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The Iron Hand
Schmidt sneered at the disassembled, skeletal metal arm Zola was tinkering with. “I still do not understand Herr Hitler’s obsession with repairing this one man. How much use is a single man, no matter how strong his arm is? You have spent months on this project, invested the rarest of metals, and a power source that would run one of our tanks for decades! A waste of time and resources.”
Zola was unmoved by the criticism. “The cube has thus far offered us power limited only by our ability to harness it. This is simply another way of harnessing it. Rather than building a weapon, we will make a man into a weapon. I believe the Fuhrer admired Herr Grauer before he was injured. He held a number of records in the Army. A symbol of Aryan perfection. The perfect candidate to become a symbol of the triumph of technology. The Iron Fist of the Third Reich. To inspire our allies and strike fear into our enemies.”
Schmidt scoffed. “You would do better to focus on what men can become without replacing parts of them with metal, Herr Zola. That is the future.”
Zola didn’t look up from the delicate wiring he was working on. Hitler’s orders came before Schmidt’s, no matter how much he might respect the other man as a scientist – or fear him, as the monstrous product of his own experimentation. The Arm was nearly ready. Another day, two at the most, and the team of surgeons could begin the operation to make it part of Karl Grauer. It was really just fine-tuning at this point. He wanted it to be as close to perfect as he could make it, so he stayed up most of that night and half of the next day before he was satisfied, and handed it over to the surgeons. The ground-breaking work, attaching it to bone and nerve, took a team of six doctors and ten nurses thirty-two hours. Zola checked on Grauer every day, though the man was barely conscious the first week. The doctors insisted on keeping him on painkillers to reduce the chance of rejection, insisted the pain would be unbearable, and might do psychological damage. Zola knew the uses of patience, though he privately disagreed. The sooner Grauer began learning to use the Arm, the better, in his opinion. They didn’t know how long it would take, either to control it or to properly interpret the impulses from the array of sensors, most of them in the fingertips. It would require completely remapping the nerves, since the attachments were random. What used to control muscles would now control servos, and the results would be unpredictable and confusing. Zola was confident it would happen, he was only irritated that scientific inquiry must wait on the frailty of humanity. Perhaps Schmidt was right, not that it mattered. He took orders, did his best to carry them out. And he had plenty of orders to work on while Grauer healed.
It was two full weeks before Grauer was off the painkillers and allowed to begin his attempt to use the Arm. Zola told him to take it slowly, knowing the man was fanatically devoted to the cause, and nothing would stop him working on his exercises every moment he could. Which was, of course, exactly what Zola wanted. Unfortunately, it was not the kind of exercise Grauer was expert at, and obviously the nerves weren’t completely healed. Days passed, with no sign of progress. Five days, six, then seven. Zola was beginning to be concerned. Had something gone wrong? Was Grauer simply incapable of making the new connections? Late on the seventh day, one finger moved.
