the weight of water

by A. X. Zanier

Sequel to covered in frost

1. part 1

A/N: This story begins in late May 2025 and is as canon compliant as I can make it to fit in with the current MCU timeline set forth in She Hulk, CA: BNW, Daredevil Born Again, and Thunderbolts.

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the weight of water

part 1

underwater

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Bucky lay on his bed in the dark, the only glow coming from the street outside, the light dim, but more than bright enough for him to see rather clearly if skewed to grayscale. His hands were tucked behind his head, sheets at his waist due to the one knee he had bent, and he stared morosely at the ceiling. The breeze from the fan slowly rotating above the foot of the bed provided just enough movement to keep the room from feeling stifling and stagnant. Not that the hourlyish hum of the AC would allow the room to get more than three degrees above the temperature he'd set.

He didn't even need to glance at the clock on his phone to know that it was after oh-two-hundred and that he would not be getting any sleep tonight. No matter how much he might need it.

With a sigh of both irritation and desperation, he flipped off the covers and rotated until his feet hit the smooth wood of the floor. He sat there for several minutes, his hands pressing deeply into the edge of the mattress as he debated lying back down or getting up and continuing his day.

Days, at this point. The third night in a row he'd failed to sleep for more than a few minutes. Oh, he could manage for a while yet, but from here on out, without a distraction, his ability to not be that proverbial grumpy old man would become a near impossible task.

"Fuck."

Standing, he grabbed a T-shirt and sweats, tucked his phone into his pocket, and shuffled out of the room and into the kitchen. He debated for a long moment about making coffee and in the end decided beer would be the better option. He opened the fridge and grabbed three bottles, the necks between the fingers of his left hand, and headed for the back entrance to the office in the dining room.

He'd, well, he and Iris technically, had modded the security so that he wouldn't have to manually make changes when he decided to work after hours. And he did work, it just didn't involve anything that Nyte Visions had done when... she had been alive.

He settled into the chair that had become his even before the apartment had, placed the bottles off to the side, cracked open the first, and drained half before turning the system on.

"How was your date?" Iris chirped as if actually interested.

Bucky grumbled under his breath. "Fine."

"Really? Are you going to see her again?"

Bucky shook his head. "No."

"Why not?"

Bucky ground his teeth in irritation. "You know why."

Iris sighed softly. "James, I'm sorry."

His head snapped up and around to face the hologram, who no longer looked like the generic female persona that Iris often took on. No, now it looked and sounded exactly like Nienna.

That's because, of course, it was Nienna.

A version of her anyway.

Alive, but not living.

Which was the problem.

"Why?" he asked, a plaintive note to the quiet word.

"Because she didn't intend to cause you more pain. She thought my being here. Her being here would make it easier on you. She... she didn't want to leave. You know that, right?"

Bucky stared at her, his throat tight. "I know. And you being here did help at first. But now..."

"Now, it just hurts. I understand. I can change back to Iris if you like."

Sometimes, he hated how accommodating she could be. "No, it's fine." Though in truth, he did kind of want her to not be her.

"No, it's not," she responded. "But I won't push it right now."

Bucky tapped on the keyboard in front of him to bring up the recent searches he'd been working on. He had starting points, memories, and he would aim Iris at them and let the system do the heavy lifting. When Iris got a hit, he would go and investigate in person. Often to great success.

He stared at the screen and studiously tried to ignore the simulacrum of the woman who stood just a few feet away. She had something more she wished to discuss with him, but in her ever-so-polite manner, she would refuse to interrupt him.

"What?" he grumbled after five minutes of staring at the same info without actually absorbing any of it.

"I need to tell you something..." she trailed off as he rotated the chair to look at her, that mask dropped firmly into place. He refused to ask Iris to not look like… her, but also sometimes hated when she was. He knew he needed to move on, and it had become painful to look at her and have it be less real than he needed.

"What," he repeated, not wanting to know what revelation she would drop upon him this time.

She gave him a blank look, her eyebrows knitting together in clear irritation. "If you could have her back, what would you do to accomplish it."

Without thinking, he said, "Anything." He wanted to regret the response, but knew it was the truth. He missed Nienna. He still hurt, even though it had been over six months. And it wasn't just because he lived in her apartment, read her books, and ate the vegetables grown in her greenhouse. Who the hell would think he'd ever become a beekeeper? Though he supposed it wasn't that far a jump from goat herding.

"Fuck," he muttered. He might as well delete that damn dating app as he clearly wasn't ready to move on no matter how many times he told himself he should have been.

"Do you mean that?" she asked, voice soft.

He sighed. "Yeah, I guess I do. Not that it matters. She's dead, and nothing I can do will change that."

She began to pace the width of the room. "Of all the things that happened to her, the bomb, the knifing, that mystery flu, the shooting, none of them were meant to kill her."

Bucky leaned back into the chair and watched her with narrowed eyes. "You can't know that."

"With one hundred percent certainty? No. But deductive reasoning suggests a better than eighty-five percent chance I'm correct."

He let all the incidents that he knew of percolate through his mind while trying to eliminate the filter of their relationship, which most definitely biased his perceptions of them. "Go on."

"The bomb was the first overt effort. I suspect it was supposed to 'go off' while she was here, not be discovered while she was at a high-security building."

Bucky nodded slowly, not disagreeing with that assessment. By all accounts, including the reports from the bomb squad, the bomb had been low yield, poorly constructed, and poorly mounted. Doing little more than causing her battery to drain. If it had gone off while she was in the car, she would have been hurt, but probably not killed. Suspicious, but not shocking when one hires amateurs. "The mugging."

"The mugging," she repeated, "was just as messy. He never tried to take anything from her. Just stabbed."

"You can't know that," he sneered.

She simply raised a single eyebrow, and he acknowledged that maybe she could. Still, it let him catch on to what she was getting at. "And then he mysteriously died in custody. No obvious injury, just dead." He only knew that because he had acquired the autopsy report and the video of the incident. Ni hadn't wanted to push, but Bucky had needed to know.

"So why didn't they, whoever they were, go after her while we were... broken up?"

Her lips turned down for an instant. "You are presuming they didn't."

Bucky frowned deeply. In the few hours they'd been back together, Nienna hadn't mentioned anything about what she'd been doing those weeks they'd been apart. Her doppelganger hadn't either. Not that he had asked. He realized he'd just assumed - he'd take the hit for being an ass - she'd been fine and hadn't once wondered what she might have had to deal with regarding the attacks on her life and business.

"I take it there were... issues."

She snorted. "That's one way to put it. She had to hire personal security at one point. They dropped her off at the Grind that night."

"She thought she'd be safe with me," he stated softly as realization struck. He'd been the reason she'd been attacked that night.

"It is not your fault," she told him in a firm tone. "She had no way of predicting when they might go after her, though in retrospect, once they became aware you were back in play, their window of opportunity began to close swiftly."

"They had to move that night or risk me being in the way again. Never mind her connection to Sam." He rubbed his right hand across his face and swore in several languages. "This is my fault."

"James... No." She walked over and knelt before him, wanting to touch him in comfort but unable to do so. "No. If it hadn't been for you, it would have happened months sooner. And no one would have ever known."

"And what does it matter? She's still dead."

"Are you certain of that?"

He frowned deeply, not willing to remember the moments after the surgeon had come out and told him that Nienna hadn't made it. An unexpected reaction to the anesthesia. The few moments she'd been out of his sight, at his insistence no less, and he'd lost her.

Out of his sight.

Shit. Aside from the bomb, all those efforts were to get her out of sight, away from anyone who would notice. "Tell me."

"I believe she's alive."

Bucky went still. A spark of hope brightening within him, one so very far above him, the water about him so deep and dark, given the depths he had sunk to over the last few months. That tiny glow seemed all that much brighter for it.

He shook his head, trying to fling away the emotion that made his heart suddenly pound. "Not possible. Her father did the formal identification that night."

Nienna rolled her eyes. "First, her father did the ID, not you."

Bucky huffed out a breath, not disagreeing with her point.

"Second, Nick Fury."

This time, Bucky sighed. Fury had survived him, The Winter Soldier, by faking his death. A drug that simulated all the more obvious symptoms of lifelessness for a short period of time. A drug that had been good enough to fool The Black Widow and Captain America at the time.

Would it have fooled him? Either of him? Bucky could answer that with no certainty, but if it was being attempted, keeping him far away would have been the wisest and safest course of action.

That spark got momentarily brighter against his will. He didn't want to have hope, didn't want to have to start the grieving process over again when this turned out to be nothing more than a wisp, a daydream that would surely turn into a nightmare as reality returned.

He hated the numbness that had begun to set in, but it hurt less than missing her every moment of every day.

"Bucky?" she asked.

He rotated his chair and tapped listlessly at the keyboard, using it to avoid asking her the question that sat heavily on the forefront of his mind. Not like she wouldn't know exactly where her words would lead him, and, in truth, he had to know.

"Where? Where is she?"

"I don't know. I was able to track her to Madripoor and lost the trail there."

Madripoor. That suggested her abduction, if that had been what happened, he still had some serious doubts, had been hired and not done for one specific purpose. "So why do you think she's alive?"

"You don't want to see what I have that leads to Madipoor?"

"Oh, I do, but you can do that after you explain why you even thought to look for her."

She chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded. "A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a chunk of code that had been put online for... let's call it peer review. The code is a mess and is obviously two different programs intertwined with each other. The programming languages used are even different."

"And that's important, why?"

"Because," she drew the word out, "I know one of the codes, intimately."

Bucky understood the implication. "Show me."

The projectors split, and the code appeared in the air next to her. It wasn't a long section, but something seemed familiar about it even without knowing it should be. He stood and walked over to it, examining it in detail. Certain sections he highlighted and swiped to the side. Once done, he rearranged them into the proper order, and only then did it click as to where he knew it from.

"Flight controls," he whispered mostly to himself. The invisible bat that had struck him in the back of the head would have hurt far less had it been real. "For a government sub-contract."

"Yeah. Fourth of July weekend in Delacroix."

"But how? And what is the rest of it?" He just barely managed to keep the combined shock and dismay out of his voice as he turned to the remaining code. There was a logic to it, but without context, he had no idea what it could be for."

"I have no idea. There's not enough to extrapolate." She shrugged. "That said, I can tell the code is mine... hers."

"How? How can you be sure?"

"The style." When Bucky looked at her blankly, she elaborated. "Even though at the most basic level the code is written the same, every coder adds a signature, a style that can be recognized, this mystery code includes several of mine... hers."

"And how would you know that?"

She laughed softly. "Bucky, she gave me as much of her as she could. Memories, ideals, knowledge, including every bit of code she's ever written."

"Every?" he questioned.

"Well, except for the one that created me. She thought that might be a bit dangerous, and I can't say she's not wrong."

"No, not wrong." It made perfect sense. If, by some miracle, someone gained access to Iris/Nienna #2 and figured out that she was far more than just an AI, it could be used to do some potentially horrible things. It was a huge part of why he had kept her a secret for all these months. "Where did the code come from?"

She shook her head. "By the time I discovered it, it had been bounced around both the net and the dark web hundreds of times. I'm tracing it back, but I started with a copy of a copy of a copy..."

Bucky waved a hand in understanding. "You'll keep looking?"

"Yes. I narrowed it down to not the Americas. Which doesn't help much..."

"But it's a start," Bucky finished with a nod. Doubts still lingered in his mind, however. "I hate to say this, but this is all circumstantial. You haven't put eyes on her, " he gave her a half smile, "so to speak."

"Bucky-"

He raised a hand and stopped her argument, whatever it might have been, cold. "I don't doubt you, but I can't believe you... yet."

"So what do we do?"

"We find something I can believe."

. . .

"You know, you could have just asked him. He would most likely say yes."

Bucky ground his teeth together. "I don't want to give him hope," he finally responded in a whisper.

"Hope isn't a bad thing," she reminded him in a sour tone.

He huffed out a soft breath. "In this case, it is. If we find her," a gigantic if, he had to admit, if only to himself, "and she wants to, only then will we tell her family."

She grumbled, which caused the bone induction receiver to vibrate oddly behind his ear. Those tech contacts they'd made on that night, so many months ago, had come through with a few toys he'd found most useful. The comms devices were a definite improvement over losing hearing in one ear for the sake of communication. It had been a simple thing via the included app to keep in contact with Iris in whatever guise while on a mission.

"Fine," she agreed. "I don't want to be wrong, though."

Truth be told, he didn't want her to be wrong either, but he had to temper that hope with reasoned facts. Nienna hadn't survived the surgery and had been cremated mere days later. "Are you certain he's not home?"

"Zad is not here in Manhattan. Or at least his phone isn't, and I've confirmed his car left the city three days ago. He's at the house in Beacon. He's considering putting this place up for sale."

Bucky grunted, not overly surprised. The only reason to keep it was his continued involvement with the restaurants. His real business as a psychiatrist involved travel when not working out of the office in his current home. He had a general manager who oversaw the day-to-day operations of all the restaurants and needed only minor input from Zad. Nienna had contributed more to the workings than Zad for the previous five years. There had been talk at Thanksgiving last year about selling them, but Ni's siblings had been insistent that he wait and not rush a decision of that magnitude.

He dropped down onto the balcony off the living area with nary a sound. "You have the security in hand, yes?"

"Yes. I did used to live here after all."

"Ish," Bucky snarked. He tried the knob on the door, not overly shocked when it turned easily. No one expects an intruder from the outside on the twenty-third floor of a high-rise. Still, he made certain the hood of the jacket was up and the mask covered his lower face, only his eyes visible. He'd taken time to rub a generous amount of kohl around his eyes, much as his alter ego had done once upon a time. He wore gloves on both hands and black cargo pants in which he carried several tools and a small tablet that had apps he preferred not to keep on his phone.

"Picky picky," she said in his ear. "According to the cameras, the box is on the mantle in the dining room."

Bucky had memorized the layout that she had shown to him. Nienna had grown up there and moved back in when the Snap had occurred, living there for eighteen months before moving to Brooklyn. Hell, she'd gotten him plans for the entire building so that he could get in as easily and discreetly as possible. He'd chosen to come down from the roof after taking a service elevator up from the basement, which had minimal security. A decided flaw in his opinion.

He found the small wooden box exactly where she had told him, on the mantle, expensive silver candlesticks on either side, the fireplace set with logs, though it hadn't been used in months. He picked up the box, the plate on the front inscribed with Nienna's full name, birth and death dates, glinting in the minimal light filtering in through the windows. He set it on the dining table and lifted the lid. Inside lay and velvet bag held shut with a red drawstring. He tugged it open to see the expected thick plastic bag of remains inside. It wasn't really ashes, but bone so finely crushed that it became a grainy powder with a few larger bits. He pulled it loose and set it aside, then rotated the small backpack he'd brought that contained actual ashes in a similar bag that he placed in the velvet bag just in case any of her family members decided to spread her remains in some favorite spot.

He put the real "ashes" into the pack and shifted it back into place. Then made certain the box had been returned to the exact spot he'd removed it from. The family might not visit often these days, but he knew a housekeeping company came by once a week to dust and make certain everything was as it should be.

