Chapter 63

January 2nd, 2017

Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

"Your honor, the prosecution rests its case."

The first defense witness, a silver-haired man in a grey suit, took the stand. Maggie watched him swear to tell the truth as she gripped the seat of her chair with her free hand.

"You alright?" Diego asked, eyeing her death-grip on the chair.

Maggie swallowed. "I'm terrified."

Diego didn't need to ask why. The source of her terror lay in neat piles on the desk in front of him. Maggie glanced over her shoulder – Tony, Pepper, Vision. They sat at the front row, as they always had (though Vision and Rhodey swapped places), their heads high and their eyes warm. Maggie's gaze swept over the rest of the packed courtroom, taking in the grim expressions. Her eyes caught on a face towards the back – the woman from the bathroom, her brown eyes narrowed.

Maggie sighed and turned around when Diego stood up. Here we go.

The witness, Edward Doyle, was an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst who had apparently dedicated the rest of his life to combating HYDRA's influence. And his job now was to give expert testimony on the Wyvern Project.

Maggie could only watch, pressed as far back in her seat as she could go, as he gave profiles of the Wyvern Project's senior members: Project Leader Peters, Chief Scientist Sanders, Marino. He explained the origins of the Wyvern Project, its extensive scientific and military membership, and the Project's aims: "they were driven to create an asset for HYDRA that rivaled the Winter Soldier in efficiency and violence, as well as a great mind to support their scientific endeavors."

He based his testimony on the Québec data that had been saved for Maggie, as well as photos of the Québec base from Tony's expedition there. Andrea and Diego's investigators had compiled information about the twelve children who had been there before Maggie. They were taken from all over the globe, and each was destroyed in their own way. Doyle discussed the autopsy report of the girl who'd taken Maggie's place in her family's car, highlighting the evidence of horrific experimentation and the medical examiner's posited cause of death: extreme cranial trauma, with signs of electrocution and extensive brain damage.

The courtroom fell into a hushed silence as Doyle spoke, painting images of plots and murders and experiments done in dark caverns.

Maggie's skin was crawling. But they'd only just begun.

"When was Ms Stark taken from her family?" Diego asked.

Doyle's already-heavy brow furrowed further. "The files don't indicate when or how, as those records were specifically targeted in the electronic purge, but the Stark car crash occurred on December 16th, 1991."

A chill ran through Maggie, mingled with a ghost-memory of the radiant heat of flickering flames. She felt Tony tense behind her.

"Why did they take her?"

"Well as these documents show, the young Ms Stark was being followed by Wyvern Project spies for at least three months before she was kidnapped." Doyle nodded at the screen and slowly clicked through each piece of evidence. Yellowing newspaper clippings of Maggie, her test scores from school, images of the projects she'd worked on, and numerous faded photographs: a young and bright-eyed Maggie following her nannies from the mansion to the car; looking up at her dad outside the Stark Industries LA headquarters; eating with her mom at a café.

Maggie looked over her shoulder at Tony. He'd gone pale, and he clutched Pepper's hand like a lifeline. Maggie's stomach flipped over.

She barely noticed the faces in the rest of the courtroom but she got a general impression of wide eyes and hands over mouths.

"As you can see," Doyle said, "the Project members were interested not just in her comings and goings but in her budding engineering skills, her high intelligence, and her physical and mental aptitude. She was systematically stalked from just after her fifth birthday to December of that year."

"And what they found appealed to them?" Diego said, not quite keeping the disgust out of his voice.

"Yes. This report states: recruit exceeds expectations. Recommend imminent pickup."

"Pickup meaning kidnap."

"That's correct."

Diego paused for a few moments. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy. "I now refer to exhibits 256 through 303. Mr Doyle, you've reviewed all these documents – they indicate the initial testing, experimentation and training conducted on the defendant from 1991 to 2001, correct?"

"That's correct."

"Reports," Diego continued. "Photographs. Videos. I'm going to ask you to take us through the evidence Mr Doyle, but before I do… anyone present who may become unwell at the sight of blood, violence, or torture should leave the room." He waited a moment. In the shocked silence that followed, a few people stood and walked out. Maggie wished she could too. "Let's begin."