“Congratulations,” Zola offered, with more relief than sincerity. “I never doubted you.” Grauer mastered moving the rest of the hand in two more days. By the end of the tenth day, he had full functionality. Feeling was longer in coming, but Grauer had always been more interested in brute force, and the lack of fine control didn’t bother him. Zola held him back for three more days before they started testing how much damage the new arm could do. It exceeded all of Zola’s expectations. Grauer was thrilled. He admitted to some pain, but Zola assured him it would fade over time. It might not, but there was no point in saying that. Grauer went to proudly demonstrate his new functionality to Hitler. If anything, Hitler was even more delighted than Grauer was. Zola happily received the accolades he was due, and had to use all his powers of persuasion to convince the Fuhrer that Grauer needed a little more practice before he could take his place on the front lines of the war. It was just as well that he insisted. After the demonstration, Grauer took a turn for the worse. Bruises started to surface from deep in his flesh. There was more pain, and a series of X-rays showed why – the bones the Arm was anchored to were starting to fracture. Using the hand was harmless, and its crushing ability was astonishing, but lifting anything heavy, or hitting, which Grauer was very fond of doing, was putting too much stress on the bones, when there was no connection to muscle to take up part of the weight. Zola ordered Grauer to rest, let the fractures heal, and he would redesign the anchors to solve the problem. But he was lying. There was no redesign that would fix this problem, the bones were simply too weak to take the strain. Given enough time, the bones could heal, and since bone got stronger after it healed, that might be sufficient. If Grauer continued using the arm the way he had been, things would only get worse. Of course, Grauer was determined to prove that he could overcome this obstacle, as he had so many others, and he ignored Zola’s orders, then blamed Zola when his condition deteriorated. Zola realized how far wrong his project had gone when he caught Grauer taking pills that he knew hadn’t been authorized. He had to use the threat of Hitler’s disappointment to pry the name of the doctor out of Grauer, and that led to a conversation that revealed the doctor, fearing the Fuhrer’s wrath if the project failed, had been slipping Grauer morphine the whole time. The project had been doomed from the start. It was time for damage control. Many men thought Zola weak, because he was quiet, unassuming – even a vegetarian, though no one criticized that aloud, since Hitler was as well. But Zola was dedicated to science above all else, and would allow no one to stand in the way of that. Zola’s engineering had not failed, and he would make sure that no one would suggest that it had. The doctor had already demonstrated that he feared consequences. Zola told him the Fuhrer would have to be informed, and left him to make his own arrangements. Grauer he took care of himself. An embolism, easy to fake, impossible to predict, common when healing from major surgery. Such a loss. He didn’t do the autopsy himself, but made it very clear that the Arm must be removed most carefully, not damaged in any way. The extensive bone fractures would be documented, but that information need never be passed along to anyone who would know what it meant.
Except, of course, Schmidt found out. He was far too subtle to come out and say that he would use the report against Zola, but Zola knew he would take his orders from Schmidt from now on. Schmidt’s ‘sympathy’ was openly mocking. “A pity your work was wasted, Herr Zola. Perhaps now you will realize that men, once perfected, will always surpass machines.”
Well, for him it was only exchanging one master for another. No matter. Zola nodded, conciliatory as ever. “Of course. We are testing the next batch of serum this week. Someday, Herr Schmidt, we may even have a use for my Arm again.” Schmidt’s obsession could serve him well, after all. Someone with Schmidt’s own abilities could overcome the difficulties with the Arm, and if they succeeded he would find another subject among their new super-soldiers, sooner or later. After Schmidt turned away, Zola smiled at the Arm, shining in its cushioned case, as another man might smile at a newborn babe. No matter what Schmidt thought, the Arm was a triumph of engineering, and he was determined that one day it would find its true potential. Until then, it would be securely stored, in anticipation of that day.
A New Opportunity
When they brought him in, they were sure they had retrieved a corpse. He appeared to be frozen solid, and was missing half of his left arm, the flesh so cold he hadn’t even lost that much blood. But they left him inside a building that was, if not warm, at least slightly above freezing, and one of the guards scrambled back in the next day babbling about demons. Their “corpse” was alive, his breath visible in the frigid air. Demons or not, there was a procedure for the discovery of anything unusual – the Fuhrer was fascinated with anything occult or strange. They boxed up the body, kept the temperature exactly as it was, and shipped him off to the appropriate department. Once Zola saw him, he knew that his greatest success was also his bitterest defeat. The last batch of the serum had worked – but the samples of that batch had been lost, along with the records. He had no idea how to re-create the effect. Well, he would have to make the most of what he had. Clearly, the Sergeant’s ability to heal was more than human. Could he possibly regenerate the missing half of the arm? It was tempting to wait and find out – but even that knowledge would not be as satisfying as the opportunity to finally have a home for his favorite project. The fact that the man was an enemy was inconvenient, but that could be overcome. That woman who had been scorned by the scientific community in Austria would be grateful to have the chance to use her methods on him. They might have been appalled by her techniques, but they hadn’t disputed her results. With some behavioral modification, he could be made into a tool for Hydra, whatever he might have been in the past. He gave orders to have the other scientist brought to the base as soon as possible. In the meantime, he had a surgeon remove the damaged part of his subject’s arm. They wouldn’t attach the new Arm until he was under control, but it would be informative to see how he healed up after the amputation.
