Silence. Echoing silence followed the breaking wood. Rogers stood very still. Silence unnerved him more than gunshots. Romanoff came up close behind him, pistol levelled under his arm. There was nobody on the ground floor. They moved up, the staircase groaning under their combined weight. Anyone above them had warning. He nudged Romanoff directly behind him. He had a shield, she didn't.
"Barton, we're one floor under. What can you hear?" He breathed in to his radio.
"Nada. They're hiding very well, if there are any left alive." Rogers and Romanoff carried on room by room, him broaching doorways, shield high, Romanoff appearing under it to shoot anything that moved, but nothing did.
"Barton, we're clear. Come down to us." Barton didn't reply on radio, just swung down through a hole in the ceiling.
"So where did they go? Stark said they just vanished." He asked, taking his bow out and fitting another arrow to it.
"Hydra bolt downwards, as a rule. Their tactics haven't changed much in seventy years."
"So secret passage way?" Romanoff asked. Rogers nodded. "They are so old school." They headed back down the stairs, moving faster now, guarding themselves less carefully, they'd have heard anyone else moving. This felt strangely familiar, standing watch over his men while they searched for a hidden door or passage, except this time Bucky wasn't standing next to him. He was miles away, with Stark trying to wrench his arm off somehow. In 1944 it had been Jim who had the knack for finding things, Romanoff and Barton set about it differently. Barton stood still in the middle of the room, sweeping it methodically with his eyes, Romanova slunk round the edges, touching, tapping. After a couple of minutes she looked at Barton and shook her head. He nodded. They moved on to the next room. Barton threw an arm across Rogers's stomach as soon as he crossed the threshold, staring at an upturned, moth-eaten rug.
"Do HYDRA booby trap?" He asked.
"Sometimes." Rogers replied. "Not often, but sometimes."
"Rug isn't flat in the middle." Barton said, creeping closer, hands almost on the floor. Romanoff copied him. "Not a good sign. "They crept round the edges of the rug between them.
"Nothing?" Romanoff asked. Barton shook his head.
"I think we're OK." Slowly, they turned the rug back further.
"If this is a primed landmine, everyone just needs to dive, no heroics."
All the rug revealed was a hole in the floor, total darkness below. The three of them looked at each other.
"I go first." Rogers said firmly. "Don't follow until I call you." Bucky had almost never obeyed that order. Romanoff held out a grenade.
"Flashbang." She said shortly.
Rogers conceded. Romanoff pulled the pin and dropped the grenade down the hole. All three of them recoiled. They heard it hit the bottom, it couldn't have been over ten feet, then clatter on over something, then the thing went off. Rogers jumped straight in after it, they had seconds, and stumbled on landing. "Stairs." He called up. Romanoff landed next to him, rather more gracefully. The stairs ran up, apparently in to the ceiling, or the floor of the room above. The acrid smoke from the grenade was mostly beneath them. There was light on the far side of it, not much, but some. He charged in to it, listening hard, hoping he'd be close enough to bulldoze anyone in the smoke. Nothing was moving. Romanoff helped Barton down. They caught up with him. They carried on in silence towards the light, barely able to see their feet, which was unnerving. Now and then, what might have been a silenced gunshot sounded ahead of them. Rogers suspected he knew why, but bitterly hoped he was wrong. A door ahead was ajar, the light seemed to be directly beyond it, people were moving around beyond it, speaking in hurried barks, not in English. Rogers reached for the door. Barton grabbed his arm to stop him and ran a torch beam round the edge. A fine wire ran between the door and the wall. If he'd opened the door, he'd have pulled it, and pulled that thing it was attached to, a bomb by the look of it. Barton tugged the wire off the door and laid it to one side, then held up eight fingers, gesturing towards the light room. Rogers nodded and took the central position, Romanoff on his right, Barton on his left.
