The metallic clank of Bucky's damaged arm dragging against the pavement. Blood dripped steadily from his mouth and nose, painting a trail of red across the concrete.
His mind was a storm… names, faces, screams, fragments of lives that didn't make sense.
He didn't look back.
Inside, Soren stood by the doorway, arms crossed as the last echo of footsteps disappeared into the night.
"You're just letting him walk?" Phil Coulson's voice broke laced with confusion.
Soren didn't answer immediately.
His gaze lingered on the bloodied sidewalk before he turned around, his expression a mix of calm and irritation, like someone cleaning up after a friend who'd crashed on the couch uninvited.
Again.
"Phil." Soren muttered, exhaling slowly.
"Do you know how many messes I've cleaned up because of you? You're not a rookie, you're not invincible, and I'm not your damn babysitter."
Phil winced. "Yeah… I figured the third medical bill was pushing it."
Soren raised an eyebrow. "Third? It's five. I itemized it."
"...Ah."
There was a pause. Soren looked over at him, expression softening.
"Look, I get it." Soren said, rubbing his temple.
"You're trying to do the right thing. But SHIELD is a rotting house right now."
"You lean on the wrong wall, and the whole thing caves in. You've already fallen through the floor twice."
Phil's shoulders slumped. "I'm aware."
"Betrayed twice in one month... It's like the universe is trying to teach me something."
"Maybe it is." Soren said, grabbing a mop from the supply closet with a grimace.
"Lesson one: don't bring killers into my clinic. Lesson two—"
"Don't rely on Soren to clean up after me?"
"Exactly." Soren gave him a flat look.
Phil smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry, really. You've already done more than I deserve."
Soren paused, leaning on the mop. "...Don't sweat it."
"You helped me when if first came here. I remember that."
Phil chuckled and nodded in gratitude, then turned to go.
He lingered for a moment, glanced back, like he wanted to say something more, but instead just raised a hand in farewell and disappeared into the dark.
Soren watched him vanish. Then sighed deeply.
"Be careful, Coulson."
HYDRA
Monitors flickered with streams of surveillance footage and encrypted communications.
In the center of the chamber, Alexander Pierce stood still, fists clenched behind his back, watching Bucky Barnes be lowered onto a steel table by medics.
The Winter Soldier looked like he'd been run over by a freight train.
"Explain!"
Bucky's voice was hoarse, the syllables slurred through swelling and broken teeth. "Coulson… Everlife Clinic… man named Soren. He wasn't on any file…"
Pierce's jaw ticked as he listened.
The deeper the story went on, the stasis field, the overwhelming strength, the humiliating defeat…
"Soren Macaluso!" He hissed. "That damn clinic again."
A nearby agent stepped forward, tentative. "Sir, he's already dismantled two of our shadow nests. Now this…"
Pierce turned so fast the man flinched.
"And why is he still breathing, then?" Pierce roared.
"You think HYDRA tolerates this kind of insolence?"
He stalked past the surgical table, glancing once at Bucky's half-conscious form. The Winter Soldier, the weapon HYDRA had crafted over decades, had been turned into a bloodied message.
Not yours anymore.
Pierce stopped in front of a steel door marked with a serpentine insignia. "We were patient. We watched. We waited."
He glanced over his shoulder.
"No more."
He placed his palm against a scanner. Red lights flickered. The door slid open, revealing a hidden command terminal pulsing with classified protocols.
"Begin project Insight!"
Hydraulic pistons hissed, gears clanked. From the chasm, three immense aircraft carriers, dark behemoths of angular steel, slowly ascended toward the night sky.
Floodlights bathed them in a pale blue glow as they lifted from their magnetic docks, turbines screaming to life.
The underside of each carrier shimmered with sophisticated railgun arrays and missile ports that gleamed like dragon's teeth.
Pierce stood high above on the command platform, hands clasped behind his back, eyes like cold iron.
"Activate tracking grid."
A technician beside him tapped rapidly on his console. "Grid is live, sir. Global lock system online."
On a massive screen, countless red dots began populating a world map, targets.
Politicians. Military heads. Scientists. Superheroes.
One dot blinked in upstate New York… Tony Stark.
"Fool walks around with no helmet." Pierce said with a sneer. "Let's see how fast he is when a Mach 12 projectile turns his heart into paste."
The Insight Plan, once a supposed safeguard of global peace, was now a loaded gun aimed at the entire world.
HYDRA's gun.
"Begin altitude sequence. All carriers to 30,000 feet." Pierce ordered. "By the time they realize, it'll be over."
Above SHIELD
"Copy that, Cap. I'm over the launch site now." Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, soared overhead, scanning the carriers as they lifted.
"They've already cleared the platform." Sam said through grit teeth.
"They're moving fast."
Through his goggles, he could see the towering steel monoliths pushing skyward.
The world didn't know it yet, but in ten minutes, every life on Earth could be turned into a dot on HYDRA's hit list.
Lower Hangar Bay
Steve Rogers dashed through the steel corridors, every footstep echoing with urgency.
In his hand, a hard drive clenched like a live grenade, the key to rewriting HYDRA's control over the Insight carriers.
But as the central control room door hissed open ahead of him, a figure stepped through the misty interior, silent and familiar.
The world fell away for a moment.
"...Bucky?"
The man standing in front of him wasn't a ghost, but he wasn't Bucky either.
Cold eyes stared back at him. His metal arm gleamed, still blood-streaked from earlier battle.
The Winter Soldier.
"Don't do this!" Steve pleaded, taking a cautious step forward.
"You know me. I know you. Brooklyn. 1940. You used to take all the punches for me in alleyways."
There was a flicker. A tremor in the Soldier's stance. But it was gone in a blink.
Then the first blow came.
A whir of servo motors.
The steel fist slammed into Steve's shield, knocking him sideways into a wall.
Sparks flew. He rolled, sprang back, eyes blazing with a mix of disbelief and determination.
"I don't want to fight you!" Steve shouted over the hum of the carrier's engines.
The Winter Soldier didn't answer, rushed him again, fists like hammers. Steve blocked, dodged, and parried, but he was on the defensive.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream