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Melissa sits in her cell. Her various bruises ache, an ache that has faded into the background. She is too used to it. Her captors- she refuses to say 'handlers', or worse, 'owners'- are strict and cruel. They won't accept the slightest amount of misbehaviour. Or even simply errors. The huge bruise blooming on her side is from when she spilled her food.
She hates them. She tells them that, regularly, but that leads to yet more punishments- no, torture, not punishments. Pain. So, so much pain. She has been beaten by hands and feet, by metal batons. She has been tasered over and over, until she was sure that she was going to die.
So she tells them it less. And she complies, unwillingly, with their orders. She hates it. It's always so dehumanising, being told to bow her head and not speak and if she speaks to use polite titles. Every cell in her body tells her to disobey. But her aching body tells her to obey. And more often, now, the aching wins.
Tears prick at her eyes, and she scrubs them away with her flesh hand. She wants to go home, back to her dad. But she hates that these bastards see her cry so much. They won't break her. They can't. She might have to pretend, for now, but she will never, ever break.
She hears footsteps along the corridor. She tenses, listening. Two sets, one heavier, one more like clicking. Brick and Savannah.
She pushes herself up to look out, and glowers at her handlers- no, captors, not handlers. That earns her a warning look. "Cyborg. Careful."
She won't apologise. They can force her to obey them, but they can't force her to like them. "What is it?"
They don't reply until they are already inside the cell. And then Savannah strikes at her flesh arm with her baton. "Speak when spoken to. And bow your head."
Melissa's arm throbs with pain, and her face burns with humilation. But she shuts her mouth and bows her head. God, she hates this. She needs to find a way to escape. But her last escape attempt led to her flesh foot being replaced by a metal one. She needs to find a better way.
"Good." The praise hurts more than the insults, and she is struck by the urge to snap back. She doesn't want praise from these people. She doesn't want to be 'good'.
"Today is very important." Brick says. "Which means that Verliezer is in a terrible mood. You don't have room to make mistakes."
The door is opened again, and she is beckoned to follow. So she does, following all of the instructions. She stays behind her captors. She keeps her head bowed. Her arms by her side.
She spots her reflection in a mirror. She recoils. She doesn't look like herself. Same hair, same eyes, same body. But the metal parts. Her posture. Her expression.
She looks like the V-Cyborg.
Savannah notices her stopping and turns. "Hurry up! We can't keep Verliezer waiting."
She feels sick. This is wrong. She needs to resist, to fight back! "No, I won't. I'm not coming. Leave me alone." She snaps, backing away.
Savannah sighs. She lunges to grab her arm, and Melissa tries to pull away. When that doesn't work, she hits Savannah's hand. Over and over again, with her metal arm. Savannah yelps, grabbing the taser from her belt and using it. She collapses to the floor as pain floods through her, a scream being pulled from her throat.
She lies limp on the floor, her head buzzing. Hands grab her arms and haul her up, and she can't fight back. She is dragged along the cold floor, and people stare, and she just has to accept it.
Somehow, it feels better than compliance.
In the meeting room, she is shackled against the wall, forcing her to stand. For a while she is limp in her restraints, but she finally recovers. And then Verliezer arrives. "What happened?"
"She resisted, sir. Spoke back and attempted escape." Brick says professionally.
"Little bastard smacked me." Savannah grumbles. "... by which I mean, when I attempted to restrain her, she attacked me physically."
Verliezer tuts as he approaches her. He studies her carefully, which makes her squirm. She feels vulnerable, and exposed. "I thought that we were past all of that, cyborg."
"We never will be." Melissa snaps, straining helplessly against the restraints. "I'm not a cyborg, I don't belong to you, and I'll never stop resisting!"
"You look like a cyborg to me." Verliezer says. "And you signed that contract, so you do in fact belong to me. And you will stop resisting. Very soon, if I had to guess."
Melissa spits on the ground in front of him. Brick jabs at her side with his taser, and she cries out as the world dissolves into a blurry, painful, buzzing mess. She tenses up, before going limp, slumping helplessly in her restraints. Tears run down her face.
"Let's try it anyway." Verliezer says to his minions, the tail end of a conversation that she couldn't heart. "I imagine that the first attempt was never going to go well. Cyborg? Oh, it's crying. Stop that at once."
Melissa can't even wipe her face, but she takes shuddering breaths and manages to stem the new sobs. "Thank you. Now, listen to me. You are going on your first mission today. You will be alone, but your handlers will be nearby. Attempting escape will not go in your favour. Your mission is simple." Verliezer turns to gesture at a hologram. "Kill this man."
