7. Stimulus

Making himself sick turned out to be the easiest part.

The doctor was always watching, but if Bucky lay on the bed and pretended the pills had made him drowsy, arms nestled in front of his chest, he could work the small blade into the space below his armpit where the metal arm met his flesh, and no one would know. He would slice away, very slow, careful not to scrape bone, not to make any noises or shudders of pain. Once, he struck something—a rib, a nerve, an electric wire—and his vision blacked out as he clenched his body as hard as he could to stop himself from convulsing or screaming.

It took a while. He wasn't trying to make himself bleed, just to keep a wound open until it would get infected or something would malfunction. Then maybe they would just wheel him out of the maze and into one of their medical rooms without drugging him, without knocking him out, without it being one of those times when he was not drugged or knocked out but was nonetheless useless.

The wound was mostly healed every time he came to, but he kept going, slicing through the puffy ridge of flesh as though repetition would eventually keep the edges from knitting back together. Sometimes—he couldn't really keep track of how many times but some times—he dared to leave the blade in. It was risky, he knew. They could knock him out and see what he'd done, notice the blood, find the chunk of metal embedded in his flesh. It'd be written on his skin along with all his other secrets.

They were going to notice, they always noticed, they always saw, but maybe he would be lucky, maybe, maybe…

Once or twice or many more times they did knock him out with the blade still in, but they didn't find it. He came to in the chair where they inked the pictures inside his brain, or in the chair where they took them out, or about to run the maze, and focused on the feel of the blade sheathed in his body, tucked under his arm, the tip scraping his ribs. He could practically feel the spray of rust on the metal. Good. Rust was good, almost as good as the pain, which let him know the blade hadn't slipped out. Rust would make him sicker sooner.

He managed to swipe a vial of something after one of his sessions with the doctor's voice, and for a moment that gave him a funny feeling in his chest; it took him a little while to recognise it not as hope but as something a little like it. A little.

Because it meant something, didn't it? That he was lucid more often than not since he'd managed to stop taking the pills, so much that he even remembered his own name a lot of the time, that he'd found that sharp little piece of metal, that they hadn't discovered the wound or the things stashed in his mattress, that he wasn't completely out of it after this session, that the tray with the vials with big danger exclamation points was in reach and a machine made a funny noise so that for one split second no one one was looking at either the tray or him, that this was one of those times when they let him keep his clothes on so he could stick the vial behind the waistband of his pants and keep the metal hand curled over it, that they didn't spot it when they made him half-sleep and wheeled him out, something, something…

It had to be a sign, didn't it? A sign. That was what he had.

In his room, awake again, he sat on the edge of the bed and pushed the vial into the mattress. It was much bigger than the pills and the blade, so at first it wouldn't go in. He kept pushing, sure that it was going to break, that they would be able to see the sweat on his forehead. The vial didn't break, but it did make an enormous bulge in the mattress, and they were going to notice that, of course they would, they would have to be blind, except of course there was no bulge, it was just his imagination, and if he lay down very, very carefully, he wouldn't break it.

A snap of glass. He shuddered out of a dream. He never slept but there were his wake-dreams, and that was all this was, a dream. When he sat on the edge of the bed, skin clammy, and felt around for the vial, it was intact.

He was hot and shivery at the same time. He tried to feel his forehead with the back of his hand, pretending he was brushing his hair away from his eyes. They're watching. They're watching. They're watching.

Fever. He didn't need to touch the wound to know there was pus, he could smell it, but even so he lay back again—they're watching they're watching theyrewatch—to cover up the motions of his fingers as he prodded at the spot he'd been cutting. The flesh felt both mushy and hard with trapped fluid. That was a good sign. He wasn't going to look at it but he could picture it well enough, blackening skin, streaks of yellow and red. When he moved the metal arm, the flesh parts hurt. That was also a good sign.

Today (what day?). Now.

He rolled onto his stomach, very slowly, trying to look like someone stirring while drowsing, and squirmed, inch by inch, to the edge of the bed. It took forever. It took a few minutes. Then he slipped the blade out of the mattress and went to work on his tongue. If the liquid in the vial made him throw up, he wanted there to be as much blood as possible.

His stomach fluttered just a little at the taste of the flesh-spattered blade inside his mouth. He wasn't sure if it was hunger, which again was good. He wasn't sure if he could eat, or if he ever had.

Maybe the liquid in the vial would would just kill him. He put the blade back in its hideaway, his mouth full of salt and rust, and carefully sneaked the vial out of its hole in the mattress, then tucked it out of sight inside his cupped hand. The label had columns of Chinese characters, only a few of which he understood—stop danger—and, pasted on top, rows of Cyrillic letters, most of which he knew. He didn't understand the words themselves, they were chemistry and science he didn't know anything about.

