Chapter 4
Chapter 4.
When Wade woke up next time he was shackled to a gurney. It felt familiar to him, even though he couldn’t ever remember having been in this situation before.
A young guy with cheekbones for days was smiling down at him blandly, wearing a white lab coat and with a suspicious bulge at his hip that suggested he was armed. For some reason, Wade found he was holding his breath and his heart rate had skyrocketed. The voice in his head had started screaming bloody murder at the sight of the guy, which Wade kind of got. He hated this guy at first glance.
“What’re you staring at, dickface?” Wade asked.
The man’s smile twitched into more amused, but the smile couldn’t cover up the fact that he was empty behind the eyes. “Good to see slavery hasn’t had much of an effect on you, Mr. Wilson.”
“And how in the fuck do you know my name, buttercup?” As far as he knew, his captors had had no idea what his name was. Usually, they just called him slave, if they called him anything at all.
A surprised delight bloomed on the man’s face like he’d just been given an early Christmas gift. “Well, isn’t this an unexpected side-effect.” The man leaned closer, grinning from ear to ear. If he got just an inch closer, Wade could bite off his nose. “What’s my name?”
Wade scowled. “How the hell should I know?”
The man and the dark-haired woman beside him (not that dark-haired woman, Wade felt like he hated the woman in front of him and he was pretty fucking sure he didn’t hate the woman in his ever-blurrier memories) shared a laugh, like Wade had just made the joke of the century.
Kill him! The voice in his head screamed. Wade would’ve been happy to comply if he could’ve. As usual, the voice didn’t care for little details like that and just kept on screaming.
The laughter finally died down to amused chuckles. The man patted Wade on the cheek like he was a cute fucking lapdog. Wade was starting to think he preferred his old captors, at least those fuckers weren’t ballsy enough to touch him. “You poor amnesiac bastard. You can’t die and you can’t remember living, how much of a person are you anymore, really?”
Wade glared silently, not willing to show how fucking close that one cut.
“Well, let’s get you fixed up. After all, you have to get back to work soon, don’t you, Wade?”
--
The surgery was just as excruciating as the first time, no painkillers and electricity and all.
Wait.
The first time?
--
After the surgery the man - who apparently called himself Ajax, like a huge fucking douche – turned to testing, with cold sadism and no feeling behind it. He pretty quickly concluded that Wade’s collar had just malfunctioned because it was old and hadn’t been taken proper care of. But he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to pass Wade back to his captors, instead more interested in seeing how the memory loss was affecting Wade and how it could be used against him.
“Didn’t you use to have a girlfriend?” Ajax asked apropos of nothing, pulling on his rubber gloves. He turned to Angel, the woman who was always at his side. “He did, wouldn’t stop nattering on about her back in the day. What was her name again?”
She shrugged disinterestedly. “I don’t know, Clarissa or something.”
Wade held his breath, an image of long black hair flashing through his mind. She wasn’t a Clarissa, he could somehow tell. He bet Ajax did actually know what her name was, or he wouldn’t have brought it up. If Wade could just learn her name…
Ajax looked down at him with a knowing smirk and Wade realized his desperation must’ve been too obvious.
“You don’t know either? Too bad. Looks like no one remembers her anymore. Hey, do you think she might be dead by now? It has been a while, after all.”
Wade struggled against his bonds ferociously, wanting to rip Ajax’s throat out with his teeth.
Wade could remember her, long black hair and a smile. He couldn’t remember what the smile looked like anymore but he knew the memory of it had been there, he remembered loving her. He still loved her.
Ajax bent down to wipe a tear from Wade’s eye. “Hey, no need to cry now. I bet you’ll forget all about her in no time.”
-
Here, wherever here was, things were different. Wade wasn’t the only captive here, he could hear the others screaming and moaning and whimpering, all hours of the day. He could smell death even over the overpowering stench of antiseptics.
Ajax and Angel were too busy to keep him company all of the time and unlike his previous captors, they only kept him blank for their experiments. They still kept him restrained all of the time but Wade hadn’t had the chance for this type of clarity of mind in a long while. Even with the daily rounds of testing things were starting to come back to him.
He remembered this facility. He’d been here before. He thought he’d probably been made here, whatever the fuck that meant. That explained how Ajax knew his name.
Ajax, what a dumb fucking name. Sounded like a, like a disinfectant or something. That wasn’t a real-person name, for sure. Suspiciously fake, he thought to himself, and the thought felt familiar.
Wade tested his bonds again, for the hundredth time this hour. They still didn’t have any give to them. Not even if he thrashed in them until he was too exhausted to move anymore. All he had was slight movement of his wrists and the ability to lift his head just a bit above his chest. Even his fucking ankles were strapped down on the gurney. He’d need something sharp to cut through the leather straps or some way to break the gurney. So that was pretty much a no-go unless he could charm a couple of mice to gnaw the handcuffs off him, Cinderella-style.
