‹ Prequel: Monster
Sequel: From Darkness

Hell Bound

Finale

"She needs medical attention," Russell was telling someone. I couldn't stay conscious once they got me into the van. I was losing too much blood. It was a feeling I was all too familiar with.

"She'll be fine," the leader said from outside. Russell moved my hair back out of my face. "Where's the Asset?"

"He's gone, sir. Should we go after him?"

"What about the kid?"

"Gone too."

"Let them go. We got what we came for."

"He'll come back for her, won't he?"

"The kid is in bad shape. We'll be long gone before he can make it back." My eyes finally shot open. I reached for the front of Russell's shirt. He was looking out beyond the doors, observing everything happening outside.

"What did he just say?" I asked. The doors slid shut and rocked the whole van. He shook his head slowly.

"The kid," he replied. "I didn't see what they did to him." I dropped my hand. My chest felt heavy, and my eyes flooded with tears.

"This is all my fault."

"I'm sure he'll be okay. Barnes won't let anything happen to him."

"Unless he comes back for us." He shook his head again.

"He won't abandon him."

"He can't stand him. You actually think he'd help?"

"I do. Yes. He didn't trust the kid because he reminds him of Steve," he explained. "But I think we've all determined that he was genuine. Barnes won't let him die now that he's gained his trust."

"When did he say that?"

"He found me a few weeks ago."

"He didn't tell me."

"Didn't really have the time." I shut my eyes again. My head still felt woozy. Like I could easily slip back into a dream if I just let myself go. The image of trees flashed through my mind. Cold and frosted. Another memory. Something that reminded me of this feeling. The lightheadedness, the rapid loss of blood.

"I should have just left him at the gas station. Bucky wanted to leave him behind. I should have listened," I muttered.

"It's not your fault, Hayes," he replied. "He'll come back for you once the kid is okay."

"It won't matter if he comes back."

"It does matter. They can't get into your head if you have hope to ground you."

"Why did they come now? Why not before?" He took a deep breath. We were moving now, and we obviously weren't alone. There was no way we could go without being overheard.

"They needed us both. They know Barnes will track you if the Avengers don't come first. So they'll have to act quickly. And they didn't know where I was until he brought you to me. They set a trap, used you as bait, and he fell for it. Love makes people—distracted. They don't think clearly. All he cared about was getting you someplace safe."

"How did they know he'd take me to you?"

"Barnes was their best tracker. They knew he'd put the pieces together. They knew I'd probably stay close to you. He wouldn't take you to a hospital. He'd have to take you to someone he knew wouldn't hand you over."

"And why do they need us both?"

"We're both just pieces to the same puzzle, Jo. Need all the pieces to finish it."

"The pieces for what?"

"Beata was studying something. A potential biological weapon. It was before she knew who they
really were. Before she found out about Barnes. It needed—a host body. An incubator."

"A vessel," I said. He nodded grimly.

"Yes. And she died before she could complete the second part of the process. I'm the only one who knows how to complete part three." He was crouched beside me, watching the front of the van, keeping his eyes on whoever was listening. I couldn't move my head far enough to look.

"What happens if you do it wrong?" I questioned. He shook his head slowly.

"Not really sure. She never got past phase one. So it might not even work as it is. But according to her, if there's a mistake, if anything is done incorrectly, it can—alter the acidity of the host's blood. So to keep it short and simple—it would eat you alive."

"And how do I fit into this puzzle?"

"She knew what they could do with it if it got into the wrong hands. So she created the perfect host body. The only thing that could bring this weapon to life. And she used her own DNA, so it could never be used on a larger scale. But that also meant it could only be used on her. She'd already turned herself into the perfect host when we found out about you. Phase one is a dormant organism. Like a pathogen. A parasite. She made herself a carrier. And since she birthed a child—you're the only person who could also be a carrier. If you didn't already have a small percentage of the pathogen in you at birth. Chances are high that some of it transferred to you already."

"So you'll give them what they want."

"I wasn't aware that I had a choice." He looked down at me. It was so obvious he was my mom's brother. They had the same eyes. The same hair color before hers turned steel-colored, and his was headed in the same direction. They even had the same lines on their faces.

"What if I want you to do it wrong?" I asked. He shook his head.

"I won't do that." I shut my eyes again and was jolted with another flash of memory—the feel of metal on my waist. The same burning cold as the memory tried to force my attention away. It felt important, like something I needed and wanted to know, but it still felt just out of reach.

"I knew before, didn't I? I knew who you were and what they wanted. I knew about Bucky."

"Of course you knew. That's what we did. We were tracking Hydra. I needed you to understand the risks so you could make a choice on your own. They couldn't let you keep that information."

"You wanted to set him free."

"Beata wanted to."

"But you did because of her."

"Everything I've done is because of her. And you. I knew he was a victim. I hated him, yes, but helping him get free felt like a better justice. It's what she would have wanted."