The exclamation point inside the red triangle, that he understood. That was familiar.

Maybe it's acid. Maybe it'll just melt your mouth.

Shut up.

Maybe it's poison. Kill you slow.

The thought hung like a rain cloud, making him neither happy nor sad. So what? If it killed him, so what?

He twisted the vial's cap off with his forefinger and thumb, sure that he was going to spill it all and end the plan right there, sure that he was going to be made to black out. Then, under cover of his curled hand, he pressed the vial against his lips and drank.

There wasn't much to drink. The liquid stung his cut-up tongue and tasted of disinfectant, but it didn't melt his lips, and once it was down it just left a chemical aftertaste in the roof of his mouth.

He rolled onto his back, head cloudy with fever. Maybe the liquid would do absolutely nothing, wouldn't that just be his luck?

(Dying would be like winning the big prize draw, it wouldn't happen and he couldn't make it happen, but wouldn't it be wonderful…)

He wasn't sure how much time oozed by before his heart began to speed up.

It was only an insistent thump against his ribcage at first, before it turned into a furious hammering. An animal was trapped inside, trying to claw its way out. He dripped sweat, struggled to breathe. Shit. Oh shitohshitohshit. Oh he was in real trouble now. He jerked out of the bed, his limbs out of his control, and slammed face-down on the floor. It barely hurt; his body was too numb for pain.

He heaved, coughed up the blood in his mouth, then retched again and threw up a flow of red-streaked bile. It sprayed on his arms, his shirt, the floor, splashed back onto his face.

You wanted there to be blood there it is good job good job.

By the time the door opened he was on his back but couldn't remember how that'd happened. His limbs jerked once in a while, his heart raced at two hundred miles an hour. He made a small sound, but that was all he managed. His mouth had slacked open, tongue lolling out like a dog's. Thinking was too hard. He had to force himself to focus by translating the two guards' words into English.

'We have a situation.'

'I'll watch him.'

'Yes, it looks real.' The guard wasn't talking to his colleague. He must be using some kind of radio device.

Before Bucky could force another thought, another wave of nausea gripped him. Sour fluid burned his mouth and nose. He tried spitting it out but he only managed to suck it further into his airways. One desperate flail rolled him onto his side and he stopped choking, just as his vision had started to blacken. He gulped air in, greedily. His mouth stung with acid and blood.

'—forty-one.'

He had not felt the guard lift his vomit-stained shirt to take his temperature but he felt the fingers on his wrist to measure his heartbeat. A gun barrel's blind eye hovered above him. The guards chattered again. This time he did not bother to try to understand what they said. His lips were stuck together, his skin cold. Thoughts curdled somewhere under his skin, firing from nowhere to nowhere.

They must have decided he really was ill. After some time he was picked up off the floor and dumped on a stretcher like a sack of potatoes, then wheeled out of the room. Left, left, right. He tried to memorise the path they were following through the maze of corridors, but soon it all blurred into a loop of beige and linoleum. He had to fight his way out, he knew that, but he forced himself to remain still.

It wasn't hard. His heart had slowed down a little, but it still felt like it a balloon about to burst, and he shivered with fever. The liquid he'd drunk sizzled in his veins.

He was wheeled into a lift, then another corridor. More guards gathered around the stretcher, hurried, on edge. Hidden doors would slide open for them, but the insides of his head were too mushy for him to understand how. The stretcher rolled to a halt. He shuddered, harder than before. He didn't know if he'd ever been here. The glint of instruments was familiar, as was the smell, disinfectant and rubbing alcohol, the sweet-sharp scent of medicine.

A clear bag, swollen with liquid, was hung on a pole at his side. Someone grabbed his hand and rubbed a cotton ball across the skin, needle at the ready.

One two three four five. Five guards.

He grabbed the pole and hit Number One so hard he sent him sprawling backwards across the room.

His muscles were rusted with fever and weakness and pain but he was still too quick for them. He jumped down, knocking an SMG off Number Two's hands with a sweeping kick, then swung the stretcher in front of him just as Number Three got his first shot off. He ducked, grabbed a metal tray and threw it at Number Four as hard as he could, then rammed the stretcher against Three and Five.

They went down in a tangle of shattering glass and muffled cries. Number Two lunged at him, but Bucky knocked him down with a blow from the metal arm and ran out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, slid the lock home, and ripped the handle out.

Come on. Move. Move. He stepped away, molasses-slow at first, then picked up his pace as more shots rang out behind him. The trapped guards shouted and something heavy struck the door, once, twice.

