Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Sudden Death [Chapter 5]

                She dared not to ask that question, however, as she did not want to know the answer.

                Time felt as though it were moving at a standstill, and Ophelia had burning questions within her mind. Sooner or later, she would find out what was going to happen to her, and at this point she really did believe that she was being given another chance. One slip up that had surely been corrected by now was not enough for HYDRA to clean their hands of her; she still had her usefulness. 

             Perhaps she was thinking too far ahead; she still had a gift that they could use until the day she dropped, which could be decades from now with the testing they had done on her. Her usefulness had not run dry, and she took a deep breath, telling herself that over and over again. Locked in her cell, as usual, she decided that the fact they had sealed her wound, given her the regular round of shocking, that she had suffered her punishment and would be back on track sooner or later. It was hard to tell, though, HYDRA was impossible to predict.

                Another day crept by slowly, no sunlight to truly inform Ophelia of the time gone by, but she counted the meals. This time she was given a large meal, filled with carbs and proteins. Without even thinking about what it might mean, she dug in ravenously, filling her pained stomach to the brim before even taking a breath. The savoury meal made her groan with pleasure, and it all seemed to disappear as quickly as it arrived. Then, she waited for a sign of what would happen to her next, worry began to seep into her mind. She worried that the meal had been her last. Why had it been so much bigger than the previous ones she had been getting?

                About an hour later, an officer unlocked her door and pulled her out. Her legs felt weak, especially the left leg that had suffered the gunshot wound. They had cleaned and stitched the wound, but it still pained her, especially since she had not been getting enough food to sustain herself, let alone heal. However, the small amount of the super soldier serum that she did have in her, or HYDRA's scrapped together version of it, she healed better than most people. The man pulled out a needle and injected her arm.

                "Stop!" She protested; but it was too late. Her question should have been about her own fate, and yet she could only ask, "Where is Bucky?"

                "You'll see soon enough."

                Ophelia felt her body go limp.

***

                It was the cold that woke her when the sedative wore off; bitter winds nipped at her skin where she was not covered. Even as she opened her eyes, she felt the lids to be heavy, as if frozen shut. Though she had goggles and a face mask on, she could not see right away. It was bright and the vast whiteness startled her, and it took her a few moments to gather herself. 

            Instantly she knew that she was in trouble; she had been given no mission, and had never been outside the base without a mission. Her last memory was being sedated, and her gut instinct told her she needed to get out of there as fast as she could. And yet, she was still lying on her side in the snow, teeth chattering. There was no pain in her body, but she knew it was because she was completely numb due to the cold. 

          Finally pulling herself out of the deep snow, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the surroundings better, seeing that she was on the mountain pass. It was a flurry, the snow whipping around playfully and painfully at her face. Siberian winters had been known to kill stronger people than her, but it was not the weather she needed to fear, and she knew it. They wouldn't toss her out in the cold like a disobedient dog, because she could find her way out of that, she would survive that. There was something far worse coming for her.