We´re going nowhere

“Steve, come on! Why are you still sitting here? Mathilde woke up three hours ago!”
I looked up from the papers I was reading. On the front stood in black letters ‘Lyis, highly dangerous’ and a picture of her the day she was captured. She looked quite rebellious and her deep blue eyes seemed to mock the viewer. He had to admit that she had been an extraordinary beautiful woman and that the desperate girl on the roof only seemed to have shared her eyes. What one year of prison can do to a person … Most of the papers were empty: no date of birth, no surname, no nationality. It seemed like they never even started to ask her question wasn´t it for the long list which showed how often she was tortured.
“Bucky, who the hell is Mathilde? I´m busy you see? “I replied a little bit annoyed. “She is the woman who lived in the cell right next to Lyis.” He answered quite annoyed himself. But I was already running out of the room and down the corridor before Bucky could even finish. I arrived at the infirmary and walked straight towards Mathilde. She was easy to spot because Colonel Phillips and Peggy sat around her bed. “… It was cold at night and they never even gave us warm clothing. The food was also terrible. But the worst things were their screams… I will never forget that.”
“Ma’am! Tell me everything about Lyis. Please…” I rudely interrupted her. Peggys mouth fell open and she looked shocked.
“ROGERS! I will not tolerate this behavior! That can wait. Now go back to your room or this will have consequences!” Colonel Phillips ordered. But I didn´t even notice them, all the time I looked into the eyes of that old woman. Maybe she saw how important this was to me or how much pain I felt because I couldn’t find answers to my questions.
“Well first of all you will never be that rude again, secondly I would look for a place to sit down. This could take a while.” Phillips looked overwhelmed but didn´t dare to interrupt her. Peggy just sat there, angry and ashamed because of my behaviour. Bucky arrived too and was confused by the tension in the air. We both took chairs and sat down beside her bed full of anticipation.

“ I remember the day she arrived well. The guards dragged her inside her cell; they must have knocked her unconscious. Her brother on the other hand went into the cell by himself; he did not struggle or seem to show resistance at all. Oh I see your look! You surely wonder how I knew that they were siblings. Well they looked like twins; they had the same blue eyes and wonderful pitch black hair. Their faces although completely different still looked the same. Later my assumption was proven by her calling him brother. Through their imprisonment their resemblance faded, otherwise you would have known too. Their clothing… you must have seen it yourself, it looked…well strange. All the time as she lay there on the concrete he cared for her. Gave her his coat, lay her head in his lap and stroke her hair. He looked lost without her I must say. She woke up a couple of hours later and as she realized where she was she started to laugh. She said something about easy to get out, that this situation was laughable. I think she just wanted to calm her brother down who was getting more and more nervous.
The next day the guards tried to take Mativ to an interrogation but Lyis quickly stepped in front of him and said that she would never allow them to take her brother. Well as you can guess the guards tried to grab him. The first one was whiplashed against the wall and got a nasty wound on his head. The second one was thrown to the ground and his arms and legs were broken. But the third one who tried to touch Mativ…. Since that day mirrors were not allowed anymore. It was a huge mess and a huge shock for the other guards to be confronted with this situation. But the most astonishing thing was that she had done this without even touching them. It seemed liked they were beaten by an invisible force; soon we figured out that she must have some kind of special talent. So she was immediately classified as highly dangerous and no guard was allowed to touch her brother. There were no problems taking Lyis to the questioning and later there were no problems torturing her. Well except that during that time she wouldn’t make a sound. It didn´t matter how much pain she had to go through, she kept silent.
This went on for three months- till Johann Schmidt came.”
“Johann Schmidt? The leader of hydra? Are you sure?” the Colonel asked.
“I am absolutely sure about that. He must have heard that there was a circular imprint found at the spot those two landed. He was sure that it is a Norse thing. That it had something to do with the Norse mythology- you know Thor the god of thunder or Odin the alfather? So one day he came to her cell, dragged her out of it into that one special room. Again she did not struggle but it appeared as though this time she was… I don´t know, enjoying it? He asked her questions about a teseract or Asgard. Everyone could hear them because even the guards were curious about what he had to say so they left the door ajar. Again she stayed silent for hours, but as he wanted to give up and leave she just started to laugh, right in his face! She said, and those were her exact words: “This is too big for you. You will die in agony for being so vain. For trying to be as mighty as gods can only be. Never will a worthless creature like you be able to control this power. You are peasants, doomed to dig in dirt for all your life. Accept your fate, man.” I would never forget her words… They sounded so different from the words she used with her brother. Dark and threatening. Lyis never talked to anyone else but Mativ, so maybe this was her way of talking to strangers.”
I noticed that Mathilde was surely enjoying her story. And she was a good narrator; he could picture that situation perfectly: Schmidt getting a red and angry face while she told him all these humiliating things.
“ Oh he got angry, really furious. He hit her in the face, you could tell from the bruises on her cheekbones. But then suddenly he went all cold and calculating again as if he regretted his loss of temper. He replied that if she does not want to answer any questions they will have to ask Mativ some. So he ordered the guards to get Mativ and drag him into another interrogation room. Soon his screams filled the entire floor and….. she lost it. Completely went out of her mind, screamed towards the ceiling like she was arguing with god. You must know at this point every single one saw what was going on, the door stood completely open. I´ll try to explain what I saw the best I can. She seemed to fall unconscious, fell just for a fraction of a second to the floor… But then she stood steady again and her hair started to change from black to white and her eyes….blacker than the nights in our cells were… It was like a totally different person stood there. Her whole posture changed, the expressions on her face became those of a stranger and the way she talked…the pronunciation had completely changed as her way of talking. It was still the same body and the same voice, but a totally different person within it. Well at least it seemed to be like that…”
I knew exactly what she meant, because I saw the same thing happening with her brother Mativ. His presence seemed to have changed completely well, just as if he had become another person. “ Did you know that her brother could do the same thing?” I asked her.
“ No, well not before I saw him protecting Lyis…” she replied, sadness in her eyes.
“ What happened next? What did they do? I mean was there a fight?” Peggy asked. She looked disbelieving and I´m sure she wouldn’t have believed it wasn´t it for Mativs corpse in the autopsy.
“There was no fight. There cannot be a fight when the one side only has their bare hands and the other one weaponry. They had installed a collar around her neck, just in case something should happen during Johann Schmidts visit. So Günther, her personal guard, pushed a button and she broke down her body twitching…. I think electrocution was that one thing that made her helpless. She couldn´t stand it or fight it. So they dragged her back to her cell, she was already transforming back into her normal self and from that day on the guards also questioned Mativ. She tried to stop them twice but every time she failed, so eventually Lyis gave up.” She looked into my eyes and said “Until of course you gave her the opportunity to escape. Did she make it? I do hope so... maybe she´ll find a nice young man somewhere and she´ll built a nice little house where she, her husband and her children live in.”
“She committed suicide; it was a 1000 meter drop. We haven´t found her body yet, but it´s impossible even for her to survive that.” Colonel Phillips said.
“No body? I tell you, she´s still alive. I can sense it, can´t you?” She replied a smile on her lips. I stood up and got out of there. Hearing that woman and her hopes was unbearable for me and although I did not want to commit it: I also felt a spark of hope for Lyis.

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