Chapter 4
It had been more than 50 hours since Steve was taken and all the avengers were still working day and night to find Steve’s location. A match for Steffani Alex was found and Natasha together with Clint was tracking her. The search was taking long because whatever records were present of Steffani were leading to a dead end which meant that she was probably using an alias. Tony trusted Nat implicitly and he knew they would find her soon. Meanwhile everyone, including Nat were still in the tower waiting to get the next live feed from Steve’s captors or hear from Natasha. Until then he was working on increasing the signal frequency of Steve’s tracker while running the face recognition programs and making them better. “Sir the feed is back online,” JARVIS called out to Tony who rushed out of his lab while asking JARVIS to tell the others as well. As everyone rushed to the common room they stopped in their tracks as the sight greeting them was as horrid as it was heart wrenching. Tony let out a strangled sound and he felt his knees going week and arms encircled him to hold him steady. Everyone rushed to sit on the couches and get in front of the screen to see what was happening in the video more clearly but that was not a good idea at all. The sight that greeted them had Tony’s heart clenching and he wanted to tear someone apart. Steve looked to exhausted, his chest was covered with jagged scars and his cheekbone was supporting an impressive bruise. His left eye was swollen shut. As everyone got nearer to the television, they could see that there were tiny tubes embedded at the side of Steve’s abdomen which were depositing a green slimy like substance in his body from a container at the far-right corner of the room. That was new and Tony couldn’t stop the feeling of ice-cold dread that slotted between his ribs even if he wanted. They could be poisoning Steve or worse and Tony was sitting here uselessly watching the love of his life being dragged through torture.
Tony hadn’t even told Steve how much he meant to him. He was supposed to dammit, he was supposed to right on the day Steve was taken from him. Everything was planned, Tony was going to take Steve out to eat at their favorite restaurant, and Italian place that they had discovered while they were out helping Steve become familiar with 21st century. Tony hadn’t even rented out the whole restaurant because he knew that it made Steve feel uncomfortable and he didn’t want to become a hurdle for other people who might want to visit the same restaurant too. They would order their favorite dishes and talk about everything. Conversation was always easy between them (after they got over the stage where they were practically tearing each other's throats out in an argument). He would let Steve carry on the night on his own pace and then hope for the best.
But right now, seeing Steve bloody and bruised he couldn’t help but let out a whimper filled with rage and frustration. They all held their breaths when they saw the side door opening and instead of the girl entering the room alone this time there was another man with her. He was middle aged in his late 20s, with blonde hair and was wearing glasses. “J you on it?” called out Tony. “Yes sir.”
The man walked over to Steve and then nodded towards Steffani. She stepped forward and with a flick of her wrist tased Steve on his neck, right on his jugular vein. Steve woke up with a jolt and a piercing scream which actually confirmed how high the voltage of the current was. As soon as he woke up the man started to speak with an uncomfortable sort of formality,
“My name’s Mike and since you refuse to tell us the disassembling code of the Ironman armor, I'm sorry to say that we might have to up our scientific methods to get out information from you.” He stepped back and Steffani stepped forward with something in her hand which alarmingly looked like equipment needed to perform biopsy. But instead of simply cutting Steve open she started to cut out small pieces of his skin making him bleed and scream loudly. He thrashed around and tried his best to get out of his shackles but Mike turned the dial on the tubes and soon it was as if Steve was paralyzed. He couldn’t move any of his limbs and Tony couldn’t help but throw his phone on the floor is sheer anger meanwhile Bucky let out a growl and Clint held on to Bucky’s arm with a death grip. Bruce had left the room to control himself from turning into the Hulk and Natasha had started saying something in Russian which Tony was quite sure were death threats intermingled with colorful curses all the while Steve’s screams filled up the background.