A/N: This story should update faster now! :) So glad people are interested in it! I haven't seen AoS, so I won't be directly crossing over with that, but there will be lots of mentions of other Marvel movies/shows. ^_^

Project: Inheritance

Chapter 2

Virginia was sweltering this time of year. Even the short walk from the stolen car to the front door of the lesser-known GRC facility at like eight in the morning was a gross kind of hot, the humidity threatening to seep into the sticky film that kept the photostatic veil stuck to Bucky's face. If that lost its integrity and started to slide, he doubted he would be able to pull this off.

Well, he could. It just wouldn't be nearly as covert as he intended.

It had been five days since the meeting with Raynor. Those days had been spent gathering information, planning, then executing the beginning of the plan. He had most of the pieces in place and was almost completely confident that it would work. Probably. It was the afterward parts that were still a little, er, blurry. But he was good at doing things spontaneously, too, so he guessed that would work to his favor and also keep people guessing.

The first thing he had done after learning about the twins was to debate with himself about whether or not to call Sam and tell him everything. He had paced in his apartment for a good long while, rolling the decision and all the possible consequences around in his head.

Sam would be mad if he didn't call, if Bucky just left him in the dark about all this. But Sam also didn't need to break into a government building and then go on the run again for Bucky a second time, which was definitely a possibility here.

If this could be done just right, it would cast enough doubt on the situation to maybe cut out the whole on-the-run thing. Or at least lessen the amount of time it had to be done. But he couldn't guarantee it and there were so many ways it could go wrong, and he knew that Sam would want to come help him if he knew because that's the way he was. Selfless.

So maybe it was a stupid choice, but he decided to not tell Sam for now. It didn't exactly sit well with him, but…yeah.

After that, he had tracked down an old familiar face who lived off the grid over in New Jersey. Back when he had been on the run from basically everyone, he had learned about Danielle "Dani" Avery and her hacking and forgery skills.

Since he hadn't had any money to pay her at the time, Bucky had wound up exchanging talents and had chased off some people who pretty much wanted to kill Dani for gambling debts. Dani had made him a variety of fake identities that allowed him to move around the world easier. The hacker also owed Bucky at this point just because of the sheer amount of people Bucky had to scare off and who those people were.

Dani had been surprised to see him show up, but she had been willing enough to help him out, even though Bucky didn't have much information to offer.

"So, you're looking for two kids, most likely at a GRC center but you're not entirely sure, and they were probably brought some time in the last couple weeks but you also don't really know that, either." Dani had tapped the edge of spoon against her carton of ice cream, the one Bucky had brought her because he knew she liked cookies and cream. She worked faster when she had a steady supply of sugar. "That's not random at all, Buckaroo."

"I know," he said, a brief frown rushing over his face thanks to the terrible nickname. "If it helps, they're seven."

"Maybe that'll help. I dunno," she said. She had pushed her long multi-colored braid back behind her shoulders, the gold glitter streaks in it catching in the fluorescents of her tech center. "I can try, but I can't promise you anything. You're not giving me much to go on."

"It's all I have. You can cross reference my name. Or the Winter Soldier."

"Ooo. The old you." Her eyes lit up with the promise of figuring out a puzzle, and she spun her chair toward him. "Why?"

When he looked at her for a long time without adding anything, she spun back around, rolling her eyes and laughing. "Fine, whatever, stay mysterious. It's cool. It's not like I'm only trying to help you." She set the empty ice cream tub down and grinned at him. "Go get me more ice cream while I get to work. I don't want you hovering while I'm busy." She twirled her chair around. "Pleeeease."

After a little more cajoling, Bucky did what she asked. When he came back, Dani had been sitting crosslegged in her chair, her fingers speeding over the keyboard. One hand reached out while the other kept typing so she could grab the carton from him.

"Huh, birthday cake, not bad. Look, Buckin' Bronco, I think I found the right place, but it's going to take me a while to really hack in and get anything solid. Like a day or something."

"Do you have an actual location?" Bucky asked, crossing his arms over his chest, staring past her at the computer screen like he understood all the code streaming past. He was decent with technology and caught on quick to using it, but hacking…it wasn't his forte.

"I think so," she said, setting the carton to the side. "I should've had you pick up takeout, too."

"Focus," he growled. "Please."

