Warnings: Mentions of torturous experiments, brainwashing, violence, drug usage, addiction, cold-blooded murder. (All canon-level). Generally a pretty dark chapter, this one. Stay safe, friends.
Still self-betaed. All mistakes remain mine.
I'll be taking another hiatus. My family and I find ourselves having to move all of a sudden, and the process is a difficult and time-consuming one. I know I just took one a few weeks ago, and I know I'm ending this on somewhat of a cliffhanger, but unfortunately, it can't be helped. I am truly sorry.
Updates will return on the 27th of September.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below!
Maybe silence adds to the pain
and maybe pain adds to the sea
and maybe the sea is only a reflection
of a ruin today.
- Lindos, Greece; Sandra Simonds
June 5th, 2025
The Circle
Sam doesn't get 'grey'.
His world has always been black and white, good and evil, us and them - a duality that he's been more than comfortable with. He'd stood behind his principles, and taken down those who held opposing beliefs to his.
Then he'd met Bucky Barnes.
A war hero, a POW, the only Howling Commando to have been KIA. A victim, a brainwashed HYDRA assassin, a patsy.
A man steeped in grey.
And now there are even more like him - S.P.E.A.R. agents, who had just wanted to report an enormous find to their superior only to be choked by royal bureaucracy. They're not innocent by any means, but Sam isn't that prejudiced against the organization to think that they deserved to be tortured and brainwashed.
A red swirling sphere comes rushing towards him, and Sam brings up the shield just in time. Most of the impact dissipates against the vibranium, but the attack had been strong enough for it to jar his bones. He grits his teeth and redoubles his efforts.
He can't use the shield offensively; in these close quarters, it'll just take someone's head off. But the Enhanced thralls are also herding him, their faces blank and merciless, completely compliant to Erich Paine's words.
The only thing going for him now is his training with the Dora Milaje and the Hatut Zeraze. Even as the agents corner him, he dodges them by weaving through the air, remembering to keep his movements precise, fluid. Sam spins, ducks beneath another telekinetic attack then smashes his shield onto an agent's head. He drops like a stone.
He realizes his mistake in the next moment.
In raising his shield, he'd left his flank exposed. But the attack he's expecting doesn't come. Instead, a red field wraps around the shield, and for a second it feels almost weightless before it is yanked from his grip and goes flying down the corridor.
He ducks and rolls, trading jarring, teeth cracking blows, but he's slowing down, he can tell - they're Enhanced, and he doesn't have his shield, nor his wings, and he can't even bring out his guns.
One swift, super-powered punch to his solar plexus, and Sam doubles down, wheezing. Another agent executes a spinning kick, and he slams into the floor, blood flowing freely from his sinuses. The world spins, and he swallows down the bike that comes crawling up his throat.
He tries to push himself up, only to yell as a red field pins him down and rips his insides apart. He chokes and spits out blood, and there's a fierce pain in his ribs that he recognizes as bruised ribs.
After what feels like an eternity, the field leaves him gasping and exhausted on the floor. His whole body feels cramped, and fire burns through his veins. Darkness is edging on his vision, forming a vignette around the sight of a thrall with an assault rifle looming over him.
There's no way he's going to be able to dodge that in time.
They say life flashes before your eyes when you die.
Sam's not really seeing anything except for the darkness.
The thrall aims his weapon.
Sam shuts his eyes.
There's a sudden, familiar report of a gun.
Familiar, yes. Far too familiar for someone like Sam, who is an expert on firearms. Which is why he realizes almost immediately that it's not, in fact, the report of an assault rifle.
The sharp noise is immediately followed by a heavy thud, and Sam opens his eyes to see his would-be killer on the ground, unconscious, blue veins crawling up his neck.
More firing and Sam rolls himself into a ball despite his screaming ribs, but whoever's shooting is careful not to aim anywhere near him. The thralls keep dropping like flies, unable to see their attackers in the near darkness.
At long last, there's silence.
Sam uncurls, wheezes through the agony in his ribs. The pain has shoved away the rapid onset of unconsciousness, but he's still bleeding, and his muscles are still screaming from the attacks.
