Prologue

Nighttime.

I examined the copse one more time, ensuring the dead lack of unwelcome human activity, my hand patiently hovering over the detonator and watching the T-junction. The road was void of life but me, the forest silent, as if anticipating my action as much as my commanders were.

On cue, my glorious overseers contacted me with an update. My handler must've been frothing at the bit for this to succeed.

"Castle to Pawn, convoy ETA is thirty seconds."

"Understood." My voice was as deadened as that of a teenager would get. I never had time to grow up. "Thirty seconds."

Seconds passed as seconds did. Fifteen seconds later, my ears picked up the hum of multiple vehicles rolling down the road towards the point of the junction, and they came into my sight in another five. I watched as they approached - a GMC each in the front and back, protecting a Cadillac sedan in the middle, all three on steady distances from each other. If Intel was correct, the target had subverted protocol along his usual route and sat in the leading car, with a double taking up the rear seat in the Cadillac. It was a good measure. Unfortunately, the technology behind thermal scanners had not yet advanced to the point of being commonly handheld, which made the work of my superiors easier. Scouts five miles down the road had confirmed the switch five minutes ago, as did a drone. They wanted this man dead.

My handler had told me that, six hours earlier, his men patched a certain point in the road - only they hadn't actually patched it so much as ruined the road progressively over the last month, to give a team the excuse to patch that particular bit of road - and plant explosive material under it in the process. PETA, perhaps, if my unallowed deductions were correct. Enough for the job.

I gave up a silent prayer and apology. I did not believe in God as humankind knew Him, but I knew objectively that this universe had something of a very close equivalent. Even if he didn't exist, I knew the family I would wrong with this act. Not personally, but I had loved their son for years and was about to do him the utmost wrong before I'd even met him.

The vehicle slowed as it approached its stopping point, the driver making to check both sides of the road. Mistake. I pressed the detonator right as it passed under the patch, ruining vehicle and roadway alike with a spectacular, Bay-esque explosion that failed to elicit a flinch from me - even if I hadn't worn my raven combat mask and goggles, all flinching instincts had been beaten from me when I was nine years old. The car was a mere fireball, everything it contained becoming ash and dead. I dropped the detonator and picked up the grenade launcher on my right, raising and firing in a precise arc at the third car. Why do Americans still have these petrol cars? I wondered. I stashed the launcher and picked up an M4A1, approaching the convoy. The double had survived, and I found him stumbling out of the car. I raised the rifle and double-tapped his legs, then extracted my M9, sat him against the car.

"P-please..." he coughed. "Hel...p... m..."

I raised the pistol and shot him imprecisely five times in the head, allowing a modicum of sloppiness to affect my aim as ordered. Afterward, I safed and sheathed the pistol, extracted a white cross, lit it, and placed it in the breast pocket of his suit, ignoring the depths of my soul that screamed in horror. Watching it burn was pointless; I moved on.

He was black, and so similar in appearance to my deceased target that he'd easily be mistaken as a twin. The handler gave me the specific instruction to make it look like a racially motivated kill. The Klan, or sympathizers thereof, would be suspected. The irony would've made me smile - double so, since I was black - but that was not allowed.

I transitioned back to the rifle, inspecting the Cadillac. I eliminated the dazed driver and his partner, two each to the head. My handler was a big fan of making sure. "You never know who they are, soldier," he'd once told me as I was punished with electric torture for the non-target I'd only killed with chest shots. "Always shoot them in the head! Do you understand?!"

I turned my attention to the third vehicle - and promptly ducked under a bullet before I knew it was coming - The Senses at work once more. I retaliated with a bullet to the kneecap and another to the head - and another to make sure. I had no sight of his companion, but I knew his exact location regardless - I sensed it in the air, in ways others could not. I stowed the rifle and extracted a frag; ridding it of the pin, I tossed it to his exact location. He recognized the sound, but lacking the reflexes of an Afghanistan vet, he couldn't get out in time. The explosion shredded his legs and threw him a distance. With that settled, I walked around the car unhurriedly - I would've been notified if any witnesses were inbound and would be compelled to eliminate them accordingly. His screams drew me as much as my senses did, and I raised the rifle again. One to the head, and another.

I inspected the burning car, frowned, and used the rest of my rounds to ensure nothing in it survived the fires. Miracles were known to happen, my handler insisted (with plenty of violence to emphasize his point) long before Tony Stark announced himself as a maniac in a suit of armor to the rest of the world.

I raised my hand to my communicator and clicked it for attention.

"Pawn to Castle," I announced in a monotone, "The target has been eliminated. I say again, Jefferson Davis has been eliminated."

