1965

"Relax. All you really are is a craftsman. And all he really is, is a tool."

I followed Agent Dsarsko down the stairs, my heart pounding with excitement. Although I had been familiar with these well-guarded grounds for years, I had never been down to the lowest levels of the compound. Ours was the largest HYDRA installation in Europe, and it was very possible to work here for a lifetime without ever learning all of its secrets.

I had heard of Project: Winter Soldier, of course. We all had. Only a select few HYDRA agents ever actually saw or interacted with this most valuable asset, but the abilities and track record of the Fist of HYDRA were a point of pride for all. And now I- I!- had been selected as his next handler. I could feel a small, idiotic grin on my lips, and try as I might I couldn't completely wipe it away. This was the kind of honor, the kind of opportunity I had been working toward for years. At thirty-five years of age, I was the youngest handler ever assigned to the Soldier.

"Tell me the truth, Dmitri. He must resist sometimes. What do you do?" I asked as I jogged down the stairs, feeling a stab of nervousness. Ordinarily, I would have given Agent Tsarsko a hard time for his insistence on avoiding the elevators- an idiosyncrasy that I rarely humored without a fight- but today I was filled with an excess of restless energy. It was just as well to release it with the extra exertion where I could.

"I've been the Asset's handler for ten years, and we've had no problems to speak of. He's beautifully designed, I told you. There are plans in place for every possible problem. The technicians will take care of all that. All you have to do is manage him and use him, for the glory of HYDRA. They have a lot of faith in you- and you've earned it, Konstantin." Pounding down the stairs behind him, I allowed my grin to broaden in pride.

I was fortunate to be filled with that giddy excitement, because it was the only thing keeping me focused today. I had been up all night- for the last three nights, in fact- with our firstborn. At nine months of age, Andrei was a delightful child and I was thoroughly enjoying the early days of fatherhood. He had been sleeping through the night for months, but he was suffering from a terrible flu at the moment which he couldn't seem to shake. Luciya was herself exhausted and seemed close to developing the illness herself, so it was I who stayed awake the last few nights with my feverish son. Even now, with my elation chasing the fog of sleeplessness from my head, his red little face and bright, bewildered eyes haunted me.

It was my first experience with the sickness of my own child. The anguish of knowing that he didn't understand what was happening, that he looked to me in his suffering for comfort and answers that I couldn't provide, had followed me away each day when I left the house.

We finally reached what I realized was the lowest level of the compound. We reached the final landing, all gray and windowless concrete. Dmitri pushed past a pair of heavy industrial doors and into a large, cold chamber, dimly lit and unadorned. My grin faded just a bit as I shivered in the echoing silence. The room held nothing but a bank of computer terminals, about a dozen muttering technicians scurrying from screen to screen, and the cryofreeze tomb.

It was not called a tomb, of course. The other agents called it the chamber, the tank, the tube, even (playfully) the freezer- but from the moment I first saw it, with a dead blue face just visible through a small frosty window, I never could think of it as anything other than a tomb.

Dmitri led me to the technician who seemed to be in charge, a tall, gangly, bespectacled man of about forty years. "Agent Yenin, this is Doctor Burkov. Doctor, this is our asset's new guardian."

Doctor Burkov chuckled at the job description and extended a hand. He had twinkling eyes and untidy gray hair. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Agent Yenin. I'm sure our Soldier will be in the best of hands." I bowed my head in mock solemnity. Dmitri asked briskly, "Well, how long now?"

The doctor gave Dmitri a small smile. "We're right on schedule. We should be able to begin the final phase in a few minutes. He's actually already warmed up a bit."

Dmitri and Doctor Burkov continued to make small talk ("Any problems yet?" "No, there was a cracked tube but we caught it…") while I stood beside them, glancing around and trying hard not to look as ignorant as I felt. I had no idea what was going on. How did you go about defrosting a corpse and making it live?

The techs seemed to know what they were doing. I felt a little irritated- I disliked being at a disadvantage of knowledge- but also subdued. There was something unutterably bleak about this place, something I couldn't quite pin down. That sense of oppression would follow me through the entire day at the lowest levels of the HYDRA compound, and although I didn't yet know it, would be a constant companion every time I deployed the asset there.

