CHAPTER 19: Modifications
They met the Wakandans at the lab at seven a.m. sharp. Tony, Dr. Cho, Dr. Abodon, Shuri, T'Challa, and the Dora Milaje were all gathered when Steve and Bucky walked in.
Shuri's gaze immediately went to Bucky. "How are you feeling, Sergeant…um…Bucky?" There was a hint of chagrin in her dark eyes.
Bucky glanced at the faces all staring at him. It made him feel like a specimen on display in a museum. "All things considering, good, I guess." He raised his arm. "Steve told me I broke my wrist, but it feels okay."
Shuri smiled. "We have repaired the bone. Please go easy on it for a couple of days."
Tony jerked his chin. "Where's the new, very expensive, state-of-the-art arm?"
"Back in the room," Steve answered, crossing his arms and leaning against the edge of a table.
"Why?" Tony's brow furrowed. "It giving you problems?"
Bucky shook his head. He didn't feel like explaining to a room full of people—half of whom were relative strangers—why the metal arm was not a good idea at the moment.
"There's nothing wrong with it." Bucky told Stark. "It's best, for now, if I keep it off."
Bucky saw regret flicker over Shuri's face.
Tony leaned forward. "Why? Is this a long-term thing, or what?"
Bucky sighed. "If anything happens here," he tapped his forehead, "I'll be easier to take down with only one arm."
"Oh, is that all?" Tony waved a hand in the air. "Hell, give me the arm. I can put in failsafes to ease your mind. We can remove them when Mr. Hyde has taken a permanent siesta. Then, you'll at least be able to zipper things and cut your food."
Bucky thought about it. He was doing okay with one arm, but there were tasks that had proven challenging. If Stark could put in appropriate safeguards…
"What type of failsafes?" Bucky asked.
"Remote detachment," Tony replied. "The remote part only temporary, of course. I remember our previous discussion. And no one, not even me, will be able to control the arm other than detachment in the event you go…you know."
Bucky thought about it. Given the threat he presented with the arm while Hydra's program ran in his head, an interim failsafe made sense. "Okay. Thank you."
Tony cocked his head and did a little drum roll on the table. "I tinker. It's my thing. Bring it by my lab."
"I would like nothing more than for us to be able to talk at leisure," T'Challa spoke up with an apologetic tilt of his head, "but we must leave shortly."
"Right." Shuri sighed. "My father is quite irritating when it comes to punctuality. Bucky, I wanted to let you know that I will continue to review the data in Wakanda. I am sorry for what happened yesterday. It was not something I anticipated, and I regret that."
"It's okay. You're trying to help," Bucky told her. "It's not like there's a manual for this. Well, not one about undoing it, anyway."
She nodded solemnly. "I will be working on an algorithm to eliminate the neural pathways associated with the activation of the Winter Soldier. Once I have the algorithm finished, I will contact you. I can reach you through Mr. Stark, but if you give me your cell phone number, I can also contact you directly."
Oh, right. The cell phone. He wasn't used to carrying it. "It's back in my room, I think, and I don't actually know the number."
Steve smiled and rattled the number off for her. She nodded her thanks.
"Do you need to write it down?" Bucky asked her.
She flashed a cocky smile. "Nope, but I will make note of it later."
"When you get this algorithm, what then?" Bucky asked.
"We will cross that bridge then. You may need to come to Wakanda if my father will allow it. He is not fond of outsiders visiting and seeing our technology, but you've already seen quite a bit. I'm sure he can be persuaded to make an exception. Or, I might return here. It is also possible I could work with Dr. Cho," she gestured to the woman seated at the nearby workstation, "to set up a remote session."
"Steve said that could take months." Bucky knew, in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't a long time, but it felt like an eternity. "Is that true?"
She tilted her head. "Most likely. I have other projects, and of course, now we have the urgent project we are working on in coordination with Mr. Stark." Her eyes darted to Tony.
Aliens. Bucky nodded his silent understanding. He wasn't sure whether Doctors Cho and Abodon were in the loop on that pending catastrophe.