He ran. The fever made him rubbery and the smallest motion of the metal arm sent darts of pain into his chest and back. Still he managed to keep going, dodging into alcoves and shadows whenever he heard noises. He was good. He could pick out sounds at a distance now. He could stay hidden even with sweat stinging his eyes and his heart thudding.

More corridors. More doors. He saw something sticky and dark pool on the floor in front of one of them, but when he blinked it was gone. Not real. There were signs, but the words were meaningless to him. Beige floors, fluorescent lights. He was lost in another maze. Soon the alarm would sound. Then they would flush him out until he was cornered. Maybe he could die fighting, at least he would have that, but of course that wouldn't be allowed.

A map, something, there had to be—

A concrete edge caught his sight. He raced towards it. At the end of the corridor there was a set of steps leading to a bulkhead door. The lock was bigger than his closed fist, but he knew he could handle it. He grabbed it, yanked, and an edge of metal ripped open. A shaft of sunlight streamed in.

God, so close, he was so close.

Two punches from the metal arm, two knives of pain into his muscles, and the panel burst open. He tore, ripped. For a second the light blinded him.

A siren started up, low at first, then loud enough to drown everything else, even his heart and his breathing. He was caught, he was caught, he was caught. Except he wasn't, there was a hole big enough for him to step through and he was up the rest of the concrete steps and into the air outside, running, running, never stopping, sight thick with black spots.

The light hurt him—how long since the sun had been on his skin?—but after a few seconds he could see again, more or less.

Grass. He was running on grass. It took a moment for him to recognise it.

He wanted to roll in it, grab fistfuls of it and smell it, God, just smell it, but he knew he couldn't stop. He slowed down just a fraction and looked around to get his bearings.

Behind him stood a concrete bunker, the bulkhead door opening into blackness like a wound cut into the grass. Even at this distance he could see a yellow and black three-foil sign with a bunch of words he didn't know and one he did.

All around him, there was a circle of houses, small summer cottages painted in bright blues and yellows and reds. What the hell? Was this a town? Were they all in on it? He ground to a halt, ready to bolt out of sight, but there was something off about the houses. He ducked and ran to the nearest one in a half-crouch, huddled under a window, and peeked in.

What the fuck?

There were no rooms inside the house, no furniture. The outside had been given a neat coat of baby blue paint, but the inside was just a wooden frame with no inner walls or ceilings. In the middle, four life-size dummies, faces rubbery and eyeless, sat on folding chairs.

He didn't have time to think about what he was seeing. Voices sounded out behind him, still several yards away but drawing closer. He broke into a run again, dashed in a zig-zag pattern through the fake village. Dummies looked on behind the windows. More voices, the crunch of gravel and tires. They were fanning out to cover a larger area. He raced towards where the houses ended and an expanse of grass began, then slid to a halt as a jeep pulled up across the terrain beyond.

He was fast, but he was not that fast. He ducked between two houses, sure that the metal arm was going to start blaring. Glow red. Knock him out.

It didn't. He couldn't control his breathing or his heartbeat as much as he wanted to, but that didn't give him away either. He heard a guard climb down from the jeep and walk in his direction, another approaching from the other side. Two more were going in the opposite way. They were all taking care to remain on the grass and not step on the gravel, of course, but that made no difference; he could hear them just fine.

He jimmied the nearest window open and slipped inside the cottage. The inside was cool and smelled faintly of dust and glue. The dummies—only three in this house, two big ones and a little one—stared at the front door. Someone had half-dressed them, which just made them creepier. He almost expected them to turn their heads towards him as he climbed up into the rafters.

The guards' voices wafted up to him.

Two men stepped inside the fake house, pistols drawn, each scanning a different half of the place. He was motionless, sharp despite the fever. One. Two.

One of the men had enough time to glance up before Bucky jumped them, but that was all he managed. Bucky landed on him, knocking him out, then bolted towards the other one. The guard squeezed the trigger twice, but as the second bullet whizzed past him, Bucky's real hand was already on the man's pistol arm, the metal one on his neck.

He was standing, his hands hanging by his sides. The guard lay at his feet, open-eyed, arm twisted up in an unnatural angle.

What?

His thoughts were no longer sharp. He looked down at the man (the corpse) on the floor, the visible eye open and blank. Someone could be looking out from it, seeing him, seeing everything. He—he didn't remember what had just happened. If he'd squeezed, if there had been a crunch. If he'd meant— Who cares? God's sake, get moving.

Yes. He stepped back, muscles full of slurry. Yes, he had to go. Had to keep moving. Keep moving. Pain pulled on his leg as he crouched to pick up both Makarov pistols. He looked down. A red stain spread across the fabric of his pants. The first bullet had grazed his thigh. It didn't matter. One full magazine, another with six unspent bullets. That should be enough.

