INDY

The call came through while I was rearranging the picture frames on my shelf. Thanks to Sam’s help, all of my stuff from my old office downstairs was now up here and mostly unpacked. I popped my headset into my ear as I straightened a picture of me in black robes and a tasseled hat, holding a high school diploma.

“This is Indy,” I answered, removing bubble wrap from a snow globe in one of the boxes next to my desk.

“Indy,” a gruff, male voice answered. Bucky. “We’ve made it to Lancaster. What now?”

“There’s a bed and breakfast on the edge of town with three rooms waiting for you.” I leaned down to look at my computer screen, typing out a quick message with an attached link. “I’m sending the info to Sam now.”

“Got it,” I heard Sam call in the distance.

“Alright. We’re on our way.”

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Raasch,” I said with a smirk that he couldn’t see.

“Wha-?”

I ended the call before he could question me, fighting back laughter at the thought of his face when he had to check in under the false name I’d made the reservation with.

BUCKY

“Checking in?” the woman behind the desk asked cheerfully.

“Yes,” I said with a stiff nod. “I have a reservation. Under Raasch.”

I heard Sam, a safe distance behind me, barely containing his laughter.

“First name?” the woman asked guilelessly.

I wrestled with the urge to roll my eyes.

“Richard.”

Sam coughed beneath a chuckle.

At least the woman behind the desk was a professional. After a few clicks on her computer, she passed a key card to me and gave me the room number, wishing me a pleasant stay and inviting me to call the front desk with any questions or concerns.

I glared at Sam (and Kate and Yelena who were sitting together in the lounge-like reception area, both suppressing smiles as I walked by) and made my way toward the elevator. Indy had gotten us three rooms. One each for Sam and I, and one for the girls, who were pretending to be friends on a trip before college.

The place almost couldn’t even pass for a hotel. It was basically just a large farm house on the edge of the city that had been re-purposed. The floorboards creaked beneath the Berber carpet and the halls were decorated with vintage picture frames and small tapestries.

Once I’ve made it into my room, I dumped my bag onto the bed and yanked out my cell phone.

“Hello?” Indy answered carelessly.

“Dick Raasch?” I yelled down the line.

Laughter spilled into my ear, and I shook my head agitatedly.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, like she was having a hard time recovering from her own amusement. “I thought it was funny just reading it, but hearing you actually say it-”

“Indy.”

“Alright, alright,” she said through her last few dying giggles. “I’m good. Seriously, though, how shocked was the receptionist?”

“Not very,” I responded, pinching the bridge of my nose and exhaling sharply. “What’s our next move?”

“I’ve got eyes on the station. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to move in.” Her voice was once again serious, only a slight humorous edge to it now. “Just be ready for the signal.”

“Got it.”

“And Bucky?”

I hesitated. “Yeah?”

“Don’t do anything… reckless.”

I rolled my eyes skyward. “Why do you assume I would?”

“Well, you kinda have a reputation, Sarge,” she said distractedly, the sound of ruffling and clinking in the background.

I stilled for a moment. The last time anyone had spoken my military rank, it had been in a scathing, demeaning tone. But Indy said it so… innocently. I softened for only a split second before I realized what I was doing and cleared my throat.

“Well, I’ll try not to live up to it.”

“That’s not-”

I pulled the phone away and ended the call before she could finish. Tit for tat.

Once the others had checked in, we met up in the girls’ room, the biggest of the three. Kate flipped mindlessly through the TV stations. Yelena tossed a knife up into the air and caught it repeatedly, watching Kate’s channel surfing more than her own hands. Sam fiddled with the strap of his goggles. I stared down at the yard below the window, not really seeing the green lawn or the wood bridge in the distance.

I was thinking of the mission. The people who had taken over the power station were doing so out of a sense of injustice. It was something anyone could empathize with. That didn’t make what they were doing right. Their demands, if met, would cause chaos across the country. If unmet, they intended to blow the station sky high. Ironic that the money they were holding out for seemed more important to them than the lives of those who would be lost if they made good on their promise to destroy the place.

