“Do you know me?” Steve asked softly.

There was a hesitant pause before the man across from us answered. “You’re Steve. I read about you in a museum.” He seemed unsteady, as though the mere sight of us had shaken him even beyond the usual shock of having someone suddenly appear in your apartment.

Steve kept his tone level and calm. “I know you’re nervous and you have plenty of reason to be. But you’re lying.”

James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes’s eyes rapidly darted around the studio apartment. “How did you…” he trailed off, unsure how to phrase the question. We’d stepped in through a portal behind him as he’d been putting some groceries away in his ancient-looking fridge.

I shot him a smile and raised a hand. “Sorry, that was me. Magic portal,” I said, looking around.

The wallpaper was yellowed and peeling, the tiles on the splashback of the small kitchenette were badly chipped, with several almost completely missing. All of the windows were papered over with newspaper, the thin barrier letting some light in but completely obscuring the outside world from view. At the front door, a salvaged wooden pallet leaned against the wall next to shelves made of a collection of loose planks and grey cinderblocks.

“Where are we, anyway?” I asked and Bucky blinked at the question, slightly confused. “What city?” I clarified.

“Bucharest.”

I ‘hmm’ed quietly. Steve glanced at me for a moment before turning his attention back to Bucky. “You pulled me from the river. Why?” As he spoke, he leant down slowly, putting down his shield and propping it up against the wall next to a rusted radiator. He took a cautious step forward, one hand outstretched, palm up, like you might approach a wild animal.

Bucky took a matching step back toward the front door, keeping his stance wide and his centre of gravity low, ready to respond to an attack or turn tail and run in an instant. “I don’t know.” He looked distressed.

“Yes, you do.”

There was another tense moment where nobody spoke. After a few seconds, Bucky deflated slightly. “I don’t remember everything. It’s… hazy. Like a dream. Like it happened to someone else.”

“What do you remember?” Steve pressed.

“…your mom’s name was Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.” His features softened, a wistful smile crossing his face, and he let out a soft chuckle.

Steve smiled back. “Can’t read that in a museum.”

Bucky’s face stilled, tension suddenly returning, and he looked down at the floor. “You should leave. It’s not safe to be around me.” I saw the fingers of his metal hand, mostly hidden by the sleeve of his jacket, ball into a fist.

“I’m not going anywhere, Buck.”

I touched Steve on the shoulder, stepping lightly past him to get Bucky’s attention. “It’s the HYDRA programming, right? What they made you.”

“Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there,” he ground out. “I’m dangerous.”

“Someone just has to come in, say the right activation phrases and you’ll be him again. The Winter Soldier.”

He nodded slowly, a pained expression on his face.

“I think I can fix you,” I said. “Make it so you never have to become like that ever again.”

“Wanda, I don’t…” Steve started, eyes widening slightly in alarm.

“I can. You know I can. You remember what happened in New Delhi? That was just me doing something on the spur of the moment.” I met his gaze challengingly, silently willing him to agree. “If I sit down with him properly, I can go in and scrub out what HYDRA put there. He can just be Bucky again. You trusted me once already to find him. You can trust me with this, too.”

“I don’t know you,” Bucky said.

“I’m hoping to change that. I’m a friend. I know what you’ve been through and I want to help.”

Steve looked back and forth between Bucky and me, brow furrowed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Whatever they did to his head, it’d be better for him to see a doctor,” he hedged.

I paused, scrambling slightly for a convincing response, but both of us were caught off guard by Bucky’s snort. “A doctor’s not going to be able to fix me,” he said bitterly.

Nodding, I carefully took a couple of steps forward. Bucky didn’t move away, but I wasn’t sure if that’s because he was okay with letting me get closer or if it was only because he was running out of room to back up into. “I know what you mean. HYDRA had me, too. Experimented on me, tried to turn me into a weapon. I still have nightmares sometimes about what they did.”