"I will be in touch." She assured him. "However, if there is an urgent issue, you can reach out to me. Mr. Stark will be able to put you in touch. I don't have a cell phone yet, though my brother does," she looked at T'Challa, who merely grinned. "We use Kimoyo beads for communication, which are far more sophisticated but not as easily reached via external cellular networks. I am not authorized to leave one with you."
He shrugged. "I'm sure that won't be necessary but thank you."
-0- -0- -0-
Bucky headed back to the room with Steve to grab the arm and drop it in Tony's lab. Once done, Steve suggested a walk outside. The fresh air seemed like a good idea. With the Wakandans heading home, the Winter Soldier programming in his head was stuck in limbo. He hoped it remained dormant until they found a way to remove it.
They stayed close to the complex, and Bucky enjoyed the sun, the view of the water, and the sound of birds. He even managed to not scan the tree lines, rooftops, and riverbank every second.
Steve noticed Bucky's lingering vigilance. "I hope, someday, you can relax out here."
"When we've gotten rid of the last of Hydra, maybe," Bucky said. "According to you, they're still around a decade from now."
Steve sighed. "Yeah. Not as strong or embedded in every aspect of government as they were, but they're still around."
"What was I like in the future?" Bucky asked.
It was a strange world. He was in the year 2015 asking to his best friend from the 40s about his future self while an android that could walk through walls kept an eye on the perimeter and an alien invasion was pending a few years down the line.
"You were…are…will be," Steve shook his head and gave an exasperated smile. "You were Bucky. A little sad. Maybe lonely. You were working through some issues still, but you didn't have me around or most of the Avengers. He tried to keep us from finding out what happened. He said if we knew, things might happen differently, and that would be very bad… end of the world stuff. Half the world's population vanished at some point, then came back."
"But not you?" Bucky asked.
"I don't know what happened to me. Your future counterpart talked about a decision that I made." Steve shrugged, stopped walking, and turned to look at Bucky. "Things are already happening differently. You're here, sooner than you should be, and we have a heads up about the invasion. What happens now is anyone's guess."
"But I don't have the Hydra programming in my head in the future?"
"Nope. You traveled back to 2014 at one point, and some of it was activated. We handled it. But in the future, you were free of the code words. You were good friends with Sam and his family. You helped restore their boat."
Bucky found that interesting, and a little hard to believe. "Sam, the Falcon guy?"
Steve grinned "Yeah."
"I get the sense he's only helping me because of you."
"That was probably true in the beginning, but he met the future you for a short time. He just doesn't know you that well."
Bucky started walking again. "The only person who knows me well, Steve, is you."
"I know how you feel. When I first came out of the ice, everyone I knew except Peggy was gone, and she…" his voice trailed off.
"Is almost 100 years old?"
Steve nodded. "Yeah."
"So, Sam's gotten over the whole attempted murder thing?"
Steve smiled. "Mostly. He lamented his car for a bit, went on and on about you ripping the steering wheel out while he was speeding down the freeway, and you destroying his wings. Stark gave him a new pair, of course. The car was an insurance nightmare, from what I remember."
Bucky winced at the memory. "I regret that day, one of many. I know, before you say it, that it wasn't my fault. That doesn't change how I feel about it."
"I know." Steve clasped him on the shoulder as they walked.
"Romanoff's pretty impressive for someone without superpowers," Bucky said. "She doesn't have any, right?"
Steve shrugged. "Not that I know about."
"Can you imagine if someone gave her the serum?" Bucky shook his head at that nightmarish image. "Jesus Christ."
Steve took a deep breath and smiled. "She'd be able to take us both."
-0- -0- -0-
That evening, Bucky hit the gym with Steve. There was a small boxing ring, and he grinned as he entered, slapping Steve on the arm.
"You remember when I tried to teach you to box?" he asked Steve.
"Yeah, so I could defend myself better. It didn't work."
"Well, look at you now, all grown up," Bucky teased.
They pummeled bags and threw a few good-natured, easy punches in the ring, mostly playing with footwork and sparring. It felt good.
"You have the advantage," Bucky told Steve, holding up his one right arm as he tilted out of the way of a light punch.
"Okay," Steve grinned. "I'll keep my left arm behind my back."
"Forget it. Let's see what you got."
