Chapter 12


"Hail HYDRA..."

He blankly stared at the muzzle of the automatic in front of to hear the safety unlock and the discharge of the trigger, he tried to desperately to block out the images of her ashen face as she was fading before his bleary eyes. It was rebirth. Her life was draining up of her and replaced by HYDRA's poison-the collection blood samples of Red Skull. She was becoming a reincarnation of her debased grandfather, her innocent mind would become alerted into his preserved thoughts and her existence and memories erased. It was a parasite infecting her, eating into the imprinted codes of her DNA strands and configuring into a morbid abomination. A soulless vessel without the understanding of emotion and reason.

"On your feet, soldier," said the director pacing away from the table, his polished shoes tapping on the cement flooring. His fingers snapped, and a stool wheeled before him. Elegantly, he sat down, and extended out his hand, grabbing the Winter Soldier's jaw, and pressing his fingers hard into the bone, almost separating the young man's lips. His deep grayish blue eyes narrowed with a riled expression. "Your compliance is the key reason why this child is being harmed. You are the primary fault of her pain." The Soldier felt his strength beginning to slip. "You were ordered to stand down from the mission. The girl was supposed to be seized by Rumlow. Not you. I can see that your levels of defiance towards following my orders have been breached since our last session when I gave you orders to avoid human contact."

"I didn't mean to disobey," the Winter Soldier returned with a shed of hesitation in his low voice. His eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes watered as the pressure tightening in his jaw bones. His thoughts were addled, as much as his emotions that had been crammed inside a space of his heart. A new feeling arose within him, as he managed to spare a glance at Avora, tears rolled steadily down his smooth face. He wouldn't stand for cruelty and enslavement. Not when it came to his friend. "I couldn't watch her die. Not out there-Not in here."

"I didn't mean to disobey," the Winter Soldier returned with a shed of hesitation in his low voice. His eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes watered as the pressure tightening in his jaw bones. His thoughts were addled, as much as his emotions that had been crammed inside a space of his heart. A new feeling arose within him, as he managed to spare a glance at Avora, tears rolled steadily down his smooth face. He wouldn't stand for cruelty and enslavement. Not when it came to his friend. "I couldn't watch her die. Not out there-Not in here."

"You think it's going to become an easy way out for her? There is no freedom. She belongs to HYDRA. You belong back in the ice. I hate to do this, but it the only way to restore you back into our weapon." The director's face came closer, an inch, as he lowered his grip, and enclosed his left hand over the other man's jugular, feeling his unsteady pulse. He shook his head slowly, before adding. "The world is changing, people need to coward in fear, and you are the symbol of our power. You are perfection, controlled by our ideals of rebuilding new foundations of a birthing world, and turning the old one into ruins. We can't allow you to become human again. There is too much at stake."

The assassin gritted his teeth, viciously.

"Don't waste your strength on me. We both know that you won't have victory. You're not a soldier." The director's eyes gleamed with unsavory hue of blue. "No memory of your true existence. Tortured and imprisoned in a reanimation chamber, maybe you should consider your choice of fighting against my authority. It's not just your life I hold in my hands. Are you human enough to make the sacrifice and give her freedom while your blood spills on this floor? My men are just watching for the order to pull their triggers. All it takes is one word to become the difference maker."

The Winter Soldier's eyes grew heavy with the film of tears. For some reason those cold words felt worse than a wielding knife jabbing into his heart. "I can be a monster, destroy lives and make children scream."

He snapped his fingers, and the assistant squeezed Avora's arm, getting her to yelp in pain. "That's a devolving sound of your failure-Listen to her cries for mercy. Tell me if you feel them?" He scowled, twisted, and settled his darken eyes on the rattled asset.

The Winter Soldier wrenched his eyes away, as much as he could, and fastened his lips into a hard grimace.

"I..." His cracked voice pitched up and then faded in his throat. "I don't want to see her in pain...Make it stop." He snapped his eyes down, bowing his head and sucking in deep breaths, trying to regain his composure.

As he lowered his fists to his sides, he positioned his body into stance of subornation-one armored knee pad pressed against the cement, before clamping his eye lids shut to darkened out the brightness of the room.

"Make it stop." he snarled. "She won't survive. She's not strong enough." He hissed while listening to her shrills of pain erupting from the shadows cloaking over the table.

