A/N: If you want mood music, the song I listened to while I edited this chapter: "No Doubt" by Rogers & Dean. Also, Infinity War, y'all. I just...can't. Next May cannot come soon enough. Let me what you think about this chapter!


The coin had finally stopped spinning.

It had appeared in his mind at some point, fat and gleaming bright silver among the dark, chaotic contents of his mind, a representation of his growing curiosity and What now? and What if? The beginnings of it had formed long ago—long before he'd brought her to Hydra, back when he'd begun to wonder why Hydra needed her, what they were going to do to her, what was going to happen to her iron will when he brought her here—but it had really started spinning the moment that she'd loudly refused to help Hydra because of him. He couldn't forget that crucial fact: she'd never intended to help Hydra but what had really made her crack was finding out they were mistreating him.

The coin had been spinning then, so fast that he felt vaguely sick when he focused on the motion, but he felt it slow down slightly after that pivotal moment. She'd defied Hydra on his behalf, she'd called herself his friend, and all of that shook him to his core because it was so…strange. So unexpected. Funny, because he prided himself on seeing every aspect of every situation—and yet this had come completely out of left field.

He'd been given a week and commanded to brutalize her in almost any way possible—save for permanently damaging her body or mind—to get her to agree to work with Hydra. Both he and the Director knew that he could have accomplished the same goal with less force—after all, someone as small as her didn't require his full force or brutality, really—but they both also knew this was about more than getting her to agree to work with Hydra. It was about punishing her. She dared to care about him—strangely, inexplicably—when no one else would, or could, and the Director wanted to punish her for that. He didn't just like to control people; he liked to completely obliterate their feelings and resistance.

But everything had felt different after she'd made her stand. He hadn't wanted to attack her. He'd planned on giving her the full week before he was forced to do anything. But he couldn't help himself: for the first time in his existence, he wanted to known why. He'd never questioned before and he wasn't one for analyzing the intricacies of human relationships but even he knew that sacrificing oneself for someone who'd kidnapped and abused them was madness. Why had she done it? Why did she persist in seeing something more in him? Why had she kept questioning and probing during their journey here? Why?

And, as it turned out, she couldn't help herself either: she had things she wanted to know as well. Why he wasn't attacking her. What he knew about himself. What he remembered about his past. Her questions hurt his mind and caused sharp snaps of pain—small rubber bands—to ricochet off of his mind and stomach and the backs of his eyes. But he answered her questions anyway because…well, to hell with it. Why not? Things were different—things were changing—and he couldn't deny this…so he might as well run with it and see where it took him.

The thrill of plunging into an unknown with no orders, no commands, no schedule, no plan, no black and white grid… It was terrifying and enticing all at once.

The coin had spun slower and slower still—but it had still been spinning this whole time. Despite all the ways he'd changed, he still kept his options open because that was who he was. He didn't jump into decisions just like that that. He considered all sides and even though most of him was telling him that breaking away from Hydra was the new direction to go in, a small part of him knew that Hydra was still a path he could continue down on. He hadn't made his final choice yet: to go with Hydra…or to go with her? Because there were two clear sides in the situation, he could see this; Sophie wasn't going to go down without a fight. The coin spun slowly, trembling, wobbling, wavering between two sides.

And then she'd kissed him and the coin—and time—and everything—had stood still. The sirens in his head had died down, the screams silenced to the faintest of dusty whispers, the ghosts and memories blurred away into nothingness. It had been amazing. He'd sunk into the sweet quiet of peace, even as his body had tingled with the shock of being touched in ways that he'd…never…

The coin toppled over at that moment and he knew he was gone. No matter what happened now, he couldn't go back to Hydra. The decision was made long before she'd told him who he'd been in the past. Even if she somehow vanished from his life in the future, even if he died getting away, nothing could change the fact that she'd given him something that he couldn't remember Hydra ever having given him. The empty comfort of following their mechanical orders could never compare to the sweet relief his mind had felt, descending into velvety silence as she kissed him, his skin sparking in faint muscle memories of somehow knowing how to do this with other girls—even when he knew he had no real memories of doing it.

That was why beating her up had been difficult. He hadn't wanted to do it at all. No—that wasn't right, because he'd never wanted to attack her, even before. He'd always done it out of a sense of necessity. But now…he actively did not want to attack her, versus having no real feelings on the issue. But he knew how to keep a cover and he knew that she knew, by now, what was necessary for survival—and so he'd done it. He'd tried to keep his blows as light as possible, avoiding her face and collarbone and ribcage, but he knew that his easiest was still hard on her.

Oh well. In the long run, it was needed. He compartmentalized, as he was used to doing, and shrugged away his discomfort with the situation, stuffing it into a dark recess in the back of his mind.

He'd expected tears and complaining afterward. Perhaps some curses. And he wouldn't begrudge her those, even though they both knew he hadn't chosen to do it.

What he hadn't expected was her telling him who he was.

He still had no real idea how she'd done it; this was something he'd have to press later. It didn't seem to matter much right now but he didn't like being kept in the dark. Ironic, really, considering they'd kept him in the dark about virtually everything since…well, since James Barnes had been frozen apparently—but he'd never known he was being kept in the dark.

The only reason he was keeping it together was the fact that he had a new mission. This was what he knew. This was what he was good at. This is what he was made—no, built—for. He felt like collapsing and sleeping for a thousand years when he tried to process all of the information Sophie had dumped on him in low, whispered tones, tears cascading down her cheeks (though why was she crying? This was puzzling). So much information. His name. A birth date. A location for a home. The names of people he knew. The more she told him, the more solid and colorful the pale memories in his mind became, the more he began to feel like they truly belonged to him.

