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Chapter 1

"You know that feeling when you walk into a room and you're about to grab something, but then you're standing there and you have no idea why you walked in? It completely slips your mind, even though two seconds earlier it was the only thing you were thinking of?"

The orange cat rubbed up against Bucky's jeans, its white whiskers twitching as it chattered its feline answer.

"Do you ever get that feeling? Maybe in an alley?" he asked the cat. "Probably not."

Two white paws settled on his lap as the cat rubbed its face against his. For two weeks Bucky had been feeding the stray he had seen rummaging through trash cans and Dumpsters in alleyways. Sometimes the battered striped cat was chased away by people, sometimes it was joined by other cats or greeted by kind strangers. No matter the situation, the orange cat strutted down the street with its tail held high.

"You're way too cool to forget why you walked into an alley," Bucky mumbled. "You're way too cool for me, aren't you? If it wasn't for these treats you wouldn't even be here."

The cat protested as Bucky moved the creature aside and stood, brushing orange and white cat hair from his jeans. Reaching into his pocket, he scattered a few morsels of cat treats he had absently picked up from the corner store along with an energy drink that had only seemed to make him jittery.

"What are your plans for the day?" he asked the cat.

So this was his life now. From trained and calculated assassin to break time on the southside with a stray cat. Jesus, now if that wasn't the strangest thing.

The cat chomped on its treats before it took off across the street and down an alley.

"Figures," Bucky said to himself. He flexed his metal arm concealed beneath a long sleeved shirt, a jacket, and a glove. A little excessive for July in Chicago, but he was taking no chances after D.C. Already he looked over his shoulder every few seconds, a habit that he would never shake. Too many people were looking for him still. This gig was only going to last until the end of summer, if that, and then he would be on the move. South this time, he told himself. New Orleans was looking good.

"Hey!" a man shouted from the dock of a dilapidated building. "You working past lunch today or what, Jimmy?"

"Coming," he answered, stuffing both hands in his pockets.

Two weeks working at a warehouse with too many men stuffed inside a building with too few windows felt like torture-or at least that was how some of the other workers described it. This was nothing, he wanted to tell them. Try being captured by Hydra and having your brain scrambled every few months.

Was it months? There was no marker in time, no calendar of when he had last been himself. When he spent too much time in his own jumbled head, he wasn't sure who that person had been or if there was anything left.

He ducked beneath a low overhang and into the building that was bustling with pallets wrapped in plastic and stacked nearly to the ceiling. Another guy who had started recently complained about lunch time being cut short.

Time didn't mean much, not after he had lost decades of his life. Every aspect of life was reduced to that feeling of walking into a room and having no idea what he'd wanted to retrieve. The repetition of the warehouse at least helped to an extent. The consistency of loading heavy bins one after the other onto the pallets as they were wrapped and then loaded onto trucks made the day pass by swiftly.

Once he finished his ten hour day, there was not much to look forward to other than a bare mattress on the floor of an apartment with a creaky, unreliable A/C unit in the window, a fridge he could never seem to keep full, and a cheap lamp with a bulb that made him feel as though he were constantly under interrogation. The water in the shower ran cold, which wasn't a bad thing after spending the whole day drenched in his own sweat.

Nothing in the apartment made it feel like home, and he dreaded turning the key in the lock and standing in the small space that was both a bedroom and living room combined. The lamp and mattress would both be abandoned once he drifted into another city and another life.

As long as he had a small amount of cash at his disposal, he could be anyone. RIght now he was Jimmy Hunt, a name he'd stolen off the side of a truck when the City of Chicago came into view. For two hundred bucks some fast-talking Filipino kid with a Cubs hat on backward and a button-down blue striped shirt made him a government-issued ID with that name, James B. Hunt.

The kid behind the counter offered a greasy smile as he produced the fake documents of a driver's license and birth certificate. "James Bernard," he said. "Bernard was my old man's name."

"Where is he now?" Bucky asked before he slid the ID into the pocket that had previously occupied two hundred dollars.

"Dead," the kid answered. Bucky couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

That one meaningless, brief conversation had been the highlight of Bucky's day when he arrived in Chicago. The time spent alone made it feel like the world collapsed around him, folded up and threatened to smash him in the process.

They had a name for that feeling now, the anger and numbness and paranoia. It was an odd sensation, like being overly aware of every muscle twitch while at the same time his mind seemed like mush.

There were medications and groups to attend so that others suffering from the same thing could sit around and talk about their problems. Post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. There was nothing post about it. The feeling was painfully current and always lingered in the back of his mind, making him forget what he'd walked into a room to retrieve and often why he was still alive.

For a couple of weeks Bucky had tried jotting down notes to see if there was a pattern to the sensation of feeling like his heart was about to explode in his chest. The sudden bouts of uncontrollable anger that took the color out of his vision. Once he'd thrown a gallon of milk at the wall and didn't realize it until he stood in a puddle. Somehow, the Chinese take-out had met the same fate. He had no recollection of throwing either item-and he didn't remember even ordering food.

This was borrowed time, he knew. Unnatural time, even. But it was still his. Somehow he couldn't help but feel like the humdrum, repetitive work of loading pallets onto trucks was the worst way to spend his life. Of course, as a fugitive there could have been worse situations.

"Jimmy!" the boss yelled from his upstairs office. He was a big guy named Javier with a thick moustache and a beard that sort of blended in with his chest hair. The guy looked like he could use a full-body shave. Or waxing. Bucky had read about something called manscaping, but he wasn't sure that was still a thing and Javier didn't look like the type of guy who relied on fashion or hygiene trends.

Bucky turned even though he was still getting used to the new name.

"We're gonna start calling you Jimmy Stray if another damn cat follows you in here."

Bucky turned to find the orange cat standing behind him, its tail the shape of a question mark as it surveyed its surroundings like a king taking over a newly acquired kingdom.

"Outta here," Bucky grumbled. He stepped toward the cat and motioned with this hands, but the feline was not at all impressed.

The cat looked at him as though he had no idea why he had entered the warehouse, but wanted to play it cool. After a moment of casually sniffing the air, the little beast strutted out the back and darted off into the alley where it disappeared around the corner.

"Jimmy!" the boss shouted. His massive hands wrapped around the steel railing. Dark eyes squinted down at the warehouse floor and glared straight through Bucky. "In my office."

"God damn it," Bucky said under his breath as he lowered his eyes and slinked toward the concrete stairs heading to the office. This job had not lasted nearly as long as he had hoped.