As he made his way back out the way he'd come, he did his best to ignore the fact that on his back were, most likely, the remains of the woman he'd cared most about in the world. That flicker of hope still hung there far above him, rippled and warped by the depth of water between him and it, but he forced himself to stay grounded, to not look beyond the next step because if he did he knew he was in for potential heartbreak and he knew he could not go through that again.

Not this soon.

Once out of the building and clear, he headed to where he'd parked his bike down an unlit alley. He removed the hood and mask, letting them drape about his neck and ignoring the sweat the warmth of the evening caused. "We clear?"

"Yes. Now what?"

"Now we head back to the apartment, and I make some calls."

"You know someone legitimate who can do the tests clandestinely?"

He started the engine. "Well, legitimate is a stretch, but, yeah, I know a guy or three who can get the job done."

She snorted. "I don't know why I'm surprised. Keep me in the loop, will you?"

"Of course," Bucky agreed, revved the engine then roared off into the night.

. . .

Even rushed, the results took a week.

Granted, the lab hadn't exactly been official, and the favor he owed would be a medium-sized one, but more than worth it.

The results themselves were... not as surprising as he had expected. Or maybe hoped?

The remains did not belong to Nienna.

In fact, they weren't even human. Most likely porcine.

Which meant...

Which meant Nienna might really be alive.

That meant she'd been abducted and held hostage somewhere for six long months.

And that Bucky had been moping about with his thumb up his ass when his girl needed him more than ever.

"Fuck," he muttered as he crumpled the sheet of paper with the results in his left fist. "What the hell do I do now?"

"You... we go find her?" Iris appeared beside him, looking like her.

He shook his head. "It's been six months. She could have made contact if she wanted to come back."

"You make it sound like she left willingly. They shot her, faked her death, then snuck her out of the hospital. Why would you presume that they'd let her just call you to come get her once healthy?" She frowned at him. "Besides, I think she did."

If anything, his frown deepened. "That code?"

"Yes, that code. I know it's a tiny breadcrumb, but it's the only one we have."

"Have you been able to trace it to the origin point?"

It was her turn to frown. "Not yet," she answered.

"Fuck," he repeated. He slammed the paper down on the desk, then settled heavily into the chair, scrubbing his face with his right hand. "What the hell do I do?"

"We know her last location," she reminded.

"You suspect her last location. Madripoor. Where I have no contacts and a rather hefty bounty on my head." His last visit had ended with a shootout and the death of the man who'd been making the then-newest version of the super soldier serum. Never mind the whole pretending to be The Winter Soldier and beating the crap out of an entire bar.

Of course, watching Sam drink that shot with the snake in it had been memorable.

"Well, do you know anyone who does have contacts there?"

Bucky began to say 'no', but realized he did. "Sharon."

Iris tilted her head as she searched her databases for the person Bucky referred to. "Sharon Carter? Grand-niece of Peggy Carter? Former SHIELD, former CIA, and presumed dead during the Snap?"

"Not dead, just very much off the grid," Bucky agreed with a nod. Nienna would not have known that herself, as he was reasonably certain that neither he nor Sam had mentioned their colleague, but Iris had access to all kinds of information that she probably shouldn't, but that had benefited both he and Sam time and time again.

Sharon... well, Sharon had gotten the short end of the stick when assisting Steve and getting Bucky free from both Zemo and the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre, where she had been working at the time. Doing so had gotten her blackballed, and she'd gone deep into hiding. So deep that when the Snap had occurred, the world had thought her one of those lost.

He and Sam had run into her during their little adventure involving the Flag Smashers, which had led them to Madripoor looking for information through a contact Zemo had. Since then, Sam had gotten her reinstated at the CIA and, as far as Bucky knew, she'd slid right back into her old life as if there hadn't been a five-plus year interruption.

Admittedly, they hadn't spoken much since then, but Bucky was reasonably certain that if he called, she would pick up. Though in truth, he planned on texting her since he had no idea if she wanted it advertised that she still knew her way around that particular country. Though he imagined that having an inside track there could only benefit her in her current position.

He wasn't entirely certain where she was currently stationed, whether here in the country or back in Germany. Iris could figure that out easily, he supposed, but on this occasion, he would go through proper channels, since associating with him could potentially be deemed not in her best interest, as Bucky Barnes still rode that fine edge of hero or villain in the eyes of the government.

"I'll shoot her a text tomorrow. See when she might have a couple of minutes to spare for me," he announced out loud for Iris's benefit. "I'm not certain what time zone she's in."

Iris opened her mouth to speak, most likely about to offer to track the woman down for him.

"It can wait a day. I have a job site to get to."

Iris pouted. "And what am I supposed to do?"

"Figure out where she is," Bucky stated. "If we know that we don't need Madripoor."

She frowned. "I'm working on it. Though I think Madripoor might still be important. Why take her there? I know its a proverbial hive of scum and villainy so selling people doesn't seem all that surprising, but she's a tech genius not a weapons engineer. Though she could probably manage a scary computer virus or three if needed." She somehow managed to frown even deeper. "I know we both suspect why she was taken, but since it's such a niche skill..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "I guess I'm just not evil enough to understand the motives."

Bucky looked her right in the eyes. "I've directly experienced the harm this tech," he waved in her direction, "can cause, even though I know Nienna's hope was for it to be used for good. To preserve the memories, to ease the loss, but it can and will be exploited horribly if it gets out there." He knew to the depths of his soul how damnably dangerous this tech could be. Not just by recreating people like Zola on a computer, but the potential of giving them bodies, robot, or synthezoid like the Vision. Perhaps when combined with other techniques, replacing the mind of a person A with the downloaded one of person B, providing a new lease on life for the low, low cost of another's soul.

"Nienna knew the risks. I know the risks. I can see more of the horrible things humans can and will do than you can ever imagine." A hand shot out, pointing off into some unmeasured distance. "I'm out there, part of it, seeing it and unable to stop so much of it because my virtual hands are tied. We need to get her back, James, because I think she's the only one who might have a chance at stopping what could be done with this tech. Whether she knows it or not."

Bucky didn't argue. Iris had become so much more than the servers in this room and every day spread herself further and deeper into any and every device she had access to. Because, while Nienna #2 was just a scarily advanced and human doppelganger AI, Iris, the original program, had been designed for research. To seek, to learn, and gather intel on any subject of his, Sam's, or Nienna's whim. It was always looking, digging in, or out since it had managed to gain access to numerous satellite systems over the months. Always leaving a tiny footprint behind, which somehow then became part of the system as a whole. Iris was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Even government firewalls couldn't keep the system out once it had gotten inside.

Dangerous in its own way, but not nearly as alive as the algorithm that had created the new, if somewhat incomplete, version of Nienna. AI, perhaps, but based on a single person and able to mimic her damn near perfectly. She used Iris and could still separate from it when she chose, but in her ongoing need to help Bucky, she generally remained connected on at least a virtually subconscious level at all times.

They, in many ways, had become one overarching, highly intelligent AI program. Even more so than JARVIS or FRIDAY. The only comparison he had was Ultron, which had been a creation of the Mind Stone and the Ultron AI protocol Stark had used in his robots. That system had had full access to the internet and as many systems as it needed to infiltrate in order to propagate and fulfill its base protocol: protect the world.

It had gone awry when Ultron determined that humans were doing the most harm to said world and decided the only way to save it was by eliminating the threat in the most permanent manner possible.

He didn't see that happening with Iris, who had been designed to serve, but the potential remained lurking in the background. Always something to be aware of, just in case.

He sighed softly. "Here's hoping we can keep this particular Pandora's Box sealed."

. . .

She woke up.

She blinked several times, the room far darker than she would have expected for a recovery room.

And the bed was far more comfortable. The pillow beneath her head was thick and supportive and soft. Too soft, in fact.

Moving carefully, she squinted and gazed about the darkened... bedroom? A bureau, bookcases with a chair, and a small table with a simple LED light atop it. A book with a bookmark sat beside a half-full glass of water, implying that it had been used within recent memory.

Yet doing so was not something she could recall.

She had no clue where she currently was.

Aside from being in a room in a bed.

Had Bucky whisked her away as soon as he'd been assured that the bullet, fragments, and all had been removed?

Possibly. Given that he knew of her utter disdain for hospitals, though not yet the whys of it.

But then why was the room so... unfamiliar?

She recognized nothing that she saw about herself. Not the books, the decor, the paint color on the walls. Not one single thing.

With care, expecting her shoulder to argue loudly with the stupidity of the move, she attempted to sit up and... and...

Aside from the mildest of aches, there was no pain whatsoever.

She looked down at herself, wearing what appeared to be a silk button-down pajama top instead of the hospital gown she expected.

"What the hell is going on?" she muttered softly.

She shifted the top to reveal her left shoulder and upper chest, surprised at the lack of bandages. Hell, just surprised. A neat dimple was visible, the color slightly different from the skin around it, though in the darkness, she could not be certain of that color.

The bullet hole had fully healed some time ago.

Months ago.

She rotated her shoulder cautiously, feeling only the slightest hint of tightness that she suspected might be permanent, but would not significantly hinder any of her normal activities.

"The fuck?" she muttered.

She dug through her memories and found a massive blank space where several months of living should be. The last thing she could remember was being rolled into the OR, drugged to the gills after telling Bucky that she loved him.

She felt her cheeks heat in the darkened room. "Jeez, great timing there." Not that she hadn't meant it, but before that hellish moment, she had taken all due care to not back the former Winter Soldier into that particular emotional corner. She had been more than content to let their relationship grow on its own without adding any pressure, especially since he had most certainly still been adjusting to life as Bucky, former soldier and potential Avenger.

He had a lot to figure out, and she had no interest in forcing him to make decisions he was in no way ready for.

Bucky had known she was drugged to the gills in prep for the surgery, however minor they had claimed it was going to be, and had responded with a smile and a Star Warsian "I know," which had been the perfect noncommittal answer.

She'd gone into that operating room, terrified but content with his response.

Then... then... more drugs, the bright overhead lights, and a voice saying "I'm sorry."

Then nothing until just a few moments ago.

Had the surgery gone wrong? Had she been in a coma?

She shook her head. She would still be in a hospital if that were true. Coma patients required palliative care, and while that could be done at home, there would be obvious machines to monitor her health, never mind a feeding tube shoved up her nose, and there quite clearly was none of that.

It appeared to be a perfectly normal bedroom. Just not hers. At least not hers in the Brooklyn apartment.

She threw off the covers, noting absently that she wore the matching pajama shorts, and looked at her body for signs of atrophied muscles or anything to indicate that she'd been bedridden for potentially months.

She looked fine. She looked like she'd been working out regularly with no excess fat to be found. Hell, she'd bulked up a bit if she were any judge.

Weird.

She rotated and slid off the bed with care, still oddly concerned she would find herself in a weakened condition, only to not have any issues except an odd sense of almost vertigo as she stood. Almost as if she weren't used to being the one doing the standing and walking.

A decidedly odd sensation, to put it mildly.

She turned slowly to give the entire room a look and saw nothing familiar.

She went to the only window and parted the curtains to gaze out over a cityscape she did not immediately recognize.

She was high up in a not unimpressive building, on or about the tenth floor, near the top at a guess, with buildings of a similar height all about her. The buildings were vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place them.

She permitted the curtain to close and took a few steps backwards, not understanding anything at that moment.

Where was she?

Why was she here?

And where the fuck was Bucky?

She found the door and stepped out into a hallway, following it down to what had to be the living room. The massive windows there gave her a view of the city that let her place it.

Those buildings were distinctive and well-known to pretty much the entire world.

London.

How had she gotten here?

Somewhere nearby, she heard a door open and close, followed by footsteps.

"Bucky?" she called out, hoping like hell he'd be able to tell her just what the flying fuck was going on.

A total stranger appeared, holding what looked like a small tablet in his hand.

"Who are you?" she asked, suddenly knowing deep in her gut that she was most definitely in danger from the tall, dark-haired male before her. She settled herself into a defensive stance, prepared to fight if needed.

He frowned in clear irritation. "I told them there were anomalies," he groused.

He tapped the screen before him for a few seconds as she slowly began to shift away, hoping to get around him and head for the door he must have entered by.

He lifted his head. "No need for that," he assured her, his voice sickeningly sweet and dripping a viscous oil. "Time for you to go back to sleep."

He tapped the screen.

. . .

Madripoor

Sharon had come through for him. She'd gotten him the name of a dealer inside Madripoor who not only would speak to him without attempting to collect the reward, but who had the best chance of pointing him in the right direction when it came to where Nienna had gone. He didn't bother with the guise of the Winter Soldier, no, he went as Bucky Barnes, who was looking for information. Information he was willing to pay or trade for.

He wasn't rich. Didn't have a huge store of information that might be valuable to someone in Madripoor, or at least not information he was willing to trade. Oh, he definitely had info someone would want, even pay for, Hydra secrets that could literally topple governments if leveraged correctly, but he was not to that point yet.

Hoped like hell he would never reach that point.

Though if it secured the return of Nienna both alive and healthy...

Yeah, he just might.

But this was just the beginning, he had not yet run out of options.

He ended up in a sketchy-looking building that was far from sketchy on the inside. Instead, it was loaded with some of the most high-tech gear and surveillance he'd ever seen - and he'd seen a lot over the years. If he'd been a rich man, he would have bought a fair few items, instead, he just made certain Iris had a good view so that she could hopefully counter anything they might use against him either now or in the future.

"I can't get access to any of this," Iris whispered in his ear. Technically not in his ear, given the bone induction comms device was curved behind his left ear and colored to blend in with his skin and go unnoticed. "I'm honestly impressed."

He didn't respond, mostly because he didn't want to alert his host that he was in contact with anyone, even if it was technically just an overachieving AI who wasn't anywhere nearby. However, the knowledge didn't surprise him as Iris had been trying to break into any of Madripoor's systems in hopes of tracking down Nienna for weeks with only the most minimal of luck. Not enough to come close to locating where Nienna had gone once entering the city, never mind if she had even left.

Never mind if she remained alive.

He mentally shook his head.

He couldn't think that way.

Why go through all the trouble to get her here only to then kill her?

Yes, she could be stubborn and annoying, but overall, the knowledge in her skull would be far more valuable to someone alive as opposed to getting rid of her to keep anyone else from getting it.

Bucky sighed softly. He had no clue the motivations of those who'd been after her, only assumptions and best guesses.

Which was why he'd chosen to risk the wrath of an entire country, small and dangerous as it was, to find out.

"You have friends in very high places. The bounty on your head has been removed, and an order put out that you are to remain untouched." The man called Fredo stated with a cold tone. "Of course, that does not mean there are not those willing to risk the Power Broker's wrath to attempt taking you far more permanently off the playing field."

If Bucky were surprised that he'd been granted a pardon by whomever ruled this lawless town, he made absolutely certain not to show it. Instead, he shrugged. "I'm not exactly easy to kill."

Fredo smiled grimly, twisting the bejeweled ring on his right pinky finger around in a nervous manner. A tell, but of what? Bucky had had all of five minutes with the man.

Fredo wanted Bucky gone sooner rather than later and probably would not have agreed to this meeting unless someone with far more power hadn't pulled on some seriously strong strings. Just based on this room and the hundreds of screens, Fredo had eyes and ears literally everywhere in this city and elsewhere. Some of the views were clearly of other international locations.

