Oh, sure, they'd been battered and disheartened when they'd been locked away, and the little witch had cried at her cell door for the archer for nearly an hour before the guards shut her up with a rather brutal introduction to the collar they'd locked around her throat, but that was nothing compared to what Ross was seeing before him now.
Clint Barton was slouched in the corner of his cell, head hanging, and the first two fingers on his right hand bent at a strange angle. His uniform was stained dark and filthy with various splashed substances that Ross can't even begin to identify, and he had a bloody patch on his scalp where it looked like a chunk of hair had been torn out. His eyes both had dark rings bruised around them, the left eye completely bloodshot, and he had a split lip that was slowly dribbling blood over his shirt.
Not once did the man move to stop the bleeding.
In the cell beside the archer, Scott Lang was lying in his cot, curled in a little ball with his back to the security cameras. He was asleep, but restless, and whimpered in pain whenever he shifted his weight. There were red marks and bruises around his throat, like someone had tried to choke him out, and his shoulder was at a weird angle that made Ross wonder if it was dislocated. There was a long, bleeding gash across his temple that was crusted over with blood, and strange bruises across his cheeks that made it look like he had been gagged with something abrasive and tied far too tight.
In the final cell, Sam Wilson was sitting, staring out at the room through one eye. The other had a large cut over it, starting up at his eyebrow and running down to gouge into his cheek. The man's face was bruised and his nose was slightly crooked, suggesting it had been broken, and the blood from that was still dried across his lips and chin. The man's posture implied relaxation or ease, however the way he jumped at every little sound suggested differently. There was a bone-tired weariness about him, one that came from utter exhaustion and pain.
None of them spoke to him, or acknowledged his presence outside of a worried glance from Sam. When compared to the riled-up curses and threats they'd shouted the first time he'd stopped in, their silence this time around was...concerning.
The three men looked like hell, and Ross felt his stomach clench uneasily. They looked like they'd been beaten...tortured. He hadn't sanctioned anything like this. In fact, he'd specified that the prisoners weren't to be harmed in his custody, aside from little shocks as needed to control Maximoff should she try anything with her powers.
Speaking of Maximoff...
Ross returned to the elevator in the hall, leaving the men to their brooding, and went down two levels to the high-security cells where the little witch was being kept. The feeling of unease only grew stronger as he stepped into the cell block and heard a sharp gasp from the girl, followed by a desperate little scramble of movement. He approached her cell slowly, feeling sick, and peered in through the glass.
Wanda Maximoff was on the floor in the back of her cell, her spine pressed up against the wall, and her eyes fixed on him in frantic terror. She was still bound in the straitjacket, but the thing was covered in various off-colored stains, and looked like it had been fastened far tighter than it was intended to be. Some of her skin was showing where her pant leg had ridden up, and he could clearly make out a ring of chaffed bruising around her ankle. She had a bruise growing high on one cheekbone, and her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her hair was a wild mess, and her movements were awkward and clumsy, as if she was in pain and trying to avoid pressure where it hurt.
A sharp ache of pity for the pathetic creature had him reaching for his key card, and Maximoff went rigid as she watched him open the glass cell door. She tried to get away from him the moment he stepped into the cell, scrambling back into the corner, her wide eyes focused on him in terror as he took a few steps towards her and stopped.
Now that he was a bit closer, he could see that she had something dried in her hair that looked a bit like Elmer's glue or sugar glaze, and Ross' mind immediately went straight to the worst case scenario of what it could be. There were dozens of tiny clean streaks across her filthy cheeks from where her tears had run, and Ross moved a bit more slowly as he heard her breath catch in fright.
"It's all right," he murmured, voice low, like he was talking to a wounded animal. "It's okay. I'm just gonna check the restraints."
She let out a tiny, choked whimper, using her legs to jam herself back into the corner, and he winced as one of her knees buckled with the pressure, leaving her to curl up in a ball to try and protect herself.
Whatever they'd been doing to the prisoners while he was away had been bad.
