I didn't sleep for three days. I couldn't stop shaking. I followed where Io led me, but the trail just spiraled from one empty building to another.
I thought that I saw the masked person who was following me in a crowd going across the road as I was walking, leering at me out of the group of people. It wasn't them though, it was a kid wearing a bandana over his mouth with the print of a grinning skeleton mouth on it. I flew on the glider for three hours straight after that until I started to get frostbite.
Was I going crazy? Maybe I wasn't really being followed at all, I tried to convince myself; maybe I was just seeing things because I was so tired. I knew better though. I had seen it, staring down at me from the ceiling of that motel room like I was a little moth in its horrible web.
Io told me that the person hadn't had a traceable scent; that they left no evidence behind of their presence. That didn't make me feel better.
After a week of running, steeped in fear and fueled by as much coffee as I could get my hands on, I decided to confront the thing following me. Maybe Io would be able to catch it and kill it or incapacitate it enough so that it would quit following me.
I found an empty parking lot and whipped hastily into a spot in a stolen car and jumped out, pacing back and forth under the lights of the street lamps, biting at my fingers.
"Be on guard, Io," I muttered, my eyes darting wildly around for movement.
A tense hour passed in which nothing happened. Io's eyes flickered warily from underneath the car. Every passing car drove nails into my nerves. Maybe it didn't want to be confronted.
I sensed something all of a sudden; the back of my neck tingled and I jerked around to see them standing there under the streetlight, their head tilted as their mask grinned hauntingly at me.
My hand instantly found my gun at my hip. "What do you want?" I said, trying to sound demanding and confident, but my voice cracked as I spoke.
The person took a tottering step toward me, but I whipped my gun out and aimed it at them.
"Take one more step and I will shoot you," I barked.
The person stopped, standing crookedly, almost as if they were a marionette with broken strings. Io had crawled out from under the car, pacing back and forth in front of me, baring her rotating sets of teeth and growling lowly.
"Who are you?" I hissed, deranged from exhaustion and fear. "Why are you following me?"
The person slowly moved their hands to their face and grabbed their mask, moving it away from their face with agonizing slowness.
Behind the mask was a woman, about my age, with startling blue eyes. Part of her head was shaved and the rest went down to her elbows, so blonde that it looked white under the streetlights. She was very pale and thin, resembling a short, frail ghost. She stared at me, expressionless, and I tried not to let my hands shake.
"You're never going to find him like this, you know," she rasped quietly. "They're moving him on purpose."
My eyes widened. "Winter? Who's moving him?"
She didn't answer and she looked up at the smoggy sky. "It's funny, actually. You're looking for them and they're looking for you."
"Who?" I barked again.
She suddenly started speaking very fast to the hazy sky. "You ought to be thanking me; I'm the only reason they haven't caught you."
"What-do-you-mean?"
She looked down at me, her large icy eyes piercing through me. "I've been keeping them off of your trail, haven't you noticed?"
I narrowed my eyes at her, not understanding.
She huffed and crossed her arms. "You could say 'thank you'."
"Why – why would you be keeping anyone off my trail?" I asked, confused.
The woman shrugged, looking down at her black-painted nails. "I don't like them, so I'm pissing them off however I can. You'd be surprised how angry they are that they can't find you."
She glanced behind her for a moment, seeming unfazed by my gun or Io's teeth.
"You should go," she advised casually. "Standing out in the open like this is going to get you shot."
"WHO ARE YOU KEEPING AWAY FROM ME?!" I shouted, but I had barely gotten the question out when the light she was standing under popped and flickered off.
I stumbled backward to get my back to the car, eyes flitted around wildly. The glider shot after her, but stopped.
"Gone," Io said, slinking back to my side.
I heard feet on gravel somewhere in the distance to my right and I grit my teeth and got into the car and drove off.
The pale woman wasn't bothering to hide the fact that she was following Io and me around now. She seemed to appear out of nothing; Io and I would be investigating a place that Winter's scent was in and I would hear "Tsk, tsk" and turn around to see her standing in a shadow with a frown on her face. "I know where he is" or "You're looking in all the wrong places" she would say, mockingly, and Io would snap at her. She would dart out and vanish before Io or I could catch her.