I wondered idly whether Fury or Indy had tried meeting some middle ground. Negotiations had been mentioned, but surely those talks hadn’t made much headway if they were still so set on holding the power station for ransom.

A quick buzzing sound came from the corner where Sam sat. He lifted his phone to his ear and a quick voice spoke from the other end. He vocalized his assent to whoever was on the other end and nodded, ending the call.

“We’re moving out.”

O o 0 o O

We were only a few minutes away from Delta when I saw a sign announcing a small community large enough for a name but too small to be considered a town.

BUCK

I don’t know why my eyes lingered so long on those four letters, or why they suddenly seemed alien to me. I don’t know why it took so long to get the echo of Steve’s voice out of my head and my focus back on our mission. All I knew was that the name seemed to belong to a metal sign more than it did to me.

We crossed over a wide river and almost immediately pulled up on the dirt shoulder of the road in the car Indy had rented out for us. We all exited the vehicle quietly. Mostly.

“Think this’ll go down as nonviolently as Indy was hoping?” Kate muttered to Yelena as we made our way into the thicket of trees separating us from the fenced-in property the station sat on.

“Depends on how desperate they are,” Yelena answered cryptically. Her hands already hovered near the practically invisible pockets of her suit.

Sam seemed to be itching to fly up above the treetops to get a better vantage point, a nervous tension in his stance that I only barely put my finger on. Since he didn’t, I assumed he’d come to the same conclusion I had; it would tip them off about our approach.

The four of us made our way through the tiny forest quickly, stepping over fallen branches and large rocks until we came to a chain-link fence encircling a wide open field. A good distance away, maybe the length of four football fields, was a small, squat building with a single thin spire reaching high into the air. It perched on the edge of the river we’d just crossed.

“Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station,” Sam said grandly, sweeping his arms out to the sides as we gazed at it through the fence. “I guess we’d better patch through to Indy now that we’re here.”

The four of us began popping our communications devices in.

“Sam here.”

“Kate here.”

“Yelena here.”

“Bucky here.”

“Alright team,” Indy’s voice said in a bolstering tone. “Let’s get this done. Yelena, you’re up.”

Yelena slipped her hand into a pocket situated over the right side of his ribs, withdrawing a tube that fit easily in her hand. She pulled one end off, revealing the red end the tube held. It was like a marker-sized lipstick. Ignoring our curious stares, she dragged the red end of the tube across the fence. Where it touched, it sizzled, and small bits of molten metal dripped into the grass before her booted feet. Within seconds, she had cut a hole in the fence big enough for all of us to slide through.

After we made it to the other side, I examined the precision of the cut, then eyed the tube Yelena was slipping back into her pocket.

“What the hell is that?”

Yelena shrugged and said, “I asked Indy for equipment like she suggested. She’s got a big collection of things like this.”

I could feel some smug energy radiating off of Sam, so I didn’t even look over at him as we began traversing the open field that lay before us. The smell of the river grew more intense as we approached. It was an uneventful walk, which oddly only served to make me more tense. Where were they?

“Let me know if anyone spots the Susquehanna Serpent,” Indy’s voice intoned.

“The what?” I asked quietly as the four of us came up to a door that faced the waterfront.

“The Susquehanna Serpent. It’s a local legend. Some people think it’s some kind of seal or sea monster. Its first reported sighting was in 1897 in the river you’re standing next to.”

“We’re here to stop terrorists, Indy,” I sighed in exasperation as the group readied themselves for whatever we would find inside. “Not to hunt monsters.”

“Yeah, yeah, just keep your eyes open and if you do see anything weird, tell me.”

At least if she was joking about the situation, the odds were good that it wasn’t horribly serious. Then again, she made light of everything, so maybe that wasn’t a good measurement.

I rested my fingertips over the handgun in the holster at my hip and nodded to Sam as we headed through the door and into the power station. The lights were off. Ironic. Before us, a long empty hallway stretched on.

Sam put a finger to his ear, speaking in a hushed voice as he glanced up at the security camera in the top corner of the hall. “Indy, you got eyes in here?”

“I’m working on it.” Her voice was nearly drowned out by the furious tapping of keys on her end.

The lights came on a few seconds after.