"Okay, okay." She held up both hands and then waved at the computer before grabbing the tub of ice cream again. "There's this GRC facility in Virginia, tucked away out in the country. It seems like they've been sending some people there."

"What kind of people?"

"Sparkly sprinkles, neat." She dipped her spoon into the ice cream. "Um, I dunno yet. Like I said, I have to do some more hacking and then actually read the stuff, but I did find a couple intake files for a pair of twins. They didn't have any exact birthdays or anything, 'cause of the Blip I guess, but they're supposed to be sevenish." Dani popped the spoon into her mouth and talked around it, not meeting his eyes. "It also had the whole Winter Soldier tag."

It had to be them. He wished that Raynor had given him something more concrete to go on. He didn't even know the first thing about them. "Did you find names? Or anything?"

"Would project names be okay? They didn't put the real names on the files, but they gave them aliases."

Yeah, trust the GRC to dehumanize them as quickly as possible. Bucky gave a quick nod.

"Okay, the aliases for the kids are Blizzard and Snowfall. Get it, they're twins and you were the Winter—"

"I get it," Bucky cut her off.

"It looks like Blizzard is a boy, and Snowfall is a girl." Her cheerful bright green eyes slid toward him, sparking with curiosity. "Soooo, they're your kids, right? Right?! Oh my gosh, when exactly did you have the time to bowchicka—"

He didn't exactly know what the word she was starting to say meant, but he knew instinctively what she was implying. His eyes narrowed. "I need the exact location and anything else you can give me."

"All right, but if they're your kids, can I please meet them?" She beamed as she turned back toward the screen, the spoon left standing straight up in the ice cream. "I want to know if they inherited the grumpy sourpuss genes or if maybe that's recessive."

Dani had been able to gather a decent amount of information since their meeting while Bucky moved into action, enough to create a plan that he hoped would work. It wasn't foolproof. There were some records that even Dani couldn't hack into without getting herself potentially caught; she was good, but she wasn't willing to put herself completely on the line for him. Still, he thought it might work. He had gotten the few things he needed from around the city before leaving for Virginia, taking his motorcycle the whole way there.

Bucky resisted the urge to reach up and touch the edges of the photostatic veil, which was currently displaying the face of one of the project researchers, Dr. Frederick Green. He had been closest in size, height, and hair color to Bucky that Dani could find, and breaking into his apartment last night, getting the scan for the veil, and locking the guy in the bathroom hadn't been difficult. The veil had come from the black market in New York, where he had also picked up some random license plates and a few other things, in case he needed them.

The badge he had stolen got him past the passkey lock on the front door, just the way he had watched the researchers do it. For a GRC facility, this place had an absurd amount of guards and security systems, but Dani had said the vast majority of that was located on the subfloors. While it was seven stories high, it had ten floors below ground. Made sense if you knew they were holding people with superhuman powers here. Unfortunately, he did have to go to the subfloors, but the twins were supposed to be on floor B2. The main thing he had to watch out for there was biometric scanner locks, guards, and security cameras.

Officially, this building was the GRC's Commission on Superhuman Activities headquarters. Dani hadn't been able to find out a ton of details, but the gist seemed to be a focus on how to figure out powers and possibly use them to support the GRC, which seemed extreme since they were supposed to be helping people readjust after the Blip. He guessed that the international organization's aims were much higher, like maybe creating a worldwide government that they headed up. Maybe that was pessimistic of him, but yeah. It made sense.

He only knew the inside of the building from schematics and a few security camera feeds Dani had been able to get into. Letting the badge zip back into place (Green used one of those retractable badge holders), he headed over to the front desk.

"Hey, Freddie, Jeanette said to remind you to stop by the breakroom, she brought cinnamon rolls for you guys," the receptionist at the front desk said as he passed by. She held up a cinnamon roll of her own and took a satisfied bite out of it.

He had managed to get a veil that had the voice recording upgrade, but he didn't really know how Green interacted with people. It was a quickly constructed plan, after all. He nodded to her, hoping it wasn't too awkward, and headed for the elevators. There was a scanner there, but this one just needed his badge again.

"Yeah, so, like the top half is all normal stuff, right? Like day-to-day things," Dani had said on the phone a few nights ago. "But the basement levels! You'll need a handprint to get down there, and I think there's a lot of crazy stuff in the lower levels. Too cool. The faster you can get in, wreak chaos, and get out, the better. And if you can bring me back a hat or something, that'd be awesome. You know you want to!"