Ross slowly lowered himself to a knee beside her, careful not to lean in any of the liquid-looking filth that covered the floor and swallowing hard to keep himself from gagging.
Most of the fight had gone out of the girl when she had found herself trapped in the corner, and she only curled tighter into herself when he reached to brush her shoulder with his fingertips.
"It's okay," he repeated, gently coaxing her to uncurl. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to check the restraints."
It was a flimsy lie, he knew. She was clearly secured in the straitjacket beyond escape, and he didn't have the key to any of the heavy locks along the back of it, but it was the only excuse he could think of to get as close to her as he needed without looking too suspicious.
Something bad was going on here, and until he had figured out exactly what, he didn't plan to give anything away - especially his relative ignorance of the matter.
It took a bit more force than he would have liked to drag Wanda upright, and to his mild horror she had tears streaming over her cheeks when he finally had her facing him. She was terrified.
Setting his jaw, he drew her close, pulling the girl's thin and trembling body up against his chest and winding one arm around her waist to secure her in place as he let his other hand stroke over her head soothingly. She went rigid in his hold, trying to twist away, but he quickly hushed her, pinning her up against him before letting his touch trail down the back of her restraints, fingers playing over the locks.
"Okay, okay, easy now...The cameras are watching," he murmured into her hair, smelling sweat, blood, and a sickening musky stench that couldn't be anything but dried semen as he pretended to check the heavy-duty buckles that lined her entire spine. "Keep your movements small, and do it slowly. Nod your head for yes, shake for no."
He could feel the tension in her body as she tried to make sense of what was going on, but to his relief he felt a little nod of her head where it was pressed to his shoulder.
"Have the guards been abusing you?"
A little nod.
"Has it been provoked?"
She shook her head a fraction.
"Torturing you for information, then?"
Another nod.
"Did they say that they had my permission to do this?"
She shook her head once more.
"Have they r-" and he paused to swallow hard before he could get the word out, because all he could think of was that if someone had done what he was about to say to his own little girl, he'd kill them using methods that the Inquisition would think were brutal. "Have they raped you?"
He felt the girl's shoulders hitch a little as a sob escaped her lips, and he didn't even need to feel the little nod of her head against his shoulder a second later to know that the answer was yes.
"Okay," he said softly, beginning to draw back. "Okay, that's what I needed to know."
Before he could pull too far away, however, the girl nudged her head up under his jaw, and he felt her cheek - hot, way too hot, she was probably running a fever - press against his chest.
For a minute he was thrown, unsure what she was doing, but then he felt her press herself insistently against him once more, and Ross turned his head a little so that she could murmur into his ear.
"Hydra," she whispered, the sound costing her a little jolt of electricity from the collar that he could feel prickling at his skin where he was touching her. "Guards are-" she choked a little on the shock she was given- "all Hydra."
Oh.
Fuck.
"Here?" he asked, barely audible, and his blood ran cold when he felt her nod against him.
He'd heard of Hydra before, of course - everyone had - but he'd never seen it as a problem that he would have to face. The Avengers took care of Hydra bases when they were found, not the military. The closest to Hydra that he'd ever been was looking through case reports that had been pulled from the compromised bases, listing the atrocities that had been committed there.
That explained it, then. The prisoners looked tortured and abused because they had been, probably since the moment he left, and he had been gone for more than a week. God knew what the sick bastards could have done in that much time.
He absently stroked a hand over the girl's head, his mind whirling.
He needed more information. Names, ranks, numbers, how deeply they'd overrun his operation...but it wasn't safe to ask questions like that here. Not where they could possibly pull up the audio feed and listen in.
And the collar wouldn't let Maximoff speak, anyway. He needed to get it off of her, or at least change the settings so she could use her voice without being shocked.
"I'm going to need you to trust me," he murmured against her temple, slowly detangling himself from her and getting to his feet.
He paced outside of her cell, phoning the control room.
"Sir?"
"Send me a couple guards for prisoner transport. And get me the Warden. I need to speak with her."
