Chapter 8: Fires In Plain Sight~
"Logically,if you must build a fire because you risk catching your death of cold, but you are being hunted by Hydra's finest, then you must do it in plain sight, and in a place where smoke would be expected. What better place, than on the other side of a landfill's incinerator?" Sherlock was saying.
Bucky and Sherlock were leading John and Steve through the midst of a huge landfill on the long road to Kiev. The sight had been established by the Soviet Union and still had an old incinerator for burning flammable trash to keep the dump from taking over. A band of locals still took their trash here, and had an operator burn them in the incinerator, so smoke still rose over this place all hours of the day.
"The other benefit is the limitless supply of junk to burn..." Bucky replied, drawing his jacket closer to himself.
Steve walked closely behind him, eyes wide, moving almost mechanically. John noticed this, subtly, because he could barely take his eyes off of Sherlock, but he did notice it. He made a mental note of insisting that he should be allowed to medically examine both the Sergeant and Sherlock since they had obviously just escaped the very jaws of Hell.
Steve shook his head, feeling like he was drowning on dry land.
Bucky looked more than just sick. He looked like he was dying.
John studied Sherlock intently, making a note of the way he walked, and how his face was pinched up in a pained expression. It didn't take genius observation skills to see that the man was very uncomfortable, possibly in excruciating pain that he had just learned to cope with. It struck John like a bolt of lightning.
"My God, he's been tortured..." he thought to himself.
John was startled when Bucky stumbled, and bowed over, breaking into a horrific bout of hacking.
Steve stood gaping, mouth wide, hands reaching out like he wanted to do something to help but he didn't know what to do.
Bucky bowed over, coughing almost vicious whip-snapping coughs, and then spit up a mouthful of blood. He stood bowed over, hands on his knees for a long time, panting.
"Please, I'm a doctor. I need to have a look at you..." John said, reaching a hand out for Bucky, laying it carefully on his shoulder.
"Gah...Yes...yes that would be nice. I'm not sure if you can though...this isn't a naturally caused disease..."
They had reached the incinerator's back wall by now. Sherlock took incentive, and pulled up a trash can, and quietly began to build a fire in it.
"What can I...can I help?" Steve began, having gone the shade of school chalk.
Sherlock pulled up a few old broken crates, and paint buckets, and things he'd found lying around to sit on.
"Yes. I can inform you of the state of affairs, you can take my word as gospel, and you can form a plan of action for how we should respond to Hydra's reaction against our revolution. If you love your friend, that seems like the most sensible thing to do. He's in more danger of what his former slave masters will do to him, than of his upper respiratory failure."
Steve sank to sitting on one of the buckets,staring up at Sherlock with a horrified expression. Sherlock stared down at him face set like stone, contemplating deeply what needed to be said before he said it.
John sat Bucky down on one of the big crates, and pulled his shirt off.
"Oh...God!" John gasped, and covered his mouth.
Bucky's hand slid up his chest, somewhat ashamed.
Steve stood up, green- faced, like he would throw up.
"Secret's out..." Bucky laughed, sheepishly.
"This is how they did all of their brainwashing to me...kept me under their thumb for so long. It's like...one of those heat- seeking GPS things they've got now, but made out of some mercury thermometer that is poisoning me...I would get deathly sick like I am now, they'd capture me, give me the antidote,and then use drugs and electricity to wipe my mind. I honestly don't remember anything about the people I killed...or why I did it, or how I got there...All of that...is like a nightmare I had...where I was...someone else..."
Steve shook his head. "So Hydra got you...Forced you to kill people, and put that in your chest so you couldn't get free?"
Bucky's hand slowly crept away from the bright brass skull carved and welded bionically into his chest, much like his fake arm was attached to his shoulder.
"Well, yeah...And it worked...until I ...uhmm...remembered well enough...and I chose that I had enough of being this undead Frankenstein thing...so I broke..I broke the mechanism. Now its like being in the torture chamber all the time. I don't know how you can help me ,Doctor, you'd have to take it out..."
John and Steve were silent.
"We should probably discuss the data, and make a plan for moving out before worse befalls all of us, especially you ,Sergeant..." Sherlock said, slowly, calculating his every thought.
"Yeah, and you. Don't try and sugar coat it ,kid, the sound of your screams echoed down to me in my little bird cage. When they caught you sneaking into their base, they tortured you, manically, didn't they? Come on, don't be so shy, let's see it..." Bucky replied, wrly.
Sherlock swallowed, and slipped out of his coat and shirt too.
John gaped.
Sherlock had an iron snake with seven heads, a Greek Hydra, wrapped around his body, the heads piercing into his flesh and coming out the other side.
" Tracking devices were never meant to be so trendy... " Sherlock hissed, snarkily, smiling apologetically at John.
John was babbling, lips gone blue, and pointed at him, unable to form sensible sentences.
Steve bowed his head.
"So, let's get this straight,because you two are moving a little too fast for me... Buck, you had been captured by Hydra and bugged this whole time, until you broke the device, and when they found out what you did they had you in some sort of holding facility? And Sherlock, you broke into this facility for information, got captured, and were tortured and had that thing , which is also some kind of bugging mechansim, stitched through your skin,like a lanyard looped through a ragdoll, so that you couldn't escape without being tracked? You two met each other in prison, and conspired together to escape, and now you're in danger of being brutally executed for your rebellion?"
"Exactly! Well done, Captain Rogers, you just might be capable of the science of deduction, to some broadly spoken degree!" Sherlock gasped, eyes shining.
John swallowed, hand trembling, and coughed, standing up straight.
"Well, by God, you're not going another day with those horrible things bolted in you. Find me a place, and things to use at tools, and I'll show you just what medical expertise I'm capable of. They don't call me the X Doctor for no reason.."