I felt it safe to assume that HYDRA had found Winter and that's who was looking for me. I didn't have the faintest idea what HYDRA had done to irritate my mysterious shadow, though. She acted like she knew where Winter was, but no matter how much I shouted after her, she refused to tell me. She was infuriatingly vague about everything she said to me. My sanity was at a breaking point. I didn't know when the last time I had slept more than two hours was. My hands were always bleeding, always shaking, always grasping for something just out of my reach.
Io led me to a back alleyway in some city I didn't even pay attention to the name of, where we found more sticky, wine-colored blood splattered on the concrete, a lot more than there had been at the previous location.
I collapsed onto the ground, my body wouldn't hold me up any longer. No sleep, no food, no help. No Winter. The glider nudged my shoulder, but I didn't move.
"Oh, come on, you can't give up now!" the woman's voice came from behind me. "You're almost close to him!"
I didn't respond. I had told Io not to growl at her anymore; she was around so often that I couldn't think through Io's snarls, but Io still eyed the woman vigilantly.
"Hey," the woman said again, the glee falling from her voice, and I heard her take a step toward me.
I didn't react whatsoever.
"I can help you find him," she said after a minute as if she had a candy bar she was trying to bargain for a favor.
"…You won't," I replied in a brittle voice.
"Sure I will, if you ask nicely," the girl said and I turned around to look at her.
Her carefree expression faded as she looked at me and she clasped her hands together in front of her, almost as if she was embarrassed.
"Please?" I pleaded, my voice breaking. "Please help me find him."
She blinked and her eyes fell to the ground.
"Yeah. I'll help you," she said quietly. "We gotta hurry, though."
I got to my feet, daring to hope that maybe this girl was actually going to help me. Io and I followed her back to our car and she told me to drive back to New York City.
"Why is he back there?" I asked as I drove, Io sitting next to me in the passenger seat and the girl sitting in the back, munching on a bag of chips.
The girl shrugged. "It's not like he wants to be."
My stomach twisted.
We drove in silence for a little while and I glanced at her in the rear-view mirror.
"What's your name?" I asked and she glanced up at me and put a finger in the air while she chewed the mouthful of chips she had.
"People call me Ghost," she said after she had swallowed her chips.
"Do you call yourself Ghost?" I asked and she looked at me strangely.
"I mean… Yeah," she said after a minute, seeming like she was almost going to tell me something else. "Just… call me Ghost."
She glanced at Io. "What's the dog's name?"
"Io," I replied.
"And the glider?"
"Cirrus," I said, saying the first thing that came to mind.
"A little on the nose, isn't it?"
"'Ghost' is too."
"Fair enough."
We got back to New York City after a few hours and Ghost directed me to Queens, to an abandoned church with broken windows and white walls blemished with graffiti. I parked the car out of sight of it and got out with Io and Cirrus. It was getting dark, but it wasn't quite dark enough that we wouldn't be seen, especially with Io.
"Be careful," Ghost warned me, trailing behind me. "He probably isn't the only one in there."
My hand nervously found my gun. I had two guns and Io's teeth, Cirrus had a gun, but I wasn't an expert marksman and Io and Cirrus could only fight so many people at once. And what shape was Winter in after weeks of being captured…
A thought occurred to me that maybe Ghost had been leading me to Winter's dead body and I turned around to ask her if this was a trick, but she had vanished.
I swore under my breath. Maybe this was a trap. But I couldn't risk it not being one…
"Scout ahead, be in stealth, but be ready for offensive measures," I hissed to Io and she darted ahead through a hole that was broken into the door.
"Defensive measures," I told Cirrus. "Stay close to me."
I stared up at the looming, dilapidated sanctuary, my stomach writhing. It was possible that he wasn't even here, Ghost could have just been lying. Something about the atmosphere made me uneasy though, the air was tense like a storm was just about to break.
I eased the door open with my gun, ready to shoot at any second, and stepped inside the musty chapel. Io blinked her eyes twice to let me know that this room was clear. Cirrus scanned the building, but came up with nothing.
I was bitterly resenting myself for placing a shred of hope in Ghost, when I noticed Io purposefully sniffing a dusty bookcase on the wall of the chapel.
Curious, I went up to it and inspected it. I pulled on it and it seemed affixed to the wall, which was strange. It slid a little bit and I realized that it could be pushed to the side. I nudged it open as quietly as I could to reveal a small trap door set into the floor of a tiny room.
