chapter 1
Cold manacles clamped firm on his wrists and ankles stopped him from going anywhere, the skin under them was bloody and raw, the cold bit viciously at his practically naked body. But that’s not what scared him. The ‘doctor’ staring him down was the thing that chilled him to the bone. The syringe filled with suspicious pink bubbling liquid was what made his hands shake violently. When that syringe entered his neck, he felt pain like he’d never felt before. His back arched as he thrashed around, his head smashed against the back of the chair as he screamed. At some point he’d arched his back with such ferocity that he’d broken it, but that pain paled in comparison with what felt like hot oil pumping around his veins. His back had healed almost immediately anyway. When he next awoke he was back in his cell, and when he grabbed his shard of mirror, he knew he had been turned into a monster, when he looked into it and saw red iris’ instead of brown. That’s when he knew he’d never be the same. Ten years old and a monster.
That memory haunted him. That’s how the nightmares normally ended, him staring into any reflective surface and seeing the red eyes staring back, often accompanied by red splatters on his face, but that never faded him, the red eyes was the one thing he never got over.
Quickly checking none of the other boys were awake, he sprung up from his bed, grabbed his red and blue hoodie and headed out the window. Nothing could make up for the atrocities he’d committed while with Hydra, but this at least began to dig him out of his seemingly endless pit of moral debt. While he was perched on a nearby rooftop, kind of vaguely looking out for any sign of trouble but mostly just wallowing in self pity, a purple beam shot right by him, clearly aiming at something he hadn’t yet seen. Shit. He should of been more careful, he had allowed himself to become lax in checking his surroundings, a mistake like that could get him killed. Those weren’t his words of course, he’d never managed that level of eloquence, those were words The Winter Soldier had warned him with. That was the last lesson he ever got from that man. He mustn’t think about that now, he had to go see what made that beam. By the time he got there, the baddies were already engaged in fighting four people, all he could do was watch from his spot on the rafters. The weapon didn’t seem of Earth, nothing that advanced could be. Everyone seemed distracted, they wouldn’t notice if he just had a look, would they? They did notice, very quickly. As he was staring at the weapon in his hands, almost entranced, he didn’t notice when the four overpowered the baddies, he only noticed when one of them yelled “one of them’s got the weapon!”
That’s all it took for his life to change.