Memories of nights spent curled up in a ball, crying until I passed out from exhaustion, my body in so much pain I could barely move, rose in my mind unbidden. The feeling of being trapped. A tearing sensation. The squelch of soggy meat. The satisfaction in Dr List’s voice. I realised tears were threatening the corners of my eyes and I hastily rubbed them away, banishing the unwanted thoughts. It wasn’t that bad, I told myself. I was just using the shared experience to connect with him, that’s all. Back into the vault. Kerplunk.

“…I don’t know if I can be fixed.”

“We can try,” I said, taking another step toward him. I was standing close enough that I could reach out and touch him now, if I tried to. “Isn’t trying better? Otherwise, what’s the point of all of this? Why run from HYDRA if they’ve already won?”

Bucky raised his eyes from the floor and looked at me, searching my features for… something. I’m not sure what. His gaze flicked over to Steve briefly before he nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I asked. When he nodded again, I turned to look back at Steve. “Okay?”

My companion’s expression was hard to read. On the one hand, he seemed extremely reluctant to let me go poking around in his friend’s head. On the other, there was a distinct hunger there, like the conflicting emotions of a starving man when presented with a plate of possibly-poisoned food. After a few moments, he inclined his head a fraction. “Okay.”

A few minutes later, Bucky and I sat knee-to-knee on a pair of wooden chairs that had been retrieved from under a tiny table that rested against the far wall of the studio apartment. Nearby, Steve sat on the edge of Bucky’s bed, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, watching intently.

“Close your eyes,” I instructed him. “Relax your muscles. Try to clear your mind, if you can. Don’t think of anything in particular.” I’d never done this before, of course, so I had no idea if ‘clearing his mind’ would actually make this any easier, but it just seemed like the right sort of thing to say. If Steve started to think I had no idea what I was doing and put a stop to this, I’d miss my shot.

Bucky complied, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths. I did the same, raising my hands to frame the pendant at my neck between my fingers. Off to the side, I heard Steve inhale sharply as I channelled magic into the Mind Stone. At once, my consciousness expanded outward and I could sense the two of them as brilliant points of light in my awareness.

I concentrated on Bucky in front of me, pushing forward into his mind and narrowing my focus until the brightness of his thoughts surrounded me. Instead of reaching for his senses or disturbing his surface thoughts, as I’d done with others, I plunged deeper in, diving into the depths and utterly submerging myself in his mind.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for—I was mostly just hoping I’d know it when I saw it. Pouring more of myself into him, I struggled for a moment to make sense of the swirling morass of light around me. It seemed to have an internal structure or texture to it, but I couldn’t really understand what I was looking at. As I focused, trying to grasp it, it suddenly snapped into a form I could comprehend and I found myself seemingly elsewhere.

I could tell that what was around me wasn’t real. Well, ‘not real’ wasn’t exactly accurate either. It was real in a sense, but what I was seeing and feeling was a product of my own mind’s interpretation of Bucky’s. Or maybe it was his mind’s interpretation of itself? Reply hazy, try again later. Either way, while there was a distinct dissonance between my senses and how I was perceiving the inside of Bucky’s mind, nevertheless I found myself standing in a long corridor in some sort of facility. My awareness of my physical body was dulled but still present, similar to when I’d projected myself using with the Mind Stone.

The walls and floor looked like solid concrete, pockmarked and dulled with a layer of grime. Steel grates set into the floor ran along the edges of the walls, bundles of power cables running below them. Several doors lined the corridor as it stretched off in either direction—thick, steel affairs set deep into the concrete. Between them were other small features—a series of what looked like emergency lights, currently off, speakers for a PA system, and the occasional boxy security camera. Was this built from a memory of a HYDRA facility? A place where Bucky had been kept as the Winter Soldier, maybe?

Cautiously stepping over to the closest door, I reached out and pulled at the handle. Locked. I briefly considered trying to bust it open but, when it came down to it, it was too risky. I had no idea what this all represented. If these corridors were Bucky’s mind, damaging a door might inadvertently damage him somehow. Maybe the doors were locked for a reason. Or maybe he was behind one? Either way, I’d be better off doing some exploring and trying to get a better understanding of this place first before I did anything rash.

