Can't get enough? Why not read ahead?
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!
Your support means the world to me. Check it out and enjoy the story even more!
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
"Whoa."
Simon Boren let out a low, appreciative whistle as he stepped closer to the frosted glass of the cryo-chamber.
"Now that is one seriously dangerous-looking guy."
He couldn't take his eyes off the figure frozen inside. Even locked away in a block of high-tech ice, the Winter Soldier practically radiated a lethal, terrifying aura. The messy, shoulder-length dark hair, the sharp jawline set into a permanently cold expression, and, most noticeably, that jaw-dropping cybernetic metal arm gleaming under the harsh laboratory lights, everything about this guy screamed elite assassin. You didn't need to read his classified file to know he was the kind of nightmare you never wanted to meet in a dark alley.
But the second Simon turned around to crack another casual joke, the words died instantly in his throat. He found himself staring directly into Nick Fury's intense, single eye.
The atmosphere in the room shifted so fast it gave Simon psychological whiplash. Fury didn't say a single word, but he didn't have to. The Director's face was a completely blank canvas, calm, stone-faced, and utterly unreadable. Yet somehow, that total lack of emotion made him ten times more intimidating. It literally felt like the temperature in the freezing vault had plummeted another ten degrees.
The playful smirk vanished from Simon's face. He cleared his throat nervously, quickly straightened the lapels of his insanely expensive tailored suit, and forced himself into full professional mode. Whoever this one-eyed boss was, Simon was willing to bet his life savings that he wasn't the type to tolerate sarcasm on the clock.
"So, he's the patient?" Simon asked, clearing his throat again and gesturing toward the pod. "The one you want... adjusted?"
"Yes," Fury replied, his voice clipping the air like a pair of shears. "Begin."
But before Simon could even lift a finger, Fury took a heavy step forward, his shadow falling over the specialist. "I want a complete review first."
Simon raised a curious eyebrow. "A review?"
"You're going to read through everything," Fury commanded, his tone completely steady but leaving zero room for argument. "Every major memory. Every single relevant event." His lone eye drifted back to the frozen super-soldier. "Start from the exact moment he fell from that train."
The underlying message was loud and clear: Fury didn't do blind trust. He wanted receipts. He wanted direct, undeniable confirmation of what was inside this asset's head before they started rewriting his soul.
"Got it. I'll pull the memories out and narrate the important parts for you as I go," Simon said, nodding.
"Good. Do it."
Simon took a deep breath. To be completely honest, this wasn't exactly his dream assignment. Binge-watching decades of someone else's trauma was exhausting, tedious work. Reviewing nearly a century's worth of a brainwashed assassin's darkest secrets? That sounded like a total nightmare.
But hey, the paycheck Fury had offered was absolutely ridiculous. It was the kind of mind-boggling money that made boredom, and a little psychological horror, incredibly easy to stomach. Besides, one quick look around this ghost facility told Simon everything he needed to know. This wasn't some basic government gig. This was a deep, dark black-site project operating way above his pay grade. Disappointing a man with this much hidden power was a certified death wish.
"Alright," Simon muttered, rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers. "Let's see what kind of skeletons you've got rattling around in here."
Stepping right up to the edge of the cryogenic pod, Simon held out his right hand. With a quiet breath, he activated the Memo-Memo Fruit.
Instantly, the air around his hand seemed to warp. His fingers passed directly through the solid, reinforced glass as if it were nothing but thin air. No resistance, no cracking sound, nothing. Then, his hand slipped straight through the Winter Soldier's frozen skin and bone, sinking deep into the man's skull.
The sight was profoundly creepy, looking like a scene ripped straight out of a high-budget sci-fi horror movie. Standing a few feet back, Maria Hill instinctively crossed her arms, her brow furrowing in disgust. Even though she'd seen all kinds of wild Devil Fruit powers since the world went crazy, some abilities were just plain unsettling to watch in real life.
Fury, however? The man didn't even blink. Compared to the cosmic madness and alien threats he'd dealt with over his career, a guy sticking his hand into someone's brain barely even registered as weird anymore. For Fury, reality-bending magic was just another Tuesday.