He needed to find some way to escape, and soon. He’d heard Ajax and Angel talking about how Wade would be carted back to his captors soon. Ajax just wanted to do a final round of surgery on him, to make sure the fucking collar was in tiptop shape – apparently, he also had some fun ideas for improvements on it, that he’d gotten from his “research” on Wade’s brain.
Wade needed an edge. Anything he could use against Ajax.
And there was something about that name. Ajax kept asking him “What’s my name?” every time he was finished torturing Wade and he was too blank to answer. Well, let’s fucking find out, shall we?
All Wade had to do was wait for the laundry cart to pass him, so close by Wade could smell the sweat of old clothes. It was surprisingly easy for him to spot a familiar white lab coat and snatch the name label right off it. Looked like Wade had clever little hands.
Oh, and what a name the dickwad had. No wonder he’d thought Ajax was an improvement. Wade really felt he was owed a win by this point and by Rob Liefeld he was going to get one.
--
The next time he was taken away for surgery, Wade really turned on the annoying.
“Hello, dickless, I was thinking we could do something a little different today. How about you lay down on the gurney and I cut your skull open for a change?”
“Mr. Wilson,” Ajax greeted him. He couldn’t really seem to get angry like regular people but he could definitely manage mild annoyance, and one of the things that mildly annoyed him was Wade. Full stop.
“I gotta say, this place has really got the shitty haunted house ambiance down, although you went a little overboard with the blood splatter - I mean, there’s just no way any of this shit is sanitary. Now, normally I’m a fan of a well-constructed cliché, but guys, you keep doing the same shit over and over again.”
Ajax rolled his eyes. “Just shock him again,” he told Angel.
Wade continued before she could. “I’m bored, is being bored part of the torture here? What do you say, Francis, is it?”
Francis stilled like something had finally really gotten under his skin. “What did you say?”
“I said your name, Francis. Francy-poo. Francie-boy. Wanna know how I found it out? It’s a real funny story. Almost as funny as your name. Fraaaanciiiis.” He drew out the name, long and slurring, making it sound like a ten-syllable word.
Francis’ eyes almost showed an emotion when he looked at Wade now, the closest to anger he could probably manage.
“You’re bored, are you, Mr. Wilson? How about we up the ante then? Angel, turn the power all the way up. Let’s see how long we have to fry Mr. Wilson’s brain until he forgets his own name.”
Angel turned on the big electrical-looking box next to the surgical knives and took out the wires from it. Wade knew those things hurt even more than the regular collar. Angel held the wires to Wade’s head and the pain threatened to make him go blank immediately, his body already knowing this routine inside and out.
Wade tried to fight it, to keep hold of his mind with all he had, to fight through the pain but it was pointless. He wasn’t fighting a concept here, they were literally burning off all the parts of his brain capable of higher thinking. Wade could feel his consciousness slipping away from him and there wasn’t even enough of him present to mourn it.
The pain continued long after Wade’s mind had left his body. Longer than usual. His body screamed and spasmed on the gurney, a quiet husk filled with pain.
The wires were taken away. The pain lingered. It was so quiet.
Dark hair fell on Wade’s face as Angel started to undo his restraints.
Vanessa, the ever-present voice in his head whispered, piercing through the silence like a foghorn. And suddenly there was a smile Wade could remember. A woman with long, dark hair smiling at him, laughing at something he’d said. “Your place is here with me, Wade”, she’d said. Vanessa had said.
Wade was still blank, not a single thought to tell him what to do. Not yet any orders from the outside to guide him. But his muscle memory had plenty of experience moving him around without his brain’s input. And he had just received an order, from Vanessa. She wanted him to come home.
Angel hauled him up and off the gurney, expecting a limp, unresisting body like usual and Wade’s body went with the movement easily, extending it into a kickflip with relative ease. Angel staggered backward, not strong when she wasn’t expecting a fight.
Wade’s body took off on a sprint to the door, his only goal to fulfill the command echoing desperately in his mind.
He had to get back to Vanessa.
Dark hair in his memories, dark hair filled his brain. There were footsteps behind him but Wade’s mind had no room for them. He reached the door and yanked. It was locked. He didn’t have the key. He yanked again.
“For fuck’s sake, you idiot, it’s locked. Can’t you even understand that much, you lobotomized dumbass?” Francis called out, exasperated.
The collar turned on and Wade fell, clawing at his neck. He had to get it off, the voice was screaming to get it off.