Maggie had looked through the Québec data before. She knew what was there. But it was one thing to know, and another for each and every detail to be relived, discussed, in front of over a hundred people. It lasted all day.

Doyle started with the data about the initial testing phase. He read each line of every report, his voice mostly steady. Sometimes he faltered, such as when he read: Subject surpasses mental capacity expectations, but injuries sustained during acquisition limit the subject's physical capabilities. Suspected fractured femur, heavy bruising. This was accompanied by a grainy photograph of the five-year-old Maggie's naked chest, with a thick black and purple bruise cutting diagonally from her shoulder to her hip: the shape of a seat belt.

Maggie listened to Doyle as he went over what was done to her in sickening detail – the serum, the training, the times they cut her open, the torture. He didn't go much into the psychological reprogramming or the chair, as that would come later, but it was enough.

The videos were the worst. Maggie stomached most of them until they came to the last and the longest one, of Marino painting Maggie's exposed bone with molten metal. The courtroom speakers shrieked with Maggie's recorded screams.

She had heard it before but this was so much louder, so much worse. She closed her eyes and covered her ears, and after a few minutes she felt Tony's tap her hands, feather light, to let her know it was over. He knew not to touch her back.

Doyle kept talking. Maggie listened, but she started not to hear. Her ears filled with a ringing sound that got louder and louder throughout the testimony and started to sound like a scream. She focused on her breathing, using every therapy technique she knew to stay calm, to stay seated, to stop herself screaming and trying to flee.

She was dimly aware of gasps and horrified whispers. More people got up and left, their faces ashen. Towards the end Andrea took Maggie's free hand – which had been putting cracks in her chair – and wrapped it in her own.

The words washed over her and through her, and she barely heard the prosecutor's cross-examination. Mallory did his best to discredit the evidence, but there wasn't much he could do to make the jury doubt the things they'd just seen.

CNN: Horrifying scenes in the courtroom today as the defense shows evidence of Margaret Stark's torture under HYDRA. From a gallery member: "I don't know how anyone could do those things to a child. It's beyond belief."

NBC News: "I've been a court reporter for thirty years, Jack, I've seen some terrible things. But the sheer amount of pain and suffering presented by both the prosecution, and now the defense, is staggering."

The New York Bulletin: The courtroom was utterly silent. I don't think there was a person there who wasn't affected – the woman sitting next to me had to leave to throw up. I could barely look away from the evidence, but when I did I looked to Margaret Stark, because I wondered how a person could relive such horrors in silence.

She'd been watching and listening for most of it but when I looked this time, her head was bowed and her hands covered her ears, blocking out her screams from over twenty years ago. I wanted to join her in blocking out the screams, but there was a sense amongst the people in the courtroom that this was trauma that had gone unnoticed and overlooked for too long. I forced myself to listen. Because if I learned anything today, it was that Margaret Stark has not been heard in a long, long time.

Doyle's testimony ended, but they weren't done with the Québec data. On day two they brought in Neil Perry, a neuroscientist and psychologist with expertise in indoctrination and torture. His job was to put the facts into context.

"The evidence is very clear about how they broke Ms Stark down and reshaped her into what they needed," Perry explained, clutching a series of progress reports. "Here, in the report dated March 22nd, 1992: Chief Scientist Sanders' team has had great success with mental reconditioning and the memory suppression machine. Identity destruction, repetition tactics and continuous cycles with the machine have ensured that obedience trigger words are buried deeply in the Wyvern's psyche." He cleared his throat. "They knew what they were doing. They did they research. They brought fifty years of mental reconditioning research and tactics and inflicted them on a five year old."

Andrea bowed her head. "Would Ms Stark's intelligence have helped her to combat the reconditioning?"

Perry shook his head. "It doesn't matter how smart you are – this level of complete psychological destruction would work on anyone."

"Please read the next two paragraphs of that report."

Perry took a breath. "Final stages of reconditioning included presenting the subject with two "innocent" targets, then providing the subject with a weapon and telling it to kill one of the targets. Subject initially questioned the order. This resulted in elimination of both targets, and 95 milliamps of electrical current were run through the subject's body." Everyone in the courtroom had already heard this in Doyle's testimony, but there were still gasps. "The subject was then wiped. This stage of reconditioning was repeated, with new targets each time, until the subject consistently obeyed orders in conjunction with the trigger words, with no questioning or distress.

