I did just as I said, we converted this house of prostitution into a coke house. After exploring the building, I found it had a basement level. We put all the manufacturing and packing down there. Damp, cold, and always humming with the low buzz of machinery, it was perfect for it.
Floor two, the ground floor, still held echoes of its old life. Some of the girls chose to keep seeing clients. Their choice. It was just a way of life they had adapted to, survival in stilettos.
Maybe in another life I would've turned this into something else, more respectable, made the girls stop. Set them free in a way that looked better, more morally acceptable.
But reality is… you can't force someone to change. And even though to others this was their worst nightmare, for some of these girls, it was better than a 9–5 or the other dead-end job options this city coughed up.
Besides, who am I to stop them? Just as I am free now… so are they.
The third floor had the office and a few bedrooms, cramped, lived-in, always smelling like incense and stale perfume. These were where the girls actually lived, laughed, argued, braided each other's hair. You'd hear music at night, sometimes even laughter. I let them paint the walls. Give it life.
Lastly, the final fourth floor. Must have been for the boss or something. It was a large apartment , well, large by our standards. Not perfect, certainly, but better than anything I had before.
The girls called it "loft style." I didn't know what that meant at first, but it made sense. No real walls, just open air, like the space itself refused to be boxed in. The only privacy was the bathroom with its sliding barn door.
A bed sat in the center like some kind of throne I never felt worthy of. A small kitchen tucked to the side, barely big enough to hold a fridge and stove. A living room with a couch soft as a cloud.
Oddly, I couldn't sleep on it. I sunk in, like the thing was trying to swallow me whole. The girls swore it was meant to feel that way, "It's comfy," they said.
But to me, it felt like drowning. I gave it to them. Same with the bed. My back hated it. My mind hated it more. I couldn't seem to get comfortable anywhere. My body hadn't become accustomed to comfort, I suppose.
It took me about two weeks to get everything set up and running.
I bought what I could using the few stolen cards I had. Headed into high town and got as much baby stuff as I could, diapers, clothes, formula, bottles. The essentials. But those cards were shut off after just two days of use.
I ended up selling the dead cards on the street. Apparently, people can still use them to steal someone's identity. Got a few hundred each.
We had a few run-ins with the original owners of the whorehouse. They came by causing trouble, loud, stupid, violent. Each time… I killed them.
Each time, I warned them first not to fight me. Figured it was the least I could do.
They never listened.
After the third time, I broke both of one's arms and sent him back with a message. "This place is mine now. Send more men and more will die."
It got pretty quiet after that, guess the guy took the hint that not some regular thug had taken up shop here.
Mira and I lived up on the fourth floor. I got her a crib. I slept next to it, on the floor. Watching her chest rise and fall every night, coddling her when she cried at any hour. Ready to get a bottle whenever she needed it.
Literally at this baby's beck and call.
Never thought I'd be happy to take orders again. But this little girl? I'd do whatever she asked.
Plus, I wasn't sleeping much anyway.
The ghosts liked to come calling every time I closed my eyes. The screams, gunshots, the thud of bodies hitting the ground, the splatter of blood. It played on repeat, like a broken record on loop inside my mind.
Weeks passed like this. Mira started crawling at about seven weeks. She moved fast around the apartment, always just ahead of my hand, always giggling, always chasing sunlight on the floor like it was treasure.
At this point, we had started selling our product. Mostly to the girls' clients, but some on the street too. Here, you could put it in a vending machine and it would sell.
That's how normalized it was.
But because of how widely available it was, this little business of mine wasn't bringing in much. I needed more money.
I ended up finding out there were opportunities for big money as muscle for hire. I certainly had the muscle. So why not?
That young blonde girl I had met, her name was Sierra. She ended up becoming my second in command. Once she regained her confidence, she was sharp, capable, trustworthy in the way most people in Madripoor never could be.
I started working as a bodyguard. The head of one of the biggest arms dealers in the city needed one of his whores guarded.
She was annoying. Always drunk. Reminded me of one of my handlers back in the day. Definitely got a few flashbacks when she tried barking orders at me, but I made myself clear with her man: I'm the bodyguard. Not her servant. She had others for that.
I wasn't taking orders anymore.
While I guarded her, Sierra watched Mira. Kept her safe. Loved her, even. It was hard, this life I had chosen now, full of sin and corruption. But I was going to hell either way after all the things I had done.
Now all I care about is making sure Mira had the best life I can provide in this cruel world.
Every so often, I would think of Bucky.
Wonder if he was okay. Did he get out? Should I go back for him? Could I even?