“Was that worth it, Wade, hm? You understand that now I have to punish you, right? And you were just about to get shipped back off again.” Francis crouched down next to him, sure that Wade was too preoccupied with suffering to do anything about it. “Looks like you just can’t get enough of me, can you?”
Take his gun! The voice ordered. And it wasn’t a whisper anymore, despite the blankness of Wade’s mind, it was a full-blown scream, loud enough to obey.
Wade’s hand shot out away from the collar and grabbed the gun Francis always carried at his hip. Wade’s body paused, waiting for the next order.
Francis’ face that’d gone all surprised for a second slowly stretched back to a grin. “What, is that all you’ve got?”
Shoot us, the voice said, no longer an incoherent scream but oddly calm, still loud enough to cover even the silence. Wade’s body obeyed. He brought the gun to his neck and pulled the trigger.
Wade felt the bullet go through his neck and exit the other side, right through the collar on both sides. The collar fizzled, crackled, and died and the pain in his brain stopped.
…
Wade’s body was cackling maniacally now, the voice leaking outside of his brain.
Francis raised his eyebrows, not enough of anything in him to feel fear.
“Angel, stop him.”
Angel cracked her knuckles and rushed at Wade. Wade’s body brought his stolen gun to her head and emptied the whole clip. It did nothing but make her angry but hey, it did make her stumble back a step. A step towards the surgery table that Wade was intimately familiar with.
Wait. He was?
Oh lookit that! That was a thought, memory and an idea all rolled into one, his brain was coming back online with a vengeance. Much like himself.
Through all of his surgeries and little experiments, Wade had surmised that the big-ass electrical box next to the table did, indeed, contain electricity and that the wires hanging from it were how said electricity was usually conducted directly into Wade’s brain. Well, not today.
Wade flipped away from Angel and rounded the table, turning on the device.
Angel didn’t even stop to scoff at him, just lunged at him with derision in her eyes. She was so used to being invulnerable and not having to worry about attacks, she was actually fucking garbage at defending herself. She probably thought her general toughness against physical attacks also extended to electricity. It was deliciously easy to shove the wires at her and let however many fucking watts this thing had go straight through Angel’s body.
Angel screamed and thrashed on the floor. She tried to get Wade off of her but Wade was very familiar with how muscles stopped following commands when they had enough electricity coursing through them, so she was shit out of luck. And because, unlike Wade, she wasn’t fucking invulnerable, she was just pretty fucking tough so she also got to be fucking dead.
“Sucks, I know,” Wade civilly told her corpse.
Francis had already taken off while Angel was busy dying. Looked like this time he was the one running.
Now that wouldn’t do at all. Wade and the screaming voice had made a temporary truce, they both very much agreed that Francis needed to die.
Wade ran after Francis. The Workshop was big and winding but Wade’s feet seemed to know where to take him even if his brain had no goddamn clue. Apparently, his feet were taking him to the exit, where Francis was already trying to open the locked door. Oh, the delicious irony, Francis didn’t seem to be able to find his keys.
“Hey, Francis!” Wade called out and landed a flying kick on the man before he could fully turn around.
“Wade Fucking Wilson,” Francis groaned. He dodged Wade’s punch, both of them grappling on the ground. Wade didn’t have any guns left to him but neither did Francis.
Seemed like Francis wasn’t as unarmed as Wade though, because the next moment he pulled out a knife and stuck it into Wade’s poor, abused brain. Frankly, that felt like being tickled when compared to the collar. Wade fumbled at the knife while Francis kept laying punch after punch at him, unable to get out from under Wade’s dead weight. Wade managed to pull the thing out of his brain after a couple of tries and promptly shoved it into Francis’ shoulder, nailing him to the floor.
Francis didn’t even have the common decency to wince. Right, the bastard couldn’t feel pain. Such an asshole.
“Any last words, Francie?”
Francis lifted his head from the ground to bring it closer to Wade’s face. “What’s my name?”
“Why, did you forget, asshole?”
Wade pulled the knife out of Francis’ shoulder and stabbed it into his face, again and again. And again and again. Again. Couple more. Okay, one more. He was don- okay, no, one more, for the road.
Now he was done. Wade pulled the knife out and let it clatter to the floor with a deeply satisfied sigh. There wasn’t much of anything left of Francis’ face anymore. Hell, even a healing factor might not have fixed that mug.
Wade got on his feet and picked the very bloody knife back up. The Workshop still had other staff working there and Wade intended to go hunting. He would probably take his time with that, really work out some of his frustrations. And then he’d free the other prisoners being held at the Workshop, seemed fair play.
But after that. After that, he had something more important to do. Because there was one more thing Wade and the voice in his head were in agreement on: they had to go back to Vanessa.