I picked a direction at random and started walking, following the corridor and staying alert to any signs of movement. Passing a pair of side passages, I paused to look down each one before continuing. After a while, I reached a T intersection and, after inspecting my options and not seeing any discernible difference between them, turned left and kept walking.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

This place wasn’t what I was expecting at all. In the original timeline, the only time we got a peek at someone’s mental landscape like this was Wanda’s herself, a mostly featureless white void with only a small section of ruined building in it. Then again, that was the mind of a Wanda that had been suppressed and trapped inside herself, artificially limited by the dreamwalker that was possessing her.

Bucky’s mind, by contrast, felt both enormous and tiny at the same time. The corridors seemed to go on forever, and, when I looked up, instead of a roof the walls of the facility stretched an impossibly far distance above me, eventually ending in what looked like a blank white void. I had a feeling that, were I capable of flight, from the top I’d see a labyrinth—an endless maze of corridors and rooms stretching to the horizon.

Despite the open space above me, the corridors felt tight and claustrophobic, the walls looming oppressively above me. There was a pressure to the air, the same way that there was when you were deep underground, knowing there were thousands of tons of rock above you. I’d been inside the Great Pyramid of Giza once in my former life, as part of a tour group, and I got the same feeling of weight here as I did there.

My ears pricked up as I heard a soft thunk up ahead. Breaking into a quick jog, I rounded a corner just in time to see a steel door gently swing closed, as if someone on the other side were trying to make as little noise as possible. I lunged at it, grabbing the handle just before it finished closing. There was a gasp of surprise and fear from the other side and the door resisted my attempt to open it as someone fought to pull it the last centimetre closed from the inside.

In what might be one of my least graceful moments recently, I braced a foot on the wall next to the doorframe and yanked on the door as hard as I could. I had managed to muscle it open a few inches when the resistance on the other side stopped and the door flung open completely, sending me stumbling back. Clinging helplessly to the handle, I was only just barely successful in my attempt to not fall on my ass.

Once I’d gotten my feet back under me, I darted through the open doorway into a darkened room, casting my eyes around to spot my unseen quarry. It looked like some sort of ancient computer lab with large, blocky workstations covered in dials and trays of punchcards, and a series of huge magnetic tape reels dominating one wall. The omnipresent light of the corridor seemed to follow me into the room, brightening it as I stepped inside, eyes and ears straining for any hint of movement.

The barely audible sound of something scraping on the floor beneath a desk tucked behind one of the workstations caught my attention and I carefully circled around, bending down just enough to look under it from a distance. My gaze was met by a pair of frightened eyes that flinched, then softened slightly in puzzlement as their owner took in my appearance.

“Bucky?” I ventured.

His eyes flew open in panic again and he slammed a finger against his lips, shushing me. I held up my hands, palms outward, then stepped closer to him. As I drew within grabbing distance, Bucky lunged out and seized me by the forearm, forcefully pulling me under the table with him. I let him—narrowly managing to avoid braining myself on the edge of the table—and hunkered down shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Now that I was closer, I could see his face looked a little younger and less weathered, and that the hand he’d grabbed me with was the only one he had. Instead of a metal arm, the left sleeve of what I now recognised was a dark green military-style shirt hung limp and empty.

“Bucky?” I asked again, whispering this time.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he hissed quietly, his words barely audible. “He’s coming.”

“Who’s coming? The Winter Soldier?”

He shot me a fearful look and nodded. “He’s always nearby. I—” He went to say something but stopped, his head jerking back as he listened. Just on the verge of my perception, I heard quiet but even footsteps coming down the corridor. Bucky looked back at me, knuckles whitening as he held my arm in a death grip. “You didn’t close the door,” he said, his tone laced with horror.

I reached over with my free hand to pry his fingers off my arm and he let go, still looking at me with an expression like I’d just murdered his family in front of him. Extricating myself from under the table, I stood up just in time to see the Winter Soldier enter the room. He paused just inside the doorway, his stance wide as he regarded me with a cold, dispassionate expression. If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it.