I just stared at it for a minute, fear gnawing at my stomach. What if I was too late? Swallowing my nerves, I pulled the little door open gently, miraculously not making a sound. I peered down to see a bare room lit by fluorescent lights and a door on the other side from me that was slightly ajar. I heard voices.
Dizzy with fear, I told Cirrus to guard and told Io to wait until I whistled for her. I crept down the ladder as quietly as I could. I padded to the door, terror twisting my stomach so much that I thought I might faint, and I peered in the crack in the door.
The back of a familiar blond head made my heart skip a beat and my eyes widened in shock. It was Captain Rogers.
I burst in the door, one of my guns pointed at Captain Rogers, the other pointed at the black man who had been with Captain Rogers before, but my eyes were fixated on a figure huddled on the ground behind Captain Rogers. It was Winter, looking pallid and sick, his metal arm stuck inside of a machine that didn't fit this place that was as tall as the ceiling. I gawked at him in horror, realization dawning on me.
"It's been you… this whole time…" I breathed, my eyes darting to Captain Rogers madly.
"No," he defended sternly, taking a step toward me. "I would never –"
"STOP TALKING!" I screeched and he obeyed.
Winter was trying to get my attention, but I was so focused on Captain Rogers that I could hardly see him, rage making my hands shake.
"Get away from him," I demanded. "NOW!"
Hands in the air, he slowly moved away from Winter to go stand by the other man. I whistled loudly and I heard Io leap down through the trap door and she prowled into the room, her teeth rotating angrily and oil dripping from her jaws onto the concrete floor. I padded over to Winter, my gun darting between the two of them, trying to force my hands to stop shaking.
"Are you alright?" I hissed down to him.
He didn't respond. Captain Rogers shifted and Io growled loudly and my finger twitched on the trigger of the gun.
"Stop moving around, Captain Rogers," I said in a slow, honeyed mask of confidence. "I designed her teeth to strip steel and lead, so… what do you think they'll do to your skin?"
Io's teeth whirred and I tried my best to look like I wasn't terrified out of my mind. I felt Winter's hand on my hip, grasping at my shirt, but I didn't let myself look down at him.
"Winter, what's wrong, talk to me," I said out of the corner of my mouth, a new jolt of fear twisting my stomach. Why wasn't he saying anything…?
I heard Winter's raspy breathing, like someone with a raw throat trying to form words.
"Never mind, then," I breathed madly, tears forming in my eyes. "I'll get you out of there in a second –"
I was going to shoot at the both of them, hoping to aim to the right of them and scare them off, but Winter seized my arm and yanked me down and grabbed my face to make me look him in the eyes. He shook his head, his eyes wide as his mouth struggled to form words.
"…Don't…" he rasped like he had daggers in his throat. "…P...lease…"
Tears flowed down my face and my bottom lip trembled. "Winter we – can't – trust them!"
Winter's eyes were wildfire and he pursed his lips and shook his head vehemently. I was sobbing now; I couldn't help it. I had thought Winter was dead for weeks, barely surviving under the weight of the exhaustion and the constant terror.
"You – trust them?" I choked in disbelief.
Winter studied me for a moment and his eyes flickered to Captain Rogers and the other man and then back to me. He nodded curtly.
He let go of my face and held it out to me for the gun. I closed my eyes and swallowed, hard. What if Winter was wrong? What if I could save both of our lives by shooting the both of them, right now?
But what if I was wrong…?
After a tense minute I slowly put the gun in Winter's hand and let out a soft sob. He put the gun on the ground and squeezed my shoulder and tears dripped down onto my pants. I heard Io snap at one of the two of the men and I glanced up at her.
"Io, heel," I said, my voice cracking and I coughed.
She kept growling at them though, taking a step toward them.
"Io," I repeated, frowning and sniffing.
She didn't respond. I huffed and looked behind me to find a bit of pipe on the ground.
I picked it up and threw it at Io and it clanged off of her flank and she turned to look at me. I motioned for her to come to me and she immediately shut her jaws and padded over to me.
I sniffled and grabbed her head to inspect her hearing mechanism, throwing a glance up at Captain Rogers and the other man who were both studying me. To my surprise they didn't look angry.
