Should we use him?" The agent continued, putting emphasis on the 'him' for some reason.
"Pierce won't like it." Rumlow replied. "It would be a waste to only use his skills for this."
The woman laughed, interrupting their conversation with the sound. It was surprisingly happy, still full of light despite the fact that I'd just tortured her. And that's without my knowledge of what the guards did to her before I entered the room.
"So first you sent in your soldiers." She murmured. "Then you sent a child, how weak are you that you can't handle one woman?"
I closed my eyes when I saw the agent behind her lunge forward but it wasn't enough. The scraping of her chair being dragged across the floor was loud enough, the bang of her head hitting the metal table was worse, the sickening crunch of bones breaking broke me.
I turned around to face the wall, my shoulders lurching as I threw up, emptying the contents of my stomach out onto the floor.
The agents around me groaned in anger, their hatred for me growing indefinitely.
Before I can compose myself I felt a hand scrunching the back of my suit, pinching at my skin as he yanked me backwards. "What the hell was that?" My father hissed, his glare making me recoil as I wiped my mouth with the edge of my sleeve.
"Idiotic child." He cuffed me upside the head and I looked down, avoiding his gaze. "I apologise Agent Rumlow."
He scoffed, a bitter horrible sound. "You should, brat." He hit the back of my head again but I make no reply, no sound or anything to show that it hurt other than a small wince of pain and my face contorted for a second.
"Get him." My father hissed to the other agent. "It will be a lesson for our little soldier too." He glared at me as he said that and the look on his face said that to him, I was more disgusting than the sick.
I stayed deadly silent as one of the agents left the room, leaving myself, the woman, my father and the other agent.
The woman's head was pulled back upright, her nose was wonky and blood had dripped down over her mouth, staining her teeth red.
He chair was shoved back against the wall, that horrible screeching sound it made making me flinch again, the sound torture to my enhanced hearing.
My father slid the cuffs over my hands again, forcing them back into that horrible claw position as the metal was clipped around me once more.
I wanted to panic, to scream and try and claw myself free but I can't. Not now. Not ever.
"Go get another chair." Rumlow asked.. no ordered. My father would never ask for something when he could simply command it.
The other agent left the room, returning about five minutes later or so with another metal chair.
My father let go of me, giving me a little shove forward as he grabbed the chair from the agent and placed it against the wall opposite the woman.
He scraped it across the ground as he did so and I scowled, my ears throbbing at the notion and something inside me tells me that he's doing it on purpose.
"Sit."
I didn't dare argue as I silently sat down in the chair, resting my head back against the wall as I tried to catch my breath.
Something bad was going to happen.
I could feel it.
The door open again and the agent that first left slowly entered the room.
Following behind him was a man with longish dark brown hair and steely blue eyes that held no expression, nothing but a blank nothingness.
He was wearing all black, though the strangest thing was that the left sleeve was gone, ripped off to reveal a shiny metal arm.
I know who this man was.
And that terrified me.
He was the asset.
The Winter Soldier.