When the guards showed Bucky the announcement of his own death, he closed his eyes and refused to look. He knew that, dead or not, Steve would search for him. He knew that he was far from where he had fallen, but there was a chance. Just a chance. That tiny spark of hope died when they showed him the newspapers draped in black – Captain America Dead. He didn’t break down and cry until much later, hours after they had given up mocking him and left. He was supposed to be the one to save Steve, but he hadn’t been there, and now Steve was gone. That bright, pure flame that had always been his guiding light snuffed out, leaving him in darkness that would never end. He wished for the thousandth time that he had died. Would die. Death would be a relief at this point. He was in a cell again, without even forced labor to keep his mind busy, he had lost an arm, and now he had lost Steve. Surely the worst had already happened.
Greta Zimmerman was the perfect picture of a Nazi scientist. Tall, thin, blonde hair pulled back in a severe bun, and eyes as cold as a Russian winter. “Thank you for the opportunity.” Her thin-lipped smile held none of the gratitude of her words. “You will not be disappointed. He will be following my orders in a matter of weeks. Three months at the most.”
“I look forward to seeing your work, Frau Zimmerman. This is, indeed, a unique opportunity. Success here will be invaluable to the cause.” He very carefully left it open exactly what cause that was. “Would you like to see him?”
“Not yet.” The other scientist’s even stare said clearly that she was paying complete attention to his wording. A microscopic nod said that she, too, might be more interested in science than Hydra, though he had no illusions that they were any more than allies of convenience. Still, Hydra was one of the few organizations that would allow either of them to practice the kind of science they were most interested in, and science, alas, always needed funding. Crafting Hydra a perfect weapon would ensure both of them many more such opportunities in the future. “What have you done with him so far?”
Zola shrugged. “Nothing in your department so far. He was frozen. We thawed him out, cleaned up his damaged arm – we will replace that when your work is done. He is in a cell.”
“Have you any other prisoners nearby?” For the first time, there was urgency in her voice.
Zola shook his head. “No. I am not a fool, Frau Zimmerman.”
She bestowed a wintry smile on him. “Guards are to wear masks at all times, and never to speak directly to the prisoner. No individual guard should be identifiable, but even so, they should be visible as rarely as possible. Isolation is a valuable tool in breaking down the human mind. I have equipment to set up, both audio and video. It must be undetectable, I will supervise installation myself. I have instructions for how much he is to be fed, and when. There are certain compounds to be added to his food to make him more suggestible. They are more subtle than those preferred by some of my... colleagues. There will be no obvious changes in his behavior, but my goal is not to destroy the subject’s sense of reality, only his identity. We simply require him to be... malleable. We are building a weapon. His mind must still be strong, only more obedient. I understand you wish this to proceed as quickly as possible, and given the uncertainty of the effects of your serum, I will need to adjust the dosage as we go. Is the cell heated?”
Zola frowned. “Of course not. Should it be?”
“Definitely not. Given his condition when found, the cold will have an appropriate psychological effect. I will visit him at intervals, starting several days from now. When I do, it will be several hours after anyone else has been near the cell, and there must be no sound of anyone near at the time. Oh, light levels should be low, and must not vary. I will give further instructions as necessary. Let us begin!”