Inside Simon's mind, his eyes tightly shut, the real magic began. The moment his power locked onto the Winter Soldier's brain cells, an absolute tidal wave of raw data slammed into his consciousness.
It was overwhelming. Thousands upon thousands of memories, decades of frozen time, and multiple fractured lifetimes all hit him at once. But the Memo-Memo Fruit was a masterpiece of an ability; it automatically grabbed the chaotic mess, sorted it into chronological order, and indexed it perfectly.
Suddenly, a mental movie theater fired up inside Simon's head, the reels spinning at an impossible, dizzying speed. Scenes flashed past in a blur of vivid color and dark shadows: Bloody battlefields and roaring explosions from a war fought long ago. Top-secret assassination missions executed in the dead of night with lethal precision. The agonizing screams of forced brainwashing sessions inside dark HYDRA labs. Lastly, the desperate, failed attempts to break free and escape the monster he was becoming.
The exact millisecond the memories started pouring into Simon's brain, the easygoing smile vanished from his face. Shock, pure, icy, unfiltered shock, slammed into his chest like a freight train. 'Holy hell...'
Simon's mind scrambled to process the data. This guy wasn't just old; he had been born during the First World War. By all logic and medical science, he should have been pushing a hundred years old, a frail old man in a nursing home. Instead, the body floating in front of him was frozen in its absolute physical prime, looking like a GQ model built out of steel and bad intentions. It made zero sense.
Then, as the memories blurred past at hyper-speed, the missing puzzle pieces violently clicked into place.
Simon's internal eyes widened in absolute disbelief. 'Wait a minute… No way… No freaking way!?!'
The man locked in this underground freezer wasn't just some random, highly classified super-soldier HYDRA had whipped up in a lab.
This was James Buchanan Barnes.
Bucky Barnes.
Captain America's childhood best friend. A founding member of the legendary Howling Commandos. One of the most fiercely celebrated, tragic war heroes in American history.
The reason the guy's face had felt so hauntingly familiar from the start finally made sense. Simon had seen that sharp jawline and intense gaze a thousand times in historical archives, school textbooks, and gritty wartime documentaries. The sheer reality of it sent a massive wave of vertigo washing over him. Against every single historical record, Bucky Barnes hadn't died when he fell from that snowy train in 1945.
Instead of freezing to death in the wilderness, he had been dragged out of the snow by HYDRA.
Then came the twisted science. The agonizing surgeries. The attachment of that terrifying cybernetic arm. The brutal, systematic shattering of his mind until nothing was left but the Winter Soldier. A phantom. An urban legend. A living, breathing weapon.
Objectively, the experiments had turned him into a god among men, giving him superhuman strength, near-ageless longevity, and a body that literally refused to break down. But as Simon dug deeper into the dark, twisted hallways of Bucky's mind, any lingering trace of jealousy completely evaporated.
It was replaced by pure, unadulterated horror.
HYDRA hadn't treated this man like a human being. They hadn't even treated him like a soldier. To them, Bucky Barnes was just a piece of expensive tactical equipment. A machine. Whenever they needed a high-profile target neutralized, they thawed him out, handed him a gun, pointed him at the victim, and let him loose. The second the target was dead, they dragged him back to a lab, aggressively wiped his brain until he couldn't even remember his own name, and shoved him right back into cryogenic storage until the next time they needed blood on the floor.
Over and over. Again and again. For seventy freaking years.
A chill crawled straight up Simon's spine, making his skin prickle. 'This isn't just dark,' he thought, his stomach churning. 'This is straight-up nightmare fuel.' Looking at the sheer agony of Bucky's existence, dying in that ravine in 1945 would have been a mercy.
The mental movie reel kept spinning, showing an endless, bloody montage of black-market assassinations, high-profile political eliminations, and covert operations that had shaped the modern world from the shadows.
And then….Simon froze.
His entire physical body locked up in the real world. His lungs stopped drawing air.