Bucky recognized Shanghai, Sydney, and DC with just a quick once-over of the room.

No wonder he had earned the nickname The Dealer.

He dealt in information.

And would share it with others... for a price.

Bucky didn't know exactly what strings Sharon had pulled, but she'd gotten him this meeting, so he would still need to agree to a price.

Fredo grinned toothily, most of his front teeth filled with gold and yet more jewels. Clearly, business had been good enough for him to be willing to flaunt the wealth. Then again, all his liquid cash might be that on and in his body, the rest invested in the tech that surrounded them. "Even you can't see a sniper, but that's neither here nor there." He waved a hand in dismissal of yet more posturing before Bucky even had time to process the threat.

If there were a sniper in this windowless room, he manned a weapon mounted into one of the walls and controlled it remotely, and there would be no hope of preventing the shot from being taken.

"You need information, I, most likely, have it; the question is, what are you willing to pay for it?"

"Payment is negotiable depending on whether or not that intel is of any use to me."

Fredo tipped his head in acknowledgment. "What are you looking for?"

Bucky pulled out his phone, pulled up a picture of Nienna, and held it up. "This woman was brought to Madripoor roughly six months ago, I want to know where she went after."

Fredo nodded, pulled out his phone, and snapped a picture of the image on Bucky's.

"Interesting," Iris muttered, "his phone is connected to the main system, he's doing a search."

Bucky wanted to ask how she knew that, but, again, did not want to give away the fact that he was not truly alone.

"Gods, this sucks, I can see the system - it's impressive let me tell you - but I can't find a way in. If I could, we wouldn't even need to deal with him. I could dig through and find it on my own." She sighed regrettfully. "The security for this country is almost as good as Wakanda's.

Bucky knew she, meaning Iris, originally had an in to Wakandan systems thanks to Nienna having a working relationship with certain groups in that still mostly standoffish country. Neither Nienna nor Iris had ever abused that privilege.

Bucky forced his mien to remain stoic and simply absorbed the information Iris gave him without reacting to it. He would need to plug her into something to gain any access. The risk was whether they had prepared for that type of incursion. They could potentially trap that portion of Iris and potentially backtrack her to her base code on those servers in New York. Could take her, could get to that algorithm that Bucky was trying to protect at all costs.

Hell, it was why he was here right now.

"Not worth the risk," he muttered softly, hoping Iris would get the hint and stop trying to gain access.

She huffed in disappointment. "Fine"

Fredo hadn't seemed to notice Bucky's comment, and a few moments later lifted his head with a wary look on his face. "Yes, it seems she did arrive here some months ago, though she did not remain for long."

As Bucky expected. He had suspected this had simply been a way point for Nienna, willing or not.

He hoped not.

If she had faked her death and run away on purpose...

He didn't believe that. Why use the algorithm then? Why create a replacement of herself ostensibly to ease the heartache she knew he would feel if she had planned to leave?

None of it fit what he knew of her.

"And where did she go?" He wanted to ask if she had arrived and left of her own free will, but knew that would give away too much. At this point, he had to treat this as a job, no more, no less. The moment he showed any emotion about her, the higher the price would go.

Fredo smiled.

Ah, yes, time for the price negotiations.

"The detail of the information will depend on what you are willing to pay, of course."

Bucky sighed. "How much?"

"How much do you wish to know?"

Bucky thought about that seriously. On a personal level, he wanted every detail, but in reality, he only needed how she came to be here and where she ended up, so that's what he asked for.

Fredo nodded. "The monetary price for that information is five hundred thousand dollars American."

Bucky held steady. No way he could afford that much in cash, even with what Ni had left him in trust. The trust that was meant to keep her servers running for as long as possible.

"And in trade?"

Fredo put his phone back in his pocket and tapped his chin in faux thoughtfulness. "Info or physical items?"

"Depends on what you are looking for," Bucky countered.

The man's eyes lit up. "There is a piece certain parties have been attempting to acquire for some time, that should be enough."

"And what is that?" Bucky asked in barely contained suspicion.

"Your arm."

Bucky shook his head. "Not only did he not want to be without it, but there was no way he'd give Madripoor access to Wakandan tech. At least not anymore so than Klaue had.

"I'm rather attached to this one. What else?"

Fredo shook his head. "You misunderstand. Not the one you currently have, your original arm."

"Interesting," Iris commented. "And you know where it is conveniently."

True, he did, and the arm itself wasn't all that valuable, being older Hydra tech and made of titanium instead of Vibranium and imbued with all sorts of Wakandan toys that Ni had revealed.

Bucky gave a counter. "The location of the arm. You or whoever you sell the information to will have to figure out how to get it."

Fredo frowned.

Bucky debated reminding the man that the shoulder portion was located in Wakanda, but decided not to bother. Let them deal with it. "Well?"

Fredo gave a quick nod. "Agreed."

"The info?" Bucky was not about to pay before receiving at least some proof of the product.

"I'll send the detailed info to your phone, but one Nienna Grace was brought to Madripoor, then sold at auction and shipped off to London a week later. As far as I know, she was kept heavily drugged the entire time she was here and unaware of anything happening to her, but otherwise appeared to be healthy aside from the injury to her shoulder, which had been treated." Fredo tapped a few buttons on his phone, and Bucky's vibrated an instant later.

"Got it," Iris assured him. "Oh, this isn't good," she muttered a moment later, having already gone through most if not all of the data. She did not sound happy about any of it.

Later. He would deal with it later. Preferably, when they were out of this city and on their way to London.

"And my payment," Fredo all but growled.

Iris took care of it using the same gateway the information had arrived by, sending the last known location of Bucky's Hydra arm: in a Black site lab ostensibly overseen by that UN Panel, but truly run by the US government. Stark had turned it over to them under the Accords after the events in Russia. The bodies of the other Winter Soldiers along with the mind wipe device and everything else from that silo were also there.

Retrieving all of it was on Bucky's never-ending to-do list, but as it was a multi-person job, he had shelved it for the time being.

"Sending it via the same channel he used," Iris informed Bucky. "He's good, I still can't get into the systems even with this direct link. I'm gonna need to make some notes." The odd sound of glee in Iris's... no, in Nienna's voice was palpable. She was well and truly impressed, and, given she was no slouch at encryptions herself, told Bucky a lot about Fredo or who he hired.

Fredo glanced down at his phone, scrolled through the data, then frowned the same time, his eyes widened. "You're certain of the location?"

"As of six weeks ago, yes," Bucky answered. "I keep tabs on certain items, and while it is still occasionally removed for various reasons, it is always returned to that locale."

Fredo nodded. "Deal completed." He tipped his head slightly to the side. "I'd wish you luck on your search, but I suspect it is not something you need."

Bucky's look hardened, causing the man a few steps away to swallow visibly. "No, luck has never really been on my side."

. . .

She woke up.

This time, there was no blinking awake in a darkened room expecting to be in a hospital bed. No, there was simply a sudden sharp swap of awareness, and she found herself standing in a room of people, not crowded, but not a mere smattering either, holding a drink in her hand mid-conversation with a complete stranger.

To say it was awkward could not adequately describe the situation.

She had no idea what she'd been saying, only somehow knew she had been the one speaking.

It took a few seconds, but looks of consternation flooded the faces of those standing about her.

"Lils, are you okay?" the kind-looking man next to her asked.

Lils?

Ni ignored him and instead thrust her drink at him, which he took, though he wore a fair portion of it in the process. She didn't care and spun about to walk away, even though she had not a single clue where she might be.

She weaved through the group, heading for anywhere but there, when she spied the sign for the restrooms and made a beeline for them. People called after her, though it was for this Lils and not her, but she ignored them all.

It was a public restroom, one wall all sinks and mirrors, the opposite side the actual toilet stalls. No windows or other doors that might let her escape.

'Do I need to escape?' she questioned herself.

She walked to the furthest sink from the door and leaned heavily upon it, staring into a face she knew and yet... and yet looked different. Her hair had grown, the colored streaks beginning about halfway down the length, and the bright blue faded to a pale teal, making it clear she hadn't touched it up in quite some time.

Bucky had eventually explained that changing her looks wouldn't make much difference when they already knew where she lived and worked, but had also complimented her on the efforts. He'd made it clear she'd had the right idea and coached her on how to make it more of a challenge to get to her when she was out alone.

Bucky.

Oh god, Bucky.

Where was he?

Was he all right?

She sucked in a deep breath and made every effort to calm her racing thoughts.

Bucky not being here, with her, did not mean he was hurt or had been harmed. It just meant...

She had no idea what it meant.

Had they parted ways far more permanently, and she simply did not remember it?

Possible, she supposed, but deep in her gut, she knew that was not the correct answer.

What was the last thing she remembered?

Clearly remembered.

The apartment.

The stranger.

Then nothing until just a few minutes ago.

What. The. Fuck.

The bathroom door opened, and a woman with a concerned look on her face entered. "Lils? You in he... There you are. Are you okay?"

Ni's eyes narrowed, part of her wanting to run, not that she had any idea where to go. How to get out of the bathroom and the literal corner she had backed herself into. She didn't have a lot of options; try to push past and hopefully escape the building – a bar maybe? – she was in, or play along, gather more intel, and then escape?

She knew the latter was the wiser course of action, but her every instinct told her to run. Run now. Run as hard and fast as she could manage and get as far away as her legs could carry her. And only once clear to stop to reassess the situation.

To call Bucky and have him come rescue her, as she was in no position to rescue herself.

"I'm... I'm fine." Ni started shaky but quickly got her voice under control. "Thought I was gonna puke is all."

"Oh," the woman responded. "But you're okay now?"

Ni nodded, realizing the woman spoke with a decided British accent, which made sense given the cityscape she'd seen the last time she'd been awake.

She now knew she hadn't been moved and was still in Britain, if no longer London proper.

Ni nodded. The less she said, the better, given she had no idea who Lils was. No way she could fake being a person she didn't know, even if it was her.

Ni wondered if this was how Bucky felt in those moments he'd been granted when not the Winter Soldier. Utterly confused and filled with the desperate need to escape.

Felt helpless and out of control.

"I called Theo. He'll be here in a few minutes to take you home."

Ni schooled her reaction to that bit of news instead of asking who the fuck Theo was.

"I'll be out in a minute, just want to splash some water on my face. Make sure the nausea is gone."

"It's okay, I'll wait for you," the woman responded, her tone suggesting she had no plans to move until Ni walked back out that bathroom door and joined the group outside. As if she had been told to watch Ni and not let her out of sight.

Great.

So Ni did so. Splashing water on her face, taking care not to ruin the makeup, and drying off with just as much care. Then she turned and walked from the bathroom with the woman right behind her, staying no more than a couple of feet away as they returned to the group she'd fled mere minutes prior. Without turning her head, Ni tried to take in everything about their surroundings. A bar or pub, far more likely, bathrooms were to the back, past the long bar, the doors in front of her, and to the right slightly. The windows on two sides revealed little more than the typical British streets portrayed in film and TV. It did nothing to assist her in placing just where the fuck she was.

She glanced back at the woman, who watched her with brows knit together as if suspicious. "I... I need some fresh air. I'll be back in a minute."

"I'll come with," she offered.

Ni shook her head. "I'll just be a minute, promise." She smiled, hoping it gave off assurance and confidence, then turned on her heel and walked- she forced herself to a relaxed pace- towards the door.

She opened it, seeing freedom if she could just keep moving. The windows to the left were a shorter width than the rest, and she would be out of any direct sight quickly, then she could run and figure out where she was later.

Get safe, then plan her next move.

She saw that the next street over was a larger thoroughfare, which could give her some inkling of where she truly was, and she headed towards it. She had come within a few strides of the street sign that would give her a location mere yards away when a car pulled up beside her and screeched to a halt.

The rear passenger door flung open and he stepped out, that damn tablet in his hand again.

Was this Theo?

"You are seriously beginning to become troublesome."

Ni turned to run, made it all of three steps before all of reality simply went black.

. . .

London, England.

Bucky sat in the outdoor cafe ostensibly reading a local newspaper while sipping a cup of tea. He had yet to find coffee that was even close to palatable and blamed Nienna for his becoming a coffee snob and caring that the dark brown liquid containing caffeine that didn't really affect him tasted good.

So he sipped tea, which he had to admit the Brits did an excellent job with, waited, and watched. The intel he'd been given said she worked in the building just across the street. It looked like a hotel, but it seemed to be anything but. Iris couldn't get into the systems in there. Not the security, not the computers, nothing.

"It's airgapped," she'd explained, meaning the entire system was self-contained and had no regular off-site connections that she could use to infiltrate the systems.

Which simply meant Bucky would have to do this old school. Research and stakeouts.

Iris had gathered all the official intelligence she could on the company - a private research company - but their online presence was minimal, and the website was in no way maintained in the building across from him. Those servers she'd been able to access easily, and it had gained her little useful information on who ran the place.

It stank of Hydra.

Though he knew it most likely wasn't. The purpose was probably something similar. Research into something that shouldn't be and then sold to the highest bidder. Or to anyone. The easiest way to make money in a war was to claim neutrality and then sell to all sides.

Not that they were at war. Not a blatant one anyway.

The world remained unstable since the return of those Thanos had temporarily erased from existence, and it was going to take time, perhaps longer than those souls had gone missing, to repair the damage their return had caused.

The battles were not as obvious, the missions far more covert than even the Winter Soldier's had been. This war was being waged in the shadows to be won or lost via moves few would know about and fewer would acknowledge.

He and Iris kept an eye on what they could, but there was little either of them could do when governments were the ones doing the somewhat nefarious deeds. Walker hadn't lost his job so much as gotten a sideways promotion, his work far more underground. Officially sanctioned, though barely.

There were times Bucky regretted not killing him that day, his vow to not do that anymore of little consequence after the man had sullied the shield Steve had given to Sam. Sullied the mantle that was Captain America with needless bloodshed.

With a sigh, Bucky dragged his mind back to the task at hand.

He'd been watching the place for three days with no sign of Nienna, which didn't mean much of anything. She could be locked up within, and he would have no way of knowing it. Iris was digging through the CCTV footage in the area, looking for any sign of Nienna, but, given the heavy foot traffic, it would take time.

Which they technically had. Other commitments he had had been put on hold until he finished this business. Be it weeks or... How long would he devote to this? Months? Years?

As long as it took, he supposed. If she were alive and happy and wanted nothing more to do with him, fine. At least he would know. But if there were the slightest chance she was being held against her will, he needed to know, then he could make a decision.

Or she could walk right out the door across from him, chatting amicably with the two women next to her.

Well, she was alive.

He tossed some cash on the table, tucked the paper under his arm, then crossed the street as traffic conveniently lightened just as he needed it to. He stayed a dozen feet behind her, strolling along as if he had no interest in her at all. He focused more on the surroundings, making note of anything even the least bit suspicious.

The three of them turned into a local pub, found a table, and settled in.

He followed but sat at the bar, ordered a beer, and watched the trio in the mirror to await an opportunity to approach Ni and gauge her need for rescue. Based on the easy discussion and occasional laughter, the women were at least friendly if not friends.

