Eminent Silence

by Tristan Carey

  He fell forward, his vision swimming, as he tried to push himself up. He could make out Vielka sprinting towards Crossbones, she slashed her sword at Sam, disconnecting one of his wings from his pack as he tried to fend her away. She grabbed him by his other wing, flinging him away like he was nothing more than a piece of paper, and would have crashed heavily into a nearby wall if it weren't for Wanda catching him using her powers.

  He then saw her grab Scott, but he shrank and she stared at her hand that had grabbed him, but before long she was swiping her sword along the ground and Bucky could just make out Scott trying to avoid her strike... then everything went black.

  Bucky woke to the sound of an aircraft landing and a familiar shuddering. He opened his eyes and found he was lying on the floor of the jet.

  He looked around to see Scott was also lying on the floor, he seemed to be unconscious and had a long gash running along one of his arms that Natasha and Clint were working on treating. He looked towards the cockpit and could just make out Steve and T'Challa.

  'Welcome back,' Sam said, leaning forward from his seat. Bucky looked up at him, he was sporting some grazes and a swollen cheek, but looked relatively alright, although Wanda still fussed over him. She was sporting a few cuts and grazes of her own, but they didn't seem to bother her.

  'She got away?' he asked immediately. Sam looked apologetic and nodded. Bucky clenched his fists as he laid there for a moment, looking to the ceiling. He couldn't get past the lifeless look in her eyes.

  He pushed himself up carefully, his head still ached from where she had struck him and he held his head for a moment as it throbbed. The back door of the jet slowly opened, and Bucky was quick to help Clint load Scott onto a stretcher and carry him from the jet to the waiting medical team.

  Steve moved to stand beside Bucky as they watched the medical team rush Scott away. 'You alright, buddy?'

  Bucky shook his head. He was still annoyed at Steve for prioritising him over Vielka, but by comparison his annoyance was far overshadowed by his concern for Vielka right now. 'We've got to save her.'

  'To be honest, I'm not sure we can,' Steve replied with a sigh, removing his helmet. 'She's far stronger than we ever expected.'

  'That she is,' T'Challa said, walking down the loading ramp to join them. Bucky raised his eyebrows when he saw that the Black Panther's armour had been compromised several times, slash marks evident across his arms and upper body.

  'You should have told us,' Steve said firmly, turning to look at the Wakandan king.

  'It was not my place to tell,' T'Challa replied, his voice even and calm.

  'If you had of told us we could have avoided this whole situation!' Steve exclaimed, his voice becoming aggravated.

  'Which situation would that be?' T'Challa asked, moving to stand face to face with Steve. 'The situation with stunning resemblance to that of your friend, who was unwillingly being used as an assassin?'

  Steve faltered, and Bucky smiled grimly. It was true, Vielka's situation was vastly similar to his own. Perhaps that's why he felt so strongly to save her.

  'Vielka's story was not mine to tell, and even then, I did not know all the details. Even then, I knew she was a loyal warrior of her own choosing, I did not know how she could be controlled,' T'Challa explained, as they stood in the ward of the small hospital wing in the facility they called home. 'I knew only that once upon a time, she had been. There were contingency plans in place should she be compromised while within the facility, as there were for Bucky.'

  Bucky's eyebrows raised in interest at the mention of him, and T'Challa looked apologetically at him for a moment. Doctors and nurses treated their minor wounds, Scott was now awake and lying on his side, listening to T'Challa explain how he had come to find Vielka.

  T'Challa pressed his lips into a thin line, before requesting a tablet from the doctor treating him. He obliged, passing him one of the spares that were close by, and T'Challa quickly found the file he was looking for.

  He sent it to the main screen in the ward, it appeared to be a file he had compiled during his time searching for Vielka. 'I originally sought to recruit Vielka to join my Dora Milaje, but I soon found that she would be of greater benefit if kept as a free standing team member. I heard rumour about a woman that went by the name of Banzai. The rumours said that she had unparalleled skill with a sword, amazing speed and strength far greater than the average human.'

  T'Challa scrolled through the notes he had written, notes pertaining to different stories he had heard. 'In Australia, she was classed as MIA after an ambush in the Middle East, her likeness didn't appear again until at least ten years later, it was recorded that she attacked a group of Boko Haram that tried to kidnap school girls, defending them all.'

  He found the list of possible locations she had been sighted. 'I travelled the globe trying to find her. Africa, Europe, Asia, until I finally found her in a remote area of South America. She was living in a small mountain village and helping the village medicine woman, as well as protecting them from drug cartels who wanted to use them to farm their cocaine farms.'

  'Crossbones said that SHIELD found them,' Bucky murmured thoughtfully. 'That Hydra operatives stole them out of there and tried to use them, but she managed to slip them and went on her own.'

  'Clearly, her resolution was stronger than her programming,' T'Challa said, taking note of the brooding super soldier. It seemed he had created a bond with his loyal friend in the short time they had been on operation alone together. 'Perhaps we can make that work for us again.'