"Tell me what you're feeling?" the director instructed, releasing his hand from the asset's clammy neck.

"I feel pain," the Winter Soldier told him, timidly. He couldn't suppress the invasive throb harrowed in his heart. He jerked his head to the side, his long, disheveled strands draped over his glistening blue eyes. "I feel her pain." he slurred, trying to clear his vision to focus.

"Showing emotions towards a child is a weakness that cannot be tolerated." the director affirmed, standing upright to his full height, and shaking his head as he looked down at his defective weapon. "HYDRA spent years trying to perfect you to suppress emotion and obedience. You were created execute our orders and termite the movement of resistance."

He smugly sneered, holding out his hand as an agent stepped forth and placed a metal rectangular box into his palm. "You are the nightmare that was birthed in HYDRA's shadow. The perfect assassin. A cold blooded killer. No emotion. No compassion. No reason. Nothing about you makes you remotely human. You're a weapon-A gun that we store away until hunting season."

The Winter Soldier blanched aback; feeling the cold venom of his superiors words seep into his hollow bones. "You're an only a frail glimpse of a man. A calibrated machine. You don't need a name. Even through at one point in your worthless life, you had one, but you don't remember it. Not anymore. To HYDRA, you're our loyal pet-The Asset."He intoned. "Your little friend and you are going to be spending a cold and dark future together."

The director smirked, virulently. "Yes. You know understand your existence, and you will not fight."

Surrender or watch her die?

Now, the Winter Soldier had become acutely aware of the heavy thumping of boots moving closer to him. He was frozen. His chin tucked down to his sternum and his hands laden over the floor. Hearing the muffled cries, he lifted his head slightly, just enough to catch a glance at her trembling underneath the flickering bulb shining over her ivory skin. Just enough to see the tears roll down her cheeks when the serum pumped into her tiny, fragile arms.

"Avora," he whimpered, soft and his voice was collapsing. "I will not fight you," he mustered up enough will power to speak in a murmur, which was unfamiliar against his tongue. He felt malady of deficiency streaming in his veins. It was a niggling sense of humanity that had been churning and prompting him to fight since he entered the room and stared at her small body strapped to the operating table. He wanted to scream, fight and break bones, but he couldn't gamble with her life. He couldn't ignore the innervation of being human. He turned, fighting against the waves of animosity flaring in him. He turned, and then glared back at the director with a malefic gleam of smelted azure and he never shifted his eyes.

Rollins ambled quietly from behind the Winter Soldier, and yanked at his arms, twisting the muscle and metal plating, and then cuffed them against the muscled planes of his back, disabling his wrists against reinforced titanium.

"Get up," he barked aloud, gruff and ugly. He pulled at the long strands, and forced the Asset's head up to stare at the girl once more. "That brat," he whispered lowly, his breath heated over the other man's scruffy jaw. "Is going to become my new play toy. She and I are going to have so much fun training while you're locked in the ice box." he grunted, cracking his knuckles.

"Get him out of my sight," the director ordered waving his hand with a dismissive gesture. He shuffled his feet back to the table, and patted his hand over Avora's paled shoulder. "It will be okay princess," he allayed with a fathering tone, smiling falsely down at the child. "It's almost over."

"My...Snow... Angel..." Avora choked up, tears streamed over the edges of her quivering lips. She turned her neck, and gazed at the Winter Soldier with her fearful caramel eyes. Her hand lifted up slightly, as she tried to reach out for him. The assistant took grip of her arm ruthlessly, squeezing on the frail muscle tight enough to terminate the blood circulation against the bruising flesh. "Don't forget about me..." she wheezed out, before her eyes dimmed and the effects of a serum began to arise in her blood. She drifted into an unconscious state.

His blue eyes were dark and intrepid and dismay surged through his system as he thrashed against Rollin's broad muscles locked over his torso.

Pain was still sharp in the isolated sections of his body, lingering and jolting spasms from his operations, and realignment of his bones in various spots of his ribs and shoulder blades, he gritted, viciously.

His vision swam into violent crimson. The reemergence of the Winter Soldier programming was beginning to take hold of his mind. "I will kill you of you!" he lashed out, snarling like caged wolf. His teeth bared and eyes livid, struggling against Rollins to retain movement.

