It had seemed like a no-brainer at the time, stepping in to protect Junior Juniper when the guards had come to select the little round-faced doctor’s next victim. She was already half-dead of pneumonia, and he was just a kid, barely 18. So when their eyes lit upon him in the next cell over, she’d raised a ruckus, banging on the bars and letting out a flood of insults in a mix of German and English, ignoring all their attempts to shut her up. Amazingly, it had worked; she’d annoyed them enough that they’d decided to take her instead.
But now, strapped down to a gurney in the doctor’s lab, she was regretting her decision. He’d shot her up with yet another vial of liquid Hellfire, and she’d screamed herself hoarse before going limp, drawing breath in shaky gasps.
“Jane Barnes,” she croaked, once it seemed that the pain had passed. “Sergeant. 32557038.”
The doctor ignored her. He’d stopped asking her questions days ago, but she kept repeating herself anyway. It was something to hang on to, something to keep her from breaking down and begging the man for mercy.
Jane Barnes, she’d thought as he held a hot iron to her side and she smelled her own flesh cooking. Sergeant, as he’d sliced open her abdomen with a gleaming scalpel. And now 32557038, as she felt something warm begin to drip from her ear. The world was going blurry, but she kept mumbling, over and over, not realizing that her words had begun to slur.
She didn’t realize when Zola rushed from the lab, either. She certainly didn’t hear the alarms blaring or the explosions coming from outside the factory.
Upstairs, Herr Schmidt flicked a series of switches. The factory was going to blow, and it looked like Bucky Barnes would blow with it.