They sparred for a few more minutes, until Bucky felt the stirrings of the dark thing deep in his brain and the tightening of his muscles.
He stopped and looked casually at the clock, then at Steve, and said, "Time for shower and dinner."
"Dinner's already in the works," Steve replied, stretching his arms behind his back. "Natasha and Sam are bringing us something new."
-0- -0- -0-
Dinner ended up being seafood and rice from a Taiwanese place with Natasha and Sam, along with something called bubble tea. Bucky sat at the kitchen counter and lifted the large cup of tea with the wide straw and looked at the purple liquid in the clear plastic.
"What the hell is bubble tea?" he asked Steve, catching Natasha's grin out of the corner of his eye.
Steve jerked his chin. "Just try it. It's a big thing."
Bucky shrugged and took a sip. Something large and squishy entered his mouth. A blueberry, maybe? He kept it between his teeth and, once he swallowed the tea, grabbed it with his fingers. It looked like a clear, slightly elongated, ball.
"Is this a kind of jellyfish gut, or something?" Bucky asked, eyeing it skeptically.
Sam laughed. "No, Ice Man, it's a tapioca ball."
"Why is it in the tea?"
"Because they're fun to chew and loaded with carbs," Natasha said, "like most things not terribly good for you."
Bucky shrugged and popped it into his mouth, giving it an experimental bite. It was rather tasteless, but the texture was interesting.
"We have got to get you more exposed to the modern world," Sam said, grinning. "I desperately want to see your reaction to pop rocks."
"What?" Steve and Bucky asked in unison.
Natasha smiled. "Two for one entertainment. We'll have to film it." She tilted her head. "Are those even still around?"
Sam nodded. "Hell, yeah."
"So, any movies still on your catch-up list?" Natasha asked Bucky.
He shrugged. "A ton, I'm sure." He took another sip of tea.
"We should watch JFK with Kevin Costner sometime," Sam suggested. "That's a great movie. Catch you up on some of the history you might've missed."
Bucky almost choked on the tapioca ball. John. F. Kennedy. The President. The open-topped limo. Two bullets, both hit their mark, but the second one was the fatal one. The first fired by another Russian Hydra agent to create chaos and confusion.
They made a movie about the assassination? Bucky looked down at the cup in his hand, unable to meet their eyes without revealing too much.
"We never did get to the Matrix," Steve said a bit too quickly, a subtle undercurrent of concern in his tone that Bucky recognized only because he knew the man so well.
Bucky closed his eyes. Steve knew.
-0- -0- -0-
It was after midnight by the time Bucky headed to bed and the others retired to their rooms. After dinner, they'd watched a movie called The Matrix, which was pretty mind blowing and banished grim thoughts about Kennedy from his mind. Why was Stark so eager to mess around with artificial intelligence? Apparently, machines that come alive and destroy or enslave humanity was a common movie plot.
Thankfully, Vision seemed nice enough. For now.
Bucky slipped under the covers. He was finally getting used to the softness of the bed, even finding himself enjoying the cloud-like sensation. Within a few minutes, he was asleep.
Sometime later, he jerked awake. It was completely dark when he opened his eyes, his brain foggy from sleep. He scanned the darkness, but it was impenetrable. The refrigerator hummed softly in the background.
Sleep tugged at him. As his eyelids started to drift closed, he saw a shadowy figure looming at the foot of his bed. His heart pounding in his chest, he sprang out of bed, hit the wall, and crouched, ready to launch himself at the intruder when his brain identified the familiar features—the chin-length hair, the tactical vest, the chrome arm.
This isn't real. This is a dream, he told himself as he stared at the vivid figure of himself—the Winter Soldier—standing motionless at the foot of his bed, staring at him. Despite the darkness in the room, the blue eyes seemed to catch a light that didn't exist.
His throat was tight, but he forced out words. "FRIDAY, lights."
Bright light flooded the room, assaulting his eyes. The space at the end of his bed was empty. His eyes scanned the room. He was alone.
"FRIDAY," he croaked. "Has there been anyone besides myself in this room while I slept?
"No. You have been alone. Shall I summon assistance?" she asked.
His heartbeat sounded like a train in his ears. "No." He breathed a heavy sigh and crawled slowly onto the mattress.
