Shuri looked at her notes she gathered from Steve's interview and the notebooks spread carefully around her. Systematically over weeks in her computer lab, she began to enter the data from both sources into her algorithm using key words, events and summaries of memories. Her supercomputer inserted sensations, and backgrounds in the proper contexts and timing seamlessly.
Slowly, page by painful page, Bucky Barnes's past became a computer program; his previous consciousness had been recreated in virtual reality like some twenty first century news reel.
It was deeply late as she sat back in front of her huge virtual screen, tiredly admiring her last work. Her eyes felt strained as she rubbed the temples of her skull in exhaustion. On playback was Bucky's memories of Steve and he as children. She saw Winifred, his mother, and his dad with his three sisters. A warm smile pulled her lips up into a happy grin as tiny Steve entered the picture and they played in their tiny Brooklyn tenement. Such a different time from her experience, yet the similar truths remained; the love of family and friends.
Waving a hand in the air to fast forward, she saw the men as teens and the struggles of poverty, the loss of Bucky's dad and the Depression. Swallowing, she saw the suffering they endured yet kept their character intact knowing and believing that someday, it would go their way. She witnessed Steve's obsession to join the military and Bucky repudiating him every time just because he didn't want his friend to be hurt.
With a careful hand, she waved on to where Hydra captured Bucky and the 107th. Schmidt, the Red Skull, appeared briefly, as did Armin Zola. Stopping the footage, she picked up a virtual knife, ready to excise the brainwashing, which in her framework was bad code.
Reaching literally into the framework with the glowing virtual blade, Shuri began to cut around the image of Schimidt's face and work towards Zola like snipping photos for a scrapbook.
"I would not do that if I were you, princess." came the sibilant hiss of Swiss accented English.
Shuri stopped, looking around her. Did she hear that or was it her fatigued imagination?
"You heard me correctly, your Highness." Armin Zola's voice reached around her into the room much like a large snake.
"You cannot be real. You are in my framework. You are nothing but a ghost in the machine. I can unwrite you." Shuri challenged him, feeling her blood pressure rise in defiance.
"Certainly, a woman of your intelligence and skill should recognize another brilliant mind and know that it is not that easy." Armin's voice came from the face she was about to remove from Bucky's virtual recall.
Her face contorted into a snarl, "You are not brilliant. You are nothing more than a hideous monster and you will not torment this man any longer!"
"That is too bad you feel that way, princess. I feel you and I could accomplish much together." Armin almost looked sad from the frozen visage on the screen, "But thank you for resurrecting me from the digital dustbin and recreating me in the network."
Shuri felt something approach from behind and realized it was one of her lab robot's arms reaching out to choke her. Spinning on her heel, she let go of the virtual knife and grabbed real steel to face off against her own creations. With a loud war cry, she lunged at the one or two armed robots who had various attachments on their arms, hacking them into pieces. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw code scrolling across her screens; Armin was writing himself back into life!
"NO!" she yelled, pushing debris at more of her robotic assistants, trying to reach the main power switches. Zola's one-dimensional photo image began to move, blink and stretch as if he had been asleep for a long while.
"Kill her." Armin commanded any robotic device in the room.
Thinking quickly, she realized one mannequin had a Panther suit on it, the prototype necklace version for her brother. She had disabled its communications to the network weeks ago. It was not vulnerable to Armin. Slipping the gold chest piece over her head, she blinked and was enveloped in vibranium.
The virtual Armin shimmered, trying to assess what had just happened. With a fierce scream, she bounded nimbly over the mutinous technology and went straight for her virtual display screen across the room where she had been working. Extending her claws, she reached into the screen, grabbing Armin Zola's image in her hands. Her fingers wrapped around his neck in a vise as her panther hooded face came close to his shimmering in-screen visage. "You should have died a long time ago sonofabitch. Wakanda forever!" With a final look of terror, she snapped his virtual neck, killing the code of Zola.
There was an explosion of electricity shorting everything out. The vibranium in the mine thrummed in harmony with the blast.
"Shuri!" T'Challa and Okoye came thundering down the staircase.
Laying on the floor, Shuri groaned in pain. Aches asserted themselves and she wondered why the world was behind a screen with T'Challa and Okoye hovering worriedly over her, then she recalled the Panther suit. Blinking, she retracted the suit back into the necklace in a purple shimmer. "I'm fine." She sat up with the help of her brother. Looking around, she saw the destruction of her lab done by the recreation of the Hydra super scientist trying to resurrect himself in the modern world.
