I sometimes still marvel at how much has changed in those seventy years. Not to mention this city. Something was wrong in this beautiful empire though. I could feel it. When you've been fighting for long enough, you start to just know when you're going to need to fight again. When something bad is going to happen.
Then I saw a woman with dark hair tied up and wearing a hood. She looked suspicious. She kept her head down and I couldn't help pursuing her. Something was about to happen. was she wired? some kind of psycho path willing to pay with her life for her revenge?
Maybe it was just paranoia but I'd come to trust my instincts throughout the years. Heroes don't usually have to go looking for trouble it just finds them anyway. I was afraid this was just my mind toying with me, that tragedy had rattled me more than I thought it did. If I'm vulnerable, my team's vulnerable, and if we're vulnerable so is the entire planet. I grabbed the woman's shoulder and she bolted.
She must be an amateur. No fully trained soldier or operative would run that fast. She knew who I was and something told me she wasn't on my side. (she kind of just proved it.) At this point we were involved in a chase, but I knew I was faster. I tripped her and pinned her down. She kicked me in the head. A jarring blow but not enough to stop me. I blocked her punch and landed one of my own. I hated fighting women but she wasn't giving me much choice.
The woman had confirmed she was my enemy and that she was worthy of suspicion. Fighting, she tired out faster. She elbowed me in the stomach, I punched, she dodged. I grappled her shoulders and threw her onto the asphalt. Fear flashed in her eyes. we had gone from trading blows to her striking one blow for every four of mine.
"Stay Down." I panted, even though it didn't look like she was going anywhere.
"Who do you work for?" I demanded.
"who do you? Or do heroes answer to no one?" The enemy laughed. I watched her bite down on a pill which instantly began frothing in her mouth. I had seen this before. Her mouth filled with white foam like rabies. She gagged, eyes bulging as she choked out her last words: "Hail Hydra."
Then she gasped and went limp. I'd seen that before. I didn't even bother checking to see if she was breathing. I knew she was dead. I puilled back her jacket to reveal a nine armed skull of scarlet color. The Hydra symbol. Hydra was a long time enemy of mine and was a German terrorist organization which had been around since the early 1940s. They were led by an evil man known as Red-Skull.
I thought I had defeated Red-Skull decades ago. I was stupid to think they would actually be dead. Are Hydra just continuing the legacy or is there a chance that Red-Skull could still be alive more vengeful than ever before?
"What makes you so special?" he had once asked me in that face-off. Right before Bucky . . . died. That's not even the right term. No . . . actually it is. Yes Buchanan Barnes died that day. The winter Soldier is all that's left of him.
Everyone wants to be a superhero. I can't imagine why.