What the hell was that? Was he losing whatever was left of his mind?
He didn't sleep the rest of the night.
-0- -0- -0-
"Any more nightmares?" Dr. Abodon asked.
Bucky hesitated only a moment. "No."
Did last night qualify as a nightmare? He sure as hell wasn't about to admit to any shrink, even Dr. Abodon, that he might be hallucinating.
"How are you feeling this morning?"
Bucky sighed. "Okay. Tired, I guess."
"How did you sleep?"
"In and out."
"Something on your mind?"
"Besides the fact that I have to live with the Winter Soldier for the next few months, at least?" Bucky shook his head. "No."
Dr. Abodon shifted in his chair and tilted his head. "Is that why you're still keeping the arm off?"
Bucky glanced at his vibranium shoulder stump. "Tony's got it, still making adjustments."
"Ah. Okay." He sighed. "You're not wanting to do this today, are you?"
Bucky closed his eyes briefly, sighed, and tilted his head back. "It's been a lot lately."
"I know. That's why I'm here. You might as well take advantage of having me. I'm really quite good, I promise."
Bucky looked up to see a soft smile on the doctor's face. "It's not you."
"Oh," he waved a hand in the air, "I know that." His face grew more serious, and he leaned forward. "Let's forget about the Winter Soldier right now. You've had time to process what happened with Ivanov and the mission to rescue Sam, Pepper, and your nephew. Is there anything you want to talk about now, regarding that night?"
Bucky stiffened and shook his head. "No."
"You're not the only person…."
"I know, Doc." Bucky said quickly. He didn't want to have this conversation, not now, not ever. "Leave it alone."
"I can leave it alone, but I promise you, Bucky, that your brain isn't going to. Our minds have a way of reacting to trauma whether we want them to, or not. I hope you'll think about letting me help you work toward recovery."
Bucky rose. "Thank you, Doc. You're right. I don't want to do this today."
Dr. Abodon nodded and leaned back in his chair. "How's Wednesday afternoon?"
"Fine." Bucky nodded and left the doctor's office.
-0- -0- -0-
The next day, Bucky arrived in Tony's lab, wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt since they would be doing work with the arm. He sat on a stool. The vibranium arm lay at a workstation while Tony's fingers flew around a hologram showing its inner workings.
"Here." Tony pointed to a small disc at the top of the arm, near the connection point. "I can remotely activate this and disconnect the arm. It's pingable, too, for location. I can disable that anytime with a simple adjustment. Also, I've added a feature so you can detach the arm and de-activate it—" Tony cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, "—are you ready for this? By thinking about it. Just like you control the other functions of the arm. Dr. Cho is on her way. We need her help for that."
Bucky stared at the inanimate arm on the table. When it was attached to his body, it felt like a part of him, but as he stared at it on the table, it was nothing more than a piece of equipment.
Dr. Cho entered the lab with a smile. "Good morning." She carried a small case and set it on the table.
"'Morning, Helen." Tony tilted his head.
Bucky gave the obligatory greeting, as well. Dr. Cho opened the case and pulled out small round nodules that looked like mini versions of the neural dampeners.
She looked up at him. "Are you ready for some cognitive training?"
He'd done it before during some fine-tuning training sessions with the arm, but he didn't remember those nodules. "Yes."
She smiled. "Dr Abodon and I developed these. They'll will read your brain patterns, basically a very sensitive EEG. We'll attach your arm and ask you to do specific movements with it, just like we did during your previous training sessions. These will read your neural activity precisely, which will allow us to fine-tune your mental control over the arm and, hopefully, get you more comfortable using its other features."
"Like the repulsors," Tony said.
"I don't want to use those until the Hydra stuff is out of my head," Bucky said.
"Aliens are on their way, Bucky boy." Tony cocked his head at him. "If you're still willing to join the fight when they get here, we're gonna need you ready. I can de-activate the repulsors anytime, but I think we should at least begin working out any kinks."
Bucky sighed and nodded. He didn't like the idea of having a weapon attached to him. The arm itself was deadly enough, but the end of the world was nigh. That meant suiting up and playing ball whether he liked it or not.