"Right away, Sir. Guards will be there in a moment."
Ross paced the cell bay, absently aware that Maximoff was still curled in the back corner of her cell, sniffling pathetically. There were very few rooms at the Raft that didn't have a security feed on them, and most of those were the worker's restrooms and lounge. Fortunately for him, however, none of the offices of the higher-ranked personnel were monitored.
"You requested assistance with prisoner transport, Sir?"
Ross looked up to find a pair of guards in the doorway. One was a young man with sandy-brown hair in a buzz cut, and the other was a slightly older gentleman with short, dark hair spiked up off his head, and a sharp jaw line. Neither of them were men he remembered hiring.
"Where shall we bring her?" the older one asked.
"Have her brought to my office."
"Sir...the interrogation room is open for use," the younger guard suggested with what looked like a hopeful smile, and Ross had to take a moment not to grit his teeth when he next spoke.
"No, bring her to my office. You all might enjoy a bit of voyeurism, but I prefer to do my interrogations without a bunch of security cameras focused on me."
The older man sent him a filthy smirk that left his insides writhing, and motioned for the guard behind him to follow as he moved to fetch Maximoff.
The girl let out a frightened little sound as the two entered her cell, and he tried his best to ignore the sounds of the struggle taking place behind him. The dull sound of flesh being hit echoed out to him, and a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as one of the guards cursed at the girl for kicking him. The responding slap, however, had Ross looking over his shoulder, feeling chilled with shock.
"Behave, you little bitch, or I swear I'll make you regret it," the older guard threatened in a low snarl.
"You liked the baton? How about we use the electric one next time?"
"You want that...? No...? Yeah, that's what I thought. Get your ass up before I show you what pain really feels like."
Ross bit his tongue as the guards manhandled Wanda out of the cell, the girl stumbling along on shaky legs as they shoved her toward the hall. One of them was holding a fistful of her hair at the scalp, using that to force her upright as her chest heaved for breath against the over-tight buckles of the straitjacket.
Trying not to show how on edge he was, Ross followed them as they moved out into the hall.
The elevator ride was tense and silent, with only the soft wheeze of Wanda's labored breathing filling the space. On the upper floor, Ross led the way to unlock his office for the guards, and as he stepped back to watch them march the girl down the hallway, he was approached by the warden.
The warden - a heavily built woman in her early thirties with short, dark hair and a shaved patch on the side of her head - came to a stop beside him as the guards dragged Wanda into the room. She snorted derisively as Wanda let out a pitiful whimper, the girl wincing away in pain from where the guard grabbed her shoulder to shove her through the doorway.
"You asked to see me?" she said, her accent heavily California but with an undertone of something he didn't recognize.
"The collar shocks her whenever she speaks. How do I turn that off?" he questioned, watching as the girl was all but thrown into the chair opposite his desk.
"Why would you need to turn it off?" she asked, one eyebrow climbing her forehead in suspicion.
"The idea is to get her to talk. I don't want anything discouraging that," he replied with a grim smile, and the warden shot him a smirk.
"Little program button on the side. You'll need a pen or something to press it in. Hold five seconds for speak mode, three to turn the silencer back on, and ten to make it sensitive to all noise."
She turned, her hands on her hips, and her smirk spread into a wicked grin.
"The third mode is fun. If you clap your hands, it registers the sound and zaps her. Great for when she starts mouthing off or squirming around too much. Or if you want her really tensed up when you hit her."
"Good to know," he replied with a smile that tasted like death on his lips.
"All set up for you, sir," one of the guards grinned, wiping his hands on his pants like he'd just handled something distasteful. "Just let us know if you need any help with her."
"I should be fine. Thank you," he replied tersely, moving toward the office space as the younger of the two guards stepped back into the hall. "I don't wish to be interrupted, is that clear?"
"Perfectly. I'll see to it that you're not disturbed," the warden nodded.
With a final glance at the three, Ross took hold of the heavy office door and drew it closed with a thud, throwing the latch.
Fill: There Is A Line (1/?)
