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He wakes up to darkness, pain, a woman’s voice saying, “What’s your name, soldier?” in unaccented English.
Name, rank, serial number, that’s the drill. “Brock Rumlow, Strike Com-.”
“Again,” she says, and the world goes a darker shade of black.
It happens again, and again, until the world is defined by that voice, by the feel of the metal table under him, by the blood in his mouth, by the sudden spark of agony. Sometimes he answers her and sometimes he doesn’t, but there seem to be no right answers.
He can’t remember why he’s here-- whether an op went wrong or someone grabbed him off the street or whether it was something else, something bigger. His head doesn’t hurt, but he must have a concussion, something to explain why he can’t remember. Name, rank, number; it doesn’t matter whether they grabbed him because he’s S.H.I.E.L.D. or because he’s Hydra, or because he’s American. “Brock Rumlow, Strike,” he says over and over, and she never lets him finish.
After a while he breaks, but he was special forces for long enough to know that everyone breaks eventually. Everyone. So he tries not to mind the raggedness of his breathing, the tears in his eyes. He listens to himself beg, as if it were someone else entirely. This isn’t his first rodeo; he can put himself back together when he gets out. All he has to do is stay alive until his team comes.
He can’t remember his team. He can’t remember anything, not really. Not where he is, or what the mission was. The past is a blur of desert and burning cities and broken buildings and the American flag waving against a blue, blue sky. The present is pain, bright behind his closed eyelids. “Again,” she says, and it fades to nothing.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
He blinks in the dimness, reaching for it. He doesn’t know where he is, or when, or why; he doesn’t know who he is. If he turns his head, he can just make out the shape of what must be his hands, chained to rings in the wall. They’re unfamiliar, big and scarred and strong. None of this is familiar.
“Name,” she says again, and he shakes his head, wordless and defeated.
“Very good,” she says. “Let’s begin the next phase, please.”
Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car.
With every word, they shock the Soldier, and he lies in the dark and screams.