He was starting to put names to the ghosts around him.

He couldn't recall everything—in fact, he still couldn't recall much—but now when he caught the image of the blond man in his mind, the one who gave him a seizing feeling in his chest, the one that made his shoulders tense up as if he should have been on the lookout for an assailant, the name popped into his head as naturally as breathing: Steve. But why these feelings? He grappled with them, wading through the memories, somehow knowing that Steve was no enemy…but the fierceness that rose up in him…a feeling… Protectiveness? Is that what they called it?

Another face: a smiling woman with laugh lines around her almond-shaped eyes, dark hair in a short, wavy bob around her face. A name: Elizabeth. And with the name and face, a strange, warm feeling…the feeling of arms around him, a hand gently brushing over the top of his head, the scent of something clean and sweet.

Another face, a memory, a ginger-haired boy with freckles and a gap between his teeth, grinning widely and hoisting something—a bat—behind him while walking backwards…a blurry field…something glittering in the sky… Carl. Carl. That was the name. And…baseball. That was the game. A group of boys, grinning, mocking, mischief-making, rough, rowdy, dirty, friends

And so many more. Some still didn't have names. Some still didn't make sense. In fact, many still didn't have names or make sense. Many were faded, spotty, blotchy, patchy. Missing links in the chain. Missing pieces of a puzzle. Runny rivulets of paint dripping down a canvas, distorting the whole image and making it hard to see.

But still—what she'd given him—it was a gift. He knew his name.

James.

James.

There was a nickname in there somewhere—she'd whispered it while she'd been rushing to tell him as much as she could, as quickly as she could… "Bucky," she'd said. The name felt achingly familiar, like slipping on a pair of old gloves made for his hands, but he ignored it for now because what use did he have for nicknames now? Nicknames were given by friends for personal use. None of those people existed now. They were all dead and gone and so was his nickname then, as far as he was concerned—for now, anyway.

But James—James still existed. James had always existed because James was who he was, from the minute he'd been born—and he had a date for that now!—and James could never be erased by dead friends or the chair…

He couldn't stop saying it. He controlled himself from saying it out loud, or even whispering it or mouthing it, knowing that Sophie would get frightened by it (nervous thing that she still was) but he chanted it repeatedly in his mind. James, James, James, James… It felt so wrong but so right all at once. It didn't fit—how could it, when he'd just re-learned it?—but at the same time, no other name could have ever made sense.

The world had gone mad for him.

And the only way he even managed to stay focused and not completely lose his mind on these new facts, or grab Sophie by the shoulders and shake her until she rattled, demanding every last fact about himself that she had learned, was by focusing on the new mission. He'd completed every mission he'd been given so far and he'd be damned if he didn't complete this one as well.

Yes, this mission would go against the ones who had given him his other missions…

But he knew now that they'd stolen his life. So he didn't care.

Much. Sometimes (and he would never have admitted this to anyone) the thought of breaking away from Hydra sent painful spasms of fear and anxiety rippling across his stomach, twisting it painfully. It was all he'd ever known.

The mission. Focus on the mission.

Get out with the girl without either of them dying. If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't have thought this plan through so much. They weren't expecting him to turn on them—a master never expected their dog to turn on them, he realized with a shocking surge of acrid hatred, a tidal wave of rage building inside him when he thought about what he'd been to them—and had he been alone…he could have just destroyed his way through the building, killed everyone in his path, and escaped.

The talents they'd hammered into him would have been the very things to help him remain hidden from them.

However, now that Sophie was in the equation…he couldn't do that. He could survive a hailstorm of bullets but she probably couldn't. Besides, she would probably oppose slaughtering everyone in their path. He wondered for a moment if he was supposed to oppose it now too, now that he knew who he'd been…

But he didn't.

Was this worrying? That the thought of killing people didn't immediately fill him with horror or guilt? Because it didn't. He felt wholly apathetic at the notion. It didn't fill him with any pleasure but he didn't oppose it in any way. It was a part of his life. It was what he did. What did he know, besides pulling a trigger or sliding a dagger across someone's throat? Besides severing spines and stopping hearts? Half-formed memories about playing baseball and checkers and dancing with blurry women didn't count. He didn't remember how to really do any of that.

Except kissing. His body still apparently remembered how to do that. So perhaps…he remembered more than he knew…

Still. For the moment, killing…violence…fighting…this was his life.

And it wouldn't cease to be so for the time being.

The first step was to get him and Sophie out of this base safely and go into hiding. Then…he knew Sophie wanted to contact Captain America—the man who was apparently his best friend of old—to save a bunch of people he didn't personally care about. He wasn't going to go along with this part of the plan. He didn't have any interest in being a hero or meeting this man who—

Who could end up meaning so much. Who could end up unlocking so many painful…things.

No, he did not want to meet this man. He was not ready to look his past in the flesh-and-blood face and confront the fact that he'd had real people and a real life ripped from him. It was easier to swallow when the people in his memories…remained memories.

It was simple, really. Sophie wanted to immediately go meet this Captain America man. He did not. But he wasn't going to let Sophie get away from him that quickly—not when he'd just realized that she had the ability to silence his mind for a while. If she could do that, what else could she do? She'd already figured out the truth about who he was. No…he was definitely not letting her go anytime soon. She was valuable. But she'd struggle against him if she knew he was never planning on meeting Captain America—so he would have to pretend like he was going to, all while planning their escape from here without getting the girl killed. And he'd never been a great actor and Sophie was pretty intuitive when it came to him, so…

Simple. Easy. Nothing could possibly go wrong.


