Part 3: Learned Silence
Final Corrected Summary:
After a year of nonstop torture, Riven begins to change — not by choice, but by force. He doesn't know what's happening to him. He doesn't know why. But the damage doesn't last like it used to. The pain stays, but something in his body is resisting. And sometimes, when he loses control... something moves that shouldn't.
---
He didn't scream when the door opened anymore.
Not because it hurt less.
Because screaming didn't help.
And Hydra didn't care.
They strapped him down.
Electrocuted him.
Burned him.
Cut him.
Poisoned him.
Let him bleed out, then dragged him back up again with IVs and muscle stimulants.
He screamed.
Oh, he screamed.
But not for them.
Not to them.
It was just the noise his body made when it couldn't contain the pain.
---
After the first year, it became… different.
Not easier.
Not cleaner.
Just… different.
The wounds still came, but they didn't last as long.
Bruises faded quicker.
Deep lacerations closed before they got infected.
Fractures healed clean.
No superpower. No miracle.
Just a body that refused to stay broken.
---
They noticed.
He heard them whisper through the glass:
> "Recovery time's shortening."
"Same sedative load, different results."
"Get blood every forty-eight hours."
They didn't understand.
And they didn't care.
---
By the middle of the second year, the guards stopped treating him like glass.
They started testing his limits like a thing.
Made the restraints tighter. The doses stronger. The breaks longer.
And somehow, he kept coming back.
---
Then came the moments.
Small ones.
A restraint that creaked harder than it should've under his wrist.
A steel hook that bent slightly when he convulsed too hard.
The feeling of metal shifting under his grip — not much, not dramatic — but just enough to know it wasn't normal.
And once…
When a technician came too close during a neural injection,
and Riven screamed harder than he ever had—
The man's head snapped sideways with a wet, unnatural crunch.
No one had touched him.
---
They called it a seizure.
Said it was neurological misfire.
Started running cranial scans.
But Riven knew.
He'd felt it.
Like something inside him surged, not from muscles, but from somewhere deeper — just for a second.
He couldn't control it.
But it wasn't gone.
---
He didn't tell them anything.
There was no one to tell.
Just the walls.
The lights.
The straps.
The silence.
---
He wasn't getting stronger to escape.
He was getting stronger because he refused to die.
And one day…
One day, they'd regret letting him live this long.
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