"Rollins," the director snapped, firm and direct. "Take him down. I will not have this child become a witness of bloodshed."

"Let go of me!" the Winter Soldier growled to Rollins, feeling all eyes locked on him. Guns were loaded with a heavy dosage of sleeping agent.

"You're unstable, soldier." Rollins shot back, twisting his right arm, and listening to the bones crack. "You've been out of cryo for too long. It's made you defective." he snorted, cursing up his throat and scolding the situation.

"Avora," The Winter Soldier whispered, brokenly to himself. The thought of her dying on the table made his heart thud to a halt in his chest. He knew the horrors of HYDRA, he was forced to watch young girl become slaves to torture in a dark place of underground Russia-The Red Room.

He saw the corruption of the mind, and trained with a lethal red haired operative -she carried venom in her blood and destroyed her enemies, ruthless and merciless with efficient methods that had been branded over her skin. She was deadly as a spider-and trapped men in her weaves of deception.

After he accomplished his final mission in Odessa before going back into reanimation stasis. He saw the agent in the mountains and pulled the trigger on his target-he missed and watched the slug enter her when she dived in front of engineer and took the bullet. He knew she wasn't dead-just wounded with a permanent reminder shaped and marred over her compromised pale skin.

Blinking the potent memory of the red-haired woman in black combat gear, the Winter Soldier tore his eyes away from the guns aimed at his chest. Something sparked within him, maybe it was the true man hidden behind the semblance of the killer or maybe it was Avora's love towards him. Whatever it was, he felt his feral strength returning,his heart pounding and searing defiance fighting the hands pinning him down.

For the first time in years, he cracked a ghostly hint of a warm, human smile. He looked at her, with his burning light blue eyes, and growled harshly, "She will have freedom." he screamed at the top of his lungs, and threw his head back. "I'll make sure of that!"

Rollins clamped his hand over the assassin's mouth from behind, barricaded the words, and ceasing the protests. The Winter Soldier bit down on his leather gloved fingers, gnashing his teeth into the bone with much force as he could muster. Rollins yelped under his breath and whipped his hand away and spewed out a jumble of curses. Seizing the opportunity of his opponent's distraction, the Soldier bashed his head into the agent's skull, hard and listened to the cartilage of his nose breaking.

He spun around, jumped a few inches off the ground, and rammed his boots into Rollin's chest, violently.

The agent fumbled backwards and collided to the ground with a loud thud; and he shifted his blue eyes to the table and with all his strength, he broke the handcuffs, allowing pieces to scatter over the floor. He moved quickly, vaulting and flipping over tables, and bashing heads until his feet smacked on a steel crate, and head lowered. He glared at the director with murderous indent, and seethed in Russian, "She is coming with me..."

The director nodded, gesturing to hostile "Okay. Take her. You won't get far." he warned, hiding a twisted smirk.

The Winter Soldier scuffed at his words, and jumped off the crate, and landed gracefully at the table side, and caressed Avora's small hand with his metal fingers. He wanted to hear her voice again. "Avora," he whispered, bringing her limp hand to his face, pressing his lips atop of her knuckles. He held a kiss there, feeling her veins pulse against the softness of his warm, trembling mouth.

Seconds later, he heard a defeating sound of a gun sounding off, and saw splotches of blood painting over the floor. His hand collided with the floor and he could only thrash and growl as his right arm suddenly grew numb. He had been shot.

"You have disappointed me, soldier," snarled the director. He reached down and tangled his hand into the Winter Soldier's long hair, and rammed his face into the floor, hard enough to make him expel out, dark red that had replaced saliva.

He tugged on the long stands hard, bringing the young man's head up, before slamming his forehead back into the floor again. "You are going back into the chair and your mind will be wiped clean. I will go so deep that you won't even remember how to talk."

The Winter Soldier lifted his metal hand, trying to grasp Avora's arm. "No, she needs me..."he coughed, his body was dragged over the floor and right arm throbbed as the bullet sunk deeper into the tensed muscle of his bicep, "I made a promise. A promise!" he managed to growl out a strangled breath, his voice fading as he felt his body becoming forcefully hauled up and strapped into the steel, electronic probing chair, before he cried out erratic bursts of pain.