"Sanders and her team have asked me to particularly highlight this stage, as it seems to have had the best results in cognitively recalibrating the subject, and may prove useful in later projects."

"Ms Stark was six years old at the time," Andrea said heavily. "What impact would such 'reconditioning' have on a child of that age?"

"In my opinion, the impact is clear. At that point you don't have a thinking, feeling individual who makes choices. You have someone who obeys orders above all else, 'with no questioning or distress.' From a very early age the Wyvern Project was obsessed with ensuring absolute obedience and efficiency."

"Let's talk about the terminology they used to refer to Ms Stark. Did they ever refer to her by name?"

"No. If you run a search on the available data, from Québec and from other HYDRA sources, there is not one mention of Margaret Stark. They gave her a new identity: the Wyvern. They referred to her by that designation, or they called her 'the asset', or 'the weapon'. Usually, they called her 'it'. This kind of language is dehumanizing to an extreme degree. It's clear that Ms Stark's captors did not even see her as a human being – to them she was a weapon made of flesh, bone, and metal, to be loaded and aimed at their enemies."

"In your professional opinion, how effective was this psychological reconditioning program?"

"I've never seen this level of physical and mental torture alongside such consistent mental conditioning. It was thoroughly researched, and carried out with devastating effect. In fact HYDRA's knowledge of conditioning goes beyond my own – the 'trigger words' that are constantly mentioned, for example. I don't know how such a thing could be implemented, but from the evidence they sound terrifyingly effective."

"What do you think was going on inside Ms Stark's head? How did she function, day to day?"

"They changed Ms Stark's very identity and the way she thought about herself. She saw herself as the Wyvern, as a weapon. She was given no space to think of anything but obeying her captors and carrying out their every whim."

"Was Ms Stark capable of making moral judgments about what was right or wrong?"

"Certainly not. I doubt she had a conception of right or wrong at all."

"Would a person be able to break out of such strict conditioning?"

Perry took a breath. "I honestly don't see how. The conditioning, the utter destruction of identity, the dehumanization, the torture, these trigger words, all on top of this Memory Suppression Chair – which I know will be described in detail later – that's a perfect storm in terms of keeping an individual under complete control. And yet there is evidence that the Wyvern – excuse me, Ms Stark – was confused. Once or twice even questioned orders."

"What happened then?"

"They wiped her immediately. They didn't tolerate any sign of independent thought, and they certainly didn't tolerate questions."

That night Maggie went back to the Avengers Facility. She needed to get out of the mansion packed with memories, needed to get away from the files that detailed the way her mind had been taken away from her, and the people who picked over each detail. She knew they were just helping but she couldn't help the way her whole body rebelled against the relived memories. Even after she'd left the courthouse she felt shaky and exhausted, and she knew she looked terrible – bags hung under her eyes, and her shoulders slumped.

The world was in shock at the details of what HYDRA had done to her, but she couldn't bring herself to pay attention to it.

Back at the facility she walked into the forest with Vision, trying to lose herself in the crunch of snow under her feet and the beauty of the stark black branches against the white sky.

"Distract me," she murmured, after they'd walked for who knew how long. "Tell me about the guy who tried to shoot Tony."

Vision's feet didn't leave prints in the snow. "He's homeless. He wouldn't say anything at first and we couldn't find a record of him getting the gun, and there was no discernible reason for him to shoot Mr Stark." He lifted a branch so Maggie could pass under it. "He started talking a few days ago. Apparently three men in masks gave him a large amount of cash and a gun, told him to shoot Tony Stark on the courthouse steps and then as many people after Mr Stark as he could. They said they'd break him out of prison as a reward and set him up in the Bahamas with a new identity."

"Does he know anything about the men who hired him?"

"No. We're looking into them though."

"But you guys thought something like this might happen."

Vision didn't miss the sharp glance she shot him, and he sighed. "I can't tell you much more than this, Maggie. It's an Avengers investigation. But I promise that we'll keep you and your brother safe."