I worked on fixing the broken wire in what served as Io's ears, avoiding their eyes. Captain Rogers and the other man spoke amongst themselves and I kept throwing glances at Winter, wishing that I was alone with him.
"I've got someone coming in the morning to get him out of there," Captain Roger's friend told me.
I scoffed and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "We don't need anyone, I can get him out just fine."
I let go of Io and snapped my fingers around her head to see if she responded. She did. I stood up and looked at the machine for the first time. Blades had Winter's arm jammed inside of the mechanism and I reached in gingerly, trying to see if his arm was severely damaged, but he grabbed my wrist and shook his head angrily.
"Are there traps in it?" I asked him and he shrugged somewhat.
I pursed my lips. I turned to Captain Rogers and his friend.
"Can one of you two go and get my duffel bag out of my car? It's a block away on the left, a white Mazda Sentia," I said quietly, my eyes down on the ground in front of him.
Roger's friend nodded and left to go get it. Silence followed and I turned my back on Captain Rogers, shame and fear making my face burn.
"How long ago did you find him here?" I asked Captain Rogers, over my shoulder.
"About…" Captain Rogers checked his watch. "45 minutes ago."
I nodded and looked up at Winter. "How long have you been stuck in that thing?"
He held up three fingers.
"Three days?" I clarified and he nodded.
"Damn," I sighed.
"Here's your bag," Rogers's friend said, swinging open the door and holding out my black duffel bag to me.
My eyes met with his for a second but I quickly looked away. I stood up and shuffled toward him. My hand was shaking as I reached out for my bag and I thanked him curtly.
I gave Winter a water bottle that he downed in three gulps and a protein bar that he practically inhaled. Captain Rogers and his friend, who I heard him call Sam, left the room and I heard them talking to themselves as they stood outside of the doorway.
I was still for a second, staring down at the ground. My eyes flicked up to Winter's and my throat constricted. I flung my arms around him and squeezed him tightly and he held me back without hesitation, wrapping his one free arm around me protectively.
"I thought you were dead…" I whispered hoarsely. "I was so… scared…"
His arm tightened around me, and even though he couldn't speak, I took it as "I'm sorry".
I clung onto him for a solid minute, sniffling and trying to compose myself. I heard a shoe scrape across the ground and I pulled away from Winter and glanced behind me to see Captain Rogers and Sam standing there and blood flushed to my face.
Winter eyed them both over my shoulder too, looking confused. I noticed a large bump on his forehead and I brushed his hair out of his face and sighed.
"Let's get you out of there," I said softly and I got to my feet.
I unscrewed the panel on the back of the machine, hoping to reverse the blades to make it spit out his arm. I dug around in the machine for about half an hour while Sam and Captain Rogers got bored and wandered out to inspect the church.
I had so much grease on my hands that I had to get up and wipe my hands off on a rag, sighing as I stood next to Winter.
I heard a metallic whir come from the machine and suddenly the blades around Winter's arm shrieked to life and started pulling Winter toward the rotating blades.
I gasped and grabbed onto him and he pulled against the machine, throwing a fearful glance at me.
"CAPTAIN ROGERS!" I screamed desperately. "HELP!"
He burst through the door and sprinted over to Winter, grabbing onto his arm and pulling and the blades slowed on Winter's arm and whined in protest. Io grabbed Winter's arm too, but even with her jaws and Captain Roger's pulling, Winter's arm was drawn farther into the machine.
I sprinted around to the other side of the machine, my eyes finding the wire feeding power to the machine. I pulled out a pocket knife, knowing full well that it was going to shock me, but I cut the wire anyway. The machine threw up sparks and my body twitched violently away from the machine and I fell to the ground, writhing.
I didn't feel or hear anything for a second. I faintly heard a lot of yelling just before I blacked completely out.
I started awake and sat up and I instantly regretted it. Every muscle in my body burned like fire and I gasped, my eyes wildly flashing around me. I was in a hospital?
Someone hurried in at the sound of my distress, a tall Asian woman that I had never seen before.
"Dr. Martin?" she said briskly. "My name is Dr. Cho, can you hear me?"
I blinked several times and groaned again. "Wh-where am I?"
"At the Avenger's Facility, safe," she told me. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been hit by a truck," I winced, focusing on Dr. Cho. I couldn't help noticing how pretty she was.