Winter had lapsed into a thoughtful silence and didn't seem like he would ever come out of it. His eyes still wore the shell-shocked look he'd gotten when Sophie had been pouring out facts about James Barnes to him but his rigid shoulders had relaxed a bit and she could tell he was deeply mulling things over. Whether he was mulling over what she'd told him about his past self, or the new mission…this she didn't know.

James. The name sat at the tip of her tongue and she wondered at it. It already seemed to fit. She studied his curtain of dark hair, the dark blue-purple hollows underneath his eyes, the pale skin beneath the facial hair… Of course he's a James. It fits so well. She didn't know why it did; it just did. She could already feel the name Winter slipping away from her…but of course, she couldn't call him "James" until they left this place—and until he gave her permission. Who knew, maybe he never wanted to be called James again. Or perhaps he wanted to be called by the strange nickname she'd found in his files, a quick note made by someone on a list of words to condition him to forget: "Bucky." It was a weird name, not one she'd ever heard before. She wasn't sure where it came from; his middle name, perhaps? Buchanan? Or perhaps something else. Still, she wasn't going to call him that. It felt…odd. She wasn't in any position to call him by an old nickname—at least, not unless he wanted to be called by the old nickname.

But this was all stupid to think about now anyway. Unless they escaped, this dilemma would never even matter. So for now, he was still Winter to her.

The pain from her beating wasn't exactly killing her but it came in slow waves. Sometimes she felt better, only slightly sore, and then sometimes she felt like laying down and groaning at the pain radiating over her hipbone, her knee, her shoulders…

Hours passed. She crawled away from Winter back to her spot across the way, hoping that perhaps their entire talk earlier had gone unnoticed. Of course, the guard had caught them kissing…but Sophie hoped he stayed silent on the whole matter. Because if he started blabbing about it, he'd have to explain why he was down there in the first place—and then he'd be calling attention to the fact that he had let Sophie out against the Director's orders and how it was technically his fault that she'd stabbed Rorkin.

And he'd seemed pretty afraid that he would get in trouble for that.

Someone came down to shove dinner through the slots. Neither she nor Winter attempted to eat anything. Both of them were lost in their own thoughts. She was thinking about how crazy her life had gotten, how strange it was how much more there was to Winter, and how wildly daring she'd become lately. Unbeknownst to her, he was thinking about James Barnes, toying with old memories that felt much fresher, and considering how to reach the electric grid room and garage without drawing attention to themselves.

Sophie lay on the ground, eyes closed, and tried to sort out the new information swirling around in her head. She knew so much now. She understood now why his memories had featured a small blond man and a large blond man who felt like the same person—they were the same person. She knew why he only had one metal arm—his real arm had been half torn off when he'd been discovered, half-dead, half-frozen, in the snow-capped mountains of Europe…

Her head throbbed with the overload of new information but not in an unpleasant way. It had been so long since she'd downloaded information and her mind and body felt electric. Her veins felt like they were full of sizzling wires, slowly cooling down, pulling her down off her downloading high. She'd forgotten how addicting and delicious this felt afterward, even when it usually left her with a pounding headache due to the surge of information crashing into her mind. Human minds weren't used to taking in a colossal amount of information in a matter of seconds and sometimes the stimuli could be overwhelming…

Still, she felt like she was glowing on the inside, blinking lights and softly gleaming keypads.

Locate. Sort. File away. Delete? This went on for hours. She went over the information in her mind again and again and again. It was a strange process. She somehow knew everything the moment she'd downloaded it—of course she did, it was in her mind—but she also somehow didn't know. It was like her subconscious prickled with the knowledge but she had to actually focus and go over the information to really get to know it. She'd experienced this before with reading books. Sometimes she would read entire pages and all the words would be in her head—she'd have perfectly understood them all—but she would need to pause and go over them to get to the deeper meaning behind them.

The information was fragmented as well and this gave her a headache. She tried to hold onto the glowing feeling as she thought but it slowly faded and a tight feeling replaced it, a metal band around her head that slowly began to squeeze tighter and tighter as she screwed her face up against the pain and tried to figure out what information she was missing. She had the Winter Soldier Project's entire files but some information had been deleted or blanked out prior to her downloading it. Also, she had to account for the fact that she wasn't a genius. Just because she had the knowledge in her head didn't mean she understood what all of it meant. Technical terms and words floated around in her mind—"Compensatory mechanical function" and "stress reaction adaptor"—that she didn't understand at all.

Going through his files, seeing all that James Barnes had been subjected to, made her feel sick so she switched to Hydra's other files. She'd only downloaded those from the last five years. She probably could have fit more than that but she'd been in a panicked hurry and five years seemed like a reasonable amount of time to steal.

She didn't understand much of what she'd downloaded. Various different projects and missions, a lot of them filled with plans and technicalities she didn't get… She shelved the ones that had been stamped with the word COMPLETED because those weren't important at the moment. She considered deleting them but decided against it. She only deleted what was absolutely necessary because deleting information was a very…uncomfortable process.

She saw the word "SHIELD" mentioned quite a lot in the files. She wasn't sure what SHIELD was—she thought it was some sort of intelligence agency like the CIA—but she assumed agencies like SHIELD and the CIA were natural enemies of agencies like Hydra, so she shrugged and glossed over that information, not giving it much attention or thought.