My mind wandered as I waited. I thought of Andrei, at home with Luciya. The reality of fatherhood had been more exhilarating and frightening than any mission I had ever known. The daily act of holding my infant son in my arms, of treating him with a softness to my hands and voice that I hadn't known I was capable of, was absolutely terrifying. I liked problems I could attack and people I could impress or intimidate. The experience of comforting my tiny, helpless child was altogether novel, and not always pleasant, yet the ability to gently care for him seemed to come forth from a previously-unsuspected part of me, some fatherly instinct I never knew I had.

My attention was yanked back to the present by a sudden surge in noise and activity around me. I watched in fascination as the tomb filled with fog and obscured the slack face within. The machines all around us were rumbling, whirring, beeping, Burkov and Dmitri stood tensely alert, and the techs had eyes only for their displays, all this to do one impossible thing- to bring back the dead.

The structure holding the tomb began, ponderously, to tip it back, coming to rest at a slight angle. I looked at Dmitri questioningly, and he leaned in close- it was loud in there- and muttered, "So he doesn't fall out as he wakens." I shivered a little at this. They tried to prepare me, but this was really happening. That body would be coming out to join us, and soon.

"Now," hissed Dmitri, a blast of hot breath in my ear. I stifled my irritation at his closeness and kept still; it really was too loud to converse at a civilized distance. "Remember, he will not awaken as a useful tool. He will be upset, crying or screaming and struggling, but he won't have much strength just yet. Your job here is to bring him out of it. You can handle it however you want. Some handlers use reassurances, others force. I favor force personally, it seems to get the job done a bit faster, but it's up to you."

"Wait- I thought I would only be watching today. Aren't you going to- to take care of it?" I asked, becoming flustered.

"Sorry, friend, not this time. We awaken him so seldom that it really isn't practical to have a trial run. This is your task. Don't worry-" and he clapped a hand on my back- "I'll be right behind you. You'll be fine."

With that, Dmitri took several large steps back and left me standing alone, the bastard. I watched with fresh trepidation as the door to the tomb opened automatically. Fog rolled out like a special effect, and I waited, half expecting the Winter Soldier to sit up out of the fog, arms folded, just like Dracula did in the foreign films. Instead, two techs reached into the chamber and emerged holding a stiff figure by both arms. They weren't helping him out so much as dragging him. He was wearing rough trousers, like something a prisoner would wear, but nothing else, and I was struck for an instant by the inhumanity of it- but of course, he would have been aware of the cold for only an instant before the stasis was complete. Remember, they had told me, he isn't like us, he doesn't feel like we do.

The asset stumbled, and the techs dropped his arms without real resistance. He sprawled heavily onto the cold tile floor with a painful smack and trembled there, back hunched and arms braced unsteadily against the tiles. His head hung low. The condensation that covered his pale skin dripped steadily from his lank hair. He was breathing hard, making a high-pitched animal sound of growing panic.

Everyone in the room was now looking at me. I became aware that I had shrunk myself far behind everyone else in the room, closer to the sanctuary of the exit. Only the two least senior techs paid no attention to me, or to the shivering figure on the floor; they had their machines to tend, and so, I realized with trepidation, did I.

Bastard. Force, Dmitri had said force, and that sounded good to me, easy; so I stepped forward, shoved the asset onto his back, and slapped him sharply across the face. And again. And again. "You will calm yourself!" Slap. "Worthless animal-" Kick. "You are useless to us, useless to HYDRA this way, you-" I aimed another kick at his ribs and that's when I saw his eyes for the first time.

Andrei's eyes, only hours before, wide and watery with fear and incomprehension. The same, same eyes, blue instead of brown but nonetheless the same, and bizarrely misplaced in the face of an adult man instead of my tiny child, and I found that I could neither shout nor slap anymore. He was still hyperventilating, eyes fixed on me, and the violence was starting to work but I simply couldn't do it. Without any plan or decision, I found myself cupping my hand reassuringly around his face, my other hand helping him gently to sit, as I murmured, "Hey, it's okay, shh. Calm down, it's going to be okay." A moment later I was crouched by his side as he shivered, giving him an awkward half-hug of comfort as I would any sobbing child.

