Carrying Small Stones

No one caught him, but that wasn’t unusual. The unusual part was when no hands immediately reached to grab him and drag him away. He sucked in air through the mask, breathing through the pain.

The ice still clung to him, sending pinpricks across the surface of his skin. His shoulder ached where the arm attached, as the numbness began to fade.

It took him a moment to realize someone was speaking. He knew his inattention would not be received well.

“—ake off the mask—“

He reached up shakily to unclasp it and let it drop to the floor. He was not allowed to remove the mask himself, but he had been ordered to remove the mask. He waited to see if he would be punished. Sometimes, it was a test.

He held himself steady, because he was not strong enough yet to push himself up, but he had to do something or he would surely be punished. When no commands were given, he chanced a question. “Are you my new Handler?” he asked.

He was not supposed to ask questions—but he was punished if he assumed someone was Handler and they were not, and he was punished if he received a new Handler and did not properly acknowledge them. The punishment for asking questions would be less than the punishment for that. Slaps hardly hurt at all.

“I’m not your Handler,” the voice said. It had a weary, mechanical edge. “You killed my parents, asshole. You killed my mom.”

He forced himself to look up then. The man was in a suit of armor, and his face was hidden. He catalogued the movements of the suit and the weapons at the palms of the hands and the wrists. It was technology that Hydra did not have the last time he was awake.

“Your parents were targets?” he realized. It wasn’t unusual for Hydra agents to engage in nepotism and then turn on each other. It had happened before. “Then you require a mission report?"

He had not been punished for the last question, but this one enraged the new Handler. The Handler listed out the names as though he expected him to recognize them. He wondered if perhaps the Handler had not fully been briefed on post-mission procedures. Or perhaps he had misunderstood. Perhaps the mission was not complete.

“Are they my targets?” he asked.

The Handler edged away from him. "You're a few Fudgsicles short of a well-stocked popsicle cart, aren't you?"

‘Popsicle cart’ sparked a vision that razed his brain with pain, a small white cart on a street corner stained with sepia. As quickly as it came, it was gone. ‘Fudgsicles’ meant nothing to him, it did not even sound like a real word. He braced himself for pain, because he could only fail in whatever it was his new Handler was asking of him. “I do not understand your commands. Please restate.”

"I'm here to kill you, Terminator," the Handler told him after a brief pause, "does that compute?"

He caught his breath as the intention became clear. He had been threatened with this many times over the years. They had always stated it as though it should be something he would want to avoid, but he had always been disappointed when they never followed through.

To imagine an end to this was all that he had.

“Okay,” he said.

The Handler went very still, his blank mechanical eyes staring back at him. Briefly, he wondered what the Handler behind them might look like—but he was not supposed to wonder about things. He bit the question back.

“Okay. I tell you I came here to kill you and your response is ‘okay’?” the Handler demanded.

He didn’t know what he’d done wrong. Perhaps he’d been too informal. He made sure to keep himself steady as he prepared a proper response. “I am being decommissioned. I understand. I will comply.”

The Handler stumbled away from him then, heading back towards the computers. He frowned as the Handler left, wondering why he was leaving right when he’d finally understood his purpose. He was prepared to die. Death did not frighten him.

Life was painful. Death sounded like relief.

The Handler began holding a conversation with a bodiless voice. He tilted his head as the Handler made his way around the controls. He was bypassing them, not using the regular command centers. Someone with authorization would not need to do that. Someone with authorization would not have left the soldier on the ground unattended.

The Handler and the bodiless voice seemed to have no trouble accessing the records despite not using any of the proper codes, however. He turned his eyes away when he saw the information was about his past. He had no past. He was not allowed to remember. It was better that way.

“Okay, new plan,” the Handler said as he approached him again. The Handler kneeled down in front of him, which was unusual. Everything about him was unusual. “I don’t really get my jollies from murdering brainwashed torture victims. So, you know, no decommissioning for you.”

It happened every time. He did not know why he thought this time might be different. He usually did not let himself get drawn into any promises that were made to him, and he wondered now if this was all just a trap, an experiment to test his reactions. He had been tested this way before.

“What is my mission?” he forced himself to ask. It was the one question he didn’t get into any trouble for.

“We’re going to get you the hell out of here. That’s the mission,” the Handler told him firmly.

He frowned as he tried to understand what the intention of that kind of mission could be, and then startled when the Handler abruptly pulled the faceplate on his mask up.

The new Handler was familiar in a way that meant he should recognize him, but didn’t. He didn’t look like he was expecting. His voice had been so irreverent, but to look at him, he seemed so sad. The Handler was watching him with wide eyes filled with so much pain that he wondered for a moment if he was a weapon, too.

He knew he couldn’t remember much, but even still he could not recall ever seeing eyes like that before. They seemed almost kind.

“Come on, let’s get you up,” the Handler said. The Handler’s voice, without the suit, was pleasant and calm. He liked the sound of it, though he didn’t trust it.

He’d had Handlers that had sounded kind before. Pierce—he was not allowed to call him Pierce, he was not supposed to remember—was soft spoken and polished and rarely raised his voice. He had thought he was kind, once, too, but the casual punishments had proven that theory incorrect.

But when the new Handler helped him to his feet he was gentle, and his hands, even covered in metal as they were, were more careful with him than he could remember anyone ever being.

This Handler was not Hydra, that was now clear. Protocol dictated he incapacitate him and find the nearest ranking officer. The punishment for doing anything else would be terrible beyond the pain even of the Chair. He had been punished like that before. The only bit of memory to survive it had been the sound of his own voice screaming.

“You still with me?” the Handler asked, as he tried to usher him through the halls.

Bodies littered the floors, but he could see they were still breathing. They would come for him when they awakened. He wondered if maybe when they found him this time, they’d kill both him and the Handler with the kind eyes. He wondered if he’d even try to stop them.

He looked down where the Handler had wrapped an arm around his waist to hold him up. He had to make a decision—this could be a trap, this could be a test, this could lead to something even worse. Could something be worse?

“Hey, look at me,” the Handler said kindly. “I can help you, but you’ve gotta work with me. Okay? We’re almost there.”

Almost where, he almost asked. Instead, he forced his feet to move.

He didn’t know where he was going, but it was hard to imagine it could be worse than where he’d been.