“There. Alright, time to split up, guys. Kate and Yelena, take the first left you see and head past the reactor rooms to the office at the end of the hall. I’ll instruct you from there on how to temporarily dismantle the red button protocols. Be careful, they have to know you’re there by now.”

The girls gave us a nod before bolting off down the hallway and disappearing around the corner, Kate unslinging her bow from her back as they went.

“Sam, Bucky, you two make your way toward the back of the building. There will be a locked door armed with a security alarm leading to a maintenance stairwell. I’ve shut off the alarm, but I can’t do anything about the lock remotely-”

“I’ve got it,” I said as Sam and I jogged toward the back of the building.

There was the door, a blue steel thing with a push bar across it midway down and a pane of glass set into the upper half. I pressed my metal hand against it and shoved, but it only gave a creak of protest and remained firmly in place. I didn’t want to have to break through the glass, but when a couple more pushes didn’t do the trick, I was seriously considering it. Before I had to resort to that, though, the door finally crumpled under a punch I placed near the handle and it swung lazily inward.

“Do that first from now on,” Sam grumbled as he slid past me and onto the staircase.

“We’re in,” I said aloud. “Where to now?”

“Down,” Indy’s voice answered. “It should be two flights down from where you are. There’ll be another door you’ll have to break down, Bucky, but it should be easier to get through than the first. Keep your eyes and ears open; there are six of them. I saw them all in the basement when I got the power back on, but they’ve figured out we’re on their tail. They’ve taken out the cameras in their neck of the woods.”

I met Sam’s eye grimly as we started jogging down the steps. The two flights were nothing. The door was nothing. The six guns trained at our chests the minute we stepped through was decidedly not nothing.

Sam and I froze, the door behind us swinging crookedly back into place.

“Who are you? Government?” the man in front asked. His voice wavered, but his gun didn’t.

“Not exactly,” Sam said, holding his hands up in a mollifying gesture. “We’re here to help.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. If you called dragging them out of there like a bunch of misbehaving kids ‘helping’, then yeah, sure, we were there to help.

“We want what we’re owed,” another man inserted, his red jacket peeking out from behind the first man. His eyes were angry, his tone belligerent.

“Money,” I said flatly.

The man in the red jacket nodded once.

“I know you think you’ve been taxed unfairly,” Sam began, taking a slow, testing step forward. All six guns remained where they were. “But this isn’t a problem that can be fixed with violence.”

“Guys,” Indy’s voice spoke quietly. “Kate and Yelena have almost got the self-destruct taken care of. Just keep them talking.”

Sam’s face didn’t change as he took in this information. He just continued speaking slowly, taking a step forward every few seconds.

“If you blow this place up, it wouldn’t just hurt the government, or the country. It would hurt the people close by. People I’m assuming you all know and care about.”

A couple of gun barrels dip only fractionally lower. I notice a young woman at the end of the line glance questioningly over at the man in the red jacket. Her hand trembled.

“What did he tell you?” I ask her softly, calling the attention of everyone else first to me, then to her.

She can’t be older than 20.

Panic and indecision have made a deep furrow between her eyebrows. She looked over at the man in the red jacket one more time before looking up at me and opening her mouth.

“Don’t, Amelie,” the red jacketed man said firmly, breaking his stare at Sam to shake his head at her.

She looked back at me, conflicted.

“He said it wouldn’t hurt anyone local. Something about emergency planning zones. No one nearby is supposed to be hurt, just us. Us and the power system.”

Her words were losing their power, like she was believing less and less the more she spoke.

“He lied,” I said gently.

“Shut up!” the man in the red jacket yelled.

“Let him talk,” the man in front said in a low voice. He stood a good half a foot taller than Red Jacket Man, and when he glared down at him, I could almost see the sheen of nervous sweat spring into existence on his forehead.

“If this station blows up, there’s no way anyone in this town is getting out alive,” I explain, stepping forward until I’m beside Sam again.

“Nearby towns and cities would be affected, too,” Sam added. “That much radioactive material being tossed up into the air wouldn’t just evaporate harmlessly. There would be a lot of casualties. And even more injuries.”