In the dim light of the corridor, a large group of Wakandans sweep in, weapons clutched tightly in fists. They scowl at him, but keep their focus on the thrall agents, kneeling to make sure they were all incapacitated.
Heavy boots approach his location, and he tenses. Before he can do more than shift in place, a long, muscular hand is held out.
Sam hesitates, then grips the hand and lets himself be pulled up with a groan. It's only when he is somewhat steady on his feet does he notice that the arm he's holding on to for support is cool to the touch and shiny. Metallic.
His head snaps up, his eyes meeting a familiar pair of icy, blue ones.
"Barnes? "
Sam stays very still, his eyes not leaving Barnes for an instant. The other man is relaxed, loose, but that might not mean anything - Sam has no interest in tangoing with the Winter Soldier ever again.
"What's that?" he asks sharply when one of the Wakandans goes to inject an unconscious agent with some kinda clear liquid.
"Omega-enkaphalin," Barnes says, then shrugs. "Only thing that suppresses the red sand's effects. Instant withdrawal." He waves his pistol, which Sam is startled to notice is an I.C.E.R. "Paine's men put it in tranqs to subdue rebellions. We… secured them."
"Are you you?" Sam asks finally, quietly.
Barnes snorts. "Wouldn't have blown my cover if I wasn't."
"Cover?"
"I've been here for two months, Sam. Pretended that Paine's little brainwashing attempt stuck as it did with them," and he points to the agents. "Was his personal guard for a while. He cracked Shuri's miracle cure, tried to use it to experiment on himself."
The answer suddenly slots into his mind as though it's always been there. "Which is when you freed the Wakandans to take back the facility."
Barnes shrugs, but there's a stiffness to his shoulders. "Shuri always did say that the best way to test her treatment was out in the field."
Sam heaves a quiet sigh of relief. "And your brilliant idea was to get yourself captured by HYDRA, again?"
"I thought you'd be here!"
"So you just stayed here for two months, waitin' for me?"
"Don't flatter yourself; I was waiting for a window to mount a rescue, 'cause you clearly weren't gonna." Barnes turns away then, looks over to one of the women in his team. "What's the verdict, doc?"
"I understand that it was necessary, but it's dangerous to combine enkaphalin with epinephrine," she replies. Her eyes are cool when they land on Sam, who recognizes her as one of the doctors who'd tried her level best to stay out of the coup but had been roped in anyway.
Seems like such a long time ago.
"It's a miracle all of them are relatively stable," the woman continues, " - if somewhat useless for the foreseeable future. Cryo is best for them for now."
"Can't do that," Sam shakes his head. "We need to restart the core, get out of this hellhole. They're the only ones who can do it."
One of the rebels scoffs, his eyes hard. "Please, we helped build the Circle. We designed its core. All you traitors managed to do with it is hand it over to our sworn enemies," he spits.
"Enough with the name-calling," Barnes intervenes before Sam can retort. "We all have one enemy here. And y'all fighting amongst yourselves is what got us into this in the first place."
Sam hesitates, then sighs. He might not trust the Wakandans or the S.P.E.A.R. agents, but Barnes… the supersoldier's proven time and again that he can trust him, with his life… and with the one thing that could save them all.
His fingers curl over the humming arc reactor briefly, before he gives it up to more experienced hands. Barnes' eyes track it, and there's a haunted look to those orbs that he doesn't care to penetrate too closely. "Where's Collins?" the other man asks, his voice almost deliberately blank.
"Said her mission was Paine." Sam isn't able to completely mask the distrust in his voice.
Barnes doesn't notice, his face twisting to something awfully close to the Winter Soldier's blank, merciless mask. "So is mine."
Sam grabs his arm. "I'm comin' with you. Got words for that scumbag."
"I'm going alone, Sam."
"Like hell you are."
"You're bleeding, you probably have a concussion - you'll only end up slowing me down."
"I can shake it off."
Barnes sighs in exasperation. "They need you more than I do," he says, nodding towards the unconscious agents being carried in firemen's holds by the Wakandans. "Secure them in cryo, make sure they don't get activated again."
Sam grimaces, then nods reluctantly.
"Don't worry." The other man's smile is razor-sharp. "I'll save you a piece."