Oh, sure, they'd been battered and disheartened when they'd been locked away, and the little witch had cried at her cell door for the archer for nearly an hour before the guards shut her up with a rather brutal introduction to the collar they'd locked around her throat, but that was nothing compared to what Ross was seeing before him now.
Clint Barton was slouched in the corner of his cell, head hanging, and the first two fingers on his right hand bent at a strange angle. His uniform was stained dark and filthy with various splashed substances that Ross can't even begin to identify, and he had a bloody patch on his scalp where it looked like a chunk of hair had been torn out. His eyes both had dark rings bruised around them, the left eye completely bloodshot, and he had a split lip that was slowly dribbling blood over his shirt.
Not once did the man move to stop the bleeding.
In the cell beside the archer, Scott Lang was lying in his cot, curled in a little ball with his back to the security cameras. He was asleep, but restless, and whimpered in pain whenever he shifted his weight. There were red marks and bruises around his throat, like someone had tried to choke him out, and his shoulder was at a weird angle that made Ross wonder if it was dislocated. There was a long, bleeding gash across his temple that was crusted over with blood, and strange bruises across his cheeks that made it look like he had been gagged with something abrasive and tied far too tight.
In the final cell, Sam Wilson was sitting, staring out at the room through one eye. The other had a large cut over it, starting up at his eyebrow and running down to gouge into his cheek. The man's face was bruised and his nose was slightly crooked, suggesting it had been broken, and the blood from that was still dried across his lips and chin. The man's posture implied relaxation or ease, however the way he jumped at every little sound suggested differently. There was a bone-tired weariness about him, one that came from utter exhaustion and pain.
None of them spoke to him, or acknowledged his presence outside of a worried glance from Sam. When compared to the riled-up curses and threats they'd shouted the first time he'd stopped in, their silence this time around was...concerning.
The three men looked like hell, and Ross felt his stomach clench uneasily. They looked like they'd been beaten...tortured. He hadn't sanctioned anything like this. In fact, he'd specified that the prisoners weren't to be harmed in his custody, aside from little shocks as needed to control Maximoff should she try anything with her powers.
Speaking of Maximoff...
Ross returned to the elevator in the hall, leaving the men to their brooding, and went down two levels to the high-security cells where the little witch was being kept. The feeling of unease only grew stronger as he stepped into the cell block and heard a sharp gasp from the girl, followed by a desperate little scramble of movement. He approached her cell slowly, feeling sick, and peered in through the glass.
Wanda Maximoff was on the floor in the back of her cell, her spine pressed up against the wall, and her eyes fixed on him in frantic terror. She was still bound in the straitjacket, but the thing was covered in various off-colored stains, and looked like it had been fastened far tighter than it was intended to be. Some of her skin was showing where her pant leg had ridden up, and he could clearly make out a ring of chaffed bruising around her ankle. She had a bruise growing high on one cheekbone, and her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her hair was a wild mess, and her movements were awkward and clumsy, as if she was in pain and trying to avoid pressure where it hurt.
A sharp ache of pity for the pathetic creature had him reaching for his key card, and Maximoff went rigid as she watched him open the glass cell door. She tried to get away from him the moment he stepped into the cell, scrambling back into the corner, her wide eyes focused on him in terror as he took a few steps towards her and stopped.
Now that he was a bit closer, he could see that she had something dried in her hair that looked a bit like Elmer's glue or sugar glaze, and Ross' mind immediately went straight to the worst case scenario of what it could be. There were dozens of tiny clean streaks across her filthy cheeks from where her tears had run, and Ross moved a bit more slowly as he heard her breath catch in fright.
"It's all right," he murmured, voice low, like he was talking to a wounded animal. "It's okay. I'm just gonna check the restraints."
She let out a tiny, choked whimper, using her legs to jam herself back into the corner, and he winced as one of her knees buckled with the pressure, leaving her to curl up in a ball to try and protect herself.
Whatever they'd been doing to the prisoners while he was away had been bad.