Dr. Cho placed the nodules around Bucky's head—one at each temple, two on his forehead, one at the base of his skull, and two beneath his hair on the top of his head. Then she attached his arm. He felt the click of activation as a jolt of tingles in his shoulder and up his neck. He gave the arm a quick rotation to banish the unpleasant sensation, then experimentally flexed the metal fingers.
"How does it feel?" Cho asked.
He nodded. "Seems to be working."
"Okay, we're going to go through some calibrations, get some baseline readings." She grabbed a thin tablet off the table. "Make a fist with your right hand."
He looked at his flesh fingers and curled them into a fist.
"Now with your left hand."
He complied. Dr. Cho spent the next five minutes having him do various things with each arm. Finally, she moved on to the new features.
"Now," she began, "I want you to think about that sensor Tony put at the top of your arm. Think about that and will your arm to detach."
He thought about it. Nothing happened. He thought hard about it, but still nothing happened.
"Keep trying," she instructed, then glanced at Tony, who made some adjustments in the holographic projection.
Bucky closed his eyes and kept willing the arm to detach, trying to visualize the sensor, commanding the arm to drop off like a lizard's tail.
"Good," he heard Dr. Cho say.
Two hours later, in a moment that shocked Bucky, they finally met with success. The arm dropped off. He stared at it on the floor and then at the vibranium stump of his shoulder.
"Wow." He smiled up at them. "I didn't think this was gonna work."
It's a matter of training the sensors in the arm to correctly read the neural signals and perform the appropriate functions," Dr. Cho explained. "Scientists have been able to train monkeys and pigs to play video games or dispense treats by simply thinking about it. Work is already underway with people who've suffered spinal injuries to allow them to manipulate robotic limbs programmed to read and interpret EEG signals. The work we're doing here can help a lot of people."
Bucky blinked at the unexpectedness of that information. He hadn't realized Dr. Cho had that in mind. "You mean, this will help you invent things to help other amputees and people who are paralyzed?"
She grinned and nodded. "That's the plan."
"Funded by the Stark Foundation," Tony interjected. "See? I'm not a completely selfish prick." He tilted his head. "Though it is a tax write-off."
Bucky felt heat rise to his cheeks. He was actually helping people. What a strange feeling! He liked it. He wasn't sure he could ever do enough good to outweigh the harm he'd caused. Maybe, someday, the sum of his existence might nudge into the positive.
"Okay," Tony clapped his hands, "let's work on those repulsors. You probably want to move that stool two inches to the right."
Bucky wasn't sure why, but he rolled the stool a couple of inches and watched Tony's fingers dance again in the hologram
Tony set an empty red plastic cup on a table in front of Bucky and instructed, "Okay, open your palm toward this and just think about giving it a gentle nudge."
Bucky eyed Tony skeptically but complied. He held his palm a foot away from the cup and thought about sending it topping off the table. Predictably, nothing happened. He tried several more times, with Tony making adjustments that sent tingles up the arm and into his shoulder.
"Try again," Tony instructed.
Bucky sighed, made a fist a few times and then held his palm out. "Okay, here—"
He found himself and the stool being propelled backward with a dizzying spin. He hit the wall hard, and the stool clattered out from under him. The back of his skull bounced against the wall, as he slid to the floor.
Dr. Cho crouched in front of him immediately. "Bucky, are you okay?"
"Okay," Tony said, "I should have seen that one coming, since it happened to me during the R&D phase of the suit. My bad. Sorry. You okay, Barnes?"
Bucky picked himself up and nodded, rubbing the back of his head with his right hand. He didn't hit hard enough to cause any real damage. He looked at the wall. It wasn't even cracked.
"I'm fine." He went back to stool. The red cup was lying on the floor across the lab. "I guess this is a success?"
Tony gave a triumphant smile. "Now, we have to make some adjustments and teach you how to plant yourself. It's a lot like getting used to the kick-back on a firearm, and mind how you hold the arm when you activate the repulsors. You just got a basic Newtonian physics lesson. I have a bunch of flight stabilizers to help. You don't, so you'll have to use that superstrength."
Bucky eyed Tony skeptically. "You knew this would happen, didn't you?"