"Thank you," she said, watching the words condense into a cloud of vapor and then vanish. She sighed. "I don't know how to face what's coming, Vis."

He held out his hand and she took it. He was, as always, surprisingly warm. "You will face it as you always have," he said with not an ounce of doubt on his face. "With dignity, and strength. And you will overcome it."

Maggie's face crumpled and she finally allowed herself to cry. Vision wrapped his arms around her and she wept into his synthetic chest, shaking in the freezing air.

Back during the discovery process, Andrea and Diego had come to Maggie with a manila folder.

"What do you know about a… Vincent Silva?" Diego asked, frowning down at the folder.

Maggie had frozen where she sat. "He's a witness?"

"Not yet. He's one of the very few convicted HYDRA agents in prison, but the prosecution hasn't called him as a witness. We're wondering why they're holding back. Do you know him?"

"Um… yes."

Once she'd explained her history with Silva, Andrea's eyes glinted.

"I can work with that," she said. "Do you think he would have told anyone about your visit?"

"Hard to say. Bucky and I scared him pretty bad."

"With what he's done, I don't think anyone would blame you."

January 5th, 2017

Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Vincent Goddamn Silva. He came in wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, his hands in chains, escorted by two guards. He hadn't aged well in the two years since Maggie had last seen him: his dark hair was thinning, streaked with grey, and his face was sallow and unhappy. When he saw her sitting at the defense table his face went white and he missed a step, stumbling between his guards. Maggie didn't take her eyes off him until he'd entered the witness box and sworn to tell the truth.

She recalled her last words to him: if only I could remember.

He clearly remembered her: his eyes kept darting toward her and then skittering away, his fingers fidgeting at the edges of the witness box. He'd never seen her in normal clothes before.

"Mr Silva," said Andrea, stalking out from behind the defense desk. "Please tell us about your role in HYDRA."

Again his eyes flickered to Maggie. Hers narrowed.

"I, uh, I was a contractor, of sorts. I'm a neuroscientist, they… they needed a neuroscientist."

"What for? What did you work on?"

"I worked on the machine. The Memory Suppression Machine."

"Could you summarize the purpose of the Memory Suppression Machine?"

"It was for HYDRA's assets–"

"Pardon me – by assets, you mean people?"

"Yes. The chair, essentially, made them forget." He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

"Forget what?"

"Everything: past, present, identity. Everything but operational knowledge, training, and obedience to HYDRA."

"I'm going to get you to elaborate on that in a moment Mr Silva," Andrea said, the words spoken almost like a threat. "But first let's pause for a moment to bring in Exhibit 324."

The bailiff opened the wide doors on the side of the courtroom, and chairs creaked as everyone in the gallery leaned forward to get a better look.

Two new bailiffs wheeled in an enormous flatbed trolley weighed down by a metal machine with various computers and wires hooked up to it, and an evidence tag wrapped around one metal support. The machinery centered around a single metal chair.

It had taken a lot of searching to find a fully functional Memory Suppression Machine, as the one in Siberia had been crushed. Tony had eventually located this one in a European law enforcement agency's vault (they hadn't known how to get it working), and called in a bunch of favors to get it to the States.

Maggie had known this was coming. All the same, the sight of the black, hulking machine lying dormant on the trolley made her hackles rise and filled her with dread. She was so fixated on staring at the chair that she barely heard Andrea's next words:

"I also enter Exhibit 325, a series of plans for this machine sourced from the HYDRA information leak."

Maggie realized her toes were digging into the carpet, unconsciously trying to push her further away from the machine, and she forced herself to relax. The seat beside her slid out and someone dropped into it, and she looked over to see Tony.

"You're not supposed to be there," she breathed.

"Looks like the judge is going to give me a pass," Tony murmured, casting a glance at Moore – who looked unimpressed, but didn't say anything. "How're you doing, Marigold?"

"I've been better," she said, rigid in her seat. "Also been worse, though."

Tony's hand covered hers on the table.

"Mr Silva," Andrea said. "Can you confirm that this machine – or rather, one like it – is what you used on HYDRA's assets?"

Silva squirmed. "Yes."

