Part 2

A Fracture Through Time

Chapter 14


Moscow, Russia, December 23rd

He never listened to them. He didn't want to interfere with the conversions of his superiors. He could've killed them all if he wanted to. It was tempting as he trained his pale blue eyes on Baron Wolfgang Strucker standing behind the desk in the vast room with triangular shaped windows streaming gray light over the metal beams craved into the hollow walls. The man was sadistic and mortally insane. He believed in evolution of humanity and was optimist when it came do dividing the balance of order and chaos. His bloodline was German and purified for HYDRA. Before he had accepted the chance to restore his own failures with the alliance of Red Skull, he was trained with the SS and observed the weakness of his prisoners. He was ruthless and hungry for true power. His disturbing train of thought could wrench any man's heart. His mind worked like an interface programmed, with every detail cut into halves for detecting truth.

It had been a method he used during the interrogation sessions, an instrument of death that harbored the weaken victims of his brutality to stare into his deaden gray eyes when he pulled the trigger. His name was engraved in the lifeless corpses he tossed into the flames and erased their existence as the smoke cleared from the skies. Death was his made deals with demons in moral flesh granted him power over the ranks, however, to earn respect for his leader, he had to cut a few bodies with lead, not his prisoners, but men he once considered comrades during his elusive operations in the shadows.

The Winter Soldier never questioned Strucker. He delivered the instrument he retrieved from the car wreckage, and moved in hushed and mechanical strides to the window. He leaned his intimating stature against the glass, arms folded and eyes narrowed. Two men in white coats and black leather boots stood in front of the desk, sweat dotted their brows when they each stole a glance at the motionless assassin's shadow darkening over the granite floor. He flicked his eyes up, glinting with unnerved intensity, light reflected in his blue irises, mirroring their wary gazes with ice as his jaw set into a sharp clenched. He never spoke to the scientists, Strucker's pack of fumbling and controlled lab rats were always timid around his presence. One look of his changeless blue eyes left them haunted, he knew how to penetrate deep within them, and make their hearts shutter. He was the lone wolf and they were just scavengers, feeding off of scraps he left behind for them. He straightens his posture up at bit, and smirked darkly. He listened to his superior's iniquitous voice, glancing at his commander flipping through documents scattered over the desk.

"Impressive," Strucker said. He lifted up the tube case into the clutch of his gloved hands, and smirk twisted his lips as he took a step back. He appraised the work of the assassin sternly. Another moment passed as he tapped his fingers absently over the case. A slew of his arm suddenly cloaked over the item protecting it from the caress of daylight. "The situation overseas is about to endure changes than anyone has never anticipated. They were on the verge of recovering ancient relics. I've cursed them a dozen times for interfering with our future. Now, we will have the advantage of leveling their systems and rebuilding the world in our image." He twisted the cap off, and carefully slid out the roll of blueprints. His eyes lowered as he scanned the details fervently, mumbling coherent words in German, calculating the equations racking in his disciplined mind. "Our sources have sent information regarding the known location of the wreckage. Once Stark's instrument becomes constructed, it will create new order."

"The body has encased in the icy waters for years, how will we restore the damaged tissue?" One of the scientists asked. He was concerned with the aftermath of the discovery. "No flesh can withstand that degree of cold-"

"You are forgetting about what stands in front of you, doctor." Struker responded, and he vaguely gestured at his hand to the Winter Soldier. "Recreation always restores the weak. Armin Zola perfected the serum after countless procedures with test subjects. Failures to the name of HYDRA. Instead of storing his knowledge, he created a perfected substance that shared the same formula that was meant to by ours, if certain loose ends didn't escape from our eyes. No matter, we developed new weapons with each injection. Some men died horrible deaths in the operating room, but one good soldier withstood all the pain, injections and became submissive to us without the escalation of his defiance... The young man was butchered; mind altered into a programmed machine, which of course Zola rewired with the stages of mind swiping. I don't think people feel comfortable around here, knowing that we have a ghost looming in the shadows. He is perfection. His body had withstand the cold because of all he is called the Winter Soldier."

What he just spoke was degrading to hear. The tension in the room was a choking haze tightening in his throat; HYDRA treated him like a puppet. The Winter Soldier lowered his arms to his sides, the mechanical and screeching noises of the shifting plates made the men in white shiver as an eerie chill permeated in the dead space between them. Despondent the firm set of his broad jaw and hard look in his paled eyes displayed a simple indication of his unpredictable and carnal nature. One scientist spoke trying to ease the dangerous aura pulsating from the ghostly figure trapped in his unsettling gaze. "If your super-soldier is perfection why do you need the other one to become extracted from the ice?"

Strucker looked at him. He sense the resistance in the other man well enough to detect the uncertainty welled in his brown eyes. "Let me tell you a story that mother told me back in the old country. It's about risk and death." He descended haughtily from the steps, nearing the man that questioned his ambitious mind.

"There were two birds sitting on a branch, both of them were strong and fearless...Brothers." he snickered, with a devilish gleam in his gray eyes. "Then, a cat climbed up the tree, a threat to their lives. One fought the cat off, pecking and clawing at the creature's face, but the cat was clever and swiped its paw at the bird, breaking its left wing. The other bird attack with defense, shielding his wounded brother, only to have his right wing broken. The cat knew their weakness, and went in for the kill-but the birds put up a fight and in the end they all fell out of the tree."

