Chapter 1
The wind was howling, stripping loose snow from the frozen ground and snarling it up into the thin, freezing air. Everything was white and roaring: the ground, the sky. All around the trees groaned and cracked, towering bodies swallowed up by the fury of the storm.
Bucky squinted up at the pale sun, then down into the ravine below.
The drop was vertical, the ground falling away sharply to expose a featureless plane of black, glass-like rock.
Visibility in all directions was close to zero. Despite everything he was wearing—the heavy gear, the ski mask—he shivered.
Behind him, Steve was crouched in the snow, face turned away from the freezing wind. He was finishing up with something, working one of the cranks. The rest of the gear was lashed to the trees behind him, totally obscured by the whirling snow.
It’d taken them just over an hour to set up shop: fixing the ropes, testing them. They were making good time but they had to keep moving; time was limited, even with the cover of the storm.
As Bucky watched, Steve straightened and stood, turning towards him. He was all in black, every part of his face, his whole body, covered up.
He gave a hand signal: good to go.
Bucky signalled back: OK.
Bucky went first, letting the ropes and harness take his weight before walking backwards over the edge of the drop.
He descended quickly, rappelling down the rock face—two hundred feet, three hundred feet—until the square shape of a landing pad emerged from the white gloom below him.
He landed neatly, boots meeting snow with a muffled crunch. The platform was solid, jutting square from the rock face.
For a moment he stood with his back to the rock and stared out into the white, roaring gloom. The wind was deafening, funnelling wildly down the rock face behind him, ripping at his back. The light was strange – thin and diffuse. The opposite side of the ravine rose up in front of him like the inviolable hull of an enormous ship.
He glanced down over the edge of the platform, steeling himself as the wind broke over his body like a storm surge at a sea wall. Huge shards of granite sliced up through the mist like teeth.
Something like fear curdled low in his gut.
Less than a minute later Steve touched down beside him. Steve took a handful of seconds to unhook himself, to secure the rope, then he was turning, looking at Bucky.
Ready when you are.
Bucky nodded: let's go.
There was a metal door set into the rock face. Mounted alongside it was a robust-looking steel box. Bucky prised it open with his left hand—there was a keypad inside—and punched in a series of numbers. The door groaned, bolts retracting with a heavy clang. Gun raised, Bucky pushed it open and stepped inside.
The relief from the wind was instant, and for a moment, only the rough sound of his heavy breathing filled the dark space. He stepped forward, eyes adjusting. Nothing moved.
Steve followed behind him, body momentarily blotting out the light.
Something clicked. Bucky flinched, gun already raised, but it was only lights overhead; a chain of strip bulbs buzzed and clicked on in pairs, lighting a narrow, curved tunnel ahead.
The walls were made of concrete. Thick cables ran down one side at waist-height.
They followed the tunnel as it bored back through the rock. After half a mile or so they came to a steel door, this time round—as wide as the tunnel itself—and heavy-looking, like the door of a vault.
There was a second keypad; Bucky keyed in a second code. For long seconds nothing happened. Then, with a low grinding noise, the locking mechanism disengaged.
The door opened inwards. The space beyond was black. Steve shone a powerful torch beam into the dark. The light cut across the space, revealing a cross between an office and some kind of lab.
As soon as they stepped across the threshold the room was flooded with bright white light.
It was filled with a mixture of old and new technology. Dated computer terminals and filing cabinets sat alongside thin modern monitors and glass banks filled with snaking cables. There were sinks and steel tables. Gurneys. One section of wall resembled an open shower, complete with drains set into the concrete floor.
Bucky’s eyes were drawn to the back wall. Side by side, flanked by banks of monitors and controls, were two large upright glass cylinders.
One was empty, the curved glass distorting the view of the tiled wall behind it. The other—
‘Jesus,’ Steve rasped.
Inside the second tank, suspended in thick clear fluid, was the body of a young man.
He was tall, lean and pale with roughly cropped hair. His limbs were limp, legs slightly bent, arms half-outstretched - like an insect speared with a pin: on display.
Bucky pulled off his ski mask and goggles, face tingling in the still, freezing air.
The man's head was bowed, face blurred by the viscosity of the cryo-fluid. Even so, it was impossible to mistake the line of his nose, the shape of his mouth—
Steve's face. A perfect facsimile.
Bucky fired up the decommission sequence for the cryo tank while Steve checked over the rest of the room, flipping dials and switches until a countdown flashed up on the console in front of him: 09:59, 09:58, 09:57.
Bucky watched as the tank started to whir.
The man drifted as the thick fluid drained, slowly listing sideways and slumping under his own weight until he was half-stood half-folded over like his strings had been cut, face down like a drowned man.
Bucky looked away. He could already taste cryo fluid in the back of his throat, burning his insides, clogging his mouth and nose and—
‘Buck!’
