Chapter 208: Winter Has Come

13th March 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

And I was right, the damn meeting took hours. No wonder she didn’t to do it at home; Wanda and Rose would have distracted me halfway through. Still, Selene seemed to have things in hand while I was gone.

Meanwhile, I was driving into the usual parking place where the portal was, so that I could teleport home. Suddenly, I felt the car being destroyed by a bomb. I had teleported out easily enough, the explosion didn’t even do anything more than surprise me. Someone had tried to kill me, or at least, someone had tried to kill Morgan Evanshade. I watched hidden as a man walked towards my destroyed car – I had arrived in Selene’s car and chose to return using one of the company cars which wasn’t enchanted in any way. He was holding a machine gun in his hand, but what was more noticeable was his mask and his metal arm.

Huh, seems like Hydra is making moves again. I was curious why they would send the Winter Soldier against me. There were two possibilities, it’s either, that they knew that I was the Morrigan and were stupid enough to think that the Winter Soldier would be enough to kill me, somehow, or the most likely explanation, they wanted to assassinate Morgan Evanshade. In this identity, I was barely more than a writer. I made a point of not involving myself in my company, preferring to make up stories and publish them. I didn’t pose a danger to their plans, meaning that they wanted the company, or more accurately, they wanted my shares of the company. Truth be told, barely twenty percent of the company existed outside mine or Selene’s control. I, as Morgan Evanshade, possessed around 60% of the company, Selene had around 20% and the rest were spread out across dozens if not hundreds of investors.

Hydra was obviously trying to buy my shares, to have the biggest media company, which is notorious for being impartial, in their pocket, meaning that they would have influence over millions, if not billions of people.

Selene had mentioned that Hydra has been trying to pressure her into buying her shares, but since ‘Morgan Evanshade’ refused to let up control over the company, they were obviously trying desperate measures, especially because the general opinion was negative towards SHIELD which is really bad for the organization hiding inside of it.

However, this is just a theory and I’ll need to see Selene to confirm everything. I wasn’t going to get much out of Barnes after I knock him out. However, this gives me an opportunity. I could see multiple plans against Hydra using him. He could be the ideal soldier. Turning Hydra’s own boogeyman against them would be very poetic. Once I fix up the mess that his mind probably is, he’ll want revenge for the years of torture and brainwashing. Considering that they even made him kill the Starks, people that he saw as his friends.

I watched as the Winter Soldier slowly walked towards the car, probably to confirm the kill. He had his weapon out and pointed at the vehicle. He looked confident, until he found no one inside the car, and he stiffened.

I chuckled at his expression. The man obviously heard me, as he turned around trying to shoot me. I conjured a black sword and redirected every bullet in what probably looked like an impressive display of speed and reflexes.

I smirked at him, “Well, if it isn’t Bucky Barnes. I haven’t seen you in a very long time. Don’t get me wrong, we never met, but we have a lot of common acquaintances.”

The brainwashed man didn’t look affected by my words in any way, and kept walking towards me. I blurred at him with a very impressive speed, and he was able to keep up with me slightly dodging my thrust. He tried to shoot me once more and I swung my sword down towards the machine gun, cutting it in half.

Truth be told, I wanted to test him. I could have just knocked him out using my telekinesis, but I wanted to see the best way to use Bucky Barnes as a weapon against Hydra.

The man didn’t even blink at the loss of his weapon and retrieved a pistol from his holster and tried to shoot me once more. I dodged the first two shots before grabbing his arm and exerting pressure on a nerve, getting him to drop the gun. The Winter Soldier tried to grab it with his other hand, but I quickly used my sword to cut it in half as well.

I stepped back and the assassin looked at me thoughtfully. He was probably thinking about whether he should continue the mission to kill me, or if he should escape, “I wonder how much of you is left, look at you, you’re barely even human anymore. Look how much they took from you.”

I use my telepathy and try to enter his mind. At first, there seems to be some sort of mechanical protection. Huh, Hydra must have equipped him when they found out that telepaths were a thing. I was easily able to break through them, and what I saw disgusted me. Everything was shredded to pieces. The memories seemed to be there, but they were disconnected from the mind by the threat of pain. It was like the moment he even attempted to remember he would be in agony, and after a while he just chose to not remember to spare himself the pain. This was a mess that would take me time and all of my concentration to fix, especially considering how delicate this was going to be, not a lot of time, but I can’t do it in the middle of a fight. In the middle of his mind, I saw commands, words given to him, that have higher meaning, programming in case he ever went rogue. They were in there, set in stone, and would turn him into a blank state. I needed to see them at work to be able to destroy them properly. I memorized the words and got out of his mind, though not completely to be able to monitor the effects of the programming on him. All of this took less than a second.

