Chapter 13


Rogan gestured to the roomful of training women, expression serious. "These girls come from all the worst places in society," he told me. "The destitute, the unwanted, the abused and wrongfully condemned. I offered them a home and a purpose here, and they came in droves."

"I've noticed they have a habit of trying to kill themselves if a mission goes wrong," I noted bluntly.

Rogan looked at me. "You say that as if you were never willing to give your life for a cause you believe in, Barnes. Make no mistake, I do not force these women to do anything. What you've seen and heard about is loyalty of the highest order. They have forsaken their old lives right down to their names because they seek something so much more important."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Justice," he replied without hesitation. "The people in power over this planet make rules that will 'keep the peace' and then blatantly disregard them. Meanwhile, the less fortunate among humanity – the ones who can't both obey the law and survive – are punished. I saw a whole lot of that while I was deployed in the Middle East. It is the existence these women – whom the world calls Molniya – have fled from. Now we intend to end the hypocrisy."

"How?" I couldn't deny the truth of his words, but I wasn't about to trust Rogan either.

"By replacing the corrupt governments one at a time," he replied simply. His gaze locked on mine. "But I can't do it unless I have the Avengers on my side. That's why I'm telling you all this. If we want to make a better world, we need to work together. What do you say?"

This was HYDRA all over again. Rogan had dressed his planned revolution up in righteousness, but at its roots it was still the same old murder, manipulation, and hunger for power. Whether the Molniya were willing participants or not, they were involved in too much crime, too much death.

I didn't have to think about my reply. "I won't work for you."

Rogan nodded. "I know you don't like my methods, Barnes, and I'd be the first to admit that sometimes you'd have to do things you don't like, but don't you see? It's for the greater good of the world. We're the ones with the power to protect the powerless. This is your chance to atone for your past."

I gritted my teeth and said nothing. I didn't care if Rogan's plan brought about a global utopia. If I had to kill innocent people to help get the world there, I would never be able to live with myself.

Rogan sighed. "I gave you a choice," he said simply.

Suddenly my arms were grabbed and pinned behind my back by the guards. They pulled me along a couple more hallways, Rogan in the lead, until we stopped before a metal door labeled 'Room 37' in Russian.

Rogan swiped a keycard through the scanner beside the door handle. The lock clicked and Rogan opened the door, gesturing for the guards and I to precede him into the space beyond.

I didn't want to go into the dark room – not after I'd just refused to work for a man intent on toppling governments – but the guards were stronger than me and I really didn't have any other option. They forced me in and Rogan followed, flipping a light switch.

The fluorescent bulbs flickered into life, illuminating the large concrete room. There were no other doors and no windows. Several computers sat on tables, and wires ran across the floor to the metal contraption in the middle of the room.

I recoiled at the sight of it all, bumping into Rogan.

He put a hand on my arm. "This is why I wish you'd said yes," he said quietly.

I stared at the memory suppression machine, feeling the panic rising within me. The mere thought of what that thing had done to me made me feel sick.

Rogan moved over to the machine, resting a hand on the armrest of its seat. "Last year when your friend Romanoff dumped all of HYDRA and SHIELD's secrets onto the Net, the world had mere minutes before the American government rounded up all that information and locked it away," he said simply.

"But some of us got in fast enough to glean the useful stuff from those files, and that's how we got this." He tapped the machine. "It wasn't supposed to ever be needed," he added. "But since you refuse to join me willingly…" He nodded to the guards.

And they started to drag me towards the machine.

No, no, no.

For a moment I considered trying to convince Rogan that I would work for him without any of this, but I knew he wouldn't believe it. He'd given me a chance, and I had refused it.

I tried to struggle, but I was weaker than I'd thought and the guards' grips were like iron as they forced me into the machine's seat. They securely fastened the straps to hold me down while Rogan moved to one of the computer tables. A middle-aged man in a lab coat entered the room and joined him. They spoke quietly in Russian as they fiddled with the machine's controls.

