Chapter 214: The Real Value of the Mass Line
Bucky...?
Hearing the name, the Winter Soldier went rigid for an instant, his hands slowing along with him, an inexplicable wave of familiarity surging up out of nowhere.
But almost immediately, HYDRA's cold conditioning crushed that familiarity back down, and in its place rose a nameless fury.
"Bucky...?!"
"Who the fuck is Bucky? I don't know anyone by that name!" The Winter Soldier's roar tore through the wind and slammed into Steve's ears.
Steve stared up at the twisted, snarling face above him, the face of a man who looked ready to tear him apart with his bare hands, and one single thought filled his mind.
What exactly had happened to his old friend, and why had he ended up like this.
While the two of them were each caught up in their own tangled thoughts...
Boom!
Falling from the sky, the two of them slammed into the ground.
Their minds so thoroughly consumed by everything else, Steve had actually forgotten to use his shield to cushion the impact, and the Winter Soldier had poured every ounce of his focus into attacking Steve, meaning his own body hit the ground with the full brunt of the fall.
"—Cough!" A mouthful of blood sprayed from the Winter Soldier's mouth and nose.
Even with the full enhancement of the Winter Soldier Program running through him, dropping from a height of over ten meters left his insides feeling like they'd been seized and wrung out by some invisible hand, agony sweeping through his entire body straight up into his skull.
The Winter Soldier tried to shove Steve off and get back to his feet, but the moment he tried to put weight through his legs, he realized, with a sudden jolt, that his left leg had snapped clean during the fall.
He turned his head, looking at Steve, who was already stumbling upright, and understood there was no fight left in him. Even so, his eyes stayed locked on the Glock lying nearby on the ground.
"..." Using every last scrap of strength, the Winter Soldier dragged himself toward the pistol, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the one weapon within reach.
Steve looked down at what his old friend had become, and something in his eyes couldn't help but soften with pity.
"Bucky..." he murmured, low.
Hearing the name again, the Winter Soldier's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ground audibly, but even so, he still snarled out a denial. "...I don't know any goddamn Bucky!"
Smack!
He got his hand down on the pistol.
But before he could get it up off the ground, a boot came down and pinned his hand firmly in place.
A voice cut in a second later.
"I've been watching you two from up there for a while now..."
"Steve, you know this guy?" Tony looked down at the man pinned beneath his foot, a note of confusion in his voice.
Faced with the question, Steve didn't quite know how to answer.
He looked at the Winter Soldier, and at the pistol that had, until a moment ago, been aimed straight at him, his expression a tangle of things he couldn't sort out.
After a long silence, he finally spoke, slow and even. "I knew who he used to be."
"But who he is now... I don't know him anymore."
"So, what do you want to do about it?" Tony looked down at the Winter Soldier, still struggling and trying to fight back, and turned the question to Steve.
Watching his old friend still refusing to give up, even now, Steve found in the end that he couldn't bring himself to be ruthless about it.
He drew a slow breath and looked up at Tony. "Stark... I need to ask you for something."
"What is it?" Tony raised an eyebrow.
This was the first time in as long as Tony had known him that Steve had actually said the word "please."
Steve glanced once more at the Winter Soldier on the ground and spoke with real weight. "Keep an eye on him for me."
"Once this is all over, I'm going to find out exactly what happened to him, and why he ended up like this."
"And when that time comes, if it turns out he really isn't who I used to know anymore... I'll turn him in myself."
With that, Steve forced himself past the pain radiating through every part of his body, picked up his fallen shield, and broke into a run back toward the building.
Once Steve had gone, Tony looked down at the Winter Soldier, still struggling. "Hey, you can't even stand up at this point. Might as well just settle down for a bit."
Seeing that the Winter Soldier had no intention of listening, Tony shook his head, resigned, and a section of the symbiote armor at his wrist snapped open, firing out a length of cable crackling and sparking with electricity.
The instant the cable shot out, it wrapped the Winter Soldier up tight, and a violent surge of current sent his whole body convulsing.
By the time the current stopped, the Winter Soldier had been knocked completely unconscious, foam bubbling at the corner of his mouth from the shock.
Tony glanced down at him, now sleeping like an infant, and clicked his tongue. "Wouldn't listen when I tried talking it out. Guess you can just take a nap instead."