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I look at my opponent and I see him deciding to complete the mission. Without any sort of long-range weapons left he seemed to choose melee combat. He took out a knife, one that I recognized and that made me furious. It was a jagged dagger that seemed to change color whenever it moved. This was a magical artifact, one that I knew intimately, this was Rule Breaker, Medea’s crowning achievement in magic.

Medea was an apprentice of mine a long time ago. I was the Sorcerer Supreme back then and went by the name Hecate. She was one of my favorites. Her story was a tragic one; she was a princess that was sold in marriage by her father, the King, for a very impressive dowry. She was opposed to the match, preferring the company of women over men, but she couldn’t defy her father. Her new husband, Jason, as soon as they were bound in marriage, killed her father and her immediate family, declared himself the King and imprisoned her, saying that she was the one who killed her family.

However, the citizens didn’t like Jason usurping the throne nor Medea who they thought had betrayed her family for power, so they chased them out of the city to Corinth, the city that I had created. Jason then wanted to do the same to the King of Corinth, and almost succeeded in seducing the King’s daughter. Medea, wanting her revenge, waited for the moment that Jason married the other princess, freeing her from her bindings to Jason. She then, in an impressive use of accidental magic, burned down the entire wedding, killing every single attendant which included the royal family.

I had found her, a broken girl, having lost her entire family. I learnt of the wedding and offered her a home and an apprenticeship. She accepted, and boy was she a prodigy in magic. She wanted to prevent being bound once more. She spent decades learning and experimenting until she enchanted a dagger, her father’s last gift, into a magic nullifying weapon. The blade, which is brittle looking, was almost indestructible, and could carve rock as if it was butter. But the most impressive part was the fact that anyone holding the dagger was immune to any magical effect. Of course, there was a limit, but if a normal wizard sent a spell at her, the dagger would stop it.

This also meant that it would work against mutants. Hydra must have found the dagger somehow and found out that it stopped mutant powers. They outfitted their assassin with it, so that he would be able to fight mutants easily.

I was starting to get angry as he lunged at me, and I grabbed his hand, used the same nerve pressure trick and took the dagger from his hand.

I glared at him, “This doesn’t belong to you.”

I put the dagger into my pocket dimension for safe keeping and dodged as the man tried to punch me with his metal arm. I held his metal arm and started to squeeze. The arm was surprisingly resilient. Ah, it was made of adamantium, I hadn’t noticed that before. The metal was starting to creak, and I looked him in the eyes before doing a back flip and kicking him in the chin, sending him flying back.

The man’s mask had flown away, leaving me with the blank face of Bucky Barnes. I looked at him and smirked, “Longing.”

I spoke that word in Russian and Barnes seemed to understand exactly what I was doing. These were his trigger words. I could feel his mind blanking slowly, his neurons firing thoughts left and right. The Winter Soldier seemed to be frantic and started running towards me, I dodged a punch to the left and kicked him in the knees making him kneel, “Rusted”

Barnes seemed to struggle even more, and he tried to flip himself up. I let him and he didn’t expect the lack of resistance, which unbalanced him. I kicked him in the stomach, “Furnace.”

I could feel his mind slowly being squeezed shut. His connections to any memories were severed from his core personality. With every word, any memories, any thoughts he had were removed, leaving only a shell that would await orders.

He got up, ready to fight me once more, “Daybreak”.

The man seemed to run desperately at me, tried to punch me again. I stepped to the side, dodging, “Seventeen”

He tried to punch me with his metal arm, but I grabbed his arm, “Benign.”

I flipped him onto his back, “Nine.”

I could feel his mind closing. He was nothing more than the weapon now. He forgot about his current orders, about Hydra. He was barely more than a rabid dog; at the end of the sequence of words, he knew that he should expect pain and that he would lose something fundamental inside him. I pitied him, truly, but this was necessary for me to see the exact patterns the brainwashing takes for me to dismantle the triggers entirely.

There was barely any fighting style left in him. He was barely more than a savage beast. It reminded me of how Logan usually fought. The Winter Soldier struggled back and leapt at me. I grabbed him from the air and slammed him down, “Homecoming”

I held him down as he kept struggling, “One”

He was able to escape my hold by kicking my hand. He looked at me, with a savage glare, with his adamantium arm up in the air, ready to punch me, “Freight car.”

This was it; I could feel whatever humanity in him disappear, leaving only Hydra’s asset. I could feel him shut down completely. The man stayed frozen, with his arm raised before standing down and giving me a blank look, “Ready to comply.”

“Remove your telepathic protections and kneel down.”

The man did as I asked without even questioning me. He removed a small metal object from behind his ear and knelt down before me.

I gave him a pitying look, “I’m sorry James, but this is going to hurt.”

I grabbed his head and entered his mind properly.