My heart hammered wildly against my ribcage as the machine's arms moved down into place either side of my head. My breath came in panicked gasps despite my best efforts to control it. I knew what was about to happen and it terrified me.

Then the machine started up and I was lost, my mind torn in a thousand directions by the overwhelming pain. I screamed until my throat ached from it.

It went on and on and on.

And then finally, some immeasurable amount of time later, the machine stopped. The guards unfastened the straps and pulled me to my feet. I swayed unsteadily, too weak to hold my head up straight. My body shook.

Rogan stepped forward. "Kto ty, Soldat?" he asked. Who are you, Soldier?

"Bucky Barnes," I mumbled weakly in English. I knew that much. I still knew who I was. The machine hadn't worked.

Rogan seemed to realize that fact too. He turned to the scientist by the computers. "Why didn't it work?"

I certainly didn't know. Maybe the Mind Stone had given me some sort of resistance to memory suppression. My head ached too much to try and figure it out.

"He has probably regained enough of his memory that the process will take more time to regain its effectiveness," the scientist offered. "There's a chance that we could even be back at ground zero."

Rogan frowned. "Let's see." He pulled a phone out of his pocket and found what he was after on the screen. Then he began to read in Russian. "Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car."

I closed my eyes at the first word, curling my hand into a fist. I knew those words, knew what they had the power to achieve. I'd been hoping against hope that Rogan wouldn't have found them amongst HYDRA's files. But he had, and they were the key to unleashing the Winter Soldier.

I could feel that other version of me stirring in the back of my mind, trying to take possession of my will and body as the trigger words called it out. But I couldn't let it. I had to stay in control.

Think about Steve, I told myself. You remember him. He saved you from this. Don't give in again now. I groaned, trying to shut out the words as Rogan read the last few.

He lowered his phone and looked into my eyes. "Soldat?"

The reply was on my lips instantly – ya gotov otvechat', ready to comply – but I bit it back with an effort. "No," I said stonily.

Rogan backhanded me across the face hard enough that my head snapped back. "Wrong answer." He stepped back and addressed the guards. "Take him to Cell 9. We'll do this again tomorrow."

"Da, General."

I didn't count the turns we took as I stumbled through the corridors, held up more by the guards' grips than my own strength. They opened a door with a keycard and shoved me through the doorway, slamming the door shut behind me. The lock clicked and then there was silence.

Cell 9 was a small square room made entirely of concrete – walls, floor, and ceiling. A narrow cot was bolted to the floor in the far corner and there were basic bathroom fixtures against the opposite wall. The cot had a single blanket folded up at its foot. That was it.

I went and sat down on the cot, resting my head in my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to quell the jumbled thoughts racing through my mind. Thinking hurt.

"Longing," a male voice – not Rogan's – said in monotonic Russian.

I looked up, but there was no one in the cell.

"Rusted," the voice continued. "Seventeen. Daybreak."

I stood up and moved toward the sound, spotting a small speaker in the corner of the ceiling above the sink. I looked for a means to access the speaker, but it was out of reach even if I stood on the basin.

I gritted my teeth and sat back down on the cot. Ignore it, I told myself as the list of words started again from the top. It was getting easier to think clearly as the pain from the memory suppression machine wore off, and that clarity of mind was crucial to fighting the trigger words.

I sat still and focused on my memories, both good and bad.

Hours later, long after the cell's single light had been turned off by someone beyond the locked door, the voice was still going – just slightly too loud to be blocked out. The words, which I'd heard hundreds of times now, echoed through my mind in an unending loop, causing my head to throb. I wanted to bang my head against the wall just to drown out the sound.

Somewhere around midnight I finally lost control and leapt to my feet. "Shut up!" I yelled at the speaker. "I'm not your puppet and I'm not your Soldier!"

The voice continued without pause and I sank to the floor, head aching. I didn't know what to do.