She couldn't stop thinking about Project Insight. It was a very recent file and top-secret, judging by how much information had been blanked out. It must be very important to Hydra, for them to blank out so much information even on their private servers… A chill slowly traced its way down her spine as she thought about what it could potentially mean for humanity: a weapon that could take out millions of people around the world all at once, anyone who Hydra deemed a threat. It was complete madness. Such a weapon could send the world into flat-out chaos. She couldn't let this happen. She was no hero but the thought of sitting back and not even trying to stop Project Insight made her mouth go dry with horror.

Winter thought for a very long time, lost in his own thoughts, eyes dim, as still as stone. She glanced at him several times, wondering if she should ask him what was going on in that strange mind of his, but he gave no indication that he even realized she had looked at him. So she looked away, nursing her aching body and cursing his super-strength.

Eventually she picked up her untouched food tray and smacked it lightly against the ground to get his attention. It worked. His wary eyes snapped to her immediately and she mouthed, "Any plans yet?"

He shook his head and she left him alone after that.

She lay down on the hard ground and closed her eyes. She'd long since lost track of time, whether it was day or night, because the lights never dimmed and there were no windows, but she had a feeling it was time to go to sleep. She felt like they were both teetering on the brink of something big—a revelation, an escape, something—so she'd need to be rested for whatever it was. It took a while of staring at the cement wall inches from her face but eventually she fell asleep…

She stood in a huge, dark, cavernous room. The ceiling was so high that she couldn't see it—but it was incredibly high. She just knew it somehow, just as she instinctively knew that she was standing in her own mind. Tall metal boxes ten-feet-tall stood in lines that stretched as far as she could squint in the dim light from one white bulb descending from the darkness just above her head.

She started forward, walking at first and then lightly jogging and then breaking into a sprint. Her panic began to grow bigger and bigger. When would this pathway end? Where was this exit? How would she get out of here? And why was it so dark?

Just as her panic mounted on borderline hysteria, she suddenly skidded to a stop at a junction. She looked left and right and realized that the tall metal boxes didn't stretch out endlessly in one direction—they went left and right as well. This whole place was a grid, criss-crossing pathways bordered by tall metal boxes that she didn't understand.

She turned right and started down the pathway, peering down every empty path she passed, seeing nothing but darkness. The white light bulb seemed to follow her wherever she want, always hanging over her head. How was she supposed to escape this place?

Or maybe she could never escape it because it was her mind. She was trapped here. Her final and eternal cage—the one she could never leave.

She stopped running and reached out and touched one of the metal boxes closest to her for the first time. It felt dusty and somehow she knew it was old and unused. She wiped the dust away and blew on it the way she would blow out a birthday cake candle. Suddenly blinking lights glowed to life in the machine, starting where she had blown the dust away and then spreading outward, lighting the whole box up. She took a step back, shocked, and watched as a chain reaction took place. Once the box was lit up, blinking and whirring softly, breaking the silence, the box next to it began to light up—and then the box next to it—and then the next—and the next—and the next—

Slowly, she spun in a circle in awe, watching rows after row of tall metal boxes light up and come to life, blinking with lights and making sounds like a running computer. What were they? She slowly approached one and examined it. It looked like an enormous computer but it had drawers. She yanked one open and peered inside. A jumble of glowing letters lay scattered at the bottom: O, S, R, D, U, I, E… What did it mean? She slammed the drawer shut and ran down the row, opening drawers at random, peering inside. None made sense. A half-eaten birthday cake lay inside one. A video game with a man with a mask on the cover. A pile of photos of a blonde girl with curly hair and blue eyes lay inside another one. Sophie flinched and staggered back, hitting a metal box with her back.

"Sophie."

She turned and her legs nearly gave way. The girl with the curly blonde hair, beautiful cascading ringlets, stood in front of her, blue eyes distrustful. A boy stood next to her, messy reddish-brown hair, looking at Sophie disdainfully. What was going on? She turned on weak legs and began to run down the aisle, looking for the break so she could turn the corner—but this aisle seemed to go on forever and ever and ever…

The girl and the boy ran alongside with her, keeping easy pace. "Where's your heart?" the girl asked.

Sophie stopped suddenly and backed away from them, her heartbeat increasing in terror. She didn't want to talk to them. She didn't want to look at them. She tried to raise her hands to block them out of her vision but her hands were suddenly stuck to her sides, unable to move.

The girl moved toward her with narrowed eyes. "Where is your heart, Sophie? Or do you even have one?" The boy followed a few paces behind, silent, his eyes cold. Sophie's mouth was dry and she was sweating. "Where will you run?" the girl whispered. "Who will take you in? All you are is a machine."

"I'm not," Sophie said but her voice cracked, broke, wavered. What if they were right? Tears burned her eyes.

"You're desperate and pathetic!" the girl shouted. "You're not a person! Look at yourself! Look!" She grabbed a gigantic mirror that stood next to her suddenly and rolled it towards Sophie. Sophie tried to look away but now her entire body was frozen in place, unable to move at all. She stared in horror at her reflection—or what was left of her. She was a mangled mess, wires dangled from a hole in her chest, skin scraped away on her face to reveal shiny metal underneath. She opened her mouth and tried to scream and scream but nothing came out because she didn't have a tongue or teeth; instead, wires and metal computer parts fell out of her mouth—

"Sophie."

The voice was low and murmured but Sophie still bolted upright, sweating and gasping, tears covering her face. She frantically patted her face, feeling her cheeks, her tongue, her heart, her throat. Soft human skin, not cold metal or red and black wires, not electrical equipment or mechanics—

I am not a machine.