Andrea circled the machine, which now rested squarely in the open space in front of Judge Moore's bench. The machine looked odd in this open, light-filled space, though it looked far from harmless. It was as if the machine had absorbed the darkness it had existed in for so long and brought those shadows with it into the courtroom. The large metal arms glinted darkly.

"More specifically," Andrea continued, "you used such a machine on my client, Ms Stark?"

Again Silva's eyes flickered toward Maggie. She wiped any trace of fear from her face and met his eyes.

"That's correct," he murmured.

"How many times?" Andrea asked, her eyes fixed on him.

Silva swallowed. "I don't know."

There was a pause. Andrea paced toward the witness box. "Why don't you give us your best estimate, doctor Silva?"

Mallory got to his feet. "Objection, your honor, she's arguing with the witness!"

Moore cleared his throat. "I'll remind you that this is the defense's witness, Mr Mallory, and I don't think we're there just yet. But mind yourself, Mrs Kemp."

Andrea nodded without looking away from Silva. "Please estimate how many times you used this machine on Ms Stark."

Silva paled. "I… maybe… maybe a hundred times? More than that, probably." He shrank into himself. A low mutter went through the courtroom.

"I see," Andrea said. Her hands loosened by her sides. "Mr Silva I understand this is a very complicated machine – these plans are full of complex scientific and medical terms that can be very difficult to wade through. So to get a better picture of the function of this machine, why don't we demonstrate it?"

Maggie hissed through her teeth, low enough that only Diego and Tony could hear her. Tony's fingers curled around her hand.

Andrea's question to Silva had been rhetorical – everything was already in place for the machine to be demonstrated. They switched on the power and the computer screens flickered to life as the machine let out a low hum. The mechanical sound washed over the courtroom and the murmuring gallery fell silent. As the machine powered up Andrea asked Silva about the process of preparing an asset and how he set up the machine, but Maggie didn't hear him.

She took purposefully long breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She couldn't look away from the empty seat of the machine. Tony's hand was warm over hers.

"You're okay," he murmured. "This is helping you. It's not going to hurt you."

She barely managed a jerky nod to acknowledge that she'd heard him.

But then they fired up the machine. The arms swiveled toward the headpiece of the chair and the computer screens flickered. For the first time in three years Maggie heard that sound: sparking lightning and incoming pain, and the blood drained from her face. It was all she could do to stay in the moment, to not regress into her flickering memories. Blood roared in her ears and her skin washed first hot, then cold, then scalding hot again.

She heard gasps and cries throughout the courtroom as the machine kicked into full effect with buzzing, blue glowing electricity, and she yanked her hand out from under Tony's to slap it over her mouth.

"'M gonna be sick," she gasped. Tony vanished, but returned in another instant with a trashcan. Maggie seized it, ducked her head between her knees and threw up her breakfast, sobbing as she heaved. Past the sound of her own vomiting she heard Diego shout "turn it off!" and a moment later she felt someone gather up her hair and pull it away from her face.

After a minute Maggie managed to pull herself semi-upright, shivering from head to toe as she pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. With one look she could see that everyone in the courtroom was staring at her.

"… call a recess–" she heard Judge Moore say, blurry and faded as if he was underwater. Like a shot she was off, bolting out of her seat and through the courtroom before bursting through the doors and toward the nearest bathroom.

Once she'd found the relative safety and privacy of the women's bathroom Maggie collided with the tile wall and sank to the ground, clutching her hair with her free hand as she tried to stop hyperventilating. Her gasping breaths echoed against the tile and bounced back at her, though not as loudly as the lingering echoes of crackling lightning.

Her throat burned, her mouth tasted foul, and her face was a mess of tears and cold sweat. She squeezed her eyes shut but then opened them with a gasp when all she could see was the afterimage of the chair's glowing metal plates.

The bathroom door opened. Maggie drew her knees up to her chest and held up a hand, but it was just Tony.

He'd taken off his orange glasses, so she could easily see the bags under his eyes. His face was lined with concern and something deeper, like grief, and when his eyes met hers he silently paced across the bathroom to slide down next to her on the floor. Maggie couldn't help the way her chest shuddered, and she almost burst into tears anew when Tony put an arm around her, warm and tight. She curled up and into him, free hand blindly seizing his jacket in an unyielding fist. She buried her face in his shoulder and cried, staining the expensive fabric. Her raw sobs echoed.

