Chapter 5
Time really was such a funny thing. Some days crawled by while others lasted an eternity... for example, the day they injected her with the blue serum. She must have passed out and woken back up a million times, but Malia knew that all those events had only occurred within the span of twenty-four hours... God, she'd felt every damn minute of that horrible day.
Things had changed since that day. Malia still spent a lot of time in LAB 241, though they no longer extracted samples religiously anymore. She spent most of her time heavily supervised -and under gunpoint- in a makeshift training room. Of course, she still had a million wires attached to her as the scientists conducted more non-intrusive experiments... They made her run for long periods of time on the treadmill, she could go for hours now without really tiring. Made her lift increasingly heavier and heavier weights that she would have never been able to lift before. This heavily scarred and angry instructor would force her to do difficult stretches until her muscles felt like snapping, though now it was almost second nature for Malia to contort her body into the oddest positions and hold them for as long as she was told.
Her mind worked faster now. She was practically fluent in Russian now, Malia would be keeping that a secret for as long as she could, and she'd yet to even actually speak it aloud in fear of getting caught. Her hearing was better and her eyesight off the charts. Malia felt decisively even less human now than when SHIELD had first confronted her on her unique parentage. HYDRA had made her this way.
It both thrilled and annoyed the scientists. After all, her new body was impressive in speed, strength, and dexterity... it was only improving with all of the tests and training and that they made her do. However, to Malia's internal glee, her skin was well- stronger now as well. It made extracting samples something of a chore as time went on. Her body practically rejected having needles in her arms for too long and seemingly spit them out. Malia healed faster now too. During one of the few surgeries, they'd had to cut her open five times because her body was regenerating too quickly. With every invasive experiment they conducted, her body learned how to heal itself faster.
It was both exhilarating and a curse. After all, drugs no longer had the same effect on her as they did before. That meant that she was awake and felt it every time they cut her open now. Malia had long learned during her captivity how to disappear into the recesses of her mind when things became too painful or humiliating... It was an idea she'd funnily enough based off Occumalcy from the Harry Potter franchise... especially since they couldn't hurt Malia in her own head.
Malia was always hungry now. Don't get her wrong, she'd gone hungry many times over the course of the last few months -it had to have been months now that she was missing... her hair was completely brown by now and it was no longer as short as it had been when the guard had shaved it off, it came to her chin now- but now... Well, no matter how much bigger the food portion she was given now, in comparison to before, Malia's stomach always rumbled and begged for more.
After she'd started losing even more weight -god, she'd been practically skeletal by then- one of the scientists had started supplementing her diet with these heavy -disgusting- protein shakes. That had at least changed her body from looking like an emaciated prisoner from WWII to that of an extremely underweight ballerina. Malia had never thought she looked so ugly. So unlike herself.
Her Pappy probably wouldn't even be able to recognize her now... Malia had a hard time recognizing herself. It was one of the main reasons why she hated being dragged into the training room. One of the walls was a full-length mirror. The first time she had seen her own reflection... well, Malia had thought someone else had been standing before her.
-She'd been punished later that night for raising her hand and touching the mirror in horror and then breaking down into heaving sobs... Malia had learned then that her body no longer scarred like it had before, it took fifty lashes to leave behind two permanent marks on her back now.-
As weird as it was, some days were better than others. Malia preferred the days when the trainers would force her to run until she collapsed. She could get lost in her mind for hours as they increased the speed or levity of the treadmill and Malia would always crash the second her head landed on a pillow. Those nights she would be too exhausted to even dream.
Yesterday they'd changed things up. They'd brought her to another padded room right off the training room and pummeled her in the name of training her in hand-to-hand combat. Malia had not been amused when the gruff man in black tactical gear had broken her arm. The head scientist, however, had been abso-fucking-lutely thrilled when it healed twice as fast as the last time they'd broken one of her bones. The bastard had been downright giddy as he inputted the new data. Malia contented herself by visualizing setting the man on fire as she poured a copious amount of gasoline on him when the ass suggested -and then doing so- breaking the other arm to see if it would yield the same response.
"Bitch isn't as ugly now that she's putting on muscle." the blonde guard commented to his comrade as they opened her cell block. Even after all this time, Malia had to suppress the urge to exclaim in disgust. She kept her expression perfectly blank.
The other snorted derisively, "You're a freak Maksim. I prefer my whores loyal to the cause."
HYDRA fucker.
The man rolled his eyes as he barked at her to stand up and press her front against the wall in broken English... it was nice to hear her native language again even if it was only when they wanted to move her. After Malia's enhancements, the guards had been treating her a lot more warily, waiting for the day Malia would snap and try to attack them now that she wasn't just a lump waiting to be dragged into the labs. Not that she didn't begrudge them for their caution... Malia had headbutted one of them a few- well some time ago making him lose consciousness after he'd touched her -maybe accidentally now that she thought back on it, these assholes had never tried to get fresh with her in that manner before- somewhere she hadn't wanted. She'd fucking welcomed the punishment.
"You heard what the big guys said? Going to start training the Subject to assist the Aktiv on missii." the blonde piped up.
Aktiv... where had she heard that word before? Missii sounded similar to that of 'mission,' but unless she heard them use it again in another sentence she wouldn't be able to confirm it. She'd heard the scientists compare her to the Aktiv before in the past, mostly when they were experimenting on her strength -which was lacking compared to the Aktiv,whereas her healing rate far surpassed that of the Aktiv's- but she'd never been able to figure out if the Aktiv was a person or not.
Mostly because they never used pronouns when speaking about them. Then again, they never really used pronouns when they were talking about her either. She was simply Subject A-0001, sometimes Subject for short. The guards liked to call her suka or shlyukha, which meant bitch and what she assumed was whore in Russian after the two men had a long-ass conversation about prostitutes... or at least what she assumed was about prostitutes since she'd never seen either of them wear a wedding ring.
-Honestly, no self-respecting woman would ever marry them either. They were misogynistic assholes of the first degree.-
"Bitch wouldn't last a day with the Aktiv. It might be enhanced now like it, but Subject A-0001 has nowhere near the skills of the Fist of HYDRA." the dark-haired guard dismissed arrogantly. Fist of HYDRA... that sounded like a title. Did that mean that Aktiv was a person like she'd been suspecting?
Either way, Malia wouldn't hear the rest of the conversation as she was shoved into the padded room from the day before where her attentive trainer was waiting for her with a cruel smirk. Still, Malia enjoyed viciously throwing the older man into the wall... even if that meant two more trainers entered the fray and beat her down.