Stultitia hominum (The folly of men)
The aged metal walls and tainted reddish-orange colour of rust garnishing the beams that had once been the foundations of a vast, perhaps not great morally, empire, had encompassed the area like a decrepit blanket.
It offered neither comfort nor warmth, nor had it offered anything but the dim and aged style of lighting that had suited them well enough back in the days of their triumph.
It was in the clutch of a room, something spacious and large with the rust eating away at metal, and the chain-linked barriers keeping small cells away from the openness of the room you had remained in.
The cells were no larger or more spacious than would be allotted for a man to stand with hunched shoulders. There had been support posts that had been worn down or eaten away, either made for a bed or some kind of cot, though neither would have been comfortable.
Or so you surmised, judging by the state of the rest of the room.
You had gained little ground in the manner of finding out what this facility was meant to do, having accessed a few files under the names of project Insight, Deathlok and Centipede; however, most files were either corrupted, inaccessible or destroyed.
As for the two men you had discovered in the crypt chambers, the files you had been able to access had spoken of their lives in the 1900s to the last records in the years of 2015/2016. You had gained access to almost every detail of their lives to a certain point, and it was these facts that you had been studying since you had left their cryo-chambers for the inner workings of the facility.
“Alert.” The autonomous voice had spoken in your ear through your comm. “Fifteen minutes until the cryogenic freezing is reversed.”
“Fifteen minutes,” you tapped your comm twice to bring forth the holographic display of files and databases you had accessed while you were here in the decrepit facility, even in the short time you were in this room and selected the two files on the men that had been frozen.
“Steven Grant Rogers was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918. Joseph and Sarah Rogers, a soldier that had died in the First World War and a nurse that died in a TB ward.” You had extended your hand for the file and tapped twice, bringing up facts that you had already known from searching earlier.
“James Buchanan Barnes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1917. He was born to a wealthy family, George Barnes and Winnifred Barnes. James Barnes had four younger sisters, the only one known was Rebecca Anne Barnes.”
There had been matching pictures of the two men in olive green uniforms, the matching colours and structures having belonged to the 107th division, although there was a clear difference in rank between the two men. One, Steve Rogers, was a captain and had been labelled Captain America, while James Barnes was a sergeant.
“Both men had been thought to have died in the war.” You hummed and slowly pushed yourself to stand, the holographic files moving with you, shifting as you had shifted to always remain in front of you.
“But it was revealed in 2011 and 2014 that both men respectively were still alive, both frozen at some point.” You dusted yourself off and reached into one of your pockets, feeling around for a small device that was akin to an electromagnetic field, the device providing you protection from the men if they had come out hostile.
You didn’t know what to expect, you didn’t know how they would react upon coming out of cryo, and while it was certainly a practice that had been used many times before, the machines these men were in had been archaic at best. The machines now were much more compact and streamlined and had far fewer side effects than these machines.
“Ten minutes until the cryogenic freezing is reversed. Your droid chirped in your ear, communicating your timeline in a pleasant yet artificial voice. “Ten minutes-“
“Threat level?” You questioned, closing the holographic database and returning your frontal vision to normalcy.
“Scanning and analyzing threat level.” Your droids voice had fallen short again, the quietude of the abandoned space was chilling.
There was nothing around you to take notice of, nothing but the sound of your footsteps and breathing. There was no sign of life in this abandoned facility, nothing but the remnants of some organization with hidden or depleted documents that could have given you insight into their business.
There was nothing but the lost touch of HYDRA, the stamped names written on walls and metal cages that were being eaten away by rust and the harsh bite of time.
It was eery.
“Threat level detected, the potential to be high risk if not armed. Be advised that Captain Steve Rogers was altered DNA and Sergeant James Barnes has an artificial limb that is made from some unknown metal.” Your drone had given you the warning, a quick-fired advanced notice that was coming before you had to go back and deal with the two men in the chambers.
“Thanks for the heads up.” Your departure back through the facility was marked with stilled silence and the sound of your breathing.
It was a look into the past that was long forgotten and left behind, the marred and eaten metal that would have once been pristine and sharp. The steel that would have been perfected and carried strength in its conception was now broken and bent, marred by time and the weight of the years inflicted upon it.
It was a captured image and look at the world before the ragged and toxic clutch of time, of Stark and his tyranny.
But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it wasn’t just the clutches of time and the weariness of the world shifting around the places of the past, maybe there was a ravaged fight that had taken place to further destruction.
Maybe it was natural; maybe it was manufactured.
“Five minutes.” The drone had given you another alert just as you had made your way back to the chambers, the cryogenic freezing nearing completion.
With the mix of processing gasses and chemicals almost dissipated, you were given a better look at the two men who were trapped inside. There was little blocking your view of the men seemingly bound together in this frozen state, the two men frozen in time in chambers of the past world.
The man on the left, you could see, was Captain America judging by the tactical suit he had been wearing that was kept as safe from the clutch of time as the man himself had been.
His suit was dark blue and reinforced with padded shoulders and protective materials around his shoulders and chest. There was a clearly outlined white star in the middle of the chest that had been greyed, likely before he was frozen.
The uniform was further broken up from the blue chest with a background of greying white, and thick, faded, red stripes that had been drawn down from the chest piece until the waist. The same shade of faded red was seen in a few pieces on his arms, pulling the whole tactical uniform together in a conceptualization of the American flag, in some way.
