32557038
It’s been four days since you’ve finished all the work on the Asset’s arm, and you have been able to do some digging on the new kid, Jordan. His full name is Ben Jordan; named after his paternal grandfather, Benjamin. His mom is Carrie and dad is Nathan, the family is from Buffalo, New York. He had a 3.7 GPA in high school and wasn’t very good at math but did well in English, and he liked golf.
He typically trained in the gym after the majority of HYDRA employees went home, enjoying the emptiness- inadvertently giving you the best opportunity seeing as he’s alone.
As he finishes up his workout, grabbing his things to head into the conjoined locker rooms, you slip into the gym, making sure to close the door as silently as possible. There is a small nook off to the side, leading to the locker rooms. Inside that nook, the door to the women’s is on the left, door to the men’s is on the right. You pop into the women’s and look around, and once you’ve verified that there is nobody else in there, you stand right inside the door so you can hear when he finishes up and goes to leave.
After a few seconds, you hear the light click of the door opening, and wait for a couple of seconds so he can step out and into the more open area of the small hallway. When you get into the hall, you slip out the smallest of your knives and gently press it to his throat. His hands shoot up quickly in innocence, his water bottle dropping to the floor with a dull thud. You feel slightly bad. Slightly.
With as much softness in your voice as possible, you lean a bit closer to his ear and whisper “Hi honey, Ben Jordan, was it?”
His nod quickly stops when the movement reminds him of the blade pressed to his throat, so he lets out a shaky and quiet “.. yes.”
“It’s a nice name! Remind me though, is it from your mom or dad’s side? Passed down from your grandfather, right?”
“Yeah, my da…” He trails off when he realizes what he’s saying and what you had just said, his body somehow going more rigid than it was the moment before. “How do you?? What.. what do you want?”
“Well, it’s not too bad. I’ll give you two options. One: you come with me and help me find this classified file I really, really need. Nobody finds out, and you and your family stay perfectly safe. Two: you don’t help me find this classified file that I really, really need. This knife goes a little bit further into your throat than it is right now, I take your key card and find the file myself, and a very sad call gets to be made to Carrie and Nathan. Your choice. One or two?” You practically feel the shiver run through his body, and you thank Peggy in your head for making you take that week-long hostage class even though you insisted at the time that you would never need it. After what you assume to be an entire minute, he lets out a few ragged breaths, letting you know that your words have finally sunk in.
“One! One. I’ll help you, please, just don’t hurt my family. I won’t tell anyone.” His voice is quick, his breath is heavy, and his body is still rigid, but he’s shaking like a leaf.
You let out a content sigh, bringing the knife down from where it’s pressed from his throat. You slip the blade back into your holster and turn him around by his shoulders so that he’s now facing you. Running your hands over his now-slightly messed up shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles, you lock your eyes on his.
With a pat on his cheek, you smile, saying “Good choice, doll. Now, classified files. Take me there, but make it look like we’re just heading to the cryo room. If anyone asks, you’re unlocking it for me since I still don’t have access. Okay?”
He just nods quickly before turning and leading you out of the gym, saying “Follow me,” as you both exit and head towards the elevator on that floor.
Once you make it inside the elevator, he presses the button for the basement, which immediately prompts him to swipe his card. He does, and the elevator begins its descent.
The metal doors open to a small hallway with a wooden door at the end. Another swipe of the key is needed to enter; and that door only opens up to another, extremely long, hall littered with more doors on each side.
“The file room is towards the end, I think.” The kid says, just as nervous as he was when the two of you left the gym. You motion for him to go ahead and he begins to walk through the hall.
He’s walking rather fast, so you’re only able to read a handful of the labels next to the doors, catching “Armory,” “Supplies,” “Evidence,” and “Tac Gear” as you trail along behind him. You do also notice that there are no visible cameras throughout the hall, which isn’t too surprising- you really haven’t seen an abundance of cameras within the HYDRA complex that you could recall.
True to his word, the door he stops at has a small sign next to it, with the word “CLASSIFIED - FILES” embossed in the metal. Even the door itself is different from the rest, it’s a different wood, and from the hinges, it looks like it’s reinforced too. Subtle. He swipes the card yet again, and to your relief, the light turns green. You couldn’t lie, you had been a bit worried that he didn’t have the clearance since he is so new, but you also couldn’t give the people working for this organization the credit of being rigorous enough to put a system like that in place.
The room is much, much bigger than you would expect from the impression the hallway gave. It goes a long way back, with metal racks that reach the ceiling, labelled banker boxes filling the towering shelves. You take a few steps into the somewhat-vault, admiring not only the organization, but the way that the lights start to switch on row by row.
“Anderson,” the young agent’s voice calls out, just a step or two behind you. “What’s the file you’re looking for? The boxes are labelled by letters, we can narrow it down with that.”
“Winter Soldier Program.” You return.
He pales, and you hadn’t even realized he’d relaxed any, but his body was becoming stiffer again at your words. He says nothing, just nods before striding past you into the deep room. He walks, and walks, and walks, and keeps walking. Is this thing just endless?
After an entire two minutes of walking up and down aisles, he stops in his tracks, turning to you and pointing.