Verliezer continues explaining, cold and sharp like ice. Melissa doesn't hear much. She knew that they planned to use her as a weapon, but now? Already? She thought that she had proved herself too untrustworthy.
But suddenly they are cleaning her metal parts, and screwing on her weapon, and placing her in a truck. The weapon has a cover on it, and she is restrained to her seat on the truck. But this is still more freedom than she has had for weeks, maybe months. She can't pass up this opportunity.
The truck stops. "He should be around the corner. Once you kill him, make your way back here. Don't worry about witnesses, we want people to see." Savannah says. "Go on, now."
Melissa gets out of the truck. And Melissa goes.
She takes off running in the indicated direction. But when she sees the man marked for death, she keeps running. Her feet pound against the ground and she ignores the pointing and gasps and confusion.
She can't go to the police station, last time it just got her caught. She will be hauled straight back. She wants to go straight home, but that will put both her and her father in danger. So she will go and hide and remove her tracker. And then she can go home. God, she just wants to go home.
Her earpiece buzzes. "Cyborg, turn around."
She ignores it. She has to keep running.
"Cyborg, this is your last warning."
She needs to get home.
It's like she was struck by lightning. She screams as she collapses, pain flooding through her. It's like she is burning, like she is dying. She can't move, is she screaming? She can't hear over the buzzing in her ears. Waves of pain, waves of it, getting worse. Not getting better, getting worse. She can’t breathe, she can’t think.
The pain gets worse, and worse, like a hundred tasers are being jabbed into her, all over, and tiny little bugs are crawling into her bruised skin and biting and scratching and hurting. Hurting and hurting and hurting and hurting and hurting and…
———
Melissa wakes up in her cell.
The first thing that she registers is the pain. Everything hurts, throbbing and stinging and burning. She whimpers, curling in on herself. It doesn’t help. In fact, moving just exacerbates it, sending fresh waves of pain through her. Tears burn in her eyes.
There are chains again, a consequence of a new escape attempt. She can’t care about that now, not when everything hurts so badly. It’s like there is fire just under her skin. She presses her forehead into the cold metal of the shackle on her wrist, desperate for relief that doesn’t come.
When her handlers come to drop off water, they just look at her. Crumpled on the floor, whimpering in pain. “This is what happens if you refuse to complete a mission.”
She has no idea what they did. A device planted in her, that can go off at her handlers command? Probably. But she can’t find it. And she doesn’t want to risk trying to take it off anyway. She can’t cope with that pain again. She would die. She would do anything to avoid that.
No, wait. Captors, not handlers.
She takes ages to recover. For days all she can do is lie on the ground, too sore to move. Too sore to think. She manages to drink water, which brings some relief, but any food that she gets the energy to eat is soon back on the floor. Her captors tease her. She doesn’t bother arguing back.
After that, she is able to move. But she is still in pain. Too much pain. She spends most of the time lying on her hard, uncomfortable bed. She manages to eat, she even paces around the room a few times. But god, it’s so bad.
When she is almost recovered, still in pain but functional again, she is marched to the meeting room. “Same mission. Same target.” Verliezer’s instructions are even briefer. “But now you know what happens when you disobey.”
The weapon. The truck. Outside.
She wants to run. She just wants to run. But the pain is lingering, and she knows how bad it will be if she does. So she walks in the direction that she is instructed to. She walks until she turns the corner, and sees her target.
He looks young, and a bit nervous. Who is this? What has he done to earn Verliezer’s wrath?
She can’t do this. She can’t just milk someone. She can’t. She won’t.
“Cyborg. You know how this works.” The voice buzzes in her earpiece, sending fear flooding through her. She knows what will happen if she doesn’t do it. But if she does do it, if she does do it…
She raises her weapon to point it at him. “You! Halt!” She yells, her voice cracking. She can’t do this. She can’t. She can’t be Verliezer’s weapon.
The man whirls around, arms raised in surrender. “I- I- who are you?! What are you?!”
Everything in her crumples, until only fear is holding her up. Fear of being hurt. “I’m the V-Cyborg.” She says, the response that she was trained to give.
She can’t do this.
She fires her weapon.
———
Melissa lies on the floor of her cell. Limp and broken. Not from pain. From guilt.
She covers her face with her hand and metal claw and sobs. Great, gasping sobs that take everything from her, that make her stomach hurt and leave her crumpled and weak.
When she tries to eat, she is too sick. So she just lies there, trembling with guilt. She killed someone. Killed someone innocent, someone who was so scared and confused, just because she was ordered to.
She hates herself. She hates Verliezer, but she hates herself too. She should’ve resisted. Should have taken the torture rather than… rather than…
Rather than being Verliezer’s weapon.