It was Bucky, but it wasn’t. The Soldier was taller—larger than life, well over six feet—and outfitted in black body armour under a military harness, with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. One sleeve was missing from the outfit, in order to fully show off the arm made of overlapping bands of metal, a bright red star emblazoned on the shoulder.

“Sorry, soldier boy.” I smirked, raising my hands. “I’m afraid you’re not the scariest thing in here anymore.”

He was already moving before I finished my sentence, ducking catlike to one side and reaching to his waist to draw a machine pistol and train it on me in one fluid motion. He squeezed the trigger and the weapon spat a stream of bullets, the sound echoing violently in the confined space. The projectiles deflected harmlessly off my already-conjured shield, robbed of their momentum. To his credit, he didn’t seem fazed and closed the gap between us, dropping the pistol and whipping out a large combat knife. I dodged back from the first two swings and caught his arm with a flicker of telekinetic energy on the third, but he simply dropped the knife into his waiting empty hand, reversing the grip and trying to disembowel me with a vicious backslash.

I was fairly certain that he would have caught me with that trick, too, if my reflexes hadn’t been heightened by the Heart-Shaped Herb. As it was, I dodged back again and the blade narrowly missed my gut. My power bubbled up inside me and I thrust my hands toward him, lifting him bodily off the ground with telekinetic power and slamming him backwards into the wall next to the door. He struggled, but couldn’t break free from the web of red chaos magic that held him immobile.

“It’s safe,” I said, ducking down to peer under the desk. “Come out.”

Cautiously, Bucky emerged from his hiding space, looking disbelievingly between me and the Winter Soldier, pinned to the concrete like an insect caught on flypaper. He shook his head with a scoff. “It’s not safe. Never safe. I’ve beaten him before. He won’t stop.”

I nodded. “Well then, let’s stop him permanently.”

Stepping over to the Winter Soldier, I reached out and pulled a handgun free from the holster strapped to his leg. I cocked it, flicked off the safety, pointed it at my captive, and paused to take a deep breath. This wasn’t real, I reminded myself. It was only a representation of what was happening inside Bucky’s head. A metaphor. I wasn’t about to shoot someone; I was erasing the Winter Soldier persona so that he could move on. Even knowing that, my hand trembled a little and squeezing the trigger took a lot more effort than I’d been hoping it would. The sound of the gun going off seemed deafening, echoing down the corridors of Bucky’s mind. The second and third shots were easier. He jerked and spasmed with each impact, then was gone, vanishing between blinks of my eyes.

Turning back to Bucky, I frowned slightly when I saw him still shaking his head. “What?”

“It’s not that simple. You think he’d go away that easily? He’ll be back. He always comes back.”

Both of us flinched in surprise as the ancient PA system crackled to life, Russian words spoken by an unfamiliar voice echoing through the facility. “Желание. Ржавый.”

Bucky’s eyes widened in terror, pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he rounded on me. “What did you do?!”

“Семнадцать. Рассвет.”

I looked around in alarm as the words continued. “Uh, I’m guessing that isn’t normal?”

“Печь. Девять.”

Bucky dropped to the floor, clutching at the side of his head. “He’s coming,” he ground out, spitting the words through gritted teeth.

“Добросердечный. Возвращение на Родину.”

Backing up a few paces, I readied myself. Was Bucky about to turn into the Winter Soldier? Or did he mean he was coming from outside again? I moved so that I could watch both the man on his knees in the middle of the room as well as the open door. This shouldn’t be a problem. Restraining the Winter Soldier had been easy enough. All I needed to do was stay alert and catch him again as soon as he showed up, then I could reassess.

“Один. Товарный вагон.”

As the final word was spoken, the omnipresent lighting died and the room was plunged into darkness. A fraction of a second later the emergency lights kicked in, casting everything in a harsh red glare. Bucky had dropped his hand to his side, sagging down in defeat. Several seconds crawled by in tense silence before the stillness was broken by the sound of footsteps echoing in the corridor outside the room once more. I nodded to myself, feeling confident, and went to say something to Bucky to reassure him. Suddenly, however, I found myself unable to breathe—let alone speak—as a crushing vice clamped down on my windpipe.