Nienna looked... good. Healthy. She'd let her hair grow out without maintaining the colored highlights. She had lost some weight, but not so much that he worried about her health. She appeared to be relaxed and happy.

A state he hadn't enjoyed since losing her, and for an instant, that hurt far more than he could have imagined.

She had moved on.

If... if that were true, then he would leave her alone, but he needed to speak to her first. To not assume and hear in her own words that she wanted the life she'd made here and not the one they had tried to make together, broken as it had been in their last hours all those months ago.

Twenty minutes later, she excused herself from the table and walked past him towards the back, where the restrooms were. He waited a slow count of thirty and followed. He needed to wait less than a minute for her to step out and damn near walk face first into him.

She started and took a step back to look up at him, apologizing profusely.

She looked him dead in the eye and did not appear to recognize him.

He shifted closer and lowered his voice so that only she would hear, "Nienna, are you all right?"

She stared up at him, her eyes widening. "I'm sorry, you must have the wrong person," the decidedly posh British accent finally registering on his ears. No, it wasn't new; she had been speaking with it the entire time, he just hadn't processed it until that moment.

She tried to push past him, but he gently grasped her upper arm, causing her to swing around and stare up at him with a touch of fear filtering into her mien. She yanked her arm, but he didn't release her.

"Ni, it's me, Bucky."

She froze. "Who the hell is Bucky?" she snarled, then, much to his surprise, she stomped on his right foot and jerked away, shuffling hurriedly back to the table her co-workers sat at. She waved the server over and alerted her to the strange man, one Bucky Barnes, who had not assaulted, but had definitely detained her, if only for a few seconds.

In that moment, he knew exactly how Steve had felt on that day in D.C. when he'd called to his friend only to have it go unacknowledged.

Bucky growled under his breath and made his way into the kitchen and out the back door, ignoring the calls of "oi, mate," and "stop, you can't be in 'ere," that followed him.

He didn't stop until a block down and out of sight of the pub.

She had looked him dead in the eye and not known him. Worse, he had looked at her and not seen her behind those eyes. Eyes that had been similar to but not the same as those he'd gazed into for months. Her hazel eyes had always contained an excess of bright green, but the eyes he'd just looked into had been far more golden, the same but different.

Could... it made no sense... could it possibly have been someone else? Could he have made a mistake?

"Iris."

"That was not me," Not Iris, but Nienna responded.

"Agreed," Bucky responded. "But it also was. She smells the same."

Iris made the comms device vibrate with a low hum.

"Cookies. You always smell like cookies."

"Cocoa butter oil," Iris agreed. "Something's wrong."

"Contact Sam, see if he knows anyone who's dealt with mind control."

"Besides you," she snarked.

"Yeah, besides me. Need someone from the Red Room." Bucky knew it had finally been destroyed mere weeks after he had gone back into cryo while in Wakanda. Natasha Romanov, former Avenger at that time, had taken it down with the help of other Widows, and a lot of the data, damaged and corrupted, had been leaked out, including their new and improved mind control techniques, but he was very much not an expert, and he needed one.

Iris sounded surprised. "I'll see what we can do."

Bucky tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and made his way back to the hotel he'd chosen for his base of operations.

. . .

"What do you want, Barnes?"

Sam had called Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, who had been both a partner and a friend to Natasha Romanov, probably the most famous of the Black Widows, mostly because she had gotten out and destroyed the Red Room not just once but twice.

The second time it had stuck. Dreykov was actually dead this time, and the floating base had been brought down to earth in rather large pieces. Unlike SHEILD/Hydra, most of its deepest secrets had gone up in flames with the base.

But only most.

Yelena Belova considered herself a sister to Natasha, having been raised with her for a few years in the nineties. They'd worked together for years in the Red Room and had both played a major role in not only its destruction but freeing the remaining Widows of the mind control they'd been under.

Mind control that Bucky knew had been created by using him to experiment on.

A control that worked much, much better than the mind wipe machine plus the trigger words to activate the implanted personality.

Ah, the improvements technology can bring to the world.

He still had nightmares about that place.

Though those that had that tech used on them probably had worse ones, based on what he had learned.

"I need your... expertise," he began, causing her to snort.

"Who do you want killed?"

He shook his head. "No one, as of yet. I need info on the Red Room mind control techniques and any counters that may exist." He shrugged. "Seemed best to go to the source."

Her eyes narrowed. "I remember you, you know. You were brought in to train the older girls, you killed... how many while you were there?"

Bucky schooled his face to a blank expression. "They failed. The punishment for failure..."

"Was death. I remember." She glared at him. "Do you?"

He nodded. "Some parts better than others, but yes, I remember. I didn't exactly have a choice; the punishment for my failure was no less than yours."

Her look softened ever so slightly. "True. Why me, though? There are plenty of free Widows who would assist you for the right price."

"You're who Barton recommended," Bucky told her.

"Barton suggested me? No wonder Kate called," Yelena muttered under her breath. "Alright, what do you need from me, and then we'll discuss price."

"I have a... friend that seems to be under some form of mind control, and I suspect it's more likely Red Room instead of old school Hydra."

"Okay, and?"

"And if she is, I've heard you have access to the antidote."

"And there it is. That is not supposed to be common knowledge."

"It's not," he assured her. "I had to dig deep to find that intel and until this moment had not confirmed it."

She frowned, realizing she'd given away the game with her comment. "All right, presuming your... friend is indeed under the influence of Dreykov's sadistic toy, what makes you think I have access to the cure?"

"Because you are Melina Vostokoff's ostensible daughter who is believed to have created it," Iris responded, her voice a touch tinny through Bucky's phone speaker. She had been the one to dig up and decrypt the highly classified and buried information. The cover-up on the destruction of the second Red Room had been most thorough, though not impenetrable.

"Who was that?" Yelena snapped, eyes darting about looking for the body to go with the voice.

Bucky held up his phone and waved it. "AI system. She does the research, I do the work."

Yelena looked anything but thrilled. "Melina did not create it. A Widow named Okasana, with the help of others, did. Melina simply keeps us supplied," Yelena corrected, clearly wanting to set the record straight. " And it will cost you."

"I figured." Bucky gave her his best offer. "A personal favor, to be called in at any time."

Her eyebrows bounced upwards. "Any restrictions?"

He shrugged. "No killing."

"Will your AI assist?"

"If needed, of course," he agreed.

And with that, a deal had been struck.

. . .

"London is always so dreary, even during the summer," Yelena complained, where she sat across from Bucky, the fog that had hung heavy about them all morning finally beginning to break up.

Bucky grunted. He preferred the fog since it kept the temps down. He was doing his best to blend in but had to keep long sleeves on to hide the arm as best he could.

Even though it was only early June, it was warm enough for him to not need the hoodie.

"Why haven't you just grabbed her and run. Fix her after you get away from them?"

A good question, but one to which he had an answer. "What's to stop them from just killing her? Isn't that what Dreykov could do?"

Yelena's look turned sour, but she nodded. "So you need to cure her before taking her. There is little chance this is the original version of the Red Room chemical, there was not enough recoverable data in the wreckage."

"And your Melina would not have sold it for the right price?"

Yelena shook her head. "No, she wouldn't. Which means someone cobbled together a new version."

Bucky nodded in agreement. "Makes sense. An army of soldiers that can't say no, and if they use a super soldier serum first..."

"They'd be damn near unstoppable."

"Yeah," he agreed, having thought about this scenario far too much over the last few days.

"Hey, there's a reason the other me kept the info to herself," Iris reminded Bucky via the comms.

Bucky wanted to reply, but since he did not want Yelena, who could do who knew what with the information, to know about what Iris/Nienna really was. Better she stay Iris, the fancy AI, than reveal that Zola's algorithm had been successfully recreated and risk it becoming known. Those with the resources wouldn't necessarily need a copy of it; just knowing it could be done meant others would try to do so. Which is why super soldiers were still being created after all these years and why new, scary versions were being designed as well.

"You have a plan, then?" Yelena questioned, the sneer subtle but there.

"Detailed no, general yes," he responded. "Make contact, determine how she is being controlled, fix it, and get her out of here."

Yelena nodded slowly in agreement. "I assume you wish me to try using the counter for the Red Room control?"

Bucky nodded. "If you have it available, it would seem the best place to start."

She huffed out a breath as if it should have been obvious to him that she always carried it with her. He had suspected that she had a personal mission to free any still-affected Widows she came across. The system controlling them might have been destroyed, but he suspected that simply meant they would continue with their last mission until successful or they had died. The control programming was not something they could break free from on their own.

"You understand the chances that what is being used is exactly the same is slim, yes?"

"I know, but it's still worth a try. If they based it on the Red Room control, there may be enough similarities to at least disrupt it enough to bring Nienna back if only partially."

Yelena's brows furrowed. "Are you suggesting she was someone else?"

"Is someone else," Bucky corrected. "The name she's going by is Lilith, and based on my one encounter and additional observations, she believes she is this other person."

"That may be an issue. I was still me, just controlled. Even those planted covertly for long-term infiltrations with covers are still themselves." She shook her head as if realizing she was doing a poor job of explaining it. "Even when playing a part, it's just on the surface; at the core, I am still me."

Whereas Bucky had literally been two separate people. They would turn Bucky off and The Winter Soldier on, and only the fact that the memories were stored in the same brain allowed them to overlap once the programming had been broken. Which is why they used him to improve the technique.

"How did they control you?" he asked.

"Chemicals, pheremones, and tech. The Red Dust immunizes the neural pathways, curing the chemical subjugation. But it's never been used against one not from the Red Room."

"Which is why you cannot guarantee it will work. Still worth a try."

"Agreed." she cocked her head thinking. "What was off about her?"

'Aside from not knowing who I was,' he thought to himself. "Her eyes were wrong."

Yelena's brows rose in the obvious question.

"Too much yellow in them, but otherwise identical."

"As if something were causing the color change," she said aloud, following along the train of thought. "Do I get to see the target?"

Bucky waved at the building across the street. He had yet to locate her residence as she had made certain to change her routine after their encounter in the pub. "She works here. Hit up the pub down the block."

"Her home?"

"Haven't found it. It might be in this building. She changed her routine since our first encounter."

"Your fuck up, you mean."

Bucky didn't argue the point as it had indeed been a fuck up.

"CCTV?"

"Tracking her had been challenging. I suspect there is an underground entrance that I cannot access the security for." Iris explained. "Without knowing her routine away from this location and there being thousands of cameras, the search is not going as well as I wish."

"Building plans?" Yelena suggested.

"Incomplete. Bucky has done a physical search of the area, but if there is an obvious underground entrance, it is not within a two-block radius."

Yelena tapped a finger on the tabletop. "Search for residences rented or owned by the company - you'll probably need to dig through dozens of shell companies to find it."

Iris's voice brightened. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Bucky sighed.

"You are too focused on rescuing the girl," she pointed out.

She wasn't wrong, but he didn't want to admit it.

"What is she to you?"

"Does it matter?" he all but growled.

"Ah, you care about her," Yelena guessed, and not wrongly. "Your emotions are affecting your skills. You need to be more Winter Soldier and less Barnes for the time being."

Bucky didn't like that she was right. He'd been reacting since he had first caught sight of Nienna instead of acting. He'd been using his available resources poorly. "Fuck," he muttered.

"Got it," Iris announced aloud. "Tunnel to the nearest tube station. I'm tracking her movement on past days now and should have a location in a few minutes."

Yelena looked surprised. "Your computer is faster than I expected."

Bucky chuckled. "You have no idea."

. . .

She woke up.

She took a moment to get her bearings, almost used to this occurring now. This time she was certain she was not here of her own free will, given that man always seemed to appear and ... and make her go away. She had no idea how, but he clearly had some sort of control over her consciousness.

She wanted to not believe that, but between knowing about Bucky/The Winter Soldier and the rumors that had come out about the Red Room a few years before the Snap and how the Widows had been controlled, she knew it was possible.

The question was: why her? Why Nienna Grace?

She focused on the computer screen before her and took a moment to figure out what the hell she'd been coding. She Nienna excelled and specialized in control programming using AI, though in most cases, the AI was extremely limited given the laws put in place post-Ultron. So what she saw before her made some sort of sense; programming for robotics, perhaps? Without going through all of it, she couldn't be certain and didn't want to take the time.

She might only have minutes aware and needed to take advantage of it. Get a message out. One that only a few would recognize, a specific few that was. What were her options?

She reached for her phone, quickly discovering it was limited due to the security in the building, not able to get an outside connection, though the internal WiFi seemed to be excellent.

She turned to the computer itself, hardwired to the building's servers. She opened a new window and dug deeper into the system, finding the lone external connection that opened on a randomized schedule to send data to an off-site location.

She could use that.

She quickly cobbled together a section of code to ostensibly be peer reviewed by anyone willing to. It contained a mix of the code she, using that term loosely, currently worked on with one she had written a year ago that one other specific person had seen and would hopefully remember. She put the packet together along with the destination location on the dark web she had used on previous occasions, and that would embed the location trail into it. It wouldn't be easy to track, but still be possible.

She hit send.

Deleting the data locally, she decided now might be a good time to try to escape. Acting as nonchalantly as possible, she grabbed her bag and got up and headed towards the restrooms, attempting to appear as if she needed nothing more than a quick pitstop.

Her heart pounded hard in her chest as she passed the elevators on her way to the bathroom. She could see nothing out the windows as they were opaqued while still allowing in whatever light might be available outside. She took a few minutes to calm herself.

At this point, she knew they called her Lils, and that she had friends of sorts here. Though she doubted she could trust any of them with the truth.

Not that she was entirely certain what that truth was.

Lils was clearly supposed to be here. Nienna was not.

Steadying herself and running over all that Bucky had taught her during those months he'd trained her, she prepared to fight her way out of the building.

Leaving the restroom, she headed for the elevators and pressed the down button without knowing for certain what floor she was currently on.

The door opened, and she relaxed marginally when there was no one inside. She chose the ground floor, not having a clue if it would take her anywhere useful, but it was the best option she had. As it moved, she dug into her memory, trying to access whatever this Lils had stored there, only to find solid blank walls. She had no access to what the other person she became had done, which meant, if things went well, she was about to be dumped onto a street somewhere in London, and while she wouldn't be lost per se, she would perforce need to orient herself to plan the best possible escape route. Once someplace secure, she could pause and go through the handbag she had grabbed to see what lay within and use that information to try to escape her captors.

For captors, they were.

No matter how kind they seemed to be to that Lils.

When the doors opened, she stepped out and ran into him.

She shifted to the right in an attempt to get past him and run for the freedom of the street she could see ten or so yards away.

He grabbed her upper left arm, fingers biting in painfully hard, but Ni didn't fold, instead she swung about and landed a solid punch to his jaw, which surprised him enough to ring his bell. His grip relaxed, and she jerked free, taking off at a run for the doorway.

"Lock it down," he snarled.

By the time she reached the doors, they had been locked shut, security guards moving in her direction, who stopped at a hand motion from him.

She spun about to face him, wishing she a something more than a purse as a weapon. If she couldn't get through the doors and to the street, it wouldn't matter.

She had seconds to decide a course of action.

Back to the elevator.

There had been floors below this one; maybe an escape route could be found there.

