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Mature Content

The trick was to irradiate the cells to the point of decay. To bring them to the very brink of death. Captain America’s healing was remarkable, but even his DNA unravelled eventually. At that crucial point, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, the cells would willingly receive any undamaged DNA they could find to repair themselves. In other words, any DNA his captors decided to inject him with.

The enhanced genes would always survive but the rest of them could be gradually replaced with almost anything. With enough time, a super-soldier could be made a super-cow or even a super-blade of grass.

But it was slow. Too much radiation all at once would kill the subject, and they'd need to be brought back.

They’d had little success with it on the Winter Soldier Project but it had allowed them to ascertain the upper limits of radiation for the superhuman body, nailing the dosage down to a fine art. It was for that reason that Vasily’s soviet superiors had transferred him here, to this internment camp in the steamy back-end of nowhere in some North Vietnamese Jungle, where he was to work on the Việt Minh’s latest acquisition. They had captured Steve Rogers.

Unfortunately the finely tuned dosage levels were at odds with Uncle Ho’s timetable. After eleven months, Steve Roger's captors were growing impatient for him to be remade. He was to become their propaganda piece, Captain Communism or whatever his new name was to be, and they salivated at the thought of parading him before the American cameras, his new body draped in their flag as he spouted their ideology. They wanted Captain America to think like them, speak like them, most importantly look like them. But they wanted it all yesterday.

One of the Vietnamese scientists was tampering with the radiation dial again. Vasily berated the man and returned the dial to its previous dosage, adding an extra roentgen or two to keep his overseers happy.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve saved your life,” Vasily called to the prisoner within the adjoining cell. “You should be thanking me.”

Steve Rogers was silent. She had dragged herself as far away from the radiation emitter as she could, and was slumped against the far wall, her breathing laboured.

Vasily’s hand rested on the lever to begin the radiation bath. “Just one more session and you will be ripe for your gene infusion. And after that, your inspection. You know how much I enjoy your inspections,” he smiled fondly. The superhuman was becoming quite the specimen between her ill-fitting clothes.

“And you are making such excellent progress now, my dear. Every inspection, you look a little different, a little sweeter. Indeed, I swear last time I noticed a bit of brown in the blue of your eyes.”