You’ve reached the boxes labelled with “W.”
“Let’s get to work, Jordan.” You say with a smile, grabbing the first “W” box off the shelf.
You both start rummaging through the boxes, finding files on current and past employees, international incidents, failed and successful projects, failed and successful inventions, pretty much if you can name it, it’s in these boxes.
Each of you gets through two boxes and are on your third when he chimes in with a smile on his face that quickly disappears with a cough as he regains his composure. “Winter Soldier Program, found it.” He pulls the extremely thick file out of the box and hands it over to you. You send him a large smile and a praise of “Great job, kid. Thanks.”
He stands up, putting the lid on the box as he does. He’s puzzled when you remain on the floor and open the file up, quickly looking over the smaller tabs within. They are each written with Russian first and English next to them, thank goodness.
The first few are notated with “Origin,” “Serum,” “Experiments,” “Memory-Loss Procedures,” and “Training.”
The next is “Participants.”
Sure, the whole file is probably filled with information that could be useful to you, but you really only cared about one part of this project.
And, you know, one small file is a lot less inconspicuous to carry around than a giant file that takes up half of a box.
That’s what you’re telling yourself, at least.
Taking a deep breath, you slip the “Participants” tab out.
Inside, there are six folders.
You only want one.
Only care about one.
After a quick glance at the names on each file, you’re drawn to one. It sounds familiar, like you’ve heard it a few times before- clearly not at your time at HYDRA, though. It also is the only one that looks New York enough to be the one you’re looking for.
Going on the feeling tugging at your gut, and maybe your heart, you grab the file that you believe to be the Asset’s, and place the others back into their respective place inside the “Participants” tab, back into the spot in the “Winter Soldier Project” file, back into the large open space in the “W” box, and back onto the available shelf.
You unknowingly clutch the file to your chest, take a deep breath, and say “Okay, this is all I need. Thank you for your help, Ben, truly.” You reach out your right hand and he takes it. After dropping the firm shake, you let that same hand fall to your holster. “And, thank you for keeping this between us. You’re a doll.” His eyes follow your hand, stopping when he sees where it is resting on your thigh. They quickly shoot back at yours, wider than you’ve seen them so far.
You smile- giving him a wink because you can’t help yourself from shaking him up just a little bit more- “Jordan, let’s go. I don’t think we should be down here much longer. Wouldn’t want them to catch you helping out a prisoner. Take me to my lab?”
He immediately walks past you, practically sprinting to the door of the vault, opening it for you and standing to the side as he waits for you to catch up to him.
Wordlessly, the two of you make your way throughout the halls of the complex, back to your lab. You had him carry the file on the way back, just so none of the agents you came across on the way would suspect why you were carrying a HYDRA file instead of the agent walking alongside you.
The two of you reach the door to the lab, and for the last time tonight, he swipes his card, both of you watching the light blink from red to green.
He hands you the file, and you thank him once again for his help and his secrecy, before walking into the corridor above the stairs and closing the door behind you. Leaning your back against the door after you close it, you clutch the folder to your one more as your eyes flutter closed, the stress and adrenaline of finding it finally wearing off now that you’re in your safe space.
When you collect yourself, you push off of the door.
You make your way down the stairs of the empty lab, the lights flickering on once you reach the bottom step.
You sit at the only empty table, the one closest to the chair; the others all still have remnants and parts of the arm scattered about, you haven’t found a good way to organize and store all the scraps, so you’ve just left them for the time being.
With the file sat in front of you, you have to take a few deep, deep breaths and let out a big sigh before placing your hand on top of it.
You flip the cover over, opening it so you can see the contents for the first time.
The first thing that captures your attention is the pictures; one large of him as you’ve seen him, sedated and behind the glass of the cryogenic holding chamber. Even though he’s asleep, the energy radiating from the photo is anything but peaceful. The second photo is a lot smaller, probably about wallet-sized and black and white, of him all made up in his military uniform. His hair is short, covered by his service cap. It’s a handsome picture, and in comparison to how you’ve seen him as the Soldier; it looks like he’s barely aged- the only real difference being a deep dimple between his eyebrows. Did the serum stop the aging? He’s been here for nearly fifty years, and if he served in World War II, he would have to be about eighty… and he truly doesn’t look a day over thirty?
Birthday, is his birthday in here? How old is he?
Name. His name.
Yes, you’d seen it on the outside of the file, but you needed to be sure and check more than once before you made a concrete connection, for your own sanity.
And, after rifling through a few more pages, you find it.
The confirmation you need.
An Army form from back in the States… and a death certificate?
Name: Barnes, James Buchanan.
Service Number: 32557038
Blood Type: O
Emergency Contact : R. Barnes, 3092 Stockton Rd, Shelbyville, In.
The certificate is littered with “Unknown” written on “Place of Death,” “Date of Death,” “Time of Death,” “Cause of Death,” and countless other lines. The only solid things you could gather are his parent’s names- George and Winnifred, and his sister’s name- Rebecca. It also confirmed his name again, and that he was born in Brooklyn, on March 10th, 1917.
Barnes.
His name is James.
James Buchanan Barnes.