"I'm sorry, Maggot," Tony said, voice loud in the empty bathroom. "We should have asked for them to excuse you for that. I didn't think–"

"Neither did I," she gasped, pulling her face away. "The sound–"

"Yeah, I know," Tony murmured, and his arms tightened around her. "I know. I'm so sorry."

From the dark tone to his voice Maggie knew he wasn't just apologizing for today. He was apologizing for the hundred times before that. She buried her face in his shoulder again and let herself cry, and slowly the cold fear that had seized her body faded away.

When they returned to the courtroom Maggie's lawyers and the prosecution had a fight about prejudicing the jury, but she wasn't really listening. The chair was still there, lifeless on the trolley bed.

Once they'd reached an agreement Judge Moore turned his gaze on Maggie. She'd cleaned herself up but there was no hiding her bloodshot eyes and haunted expression.

"Are you ready to continue, Ms Stark?" He asked. His voice wasn't unkind.

"I am," she said, then cleared her throat to shake away the slight tremor. "I'm sorry for holding things up."

"That's quite alright. If you need to take another break, ask your lawyers to call for a recess." His face softened for a moment into compassion, and Maggie felt the prosecution scowling at her.

She nodded. "I will."

BREAKING: Margaret Stark breaks down in court.

Andrea wasn't done with Silva.

"How likely is it that a person subjected to this device would regain intact memories?"

He hesitated. "I… I don't know. We never studied recall, we were… we were focused on removing memories."

Maggie heard a disgusted scoff from somewhere in the gallery.

"In your medical opinion, would a person be capable of making moral judgments and choices after being subjected to the device?"

"N-no. They weren't supposed to be."

Maggie wondered if it was possible for Andrea to kill someone with her eyes. She wouldn't put it past her. "Now, you've stated that you used this device on my client over a hundred times. Did she ever volunteer for this process? Did she ever sign a consent form?"

He swallowed. "Not… not to my knowledge."

"Please, Mr Silva. I think you knew exactly what you were doing. Did Ms Stark want you to do this?"

There was a long silence, and Silva's eyes dropped to the bench in front of him. "… No," he finally answered in a quiet voice.

After going into painful, scientific detail of the tortures he'd put her through, Andrea got Silva to admit that Maggie had been the one to leak his information to law enforcement and get him to turn himself in. Silva cried when he admitted that he wouldn't have turned himself in if it weren't for Maggie. Maggie listened with a clenched jaw, and felt stares prickling on the back of her neck.

Andrea finished Silva's testimony with the single image of Maggie's face from the Québec data: twelve years old, strapped into the chair, her face wrenched in a silent scream. Two people left the courtroom, and Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Tony staring down at his hands, his eyes glimmering with tears. Pepper had one arm wrapped around him but she wasn't holding up much better – her mascara streaked down her cheeks in black trails.

When Andrea was finished the prosecution tried to salvage the situation, but there wasn't much they could do after everything that Silva had admitted about what he'd done to Maggie.

As they broke for lunch, Diego and Andrea checked on Maggie. She reassured them that she was doing better, and apologized for interrupting Andrea's questioning. The other woman just gave her a look as if she'd said something incredibly stupid.

Diego sighed and loosened his tie. "Calling Silva was a risk," he said. "Especially since it's now public record that you committed more crimes under your own steam: breaking and entering, intimidation, assault. But that's small time, comparatively, they wouldn't put you away for that for long and I doubt they'll pursue it at all." His face darkened. "That guy's a dirtbag."

Maggie cocked her head. "He's a coward."

"That too," Diego agreed.

Maggie closed her eyes, wisely not informing her lawyers that alongside the various crimes she'd committed against Silva, she'd also put serious thought into murdering him.

But she recalled the wide-eyed way Silva had looked at her just before he'd been escorted out of the courtroom, just as terrified of her now as he'd been two years ago when she loomed out of the darkness of his study and glared at him from behind red goggles. She allowed herself a small smile.

CNN Breaking News: FEATURED: Margaret and Tony Stark, along with Pepper Potts and Colonel James Rhodes, share a group hug in the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse after a harrowing and dramatic morning of testimony.

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