"Why won't you just stay in your box?" he groused, rubbing his jaw where a lump was already forming.

"Because you can't have me," she snarled, letting him approach since it moved him away from the elevator doors. She would need that time to get in and close the doors.

"I paid for you, and I intend to get my money's worth," he snarled, upset with her continued resistance.

"Paid for me," she repeated, sounding affronted. "I'm not for sale."

"Oh, you are, to the highest bidder. Lucky me." He had finally come within range. "Stop fighting me, and this will go much easier."

She took a moment to wonder why he didn't just use that tablet to turn her off again, but knew she had to take advantage of it. She waited just another second, hoping to convince him that she had acquiesced, and when he reached out, she rotated and kicked out. Her aim was slightly off, connecting with his inner thigh instead of his balls.

Still, he doubled over at the impact, and she ran for the elevator doors, praying they would open and not be locked down.

They, by some miracle, opened only this time, the car was not empty. A woman stood within, one Ni had seen in the office above.

In her hands was another dreaded tablet.

"Theo, your pet has gotten loose again."

This time it felt as if she had been plunged into icy cold water and was being pulled down into the depths, the water growing deeper by the second and the wavery light above her head fading from bright blue light into utter blackness.

Then she knew no more.

. . .

They took twelve hours to verify that Ni did indeed live in the flat Iris had tracked her to. They put eyes on her twice, coming and going to what they presumed was work via the tube station just a couple of blocks away. She visited a cafe after getting home and changing clothes, working on a laptop while sipping tea. Iris had not been able to get into any of the electronics on Nienna, but had accessed all the local cameras to keep track of where she went and when she might be accessible.

She did not appear to have any guards, not even passive ones, which meant... Bucky wasn't at all certain what it meant. If it had been him, he would have assigned her at least two teams to make certain she went undisturbed when on her own. The fact that she appeared to be free to do as she wished disturbed him.

"Were you allowed freedom when not training or on a job?" Bucky asked Yelena.

She tipped her head slightly as if thinking seriously about it. "I'm not sure. Did I have friends among the other Widows? Yes. Were said friendships real or a product of the control? I cannot say for certain. Some friendships have remained since we were freed, so perhaps yes."

Bucky nodded slowly as he absorbed the information. "So, her being alone," he waved at Nienna, who they could see through the window of the cafe, "could have been this Lilith choosing to be alone outside of work."

"Perhaps," Yelena agreed. "We only have supposition and assumptions, we know too little."

There was no sense in arguing that truth. "We stick to the plan and go from there."

Not that the plan for tonight was complicated. Grab her and dust her. Hope for the fucking best.

They didn't yet have a plan for the worst.

Ni remained in the cafe for a couple more hours, then closed down her laptop, tucking it in the protective sleeve, and then stood to leave.

Bucky and Yelena waited until she neared the alleyway half a block down between the buildings to slip out of the shadows and, on near-silent feet, rush her and drag her into the alley. Bucky covered Ni's mouth as gently as possible, his left arm wrapping about her torso, trapping her arms, and lifted her easily off the ground. Once well into the darkened alleyway, he shifted about so Ni faced Yelena, who cracked the vial of Red Dust in front of the other woman's face. Bucky moved his hand and Ni conveniently sucked in a breath absorbing the dust.

Yelena nodded success, having watched for the red flash in the other woman's eyes, signalling the antidote had been absorbed. Bucky leaned in and said against her ear. "You're safe now, Nienna."

He felt her suck in a breath prepartion to scream for help, but instead cracked her head back catching him in the cheek. It hurt, but not nearly enough to cause him to let go.

Yelena chuckled. "She's a fighter, I like that."

Bucky sighed. "Nienna, come on, wake up for me."

She stilled. "You," she growled. "I told you before..." she trailed off. "I'm... I'm... Bucky?" she finally questioned, voice plaintive.

Yelena's brows knit together. "It appears to have only partially worked. You may not have long."

Bucky set Ni down and spun her about, hands settling on her shoulders as much for support as to keep her from running away. "Doll, tell me it's you."

She blinked several times, but it was too dark for even Bucky's enhanced sight to tell if the yellow that had flooded her eyes had faded at all. "I... I think so. My head fucking hurts," she complained.

"I know, doll." He pulled her in close for a hug, which she returned, squeezing as hard as she could. "I need you to remember everything you can. I... we are going to get you out of this."

Ni looked over at Yelena, who gave her a look of encouragement, which swiftly faded when she turned back to Bucky. Her eyes, her beautiful eyes were still had far too much yellow amongst the brown and green. It hadn't worked, damn it. Not completely anyway.

"Bucky, I'm drowning," Ni said at a near whisper, the fear in her eyes a living thing.

Then Ni was gone.

Bucky looked at Yelena, and before Lils had a chance to do more than become aware of her current surroundings, they both faded into the darkness, heading for the opposite end of the alleyway from where they had taken Nienna and around the corner to the car they had waiting for them.

They said nothing until several blocks away.

"You're in love with her," Yelena finally stated.

Bucky gripped the steering wheel hard enough for the leather-coated plastic to pop ominously. "And if I am?"

She shrugged. "Explains why you were willing to grant a personal favor as payment. You would literally do anything to get her back."

"Almost anything," he corrected, reminding her of the line he would not cross.

She laughed. "Oh, I think you would kill to save her."

Bucky opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to stop the words.

"Not as payment, but to save her... you will."

Bucky wanted to argue, but couldn't. Ni had stopped him the last time he'd tried to end the life of someone who had hurt her. But she was no longer here to rein him in when the choice had been laid before him.

The last person who had hurt her had ended up mysteriously dead. All of those who had tried had died.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he snarled, one hand pounding the steering wheel and leaving an obvious bow in it.

"What the hell, Barnes?" Yelena complained.

"They killed them, when they no longer needed them."

"Killed who?" Yelena asked, bewildered.

"The three idiots who attacked her in New York. They all died of unknown causes while in custody. Bets they had some version of this control in them?"

"Not taking that bet." She sat there for a moment processing the information. "They were trying to kill her?"

"No, injure. I think they were trying to isolate her so they could grab her. Given it took a gunshot wound to get her to a hospital, and he could have easily killed her." Bucky shook his head. "They wanted her alive, but had trouble getting to her because of me. Fuck."

"Barnes, it is not your fault."

"I know that," he snapped, "but because I didn't see what they were doing, she's been a captive for seven months. Seven fucking months."

Yelena's soft voice penetrated his self-recrimination. "You had no way to know. Whoever is running this lab is good. Dreykov good. They hide in plain sight. For all we know, everyone in that building is being controlled."

"I don't care about them," he roared, causing Yelena to flinch ever so slightly.

"You should," she stated, tone harsh. "You and I both know what it feels like to not have control of yourself. To be forced to be someone else, to do... horrible things against your will. So do not lie to yourself. You do care, just not more than you do for this Nienna."

Bucky sucked in a deep breath and released it to a slow count of ten. He was not angry at Yelena, but she was right. Yes, his first priority was to save Nienna, but after that...

There would be nothing left standing of that lab but a burnt-out shell if he had his way.

He pulled the car into the parking lot for the hotel and turned off the engine, listening to the soft ticking as it cooled. "The dust didn't work. What now?"

Yelena gave him a fierce grin. "Let me make a call."

. . .

She woke up.

The dream was still heavy on her mind.

No. Not a dream.

A memory.

One of her and Bucky on a steamy summer night with thunderstorms in the distance, lighting up the sky soundlessly. The rain would come eventually, but by that time, she and Bucky had had other things, mainly each other, on their minds.

Her body was covered in a slight sheen of sweat and felt flushed. And she was most decidedly aroused.

Which must have been most disconcerting for the other woman whom Ni knew had encountered Bucky, but had no idea who he was or why he'd appeared in her life.

But the fact that this other person she became had experienced the memory, not herself, meant...

She had no real idea what that meant since she had no clue what had been done to her. She got the impression that Bucky and the blonde had tried something to bring her back on a far more permanent basis. Give her back control over her own body, over her life.

And it hadn't worked.

She needed to find Bucky.

Then she remembered.

Bucky had found her.

She reached for the phone on the nightstand, intending to send him a text, but stopped before pressing send, somehow knowing that anything she did on the phone would just alert Theo. Same with the laptop sitting on her kitchen counter.

"Fuck," she growled throwing off the covers and standing. She went to the window and stared down at the street far below. A few people walked the streets, fewer cars, telling her it was fairly late. She glanced over at her phone, where she'd left it on the nightstand, to see that it was after two am.

She didn't see him or the blonde he'd been with, but if there was even the slightest chance he was out there, she had to risk it. He'd found her and hadn't taken her away, which meant...

There was a reason. A good one.

So, even though they'd reconnected, she was still in some sort of danger.

Okay.

She needed information and had to assume that this location and all her tech were compromised. He would presume the same and not risk a breach here.

So what could she do?

She could go to him.

Decision made, she dressed quickly and headed outside, leaving behind both phone and laptop. She somehow knew the cafe down the street would still be open, catering to those leaving the pubs late and needing a sober up. Acting as if she did this all the time, she headed in that direction and silently prayed he would take advantage of the situation.

He did exactly that.

The bulb had been out at the entrance to that alley for ages, so she was not overly surprised when a hand reached out and tugged her deeper into the shadows. She managed to contain the 'eep' of surprise even as a gloved hand covered her mouth. She bit down on a conveniently placed finger and got a feminine curse in Russian for her trouble.

"Not nice," the woman complained as Bucky shifted in front of her.

"Doll?" he asked.

She nodded.

Bucky glanced at the blonde over her shoulder, gave a nod, and she was released.

"Bucky," she breathed out as relief flooded her. She had a thousand questions that she shuffled through and shelved as they weren't important to the now. "What do you need from me?"

In the dim light filtering through from the nearest street lamp, the blonde smirked. "Right to the point, I like this one, Barnes."

"I need to see your eyes." He pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on, aiming the bright beam towards the wall and just past her head to not to blind her. "Still wrong," he confirmed.

Ni had no clue what that meant, but didn't doubt him. "So what do you need to make it right? I have no idea how much time I have before... they figure out I'm awake."

"A blood sample," the blonde said. "I'm Yelena, by the way. Barnes brought me in to assist."

Ni gave her a nod of acknowledgement. "Take it."

Yelena gave her a grim smile and pulled the kit from a small pack she had strapped across her chest. "Roll up your sleeve and lean back against the wall, I don't want to hurt you more than necessary."

Ni did as asked, Bucky shifted to stand partially in front of her, shining the light so Yelena could see what she was doing. Ni rolled up her sleeve to expose the crook of her elbow, Yelena wrapping the rubber tubing around Ni's upper arm.

Bucky stared at Nienna's forearm while Yelena slid the needle in and withdrew several vials of blood.

"Bucky, you okay?"

His head snapped up. "Yeah. Shit your eyes."

Yelena's gaze flicked up for a second. "We're almost out of time, I'm guessing." She filled one more vial and removed the needle quickly replacing it with a band-aid. "You'll have to explain this to your handlers."

Ni snorted. "No, I won't."

"Ha, true."

"Head for the coffee shop. She sometimes goes there late at night."

Nienna nodded a tickle at the back of her mind, agreeing with him.

"You'll be around?"

He reached out to cup her cheek. "As much as we can."

She leaned into it, wishing she were touching skin and not a glove, but understood the necessity. "Thank you."

"Not yet, doll. I haven't saved you yet."

She closed her eyes at the sudden throbbing of pain that echoed through her skull. She didn't have much time before she would no longer be in control. She met Bucky's eyes one last time, for now, and walked away. She fixed her sleeve to hide the bandage on her arm.

By the time the world slipped away, she was already sitting with a cup of tea in her hand.

. . .

Yelena watched Bucky like a hawk the entire ride back to the hotel.

They'd waited in the shadows until the man named Theo, the one they believed to be Ni's handler, arrived to find her sipping tea in the cafe. He pocketed a tablet and sat down with her until she'd finished, and then escorted her home. Bucky had seethed the entire time Theo had been up there with her, but he'd stayed only twenty minutes.

Yelena suspected he'd been doing a diagnostic of sorts. The system had to be imperfect if Nienna had been breaking through the programming even before their arrival and administering the Red Dust. The fact that it hadn't worked suggested the Red Room programming had been modified to account for it, the cure only temporary at best.

It may have cracked the chemical link enough to allow Nienna to break through on her own, as had seemed to happen tonight. There had not been enough time to dissect what she had experienced, but she had clearly remembered encountering Bucky and Yelena previously and knew that Bucky, at the very least, would have remained nearby. She'd come outside prepared to assist in her own rescue without questioning their methods.

Perhaps on the next occasion, there would be time enough to explain.

Once back in the hotel room, Yelena packed the blood samples into the styrofoam cooler loaded with ice and called the courier for pickup. She faced Bucky and asked. "What did you see?"

Bucky stared stoically ahead. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Bullshit," she stated. "What was it?"

"The tattoo on her forearm. It's new."

"So?"

Bucky reached into his shirt and pulled out his dog tags. Attached was a capsule that he twisted apart. He poured the item inside into his palm and then held it out for Yelena to see.

She picked up with care, seeming to realize it had importance to him. The gold chain had a pendant of a section of honeycomb with three tiny bees.

It was identical to the tattoo Nienna had on her forearm.

Yelena handed it back. "I take it the necklace is hers."

Bucky returned it to its temporary home and tucked it back into his shirt. "Yeah. She asked me to hold onto it when she was wheeled into surgery."

Yelena took a moment to process, then her eyes widened. "There's no way the second personality could have known about it," she concluded.

"Which means Ni has been in there all along, fighting to get out." That realization hurt. How many times had he, Bucky, awoken knowing he had done something horrible and worse, knowing he was about to be sent out to do something worse, only to be shoved into a box inside his mind? Pounding on the foggy glass walls, trying desperately to stop himself, a passenger in his own body, unable to change anything going on around him.

He could only hope and pray the same was not happening to Ni. He would not wish that on his worst enemy. And he'd made more than a few of those over the decades.

"She said she was drowning," he said softly, only now understanding what that really meant. "The control program must not be complete. She's a test subject. But why? Why do they need her?"

Yelena paced the room. "She's smart, I get that, but what does she have that they put in all this effort to grab her?" She stared at Bucky, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "What can she give them that no one else can?"

Bucky knew he would have to give her something. With a bit of research, she could find it on her own, as he suspected the work continued, given how badly the US government had wanted her to return to working for them after the Blip. "Before the Snap, she worked for a government think tank; her job was compartmentalized, but she put the pieces together."

"See, smart."

"They were trying to reconstruct one of Arnim Zola's algorithms." Bucky left it at that.

"The Insight Program?" she asked, making the same assumption he had when Ni had revealed the truth to him about a year prior.

"No."

Yelena scrunched up her face for a long moment before realization dawned.

"Oh shit."

"That seems to be the common consensus."

"But would her alternate personality have access to the information?" Yelena mused aloud.

"Now that's a fucking good question. I'm guessing not directly, but if she figured it out once..."

"She could do so again," Yelena finished. "This is not good."

Bucky shrugged. "They've had her for roughly six months... I don't think she'd still be alive if they had it."

"But if she did," Yelena argued. "I need to make some calls."