The Operating Room
Erich feels the contradicting sensations of hot and cold flooding his body.
He would almost believe it's a side effect of the surgery had it not been for the crack running across the screen where his grip had been too tight. Jana is beside him, silent and still in her fury, but her rage is directed at him alone.
He'd used the word 'unfortunate' before. He'd believed it had just been bad luck that the rebels had broken free just when he'd been in intensive surgery, allowing them to take control he wouldn't have allowed otherwise.
His ego hadn't allowed him to consider the possibility of design.
He replays the footage of the Winter Soldier - no, not the Soldier, this was James Buchanan Barnes - coming to the rescue of the Falcon, leading his own troop of Wakandan rebels - no doubt from the southern section where Jana had assigned him - to easily subdue the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Erich had managed to re-educate, having somehow shaken off his own reconditioning.
Or perhaps he'd never been under the Faustus at all, and Erich had been played all these months.
The cold wins over - dousing the flames of his rage, his humiliation - replacing it with a clarity that had eluded him since the surgery.
He knows what he has to do.
Erich outlines his plans to the nervous technician before him, whose eyes widen. But the other man has more than enough sense not to argue, just nods.
Jana is stiff beside him, her face carved out of stone as she stares at the scientists trickle out of the room until it's just the two of them. "Do you have no better ideas than to waste our hard work into this mad plan of yours?"
"It's not a waste if we get something out of it, Jana." He brings up an adjacent screen and shows her his trump card. Her lips curl in satisfaction as she watches the ancient footage, her eyes reflecting the blurry silver sheen of an arm. "Collins' access codes opened a lot of doors that were otherwise closed to us. Including access to the ventilation system."
He channels his cooled, banked fury towards his keystrokes as he uses up all of his limited control over the systems to finish laying the perfect trap for his enemies.
Barnes will regret crossing him.
The Operating Room
The faint whine of a heart monitor flatlining is the only sound that greets her when she steps through the automatic doors.
She inches closer to the head of the unoccupied surgical table, surrounded by plastic curtains. A multitude of wires disappear into various machines, and she yanks out the one connected to the LED heart monitor, watching as the uninterrupted green line fizzles out to a quiet, eerie black.
Nothing jumps out at her, and she is almost disappointed.
The room is empty, with no consoles to determine Paine's possible location, but she glances around nevertheless. Once pale walls are now drenched in the demonic blood-red of the warning lights that are the only source of illumination in the room. An anesthesia cart has been hastily shoved to the side - she can see the scuff marks when it'd careened outwards.
She spots a camera linked to an intercom, and arches an eyebrow, raising her arms. "Gotta say, I'm not impressed by your traps," she addresses the almost invisible device. "If that's what this is," she adds disdainfully.
A beat passes before it crackles on, and a rough, hoarse voice comes through. "If you knew it was a trap, then why did you come?"
"Best way to figure out the kind of man you are is by testing the strength of your snares."
He chuckles then, and the intercom distorts it enough to make it sound slightly unhinged. Or maybe it's not a distortion, she thinks, making sure her face betrays no sign of her growing unease. "'Snares' implies I'm a hunter, and you, my prey. I appreciate you acknowledging your place."
She refrains from gritting her teeth. "Nice touch with the footage. I'm guessing you tampered with the timestamp somehow; made it so that even F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't detect your interference. Impressive." Her lips curl.
"Now you're just flattering me."
Her eyes flash a brilliant blue as she drops all pretense of amicability. "Why don't you show me where you are next?" Her voice is just short of a snarl. "Maybe I can flatter you in person."
Paine hums. "I'd rather just show you something else. "
Her eyes are drawn to a screen, and, as though prompted by her probing gaze, it switches on.
She inches closer as the static crackles across the screen before resolving itself into black-and-white footage. The first thing she sees is a road, cutting through dense, dark woods, lit by a single streetlight.
A chill runs down her spine, and the world tilts sideways a little. Her mind shies away from the instant recognition, latching on to the dread instead, tearing it down into bite-sized, manageable pieces, but that defense mechanism lasts only until her eyes fall to the timestamp.
