Warning- this chapter contains graphic torture scenes. If you're sensitive to this, please do not read.

"092, you're up." Said the guard, pulling my prison cell open. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. My hands were shaking like crazy. I could feel the scars on my back more sharply than ever. I clasped my hands together, and flexed my back. It was easy to imagine my flesh ripping, tearing, blood streaming down my legs, as tears streamed down my face. I didn't have to imagine. It was going to be a reality in a matter of time.

The guard slammed his hand into the iron door. "Now, goddamn it! 092, are you fucking stupid?"

I staggered to my feet. I was aching down to my bones. I had a few cracked ribs, I was sure of it.

"093?" I cried to my brother, my hand clasping my side, as though that would somehow hold me together. The guard stormed forward, his combat boots hitting the cold floor heavily. He grabbed me firmly by the back of my neck, as if I was a disobedient cat, and he was my mother.

I could hear him slam against the stone wall that separated us. "092!" he cried.

The sound of his voice made me want to cry. The pain in his voice chilled me down to my bones. I hadn't seen him in months, I had only heard his voice. And every time before I was dragged away, his voice both reassured me, and destroyed me.

I burst into tears, and despised myself for it. I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to resist this. I was supposed to be used to this. And yet, here I was bawling like a baby. The ribs weren't helping my breathing, either.

The guard slammed the door shut, the sound of iron against stone echoing throughout the dimly lit, damp stone hallway. I could hear 093 sobbing, begging for the guard to let me go. His voice was horse, his voicebox destroyed because of me.

As we approached the end of the hallway, I saw the room I dreaded the most. I weakly protested against the guard, but I knew it was no use. I was weak. I slept in thirty minute shifts, at the most. I hadn't eaten well in… How long had I been here? About eighteen years. I was skinny, malnourished, emancipated. I hadn't felt sunlight on my skin in almost two decades, and my skin tone showed it. The heavy metal door's lock spun open, like a hatch on a submarine. The room was familiar to me, and I hated it.

The guard shoved me to the center of the room, where the floor was stained black from years and years of blood. Two chains with handcuffs on the end hung from the ceiling. On the floor, there were two more cuffs. They were to hold me in place, make sure I couldn't leave. What I wouldn't give to be a bird, to fly away.

I was locked into place by the guard, and I didn't even fight. I had given up fighting such a long time ago, when I realized no one was coming to save us. 093 and I were alone, and would be until one day, they tortured us a little too much. Maybe then I could be a bird. I could fly away.

The submarine lock on the door spun open, as the man I hated the most stepped into the room. Shivers traveled down my side, and my shoulders convulsed. The guard stepped back, back to the wall, his hands clasping the gun that stopped me from fighting back.

"092, it's so good to see you again," said Dr. Emery, snapping on rubber gloves. God forbid he would get blood on himself.

I didn't say anything back. I could have said it was nice to see him again, but that would have been lying. I also could have said that it wasn't nice to see him, but he would have hurt me twice as badly if I was rude. For such a dark, evil man, he had an incredibly fragile ego.

He held his hands out, in an 'I surrender' kind of pose. He walked slowly towards me, until he was less than a foot away. I felt the overwhelming urge to lean forward and bite his nose off. "092, aren't you going to say anything back?"

"It's nice to see you again, Dr. Emery," I said hoarsely through my teeth.

"You're lying to me." He said coldly, snapping his hand across my face. My skin stung, and I could feel a cut just beneath my eye from where his wedding band had hit me.

I coughed in shock, my ribs screaming in protest. "I'm sorry, Dr. Emery. I didn't mean to lie."

"Yes you did," he hissed, his gloved hand grabbing a fistful of my hair, and yanking it forwards, my scalp on fire. "You just lied to me again. Bad girl," He released my hair, shoving me backwards. My shoulders and hips ached as the chains tying me to the ceiling and floor swung dangerously. He turned his back to me, looking back at the table of torture weapons he had lined up, clean meticulously before every session. My eye had started to swell, restricting the view I had of the table. His back was blocking the rest of the table, but I saw how his shoulders moved as he picked up some kind of weapon.

"092, darling?"

"Yes?" I wheezed out, my ribs creaking.

He sighed, and turned around to face me. I could see now that he was carrying a crowbar. "You know that I'm doing this for you, of course. The only way you can get stronger, and more resistant to pain is to experience it, become numb to it."

"Of course," I whispered, leaning back into the chains as Dr. Emery came closer, fiddling with the crowbar like it was made of styrofoam.

"Good," he answered, before swinging back the crowbar like a baseball bat, and slamming it into my ribs.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, a bloodcurdling scream as I felt my ribs shatter. I could feel the sharp pieces inside, moving, like they had pierced my lung. I could barely breathe. Every inhale was agony, as I felt the bone fragments dig deeper and deeper.

My eyes were trained on the ground at my feet. I was pale and sweating, I knew that. My hair, greasy and pulled into the clumps by Dr. Emery's hand, fell into my face. My left eye had now completely swelled shut, the ring on his hand doing the damage he intended it to do. My breathing was shallow and haunted, coming out in rasps like a dying animal. I gave a guttural moan.

He turned his back to me, like I was disgusting. He acted like he had nothing to do with my disgusting appearance. He picked up a knife from the table, and I shuddered again, ready for him to drag the knife across my face. Instead, to my surprise, he walked past me, and began to take off my shirt, cutting it with the knife, and letting it fall to the ground. My breathing became quicker, even though it caused me so much pain. This was why I was suspended in the air, not tied to the chair. This way, Dr. Emery could have his way with his creations. With the things he had implanted into my back.