  'There's no guarantee it will work,' Sam said skeptically, crossing his arms. 'They could have altered the new programming to make sure that doesn't happen again.'

  'Wouldn't they need to test that on her specifically, to see if it worked?' Scott piped up. They fell silent, considering Scott's words. 'I mean, really, we don't know how many others have managed to break their programming, but let's assume she's the only one since we've never met others. It's like an electrical circuit, you can't ensure you've fixed the fault unless you run tests. Even if you use another electrical circuit and it works on that one, it doesn't mean that fix will work on the original one.'

  Clint stood up pointing at Scott. 'He's right, they don't even know if they've fixed the program.'

  'That still doesn't solve how we are going to be able to find them now. They're not going to stay in Italy,' Natasha pointed out. They were quiet again.

  'We've got to find her,' Bucky murmured quietly. He looked at the ground sadly, and T'Challa raised an eyebrow as he stared at the Winter Soldier. The man's body language spoke of his current torment, he had seen her turned. 'She doesn't want this, she was terrified. She pleaded for them to stop.'

  T'Challa glanced around the group. All eyes were staring at Bucky, a look of sympathy in each and every one of them. Eventually, Steve moved to stand beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He looked at the others. 'Let's figure out where they're going and what they're doing.'

  Bucky watched as Natasha scanned through secret government files that T'Challa's best techs had managed to gain access to, they were all lodged paperwork about events that had been dubbed top secret by the government. She was swiping through pages, her lips pursed together as she seemed to become more and more annoyed.

  Bucky didn't know how she was managing to read the pages so quickly, and was worried she might be missing something vital, that is, until she froze with her hand poised over the tablet while she furrowed. 'What is it?' he asked, looking at the screen.

  There on the screen was Red. It was a fuzzy image but it was unmistakable. His blood boiled as he remembered the blood that dripped from her neck as Red had pressed his sword against her.

  'It says here that he was a SEAL that went missing in 1997? Looks good for a 50 year old.' Bucky pursed his lips, waiting for Natasha to continue. 'He started reappearing in 2000. In the Middle East, attacking his own country's units, disappeared again around the same
time as Vielka did the first time, reappeared in 2015 in various locations. That doesn't help us at all,' she said with a frown.

  Clint appeared, reading another file. 'None of this is going to help us find out what Crossbones end game is.'

  T'Challa, who was sat at another desk in the mission room, looked contemplative. 'Crossbones has always been about money, correct?'

  Natasha and Clint nodded as Steve stood and looked at the board they had put together that featured all the small bits of information they'd managed to glean from their research. He stood before it, staring at it before he spoke again. 'Weapons merchant has always been his game. Would he alter from that course?'

  They looked around at each other. 'Start looking for every big bio lab or weapons development factory within range of a single flight from Italy. That will be the first place he will look.'

  Bucky racked his brain for a moment before he remembered. 'Wait! Austria!'

  Natasha looked at him puzzled for a moment then a look of recognition spread across her face. She went through her tablet until she found their intel report. 'The assistant, she said they were moving onto Austria. Would they falter from those plans now that they have Vielka, or was it something important?'

  'Start looking, what's in Austria?' Steve ordered.It was dark when they landed on the outskirts of Linz, Austria. They filed off the aircraft, before making their way to the labs that were situated just outside the city limits, it towered over the trees that surrounded it.

  'This seems like the closest place with the capability to make the type of weapons Crossbones might like to sell,' Steve said as they skirted the fence line. It had taken them three days to figure out what was the most likely target, and although they couldn't pin-point an exact date, they believed Crossbones would be making an appearance here any day now.

  They stopped and watched for a while before Bucky noticed something particular that caught his attention. 'Where are the security guards?'

  They all looked around. There was no one in sight. 'They're already here,' T'Challa murmured. 'We must hurry.'

  They broke into a run, sprinting across the compound. It wasn't long until rifle fire rung out from the building, cutting through the glass easily. Wanda was quick to raise a red barrier to protect them.

  Two men strode out from the building, maintaining their line of fire. 'Guys, I can't hold it forever,' Wanda groaned with the effort.

  'I got this,' Sam and Scott said in unison, before Sam took off and Scott disappeared. Within seconds one of the men appeared to be beating himself up, while the other was knocked flying by a swooping Falcon.

  The others continued on their way in a hurry. Once inside, they faced further resistance. Bucky and Steve ran for cover in one direction while Natasha, Wanda and Clint ran in the other. T'Challa ran straight through the centre, confident his armour would deflect their bullets. He charged at the small contingent of men and women, beginning to disarm them and giving Steve, Bucky and Clint the opportunity to fire their own weapons at them.

  Steve and Bucky charged forward as Sam swooped overhead, also firing into the small group. It took more than a few bullets to take down these soldiers, it seemed. Bucky ducked below a swinging arm of one of the soldiers, using his weapon to block a following jab and then used the butt of his weapon to render his attacker unconscious.