Chest heaving up and down, she turned to see Winter crouching near her, watching her carefully. "Nightmare," she said, her throat dry, wiping at her mouth and drying her tears. He nodded once but didn't probe, for which she was thankful. How could she ever explain it to him? He would think her nightmares and horrors so petty and trivial—and, compared to his horrors, they were petty and trivial…

That didn't stop them from haunting her, however.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I have a plan," he said in a low voice, his eyes almost burning with intensity. "When you looked at Hydra's files, did you happen to look at a map for the facility?"


Thankfully, she had managed to look at a map of the facility. She went one even further and told him that she knew the entire blueprints to the whole facility. He still didn't know how she suddenly knew all of this—his files, the files on Project Insight, the blueprints to this facility—and he suspected she had a photographic memory but he knew he would definitely ask her the first chance he got. He wasn't going to let this go. It was obviously connected to why Hydra had wanted her in the first place and perhaps she could be of use to him as well; however, all of that would have to wait until after they broke free of this place.

This place. Yet another one of Hydra's bases. Hydra. Hydra. The only thing he'd ever known—so full of lies. So full of treachery. They'd molded him like he was clay, engineered his mind, treated him like he was their puppet, their brainless attack dog…

The dog was going to bite back.

He'd formulated a plan in his head. It wasn't the best plan but it was all he had right now. He just needed a few pieces of information—which Sophie easily supplied him with. She explained once exactly where everything he needed to know was and that was that. He didn't need to ask again. His mind was sharp enough that once he was briefed on the information and plans, he never needed to ask again. His mouth twisted bitterly. They really had created the perfect soldier, the perfect deadly weapon.

Let's see how they like it when the weapon is pointed at them.

He explained his plan to Sophie and watched her carefully. She interrupted him a few times to ask questions and ask him to repeat certain parts. Interesting—so when he verbally told her something, she couldn't immediately memorize it. Perhaps she only worked with visuals—photos and words and paper. He filed the information away in his mind to think about later and patiently answered all of her questions. He was itching to break out of here and have his revenge on Hydra but there was no point being impatient with her. He needed her mind clear and if he snapped at her, she would only get upset and frazzled.

Once she got the plan, they both sat there for a moment, occasionally glancing at camera. By this point he knew that no one was really watching them—Hydra had too much faith in the Winter Soldier's abilities—but he'd have to make the camera a part of their escape anyway, to lessen their chances of getting caught.

"Well," Sophie said quietly, "I guess we should do this. Nothing to wait for, right?"

"Right," he said tersely. "Are you ready? Do you remember where to go?"

She nodded, biting her lip, her face pale and worried. "What if you…don't make it?"

"I'm going to make it," he scoffed.

"How do you know?"

"Because." He got to his feet and grabbed her upper arm, hauling her to her feet. "I'm the Winter Soldier."

He walked over to the camera, studied it for a moment, and then leaped up and smashed his thumb into the small glass lens. The lens cracked and the red light immediately went dark. Now they had to move quickly in case someone sounded the alarm. He reached up to the air vent and punched upward, knocking the slatted metal panel upward. He slid it into the vent and reached out to Sophie. She came towards him, he grabbed her by her waist, and lifted her up. She was as light as a feather. She grabbed the edge of the vent and hauled herself up. She peered down at him, her face shrouded in shadows, and he nodded. She slid the panel back into place so it looked like no one had ever moved it. He heard her crawling away and listened until all sounds of her had vanished.

She was gone. He hoped she would remember which direction to go. If she got lost…he'd have to rip apart the entire building looking for her and they'd both have a much higher chance of being caught (and killed, in her case).

He ripped the cell door off of its hinges and stepped outside. There was no guard in sight, which made sense; he was down here and he was Hydra's most dangerous guard. He raced down the hall, passing darkened cell after cell, and stepped into the elevator. He hadn't known where the security room was before but thanks to Sophie, he did now. He rode up to the first floor and after checking both ways to make sure the coast was clear, he crept off to the security room. He was lucky not to encounter anyone else on his way there. If he had, he was sure he could have bluffed his way through it—but why call attention to the fact that he was out here?

The security room was a small room at the end of a narrow hall that clearly no one went down often, judging by the dust and dirt gathered against the corners of the floor. He swiftly and silently made his inside the room. It was tiny and dark, computer screens taking up almost every inch of wall, monitoring every room and hallway in the compound except for the Director's office. And there it was—a small monitor in the right-hand corner that showed a blank, fuzzy screen where their cell's feed should have been. A young man leaned back in a swivel desk chair, feet propped on the desk, snack wrappers laying all around him. His skin had a greasy, sallow look in the dim light of the computer monitors and he was playing some sort of game on a hand-held device. Enormous headphones covered his ears.

He wondered for a moment what Hydra was doing, employing such juvenile, worthless idiots—and then shrugged and stepped forward into view. All the better for him that they did. He'd come in so silently, used to moving in shadow and darkness, that the young man hadn't noticed him. When he moved, the boy looked up, his eyes widening. He paused his game and pulled his headphones off. "Who are you?" he demanded in a high, fearful voice. The Winter Soldier waited, silently, watching him, arms crossed. This was one of his best tactics: simply intimidate them into messing up or confessing—before he killed them, of course.

The man's eyes took in his outfit and stance and widened even more. "Wait a minute—holy shit—you're him, aren't you? The one they thought was dead—you're the Winter Soldier!" His posture relaxed slightly as he realized the Winter Soldier was another Hydra member, like him.

Too bad, he thought emotionlessly before he stepped forward and snapped the boy's neck. His hands went slack and his gaming device clattered to the ground, eyes staring vacantly up at the ceiling.