"You sent me in there. To confirm that he was there and couldn't remember."

"No. I never would have sent you willingly. But I prepared you for the possibility. I knew that if they ever got their hands on you, you needed to be ready to do your job."

"I didn't remember it when you got me back."

"No, you didn't remember anything. They blocked specific memories and anything that would have triggered them. They didn't want you to know you were mine or what you'd been doing. They made you forget years of training. Made you afraid."

"Why?"

"To decommission you. So you were no longer a threat. They needed you clueless and docile, so you couldn't do what Beata did and take yourself out. Probably knew you'd be willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good."

"Why didn't you try to fix it? To make me remember?"

"Believe me, I did. I sent you to work for SHIELD because I thought they'd be able to help. Fury thought you might have locked memories of valuable information. I thought he'd work toward bringing them back. Instead, you pushed yourself away from me. Remembered even less the next time I saw you. I was surprised you even remembered me at all. You sure as hell didn't seem to know I was your father."

"And you didn't suspect SHIELD?"

"Once I realized how much damage had been done while you were with them. But there wasn't much I could do. I had to be careful about it, or you could get hurt. I knew if I stayed away, they wouldn't be able to complete the process. By the time I had the resources to do anything, SHIELD had already fallen." I shook my head, and pain ebbed out from the back of my skull.

"Why didn't you just abort me from the start? You could have saved all of us a lot of unnecessary suffering."

"Wouldn't have saved Barnes, though, would it?" He sighed deeply. "Look, I'm not going to play it off like it was a good and noble choice. It was already too late. We thought the best way to keep it out of the wrong hands was to give you a chance to live."

"Right. Hunted all my life."

"Our goal was to control the pathogen. The Chaos, Beata called it. Keep it as far from them as possible for as long as possible. As a baby—you would have been the perfect host. They could have turned you into the perfect weapon. The only way we could ensure that you couldn't be abused and controlled was to let you grow up and develop a sense of—morals. That way, Chaos couldn't be utilized on a larger scale. It exists to protect its host. When it's active. My sister and her husband did a much better job of it than I would have done. But I won't lie and say I didn't want a chance to try."

I still had a thousand questions, but it was hard to remember them all at once. My mind still felt fuzzy, and I kept thinking about that snowy forest in my memories.

"Why'd they send him after me in Malibu if they didn't have you yet?"

"I can answer that," someone said from the front. I tried to move my head again, but it hurt too much. I recognized the voice of the man with the suit. "That was meant to be an execution. His. Not yours."

"Barnes?" Russell asked.

"He's no longer useful to us—more of a liability than an asset. But now we have a better way to get rid of him. We're going to make her do it." Russell looked back down at me.

"There's too much good in you, Jo. Don't let them get into your head. This is why we wanted you to have a life. They can't control you if you have something to hold onto. You can fight it," he insisted. "Just look at Barnes. They were never able to erase him completely. He was unstable from the start. You think this is the first time he's gone rogue? The first time he's made choices independently of them? He always started to after a while. That's why Beata wanted to help him. I think that's why you wanted to help him too. You're more like her than you know."

"Why'd they have him shoot me?" I asked.

"Because we knew he wouldn't do it," the leader answered. "That was a test to prove he was compromised. Trust me. If we'd wanted you dead, we had other ways to make him do it. And we wouldn't have had to ask." I tried to rub the ache out of my head, but I was too weak and shaky to get very far. My hand dropped back to my side. Russell reached out and squeezed it.

"They've already controlled me before," I reminded him. "They got into my head and made me kill. So having something to hold onto won't matter if they can control my mind."

Exhaustion was seeping back in. My mind kept bringing me back to that memory. Of Bucky's arm around my waist. His whispered words in my ear. "Run," he'd said. But I couldn't place the rest of the memory. Something in my mind wanted me to pay attention. That's what the dreams really were. My mind trying to force me to listen to something I ignored when awake.

"Killed who?" Russell asked, snapping me out of it.

"Our squad. The whole team."

"My team? What in the hell makes you think that was you?"

"Because I remember it. I remember shooting them. Tran first. Then Carlson. Then Jimenez. That's all I can remember, but I think I killed the others too." He was silent for a few beats. When I opened my eyes, he looked perplexed.

"We were both there when Tran got hit. He was taken out by a sniper. The others got hit by the same guy; before I managed to knock him off his perch. That's why I made you run. So he didn't target you next."

"I remember lifting my gun. Pulling the trigger. I turned it on you first." He shook his head.

"You didn't even have your gun when Jimenez went down, Hayes. It was yards away, lost in debris when you got shot. So there's no way you could have shot Jimenez. Talbot confirmed you were unarmed. And even if you weren't, you wouldn't have had the strength to fire."

"You shot me. I saw you. To stop me from killing anyone else."

"Me? You think I shot you? It was the sniper. I managed to knock him off his perch once I'd found him. Didn't phase him. He went right for you. I just wasn't fast enough."