"What happened?!" Okoye asked amazed, surveying the damage. Sparks spit out from various areas as dying robotics flailed helplessly. Smoke curled up from scorched wiring and insulation. Computer screens were shattered into hundreds of pieces. The only thing that wasn't broken was the tribal art on the walls that pulsed with vibraniums' power.
Shuri got up from the floor, ignoring the bruises, a furious look on her face. "Look what he did!"
"Who?" T'Challa asked.
"That damn Hydra bastard, Armin Zola." Shuri growled turning slowly to see the destruction. A small Roomba-like robot resumed some life and tried vainly to clean up the mess.
"But he's dead." T'Challa recalled.
"Well, now he is." Shuri smiled cockily at him, "But apparently I'm too good at recreating A.I. so I inadvertently recreated a shell of him from Steve and Bucky's notes that let him reanimate himself enough get into the code of…." Her eyes went wide in understanding. Without explanation, she sprinted off.
T'Challa and Okoye chased after, not seeing what Shuri did.
Several floors down, Bucky's cryochamber lay open. Shuri slid to a stop, breath heaving in her chest.
Using every fiber of her being, she listened for any sounds or indications that the Winter Soldier was up and about. Blinking, she pulled the Panther suit down again. Her augmented sight helped in the low light of the room. "Wait." She whispered to T'Challa and Okoye who had caught up.
"What is going on?" Okoye whispered back fiercely from the doorway.
"Trust me."
Moving stealthily around the room, Shuri used every ounce of her focus to find where Bucky had gone. Catching a glimpse of someone moving, she turned to face it. "Bucky?"
A form in the shadows shuddered.
"Bucky?"
"32557038, Sargent James Buchanan Barnes." A hoarse whisper came from the shadow. T'Challa and Okoye tensed to pounce. Shuri held up a hand behind her to warn them off.
"James?"
"32557038, Sargent James Buchanan Barnes." The voice intensified, and a wince ran over him.
Shuri blinked removing the Panther mask and approached cautiously. "Bucky."
He looked up at her, his pupils huge in his blue eyes, stubble over his face gave him a disheveled appearance. "Steve? You're a girl now?"
Shuri smiled gently, "No, Sargent. I am not Steve. I am Shuri. You are in Wakanda. Did you have a bad dream?" She glanced down and noticed the blood running from his right arm. He tore out his IV's.
"I did." His mind was not clear from the stasis drugs.
"Do you want to tell me what you dreamed of?"
"Not really. It was bad."
"I can help you with that."
"Are you a doctor? You're dressed funny if you're a doctor."
She smiled gently again, "Yes. I'm a special kind of doctor. Come with me, Bucky. Let's make you comfortable."
Tremors ran the length of him. Shuri could feel that he was still very chilled from the cryochamber and was extremely surprised he was alert enough to talk to her.
Standing up with shaking legs, Bucky held onto Shuri for support as T'Challa came in to support his other side. Leading him to the cryochamber, they sat him down on the edge of the bed. Bucky's eyes became confused and afraid. "Bucky. I want to tell you something." Shuri said quietly, "Captain. Steve. Rogers. Best. Friend. Brooklyn."
Barnes's face relaxed and a silly smile splayed across his lips. He nodded stupidly as if drunk and swung his legs up onto the bed. Shuri pushed his hair out of his eyes like she would a small child as he closed them. Carefully, she reinserted his IV's and closed the glass lid. Using her tech enabled bracelet, she did a quick diagnostic on the cryochamber to make sure that Zola hadn't reached down and contaminated it with his meddling. It passed inspection, so she punched some keys and it sealed and chilled again, refreezing the former assassin.
She retracted the rest of the suit and looked at her brother and their good friend. "What was that?" T'Challa asked.
Shuri looked exhausted but there was the ever-present twinkle in her eye, "I gave him some of my own code words. Those words only bring him peace and happiness. They override the Hydra programming until I can excise that from his mind. I thought it would be a good insurance policy against a … regression."
T'Challa nodded in approval. Okoye smiled a grim smile.
"Let's go to bed. I'm tired." Shuri said moving past them.
"That Panther suit looks good on you, sister."
Shuri looked over her shoulder with a feisty grin, "I know. You better watch out."
Both Okoye and T'Challa laughed as they took the elevator back up to the surface leaving Bucky in his peace codeword induced sleep.