"Excellent work, Pawn," a different voice complimented - my handler, I realized. "Fall back to your exfil point. Bishop will rendezvous with you in fifteen minutes."

Bishop was the cleanup crew. Five people, in to plant more evidence framing the KKK. It was not the first time the organization had done such.

"Understood," I said. "Complying."

I returned for the launcher and detonator, then moved on into the roadside forest.

The explosion had scared the forest into deeper silence. Were I alone, I would've been unnerved. I took a straight path as shown by my handler, finding a clearing five minutes into the forest designed specifically for this moment. A Chinook awaited, motionless, its pilot awaited me with an alert expression and flicked his rifle towards me before he recognized me. I gave him no acknowledgement - not protocol. He gave me a wary look as I boarded the helicopter, stowed the weapons in a chest made for them, and sat in the back. I did not remove the mask.

So, ten minutes...good enough.

I closed my eyes and deepened my breaths, unseen behind the darkly tinted goggles - and fell into my mind with the ease of clumsy, irregular practice.

I woke up in a mind world. I sat on a red single-seat couch - our favorite color - and took in the beige-painted library with only two walls, the rest opened to black space, and the theater-sized screen in front of me representing what we saw - in this case, an outline of the helicopter as interpreted by my Sense, with the pilot still waiting outside and casting occasional glances at me. It was much less chaotic now that I was actively intervening, but something in here was missing - it drove us both mad. I sighed ruefully and pinched my brows in terrible regret.

I killed, again.

I had absolutely gone John Wick on a bunch of poor innocents, and had absolutely no say in it.

Eight years of torture, six failed escape attempts, seventy-nine failed attempts and two "successful" attempts at brainwashing, ten successful assassinations and one botched under these motherfuckers. All they did was piss me off beyond a level I'd ever been in any lifetime before.

"All done?" a ethereal voice asked next to me, and I turned to see Rod.

The Tyrel Jackson Williams lookalike was the real owner of the body. I'd been dropped into it, sixteen years ago, and did my utmost to nope the fuck out of my reincarnation. I wasn't entirely successful, obviously, but at least Rodrigo Guevara survived the intrusion. Now, we were two sad little fuckers, a 33-year-old dead for sixteen of those, and a teenager sharing one body working for a spiteful bunch of fuckers.

I sighed. "Yeah. Here's to more blood on the old ledger." A glass of water appeared in my hand, and I toasted it sarcastically - then threw it away with disgust. It shattered, but made no sound.

"When can we go?" he demanded. "We have to find Peter. It's been eight years, dammit."

"I know," I sighed. "If it were up to me, we'd leave now. It wouldn't be all that hard, either - all they have is the tracker, which I can remove, and the drone, which will be harder to evade, but not impossible."

"So? Why the fuck are we waiting?"

I felt a small pang of regret for my potty mouth. Didn't hurt me much worse than an ant crawling across my skin compared to my guilt.

I looked him in the eye. "You haven't been paying attention. We're going to be transported to Florida after this mission, in three days. They'll take us on road at first, through New York. Guess what?"

"What's up?"

"In three days, New York will be feeling the climax of Fury's Big Week."

I'd told Rodrigo everything I knew about this world when he was ten years old. He was under the impression that I was a time traveler - which, yeah, I didn't do too much to correct him on. I didn't want to turn him into Deadpool - and I absolutely had no fucking intention of sharing headspace with a Deadpool expy. That was unwanted stress, and I would have no part in it.

"Big Week? Wait, you mean...oh, shit!" Rodrigo's eyes widened. "Really?!"

"Yeah. And you know I can resist sedatives and that sort of shit a lot better than you. We'll wake up at the opportune time, kick their teeth in, run, and find someplace to tear out the tracker. See what happens after."

"Okay," he nodded eagerly. "Okay. I'm sorry I -"

"It's okay," I interrupted. "What? I know you're chomping at the bit for a family reunion. We'll be fine."

"Yeah." He nodded. "I can't wait. They don't even know about what we can do now."

"We're not that powerful right now, Rod," I warned. "Plus without the opportunity to use them properly, we haven't been able to do a lot with them. We still have to be careful, powers or no powers."

"No, sure, I got it," he said. "Can you get us out?"

"Sure." My eyes hardened with a fury that, if weaponized, would eradicate an entire planet. "I have a plan."

The plan was simple.

HYDRA was gonna fucking die.

This will not be updated for some time. Right now, my focus is on Project Arachas, but once we're past Infinity War on that one, I might start updating this one semi-regularly.

Let me know what you think.

Later!