Siberian Wilderness - Remote HYDRA Facility
The Siberian wind cut through the landscape like a blade forged from winter itself, carrying with it the kind of cold that penetrated to the bone and reminded any living thing of how insignificant it was against the vast indifference of nature. Snow fell in steady sheets across the endless expanse of tundra, creating a world of white silence broken only by the crunch of boots against frozen ground.
James Buchanan Barnes pulled his heavy coat tighter against his body as he trudged through the knee-deep drifts, each step requiring effort that would have exhausted a normal person hours ago. But Bucky Barnes was far from normal—the same super-soldier serum that had enhanced his best friend Steve Rogers coursed through his veins, though his had been delivered through torture rather than patriotic volunteering.
The irony wasn't lost on him that he was returning to Siberia voluntarily. This godforsaken wasteland had been the setting for so many of his worst memories as the Winter Soldier, the place where HYDRA had broken him down and rebuilt him into their perfect weapon. Every landmark he passed triggered flashes of missions he wished he could forget—assassinations, infiltrations, eliminations carried out with mechanical precision while his true self screamed silently from within his programmed mind.
But now, with HYDRA exposed and Project Insight destroyed, Bucky was slowly reclaiming pieces of himself that had been buried under decades of conditioning. The memories were returning—not just of his crimes, but of who he had been before HYDRA turned him into a monster. James Buchanan Barnes, sergeant in the 107th Infantry Regiment, best friend to Steve Rogers, a man who had fought against fascism rather than serving it.
The guilt was overwhelming. Every night brought dreams of faces he had killed, lives he had destroyed, families he had torn apart—all while wearing the face of someone who had once stood for everything good about America. Some mornings, Bucky woke up wishing he could simply cease to exist, to find the peace that seemed impossible while carrying the weight of so many deaths.
But before he sought that final rest, there were things he needed to do. Messes to clean up. Debts to pay. And secrets to uncover that might prevent others from suffering as he had.
The facility he was seeking represented the biggest and most dangerous of those secrets.
After hours of walking through terrain that would have killed most people, Bucky finally spotted his destination—a rocky outcropping that looked like any other formation in the endless Siberian landscape. But his enhanced senses and fragmented memories told him this was the place.
The metal door was exactly where he remembered it, set into the rock face and secured with what appeared to be a simple steel wheel lock. To most people, it would look like the entrance to a mining operation or scientific research station—unremarkable and easily dismissed.
Bucky knew better.
Instead of approaching the obvious lock, he moved to the side and began tapping the rock surface with his cybernetic fingers. The metal digits were sensitive enough to detect minute variations in density and composition, allowing him to locate the hidden panel that most people would never find.
When his fingers found the right spot, a section of seemingly solid rock slid aside to reveal a nine-digit keypad that glowed with soft blue light. The technology was decades ahead of anything the outside world possessed in the 1990s, a testament to HYDRA's scientific advancement and their ability to acquire resources through any means necessary.
Bucky unzipped his heavy coat and reached inside to retrieve an item that he both needed and despised—a red leather-bound book with a distinctive white star emblazoned on its cover. The sight of it made his stomach clench with revulsion, but he forced himself to open it with steady hands.
This was one of two Red Books that HYDRA had used to catalog their most sensitive information. He had taken it from Alexander Pierce's personal safe during the chaos following the exposure of HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. The book contained access codes, facility locations, operational procedures, and contingency plans that represented decades of the organization's criminal activities.
Every page represented atrocities he had been forced to participate in. Every code was paid for with innocent blood. Every location marker represented lives destroyed in service of HYDRA's twisted vision of order.
But despite his desire to burn the cursed thing, Bucky needed its contents to accomplish what he had come here to do.
He found the page he was looking for and carefully entered the access code into the hidden keypad. The response was immediate—a deep mechanical clicking sound echoed from within the rock face as ancient but sophisticated locks disengaged.
The steel door swung open with surprising silence, revealing a tunnel that descended into artificial light and recycled air. Bucky stuffed the Red Book back into his coat and stepped across the threshold, sealing the entrance behind him.
The moment he entered the facility, memories crashed over him like a psychological avalanche. He had been here before—many times—but always under HYDRA's control, always as the Winter Soldier rather than as James Barnes. Now, walking these corridors with his own will restored, he could finally see the place for what it truly was.
His footsteps echoed off polished metal walls as he made his way deeper into the complex. Emergency lighting cast everything in harsh shadows, while the hum of automated systems provided a constant reminder that this place was still active despite being abandoned by human personnel.
The facility was larger than most people would believe possible, carved out of solid rock and reinforced with materials that could withstand nuclear attack. HYDRA had spared no expense in creating a stronghold that could serve as a backup headquarters if their other operations were compromised.
Bucky's enhanced hearing detected no signs of human presence, but his nerves remained on edge. Too many missions had taught him that the absence of obvious threats didn't guarantee safety, and this place held too many dangerous secrets to be left truly unguarded.