The two long, identical scars that ran parallel to my spine went cold. He was pressing the knife to the top of one of them. Then, he dug it in, and slowly, agonizingly tore my skin open along the seams. He did the same to the other scar. There was the gentle pit-pat as my blood dripped onto the stone floor. I whimpered.

"Let them free," he whispered, and although I couldn't see him, I could imagine the psychotic gleam in his eyes.

I cried in pain as I obeyed his orders.

Two feathery white wings erupted from my back, the blood on them flying off with such force, and splattering the walls of the torture chamber. They were nearly twenty feet long, and full of muscle. It must have added an extra thirty or fourty pounds each to my starving frame.

I stayed like that for a while, my wings stretched out, as Dr. Emery paced back and forth the twenty feet, his hands stroking the feathers, admiring his handiwork. I didn't know how long we did that, but eventually he spoke, breaking the silence. "Good. Put them away."

I groaned as my muscles flexed, pulling the wings back into the slits in my back. More blood gushed from the wounds, as the wings filled up the cavities that had formerly been filled with blood.

Dr. Emery went back to the torture table, and put the knife back down. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I heard the clang of metal on metal.

"092, do you remember what I told you about the super soldier serum?" he asked coldly, his back still towards me.

Even though it was ridiculous and useless, because I knew Dr. Emery couldn't see me, I still nodded. "It's supposed to make you strong, fast, endure more."

"Yes, good girl. We tried it on you five years back, do you remember that? It was after we had perfected the wings, of course. And it failed. It didn't make you stronger or faster. It just made you heal."

I swallowed heavily. I hated that. I hated that I could heal quickly, that I could regenerate nearly ten times faster than the regular human. That just meant my torture sessions were that much closer together. In a way, my brother, 093, was lucky. His sessions were about once every fourteen days. Mine were twice a week.

"Well, we have a new serum. It might not be perfect, but that's why you're here. You're our test subject. If it works, we'll try it on our real soldiers." He turned around, holding a needle full of some kind of clear liquid. He tapped it twice, letting all of the air bubbles out. Then he walked back over to me, his heavy boots now muffled on the stone floor, as the blood that coated it muffled the noise. He unlocked one of the handcuffs, letting my left arm down.

What I wouldn't have given to just pull my arms back and punch him. It wouldn't have even hurt him, though. I had been starving in a cell for 18 years, living off of crackers and stale cheese. Water was a delicacy for me. My punch would have felt like a flea to him. So instead, I let him puncture me.

The needle went into my forearm, and I watched as he depressed all of the serum into my blood stream. At first it didn't hurt very much. And then, my forearm felt like it was on fire. I started gasping like a fish out of water, not even registering the pain enough to scream.

My forearm began to swell, the skin cracking, and pus oozing. The swelling slowly began to spread down to my hand, and up to my bicep.

"Shame," said Dr. Emery. "It looks like it doesn't work." He then reached behind him on the torture table, and pulled back a machete. I was crying now, my breathing uneven and painful as my ribs moved further into my chest. "You know, I've always wondered how far you regenerative capabilities would go. Let's see if you can grow back a limb." He then pulled back the machete, and sliced cleanly through my shoulder.

My arm hit the floor with a dull splash, the blood making waves. In some sick, twisted way, it was a relief. I didn't have the fire in my bloodstream. Instead, I didn't have a hand.

I just wanted to go back to my cell. It was a cold, damp cell, where my risk for infection increased tenfold, but at least there I was safe. I could talk to 093. I could rest. I wasn't safe there, but it was the closest to safe that I'd ever known.

"We're not done yet, 092." Said Dr. Emery, putting the machete back down on the table. "Just one more thing before we're finished. All we've done so far to you is physical torture. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it, but one of my superiors, Strucker, informed me that if you truly want to work for Hydra, be a soldier, you need to work on your emotions. Right now, you have very little control over them. I was informed that emotional torture would help with that."

"Johnson," Dr. Emery barked at the guard, who snapped to attention. "Bring him in."

As the guard left, Dr. Emery got himself busy. He wheeled away the torture table, and brought in front of me a wooden chair. It was like he was setting the stage. When Johnson returned, I saw who he had brought back with him. It wasn't some torture expert. It was my brother.

"093!" I cried, but he didn't even look at me. It was the first time I had seen him in months.

My brother was tied to the chair that Dr. Emery had brought forward. His eyes were on the ground the whole time.

"Well now, 092, let's see what you're made of." The Doctor said. I felt sick to my stomach.

I watched Dr. Emery pull out a gun and shoot my brother. I don't remember if I screamed or not. I watched his brains splatter the wall, and I went numb. The guard, Johnson, released me from the handcuffs, dressed me, and took me back to my cell.

I sat on my bed and stared at the wall, my remaining hand caressing the stump where my arm used to be. The skin had already healed over the stump. Some deep part of me knew my arm wasn't going to grow back.

"092?" said the voice I was so familiar with, on the other side of the wall.

My heart stopped. "093!" I cried, slamming myself against the wall. "You're alive!"

"Of course I am," He said, thoroughly confused. "How was your session?"'

"They killed you right in front of me," I said at a voice barely more than a whisper. I watched you die. It must have been one of Dr. Emery's tricks. But I swear, I watched you get shot."

093 was quiet for a while. I stayed clinging to the wall, listening to him breathe. I was just relieved to know he was alive. Then he said the one sentence I had heard all my life. "We need to get out of here." He murmured.

I sighed, the pain in my chest already slightly better as my regenerative capabilities took over. "093, we've been here something like eighteen years. How many times have we tried?"

"No," he said angrily. "This time, I mean it."

Thanks so much for reading. This is my second story, and I never really finished the first because of a lack of motivation. I know how stupid and cliche this sounds, but reviews really do make me feel more motivated to write. Till next time!

-ElleLupin