“Did you make up those emergency evacuation protocols, too, Riley?” the man in front (I assumed he was the leader of this group) asked the man in red.

Riley’s eyes darted excitably around from face to face before settling unfavorably on mine. Before any of us could say another word, Riley had lifted his gun and fired directly at me.

I only had time to squeeze my eyes closed and wait for the bullet, but Sam stepped between us, wings spread so that the bullet ping-ed off the metal. I heard a scuffle, a grunt, then quickly retreating footsteps behind Sam.

We both turned to follow the red jacket sprinting down the hallway, but I put a hand on Sam’s shoulder to stop him.

“You get them out,” I said, pointing to the remaining five. The girl, Amelie, was kneeling down beside the man in charge, who had a small stream of blood flowing from his slightly crooked nose. I turned and pulled the gun from my holster. “I’m going after Riley.”

Sam frowned, but nodded, turning to the five and helping them hurry back out of the door we’d come through.

I turned and steadied my right wrist with my metal hand, jogging down the dim hallway after Riley.

“Indy, you there?”

“I’m here. Your guy just ran down the west hallway and made it up another floor. He keeps shooting out the cameras, but I think he’s trying to make it to the reactors. Kate and Yelena already eliminated the self-destruct function, but he can still cause a lot of damage if he reaches it before you. There’s a door to your left. Take it now.”

The urgency in her tone propels me forward and I throw my metal shoulder into the door, bursting through with no problem.

“Stairs straight ahead. He’s two levels up now. Sam’s got the others outside.”

I took the stairs three at a time, gripping my gun like it might disappear if I hold it too loosely, then exploded through another door. The lights were brighter up here, but there was nothing around to see besides the empty hall. I glanced to the left, to the right, then finally heard footsteps in the distance.

I sprinted toward the right end of the hall, bringing my gun up just as I rounded the corner. On my right, a wide pane of glass gave an alarmingly personal view of one of the station’s reactors. Straight ahead was Riley, stuck at a dead end and coming to realize it only now.

He turned slowly to face me, the panic in his movements absent from his hostile expression. His gun was in hand, dropped at his side. I cocked my head to the side, keeping my sights on him.

“Dead end.” My voice echoed down the cold hallway. “You maybe wanna talk about this now?”

Instead of answering, he chuckled humorlessly as I slowly approached.

“They told me about you, you know. Winter Soldier,” he sneered the name, a burning anger in his eyes.

My teeth clashed together, knuckles whitening on my gun. “Who told you about me?”

He smirked, shaking his head. “You think it’s going to be easy, don’t you? Drag me in. Be lauded for your efforts. Go back to living a life you don’t belong in anymore.”

I wasn’t aware of my thumb moving until I had pulled the hammer back on my gun, the resultant click bouncing back at us from several directions.

“Bucky. Don’t.” Indy’s voice was firm in my ear, both warning and pleading.

Her constant reminders were aggravating; did she think I had no control? I lowered the gun and brought my Vibranium hand down hard across Riley’s face, grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him against the wall behind him.

“Who?” I growled through my teeth.

His jaw rocked from side to side and for a moment, I thought maybe I had broken it. But then I saw the self-satisfied light in his eyes and heard the chomp of something breaking between his teeth.

“Hail… Hydra,” he gurgled, half-shaking with either laughter or the tremors of death by cyanide.

I let his shirt slip through my fingers as his body dropped leadenly to the floor. My hands felt numb. My ears were ringing. I stared down at Riley’s face, unseeing.

“Bucky. Bucky!” Indy’s voice grew louder, more concerned.

“I’m here,” I responded hoarsely. “Did you hear any of that?”

There was a pause before she reluctantly responded. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

I wasn’t sure what else there was to say. I had questions. So many of them. And the only people I knew could answer them were all dead. So many of them.

I don’t know how long I stood there silently, just processing, but eventually Indy’s voice broke through the haze again.

“Just get back to the others, Sarge,” she said gently, like I was a frightened animal she was talking into coming closer. “We’ll figure it out when you’re all back at the compound.”

I cast one last glance at Riley’s body before turning and walking woodenly away.