"Then why do I remember it that way?"

"I don't know. They were in your head for a long time, Jo. If they can take things out, they can probably put things back in."

"No, this didn't start until after SHIELD fell. They weren't in my head anymore." He sat back off his knees to find a more comfortable position on the hard floor of the van.

"I've seen this kind of thing before," he said. "It's common in soldiers with PTSD. Remembering things differently. Remembering them killing their friends. It's survivor's guilt."

"But I remember so clearly. I can see it when I sleep. I could see the color in your eyes."

"You can't trust dreams and memories. Our minds never remember things exactly. It's possible your brain mixed things up. It was right before you were taken. Your memories had holes your mind was trying to fill."

"But—I know exactly how they got control. I remember trying to fight it. I remember feeling something in my head." He shook his head slowly again.

"That's not how I remember it, Kid."

"Then who was it? Who shot me?" He stared at me for a long moment as the van gently rocked beneath us.

"You really haven't figured it out?" he asked. I tried to shake my head, but the movement just sliced through my skull and made me dizzy. "What was the one thing they wanted you to forget the most? Besides me. Besides Beata. What else did they want to keep hidden?"

"Bucky." He nodded.

"Barnes was the sniper, Jo. He shot you. Twice, I'm told."

"It can't be true."

"It is. I had the best team in the world. You think I would have sent you into the field if I didn't believe you could handle it? You think I would have sent you up against Hydra if I didn't believe you could fight them? We didn't have Avengers then. I was their biggest threat. My team. You. He was their most efficient killer. He could get all of them in one mission."

"He hit me in the shoulder. He never misses. It couldn't have been him." I wanted him to be wrong, but I thought about the moment Jimenez ran for me, shouting for me to leave the courtyard. "They're coming," is what I thought he'd said. But that wasn't it. "He's coming," is what he'd said.

"His mission wasn't just to wipe out Russell's team," the leader explained from the front of the van. "We needed your captain alive because we needed to find his child."

"You didn't know it was me. Not until later."

"We told him if he couldn't get his target, to bring in one soldier for questioning. He chose you."

"But why?"

"Well," he started. "He was told to bring back the Captain's favorite. Not his lieutenant. Whoever he seemed the closest to—on a personal level. But I like to think it's just because you were the prettiest member of your unit. A little butterfly caught up in a war."

I pinched my eyes shut tight, and Russell swept his hand over my head again. The stitches were still sore, and it felt like someone had taken a steel-toed boot to the back of my head. I could feel it soaking the sweater he'd stuck under me like a pillow. Every part of me hurt. Not dull, tolerable aches like I'd grown used to, but sharp jabs of agony.

"Romanoff found you in the woods," Russell murmured. The memory came back. The cold. The trees. My shoulder aching with that same sharpness deep inside. An arm was around my waist, dragging me when I slipped on wet foliage. "Do you remember how you got there?" Russell asked. I focused on the memory again. On the sound of my breathing, the metal gripping me tightly, pinching into my skin and forcing me to move.

"Run," he'd said, pushing me forward. I stumbled into frosted leaves and twigs.

"Why are you helping me?" I'd asked. He stepped back and away from me.

"You don't remember. They already got into your head." I turned to look at him as he backed away.

"You're not coming with me?" He shook his head slowly.

"I don't deserve to go free." There was shouting somewhere off in the woods. Someone was calling my name.

"Why are you helping me?" I repeated. He looked toward the trees and back at me.

"You saw me."

"I don't understand."
He shook his head again and took another step back.

"You saw. You looked right at me. Like I was—someone. James Barnes."

"I don't know who that is."
He did another glance toward the shouts echoing through the woods.

"They'll come after you. Run. Follow the voices." Then he disappeared into the trees. I didn't know why he was helping me. I didn't remember him anymore. I was just cold and in pain and scared.

"Johanna!" someone called through the trees. The memory of Russell's voice brought me back to the present. I opened my eyes again and stared up at the black metal ceiling of the van. He was sitting beside me with my hand clutched in his, but he was staring at his feet.

"Bucky got me out," I said.

"That was all you could tell us when we found you," he confirmed. "Didn't know where you'd been, for how long, or why they let you go before we could settle the exchange agreement. Just that he got you out. A guy with a metal arm, you said. When I went to see you in New York—you couldn't even remember that anymore. That's what made me suspect SHIELD—your therapist, at the very least. I gave you the book to lead you to the truth. I couldn't risk anyone overhearing. Finding out what you were up to."

My chest felt heavy again. It finally made sense that Bucky had come to me instead of Steve. Why we'd been so drawn to each other. Why we'd learned to trust each other so quickly and easily. Neither of us could remember, but some part of us must have known we'd helped each other before. However briefly.

It wasn't imprinting, after all. Bucky came to me because I once told him who he was, and he thought my life was worth something. I felt safe with him because he'd saved me once before. Hydra didn't let me go. Bucky did.