I flailed impotently in surprise, reached up to claw at my throat as the pressure increased. In a panic, I flung myself away from Bucky’s mind and reached for my connection to my own body. Back in his apartment, my eyes flew open to see a familiar cold, dispassionate expression inches away from my face, metal fingers digging into my flesh as the Winter Soldier tried to choke the life from me.

--

T’Challa entered his father’s study, closing the door behind him. The king, his father, stood up from his desk with a small smile as he approached him. “T’Challa.”

Holding out his arms, he embraced him briefly before retreating a step. “The briefs on the Red Woman and her brother have been circulated to all War Dogs. They will be found.” He found himself scowling as he said the words, a burning anger rising in his chest. Wanda had threatened his father, his sister, and then just walked away. She would not escape his grasp. He would repay every word, every gesture.

“We must tread carefully. Their powers cannot be underestimated. Have we received any information confirming the details of her warning?”

A flash of annoyance passed across T’Challa’s face. “Baba, I do not know why you are so willing to entertain anything that that treacherous woman said.” She had lied and manipulated her way into the palace, threatened all of them, and then heaped insult on top of the indignities she had already inflicted by stealing the Heart-Shaped Herb right from their sacred garden. “Our American War Dogs have confirmed the existence of the man the Red Woman spoke of—this Erik Stevens. The Killmonger,” he grudgingly admitted.

King T’Chaka nodded slowly to himself, a heavy weight seeming to settle on his shoulders. Suddenly, he looked older. Vulnerable. Why had the Red Woman’s words shaken his father so?

“My son,” his father said finally. “There is something I must tell you. A secret I have kept for too long.”

“Baba?”

“My brother took a War Dog assignment in America.” As he spoke, he walked slowly over to the window, looking out over the shining skyline of Birnin Zana. “I placed Zuri there to observe, unbeknownst to him. N’Jobu was my brother, and it gave me peace to know that he was being watched over. However… he fell in love with an American woman. They had a child.”

T’Challa inhaled sharply at that. “She was telling the truth? I have a cousin?” It seemed that a devil like her could wield the truth as a weapon as easily as a lie, after all.

“The hardships your uncle saw there radicalised him. He believed strongly that Wakanda should provide vibranium weapons to those that suffered, so they could fight back against their oppressors, but knew I would not support him. So he betrayed us. He betrayed Wakanda.”

“No!” T'Chaka flinched back.

“N’Jobu helped Klaue steal the vibranium. It was his plot.”

The prince felt his face growing hot, a hoarseness to his voice that wasn’t there before. “No, no, no…”

“I went to him. Confronted him. I only intended to take him home—to make him face the council, inform them of his crimes.” His father paused, looking sadly back toward him. “He would not allow it. He drew a weapon. I killed him.”

It felt like T’Chaka had been punched in the gut. He looked at his father—how could this be? How could he have killed his own brother?

“And the child?” he asked. Though he already knew the answer, he needed to hear his father admit to it.

“We left him.”

“Why? Why didn’t you bring the boy home?” A few moments passed in silence, his father simply hanging his head in shame. “Why, Baba?”

“He… he was the truth I chose to omit.”

“You abandoned him.”

“I chose our people. I chose Wakanda. Our future depended on Wakanda remaining hidden. Remaining strong. N’Jobu was dead. It would have served no purpose to sully his memory except to weaken us.”

T’Challa’s emotions raged beneath the surface—anger, disbelief, sadness. This was all too much. His jaw worked silently for a few moments before he ground out his next words. “The Red Woman… she spoke so cryptically because she knew what you had done. How? How is that possible?”

“I do not know.”

“This man, this Killmonger. He is a monster of your making. You were wrong to abandon him. We must take responsibility. We must right this wrong.”

“T’Challa…”

“I will find my cousin. I will bring him home.”

His father’s expression was grave. “The Red Woman spoke of things she could not know. What if she was right about the threat he poses, as well?”

T’Challa set his jaw stubbornly. “I will find the truth. I will bring him home. And if he is truly beyond reason, if he is lost to the hate in his heart… then I will do what must be done.”