He ran out, into the grassy terrain, away from the jeep. He heard shouts behind him, spun around, unloaded six shots, then ran again, faster and faster. Blood spurted out. Soon it had soaked his leg completely. Gotta keep going. Gotta keep going.

Ocean. He had thought it was a river at first, but now that he was getting closer he could see the plain gave way to a rocky shore that swept down into the sea. The water was dotted with boulders, then it spread out into the horizon, unbroken. He slowed down. His feet ached from running barefoot, but his biggest problem right now was the limp, which was getting harder to power through. He turned around in an arc, keeping parallel to the shore, and sped up again. Each step was agony, but he managed to pick up speed.

Gotta keep going.

Only… he wasn't going anywhere, was he? The shore began to turn inwards after maybe two miles (was he that fast? he didn't know) and ahead there was only more sea.

The sign outside the bunker. The word he recognised. Остров. Island. He was in an island, surrounded by water on all sides, a sea that stretched on forever. There was no other shore in the distance, nothing breaking the water. There wasn't even the cry—

remember him drawing the bridge

—of a gull.

He had slowed down to a jog, almost, but he couldn't stop. He forced himself to move around an outcropping of rock that jutted out into the water. A boat. There had to be a boat, for Christ's sake, how else did all the people in the maze get here?

(The rest of the world didn't exist.)

A slab of stone gave way under him and sent him spilling across the rocks. The blow was hard enough to make everything black for a split second.

On your feet, soldier.

Who is the soldier?

He opened his eyes. He was sitting on a boulder. The sun was low, tinting the ocean orange. He blinked stickily, wet cotton filling his head. He hadn't blacked out, had he? He'd fallen just now. He could still hear the oof noise he'd made when he'd struck the ground, the sound of one of the pistols skittering across the—

He looked down at his hand. He wasn't holding a pistol. He was holding a bloodied rock. An image flashed behind his eyes, so vivid it made vomit rise into his mouth: kneeling on another man's chest, using the rock to strike at his face and head until it was a mess of red and bone fragments. He dropped the rock, scrambled away from it as though it might bite him. Poison him.

A pistol was lying on the ground, a few feet away. There were two. He picked it up. It felt light. He pulled out the magazine. Empty.

He wiped sweat off his forehead. His skin was burning. The pistol had been loaded when he'd picked it up, he was sure of it. He rubbed his eyes.

He could smell the salt tang of the ocean, but he wasn't outside.

He was lying on the floor of his room, head full of the pictures the vial had put in his head.

He was in the chair, things being injected into his eyes.

So real.

No. No no no no. No, this was real. (Wasn't it?) He couldn't tell by the pain, there was always pain, but the blood on his leg was real. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle but the fabric was soaked through, cold and sticky and smelling of copper. It was real. It was—

Engine noises, drawing near. He jumped to his feet and thought of running, but he was ringed in by jeeps. He tried squeezing the trigger, but of course there was nothing but dry clicks. He glanced behind him. His heart was racing again. He could jump into the sea.

He could charge them.

He was never getting out of here.

Guards spilled out of the jeeps, rifles pointed at him. He could throw the pistol at them, but they were out of range, even for him.

'Why don't you just kill me?' he yelled. 'Why don't you just fucking kill me?'

The darts sped towards him almost too fast for even him to see. He managed to snap one out of the air with the metal hand and another went wide but the others struck home in his flesh.

He was unconscious before his body hit the ground and his last wild, lightning thought was that he was going to black out before he got to feel the grass on his face.

TBC…

Author's note: Re: Bucky recognising some Chinese characters, it seems logical to me that the Winter Soldier in the MCU, just like in the comics, would be sent off on missions in the PRC and other places where knowing how to read at least some common characters would come in handy, so it makes sense that Bucky's handlers would include this in his conditioning/training. Bucky's temperature of 41 C (if any of that is even real, amirite? Hahah. Haha. Ha.) may seem too high for him to be running around, but his basal body temperature increased after I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum, so it's not actually that high a fever. The island in this chapter was based on similar small islands in real life where biological warfare research, or research involving serious biohazards was/is conducted, such as Vozrozhdeniya Island/Rebirth Island, also known as Anthrax Island, Gruinard Island, which was… also known as Anthrax Island, or Plum Island, which, umm… apparently Anthrax Island was the happening nickname for this sort of place. (I work in cancer research. Our facilities don't have interesting nicknames. I do work in an office with twenty-seven penguins and zero anthrax, though, so I think I still win.) The failed escape attempt was inspired by a similar scene in the Breaking Bad episode Granite State (season 5, episode 15). The line why don't you just fucking kill me? comes from the same scene, where it is delivered much in the same context, by a character who would no doubt have much to talk about with Bucky…