He crashed through the door. Light stabbed at his eyes, but he could see. Five men standing, two white coats, scientists, minimal threats, three wearing black, fighters. The place already looked like a battlefield. Barton and Romanoff had each dropped a man by the time Rogers reached the nearest fighter and threw him back twelve feet by the neck. One of the scientists had taken cover, the other had a neat bullet hole in his forehead. Rogers jumped an upturned desk and smashed computer and landed six feet beyond the man, who was lying convulsing and frothing at the mouth.
"Cyanide?" Barton asked as he caught up. Rogers nodded. Romanoff stooped and slit the man's throat.
"Or soap and twitching." She said.
"What happened here?" Barton asked, looking around at the devastated lab. "Do you think The Winter Soldier fought his way out from down here?"
"Not necessarily. If you threaten HYDRA, they scorch the earth." Rogers said. "This is a good sign though. If they do this, there's no self-destruct."
Barton blew out through his nose. "Yeah, I guess that's good."
There was only one other door out of the room. They formed up and moved off again. There were no more shots now. They hadn't really had a hope, only three of them and trying to deal with Bucky as well, they could never have been quick enough. The smell of blood met them before they saw the four men standing ready to meet them. Rogers broke in to a sprint, tucking his head down behind his shield, usually people didn't think to shoot at his legs. He heard a cry of pain from ahead of him, then another. He grabbed the barrel of the gun held by the nearest man still standing, pulled it forwards and bashed the man off it with his shield. The man reeled backwards and fell. Rogers stamped on his neck, turning to face the other, who went down as he looked, an arrow stuck in his chest. There were other smells here than blood; urine, sweat… human filth making the air thick. Barton and Romanoff caught up with him, Barton stooped to pull the arrows from the chests of the men he'd killed, nose wrinkled at the smell.
"That's probably it." Rogers said, feeling his stomach tightening. He knew what he was about to see, they all did. "Come on."
The bodies lay in a heap against a wall; they looked like they'd been dragged there.
"Prisoners?" Romanoff asked. Rogers nodded bitterly. They'd never had a chance. He stashed his shield on his back and picked up the top body in his arms. It was a man, greying and thin, wearing layer on layer of dirty clothes, with a neat bullet hole in the back of his head. Rogers laid him down straight on a clear bit of floor and closed the man's staring eyes. Barton had picked up the next and was pulling him clear.
"They pull these off the streets, you think?" He asked.
"Probably." Romanoff said, gun still levelled, not willing to trust the fight was over.
"Why?" Barton asked. "Lab rats?"
Romanoff drew breath slowly. "Not necessarily."
Rogers looked up at her as he stooped to pick up another body, another thin, filthy man. She had more in her head, but she wasn't going to say it.
Romanoff picked up one of the bodies and carried him away to lay him straight. Barton copied her. After a long moment, so did Rogers. They set the bodies down on clear ground, like the others, and closed their eyes.
"They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn." Silence hung for a long moment. He could feel Romanoff and Barton looking at him, he didn't really care. He and the Howlin' commandos had always said that over unknown dead. They'd all quietly hated how HYDRA made their prisoners so nameless, they had almost never been able to find the names of the dead, so they went unmarked, MIA forever. Not KIA or POW. MIA, which had to be worse. This had been their way of marking their passing. It was inadequate. It was nominal and pointless, but they did it anyway.
They walked in silence back to the surface, radioed the police to let them know the fight was over, and what they'd find underground. You never walked away from a pile of dead prisoners talkative, whether it was your first or your hundredth. It had even pushed Bucky out of the front of his mind for a while.
Attempts to call Stark on the way back were futile. Jarvis, who served as Tony's answer machine, just said
"Mister Stark is with the asset and has given instructions that he is not to be disturbed unless the building is on fire." The asset. Rogers had half a mind to tell Jarvis that Bucky had a name, but didn't. It wasn't as though the thing could actually think, it was just copying Stark. They landed, changed out of their gear and washed off in silence, all Steve wanted to do now was get to Bucky. He probably still wasn't conscious, maybe Stark hadn't even managed to get the arm off yet. Steve had a quiet suspicion that that arm was all that kept Stark behind this; once it and Bucky were separate, who knew what would happen? They'd cross that bridge when they came to it.