Bucky's head snapped around at the sound of Steve's voice. Steve was across the room, kneeling in front of something that was up against the wall. Bucky went over to him, blood pounding in his ears. Steve was leaning over some kind of heavy-looking metal box. It had clearly been locked and sealed – the lid was mangled, metal half folded back where Steve had bent and prised it away.
‘What?’ Bucky said, but Steve didn't look up. He kept staring down at whatever he'd found, shoulders tense.
He’d pulled his mask off too. Bucky could see his face was blotchy. He looked like he was going to be sick.
Bucky followed his gaze.
The box was rectangular, maybe four feet long and one and a half feet wide. He knew immediately that it was full of cryo fluid – the chemical smell made his head spin.
He could see, even with dark spots blurring his vision, that there was somethings submerged in the fluid. He grit his teeth, stomach lurching.
Lying along the bottom of the box was the body of a small boy
Bucky scrubbed a hand over the back of his head, breath suddenly ragged. Horror seemed to knock something loose inside him. A man was one thing, terrible, sick. But a kid; that was—
Steve was already prising away the rest of the metal lid, tearing it back like it was nothing.
As soon as it was clear, Bucky reached down into the box with his left arm.
The cryo fluid went up to his bicep, noxious and freezing: thick like oil. He slid his arm under the kid's shoulders and lifted him carefully. The fluid clung slickly to his face as his head broke the surface. He was stiff and pale.
Steve was ready with a blanket.
Bucky lifted the kid clear of the box and passed him over. Steve took him easily, wrapping him up and wiping the kid's face, a much, much younger version of his own.
Bucky stood and stepped back. ‘Get him warm. I'll get the—‘
Something heavy connected with the side of his head. Pain exploded across his skull. He staggered, vision blurred, and threw his arm up. The next blow glanced off his metal forearm. The one after slammed into the back of his neck. Bucky grunted, body flooding with adrenaline, and twisted sharply, catching the next punch in his left hand.
It was the man from the tank.
He looked wild, chest heaving, body shiny with cryo fluid. He wrenched his arm free easily, and lashed out again. Bucky blocked two hits, head throbbing, before clipping the man in the jaw and sending him staggering backwards.
‘Hey!’
The man snarled at the sound of Steve's voice, recovering quickly, angling his body to take on a second threat.
Steve had his hands up, palms out.
‘Easy. We're not gonna hurt you.’
Bucky kept his eyes fixed on the man as Steve spoke. He looked young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. Little more than a kid. He was taller and broader than Steve had been at that age, and probably as fast and strong as Steve was now. He was still baring his teeth but there was a little flicker of unease in his face. His eyes darted between Steve and the open door that led back out to the tunnel. He was breathing hard, trembling finely all over.
Steve was still talking.
‘You've got no reason to trust us. I know that. But we just want to help you. The people who keep you here are bad people. All they want is pain. Chaos. We can take you somewhere where nobody's gonna hurt you anymore. No training. No cryo-freeze—‘
The kid had stopped looking around. He was staring at Steve, all animal focus. He was holding something, Bucky realised. A jagged flash of silver.
Without warning, the kid lurched forwards. He was on Steve in less than a second, enraged, aiming for the head, the neck, the eyes.
Bucky grabbed him and threw him bodily to the floor.
‘Listen!’ he snarled, mouth bloody, but the kid was already twisting up off the concrete. He launched himself at Bucky's knees, wrenching his legs out from under him. Bucky staggered and grabbed at the kid's hair, using the grip to punch him squarely in the side of the head. The kid’s face snapped to the side.
Steve's face.
Bucky stared, panting.
The kid was slumped on his knees with his face turned away. He was breathing so fast he could have been hyperventilating. There was blood all over his mouth and chin.
‘Hey,’ Bucky rasped, moving closer. ‘I—‘
The kid exploded into motion, launching himself at Buck's body. Bucky raised his arms to block the hit, grunting as something sharp bit into his right forearm. Then the kid was twisting and ducking, yanking Buck’s gun up out of the holster and—
‘Bucky!’
Bucky shoved the muzzle off-line just in time. The bullet skimmed his jacket and cracked into the floor somewhere behind them. Bucky twisted the kid's wrist brutally, forcing him to drop the gun, and grabbed the back of his neck, hauling him up and smashing his head down into the nearest steel table. The kid crumpled and fell backwards, landing heavily on the floor. He didn't get up.
Steve was there instantly, touching his shoulder, his neck.
‘You ok?’
Bucky scrubbed the back of his head and nodded, wincing as a sharp pain flared up at the base of his skull. The whole side of his face was wet.
He watched as Steve crouched down and picked up the gun, wiping the hand grip on his thigh.
The kid was still lying on the floor by the table, face twisted away.
‘Shit,’ Bucky muttered.
He glanced around.
The little kid was on the floor where they’d left him, swaddled in the blanket, dull hair matted like he’d just been born.