With that, he grabbed hold of the cable still binding the Winter Soldier, gave his wrist a firm tug, and hung him from a nearby streetlamp like a slab of cured meat.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Stepping out of the elevator, Carter looked at the row of guards already lined up waiting for her and had just started to raise her shield when a massive steel fist punched clean through the outer wall, sending the freshly formed line of guards flying, rifles and all.
Having done that, Natasha looked over at the Titan mech, her eyes shining.
She was starting to fully understand the appeal of a mech now.
With something like this, who needed to sneak in quietly? Just charge straight through in a glorious one-mech rampage.
"Captain, Pierce should be in the office up ahead."
"Call if you need me." With that, Natasha leapt straight off the outer wall of the building and went right back to her unstoppable rampage across the SHIELD plaza.
Listening to the footsteps fading into the distance, Carter looked down the now-cleared corridor, picked up a stray pistol, and walked toward the office ahead.
BOOM!!
Skipping any pretense of restraint, Carter kicked the locked door open with a single powerful strike.
"Alexander Pierce!"
"I think it's time we had a real conversation about Project Insight, and about the fact that you're a senior member of HYDRA." She leveled the gun straight at Pierce in the distance.
Behind his desk, Pierce raised his own weapon, matching her standoff.
Hearing what she'd said, something dark flickered briefly across his composed, faintly elegant face.
"Peggy Carter, what exactly are you talking about?"
"I don't understand a word of it."
"And... do you have any idea how serious the charge is, pointing a gun at a senior government official?"
Carter wasn't remotely moved by his performance.
Her eyes flicked briefly to the countdown display in the distance, and without a trace of hesitation she advanced on Pierce, step by step.
"Pierce, if you're trying to stall for time with this act, I'd suggest you save your breath."
"Terminate Project Insight. Right now."
"Or I won't have any problem putting you down right here." As one of the top field agents to come out of the Second World War, Carter had never held much stock in playing by the rules...
As far as she was concerned, whatever method got the job done was the right one.
Facing the black muzzle of her gun and Carter's undisguised readiness to kill, Pierce was quiet for a moment, then, uncharacteristically, let go of his own weapon, letting it drop carelessly to the floor.
"I'll admit, I'd genuinely like to keep breathing..."
"But Project Insight has come too far along now. There's no stopping it." He settled back into his chair, entirely at ease.
But before he could fully sit back, the glass wall behind him shattered as a figure crashed through it.
Tony Stark landed right beside Pierce.
The instant she saw Tony, Carter's eyes lit up, and she spoke quickly. "Tony, perfect timing!"
"The Project Insight program has already started running. See if you can shut it down."
"No problem. That's exactly what I'm here for." Tony spread his hands, then pulled out the prototype Ultron and set it down in front of the countdown display.
Time ticked by, second by second, the data streaming across the projection from Ultron's display flickering wildly.
But then, at some point, that frantic stream of data ground to a sudden halt—
[Program modification failed... Command cannot be terminated.]
"...See. Told you Project Insight couldn't be stopped." A satisfied, victorious smile spread across Pierce's face.
At that exact moment, the countdown finally hit zero.
The instant the display flashed "00:00," the lake not far from SHIELD headquarters split open without any warning at all.
An enormous volume of water surged and drained away, and under the group's stunned, horrified gaze, three massive helicarriers rose slowly out of the churning water.
The moment they saw the helicarriers, everyone's stomach dropped.
"We're done for!" Steve growled.
Seeing this, Natasha didn't hesitate for a second, driving the Titan straight toward one of the helicarriers.
Inside the office, Carter and Tony watched the scene unfold, fists clenched so tight their knuckles went white.
Only Pierce remained entirely composed.
"Witness it."
"A precision purge capable of eliminating two thousand potential threats every single second!"
"When it's done, all of you, everyone on that target list, or that man who's spent this entire time playing the role of an obstacle, Matthew Lawrence, will all be ground to nothing under this program!"
With that, Pierce turned away, looking out at the helicarriers slowly climbing into the sky, and paid no further attention to anyone behind him.
NYPD headquarters, thirty minutes earlier.
At that moment, Matthew was sitting in an interrogation room at the police station, sipping tea with total ease.