When they came for him, Bucky was still too weak from the surgery to fight them. They didn’t even beat him up, just sedated him. As the darkness washed over him, he thought he would have preferred a beating to the fear of waking up again strapped to a table. Azzano had broken some part of him, the burning in his flesh lingering for months before it finally faded away. He’d found himself obsessively checking, almost unconsciously, to see if his skin was peeling off, every time caught between needing to know and fear of what he would see. Every nick when he shaved made his heart pound, his hands scramble to wipe it away, lest the red spread until he drowned in it. He had come to hate mirrors. When he woke, an indeterminable time later, he was actually relieved to be back in his cell. He wondered dimly what the game was, but found the thought slipping away. He just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Soon after that, he was pretty sure he was going mad. It started with a whisper, barely at the edge of hearing. He couldn’t even make out what it was saying. Just a single voice, but it sounded accusing. Than it was joined by another, stopping and starting, overlapping. And more. Some were disappointed, some angry, some bitter. He could make out words, some more easily than others. Weak. Useless. Failure. Disobedient. They accused him of abandoning his friends, leaving them to die. He knew he hadn’t, knew that if they knew where he was, they would come for him. If they knew. But they probably didn’t know, and it was so hard to think, to remember anything even existed outside his cell. He wasn’t sure what the voices were. Ghosts, come to haunt him? He had enough blood on his hands to deserve haunting, if anyone did. But he didn’t believe in ghosts, and they were more likely to be hallucinations, anyway. Either way, he knew not to listen to them. At first. And he could remember that, be strong, think of other things – as long as he was awake. But he couldn’t stay awake forever, and no matter how exhausted he was, how deeply he slept, they wormed their way into his dreams. When he woke, he couldn’t shut them out anymore. He felt just as tired as he had when he’d dozed off, and they never stopped. He didn’t even know it when he started talking back to them. Apologies, begging, and fragments of prayers fell from his lips just as tears fell from his eyes, but the voices never relented. Eventually, he gave up responding to them, and just let them wash over him, filling up all the empty space inside his head until finally they took up so much space there was none left for him. He thought he might have been here forever, all the rest of his life only a distant dream. He thought he dreamed that an angel came to visit him. A beautiful lady with golden hair. He remembered someone else with golden hair. The voices faded to a whisper when the angel was there. She brought him things. A bite of chocolate, a hard candy, a handful of bread. Her hands were gentle as she touched his bruises. And she talked to him, told him that he was brave, and strong. He wanted to be brave for her. She called him her Soldier, and at first that bothered him. He had a name, he was a person. He never corrected her, though. Maybe she was right, and he was wrong. Over time, it came to seem normal. He was a soldier. Her Soldier. He had flickers of memory sometimes, of other names, other faces. But when he tried to grasp them, they melted away like smoke. His angel never stayed long. He wished she could stay forever, but he was glad when she left, so that she didn’t get caught helping him. He knew time passed, because his arm healed. He didn’t know how much time. Weeks? Months? His angel came after a particularly bad beating, and she told him not to fight the guards, that it would only make things worse, and she didn’t want him to be hurt. He didn’t want to stop fighting. It was one of the few things he still knew. Hunger, cold, and fighting. But eventually, to please her, he did. And she was right, they beat him less after that. He felt guilty about it, but he couldn’t deny her.
The next time his angel visited, she said that she was afraid. He vowed to help her any way he could.
His angel said she had heard the scientists talking. They had plans for him. She told him to be brave. He would be brave for her.
The Fist of Hydra
Zola had given Greta free reign, but as far as he could see, there had been little progress. “You said three months, and there are only five days left.”
Her glare said that she could read a calendar just as well as he could. “Do you want a weapon that will turn on you when you need it most, Herr Zola? He will be ready when I say he is ready. He has become resistant to the drugs, but they have been effective enough. It is just as well they have lasted this long, he is remarkably strong-willed. Still, the process works, it will only take a little longer. He has already left his former identity behind. Now it is only a matter of making the conditioning self-reinforcing. Soon you will be able to replace the arm.”
“Are you sure that will be safe? Once he has control of it, the Arm is not just an arm, it is a formidable weapon.”