Tony raised his eyebrows. "Are you accusing me of punking you?"
"I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I'm gonna say yes."
Tony smiled and shrugged. "Maybe, but it's stuck in your mind now, isn't it? Best way to learn is sink or swim. Trust me, I sank a lot when I was building and testing the first couple of Iron Man suits. You're a lot less fragile than I am, so don't be a whiner. Speaking of whining, I hear you're still worried about Hydra. You know those new earpieces are so far down in your canal and fastened to the cartilage, they're almost impossible to detect and harder to remove."
"If I'm captured, Hydra will find them."
Tony nodded. "Probably, which is why I've continued tinkering. How would you feel about some light surgery later today?"
-0- -0- -0-
Bucky spent the entire day in the lab working out the kinks of the upgraded arm with Dr. Cho and Stark. They even worked through lunch, with Tony having food sent in. Unlike Dr. Cho, he didn't mind food in his lab. Bucky figured he spent enough time there that it was probably eat in the lab or starve to death.
The light surgery ended up being slightly more painful than he anticipated, but worth it. He now had new earpieces, implanted just beneath the surface layer of skin inside his ear-canals. Even if Hydra captured him, they'd never find them unless they imaged his head. With their dwindling resources, they'd have to move him to a base with such facilities.
It was seven in the evening by the time he headed back to the room, exhausted. His stomach was grumbling again. Lunch had been six-and-a-half hours ago.
He spotted Steve, Natasha, and Sam at the elevator, looking at something on a tablet. When he approached, Natasha turned off the tablet and smiled at him, jerking her chin toward his vibranium arm.
"How're the upgrades?" she asked.
He raised the arm. "I think we've managed to work out the kinks. Most of them. I hope."
"Repulsors up and running?" Sam asked.
Bucky nodded. "For now. I don't think it's a good idea to leave them turned on, but Tony wants me to test them for a few days."
"You hungry?" Steve asked. "How about a pizza and movie night? We're going to watch the second Matrix movie."
"Sure, why not. More scary-evil machines that take over the world. Didn't you already do that in real life?" Bucky asked with a tilt of his head.
Natasha sighed. "That we did."
"Come on," Sam tapped Bucky on the metal arm. "You look like you've been through the wringer today. You wanna crash, or you wanna eat and relax?"
Bucky studied Sam for a moment. Supposedly, they would become friends—or had become friends in some future timeline. Maybe he should try to figure out what that was all about. "Food sounds good." Bucky hit the elevator button for the lower level. "My room or the screening room?"
"Your room is fine," Steve said. "We'll give you a chance to change. Pizza should be here in about an hour. We'll see you then."
-0- -0- -0-
It was eleven o'clock by the time they finished the movie, a dozen beers between them, and three large pizzas. The movie resonated with Bucky. He related to the sleep issues and the control theme. He wondered if Steve was playing closet psychiatrist in his choice of movies.
"Well," Bucky got off the couch and stretched, "thanks for the pizza, beer, and movie."
They all helped clean up, then headed to the door. He bid everyone goodnight, but Natasha lingered, studying him in the hallway.
He tilted his head. "What is it, Romanoff?"
She took a step closer to him. "What you said back at the elevator a few days ago, about there being a killer inside you…."
He leaned against the doorjamb and stared at her. There was something uncertain in her expression, almost pained.
"You're not the only one," she finished. "There's a killer in all of us, me more than most. Difference is, you didn't have a choice."
He knew her history. He read the SHIELD and Hydra files she released on the Internet.
"I read the stuff you leaked about Hydra and SHIELD. You were taken as a child," he told her. "I wouldn't call that much of a choice, either."
"I was old enough," she replied. "We all make choices. Sometimes it's the choice to kill or be killed. You weren't even given that choice. You're no more a killer than any other human being who is sent to war or forced to defend themselves or someone else. I spent time with the Barnes from the future. He turned out to be a decent guy."
He wasn't sure why she was telling him this, but it was strange having people who knew a version of him better than he knew them.
"In fact," she tilted her head and threw him a guarded smile, "I happen to know from personal experience that you're a pretty good dancer."
What? His brow creased. "How personal?"
She winked at him, turned, and walked away.