Across from him sat Tore, the officer who wanted nothing more than to move up in the world.
Tore looked at the man in front of him, treating the interrogation room like his own living room, and every inch of him radiated discomfort.
Just as he was trying to decide what to say, Matthew, who'd been quiet until then, suddenly spoke.
"Tore, how does your commissioner treat you all?"
How does he treat them...
Hearing the question, Tore fell into a brief silence.
Thinking back on how the commissioner routinely squeezed and berated him and the rest of the officers, he could only sum it up in a few words...
Not well at all.
"I won't sugarcoat it. Our commissioner is brutally strict about work, and the smallest slip gets your pay docked."
"And if anyone dares push back, he goes out of his way to target them, transferring them to whichever district has the worst crime rate."
"So it sounds like you've all been suffering under him for a while, then?" Matthew raised an eyebrow.
"That's right." Tore nodded.
"Honestly, all of us already knew going into this that someone like you couldn't possibly be the kind of criminal the commissioner made you out to be."
"But there wasn't much choice. Rank outweighs everything..."
"Once the commissioner gave the order, all we could do was follow it." With that, he let out another heavy sigh.
Watching Tore's expression, Matthew suddenly asked, "Tore, if you were the commissioner instead of him, do you think you'd do a better job?"
Hearing that, Tore nodded firmly without a second's hesitation. "Of course! I'd absolutely do a much better job than him!"
Listening to Tore's confident promise, Matthew chuckled, glanced at him briefly, then let his gaze drift elsewhere.
Just as Tore was about to keep talking, the interrogation room door was suddenly pushed open.
A group of young officers strode in.
"Mr. Lawrence, you're free to go."
"...My suspicion has been cleared?" Matthew looked at the officer with a hint of genuine surprise.
The legal team really moved that fast?
It had barely been any time at all, and he was already free to walk?
If that were true, the legal team's salaries were probably due for a raise.
Faced with Matthew's question, the young officer standing at the front broke into a sincere, earnest smile.
"Legally speaking, your suspicion hasn't actually been fully cleared yet."
"But—"
"Mr. Lawrence, every one of us has known from the start that a good man like you couldn't possibly be under any real suspicion at all."
With that, the young officer raised a hand and pressed it over the badge on his chest.
"You might not even realize this, but if it weren't for the low-interest student loan program you started, there's no way I would have made it through the academy."
"And if it weren't for your free medical assistance program, my mother would never have been able to walk again," another officer added, just as full of gratitude.
"A man like you should never have to suffer being framed by scheming, small-minded people!"
"So—"
"I secretly disabled the surveillance, and while that idiot commissioner was asleep, I tied him up!"
A third officer chimed in, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. "With the cameras down, this is the perfect chance for you to slip out."
"By the time that idiot commissioner comes around looking to blame someone, the worst that happens is it lands on us."
Listening to the officers' earnest, reckless little speech, the corner of Matthew's eye twitched.
...Hey, hold on now. Sure, without meaning to, I might've done a fair amount for you all, but isn't this taking it a little far?
I had a perfectly dignified way of walking out of this station on my own, and now that you've gone and done all this, if I don't leave right now, it's going to look like I threw your good intentions back in your faces.
Looking at the earnest, grateful young officers in front of him, Matthew hadn't even had a chance to stand up before Tore, who'd clearly had the same idea already, beat everyone to it and unlocked his handcuffs.
"Mr. Lawrence, go on."
"Yeah! Go on!" another officer chimed in.
Seeing that everyone shared the same idea, Matthew drew a slow breath and got to his feet.
"...All right, then."
"..."
Under the watchful eyes of the assembled officers, he walked straight out through the station's front doors.
The officers on duty along the way, catching sight of him, all turned their heads away, their eyes drifting somewhere else entirely, treating it as if they'd seen nothing at all.
Once Matthew was standing outside the station, he tilted his head back and looked up at the sun hanging in the middle of the sky.
A few seconds later, he murmured to himself, genuinely moved by the thought. "Looks like, even in America, walking the mass line still gets results."
With that, paying no mind to the people around him, he drifted slowly up into the air, and the next instant, accelerated and vanished from sight entirely.
...As president of the Mutant Association, being able to fly probably counts as pretty reasonable, right?
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