PM 7:00
DEC. 16 1991
CAM 2
The full force of the realization hits her just as a car in the footage skids off the road and slams into a tree.
There's no audio, but she can still make out Howard's last words, whispered in confusion, just before the Winter Soldier caves his face in. She has watched this before, she knows what happens next - but it doesn't stop a flinch from wracking her body.
She stumbles towards the exit because she had come prepared for a trap, not this… this assault on her very soul.
The automatic doors whoosh shut as she approaches. Terror fills her then, and she tries to tug it open, but they don't budge. There's a secondary exit on the other side of the room which remains just as stubborn, making her realize just what she has walked into. She smashes a fist once, twice at the doors, but they are vibranium after all - the force just reverberates through her own arm instead, and she cries out wordlessly.
The images have been burned to the back of her mind since the first time she saw it, and even without looking at the footage directly, she can count down the exact seconds to when her mother's gasps die out.
It doesn't stop there; Paine is crueler than that. The footage replays, the worst two minutes of her life playing on an endless loop.
Isabelle aims her gun at the screen, but her hands are shaking violently, so she just smashes a fist through it instead. Cracks splinter across the glass, shattering the horrific vision. The gun drops from her nerveless fingers, and she follows it an instant later, dropping to her knees, cradling her head in her hands.
A high whine is ringing in her ears, and her head's spinning, trying in vain to keep the familiar trauma at bay, which is why she doesn't notice the thick, red mist flooding out of the vents until it's too late.
She draws in a sharp breath, feels the first hints of it burning down her windpipe. She flinches again, but this time it's because of a heat that starts in her chest, slowly spreading outwards.
The agony slicing through her innards bleeds away as she pushes herself to her trembling feet. A sensation of weightlessness infuses her body and she tips her head back, closing her eyes. She pulls in deep breaths, trying to hold it in her lungs for as long as possible, aching for something, anything that's not pain, and even that ache ceases after a moment as her mind empties.
Some part of her mind, the part that's rapidly shrinking to nothing, screams at the dichotomy of the bipolar emotions, making itself known to her long enough to make her squint. But the red mist blends almost seamlessly with the warning lights, and by the time she recognizes the faint difference, she has already stopped caring.
Everything is heightened. She feels a familiar tingling surge beneath her too-sensitive skin, and the feeling of power, of invincibility manifests itself as a sphere forms over her palm, vapor swirling into water and then to ice.
For the first time in her life, she doesn't just have the ability to command water.
She can create it.
The elation of that realization lasts only for maybe a minute though, as the red mist fades away, and the high recedes just as fast as it'd come. The sphere splinters into her palm, but she barely feels it, far too consumed by the grief that returns with a blinding vengeance, driving the breath from her lungs.
Her omni-tool flickers on. "Skipper," F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s frantic voice comes through. "Your vitals are fluctuating rapidly, what's…?"
Isabelle mutes her, stumbling towards the operating table. Her fingers curl into the plastic curtains. "Please, please," she cries, her mind throbbing with the effort to reach out to the absent rapture. She doesn't even know what she's begging for - the euphoriant, or something deeper… something truer.
The intercom crackles. "I am not an unkind man, Agent Collins. I offer you a choice, which is far more than you offered me before you stole what was rightfully mine."
She doubles over, her extremities trembling with the effort to keep her on her feet.
"You can choose to come after me. I'm sure your A.I. has already triangulated my position. You can fulfill your mission, go home, then dive into the next as you've been doing all along until you realize that you can't outrun your pain."
She swallows down nausea, but it doesn't stave off the dryness of her mouth.
"Or you can finally find some measure of peace." Her omni-tool flickers on then and her trembling fingers bring up another surveillance footage. It zooms in to a muzzled, heavily armed operative sprinting through one of the many corridors of the Circle. The metal arm is different, darker, lacking the iconic red star, but even without it, she'd have recognized the cold, dead eyes of the Winter Soldier anywhere.
"In the far cabinet, there is a syringe full of a liquid, concentrated form of the drug you just experienced. Even if you push yourself, I estimate it will grant you ten minutes."
"Live up to your identity, Agent Collins. Avenge your parents."
In the end, it's an easy choice to make.