  Scott popped up beside him, blocking another soldier that tried to charge from Bucky's unguarded side. He managed to flip him onto his back and dropped a knee across his head, knocking him out. 'Thanks,' Bucky murmured, continuing to run ahead.

  'No problem, piece of cake,' Scott replied, before he was tackled by a female soldier who launched herself from the stair case above them. Bucky grabbed her from him with his titanium arm quickly, but she thrashed and kicked out at him, connecting with his ribs and causing him to drop her. She turned to punch him only to be thrown across the room as Captain America's shield collided with her side.

  'Thanks,' Bucky said in unison with Scott as Steve caught his shield again.

  'Don't mention it,' he replied, walking past them to look up into the higher levels of the building. 'Sam?'

  'I'll check it out.' He flew up and looked around, but returned soon after. 'There's no one up there.'

  Steve furrowed his brow in concern, as Bucky looked from Steve to T'Challa.

  'A facility such as this, producing items that could be used as weaponry would perhaps think it more appropriate to have their labs below ground level,' T'Challa reasoned, looking around.

  Bucky looked too, spotting a fire exit and running to reef open the door. He found a set of stairs leading down. 'This way!'

  They faced heavy resistance from Crossbones' men, but there was no sign of Vielka, yet. According to Bucky, Crossbones was using Vielka as a personal bodyguard, so she wouldn't be drifting far from him.

  When they finally reached the lowest level, Bucky, Steve, Sam, and Natasha were running low on ammo. They stacked up on the door, Scott shrinking and disappearing under the door. 'Holy shit...'

  'Scott? What is it?' Steve demanded. The door was opened from the other side and Scott stood there, before motioning behind him. They carefully filed in, before they all stood staring at what they were faced with.

  Inside the 'lab' was machinery that seemed to be working on a very large suit of armour. It vaguely appeared to be a much larger version of what Crossbones was wearing on their first encounter.

  'I reckon this might be a case for false advertising, guys,' Scott said. Their eyes scanned the room for any sign of Crossbones or Vielka.

  'There,' Bucky murmured, motioning towards a gangway over on the furthest wall of the lab, she was standing next to Crossbones, who was talking to the Viscount with Red close by. Steve noted that Crossbones seemed annoyed at the Viscount, by the way he was talking and gesturing.

  Within seconds of finally spotting her, they were fired upon as a small group of soldiers spotted them.

  They split up, trying to find cover or return fire. Bucky didn't hesitate to try and make his way to Vielka.

  'Bucky! Wait!' Steve shouted, noticing his friend charge through the heavy fire. He turned to try and offer him covering fire, but he was soon out of ammo. He threw his shield at a soldier who tried to attack him from the side, catching it again, before running after Bucky.

  Bucky was fighting his way towards Vielka, and Steve could see he wasn't going to let anything get in his way. T'Challa was also trying to reach her, or at least he was trying to support Bucky, as he managed to get ahead of the Winter Soldier, before tackling one of Crossbones' men before he could fire upon Bucky.

  Steve realised he wouldn't be able to stop Bucky, and looked ahead to see Crossbones starting to look for a way out, as Sam soared through the air, opening fire upon him, Red and the Viscount. Several soldiers moved into protect him, while Vielka's eyes hadn't moved from Bucky.

  Steve threw his shield again, stopping two more in their tracks, Bucky hurdling them easily, before skidding to a halt and looking up to the gangway where Vielka stood.

  'Corporal! Deal with him!' Crossbones shouted as Red and two others began to try and usher him away to safety. 'Destroy him!'

  'We mustn't let him get away!' T'Challa implored as he fended off two more soldiers.

  'But what about Vielka?' Wanda asked, using her powers to collect parts of machinery and fling them at anyone who tried to get too close to her.

  'I'll get Vielka. You guys stop him.' Bucky looked to Steve as he slid to a stop beside him. Steve eyed Vielka, who was slowly drawing her swords, before he glanced at Bucky.

  He wasn't going to give her up, no matter what he said, Steve could see that now. 'Take care.'

  'You too.'

  Steve sped after T'Challa and Natasha, who were already in pursuit of Crossbones and Red. Sam, Clint and Wanda close behind him.

  'You sure you don't want some help,' Scott asked, making Bucky jump slightly when he realised Antman was on hi
s shoulder.

  'You think you could?' Bucky scoffed, turning his eyes back to Vielka.

  Scott was quiet for a moment, before he jumped from Bucky's shoulder and landed on the ground full sized. 'Probably not.' With that he took off after the others.

  Bucky watched as Vielka tilted her head slightly, it was like a cat analysing its prey before it attacked. 'Vielka, you know this is not what you want!' he shouted.

  She didn't answer him, but jumped from the gangway to the ground, landing in a crouch, her swords held out to her sides as she stared at him again. The same lifeless, golden-brown eyes bore into him as they had at their last encounter.