#hydra!verse

@pleinsdemuses

It was difficult to think through the myriad drugs in his system. His thoughts were a constant muddle that it was impossible to untangle. Admittedly, he'd mostly given up trying at this point. Dex understood why he was here. He'd killed a number of people, and he wasn't even really sorry about it. He was only sorry he hadn't succeeded in killing Fisk. Sorry that Julie had been caught in his crossfire. Sorry that he'd let a selfish, manipulative fuck like Fisk destroy his whole life.

In some ways, being here was a relief. That granite control he'd been striving for every day of his life for as long as he could remember--to stay on the path, to be good--had crumbled, and there was no piecing it back together. He didn't have to try anymore. He didn't have to do anything anymore, except shuffle from one place to the next and swallow the pills they gave him like clockwork. That monster inside him he'd tried for so long to leash? It turned out the drugs kept it subdued better than anything he'd ever learned in therapy, and if there was a small, buried part of him screaming to be let out, it was hard to hear it over the fog of his mind.

He swallowed, his mouth perpetually dry from the drug cocktail, and tried to focus back in on the conversation. He'd already forgotten the name of the woman sitting across from him, but he'd realized it didn't matter. She wasn't who she said she was anyway. Despite his difficulty in following a conversation these days, he'd grasped the overall point of this one.

"You want me to kill people." His voice was dull, like his eyes, like his mind. He wasn't offended. It was what he was good at. There was no denying that to himself now. He didn't feel much of anything about it, except so, so tired. He'd trapped himself thoroughly in a prison from which there was no escape.

It was a long shot that they'd ever get Steve Rogers to willingly work with Hydra, even after the success of Project Insight. Fortunately, they had other ways of making people compliant, ones that were far more effective than the two decades of torture and brainwashing it had taken to break down the Winter Soldier. It had been groundbreaking at the time, but the research and technology had come a long way since then, thanks in large part to the trial and error with Barnes.

It was based on a similar premise, though, of building on existing memories and ideologies but altering the details. Barnes worked better than any of the other failed Winter Soldier projects because he believed he was doing the right thing. In theory, they wouldn't have to go as far as turning Rogers into a mindless puppet if they could convince him that he'd always been a Hydra agent working against SHIELD. The idea was to effectively shift that loyalty from SHIELD and the Avengers onto Hydra--and from Barnes onto Rumlow.

The initial results were promising, but they wouldn't know for sure how it was taking hold until Rogers woke up. Brock was there by his bedside, ready to play the concerned partner. It helped that they had an established rapport before this. He’d helped Steve adjust to living in this century, and they’d worked together on STRIKE. Those feelings were a foundation on which to build the rest: childhood best friends, 'til the end of the line, all that shit. Barnes had spilled everything over the years; he hadn’t had any other choice.

Theta glided silently over the treetops of the rural mountains, as his team escorted their new prisoners to the transport vehicles. His side burned with pain, but he easily ignored it. His colleagues weren't so lucky, especially the enhanced. They couldn't keep up, so they fell into the enemy's trap, an ambush. He'd already warned them to keep. The girl had challenged him, so he had felt more than confident that they could keep up. Apparently, he was wrong. The girl was seriously injured and Stephens was taken out.

One of the prisoners then broke loose from the team and took off running into the woods, his hands zip-tied behind his back.

Theta swooped down, drew his silenced gun, and glided behind him as he took aim.

Then, he reported back to the team, landing right beside Hughes.

"Mission accomplished, sir?" asked Hughes.

SEXY TEXTS, BITCH

Ash:

@burdenoforder

“Hmf. Don’t think me being in here has dulled my senses in the field Stevie. It’s just part of the upgrade.”

Interference flickered through the Echo but Barnes filtered it quickly as not to let it get in the way.