A specific, heavily guarded memory surfaced in the stream. For a wild, desperate second, Simon actually prayed that his Devil Fruit was malfunctioning. That he was misreading the data.
'Wait. Hold on... What the hell am I looking at right now?'
In the theater of his mind, Simon watched the memory play out. Once. Twice. Three times. No matter how many times he hit rewind, the brutal reality stayed exactly the same.
A deserted, pitch-black road. A smashed-up black sedan. Two bleeding passengers gasping for air.
Howard Stark. Maria Stark.
The scene played out with stomach-turning, crystal-clear precision. It hadn't been a tragic car accident. It had never been an accident. Every official police report, every heartbreaking newspaper headline, every solemn government statement, it was all a massive, carefully orchestrated lie.
Tony Stark's parents hadn't died from a slick road or a blown tire. They had been executed. Methodically, brutally, and with zero hesitation, by the Winter Soldier.
*Hiss!*
Simon violently sucked in a breath, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. His entire scalp went completely numb.
'Holy mother of hell! Captain America's best friend murdered Iron Man's parents!?'
The sheer, universe-shattering weight of that revelation made him genuinely dizzy. This wasn't just a classified government secret; this was a political nuclear warhead. It was the kind of toxic, explosive information that could single-handedly rip everyone involved apart, destroy global alliances, and spark a literal superhuman civil war if it ever leaked out into the public.
For a wild moment, Simon seriously considered pulling his hand out, sprinting out of the bunker, and pretending he had never seen a single thing.
But it was too late. The knowledge was now branded into his brain, and the Memo-Memo Fruit didn't have a delete button for its own user.
*Thump! Thump! Thump!*
Simon's panicked pulse was practically echoing in the quiet lab, and his sudden, rigid posture didn't escape Nick Fury's hyper-vigilant eye.
The Director's single eye narrowed instantly, tracking the sweat breaking out on Simon's forehead.
"What is it?" Fury's voice cut through the silence, entirely too calm, which somehow made it infinitely more terrifying. "What are you seeing in there?"
Simon's brain kicked into absolute overdrive, the adrenaline spiking through his system. There was a zero percent chance he was going to blurt out the truth about the Stark murders. No way. Not unless he wanted to test whether S.H.I.E.L.D. had a convenient, off-the-books incinerator built into the floorboards to make problematic witnesses disappear.
Desperate, he grabbed the quickest, most believable cover story he could think of.
"He... he's actually Bucky Barnes?" Simon gasped out, looking genuinely rattled, which wasn't hard to fake because he was currently losing his mind. He pulled his hand back slightly, staring at Fury with wide eyes. "Director, be completely honest with me. Can I still back out of this contract?"
Fury just stared at him, his expression unreadable.
Simon pressed forward, letting the nervous energy take over. "Because finding a living, breathing World War II legend locked in a secret underground cage feels exactly like the kind of top-secret mess that gets ordinary civilians permanently retired. As in, buried under a bridge."
It was a perfect lie. Anyone discovering an asset of this scale would logically be terrified for their life.
Fury remained silent for a few agonizing seconds, letting the tension stretch out until Simon's nerves were practically screaming. Finally, the Director spoke.
"I am the Director of global security," Fury said, his voice smooth and cold. "Not a terrorist."
Simon wasn't entirely convinced those two job titles were mutually exclusive, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
"As long as you comply with the non-disclosure agreement you signed," Fury continued, his tone carrying a subtle, heavy warning, "you have absolutely nothing to fear from me."
Simon forced out a shaky, hollow laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "Right. Yeah. That's... super reassuring."
It wasn't reassuring at all, but it was the best guarantee of survival he was going to get. Taking a massive, steadying breath, Simon forced his hands to stop shaking and refocused his gaze on the frosted pod.
"Fine," he muttered, rolling his shoulders to shake off the lingering dread. "I'm already neck-deep in the quicksand anyway. Let's finish this."
There was no turning back now. So, with a massive pit growing in his stomach and a heavy sense of existential doom hanging over his head, Simon plunged his hand right back through the glass and into the Winter Soldier's mind.
