On the screen embedded in its belly, Doctor Zola's robot paced back and forth, chattering away about incomprehensible scientific jargon and endlessly explaining how amazing his latest invention was.
Meanwhile, Steve secretly worked to recover his strength.
For someone with such powerful willpower, as long as he held firm to his beliefs and silently repeated hot-blooded lines like Move, damn it! Move!, his body really did seem to surge with a little strength.
Tranquilizers? Anesthetic injections? How could those possibly stand against human willpower?
Unfortunately, if this had been World War II nearly seventy years ago, willpower might actually have been useful. Metallurgy had been mediocre back then, and he could have snapped shackles like those with a casual twist.
If he could go next door to DC, willpower counted as one form of the Force of Connection there, and it was quite useful.
But now, he was trapped in a Marvel Secondary Dimension where physical constants changed constantly and technology was paramount. Here, the role willpower could play had been reduced infinitely.
This was a cybernetic world. Power came from numbers and calculations.
Not to mention that the metal restraining him was Skrull Alloy supplied by aliens. An antique like Captain America had never even seen the stuff before.
No matter how he secretly struggled whenever Zola turned his back, the metal shackles remained completely unmoved, fastening him tightly to the operating table.
At some point, the robot carrying Zola's program had turned around.
More precisely, the large television embedded in its waist and abdomen had rotated a hundred and eighty degrees horizontally. The robot itself still faced the other way; only Zola's head had turned around.
The big-headed dwarf watched Steve clench his teeth and exert himself with his eyes shut, his expression full of amusement, as though