Greta’s smile was cold as ice. “It is simple. Your serum amplifies what is already there. He was a good man, and remains so, but that is not an insurmountable obstacle. With the proper incentive, a good man can be made to do terrible things. He is a protector, a champion of others. He would never bend to a threat to himself, but a threat to another he cannot resist. All we need do is define for him what he is to protect, and he will do anything to accomplish his mission. Anything.”
Zola knew the accelerated healing was both a blessing and a curse. Once the Arm was installed, it should remain viable. The bones it was anchored to would fracture, but they would heal stronger than before, and eventually they would be strong enough to minimize the damage. Unfortunately, it also meant that the body would try to reject the Arm. A delicate balance would have to be reached. Overload the healing factor enough to keep it from rejecting the Arm while still allowing it to heal after the installation. One of the surgeons suggested that it would be simpler to adjust the Arm to fit the current amputation site, and Zola turned on him with vicious scorn. “And when did you learn engineering? Imbecile! If the Arm has no foundation, it will never be more than a pretty prosthetic! The Arm is a weapon! Properly anchored, it will be capable of unstoppable force!” The man cowered in the face of Zola’s rant, but his superior still protested.
“It is simple enough to remove the arm back to the shoulder joint, but we have seen effect of the subject’s unnatural healing. The arm has already regenerated over an inch from the initial amputation. If we graft it on as it is, it will be pushed back out.”
Zola’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, the results of my previous experiment are quite remarkable. Yet his capacity for healing is not infinite. We simply have to determine what kind of damage heals the slowest, then repeat as necessary to overload the healing ability until we can stabilize the implantation area.” Thus began the worst five weeks of Bucky’s existence. He gave up even trying not to scream. Once they determined that freezing the area solid and then cauterizing it would slow the healing enough that it would scar, they sedated him, and he woke up to the horror of having the rest of his arm removed. He drowned in the terror that they would keep cutting off parts of him until there was nothing left, and his thoughts inevitably returned to the possibility of killing himself, mortal sin or not. But for the first time in weeks, his angel returned and assured him that the rest of him would remain intact. He only needed to remain strong for the rest of the treatment. If he had known what would come next, he would have reconsidered the benefits of suicide, despite his angel’s pleas. They couldn't take the chance that he would develop a resistance to the anesthetic – it would be disastrous if it stopped working partway through the surgery - so they didn’t use any during the preparation. Over and over, they froze his shoulder, then branded it, until the whole stump of his shoulder was scarred over. It was more than he could bear, and in his weakened state, he spent more time unconscious than aware. He considered that a blessing. Every time the darkness closed in, he prayed he wouldn’t wake up. The pain was the worst of it. Only a fool would have thought otherwise. But a close second was the way the doctors treated him like a piece of meat. They never responded to anything he said or did, until, delirious, he started to doubt his own existence. Perhaps he had died, long since, and this was hell. If it wasn’t, he couldn’t imagine that hell could be any worse than this. He thought he must have a long list of sins, but surely none of them had been bad enough to earn such a punishment. It was hard to be sure, though. His previous life seemed like fragments of a distant dream now. Reality was pain, and cold, and constant, gnawing hunger. The only spark of light in his world was his angel, and he wasn’t sure that she was real, either. She didn’t belong here. If she was real, he hoped she could escape, even if it left him here alone.
Eventually, his shoulder was a mass of scar tissue. It took three weeks, but it worked. Finally, they were as ready as they could be for the actual installation. It took twenty-eight hours, the anesthesiologist almost had a nervous breakdown, and they barely got him strapped into the chair before he woke up. This time his screams were half pain and half horror at the metal monstrosity grafted to his body. If they hadn’t had him thoroughly restrained, he would have tried to rip it back off. Hours later, after everyone was gone, and he was too exhausted to keep fighting, Greta explained gently that this was a good thing, that he would be strong, and be able to protect her. That it wasn’t just a hunk of useless metal, but a tool he could learn to use. He passed out again soon after, but the seed had been planted.
