THE SOLDIER ON THE BRIDGE
The Soldier stood apart from the STRIKE team as they gathered for rendezvous on the rooftop. The dust was beginning to settle in the streets several blocks away in the wake of the S.H.I.E.L.D. fugitives' capture, but the city around him was still red. It was a colour no one else could see. It was always right there in the corners of his eyes, tinting his vision as if he were viewing the world through a pane of blood-smeared glass. Sometimes it was thicker, and he could almost feel it dripping from his fingertips; other times it was little more than the trickle of a nosebleed.
He flexed his fingers, rolling the mechanical joints around; the shiny metal of his cybernetic arm caught the midday sun and cast it across the skyline. There was no doubt his arm would require maintenance after the fight with the blue-eyed man, the one the others called their Captain. Even wielding nothing but a shield, the Captain was a formidable opponent. The fight had been satisfying – up until his mask went flying.
His mind was still reeling from their encounter. Had they met before on another mission? Is that why the Captain seemed to recognise him? No, that couldn't be it. There was something deeper there, something far more intimate than two soldiers who had met in passing once before. The stubborn set of his jaw, the way his blue eyes blazed with a righteous fire… The Solider felt like he had seen it a thousand times before. He was certain that the Captain had recognised him, not as the fabled Winter Soldier, but as whoever he had been before he had become a Hydra dog. What was it he had called him?
"Bucky."
The name fell from the Soldier's lips now in barely more than a whisper. It was a name he connected with the howl of rushing wind, but he did not know why. It left him feeling cold and confused. He shook his head in a sharp jerking motion, brushing the snowflakes from the edges of his vision.
A crackle came over his earpiece.
"Chopper inbound. Prepare for evac."
The Soldier's long lank hair whipped about his face as the roar of the chopper filled the air above them. He ducked beneath the whirling blades and climbed onboard, taking a window seat. The STRIKE team piled in behind and the chopper shot back up above the low clouds. Ignoring the other men, who were watching him carefully with their weapons in their hands, the Soldier leaned down and used the tip of his Gerber combat knife to trace lines on the floor: 8. The numbers formed before his eyes and then blew away like smoke.
"Asset en-route to base," came the pilot's voice from the front.
The knife punctured the floor; every finger on the STRIKE team flew to their trigger. He gave them all a dismissive sideways look, and then ripped the knife out and slipped it back into his boot. He leaned away from them all again, letting his back form a wall between them for the rest of the flight. There was a pressure building in his left temple.
Soldier. Asset. Dog.
Slave to Hydra.
A man broken and remade into the perfect weapon.