Ross slowly lowered himself to a knee beside her, careful not to lean in any of the liquid-looking filth that covered the floor and swallowing hard to keep himself from gagging.
Most of the fight had gone out of the girl when she had found herself trapped in the corner, and she only curled tighter into herself when he reached to brush her shoulder with his fingertips.
"It's okay," he repeated, gently coaxing her to uncurl. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to check the restraints."
It was a flimsy lie, he knew. She was clearly secured in the straitjacket beyond escape, and he didn't have the key to any of the heavy locks along the back of it, but it was the only excuse he could think of to get as close to her as he needed without looking too suspicious.
Something bad was going on here, and until he had figured out exactly what, he didn't plan to give anything away - especially his relative ignorance of the matter.
It took a bit more force than he would have liked to drag Wanda upright, and to his mild horror she had tears streaming over her cheeks when he finally had her facing him. She was terrified.
Setting his jaw, he drew her close, pulling the girl's thin and trembling body up against his chest and winding one arm around her waist to secure her in place as he let his other hand stroke over her head soothingly. She went rigid in his hold, trying to twist away, but he quickly hushed her, pinning her up against him before letting his touch trail down the back of her restraints, fingers playing over the locks.
"Okay, okay, easy now...The cameras are watching," he murmured into her hair, smelling sweat, blood, and a sickening musky stench that couldn't be anything but dried semen as he pretended to check the heavy-duty buckles that lined her entire spine. "Keep your movements small, and do it slowly. Nod your head for yes, shake for no."
He could feel the tension in her body as she tried to make sense of what was going on, but to his relief he felt a little nod of her head where it was pressed to his shoulder.
"Have the guards been abusing you?"
A little nod.
"Has it been provoked?"
She shook her head a fraction.
"Torturing you for information, then?"
Another nod.
"Did they say that they had my permission to do this?"
She shook her head once more.
"Have they r-" and he paused to swallow hard before he could get the word out, because all he could think of was that if someone had done what he was about to say to his own little girl, he'd kill them using methods that the Inquisition would think were brutal. "Have they raped you?"
He felt the girl's shoulders hitch a little as a sob escaped her lips, and he didn't even need to feel the little nod of her head against his shoulder a second later to know that the answer was yes.
"Okay," he said softly, beginning to draw back. "Okay, that's what I needed to know."
Before he could pull too far away, however, the girl nudged her head up under his jaw, and he felt her cheek - hot, way too hot, she was probably running a fever - press against his chest.
For a minute he was thrown, unsure what she was doing, but then he felt her press herself insistently against him once more, and Ross turned his head a little so that she could murmur into his ear.
"Hydra," she whispered, the sound costing her a little jolt of electricity from the collar that he could feel prickling at his skin where he was touching her. "Guards are-" she choked a little on the shock she was given- "all Hydra."
Oh.
Fuck.
"Here?" he asked, barely audible, and his blood ran cold when he felt her nod against him.
He'd heard of Hydra before, of course - everyone had - but he'd never seen it as a problem that he would have to face. The Avengers took care of Hydra bases when they were found, not the military. The closest to Hydra that he'd ever been was looking through case reports that had been pulled from the compromised bases, listing the atrocities that had been committed there.
That explained it, then. The prisoners looked tortured and abused because they had been, probably since the moment he left, and he had been gone for more than a week. God knew what the sick bastards could have done in that much time.
He absently stroked a hand over the girl's head, his mind whirling.
He needed more information. Names, ranks, numbers, how deeply they'd overrun his operation...but it wasn't safe to ask questions like that here. Not where they could possibly pull up the audio feed and listen in.
And the collar wouldn't let Maximoff speak, anyway. He needed to get it off of her, or at least change the settings so she could use her voice without being shocked.
"I'm going to need you to trust me," he murmured against her temple, slowly detangling himself from her and getting to his feet.
He paced outside of her cell, phoning the control room.
"Sir?"
"Send me a couple guards for prisoner transport. And get me the Warden. I need to speak with her."