With the Arm grafted on, it was hard to monitor the healing process, and for two days Zola worried that they hadn’t managed the right balance, that all their work would be wasted. They had tried giving the Soldier morphine, to ease the transition, but it wore off too quickly, and required a dosage that made the doctors nervous. So they shut the soundproof door and waited. On the third day, the screaming stopped. Zola considered the possibility that their subject was no longer capable of it, but when he wanted to check, Greta insisted that she had to be the one to go, alone. Zola shrugged. It was safe enough. The man would be helpless until he learned to use the Arm, and even with an improvement on Grauer’s timeline, that would probably be at least eight more days.
It took four. Finding that out cost them one of the surgeons, who happened to be checking on the healing at the time, but when he ripped free of the restraints like they were so much tissue paper, Zola was as close to ecstatic as he ever got. There was no telling how much was due to the serum, and how much to his natural learning ability, but that didn’t matter. He quickly sedated the Soldier again, and they took him to a barren room, one step up from his cell, trusting that Greta could keep him from escaping.
Greta only smiled in chilly triumph. “Your serum gifted our Soldier with enhanced neuroplasticity. It has made him more susceptible to my techniques, but more importantly, he will absorb details about his missions quickly and thoroughly. There will be no mistakes, nothing overlooked.” Greta said ‘mistakes’ like the foulest of curse words. “Very soon now, you will see what a weapon we have made.”
His angel was there when he woke up. She said she was proud of him, that he needed to heal and grow strong so that he could protect her. He swore that he would. She brought him food, enough that he wasn’t hungry all the time, and showed him a room nearby where he could exercise. Using the arm hurt, but he did it anyway. She said he had to. So did the voices. Some of the voices were different now. They said he had to protect his angel, that he had to obey, or people might hurt her. His angel slipped him handwritten pages of German to learn, so that he could listen to the guards without them knowing. He quickly memorized the pages and then destroyed them. When the voices started speaking in German, he didn’t even notice the change.
Ten days later, Greta pronounced the Soldier ready for his first mission. He wasn’t quite as strong as he could be, but this was mostly a test of obedience, and the video of the Soldier using the Arm had already more than proven its destructive capability. The flaw in allowing the Soldier to bond so strongly to Greta became obvious when the guards entered the room behind her. They didn’t make any threatening moves, but the Soldier killed them anyway. They didn’t even have the chance to get their weapons up. Unruffled as ever, Greta wiped the blood off her face, praised the Soldier, and postponed the mission for a day. The next time, Greta explained in advance that these guards were there to help him protect her, not to threaten her. They weren’t thrilled, after what had happened to the last four, but the Soldier wasn’t the only one who knew how to follow orders.
“This man wants to hurt me.”
That was all he had to hear. “I will kill him.” He flipped through the file, absorbing every detail. The mission went off without a hitch. It never seemed to occur to the Soldier that he didn’t have to return. The Fist of Hydra was a success.
There were many more missions after that. The Soldier enjoyed them, as much as he could enjoy anything. The only time the voices went away entirely was when he was on a mission. When he had purpose. And his angel was always pleased when he returned.
Between missions, Greta taught the Soldier languages to keep his mind busy. German first, then Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin. He soaked them up like a sponge. They brought in specialists to train him in other fighting styles. He practiced twelve, fourteen hours a day, refining speed, skill, strength. He learned security systems, weapons. Anything to keep him busy between missions. Zola wasn’t the only one who had a deep suspicion of what he might do if they didn’t keep him busy enough, though so far Greta’s control appeared to be absolute. She gave him the details of each mission, and he accepted everything she said as holy writ, obeying without question.