The Morgue
Bucky swipes the ID badge he'd filched from one of the lab techs. The morgue cuts the route to Paine's getaway plane by half, but it'll still be a close call.
The second he crosses the threshold, he knows that something's wrong.
The room is dark, which is not surprising - Paine rarely uses the morgue, preferring the cryo room to store his corpses for easy access - but it's also cold, the kind of cold that can never be pulled off by an air-conditioner.
The kind of cold that reminds him of the tank where the Winter Soldier had spent most of his life sleeping.
He jams the doorway, allows the barest hint of light from the hallway to penetrate the near darkness. Even with it, his Enhanced eyes can only make out the vaguest forms.
The only thing that stands out in the room is a humanoid silhouette, blocking his path to the other exit. His fingers curl into fists as he recognizes the tell-tale veins of red radiating outwards from it.
He's had to down enough sand-blasters today, but this… this feels different. A long-buried instinct rises inside him, an instinct honed by seventy years of torture and mindlessness… an instinct that hadn't even been triggered by Paine's paltry attempts at brainwashing.
The figure steps forward then, and his stomach roils.
Isabelle Collins stares at him behind an armor of hard, spiked ice.
He has never met her, only seen her in footage and briefings the Winter Soldier had been shown when reactivation had taken longer than a decade. Even HYDRA had been taken in by the long shadows cast by her brother - a status that, by all accounts, she'd preferred, hiding behind the anonymity S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided.
But tonight… tonight, it's not Isabelle Collins he faces.
It's not even Aquamarine, the Avenger.
No, tonight Bucky recognizes with a chilling certainty the figure in front of him as one Isabelle Stark - a grieving sister, a vigilant aunt... a vengeful daughter.
A syringe falls from her fingers, rolls down the slightly-sloped floor to him, and one glance at the remnants of the red liquid confirms what he already knows.
He takes a step forward, a hand raised in appeal. "Collins…" he murmurs, stuttering to a stop when her icy face twists into something dark. He can just make out the bloodshot red sullying the turquoise of her eyes.
"I'm gonna savor this," she whispers, just before she launches herself at him.
She fights silently.
There are no taunts, no jeers, just an endless barrage of punches and kicks which - while slow - hit hard enough to leave deep bruises. The few attacks he does manage to inflict barely wind her, the red sand's high deadening her pain receptors even while enhancing her abilities.
She strikes out with her leg, anticipating that he will block it, then performs a spinning backfist. His jaw snaps sideways, and she follows it swiftly with a double roundhouse kick, then spins and uses the momentum to boot him in the chest.
The next few attacks are brutal displays of unrestrained violence, but it's not just wild savagery. No, she is economical in her strikes, aiming where it hurts the most, drawing out the fight.
The longer Bucky spends engaged with her, the more time Paine has to get away.
He stalks towards her, and she manages to block his lightning-fast strikes, but then his leg connects with her abdomen, forcing her backward.
She recovers quickly, and he blocks another strike, grabs her shoulders, forces her downwards. His grip is too strong for her to shake off, so she plants a foot on his bent hip, clambers up, wraps her legs around his neck and rolls backward.
They both crash into the floor, but he pushes himself up faster, wraps his fingers around her throat, and slams her against the cold cabinets, and immediately socks her in the stomach with his vibranium arm hard enough to drive the breath from her lungs. "Goddamn it, Collins, stop! "
His words seem to have the exact opposite effect, though. Her fingers splay across his chest, and before he can even blink, a wave of water erupts from her palms, crashing into him with all the force of a tiny waterfall.
Bucky's thrown clean across the room but somehow manages to right himself and land on a three-limbed crouch that makes her snarl and launch herself at him before he's even had a moment to recover.
He doesn't get it until she backhands him so hard his head snaps back and he stumbles backward. A trickle of blood runs down his nose. "Not her name! Not from your mouth!"
The realization hits him like a brick wall.
Collins.
Maria Collins.
She drops to avoid his next strike, scrambles backward to avoid his stomps, then flips backward and lands on her feet.
"I am not the enemy here," he tries, panting.
"You are my enemy."