"What is the meaning of that story?" the other scientist asked, shifting uncomfortable under the Winter Soldier's daunting gaze.

"It is a simple answer," Strucker said, lowering his hand to his side, and rubbing a finger over his sidearm. "The birds represent order and nobility... While the cat is chaos. When each fight a battle on the high level of power, the end results become deadly, but cats always land on their feet." he chimed, quickly removing his pistol, and aiming the muzzle at the scientist ."It's a story that doesn't make sense of logic, but I like to use it as a distraction before I pull the trigger. It also helps me erase certain errors. The world is collapsing into spiraling void of chaos, and if hope is lost and it became a very dark place."

"So why do you need the America soldier?" the other man questioned, his eyes locked on the gun as he almost swallowed his tongue.

"That is a good question," Strucker said, he stiffened his jaw and undid the safe lock of his gun. "Imagine all the enemies lives we can lid once we change up the mind of America's hero; both him and our friend over there," he pointed to the Winter Soldier. "They both served in the Armed Forces together. Best friends since childhood, but sadly our toy soldier has no recognition of his past. According to Zola's notes, he doesn't even know the name written on his dog tags; including his date of birth. He is a nameless man, hollow and obedient to my commands. A loyal attack dog, who fetches what I order him to retrieve. He never questions, no, he just obeys."

He snapped his fingers, and the brainwashed assassin responded, advancing down the steps, his broad expanse of armored shoulders rolled as he thumped his heavy boots, with an intimating swagger, and then stood at Strucker's right side. "Very good, Solider," he gave the younger man a pleasing nod. "Now, I want you to kill the man who has defiled HYDRA." He placed his gun into the metal hand, and pushed down on the fingers, enclosing them over the weapon. "One bullet in the head, and another in the chest. You have ten seconds."

"Wait-"

The Winter Soldier lifted his bionic arm, chrome alloy glared in his target's eyes, and he pulled back on the trigger, discharging the bullet. His blue eyes became suddenly unhinged with a ghoulish stare, and he watched the bullet enter into the man's forehead, just staring at the line of blood dripping from the bridge of his nose, and lips. The other man jumped a few steps back in a sharp gasp, the Soviet assassin, smirked d ominously, a murderous scowl became a semblance over his chiseled face, and his eyes hardened with morbid satisfaction of his kill. With another clap of thunder ripped through the deafening silence in the air and the body was struck with a bullet in the left side of the chest.

He looked at the lifeless body, his eyes dense and vacant, staring at the splotch of red leaking through the white lab coat. "Enough," Strucker ordered from behind him. The rattled and alive scientist shook in his boots, clamping his hand over his mouth and he tore his eyes away from the Winter Soldier to watch his friend's eyes roll into their sockets. The Baron tossed the tube case to the floor and shook his head. He glowered at the corpse with coldness in his gaze. "Remove the body and get to work." He pointed a gloved finger at the blueprints. "No mistakes this time. Unless you want to stare at your wife's grave."

The Winter Soldier took a step back, the tension heated his body. The scientist glared at Strucker, the German commander disregarded him with a threat welled in his gray eyes. "I want everything ready for the extraction. Remove all lingering failures." He ordered with a bit in his harsh tone. The man grimaced and placed his hand over the glazed eyes of his friend. The Baron smirked, cuffing his hands behind his back. "Imagine having two guns in the hands of HYDRA. So many things need to become rectified on American shores." He turned, and looked at the voiceless assassin; gun was still smoking in his metal hand. "You never fail to disappoint me...You can speak now."

"What is your command, Herr Strucker?" the Winter Soldier spoke, his raspy voice cracked, with ting of soft Russian ghosting from his neutral held lips. He stood straight, frozen as if he was suddenly turned into stone. His eyes looked forward, and jaw flexed when he caught a whiff of the spilled blood draining from the body in front of him. He never budged a muscle, unblinking and strictly pliant under his master's glare. He had been subjected to torture, his mind scarred with the high voltage they gave him before he had a chance to recover olden images of his past. He waited for orders, and carried each one out without a reason to question his inhumane masters of authority.

Struker leveled his eyes on the body with disgust written on his face, "Dispose this filth and report back to me. I have a new assignment for you. I want you to recover something for me in Odessa."

Listening to the spitefulness escalate in Strucker's sordid voice, obliged to follow his instructions, the Winter Soldier nodded quietly, "As you command, Herr Strucker." he responded with a blank expression, and in a swift motion, he advanced to the body, his boots created ripples in the pool of blood. The disheveled and paled faced scientist lurched back in terror, as he reached down his silver arm, grappling the neck of the corpse and started to drag the body across the floor and towards the doors.

"You're a human!" he screamed, enthralling the assassin to jerk in movement. The phantasmal shell of a man turned, and glared over his shoulder, darkened blue eyes held malice, and brown tresses veiled his emotionless face... "You have soul...A soul!"

"No...I don't." he snarled coldly, curling his lips into a viscous sneer, and continued his trek out of the room while leaving a blood trail.

A cold, and frightful chill swept through the room as the door slammed the moment he had disappeared into the shadows.

The scientist lowered his head in reverence for his friend and the butchered soul he'd watched pulled the trigger. "What is in Odessa?" he had to ask, dreading to listen to the answer escape from Strucker's cold lips.

The Baron hollowly reprimand, his words filled with empathy, "An engineer who owes HYDRA a debt."