Iris chimed in then. "If, and I stress if, the algorithm has been recreated, it has not been leaked or sold anywhere I can discover. It is possible it is being distributed by hand, on external drives, and the like, but someone somewhere would have put it on a server or system I do have access to. I haven't even heard rumours about such an item being available. So the sooner we get her out of there, the better.

"Your AI can be mouthy at times," Yelena complained, but it seemed to be more good-natured than anything. "Mind if I check for myself?"

"Of course not," Bucky said without complaint. Iris had done an excellent job of being discreet about the fact that she was a product of said algorithm. He suspected Yelena would not be looking to sell the information for potential use. Her interest seemed to be more in prevention, which was perfectly fine in Bucky's opinion. "Where's that courier?"

"Ten minutes out. We probably won't have answers for forty-eight hours," she reminded.

A lot could change in two days, maybe even in their favor.

. . .

"Nanobots," Melina said, an odd look of joy on her face. "They replaced the chemical interface with nanobots."

"I take it you find this an improvement over the Red Room tech," Yelena stated drily.

Melina nodded vigorously. "They handle all the functions the neural link did for Taskmaster and then some. I don't believe they are using chemicals and pheromones to keep her under control. At least I did not find any traces in the blood samples. The nanobots are heavily encrypted, but appear to use a control program similar to the one I created, with one serious modification: you can input entire personalities, not just training and intel."

"Shit," Bucky muttered. "So this Lils is an implanted personality being stored in the nanobots?" he wondered aloud. "Does that mean Lils' memories are not being stored in Ni's brain?"

Melina quirked an eyebrow. "I do not know. My best guess is both, though the majority would probably be the nanobots transmitting to a server. Without being able to access the full programming, I cannot say. I can only guess based on what I would do."

Yelena shot a look at Bucky, who ran his right hand over his face in frustration. "Can the nanobots access Nienna's memories?"

"Possibly. Why?"

Bucky knew he had to tread carefully here. Melina would use the information if he revealed it. Beside him, Yelena gave a tiny shake of her head, confirming that he should not reveal exactly what they wanted from Ni. "To gain access to a specific algorithm that she created. One that I can say with certainty would be very valuable to... anyone."

"I see." Melina tapped a few keys on the computer before her. "Again, possibly, but it would take time. No two people store information in their brains precisely the same way. They would need to map the neural pathways in order to access the specific data storage they are attempting to access. If she is the least bit resistant to the data being accessed, the longer it will take."

"Well, that's not horrible news," Yelena pointed out. "But how is she... waking up?"

Melina shrugged. "This could be an Alpha test of the system, still full of bugs."

"Beta," Bucky stated. "It feels too refined for an Alpha."

Melina tipped her head. "You are there, so I will defer to your increased knowledge."

"How do we break her from it?" Yelena asked, knowing that was the ultimate goal of Bucky.

He suspected the answer.

"If the Red Dust did not work, you may not be able to," Melina said, confirming his worst fears. "Now that does not mean it can't be turned off or the nanobots destroyed, I simply do not know how to yet."

Bucky's frown only deepened. "This is a fucking shitshow," he complained bitterly. "Are you willing to work on that? Finding a cure for lack of a better term?"

Melina nodded. "I will not risk any chance of the Red Room being recreated, however, in the case of your friend, I do not work for free."

Bucky had known this would be coming thanks to Yelena, and in truth, he hadn't been the least bit surprised. "Same offer I gave to Yelena, a personal favor in the future. No killing is my only restriction."

Melina smiled. "Agreed. This may take some time, but I will do everything I can to find a solution. To be clear, even if I find a permanent counter to this version of mind control, it does not stop anyone from creating yet another."

Bucky nodded in agreement. "Look at this way, if this gets out, you'll have a steady income selling the cure."

Melina laughed softly. "True, true."

Yelena sighed. "We have no idea how many others are under this nanobot control already. Sleeper agents could be everywhere, and we would have no way of knowing."

Melina's laughter died quickly.

"That's future me's problem," Bucky muttered. "What can we do now? How do we get Nienna back fully?"

Melina took a moment to seriously ponder the question. "Without knowing what deadman switches may be programmed into the nanobots, your options are limited. Shorting them out in hopes of a reset that frees her might be your best option."

"Which risks a self-destruct that could kill her," Yelena just had to point out, no matter how right she was.

"Then you must be the one holding the program. Perhaps you can turn off the secondary personality and leave your Nienna in control until such time as the nanobots can be removed or disabled permanently."

Bucky huffed out a breath. "So, no blowing up the servers the program is on," he groused.

Yelena grunted. "What if your Iris can gain access and copy the program? We could then destroy any copies they have and leave you in control of your girl."

"That should work," Melina confirmed. "And if you can gain a copy, my creating a counter will be much easier."

Bucky stared straight a Melina, who made certain to plaster a neutral look on her face. "And what's to stop you from selling this tech to the highest bidder once you have it?"

"Nothing," she admitted, causing Yelena to gasp softly in reaction. "My word will mean little to you."

"I will keep that option open," Bucky finally conceded, knowing how few people on the planet he would trust with this tech. He had an option, but had no way of knowing if they would, never mind could, actually help.

"I understand, Sergeant Barnes," Melina acknowledged with a nod. "I will contact you when I have more information, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good to see you, Yelena," Melina said, then closed the connection.

"Iris, you get all of that?"

"Of course, I'm casting my net wider, but if the servers are airgapped, there's nothing I can do."

"Yet," Yelena added.

"Yet," Iris agreed.

"So now what, Barnes?" Yelena asked.

"You sticking around?" She could argue that her part in this was done as she had gotten him the information she needed to potentially rescue Nienna.

"I'm here till your girl is free, whatever that may mean in this case."

Bucky nodded in thanks. "We need to get a controller."

"So we get to Theo and grab his. Hope it's the only one connected to her nanobots, and if nothing else, shut off the second personality."

"Which should bring Nienna back," he finished. "Then get the hell out of here."

"You have a plan for after?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

. . .

She woke up.

It was early morning, and she sat in that cafe she seemed to frequent as that Lils person.

Her laptop was open with code on the screen that she had been reviewing. Control programming. No surprise there, it was one of her specialties. It had definite AI aspects to it as well. It was... intricate. To put it mildly, though definitely not out of her skill set.

And familiar.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath.

It was Zola's algorithm. A variant anyway. Not quite where it needed to be to be truly functional, but close. So damn close.

"No. No. No."

She seriously considered erasing the code, but suspected this was merely a copy for her personal review, not the original. With a growl of pure frustration, she added a fatal flaw to the code, so that it would appear to work for a time, then ultimately scramble the personality that had been generated, causing the doppleganger to be the virtual equivalent of insane.

Once Lils returned to the office and did an update, the flaw would propagate and hopefully set back the project for long enough for her to find Bucky and get out of here. The coding was clearly beyond anyone else in the building, which meant finding and removing the flaw should be difficult at best and impossible at worst for anyone other than herself.

That meant getting to the office.

And warning Bucky and the blonde that she was close to giving them what they wanted.

Out of sheer curiosity, she pulled up other project files to see what else she'd been doing. Lots of AI-generated skills, training simulations, and control programming. Extremely detailed programming, as if for humaniform robotics.

How very Asimov of her.

Then she dug deeper, only to realize that while most of it would work for robotics, it hadn't been specifically designed for that.

No, it was designed to control something else.

People.

Like her.

She was working on the very programming that controlled her body. That made her this Lils person and allowed Theo to turn her off whenever he wished.

She understood that she was not supposed to be waking up, but they were using her to fix that exact problem.

And from the looks of the code before her, she was close.

So, it was now or never.

Shutting down the laptop, she shoved it into the padded bag, finished her coffee, and with a wave to the barista, left the cafe and out into the late morning fog. A glance at the smartwatch on her wrist told her it was a Saturday morning, explaining why she was here and not in her cubicle at work. A day off, though if this Lils was anything like herself, she never really took a day off, thus the code review in a cafe on a heavily encrypted and secure laptop. She had not been connected to the cafe's wifi, which made a ton of sense given the sensitivity of the data she worked on.

She stepped out of the flow of people, glancing around to see if she could pinpoint where Bucky might be hiding this time. An alley with a broken light wouldn't work now, as the fog began to thin, letting bright splashes of the sun through here and there.

"Bucky, if you are nearby, we need to talk."

She then turned and headed away from her surely bugged apartment and towards a nearby park that she had no clue if her other self frequented.

Not that it mattered, she needed to contact Bucky, and sending him a text wasn't an option. She wandered about for a few minutes, the sun breaking through the low clouds in no discernible pattern, and finally chose a bench by a pond that was somewhat secluded under trees with low-hanging branches. Water dripped from the leaves, but it would be worth getting damp for the comparative privacy.

Seconds later, the blonde - Yelena - slid in beside her.

"Nienna?" she asked, clearly wanting to verify who she had sat next to.

"Yes."

Bucky melted out of the fog a moment later and sat on her opposite side. She took a moment to lean against his strength as the full implications of all that had occurred crashed down upon her.

He set his left hand, covered in a glove, on her thigh and squeezed gently. "You called."

So much she wanted to say, to ask, that she simply did not have time for, as she had no idea how long she would have control. Her head did not yet hurt, which she now recognized as a warning sign, but that did not mean it wouldn't begin in mere moments. "We're running out of time. I've almost recreated the Zola algorithm."

Yelena swore under her breath in Russian.

"And?"

She didn't know how Bucky knew there was an and, but he did.

"And they have me... Lils, working on the control programming that is controlling me."

She could hear Bucky's teeth grinding together in his ire. "Nanobots. They are using nanobots to control your neural pathways, implant the personality, and give you any other skills you may need. However, we don't think they can access your memories, only have you recreating the work."

"Can't access your memories, yet," Yelena corrected.

Ni thought back on the code Lils had been working on. "Fuck, I'm almost there as well. If I succeed, they will have one hundred percent control of me. This... this tech is dangerous."

"No shit," Yelena agreed a bitter laugh coloring her words. "Did you know you speak with a British accent when that Lils person?"

Ni blinked. "No, or maybe yes? Some of the lines between us have been blurred, though I'm not sure how."

Bucky's fingers gently grasped her chin and encouraged her to face him. He stared right into her eyes as if looking for something.

"What?"

"The yellow is still there, but less." He leaned back slightly to talk to Yelena. "The Red Dust helped, just not enough. Do you think another dose will make a difference?"

Ni swung around to see Yelena's response. "I do not think so. The nanobots act as a neural link, an implant like they used on Antonia, different from the chemical and behavioral control used on the rest of the Widows."

"They're controlling my neurons directly?" Ni asked. "That would be the simplest way to do it. But my eyes?"

Bucky chuckled softly. "You usually have a lot of green in your eyes, it's been altered, we assume by the nanobots, to yellow. Don't ask why, we don't have a clue."

"You have to get me out. With what I've coded, they can figure out the rest with anyone with my skills."

"Is there anyone with your skill?" Yelena questioned.

"An infinite amount of monkeys..." Bucky said, causing surprised laughter to be pulled from Ni.

"Ah, hell, all they'd need is a smart enough AI to run through possible combos based on the code until one stuck." She knew she sounded horrified at the realization, but couldn't prevent the feeling from leaking into her voice. Bucky may have trained her, but it had only been months, not years, and she couldn't yet manage that distance needed to keep her emotions out of it. "Bucky..."

"We need access to the program controlling you."

"Which you don't have," Yelena pointed out.

Ni pondered. "Technically, I do." She tapped the side of her head. "I just have no idea how to access it."

"I don't need to," Iris suddenly spoke up through Bucky's phone speaker.

"What?" Yelena questioned in a slightly confused tone.

"She... you're wearing a smartwatch."

"So?" Bucky prompted.

"I can connect to it," Iris crowed. "All she has to do is walk into the building, and I'll have access to everything."

Yelena's head snapped about. "Will that work?"

"It'll get her in, yes," Nienna agreed, "but it doesn't get any data out."

"You need to write a code that will access that outside connection once you're in the building. You've done it before, once it's open, Iris will download the control programming and get it to us," Bucky suggested.

"And that will work?" Yelena asked.

"Oh yes," Nienna said with a certain amount of glee in her voice. "I designed Iris better than expected. Once she's in, she permanently integrates herself. The only way to remove her would require nuking the whole system and starting over." She pulled out her phone, the ache behind her eyes beginning to make itself known. The tide rising inexorably higher. "The watch and phone are connected via an app, just need to make some adjusments and... there it is, a freaking tracker, that should give you the in, once I connect it to the app and... voila. The phone auto-connects to the servers once in the building, though why I know that I have no clue. Now to convince this Lils, she needs to go into the office today, and you should have access within hours at most."

"Hours?"

"Iris needs to propagate in the servers; it is not instantaneous, yet."

"Your program really leaves pieces of itself everywhere?" Yelena questioned.

"I have not touched your equipment," Iris offered up. "You did not offer, and I do not ask that of allies."

Yelena's sigh of relief was subtle but visible enough for Ni to see it. Her head pounded, and she tucked her phone away, having done everything in her power to help save herself. "How did you know I was still in here?"

Bucky gave her a wan smile, then slid the sleeve of the light jacket she wore on her right arm, revealing a tattoo she didn't remember getting.

"Oh," she said, seeing the honeycomb and bees on her right forearm as if for the first time. When Bucky reached into his shirt for his dog tags and small container, she shook her head. "Not yet. I'll ask for it when I'm ready."

He nodded and tucked it away, then leaned in to kiss her lightly. "I'm gonna hold you to that, doll."

"Go, I don't have long."

"She's not alone this time," Iris reminded, a tinny voice coming from the smartwatch speaker.

Yelena stood and stepped away, disappearing into the wave of fog that rolled by.

"Ni-"

Nienna smiled up at him. "Go. Theo is probably on the way."

Bucky nodded, then turned on his heel and walked away.

"Ni?" Nienna asked sotto voce.

"We can do this," the doppleganger assured her.

The comfort of knowing she wasn't alone in this anymore made the appearance of Theo bearable this time.

. . .

Bucky hated the waiting. The Winter Soldier had always been patient simply because he had no choice. If the mission could be completed quickly, it had been, if he needed to wait for the target to be in the right place, he waited. Period. End of story.

Bucky was not the Winter Soldier. Especially not when it came to this particular mission. He wanted... no, needed it to be over. Needed Nienna back fully so that they could hopefully move on with their lives.

He had no clue what that might entail, but they would have the time to find out.

"The waiting is always the worst, isn't it?"

Bucky grunted in agreement, hiding his amusement that Yelena clearly had some of the same issues.

Not that they had much of a choice, the next steps had to be completed by Nienna/Lils, if only unwittingly by the latter. Until Iris confirmed they had full access to the control program, he and Yelena could do nothing but wait and be ready to take the next step.

Which was to grab Lils and hopefully turn off the other personality, leaving Nienna in control. After that... he hadn't thought that far ahead.

"We're gonna need transport on short notice," he said out loud. "Any ideas?"

"Aside from the tube to the Eurostar and getting out of the UK, no."

Bucky shook his head. Without knowing exactly what they'd be able to control or what the nanobots were programmed to do, he suspected that Ni would still be tracked. "I'm thinking more like a private airfield and an unregistered flight back to New York."