The Winter Soldier stepped back out of the security room and checked a clock hanging at the far end of the hall. It had been five minutes since their escape had begun. He had to move faster. The hallways were strangely empty as he moved up another floor to the weapons room. This room was restricted access; only certain people were allowed in here. He, of course, was allowed in here. He pressed his thumb against the scanner. It let out a loud beep, flashed green, and the door clicked. He slipped inside and shut the door. His ID would be recorded permanently within the logbook but by the time anyone realized he'd been in to get weapons, he would hopefully be long gone.

He wasn't sure exactly what he would need but he knew that if things went his way, he would never be returning here. He focused very hard on not thinking about what he would do after he left here because he saw nothing but empty darkness stretching out in front of him. He strapped as many weapons onto his person that he reasonably could without impeding his range of motion or falling over. He took one last look at the weapons room and then left.

His luck ran out out as soon as he stepped outside. An agent turned the corner—a tall, broad-shouldered man with a blond buzz cut and pale blue eyes. He had a distinctive Nordic look to him. The Winter Soldier knew him; his name escaped him but he'd accompanied him on a few of his most recent missions. There had been so many men—and a few women—over the decades, all these faces blurring into each other. He'd be woken up for yet another mission and realize that time had passed and the old team had died or gotten too old for work.

"Soldier," the man said in surprise, halting in his tracks. "What are you doing here?"

The Winter Soldier gave him the coldest look he could manage, which was very cold. "What's it to you?"

The man quailed under his dangerous stare for a moment, clearly unnerved. Despite his large size and high-ranking status, he, like every other strike agent in Hydra, knew that the Winter Soldier outranked them all in terms of skill and strength. That didn't mean they all respected him, however; some did and then there were others who knew that even though his bark and bite were ferocious, his will was as broken as the lowest, abused animal. "You're supposed to be…with the girl…" The man's voice trailed off.

"And I will be," he said clearly and coldly. "Getting some supplies to get her talking."

The man looked doubtfully at the arsenal hanging off of his person. "All of that—just to make a hundred-pound girl talk?"

"She's stubborn," he said through clenched teeth. "Are we done?" He turned without waiting for an answer and stalked purposefully down the hall, feeling the man's gaze on the back of his neck as he went. He could tell that the agent knew something wasn't right—their instincts were sharper than ordinary civilians—but he clearly wasn't sure if he should press the issue because he was dealing with the Winter Soldier, a living legend within Hydra. The Winter Soldier hoped the agent would just shrug and drop the issue, lazy and complacent like many agents had become as the years had gone on.

"The elevator to the basement is this way," the man called out from behind him.

The Winter Soldier paused and then curtly called, "I know," over his shoulder before continuing to the elevator at the far end of the hall, the one that led to the fourth floor.

"So where are you going?" the agent loudly called, suspicion coloring his tone.

The Winter Soldier decided it was best not to answer at this point. He was wasting time and Sophie would (hopefully) be waiting for him by now. He hoped she had the good sense not to get caught before he had a chance to meet up with her. He stepped into the elevator and saw the agent coming down the hall towards him. The last thing he saw before the doors slid shut was the agent's narrowed eyes and mouth opening to say something that was cut off.

The elevator slid up three floors. When he stepped out onto the fourth floor, an alarm suddenly began blaring and he gritted his teeth, silently cursing. The idiotic agent had rang the alarm—now everyone would know something was wrong. Still—no matter. No one would suspect that he was involved as long as he kept an even expression.

Agents poured into the hallway from various doorways, weapons drawn, confused expressions on their faces. "What's going on?" someone called. Another said, clearly startled, "Soldier! What's—what's happening? Are we under attack?"

He shrugged and kept his gaze focused on the doors at the very far end of the corridor, keeping his pace steady. If he ran now people would find it suspicious. He suddenly felt a tiny spasm of guilt for not telling Sophie this part of the plan—but he couldn't have told her. She wouldn't have understood why he needed to do this and it put her in danger. So he'd just conveniently left out the part where he was going to murder the Director before they made their escape.

"STOP HIM!"

The Winter Soldier spun to see the elevator doors open and the Nordic agent stumble into the hall, pointing at him. "He's up to something!" the agent shouted furiously. "The guard in the security room is dead! Neck snapped! He did it!"

The hallway went slightly quiet as agents turned and looked at the Winter Soldier, some confused, some fearful, some cautious and watchful. Everywhere he looked, he saw distrustful eyes, narrowed eyes, pinched mouths. People feared him, some people perhaps even respected what he could do—but no one liked him enough to stand up for him.

The way Sophie had stood up for him.

And why would they? What was there to like? What was there to stand up for? Sophie had seen something in him but he didn't expect any other human to see what she had.

He raised his chin slightly and tonelessly said, "I don't know what you're talking about," while surreptitiously slipping his hand to the gun strapped to his thigh—a move that didn't go unnoticed by several agents. Perhaps he could still get out of this without blowing his cover—

"Where's the girl?" the agent demanded, looking both fearful and livid all at once. "I checked the security camera—it's broken! What did you do, Soldier? The girl isn't in the cell anymore, is she?"

Dammit. Now the secret was out.

He took one moment to silently curse the fact that he was not, in fact, going to get to kill the Director today—a job left for another day then—and then he whipped out his pistol and began firing. Immediate chaos descended. People had sensed trouble brewing but no one had anticipated the Winter Soldier turning on its master. Several agents went down before anyone had the presence of mind to pull out their own weapons and begin firing—but by that time, he had already thrown himself into the fray.