While digging through almost a century of black-ops trauma and psychological torture sounds like a process that should have taken hours, the reality was mind-blowing.
It took less than a single second.
That was the terrifying, broken efficiency of the Memo-Memo Fruit. Inside the weird, distorted mind-space created by Simon's power, decades of a human being's life could be indexed, sorted, and cataloged in the blink of an eye.
The second the mental extraction finished, Simon's eyes snapped open in the real world. He took a breath, composed himself, and began his verbal report immediately.
Following Fury's strict instructions to a T, he narrated the horrific timeline of what happened after Bucky Barnes plunged off that train and vanished into the snowy abyss of the ravine. He walked Fury through the HYDRA recovery team, finding him, the twisted lab experiments, the attachment of the cybernetic arm, the aggressive brainwashing, the high-profile assassinations, and the endless, freezing cryogenic cycles. He laid out the history of the Winter Soldier piece by piece, operation by operation.
Well... almost the complete history.
The exact moment Simon reached the events of December 1991, he smoothly skipped right over them.
There was no hesitation in his voice. No nervous twitch. No awkward pause. He gave absolutely zero indication to the two super-spies in the room that he was leaving out a massive chunk of data. The dark, bloody memory of Howard and Maria Stark's brutal murder remained locked away safely inside Simon's own skull.
Because Simon wasn't an idiot.
The very second he had witnessed that specific memory, he recognized its true, astronomical value. We weren't talking about millions of dollars here. We were talking about hundreds of millions. Tony Stark, the literal Iron Man, would willingly burn his entire empire to the ground and pay an unimaginable fortune just to get absolute confirmation on what had actually happened to his parents.
A secret like that wasn't just information. It was a golden, winning powerball lottery ticket, and Simon had absolutely no intention of handing it over to S.H.I.E.L.D. for free.
Fortunately for him, Fury appeared completely oblivious to the deception. The Director listened to the entire briefing in grim silence, occasionally throwing out sharp questions or demanding quick clarifications. But not once did he suspect that a massive, game-changing piece of history had just been quietly wiped from his plate.
Then came the actual, mind-numbing labor.
For the next several days, Simon was forced to stay deep inside the underground facility. And honestly? Those days were miserable. Absolutely, deeply miserable.
The Winter Soldier's lifespan stretched across nearly a hundred years, meaning his operational record was insanely long, and his deep-seated psychological damage was even worse. Every single past mission, every mental trigger, every layer of dark HYDRA conditioning, and every sleeper command hidden in his subconscious had to be microscopically examined, modified, erased, or completely rewritten.
To make matters worse, Nick Fury proved to be the ultimate nightmare client. The man was a textbook micromanager. He didn't just want the brainwashing gone; he wanted details. All the details. Simon wasn't allowed to just erase memories at random. Fury insisted on understanding the exact context behind almost every major historical operation before he would give the green light to change anything.
The process turned into an exhausting, endless loop of mental editing. Memory after memory, day after day.
By the time they reached the end, Simon felt like his brain had been shoved through a rusty industrial meat grinder. When he finally pulled his hand out of the Winter Soldier's head for the absolute last time, the sheer, crushing weight of physical and mental exhaustion hit him like a semi-truck. His face was deathly pale, his eyes were violently bloodshot, and his head was pounding to the rhythm of a heavy bassline. At that exact moment, his only goal in life was to find a bed and sleep for a literal week.
Fury, on the other hand, looked as sharp, alert, and terrifying as ever.
"So," the Director murmured, his single eye drifting over to the silent, motionless man now strapped into a heavy containment chair. "The new conditioning... is it permanent?"
Simon resisted the massive urge to groan out loud. "Yes," he muttered, his voice sounding completely drained and hollow. "It's done." He rubbed his throbbing temples, staring at the floor. "If you want to wake your pet monster up, go right ahead."
Fury didn't say anything, so Simon kept pushing through the fatigue to explain. "The old trigger words? Completely vaporized. HYDRA's original conditioning has been totally stripped out of his system. You shouldn't have to worry about any more random glitches or cognitive instability."