Yelena raised an eyebrow. "I can arrange that, but you would owe my boss a favor, not me."

"And who is your boss?" Bucky hadn't asked before, but if he was going to owe this mystery person a favor, he would need to know who he would be working for.

"That I can't tell you. They do, however, work for your government. And that is all I am permitted to say."

Not great, but also not some foreign government either. "Are we talking shady government agency or something more obvious like the IRS?"

Yelena choked on a laugh. "The former," she managed. "You'll have to trust me when I say your skill set will fit right in."

Not having much of a choice, Bucky nodded. "Agreed, same terms though. No assassinations."

"Not even character?"

"Case by case basis," Bucky answered after thinking about it for a few moments.

"Done. I'll make a call." Yelena stepped into the bathroom, started the shower, and made her call. He could still hear, but the white noise of the water did its job so that he only understood one word in three and could not hear more than a mumble from whoever was on the other end.

He expected no less from the former Widow.

"Do you want me to find out who she works for?" Iris asked via the comms.

"It doesn't matter," Bucky told her. "We need the assist and I'm willing to pay the cost."

"Nienna and I do not need you to sell your soul for me, us, her."

He sighed softly. "But I'm willing to."

"For the record, we feel the same."

Bucky knew that, but hearing it said made his heart ache. He wasn't used to people expressing that they cared about him in any manner and was suddenly aware of how much he had missed it, especially hearing from Nienna. She'd always been subtle about it, not wanting to push too hard in case he wasn't yet ready to face any emotions, much less the ones developing between them.

And for a while, it had been too late to say anything.

But now he had a new chance.

He just had to not waste it.

"Done," Yelena said as she stepped back out into the main room. "A plane will be fueled and ready to go at a moment's notice for the next seventy-two hours. After that, we're on our own, or you will need to negotiate an additional agreement."

Bucky nodded. They had their deadline. "Iris?"

"Did you get the tablet I requested?"

Bucky grabbed it off the desk and turned it on. He left it plugged in, not knowing how much power the transfer would take. "On and awaiting instructions."

"The packet is huge, and I'm going to need to transfer via your phone to steal the encryption I have there for the tablet. It won't be perfect, but we don't need it to be today."

"No, we just need it to work." He pulled out his phone and grabbed the cable Iris had told him to purchase when he got the tablet, and connected them. It was a jury rig, but faster than downloading to an external and then uploading to the tablet, which had been the other option. With Iris supervising the upload, she could control the speed and make certain nothing became compromised. "Ready when you are," he informed her.

"Commencing data upload," she said via the comms. His phone was going to be too busy for the next little while to handle anything other than the transfer. "Roughly one hour barring issues, then I'll need to decompress it and verify the contents are intact."

"So, two, three hours total?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll let you know when it's complete. Perhaps have Yelena keep an eye on real girl Nienna? You did bring the additional comms, yes?"

That had been the plan, but the reminder of the comms was a good one.

"Belova, I have something for you."

She turned about and caught the small case he tossed at her. She opened it and stared at the contents before removing it.

"Comms. Place it behind your ear, it'll stick."

She didn't question him and did so. "Testing."

"Five by five," he responded, and she gave a thumbs up.

"I like this, it doesn't disrupt my hearing." She shook her head to test how well it would stay in place. "Waterproof?"

"Yep. Iris is connected, so don't be surprised when she starts with the snarky commentary. She'll let us know when the upload is complete and it's ready for test runs."

Yelena frowned. "So now we wait."

"You," he pointed at her, "are going to keep an eye on Nienna while I babysit the devices. Iris couldn't guarantee the outgoing connection wouldn't be noticed and shut down, so she's doing the upload from their servers as quickly as possible; it's the transfer to the tablet that will take time since she has to piece it back together correctly."

Yelena nodded. "Keys?"

Bucky tossed her the keys to the rental.

"I'll contact you if your damsel is in need of rescue."

Bucky chuckled darkly. "I feel a great swell of pity for anyone who tries to harm her."

Yelena smiled grimly. "I believe you." She headed for the door. "Let me know when we're ready to move."

"I will."

. . .

Nienna stared up through the depths of the water at the dimmest of lights high above her, fighting to swim towards the unseen surface before she drowned and became completely subsumed by the pressure that continually pushed her down.

Underwater.

But still holding on for dear life.

The need to give in, to just let go and drift downwards to the depths below, an ache deep in her soul.

Yet she fought.

Bucky was out there doing everything in his power to throw her a lifeline and pull her back to the surface. She needed to be here and ready for it. To grab hold of it when it appeared and grasp onto it with all her strength.

He might have come to save her, but that didn't mean she was helpless. She'd broken through before, the waves at the surface rough, making it hard to swim and stay afloat, the storm only growing more and more violent every time she succeeded in breaking the surface. The program controlling her winding its way in ever deeper, learning how she thought and fought, and countering it with greater ease every time.

Eventually, on her own, she would lose this fight.

But she wasn't on her own.

She had Bucky.

She had Yelena, whom Bucky trusted enough to help.

She had Iris. Who was no longer just Iris, but a computer duplicate of her, of Nienna Grace. Every bit of her life that could be had been uploaded into the matrix for the algorithm. Months of security video from her apartment. Diary entries going back years, projects and codes, and family pictures, everything she could manage in the few short weeks she'd had to input data.

At the time, she hoped she could avoid the necessity, but without Bucky, the threats had become more obvious. She'd needed to hire bodyguards on those occasions she had to leave her building for meetings. She had damn near become trapped in that apartment for two weeks, not able to trust anyone around her for fear another attempt on her life would be made.

So she updated her will, made certain her father had a copy in case that amorphous they tried to circumvent her wishes to claim her servers, gave it all to Bucky, knowing he could make the choice to destroy or protect it as he deemed safest.

Then she set up the deadman's switch.

Which had clearly worked as planned. She existed.

Nienna Grace 2.0.

And she'd been smart enough to incorporate Iris into her programming, which probably made her the most powerful non-living entity on the planet since Ultron. Parts of her spread everywhere, in every computer or server she touched, leaving a tiny piece behind that granted her permanent access and let her grow.

Let her survive.

So even if she ultimately failed here, part of her would survive. The same yet different.

Nienna continued to swim for the surface, treading water hundreds of feet down but still trying, when suddenly the water began to rush past her.

Not up, becoming yet deeper, but down.

Rushing past her fast enough for the hair and clothes to be drawn down, but not her.

No, she remained in place.

In seconds, the surface lightened, then became a watery blue, and then... then she burst through the wavery glass-like surface, the endless sea around her glassy calm, the sun glowing high overhead in a cloudless blue sky.

Then...

She.

Woke.

Up.

. . .

Bucky crouched next to Nienna, a tablet in his hand, Yelena's arms wrapped firmly about her to keep her in place. Following Iris's instructions, he set the dial to zero as it couldn't be turned off per se, then hit the button to store the file. They weren't yet sure what deleting the file would do, but they could power it down completely, which would get them the time they needed to get Ni away.

He could only hope like hell they had attracted no attention. They didn't have time to fight off anyone and get her out of here. At Nienna's sudden shift from fight to relaxed, Yelena cautiously loosened her hold, but otherwise didn't move in case she needed to restrain the woman again.

As Bucky watched, those golden yellow striations that had been suffusing her eyes the last few days faded, the green heavy hazel eyes widening as she looked up at him.

"B...B...Bucky?"

"Yeah, doll," he responded in what he hoped had been a reassuring tone.

Yelena released Nienna fully and shifted head on a swivel, keeping watch for anyone who might have noticed that Ni, or Lilith, had gone AWOL.

Nienna shifted, hands coming up to cup his cheeks. "Bucky. My god, Bucky, are you okay?"

Was he okay?

He'd thought her dead for more than half a year, finally... finally tracked her down and freed her from the programming that had been controlling her and making her believe she was someone else. And her first coherent sentence once freed from said control was to ask if he, if Bucky Barnes, was okay.

His heart pounded in his chest, and the sound became a rush in his ears, nearly drowning out the noise of the city about them. That sense of relief that always seemed to be present when he was with her crashed upon him like a wave. He cupped a hand about the back of her head, closed his eyes, and leaned his forehead gently against hers. "For the first time in a long while, yes, I'm okay."

Yelena snorted in a manner that seemed both amused and condescending at the same time. "Besotted," she muttered under her breath.

Bucky sighed and pulled away from Ni, not about to argue the point. "Can you stand?"

Ni nodded and, with his help, got to her feet. She shifted, rolling shoulders and adjusting her stance as if having to get used to her body again. Which wasn't really that far from the truth. Someone else had been in control for months, dictating pretty much every moment of her life. Based on what Bucky and Yelena had observed, Ni, under her Lilith guise, had had some seeming freedom, but only within the preset script. His... their arrival had been the catalyst for weakening that control. The nanobot control was effective but incomplete, allowing Nienna to bleed through now and then.

Much like when the Hydra programming had cracked after meeting Steve in DC that fateful day.

"We need to get out of here," Yelena reminded somewhat needlessly.

Ni turned to her, seeming to trust that the woman with Bucky was an ally if not a friend. "No."

"Doll, it's okay, we've got a workable exit plan- Why are you shaking your head?" Bucky stared at her, the stubborn set on her face and understood she had a reason for her unwillingness to just get the fuck out of here. He could only hope it wasn't an attachment to those people she'd been working with.

"Shit," she muttered. "My brain is a bit jumbled, so give me a sec."

"We don't have much more. Perhaps walk? Just a few friends out for the evening?" Yelena suggested. Neither she nor Bucky had dressed for a heist other than dark clothes. They would pass well enough as ordinary people having a late night.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. He slung an arm about Nienna's back and encouraged her forward, walking away from the shop she'd come out of before they had grabbed her. "Ni?"

"I'm not sure how much you know," she began.

"You don't remember what you've told us?" Yelena asked, worry in her tone.

Nienna cocked her head digging through her memories as they strolled down the fog covered sidewalk. "Ish. I remember meeting both of you several times, but it's blurry, like seeing it through several feet of water," she explained.

"She was never truly awake," Yelena said softly. "She did all that subconsciously."

That fact seemed to impress the Red Room agent.

"Enough to know you created some seriously dangerous programs for them. Including this one." He waved the tablet. "It controls you via nanobots that have taken up residence in your neural pathways."

She frowned deeply. "I did that to myself?"

"No, you did modifications. Fine-tuned it, though it still seems to be a Beta program," Yelena explained.

"That's good. I can work with that." Ni pulled away from Bucky, then turned about to face both of them. "We can't leave yet because I have to destroy it. I can't let this, any of this, get out."

"Doll, we don't know if you can. If there's a self-destruct, messing with the program might kill you."

"Does Iris have a full copy isolated from their servers?"

"I do."

"She says she does," Bucky confirmed. "Why?"

"So I can go in and kill the rest. So long as we have control of the nanobots in my brain, I should be able to separate the controls." She looked Bucky dead in the eyes. "You will quite literally have my life in your hands until we can figure out how to shut them down or remove them, understand?"

"Understood," he agreed. Her life everything that made her her in his hands and knowing that with a few keystokes he could change her mind for her and they'd be on that damn plane within the hour and away from here. "Yelena, how much longer on the plane?"

"Thirty-six hours."

He looked at Nienna. "You have twenty."

Nienna nodded.

"How are you going to do this?"

"She goes back in," Yelena answered as if it were obvious.

"No," Bucky growled, not even surprised at the amount of absolute hatred he had for that idea.

"Not alone," Iris reminded him. Then, through the smartwatch on Ni's wrist. "I'm in here. She can get me past security just like before, then into the main servers where I can wipe everything. She would just need to get in and get out."

The smartwatch had been the key in getting to the program controlling Ni, after all.

"This will work. I created access to the off-site upload system, I can use that and try to create a more permanent link to the outside. Let us locate the off-site servers. Maybe get them more visible to others. "

"That would let you reveal them as well," Yelena pointed out.

"Oh no," Nienna said with faux worry in her voice.

Yelena chuckled. "I like her."

"That's how you did it," Bucky mused as they turned the corner, headed for a nearby deli to hide amongst the other late evening patrons. "In one of your lucid moments, you used the off-site uplink, and it let Iris find you."

Nienna cocked her head slightly, clearly looking for that memory that was both hers and not. "Yes. I justified it as verifying a code sequence, but they were pissed. Not much they could do though, just lock that door so I couldn't use it again."

"You're sure you can do that?" Yelena asked as she gestured at a table, a foursome was just leaving.

"With Iris inside with me, yes. They have very few hardlines out and only for a semi-regularly scheduled offsite update, which I never had the time to trace, sadly. I can always resort to forcing a satellite connection, the building has that, and wifi connections. I will corrupt my data with a self-propagating virus, making certain any copies made will also destroy themselves. Hell, I'll poison the well. Nothing digital will escape here."

"Doesn't that put Iris at risk?" Yelena asked, pointing out the flaw Bucky had also seen.

"I'll be fine. If it's the virus I think it is, I'm immune. I can even help spread it and remain in the servers. If they try to do uploads, I can make certain the virus is included. I am technically part of the system already, I simply can't access... myself without a connection."

"You," Nienna pointed at Bucky, "will have the only copy."

"Till we get back to your servers," he said.

Yelena's eyebrows went up, but she said nothing, just filing the information away for later.

They remained silent while the drinks were delivered and food ordered.

"What are the other options?" Bucky asked when they were alone again.

"Blow it up," Yelena stated frankly. "Make them start from scratch."

Bucky had to admit to liking that idea. "If we get Iris connected..."

Nienna nodded. "Exactly. They could potentially cut off that part of her, but it will always be there. One instant of connection to the outside and we'll know everything she does."

"And be able to stop them before they hurt anyone," Bucky finished. "I knew there was a reason I liked you." He gave her a nudge with his shoulder, and she ducked her head.

"I have to go back to the apartment. Theo can't even suspect I was here with you tonight."

Bucky hated that idea. Hated that she would have to pretend to work with the man who had been holding her hostage and pretending to be her coworker for the last several months. A man who had been controlling every aspect of her existence and using her to recreate an algorithm that she had rediscovered on a whim.

A fucking whim.

"Doll..."

"Bucky, I don't want to do this. Every part of me wants to run as far away from here as possible, but-"

"But you won't," Yelena interjected. "The job is not done."

Ni nodded in agreement. "I have Iris. You'll be able to find me, and she'll let you know if there's trouble. But I have to go."

She stood and moved to step away, but Bucky reached out and grasped her hand lightly, keeping her in place. He wanted to tell her no. Wanted to come up with some other plan that would not require her to pretend to be that Lilith, that woman who looked at him and saw a stranger. He never wanted to be a stranger to her again, but he was aware of how little time they had and how few resources at their disposal. He'd already put himself deeply in debt with Yelena's benefactor, so much so that he might never be clean of it.

So instead of insisting they find another way, he asked, "You can't let them figure out that they no longer have control of you."

Iris had slaved control to the tablet Bucky held; no other one would work, they hoped, and it would be obvious if they tried. The Iris on the inside would fake the readings to make certain everything appeared nominal, but if Theo or anyone really tried adjusting any of the settings, Nienna would not be able to cover the fact that Lilith no longer responded.