The fight was furious but short. None of the agents were any match for him and even though one bullet grazed his right bicep, he dealt with all ten agents in the hallway quickly, firing off rounds into three heads, snapping the necks of two, kicking one so hard that they hit the wall and snapped their spine immediately, and stabbing the rest with a dagger he yanked out of his belt. He wasn't the Winter Soldier for nothing.

But the alarms were still blaring and he knew he only had moments now before an entire battalion descended upon him. These agents had just had the misfortune of wandering into this hallway out of curiosity—but the ones below, the ones equipped to deal with emergencies, they'd have been racing to get into gear the second they heard the alarm. A strike team would be sweeping the entire building minutes from now and it would only take one glance at this bloody picture to realize what had happened here.

The Winter Soldier had betrayed Hydra.

He wished he could go to Sophie immediately but unfortunately, there was still one thing left to do. He turned and sprinted down the hall, skidding around the corner, kicking a door open so hard it flew off its hinges, and hurtled down three flights of stairs, hitting the ground floor so hard that he left craters in the ground. He paused outside the door and peered through the small window set into it. A group of six strike agents, dressed in all black and crouching low, crept swiftly towards the elevator, led by a man named Monroe, an extremely capable commander. He motioned to them silently with his hands and the Winter Soldier decided it was now or never.

He burst open through the door and the entire team whirled immediately, weapons focused on him. "Soldier," Monroe said, clearly confused but also relieved. His sharp eyes immediately took in the blood smeared on his hands and dripping down his right arm. "What's going on?"

"Intruders," he grunted. "Fourth floor. Took care of them—but there could be more. You should check it out."

"Where are you going?" Monroe demanded.

He shot him a cold look. "My prisoner?"

"Right," Monroe said. "Right, almost forgot about her. Well—you heard the Soldier," he barked to his team. "Be on the lookout. Jefferson, Ketlucky, Boro, I want you to take the stairs. Ketlucky, get to the Director's office and make sure he's secure. The rest, with me in the elevator. Weapons at the ready." He nodded once at the Winter Soldier.

The Winter Soldier turned and left. The second the entire team was out of sight, he broke into a sprint again. It would take them only seconds to realize that the dead people upstairs weren't intruders but instead Hydra agents—and that he'd been lying. Then it would take them another few seconds to sound the alarm through their radios and get back downstairs. Then every damn agent on the perimeter—and there were quite a few—would be on the lookout. Sophie would be caught and their escape would be ruined.

Not if I have anything to say about it.

He spun around a corner and threw himself into the electrical control room. The man leaning against the wall, standing guard, jerked upright, clearly startled. The Winter Soldier didn't even look at him as he pulled out a handgun and shot the man in the head. He yanked open the metal control panel boxes and studied the entire thing, his mind racing. He was clever, yes, and he knew how to fight, how to strategize for battle, how to extract information, how to break into places—but he was no electrical engineer. All these wires and switches…which one did he need?

His eyes frantically scanned each row as quickly as it could until he saw one that he thought looked about right: FENCE/PERIM.

Fence.

Perimeter.

Yeah, that sounded just about right.

He yanked the switch off the control panel completely. A few wires dangled, exposed, and he ripped those out as well. Then he punched the entire control panel a few times as hard as he could, as far as he could reach, destroying as many switches and wires as he could in seconds. If he could lock the agents out of the weapons room and labs…all the better for him. If he managed to lock people into rooms by disabling the electrical locking system, even better.

Satisfied, he turned and left, running back down the hall and turning the corner—to face a battalion of almost twelve agents pointing their guns at him, making their way down the hall towards him. He threw himself forward, disappearing around a corner just as their bullets whizzed past where he'd stood and hit the wall behind him. He stuck his head and hand around the corner and fired expertly a few times before ducking back. This went on for a few long seconds, an intense firefight, and finally he decided to speed the process up by throwing himself into the fray.

They'd shuffled closer and closer with every passing second, so he pulled out a smoke grenade and threw it at them. "GRENADE!" he heard someone yell—the sounds of many bodies moving all at once—and then a thick white smoke began to fill the hall. He spun around the corner and threw himself into the crowd, letting the smoke conceal him. He grabbed whatever body he could and yanked, ripping and wrenching body parts, disconnecting people as viciously as he could. He heard screams and gunshots as people shot wildly into the smoke, missing him by centimeters and hitting their own fellow agents. Hydra agents were normally very capable but they'd never been trained to withstand an attack by one of their own most dangerous members, especially one who would do virtually anything to get what he wanted.

Shouldn't have trained me to be so dangerous, then.

He didn't stick around to kill everyone. The smoke was spreading and thinning out. They'd be able to see him in a matter of ten to fifteen seconds, so he let them flail around in the chaos and shoved past all of them, throwing himself down the smoky hallway, skidding around corners and shooting every single person he passed. Most people didn't see him coming and went down like stones. A few paranoid types had realized that the enemy was within the building and fired wildly at him as soon as they saw him but he dodged easily and put his own bullets in their brains.

He wound the maze to the garage. He didn't need Sophie's instructions for this—he knew exactly where to go. He'd been to this facility before and he knew how to get to the garage of every facility he'd been to. The Winter Soldier always needed to be able to move out at a moment's notice. He burst through the doors to the cavernous garage, which housed multiple vehicles—motorcycles, military-grade Humvees, SUVs and Hummers with tinted windows, small airplanes—and kicked the door shut behind him, hoping that no one would think to look in here for a few minutes.