Bucky had made no promises on the hat.

He punched the button for B2 and then put his left hand on the scanner. It was covered in a glove that acted a lot like the photostatic veil, except this copied someone's exact handprint. Still, there was a cool sense of relief when the elevator dinged and started gliding down.

The info he needed and the steps of the plan replayed through his head as the elevator dropped. Stop by the main research room and gather up-to-date details. Send Dani a text and put his bag with the small EMP generator in Green's locker. Go to the boy's room, it was closer to the first room. From there, he would say he needed to take the kid for testing and take the route that passed by the girl's room. He'd go in right before the EMP was supposed to go off, grab the girl and then take the fire escape back up to the ground floor. A lot of this plan hinged on the kids trusting him, since it'd be way harder if they fought him the whole way.

Dani had only been able to get two video clips from the feeds of the kids before she had gotten scared of someone tracing her. The quality wasn't great on either of them, but Bucky had them both memorized.

In the boy's, he had been sitting on the floor in front of the door in a room that was garishly painted with sunshine faces and overly happy sheep. There wasn't anything in the room except for the bed, which only had a blanket on it. Once the door open, it became quickly clear why that was the only thing in the room. The boy had jumped to his feet and immediately lifted a pair of small fists. There hadn't been any sound on the video, but he had definitely been yelling. The instant an adult stepped into the room, he had launched himself at them. The scuffle was quick, but he had put up a fight. From what Bucky could tell, he had dark hair and a mean right hook for a kid.

In the girl's video, the room was empty. Or at least that's what it looked like. It was a light purple room covered in huge painted flowers, and again, there was just a bed, though this one was neatly made. A woman in a lab coat holding a tray of food came in for a moment and crouched down next to the empty bed. It looked like she was talking to nothing before she set the tray down and left again. After a moment, a little hand crept out from under the bed and grabbed the glass of water from the tray. The glass disappeared under the bed then the hand shot out to shove the tray farther away before retreating under the bed again.

From what he could tell watching those incredibly short videos, getting them to trust him wasn't going to be a walk in the park. However, he could work around that. Hopefully.

The elevator opened, and he took a right past a couple glassed in labs. Everything here pointed to the idea that they thought the kids were like him. Super soldiers. That, or just wanted them to be.

He closed his left hand tight enough to almost break through the glove and then forced himself to relax. Freddie Green wouldn't be a ball of rage right now. This was just another day of work for Freddie Green the immunogenetics specialist. He was going to be in a shit ton of trouble if someone asked him to do some science.

It wasn't like he had a gun for back-up. There was a metal detector on the way in the building, but luckily for him those didn't pick up on vibranium. Not yet at least. He had decided if he needed a weapon, he'd find one.

He should've told Sam. No, no, Bucky wouldn't want him to be in this situation right now. But Sam would want to be here. Man, Sam was going to kill him later. He'd deal with that then.

Attempting to look neutral, he palmed his way into the main lab and glanced around like anybody would when they came to work in the morning. Because he knew what it was like to have a normal job in the 21st century. Sure.

It was a big, open space with a lot of equipment, monitors, and screens. There were only a few people around, most of them wearing lab coats or scrubs. Bucky wasn't sure which station was Green's, but he knew his locker number since they were digital. However, he waited, going first to the swanky coffee station in the corner. There was a whiteboard sign hanging over the coffee pot that read '0 Days Since Last Escape Attempt.' Next to that was what looked like a betting pool. There were names on one side and "project" names on the other. There was a good number of people who were betting on Snowfall for something. Bucky gave it a onceover that was more intense than it should've been. He still needed to find out the kids' names. They had been redacted from the intake files and from everything else Dani could find.

He poured himself a black coffee and poured sugar in it, buying time as he listened to the office chatter.

"—like a frog. I mean, seriously, how's that useful?"

"I don't know, but there's already a spider guy and an ant guy. A toad could be handy during a bad cicada season."

"Whatever. I'm just glad they're sending him to Six. Then he's out of my hair."

Bucky wrote that conversation off, guessing it was about one of the other subjects and not the kids. According to Dani, this level was where people were kept before they were sent to a different floor, like it was a processing center. Right now, though, he was focused on the twins. Big picture shady government stuff was a worry for later.