Nienna picked up the paper cup of coffee and toasted him with it. "Coffee run for late-night work. I'll work on some preset code to make it look good."

He still didn't release her. "Take this." He held out the additional comms device he'd brought just in case. "Iris can keep in contact with that. Coach you more easily." Plus, he would be able to talk to her, offer advice if needed. That lion's den she would be walking into, full of ferocious, hungry beasts. "Doll." Those second, third, and fourth thoughts made him want to carry her off and let the situation settle itself with her nowhere near it.

She leaned down and kissed him delicately on the cheek. A bare brushing of her warm lips against his skin. "I'll be careful. Iris will give me a run-down on Lilith so I can fake it."

And then she was gone. Blending into the crowd and making her way back towards her faux life.

Yelena leaned back in her chair, watching him with narrowed eyes. "Can she do this?"

Bucky honestly didn't know. The Nienna he had been with? Probably not. But this person she had become? Maybe.

"I guess we'll find out."

. . .

Nienna spent the evening modifying the virus program in her head. She didn't dare put a copy of it on the laptop on the off chance a random outside dial-in occurred. Yes, the encryption on the device was ridiculously overpowered, which made sense given the less-than-legal work the company was doing, but she wanted no chance of them getting a heads up on what was coming.

Iris had the virus code and would get it to Ni when she forced open the connection. She'd modify it on the fly and release it into the servers and let it do its job. Systems should begin to go down within hours. Then... then she just had to get out of there.

Without generating any suspicion.

Without giving away the fact that they no longer controlled her. That Lilith had been put to sleep and the true owner of the body awoken to cry havoc and loose the dogs of war upon them. She wanted to talk to Iris before she crawled into bed to get a few hours of sleep, but suspected the place was bugged, and while Iris could answer via the comms, Nienna would still need to ask out loud, and that would give the game away quickly.

Remembering to speak with a British accent was going to be challenging enough.

"Fuck," she muttered. "My accents suck," she whispered to herself.

"I can see if Bucky can activate that part of the Lilith program," Iris suggested, and it was not a horrible one.

Nienna walked into the kitchen, grabbed the kettle, and moved to the sink to fill it with water slowly. As softly as she could, she said, "If he can access Lilith's behaviors as well without waking her up, that would help. If I can act like her while still being me, this will go much easier."

"I'll ask and assist since I'm monitoring the program. Don't need our brain fried, I need you to grow."

"I suppose you do. But you can be your own self. You have been for months."

"I know, but I feel... incomplete at times, which makes sense given you only had a few weeks to upload... you. This is weird."

Nienna laughed softly. "You have no idea. I won't be shutting you down, I don't want you to think that now that I'm back, that you can't be you."

"I figured, but what will I do? I can't exactly announce my presence to the world without creating a host of other problems."

Nienna was silent for long minutes. She set up the tea ball and cup as she waited for the water to boil. The idea that came to her was both insane and a solution to the problem... if she got out of here, that was. She had to shut down this lab first, then she could work on actually securing her existence.

"Did you make copies of all the code I wrote in reference to the nanobot control program?" she asked as she poured the steaming water into the cup.

"I did and will back it up to the home server under an invisible partition, heavily encrypted, of course, as soon as I have a reliable outgoing signal."

"Perfect," Ni responded, noting the perfect British accent rolling off her tongue. "Thank Bucky for me." They were keeping the communication separate to keep Bucky and Yelena from being compromised earlier than necessary, so Iris had to play go-between.

"I will. Now drink your tea and get some sleep, you have a busy morning tomorrow."

. . .

Bucky hated the plan, even knowing there were no other real options. They had wasted a couple of hours arguing once Nienna had left, but neither he nor Yelena had come up with a better plan. Yes, he and Yelena could probably break in and get Iris the access needed to shut down this lab and get back out, but even after nearly a week of watching the place they had little to no information as to what went on inside, guard routines, server locations, security, aside from extremely tight, nothing. They would be going in blind, which was never a good idea.

Oh, they could do it, but covert it would not be. At that point, they might as well blow up everything and just walk away.

And that was definitely plan B, in his mind at least.

The hell of it was they needed the data scrubbed, needed that in to track where else the data might have been sent.

Nienna had become their in.

The trouble was she had no memory of what that implanted personality knew.

Bucky, at Ni's request, via Iris, had accessed that Lilith personality and, without activating it, turned on what data he could to allow Ni to know what the other persona had. The accent, the routines, and the work knowledge she would need to pretend to be the other woman. Lilith's memories, not the person."

Useful, but no little terrifying when you considered the implications.

Yes, it meant anyone carrying those nanobots could simply be given data, training tech specs, you name it. Iris had even suggested with a few modifications, the carrier of the nanobots could be simply connected to the internet and access whatever they needed by simply thinking about it. Have files and assignments uploaded directly into their brain. Much like what had been done with Antonia Dreykov, but on a far more sophisticated level.

He could see those potential benefits, knew Nienna would as well, but feared the abuses.

And there was no chance it wouldn't be abused.

Entire personalities, people, being uploaded and overriding the original owner of the body.

Completely perfect sleeper agents.

Once the bugs had been worked out, of course.

The purpose of this lab and who knew how many others.

The Red Room and Black Widow program increased a thousandfold.

With Nienna as their proof of concept.

That was assuming she was the only person being controlled at the moment. They had absolutely no way of knowing. Thus, adding to the importance of gaining total access to the servers. If there were more, they would need to be found and... cured? Fixed? De-nanobotted? Getting the data and getting out with it was merely step one. They had no idea what it would take to fix this. If it even could be.

"What are you brooding over this time?" Yelena grouched, eyes focused on some point down the street and not Bucky.

He ground his teeth together. "This tech is dangerous in ways I can imagine, which means others already have."

Yelena nodded slowly. "Da. Shutting down this lab will not stop anyone else from coming up with another version a month from now." She turned to face Bucky, looking him right in the eyes. "We save your girl and go home." Then she shrugged. "Take the win."

Bucky looked away, staring at the building Nienna had walked into almost an hour ago. "It's not enough."

"It never is," Yelena agreed in a low tone. The look of dissatisfaction on her face was palpable.

And one Bucky recognized.

He'd seen it in his mirror on more than one occasion in recent months.

He wanted... needed to do more. He simply had no idea how to go about it.

He huffed out a soft breath of irritation. Focus on the mission at hand, then figure out tomorrow when it comes.

Save the girl.

"I'm in, or out as the case may be," Iris informed them. "Commencing packet compression and upload."

"Upload?" Yelena asked sotto voce before Bucky had the chance to.

"Nanobot design and programming," Iris added, her tone oddly strained as if she were trying to do too much at once.

Yelena's brows knit together. "Why would she-"

"To get them out?" Bucky suggested. It would make sense as the only way to truly guarantee that they couldn't be used would be to either turn them off or get them out, and right now, they didn't know how to do either. Bucky could control the secondary personality, but had no access to anything beyond that. For all they knew, a dead man's switch was in that programming somewhere that would kill Nienna if it were turned off.

"I guess," Yelena agreed warily. Not liking the move much either. "Something is happening in the building." She gestured up with her chin, where, several floors above them, figures could be seen rushing past the windows. "Iris?"

The response took longer than either former spy liked. "He's here."

"Who?"

"Theo," Bucky growled.

"Oh, that can't be good."

"No fucking shit," Bucky muttered getting to his feet. "We're on our way in."

"No," Iris barked, causing the ear pieces to squeal and both Bucky and Yelena to wince at the volume. "Upload has been interrupted, someone is shutting down the servers, and I haven't completed the infiltration to track where, if anywhere, the data has been transferred to."

Yelena snapped her head about to Bucky. "Was the virus uploaded? That will take care of any off-site data."

"Fuck, I hope so." What the hell was Nienna trying to do in there? They had a plan, the best they could manage, so what had changed that she felt the need to acquire the nanobot info? "What is Theo doing?"

"Testing her," Iris hissed. "And being damn confused as to why his control tablet is seemingly offline."

"Shit, if he manages to reconnect to her nanobots..." Yelena didn't look happy.

Bucky quickly checked his tablet, which, given he'd only had about twelve hours with the program, seemed to still be the primary control over Nienna, giving him confidence she was still making her own decisions.

For now.

How long would it take for Theo to figure out what was going on? Maybe do a hard reboot and cut Bucky's control off. To drown Nienna under that alternate personality that had been uploaded into her without her knowledge or permission. To take her away from him again.

"You can make her come out." Yelena reminded, glancing at the tablet in his hands.

Bucky shook his head. "She would never forgive me."

"Even if it saves her life?"

"She. Would. Never. Forgive. Me." He repeated a stern emphasis on each word.

Yelena's eyes narrowed slightly, but then she gave him a tight nod. "Then what?"

"We're going in," Bucky stated tone flat.

He tucked the tablet away into the padded pack and made certain it was secure on his back.

Yelena gave him a grim smile and a nod. "Casualties?"

"No deaths, if possible. We have no idea who in there might be an innocent victim."

Yelena bobbed her head from side to side. "Fair. Though if there is more than one under their control, we have much bigger issues."

"Which is why we're forcing the virus through the servers," Iris informed them. "Operation: destroy all monsters is commencing now."

Bucky chuckled as he and Yelena ignored the slow-moving traffic, dodging about the vehicles to cross the street and enter the building. Nienna had picked the name, a title from an old Godzilla era movie. She had introduced him to the sub-genre of Japanese Kaiju movies, and while the originals from the sixties and early seventies had that corny factor built in, he'd understood the draw. They'd spent more than a few evenings up on her roof watching them projected onto a white sheet she'd hung on the side of her greenhouse.

Fuck. So many moments lost since then. He fully intended that he… that they would not miss another one. "Where is she?" he growled once in the building.

"Fifth floor."

"And the servers?" Yelena asked, knowing they needed to be shut down on a more permanent basis now that the original plan had gone FUBAR.

"Seventh."

Yelena turned to Bucky. "Get your girl." She ran for the stairs, leaving the elevator for Bucky.

Divide and conquer.

As the elevator rose, Bucky pulled out the tablet and turned off the bits of the alternate personality he'd activated to assist her covert efforts, permitting Nienna to take over full control of herself. In theory, everything she'd had access to of Lils would now be a permanent part of Nienna's memory, if only in the short term. It wasn't everything, but it should be more than enough for Ni to know the building layout and the best escape options. "Can you let her know we're en route?"

Iris chuckled darkly, "Oh, she knows."

Bucky bared his teeth. "Good."

When the elevator dinged and the doors parted, he stepped out into chaos. Alarms had started going off at some point, lights flashing, and a high-pitched whooping telling everyone to get the hell out of Dodge. People rushed into the car, forcing him to barrel forward between them, knocking them aside none too gently, though in his mind, no matter how innocent they might be, they still worked at the lab and were therefore complicit in whatever had been created therein.

"Where?"

"Left. And you might want to hurry."

He took off at a run, momentarily debating going through the walls instead of taking the extra time to find doorways. Only the unknown on the far side of said walls prevented him. He was strong, but a large safe would most certainly slow him down. So the sane route it was.

"Is she all right?"

"Oh, she's fine," Iris responded, tone dark. "She's pissed."

Anger. Not fear. He could work with anger.

He rounded the final corner just in time to see Nienna jerk the tablet from Theo's hands and smash it against the edge of a desk, which effectively snapped it in half.

Theo laughed at the fury on her face. "I have dozens of those. A quick reboot and we'll have everything back to normal. Now come here." He reached out to grasp her left forearm as if planning to drag her off like a recalcitrant child.

Quick as a snake she twisted, making certain to get a solid hold on his wrist, ducked under his arm and, with a speed that impressed Bucky, had Theo's arm forced awkwardly behind his back, causing the man to go onto his toes in a vain attempt to get away from the sudden burst of pain.

She dug her right knee into the back of his in an attempt to get him to go down, but after his initial surprise, he managed to use his height and bodyweight to his advantage. Shifting backwards instead of falling forwards, he smacked hard enough into her to force her to take a step back and release some of the pressure from his arm. He turned into the hold and shoved her with his free hand, causing her to stumble.

Then Bucky was there. His left hand wrapped firmly about Theo's throat in an inexorable grip. The man could still breathe, if barely, but was now far more focused on the metal fingers holding him than Nienna.

"Doll, you good?"

The expected look of relief was absent instead, there was a hot red rage emanating from her eyes. "No."

Bucky wanted to reach out and pull her in close, to wrap his arms about her and tell her everything would be all right, but knew with a certainty in his bones it would not be welcomed right at that moment. "Ni?"

"He used me, James. He fucking made me his girlfriend and forced me to... to..."

She couldn't finish the sentence, and she did not need to.

Bucky lifted Theo off the ground and marched forward until the man's back hit the first available wall just a few feet away. The crunch was audible, the plaster cracking, dust raining down onto the rug at their feet.

He had raped Ni.

No matter how willing the Lilith programming had made her, Nienna had not been able to consent and never would have.

Theo's hands wrapped tightly about Bucky's metal one, desperately trying to free himself.

"I had to make certain all the features worked," he ground out.

Bucky's sight bled over to red, and a cold stillness settled into his mind. Theo became nothing more than a target, and Bucky no more than the weapon aimed at the man. It would be so simple. A quick squeeze and he'd easily crush everything, literally rip the head off the man's body and display it upon the battlements to serve as a warning to all others.

A dull thud sounded above them. The few people remaining nearby were shouting in actual terror.

Bucky didn't care.

"Barnes," Yelena yelled from nearby. "We need to go."

But the job wasn't finished yet.

Nienna appeared beside him, her shoulder brushing against the arm holding his current target nearly a foot off the ground, looking up at Theo's bright red face, the lack of oxygen impacting his now growing feeble efforts to escape.

Bucky snapped back to himself, guilt sweeping through him. The last time they'd been in this situation, she'd talked him down, not wanting him to kill for her while the eyes of the world watched. Had needed Bucky and not The Asset.

"Nienna..."

She shrugged. "If he's dead, he can't do this to anyone else," she snarled.

Bucky might have had an instant of surprise, realizing that once again she held no concern or fear of his more violent tendencies and trusted him to police himself. He may have crossed the lines more than a few times since she'd died, but he still hadn't killed when it hadn't been absolutely necessary.

And, sadly, on this occasion it wasn't.

He pulled Theo back from the wall, then forced him violently through it. The man landed atop a desk with a grunt of pain, then rolled off, coughing and sputtering as he was finally permitted to take in actual air.

Bucky turned away, the man and whether he lived or died no longer his concern.

From the sounds above them, there was a fair chance he'd never leave the building.

"Barnes, now."

"The building structure appears to have been compromised. I suggest haste," Iris warned him.

Bucky turned to Nienna and held out his hand for her to take. She didn't hesitate, and the three of them ran for the stairwell, rushing down as smoke began to fill the space.

By the time they reached the street, a vast portion of the building had become engulfed in flames.

They ran down the block, not looking out of place given the number of people trying to get away, and climbed into the car waiting. Yelena slid into the driver's seat and weaved through the thickening traffic heading for the airfield and their ride home.

.

.

end part one