"Sophie?" he called in a low voice, eyes carefully scanning the garage. He hoped she'd made it here; if she hadn't, he would have to tear the entire place apart to find her. There was no way he could leave her behind, now that he knew she had so much information about his past swimming around in her mind and a mysterious talent for gathering information.

He tried to convince himself that these were the only reasons why he would never leave her behind.

"Winter!" He turned to see her sidle out from behind a Humvee. Her face was pale and she looked incredibly relieved. "I heard alarms—I thought maybe you got caught."

"What would you have done then?" he asked, watching her carefully.

"Gone in to see what happened to you," she said, looking around the garage and scanning all the vehicles. "So what's our next—"

"You would have gone back inside to find me?" he asked, feeling shocked, his feet rooted to the spot.

She looked at him, looking startled by his strange tone of voice. "Well—yeah. What else would I do? Bust out of here on my own?"

"So you'd go back in because you need me," he said sharply. He just wanted things to be clear.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Yeah, that's right. I stood up for you and got myself thrown in a cell because I only need you to help me out. That's exactly it. You're a tool for me to use and dispose of when I'm done. Is that what you want to hear?"

A hot, burning feeling flooded his chest, filling his veins, making his mouth twist downward and his eyes look away. It took him a moment to realize that the hot, ugly feeling was shame. She was right—he was being unnecessarily harsh, trying to accuse her of using him as a tool when in fact she'd gone above and beyond what he'd ever expected any human being to do for him. Strange words bloomed on the tip of his tongue but he didn't ever remember apologizing for anything in his life, he didn't even know how to, so he pressed his lips together tightly and said, "Let's get out of here."

He nicked a pair of keys from a board hanging on the wall and clambered onto a motorcycle. She climbed on behind him and he said tersely, "Hold on tight. If you fall, you'll die."

"Got it," she murmured, her face pressed into his back.

The motorcycle engine revved to life, growling and snarling, and he kicked off, circling around the garage, making a sharp turn, and coming to a stop in front of one of the huge garage doors. He pressed a button on the key that should have opened the door and—

Nothing.

He pressed it again. Nothing again. The door stayed silent and still and shut.

What the—?

Then, in a blinding moment of clarity, he realized what had happened: all that destruction he'd done to the control panel in the electrical room had clearly broken the mechanism that opened the garage door automatically.

"Watch out," he warned Sophie and then he rumbled as far back as he could. She asked what he was going to do. He ignored her question (this girl asked far too many questions; sometimes he wished he could stitch her lips together so she could shut up for a moment) and pulled out another grenade.

Just then the door to the garage burst open and a crowd of agents poured into the garage, wildly looking around for the Winter Soldier. They spotted him and pointed their weapons at him, shouting, "STOP!"

"Hold on!" he shouted and he threw the grenade as far and hard as he could, roaring forward at the same time as gunshots rang out and bullets whizzed by right where their motorcycle had stood a moment before. Sophie's screams were lost in the noise of gunshots and the grenade going off, the entire garage door blowing open like a tin can from the inside, flames licking the sides, smoke filling the garage and floating outside into the bright sunshine. He roared through the smoke and flickering, dying flames, tires rumbling over broken bits of metal, as he heard shouts and gunshots ringing out behind them.

They burst onto the main drive, the sun beating down hot on their heads. He felt Sophie flinch at her first real sight of sunlight in ages, her arms clutching him tighter, her fingers digging into him almost painfully. He pressed the motorcycle as fast as it could go, speeding down the main drive. His enhanced ears picked up the sound of engines roaring to life behind them as other agents got onto motorcycles and threw themselves into Hummers and SUVs. He steered one-handed as he pulled out two more grenades and readied them. He ignored the main gate—there was no time to stop and force the guard to open it, and rode off the drive onto the grass, heading towards a section of ten-foot-tall metal fence that was normally humming with electricity. He prayed that he actually had disabled the electricity for the fence because if he hadn't…

Both he and Sophie were about to be turned into fried fillets.

Gunshots rang out behind them and he zig-zagged wildly to avoid the chances of getting hit. He felt something whiz just past his right ear and Sophie let out a loud shriek. He pressed the motorcycle, heading straight for the fence. "We're going to crash!" she screamed. "What are you doing? The gate is that way!"

He ignored her and hurled the grenades as fast and hard as he could. Then he ripped out a third one and chucked it as well. As he'd expected, all three hit the fence and exploded on impact. One might not have done it but three definitely did the trick, blowing a large enough hole in the fence for them to get out of. Unfortunately the hole was also five feet off the ground. He threw the motorcycle back on its rear wheel—Sophie's grip on him was a death-grip at this point—and then threw the motorcycle forward as hard as he possibly could at just the right moment. The motorcycle flipped over itself, his body lifting off the seat, flying through the hole—Sophie's screams mingled with the sound of gunshots and chaos behind them—and the motorcycle landed upright with a thud—

And then they were off, racing across the grass back towards the main road and onwards to the city.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT! WHO ARE YOU, EVEL KNIEVEL?!" Sophie screamed. He wondered why she was still screaming. There was no immediate threat now. No one else at Hydra was as experienced a rider as him—or as daring or durable—so they wouldn't be able to jump the hole like he had. Likely they'd be making sharp left turns and racing for the gate so they could get out the main road. He hoped he'd also somehow disabled the gate when he'd destroyed the control panel. That would be really helpful.

"Where to now?" Sophie shouted.

"Away from Hydra," he said, narrowing his eyes and urging the motorcycle to go faster.

He was out—and he wasn't going back. This was it. He had officially gone rogue.