I'd think about what he'd say if he saw this life I had here, the baby, the guns, the drugs, the pain stitched into the walls.
It was odd. Bucky and I had barely interacted. It wasn't some great romance. But… I don't know.
I care about him. I worry for him.
Maybe it's because I was witness to what they did to him. Maybe because I knew his pain all too well. We were probably the only two who could understand what the other had been through.
The years taken from us. The horrors inflicted. The scars carved in. The sins we were forced to commit. We shared a bond no one else could see.
Thoughts of destroying Hydra and setting him free rattled in my mind at times.
I had the strength now. Yet I still felt weak.
The thought of returning to one of those places made me quake in fear. Flashbacks hit like lightning strikes. Cold sweat. Tunnel vision. At times like that, I would just hold Mira. Hear her giggle. Feel her warmth. She was the greatest comfort I had.
The girls showed me how to work the TV in my room.
We didn't get many channels, but a few news stations came through from nearby countries. One day, my prayers were answered in the most unexpected way.
The news was talking about files, released from an agency called SHIELD and from Hydra. Files that were posted publicly. Proof of corruption and espionage. Of all those shadows brought into the light.
Sierra helped me get online with a laptop. I dug through the files for hours. Still, it wasn't all of Hydra's secrets. I knew that. But there was enough.
Political crimes. Acts of terrorism. The Winter Soldier program.
I found the files on Bucky. Most of it I already knew. Some I didn't. Apparently, he fought back hard after coming out of cryo with his new arm.
They tried to wipe him right away, but he resisted. They found they had to break him first.
The files didn't describe bruises or screams. Not in a way that acknowledged suffering. It was all technical, cold and clinical.
It detailed how he had been kept in a cell barely big enough to move in. The lights never turned off. They restrained his arms above his head for days at a time, what they called stress positions, to weaken his body and break his will. There were notes about disorientation, edema in the limbs, hallucinations.
They logged his breakdown in bullet points. Referred to him not by name, but as the subject. His resistance was noted as, within acceptable thresholds. When he began to mumble to himself or slam his head against the wall, they noted it as it was indicating progression toward being ready for wiping
They treated psychological torture like a checklist. Noise exposure, sensory deprivation, starvation, dehydration, forced isolation.
They didn't describe the pain, just its effects. When he stopped fighting.
And then, after three years, he did.
Then I found a file labeled "Serum X." Inside, it detailed attempts to recreate the super soldier serum, and improve it. They exposed it to something called "The Cube." I don't know what that is.
It was developed in the 1940s. They had fifteen vials of it.
In a sub file I found details of how it was administered; there I found my information, Subject X-13, that was me. No names were listed for any of the subjects.
Subjects one through twelve all died at varying stages after getting the treatment, the first seven were male subjects, most died promptly after getting injected, vomiting blood, organs liquified or failed, dead within an hour of injection.
The eighth was a woman, she lasted a day, in agony based off what they describe, from then they continued experimenting on woman. Lowering and playing with the dosage made each one last longer, but in the end they died.
When it came to my file, I hesitated to open it, I remembered the torture.
Did I really need to relive it. Something in me wanted to know though, what did they inject into me?
I opened the file, apparently there was a remaining dosage of standard super soldier serum, they gave me that first. After I had "settled" I was given a partial dose of the X serum. They noted changes to my muscle tone and pain tolerance.
I survived, several days later they administered more, and more until a whole dose had been given. Then the results showed as if serum X was negating the super solider serum, almost deactivating it. My body regressed back to normal.
I was given another dose of X, they noted no change, but I survived, painfully so. Finally, they administered the last dose, there was some note in here about how I briefly presented with enhanced abilities when the final does was given. Super strength came out and in a moment of sycosis I apparently had broken free and killed multiple guards and doctors.
I don't remember that.
After that, Zola started the torture. They thought it would make the serum "activate" again.
I stopped reading there.
What would be the point of reliving that hell?
I only wanted to know what they did to make me. Instead, I was left with more questions.
Oddly… every subject was listed as deceased. Including me.
At the bottom of my file:
"Agent deployed. KIA."
Nothing more.
Guess someone didn't want the others to know I was alive. Works out for me. Let them believe it.
But wait.
That report of me being KIA? It was from 2013.
That was when those twisted breeding experiments were started.
No one knows about Mira.
No one ever will.
But… why?
Why wasn't there a record of what they did?
It's not like I want their cruelty preserved. But still, why?
Even within Hydra, that experiment wasn't documented. Covered up. Hidden.
Was it Zola?
Who would've buried it? And for what reason?