Brock stared up at the hospital ceiling. He wished there were at least cracks he could count, but it was smooth and unblemished. He supposed he should be glad he was alive. A helicraft and a building had fallen on him and he'd lived to tell the tale. Not many men could honestly say they'd survived that. The doctors hadn't been sure that he would. He wished they'd been right. Or at least that he was still in that blissful realm he had floated in for a month between life and death. Not completely unconscious, but too full of painkillers to care or think.
But now he was fully conscious and his brain was fully working.
He didn't care about his face. He'd only seen it fully for the first time last week. The doctors had tried to ease him into the shock. They thought it would wreck him. They'd even had a physiatrist on hand. But what did it really matter? He just looked on the outside at last how he felt on the inside. Now everybody would recognize him for what he was.
Though, he had to admit, it was going to make it more difficult to hide. And hide he would have to do. As long as he was here in the hospital, he was relatively safe. And it would be a couple of months more before he was likely to be well enough to leave it. Two months down, two to go, and then what?
HYDRA searching for him. SHIELD searching for him. He'd be a wanted man for the rest of his life and odds were they'd catch up to him eventually, sooner rather than later. And it would be HYDRA who would. It was always HYDRA. How long would the running last? Maybe he didn't want it to last that long.
He had thought that he couldn't live if HYDRA won. Maybe he couldn't live now that they'd lost either.
Brock looked around the room. He'd only been moved there this morning, finally out of intensive care. Exasperated at himself, he grabbed the TV controller and switched on the TV, mindlessly flicking through the channels. He hadn't watch TV in months. He'd never watched much of it. In fact mostly he just watched it when he and Soldier had ended up hulled up in a motel during a mission. He fancied that the Soldier enjoyed the distraction sometimes. Or maybe that had just been himself projecting again.
Either way, he needed to stop thinking.
As he passed a news channel he paused, the name 'HYDRA' catching him off guard. What was the news saying?
For the next ten minutes he stared as two reporters gave the rundown of several recent arrests. From several more casual comments he slowly began to understand that all SHIELD files had been dumped online…along with HYDRA's.
Wow. A lot really had had happened the day those helicrafts crashed. And a lot had been happening while he was out.
HYDRA would be severally weakened. He at least had a chance now of staying off their radars then. And SHIELD, well if what he was hearing was correct, SHIELD was no more either.
Did that mean he was free? And what about the Soldier? What had happened to him?
He still remembered the hazy sight of the Soldier walking away from him. He'd gone over it again and again in his head. The Soldier had owed him nothing, and yet he had come back. He didn't know why that thought kept returning.
Darn. He'd turned on the TV to stop thinking and it had just made it worse. He shut it off again.
HYDRA. HYDRA was gone. Not gone, he amended, but weakened. On the run. What remained would be fractured and broken until it either dissolved completely in time or rebuilt itself several generations from now.
Unless it's not given that option.
He sat up suddenly, a jolt of pain shooting through him but he ignored it, focusing on that thought.
HYDRA. The one thing he hated more than himself and it was weak and on the run.
Brock could run for the rest of his life. Or he could take those days, probably shorten them, and fight back. Follow the snake into its lair and cut off whatever heads remained. Kill, burn, and bury whatever was left. It might be justice or it could be vengeance, but he couldn't care less. This was his future. He knew that now.
He would heal. He would leave here. And then he would hunt.