She smiled kindly. "I'm sure that you do. I don't know exactly how much electricity went through your body, but it probably should have killed you."
"How did I get here?" I asked, pushing myself up, but I felt searing pain in my hand and I dropped back to the bed. My hands were now heavily bandaged.
"Mr. Wilson brought you here," she said, busying herself to check my vitals. "I was sure that you were already gone, you were so limp."
She noticed me looking at my hands and she smiled sadly. "You suffered second degree burns on your right hand where the electricity entered your body."
"Wonderful," I mumbled.
Dr. Cho's smile widened. "I can fix all of the damaged cells in your hand easily, Dr. Martin, it is nothing to worry about."
I looked up at her, raising one eyebrow. "How are you going to do that?"
"One moment," she said simply and left the room.
I looked all around me, fear churning in my stomach. What if I hadn't gotten the machine to turn off? Sam Wilson came into the room and he seemed relieved to see me awake.
"Oh, thank God you're up," he said, smiling. "You had us worried there for a minute."
"How did we get here?" I frowned.
"Well, you know how Steve's thing is his strength, and, like, Thor's is his hammer?"
I nodded.
"Well my thing is flying."
I narrowed my eyes.
"It's true," he insisted, putting his hands up in the air and I laughed somewhat.
"So, what, you flew me here?"
"Sure did."
"What about –" I glanced at the door and blinked a few times. "Captain Rogers?"
"Just where we left him, unless that dog of yours ate him," Sam said, smirking. "He prefers 'Steve', by the way, he says 'Captain Rogers' makes him feel old."
I chuckled a little and Dr. Cho came back into the room, pulling an egg shaped machine behind her. Sam scooted out of her way and I inspected the machine curiously.
"What does that do?" I asked.
Dr. Cho beamed like she had been waiting for me to ask. "It's an invention of my creation, I call it the 'cradle'."
She pushed the machine by my bedside and it whirred on with a soft mint light.
"It rebuilds lost tissue, urging your own cells to knit back together faster than ever thought possible," Dr. Cho said proudly. "Here, I'll show you."
She helped me lie down on a bed inside of the machine and I watched in amazement as the colored lights whirred over my body and my eyes widened as my burns shrunk. It felt strange, like my hand was asleep and it itched like a poison ivy rash like I had gotten once, but in just 60 seconds, my burns were healed as if they were months old.
"That's…" I laughed, smiling. "That's amazing!"
Dr. Cho glowed happily.
"I have a burn on my leg as well," I remembered, turning to Dr. Cho. "It's, I mean, it's several months old, but would it work on that too?"
"Of course," Dr. Cho nodded.
The burn on my leg was old, but it had still been an angry red, but now it was gone. A painful mar that I thought I would have forever was suddenly gone. Even my thumbs were healed where I always bit them.
"Wow," I said in a hush, awed.
"You should rest for a short time, but other than that, you should have no further complications," Dr. Cho said, smiling and I turned to her.
"This-this is –" I babbled and then broke off and laughed in awe. "This is unbelievable."
I glanced between Sam and Dr. Cho. "This technology is going to save hundreds of thousands of people."
Dr. Cho nodded and beamed. "I certainly hope so."
"Unfortunately it isn't ready to be used by the public yet," Dr. Cho said, her eyes falling to the ground. "But I am striving to get it ready so that I might lessen the pain in the world."
I stayed at the Avenger's Facility over the night to rest and around one or two I jostled myself awake out of a bad dream and I saw a pale, dark haired girl standing in the corner in the room, her bright blue eyes watching me curiously.
"Who…?" I tried to ask, but my eyes suddenly refused to stay open and I heard the woman mutter something foreign to me. I mumbled incomprehensibly a few times before I was overtaken by sleep. I woke up in the morning having forgotten all about her.
Sam and I left the facility in the morning, using one of Steve's motorcycles rather than Sam's 'flight'. I didn't know what to think about his proposed 'flight', but he seemed kind enough.
We arrived back at the church in under an hour and I noticed that the car I had left had been taken, leaving shards of glass in its place. I didn't mind.
I rushed back to the basement of the church ahead of Sam, worry gnawing my stomach that relaxed when I burst into the room to see Winter right where I had left him.