"Right away, Sir. Guards will be there in a moment."
Ross paced the cell bay, absently aware that Maximoff was still curled in the back corner of her cell, sniffling pathetically. There were very few rooms at the Raft that didn't have a security feed on them, and most of those were the worker's restrooms and lounge. Fortunately for him, however, none of the offices of the higher-ranked personnel were monitored.
"You requested assistance with prisoner transport, Sir?"
Ross looked up to find a pair of guards in the doorway. One was a young man with sandy-brown hair in a buzz cut, and the other was a slightly older gentleman with short, dark hair spiked up off his head, and a sharp jaw line. Neither of them were men he remembered hiring.
"Where shall we bring her?" the older one asked.
"Have her brought to my office."
"Sir...the interrogation room is open for use," the younger guard suggested with what looked like a hopeful smile, and Ross had to take a moment not to grit his teeth when he next spoke.
"No, bring her to my office. You all might enjoy a bit of voyeurism, but I prefer to do my interrogations without a bunch of security cameras focused on me."
The older man sent him a filthy smirk that left his insides writhing, and motioned for the guard behind him to follow as he moved to fetch Maximoff.
The girl let out a frightened little sound as the two entered her cell, and he tried his best to ignore the sounds of the struggle taking place behind him. The dull sound of flesh being hit echoed out to him, and a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as one of the guards cursed at the girl for kicking him. The responding slap, however, had Ross looking over his shoulder, feeling chilled with shock.
"Behave, you little bitch, or I swear I'll make you regret it," the older guard threatened in a low snarl.
"You liked the baton? How about we use the electric one next time?"
"You want that...? No...? Yeah, that's what I thought. Get your ass up before I show you what pain really feels like."
Ross bit his tongue as the guards manhandled Wanda out of the cell, the girl stumbling along on shaky legs as they shoved her toward the hall. One of them was holding a fistful of her hair at the scalp, using that to force her upright as her chest heaved for breath against the over-tight buckles of the straitjacket.
Trying not to show how on edge he was, Ross followed them as they moved out into the hall.
The elevator ride was tense and silent, with only the soft wheeze of Wanda's labored breathing filling the space. On the upper floor, Ross led the way to unlock his office for the guards, and as he stepped back to watch them march the girl down the hallway, he was approached by the warden.
The warden - a heavily built woman in her early thirties with short, dark hair and a shaved patch on the side of her head - came to a stop beside him as the guards dragged Wanda into the room. She snorted derisively as Wanda let out a pitiful whimper, the girl wincing away in pain from where the guard grabbed her shoulder to shove her through the doorway.
"You asked to see me?" she said, her accent heavily California but with an undertone of something he didn't recognize.
"The collar shocks her whenever she speaks. How do I turn that off?" he questioned, watching as the girl was all but thrown into the chair opposite his desk.
"Why would you need to turn it off?" she asked, one eyebrow climbing her forehead in suspicion.
"The idea is to get her to talk. I don't want anything discouraging that," he replied with a grim smile, and the warden shot him a smirk.
"Little program button on the side. You'll need a pen or something to press it in. Hold five seconds for speak mode, three to turn the silencer back on, and ten to make it sensitive to all noise."
She turned, her hands on her hips, and her smirk spread into a wicked grin.
"The third mode is fun. If you clap your hands, it registers the sound and zaps her. Great for when she starts mouthing off or squirming around too much. Or if you want her really tensed up when you hit her."
"Good to know," he replied with a smile that tasted like death on his lips.
"All set up for you, sir," one of the guards grinned, wiping his hands on his pants like he'd just handled something distasteful. "Just let us know if you need any help with her."
"I should be fine. Thank you," he replied tersely, moving toward the office space as the younger of the two guards stepped back into the hall. "I don't wish to be interrupted, is that clear?"
"Perfectly. I'll see to it that you're not disturbed," the warden nodded.
With a final glance at the three, Ross took hold of the heavy office door and drew it closed with a thud, throwing the latch.
Now to get some damn answers.