He flexes his metallic fingers. Her eyes snap to the arm, and she stills for a second before her lips lift in a cold smile.
An orange glow in the vicinity of her wrist pierces the darkness, and a hologram manifests around her arm in the shape of a gauntlet. She raises her arm in his direction.
Before he can react, a pulse of electricity arcs out of the hologram, hitting his vibranium arm instantly. He bellows as pain races across his shoulder, strong enough to bring him to his knees.
Bucky's seen that move before when the Black Widow had stopped T'Challa from following him in Leipzig. Electricity remains the one thing even vibranium can't protect against, and Collins hadn't held back in her attack. Bucky gasps and grunts, almost blinded by the pain, but still somehow manages to tug out the deadweight arm out of its socket.
Enough of this.
It takes him a few seconds to offset his balance to compensate for the loss of a limb, but he makes up for it with his speed, and her failure to land any hits on him seems to frustrate her enough that she gets sloppy.
Relief rushes him when he manages to get the slightest bit of leverage he needs, and he has her by the throat and slams her head, once, twice against the cabinets. Their eyes meet, and for a moment, the blue drains out of hers, leaving behind a pair of painfully familiar brown ones tinged with red.
Isabelle Collins inherited her father's eyes.
For a moment, Bucky's back on that road again, holding Howard Stark by his hair, and the other man calls out his name, refers to his rank even, and it causes a moment of hesitation... but not enough to break through decades of brainwashing. The echo of Howard's nose caving backward into his skill reverberates through a phantom limb.
The momentary distraction is all she needs. She flips him on his back and straddles him, freezing his limbs and torso so he can't move. He roars, but she backhands him again and slams a palm over his mouth and nose.
Water floods his sinuses and he jerks, but she doesn't let up. His mind screams at the utter wrongness of it like it has countless times before when HYDRA had put him under cryo.
But this is different. HYDRA was preserving him.
Collins just wants to drown him.
He thrashes as water rushes into his lungs, locking helpless eyes with her. Darkness encroaches on his vision until the only thing he can see is the last of the bloodshot red of her eyes draining into a pure brown, and she shudders and blinks in confusion, as though coming down from a fugue.
Just as he's about to lose consciousness, a voice cries out " - enough!". A spinning disk of red, white, and blue tears through the space above him, striking Collins directly in the chest. It tosses her backward and boomerangs back, then is slammed down directly onto the ice holding Bucky immobile.
It shatters under the assault.
Bucky rolls to his front and vomits up all the water, rasping coughs burning out of his lungs, desperate to get the taste out of his mouth. Tears leak out of his eyes, and his windpipe feels raw. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Sam stride across the room and jab a syringe of clear liquid into Collins' neck before she can get up.
Her eyes widen - there is no gradual release from the high; the withdrawal hits like an earthquake - and Collins stumbles to the wall and retches vile, red substance until all that remains is bile.
Sam remains unmoved, pistol drawn and pointed towards Collins. "What the hell happened to 'the mission'?" he snarls.
Collins' hand trembles as she wipes her mouth, and her wide eyes meet his again, and for one instant Bucky sees something vaguely approaching horrified panic on her face before it smoothes into a blank mask.
She presses her comm. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.," she rasps. "Paine?"
The intercom crackles on. "He's gone, skipper."
"He's gone."
The words are punctuated by a huge roar, and the ground shakes alarmingly. Sam and Collins stumble towards the walls, but Bucky's legs are still restrained by the ice, and it takes him a few harrowing seconds to wrench his way free.
Almost immediately, there's a muffled explosion from somewhere deep in the facility, and the Circle tilts alarmingly. Bucky scrabbles for purchase, but the floor is too slick, and a sudden massive lurch sends him tumbling uncontrollably towards the cabinets.
The last thing he sees as he hurtles through the air is Sam's horrified face before everything goes dark.
LOCATION: Somewhere over the Indian Ocean
A few hours later…
Back when Erich had been an intern, one quote had been seared into his brain above all else.
Discovery requires experimentation.
Despite the forward-thinking nature of his motto, Daniel Whitehall had been anything but. Erich had always privately derided him for relying too much on tried and trusted methods. A true product of his time.