I sighed in relief when I saw him and Winter lurched like he was trying to get up, staring at me in distress, and Io nuzzled my hand in greeting and I patted her head before padding up to Winter and kneeling beside him. He strained on the blades against his arm, trying to get closer to me, and he reached out and touched my face. Color rose to my cheeks, very aware that both Steve and Sam were watching us and I let out a nervous laugh.
"I'm okay, really," I assured him. "Sam brought me to the Avenger's Facility and there was this woman who had invented this machine that accelerated cells healing and she used it on me, and I'm okay now."
Rage contorted Winter's features, but he still held onto my face.
"What were you thinking?" he demanded angrily, his voice still rough from misuse.
I looked away sheepishly.
"I – that was the only way to get that machine to stop right away – it could have cut you to pieces –"
"You should have let it!" he interjected lividly. "You knew what cutting that wire was going to do –"
"What else was I supposed to do; let it kill you?" I retorted angrily.
"I would have been fine, if you hadn't been so thoughtless, you could have just turned the damn thing off!"
"There is no 'off' switch, it's internally wired to a power source!"
Winter looked like he was trying very hard not to lose his patience and he didn't retort for a minute and he just glared at me and I crossed my arms and glared back.
"Yikes," said a voice I didn't recognize and I turned to see a man in a black and red suit with an insect-like helmet with red, buggy eyes suddenly standing by Steve.
I yelped in surprise, recoiling.
"Oh, sorry!" the helmeted man said and he pressed a button that retracted the helmet from his face. I still had no idea who he was. "My name's Scott, uh, he asked me to come." He gestured to Sam.
I stared at him in distrust. Io didn't seem too worried about him and I scrunched my nose at her for being such a bad guard dog. She tilted her head to the side and trotted over to me.
"Nice, um, robot dog," Scott said, trying to make conversation. I just gaped at him.
"What, what is that suit for?" I asked after a minute.
"Oh, well, it'd be easier to just show you," Scott shrugged. "I'm gonna use it to get him out of that machine." He nodded to Winter.
"I can get him out just fine," I said quietly.
"Obviously not," Winter growled and I shot him a glare.
Scott was quiet for an uncomfortable second. "Okay, well, I'm gonna get on that."
He disappeared suddenly and I jumped to my feet.
I looked between Sam and Steve. "What?!"
"He can shrink with the help of that suit," Sam explained. "He calls himself Ant-man."
I gawked at him. "…Okay."
Steve shrugged. "I don't understand either."
Winter wasn't speaking to me or looking in my direction, so I got up and leaned against the wall next to him, crossing my arms.
"How are you feeling?" Captain Rogers asked me and I glanced at him, surprised.
"I'm okay," I said shyly. "Thanks."
I heard something in the machine rumble and I glanced at it in worry, automatically moving to bite at my newly healed fingers. Io was sitting by the door, making sure that no one entered and she turned around to look at me when the machine whined. I made a motion with my hand for her to stay where she was and she turned back around, staring up at the trap door.
Scott was only shrunk for about ten minutes before the machine screamed and with a metallic whine the machine's blades spat out Winter's arm.
Steve and I both moved at the same time to help Winter up but he waved our hands away and stood stiffly up with a groan. I wanted to touch him, I was still an anxious shell from having thought he was dead for so long, but he swatted my hands away when I gave a second attempt to reach out to him and my throat constricted.
"Any other bionic friends you need me to get out of any machines?" Scott asked, grinning, as he reappeared from seemingly nowhere.
"Not for now, anyway," Steve said, smiling warmly at Scott. "Thank you for your help, Scott."
Scott blinked a few times, like he couldn't comprehend that Captain America was thanking him for his help. "Yeah, yeah, of course. Anything you need help with, just let me know."
"We might have to take you up on that," Sam laughed and I glanced at Steve out of the corner of my eye. Worry and anger crossed his features and I briefly noticed how badly my fingers hurt.
Scott bade us farewell and he got into a beat up cavalier and drove off, smiling to himself. Winter and I were left standing outside the desecrated skeleton of the church with Sam and Steve, not knowing what words to put into the air.
"…What now?" I mumbled, crossing my arms against the bitter wind that was picking up.
"Let's go to a hotel for the night," Sam said, bouncing up and down slightly. "We can figure out what to do next in some damn heat."