On missions, no one could doubt that the Soldier was the perfect weapon. Given a target, he proceeded with brutal efficiency – and complete callousness about his own survival or that of his support team, unless explicitly instructed otherwise. His ability to find a weakness and exploit it was nothing short of phenomenal. He didn’t so much think outside the box as refuse to admit the box existed at all. If a target was hidden behind a wall, he would break through the wall. If they could only get within a mile of the target, he would shoot from a mile away, and make the shot every time. If he was told to break into a locked room and leave no trace, even his team didn’t know how he did it, but it was done. The thing no one noticed was that he minimized collateral damage. Not that there wasn’t any. If bystanders had to die, they died. But if they didn’t have to, they didn’t. No one ever thought it made him weak, because he never said anything about it, didn’t stop others if they killed out of carelessness, or just because they liked it. Maybe it was just that he was efficient. If it was any kind of human feeling, it didn’t show on the surface. He certainly didn’t hesitate to kill the men he worked with if they disobeyed orders. Most of them were absolutely terrified of him, if not when they first met, then definitely after going on a few missions with him. That proved to be a benefit as well. The rumors spread through Hydra like wildfire, and after he was sent to remove a pair of traitors, the rate of defection dropped dramatically. Any member of Hydra who died under even slightly suspicious circumstances was attributed to the Fist of Hydra, though they hardly ever sent him out on such missions.
When Greta died, it wasn’t even enemy action, just a random car accident. Could have happened to anyone. Unfortunately, it had happened to the one person who could control Hydra’s best weapon. Now Hydra’s biggest problem. It would only be a matter of time before the conditioning started to slip. Zola was no fool, he knew how to make some adjustments to the tapes Greta had used, but it was a stopgap measure, not a long-term solution. They could have someone pretend to be Greta, but no matter how carefully a replacement was trained, the Soldier would detect the difference sooner or later, and frankly they couldn’t afford to have him bond to another person that strongly, and end up with a repeat of their current problem. They needed another solution.
Their remaining psychologist insisted that they tell the Soldier that Greta was dead, that it was his fault, he had failed to protect her. No matter that he was locked in his room at the time and had no chance to save her. It was still his fault. He didn’t even try to protest, almost as if he was expecting it. The last vestige of humanity was gone from his life. Zola knew it was a mistake, and when he saw the despair in the Soldier’s eyes, his assessment was confirmed. Without Greta to rein him in, the Soldier’s despair would soon turn to anger, and soon after that, he would turn on them. He could almost hear the ticking of the countdown.
Zola contemplated his options. He had to find another behavioral specialist, someone who could control the Soldier, direct him to take commands from any designated handler. Greta had relied too much on emotions, something Zola had always distrusted. There was a man in Russia who had some success with a pre-programmed series of code words, but he didn’t work for Hydra. Yet. Perhaps the man could get rid of those problematic emotions altogether. Molding the man they had started with was inefficient. Far better if they could wipe all that away and start over, build their weapon from scratch. The best way to keep a man in line was to keep him from being a man. In the meantime – there was the cryo tube. It wasn’t perfected, still killed ordinary men every time they tried it, but the Soldier had already survived being frozen and thawed. It would keep him until the new psychologist arrived and set up a plan. And perhaps it was for the best. They wouldn’t have to keep the Soldier occupied the way they used to between missions. One of the other scientists had been working with him long enough to know what his contemplative expression meant, and protested. “Surely, Herr Zola, you cannot mean to keep him! You know how many of our own he has killed. He is a rabid dog! Now that the bitch who held his leash is gone, he is more danger than he is worth!”
Zola only gave him a slow smile. “Patience, Herr Schumann. Like any other dog, he only needs a little more training to know who his new master is. I assure you, he will still be an asset to Hydra. Until then, we will simply put him somewhere safe.” He gestured to a dusty apparatus in the corner. “Freeze him!”
He didn’t resist when they put him in the tube, and he embraced the hated cold when it came. It was no more than he deserved. The voices said so, right up until he could hear no more.