It is unfortunate, then, that Erich had fallen into a similar... complacency.
Jana had warned him against the Faustus technique, and he'd ignored her to his folly. Without the threat of a painful death hanging over his head, it's almost too clear how foolish his decision had been.
The Jet shudders beneath him, forcing him to swallow past nausea yet again. His long sleep had been fruitful, and all scans had shown up normal, but the forced retreat had set back his full recovery by a couple of weeks. Jana has assured him that they're running silent; even Wakanda's exceptional tracking systems won't be able to lock onto them.
He rewinds the footage again, analyzing Collins's confrontation with Barnes. Without the concentrated red sand, he'd have easily overpowered her, powers or no. Seventy years' worth of training can't be overcome easily, even by someone who could literally desiccate the Earth, should she choose to do so.
Erich's success with the red sand is assured. But, besides the side effects like addiction - which can only be useful to influence the subjects - his biggest problem with the chemical is that there is no variation.
Each subject had the same abilities, and perhaps with training they could use to control those abilities as he'd done with the few who had acknowledged the Faustus reconditioning technique. But beyond that, there aren't, and there never will be any mutation, any... evolution.
It'd been at the back of his mind - this constant source of frustration - because even with this miracle in his hands, he still couldn't prevent the eventual stagnation of the human species.
Isabelle Collins ramming her Quinjet into the Circle had reminded him that humanity as a concept, and as a race, had expanded its definition long before he'd born. Unlike HYDRA, he'd never been bothered with Enhanced or Gifted people. After all, his ultimate goal in life is to push humanity to great heights.
The red sand's atypical reaction to Inhuman biology is the solution he's been looking for. Erich should never have started with baseline humans. The Gifted and the Enhanced already have a head start towards the perfection of the human race; he doesn't need to reinvent the wheel.
It's a valuable lesson, even if it did cost a lot to learn it.
It's not all wasteful though, he thinks. His scientists had ensured that almost all the crates of red sand had been distributed to the Nigandan populace - a petri dish if there ever was one.
Most importantly, he thinks, as Jana places a silver briefcase before him, he has everything he needs to continue his work.
Three vials greet him as he unlocks it.
One holds a similar dose of concentrated red sand he'd used to influence Collins.
The one with the clear liquid contains Shuri's breakthrough formula which had cured his condition.
The last, with the darker liquid, holds the only remnants of Arnim Zola's bastardized super-soldier serum outside of its host's veins.
Comics Context
Hatut Zeraze: Wakandan Secret Police, basically their version of CIA. The White Wolf (from the comics) is their leader. They're like the opposite of the Dora Milaje. Nakia is a member. As were N'Jobu (T'Chaka's brother) and Zuri. I don't know much more than this.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Context
Daniel Whitehall: I liked the idea of Erich Paine being a student, a mentee of Whitehall. I'd planned for this a while ago - I wrote this chapter way back in May - but the show mirrored my idea with Nathaniel Malick, and now it just looks like I mimicked them. Oh well. I'm still keeping it.
Erich Paine's going to be a bigger pain in the ass in the future.
Mass Effect Context
Omega-enkephalin: It's an enzyme that's shown to weaken biotic powers, so I'm assuming it also works on users of red sand to bring them down from the high. In canon, it doesn't come up until much later, but as always, I'm shifting timelines. I have no idea if it's risky to combine adrenaline with omega-enkephalin; I just made it up.
Red Sand's Effect: In canon, the only Enhanced people are biotics, people with telekinetic abilities at different power ranges. Before them, there was no one else. But I really wanted to explore a world where 'supers' already existed, of some kind - and explore how the red sand would interact with their biology, with their nervous systems.
I'm thinking that with Inhumans, the red sand interacts directly with the parts of their DNA that governs their abilities, and instead of giving them the usual telekinesis, it alters their already existing gifts and turns them into... more. I came up with a very temporary enhancement of my OC's abilities - something she will never be able to achieve on her own; hydrogenesis.
Maybe, in the future, I'll contemplate how the red sand will affect the biology of other Inhumans as well - Daisy Johnson, Yo-Yo, and more.
Sand-Blasters: An informal name for those who use red-sand.