Then, Simon dropped the most important part. "The new directives are fully anchored into his brain. Your authority is now hardcoded directly into his behavioral framework. He answers to you, and only you. He's not going to lose control."
For a long, tense moment, Fury just stood there, staring down at the silent assassin. He was evaluating, calculating, and mapping out a million different dark scenarios in his head. Then, he finally turned his gaze back to Simon. Predictably, Fury had zero intention of testing his newly minted black-ops super-weapon in front of an outside contractor.
"You're cleared to leave," Fury said, the dismissal coming fast and cold. But before Simon could even take a step toward the exit, Fury's expression hardened into something incredibly dangerous. "However..."
Simon's shoulders immediately locked up, his survival instincts screaming.
"Remember the exact terms of your security clearance," Fury warned, his voice dropping into a register that made the entire room feel freezing cold. "If even a single syllable of what happened inside this facility ever makes it to the outside world... I personally guarantee you will spend the rest of your natural life rotting in a high-security prison that officially does not exist on this earth."
Simon forced a smile onto his face, a flawless, sleek, professional smile. The exact kind of smile you use when you are talking to a man who definitely has a collection of secret prisons.
"Director, discretion is the entire foundation of my brand," Simon said, smoothly placing a hand over his heart. "I've done delicate memory work for corrupt politicians, high-ranking tech executives, brutal cartel bosses, and people wealthy enough to buy their own sovereign nations." His smile widened just a fraction. "My client confidentiality record is completely spotless. Your secret is safe with me."
Whether Fury actually believed a word of it was anyone's guess. The Director simply gave a lazy wave of his hand, signaling that the conversation was officially over.
A massive, black-suited tactical agent immediately stepped forward out of the shadows. Seconds later, Simon found himself securely blindfolded and aggressively escorted out of the facility. One heavy steel security checkpoint after another clicked shut behind him, until his footsteps finally faded entirely into the distance.
Only after Simon had completely cleared the facility's outer perimeter did Fury finally make his move.
The Director walked slowly over to the main cryogenic control console, his heavy trench coat billowing slightly behind him. He hovered his hand over the interface for a second and then flipped the primary master switch.
Deep inside the walls, bright red warning lights began to spin and flash. The awakening sequence was officially online.
Heavy cryogenic fluid began to drain out of the pod with a loud, gurgling hiss. The massive mechanical systems hummed to life, vibrating through the concrete floor. Slowly, the thick, armored glass surrounding the chamber began to slide upward, letting a massive wave of freezing white vapor spill out across the laboratory floor like dry ice.
For a few agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The silhouette just stood there in the fog.
Then…
The Winter Soldier gasped, a sharp, violent intake of oxygen rushing into his lungs. His chest expanded instantly. His eyes snapped wide open.
A fleeting, split-second flash of confusion washed over his face as his pupils adjusted to the piercing laboratory lights. But the moment his gaze locked onto Nick Fury standing at the console, any trace of human hesitation vanished.
Instantly, he moved. The motion was crisp, terrifyingly fast, and completely mechanical. His boots snapped together with a sharp crack, his posture went rigid, and without a single shred of doubt, he slammed his right hand up against his temple in a flawless military salute.
"Director," his voice boomed out. It was steady, completely devoid of emotion, and chillingly absolute. "The Winter Soldier reporting for duty, sir."
Silence filled the massive, sterile laboratory.
And then, for the first time in days, a slow smile crept onto Nick Fury's face. It wasn't a warm, friendly smile, and it definitely wasn't a smile of relief. It was the dark, profoundly satisfied smile of a man looking at a lethal weapon that worked exactly as he had designed it to.
Because standing in front of him in the freezing fog wasn't Bucky Barnes anymore. It was the perfect, unyielding soldier he had always wanted.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Next Chapter: Do You Know How Your Parents Really Died?
Next Next Chapter: A Billion Dollar Truth
Next Next Next Chapter: Some Debts Can Only Be Paid in Blood
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!