Several minutes passed in stillness, the only sounds my muttered reassurances and the asset's labored breathing; this was working too, but then I froze in a moment of jarring clarity, abruptly repulsed by the hulking, clammy figure that I was embracing. I quickly glanced behind me, suddenly self-conscious, but Dmitri was not watching. No one was really watching anymore. Once I had begun dealing with my charge, the situation had lost its novelty and now everyone was busy shutting down their roaring machines. I had a strange feeling, just for a moment, that the asset and I were alone on an island of quiet, amidst all these indifferent people. And here I sat, almost rocking the most feared assassin in the world like a toddler with a nightmare. Bastard, I thought again, but I stayed there.

It took about half an hour for the asset to become lucid enough to behave normally, or what passed for normally for him. I hadn't yet learned what to expect from my charge, but Dmitri assured me that his unnerving passivity was indeed standard for the Winter Soldier at ease.

I couldn't stop glancing at him. I had expected a dark, angry boogeyman, not this timid man-child. How did he get this way? I reminded myself (not for the first time) to never get on the wrong side of HYDRA, then shook myself back to the present. It was time for his conditioning.

"Come," I said, and I held a hand out to him to lead him from the room. I cursed myself immediately for this, another action in grotesque parody of parental behavior, but he didn't recognize the cue anyway and only followed me obediently. Dmitri trailed behind at a short distance, talking casually with Burkov, and I realized that the Soldier hadn't acknowledged him at all. His eyes slid past him with nothing, no ghost of recognition, and he clearly had no memory of his previous handler. I experienced a fleeting, bizarre feeling of hurt before dismissing it impatiently. Would he forget me so easily too?

At the door to the conditioning room, I realized my charge had hesitated. His eyes were fixed on the procedure chair within, and he was breathing fast once again. Perhaps he remembered? If so, it couldn't be much, probably just a faint impression of pain. I had seen film of the chair in action, and I was confident that if he remembered more, no amount of conditioning could make him approach it willingly, as I had been assured he would.

My confidence faltered a little as a new batch of techs turned our way questioningly. What came next? Dmitri had sketched it out for me but I still felt unprepared. Bastard. Thankfully, two of the techs stepped forward and took the Asset's arms, leading him forward, leaving me behind. His steps still dragged a bit, but despite his still-shaking limbs and obvious distress, he offered no resistance. He glanced around the room and his wide eyes landed on me, locking on with a hint of desperation.

It's almost like he's a person, I thought uncomfortably. Like he expects something. I didn't know why he would, I was sure Dmitri wasn't forthcoming with civilized interactions during his custody of the Soldier, but after a beat I relented. What the hell, what does it cost me. I smiled slightly and nodded my head, and my charge relaxed slightly into the chair as if he felt reassured.

"This is good, Konstantin," Dmitri said jovially, patting my shoulder. "He is already imprinting on you. It's necessary for all his handlers, but sometimes it takes some doing. This is going to save you days of trouble."

"Imprinting…? Oh, yes." I had been briefed on this as well, of course. The need for the Asset to develop unquestioning loyalty and obedience to his primary handler was obvious, and there were protocols in place to ensure that this happened. I had no objection to any processes that would reduce the likelihood of the Asset attacking me in some unanticipated fit of rage, but I hadn't realized it would manifest like this. Despite Dmitri's upbeat words, I felt a brief stab of unease as I held the Asset's steady gaze.

They had assured me that he would obey me. No one had warned me that he would trust me, too.

The Soldier's eyes didn't leave me as the techs buckled sturdy restraints over his arms and torso. They didn't leave me as a rubber guard was crammed between his teeth. They didn't leave me as the chair reclined, as the mysterious array of machinery behind him spiraled down to embrace his head, as it sparked and hissed to life. They did finally leave me as the screaming began.