After navigating several corridors that triggered increasingly vivid flashbacks, Bucky reached his primary destination—a reinforced chamber that housed one of HYDRA's most ambitious and terrifying projects.
The cryogenic storage room contained five cylindrical pods arranged in a precise formation, each one a marvel of 1990s technology that was still decades ahead of anything the civilian world possessed. But these weren't simple storage units—they were life support systems maintaining five individuals in perfect suspended animation.
Bucky's memories of this place were fragmented but painful. These pods contained what HYDRA had called the Winter Soldier Mark II project—five individuals who had been selected, enhanced, and trained to be even more effective than their original Winter Soldier.
Each of the five had been subjected to a refined version of the super-soldier serum, reverse-engineered from samples of Steve Rogers' blood that Howard Stark had foolishly shared with government scientists. But where Steve had volunteered for the procedure and possessed the moral character to remain unchanged by the enhancement, these five had been chosen specifically for their psychological profiles.
They were killers by nature, made superhuman by science.
Bucky remembered Steve's words about the serum: "It doesn't change you, it just makes you more of what you already are." A good man became a better man. A bad man became something much worse.
These five represented HYDRA's attempt to create the perfect assassins—individuals with enhanced physical capabilities, extensive combat training, and absolutely no moral constraints. They spoke dozens of languages, could blend into any culture, and possessed the skills to overthrow governments or eliminate entire leadership structures with surgical precision.
But the project had ultimately failed because the enhanced killers had proven impossible to control. Even HYDRA's advanced conditioning techniques couldn't maintain discipline over individuals whose enhanced aggression and intelligence made them question orders. Rather than risk losing control of their super-soldier program entirely, HYDRA had placed all five in cryogenic suspension while they developed more sophisticated control methods.
That development had never been completed before HYDRA's exposure and collapse.
Bucky stared at the five pods, knowing that inside each one was a person who had been turned into something even worse than what he had become. At least he had retained enough of his original personality to feel guilt and seek redemption. These five had been selected because they were already monsters—the serum had simply made them more efficient at being monstrous.
Leaving the cryogenic chamber, Bucky made his way to a smaller adjoining room that his fragmented memories suggested contained something even more significant. The room was smaller and more heavily secured, with multiple layers of access controls that had kept it off-limits even to him during his time as HYDRA's primary asset.
An ancient rotary telephone sat on a metal desk, looking absurdly anachronistic in the high-tech environment. But Bucky's memories told him this was no ordinary communication device—it was another key to HYDRA's deepest secrets.
He consulted the Red Book again and began dialing a specific sequence of numbers. Each rotation of the dial produced mechanical sounds that seemed to activate hidden systems throughout the facility. When he completed the sequence, hydraulic systems engaged with a deep rumbling sound.
A section of the far wall—covered with pipes, valves, and monitoring equipment that had appeared to be purely functional—slid aside to reveal a black door that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
Bucky had never been granted access to whatever lay beyond that door, even during his years as HYDRA's most trusted weapon. The fact that it was so heavily secured, so carefully hidden, suggested that it contained something of extraordinary importance to the organization.
His cybernetic hand found the door's opening mechanism, and with a sharp metallic sound that seemed far too loud in the confined space, the barrier slid aside.
What he found beyond defied his expectations and raised more questions than it answered.
The chamber contained a single device that dominated the space—a sophisticated piece of technology that was clearly related to the cryogenic pods he had seen earlier, but far more advanced. Where the other pods had been utilitarian in design, this one was crafted from materials that seemed to absorb and reflect light in impossible ways.
The surface appeared to be made of some kind of black crystalline substance that gave off an almost organic feel, as if it were alive rather than manufactured. The chamber was larger than the others, with more sophisticated monitoring equipment and life support systems that suggested its occupant was of far greater importance than the five enhanced killers.
Bucky approached the device cautiously, his enhanced senses detecting energy patterns that were unlike anything in his experience. This wasn't just advanced technology—it incorporated principles and materials that seemed almost alien in origin.
Using his cybernetic hand, he carefully brushed away condensation from the surface of the viewing panel. The material was warm to the touch despite the chamber's obvious cryogenic function, and it seemed to respond to his presence in ways that conventional glass wouldn't.
As he peered through the dark surface, Bucky could make out the vague outline of a human form suspended within. The figure appeared to be female, though the distortion caused by the crystalline material made it impossible to determine details about age, ethnicity, or identity.
But something about the silhouette triggered memories that felt different from his Winter Soldier experiences—older, more fragmented, as if they came from a part of his mind that had been locked away even more securely than his James Barnes identity.
The woman in the pod was significant. Important enough for HYDRA to dedicate their most advanced technology to keeping her in perfect preservation. Important enough to be hidden even from their most trusted assets.
But who was she? And why did looking at her trigger memories that felt like they came from someone else's life entirely?
As Bucky stared at the mysterious figure, he realized that his quest to clean up HYDRA's messes had led him to something far more complex than he had anticipated. The five enhanced killers represented a threat to global security, but this woman represented something else entirely—a secret so deep that even HYDRA's leadership had been afraid to fully explore its implications.