“Captain America.” You had set your hand against the glass, feeling a soft yet steady hum from the machine. “Which means-“
“The Winter Soldier,” the drone had cut you off, delivering a new accessed patch of files that had come without the time frame allowed for you to read it before the process was complete, “is Sergeant James Barnes.”
“The Winter Soldier,” you stepped before the other chamber and gazed at the man behind the barrier, studying his features with the same intensity that you had studied the captain with, “is the Sergeant.”
Unlike the man, who was with Sergeant Barnes, the Winter Soldier had not had a tactical suit like the Captain.
Instead, he was wearing a thickened deep black jacket that was reinforced internally with the left sleeve cut off displaying the sleek metal arm that had been branded with a red star on the shoulder. You could only see an inch of his bottom half, you could sparsely make out the appearance of some kind of militarized cargo pants that you had surmised carried the same strength as his jacket.
His hair was long, brushing against the nape and bottom of his neck, the curtains of hair falling into his face, with stubble dusting his cheeks and neck, the beginnings of a beard adorning his strong jaw.
Both of the men were beautiful, both of the men were tall and had cut imposing figures.
There was no indication of what the Winter Soldier was, or why the name had been given to him, nor was there any indication that he was any more of a threat than his friend was.
“One minute.” Your drone was hovering, the green light continuously scanning the chambers as you waited for the men to be out, to be freed from the cryogenics.
“One minute.” You had stepped away from the chambers and grasped the device you had meant to have readied sooner, and pulled it out of your pocket.
You had turned the small orb over in your hand before you felt the small trigger button on the top of the smooth orb. You flexed your finger and pushed the button in to initialize the safety device, receiving a series of small vibrations before you knew to let it go.
As the orb had fallen to the floor and rolled a few inches away, a pulse akin to electromagnetic technology had started to radiate from the metal, surrounding the area in a safety net that would render most weapons useless. If they had attempted to physically strike, the device would administer a mild shock that would debilitate them where they had stood.
The start of a gentle hiss that had begun pouring out from the bottom of the chambers had arisen with the end of the freezing process. You were readying yourself, preparing yourself with a few electrostatic disks that were usually used to neutralize potentially dangerous high emittance emergency sirens of buildings.
You had discovered and learned that those same discs could be used in self-defence if someone had tried to attack you while you were unaware. The discs would emit a pulse that could bring grown men to their knees without a fight.
“Process complete.” The drone’s green radiating light had ceased and the device had flown back to your palm.
The small little thing compressing back into its travel size, leaving you alone with the men to witness the top and bottom half of the separating and allowing the two men to finally be earthed after so many years after being frozen.
You waited and watched with bated breath as the last lingering effects of the cryogenic freezing had dissipated and the two men had started to come back to the real world. There was a moment when you felt as if time had stopped completely as if you would never feel the shudder of your breath or the beat of your heart.
There was nothing to kickstart your heart or lungs back into functionality again until you saw their eyes fluttering open, the start of the two men coming back to the waking world.
“They look like they’ve seen better days,” POGO had claimed, precariously scurrying across the floor as he crossed the room back to your side, climbing up your leg to your shoulder, “old relics.”
“Steve-“ the first spoke, stumbling from the chamber with a thick and hoarse cough coming from his mouth. His hands, both flesh and metal, had rested on his knees while he gathered himself.
“Buck-“ Captain Rogers was next, almost as worse for wear as they both had been heavily afflicted by the years and decades spent inside the frozen chambers.
They had yet to notice you, yet to pay you any mind. You had remained as still as possible as they, and their bodies, had started to get used to the immediate release from the cryogenic chambers. You had studied them, watched them as they stood close to each other, and had finally and truly recognized how physically imposing they were.
Both men were over 6’2”, both as broad as they were thickly built, with the sheer impressive size and muscular strength making you second guess having not prepared better.
“Hi-“ the sound of your voice greeting them had elicited a reaction of proactive fight instincts, and the resulting jerk of their bodies had done exactly what you hadn’t wanted.
The pulse of the device you had set up for your protection and the disks POGO had carried himself, had brought both men to their knees within a single moment. They were dragged down, rendered unable to move and you had reacted just as quickly, with a swift kick of the orb that was pulsating, the field was cut out and you were able to approach.
“Shit! I’m sorry, I didn’t think you would react like that. Are you okay? Are you both okay?” You crouched in front of them, the two of them still reeling from the pulsation that had rendered them unable to move.
“Where the hell are we? What the hell was that?” Sergeant Barnes had hissed, holding his flesh hand against his side, his jaw clenching with every breath.
“Shit, I think you’re hurt. POGO-“
“I have located three different first aid kits nearby under some rubble. Would you like me to grab one?” Your robotic friend had hopped from the ledge he was at to approach, tilting his head.
“Where the hell are we? Where is Stark?” Captain Rogers asked with tentative aggression, slowly starting to rise again. “Tony Stark-“
“Tony Stark?” You furrowed your brows and eased back onto your heels. “Tony Stark is dead. He’s been dead for nearly a century and a half.”
There was silence, egregious and tense. It lasted a single moment before Steve Rogers had spoken in a whisper, shocked and at a loss.
“…how long have we been cryogenically frozen?”