Spinning the stirrer around the coffee mug, he wandered closer to a different group of people, his gaze occasionally flicking to the scenes. On one screen, there was an Asian woman with purple hair sitting on a bed, her arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees. In another frame, a girl poked her fingers together and watched as sparks jumped from fingernail to fingernail.

Finally, he saw a screen where there was a dark-haired boy who was about the right age. The kid was asleep, the blanket shoved down to the bottom of the bed, one arm, thrown over his face even though the lights were dimmed.

All right, one down. He glanced at the screen beside it, but he could only make out a mostly dark room with an empty bed. That could be the girl's room. She had been hiding under the bed last time, so maybe she had slept under it even though that had been a couple days ago.

"Okay, right, but Walker's face—how bad was it?"

Before he could stop himself, his head whipped toward the conversation, following his attention. They couldn't be talking about John Walker, could they? Then again, he had worked for the GRC before. But he had been tossed out. Hadn't he?

"I heard it actually bruised. She got him good, right in the eye."

"He deserved it."

"Deserved what?" Bucky asked, stepping into the group of researchers, definitely giving off a I'm-very-casual-and-supposed-to-be-here vibe. Judging by the way half of them looked at him, he was doing an okay job.

"You didn't hear?" A researcher with a goatee and a randomly dark blue lab coat grinned and looked over at a guy who was chugging down an energy drink. Their name tags pinned them as Stroud and Rodriguez. "I thought you texted him."

"I did, but he never responded." The energy drink was tossed into a recycling bin. "Busy night, Green?"

"You could say that," Bucky said.

"Man, you missed it. Little miss escape artist made another go for it last night," the goatee guy, Stroud, said, "Somehow she got that vent under her bed open and squeezed in." He laughed. "So, see, she wasn't hiding, she was working this whole time."

"I think it was both," said a grey-haired woman, a frown on her face. He recognized her from the personnel files that Dani managed to nab as Dr. Adrian Arnaud. "Poor thing, she has to be scared."

"Poor thing?" Rodriguez, the man who had just chugged a Redbull snorted. "This is her fourth try, and she hasn't been here that long."

"I think trying so hard to get away is a very good indication that she's scared, Jon."

"I didn't say she wasn't scared. I was just saying that it's probably a bad idea to underestimate her."

Bucky leaned against the wall, using as a way to ground himself so he didn't start doing something. Anything. It had to be the girl who had tried to escape.

"Anyways," said Stroud, clapping his hands together, "So she was climbing around in the air ducts, and they sent Amari to talk her down. Walker tagged along because he sticks his nose in everything—"

"Colton…" Arnaud warned.

He rolled his eyes. "What? If he hadn't been there, maybe she would've come out on her own."

"What happened?" Bucky asked, struggling to not tense up.

"Oh, Amari was talking to her and she just stayed all quiet, you know. And then Walker tried to talk to her in his Leader Man voice and she started moving again—"

"And he tore the air duct off the ceiling," Rodriguez said, rolling his eyes, "With his bare hands."

"But the kid kicked him in the face before he pulled her down," Stroud said with a pleased smile. "It was epic."

"Honestly," Arnaud said, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose as if conversing with them was exhausting. "After this, he'll most likely be restricted to Ten."

"Dream on," Stroud said, "You wish."

"So did they put her back in her room?" Bucky asked in the calmest tone he could muster, as if this was just some amusing office tale and not another reason to punch Walker in the teeth with his left hand. It had to be John Walker.

"Nah, they put her in the med lab," Stroud offered, proving himself to be a fount of information. "They're busy finding a new escape-proof room, and they're also figuring out how they're going to get her to eat. It's day three of that." He gestured over his shoulder at one of the screens, and Bucky glanced over at it.

There was an overhead image of a little girl curled up on a medical table, asleep and half-covered with a blanket, one wrist buckled down to the table. Her dark brown hair was long and unruly, her head resting on her free hand. There was someone in scrubs in the room messing with equipment, and there was also a woman in a dark green tactical uniform.

Bucky stuck his tongue in his cheek to keep from saying anything or betraying to much attention. He reached for that piece of ice still lodged in him and settled back on one foot, shifting his weight.

All right. Time for a change in plans.