6631/Happenstance or fate

Happenstance or fate
Date of Scene:	19 June 2021
Location:	Island off the coast of Maine.
Synopsis:	Happenstance, or was that fate, bring Sam and Bucky together again for the first time since HYDRA destroyed SHIELD. What the two find doesn't bring anything anywhere near comfort.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Sam Wilson

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James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky's memory is sometimes Swiss cheese, but there ARE some memories still floating around up there in his damaged brain from his time as the Winter Soldier and more than a few of those memories are of safehouses and small labs dotting the globe; safehouses and small labs owned and operated by HYDRA. He has a list and it's time to check one more off that list.
    The little island off the coast of Maine doesn't really have a name. Back when he was here, there was nothing but HYDRA's underground lab and the small town above that served as residence for the people working in the lab.
    It's not the town he's worried about, in fact he's skipped it entirely by pulling the little motor boat he used to get out here up onto the shore on the opposite side of the island.
    He's alone, Bucky prefers these little ventures that way if only because they are, in no way SHIELD sanctioned.
    After having made his way through the woods between his little boat and the small cave he remembers serves as the entrance to the lab, he's behind cover... watching for the moment. Is the place even still in operation?

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Even though Sam is (or was) officially on SHIELD's payroll, he's never been the most prolific agent. There are a whole host of missions where he's not the agent best suited for the task at hand, and given that he also splits his time between publicly being an Avenger and privately offering counseling services, he's aware of what's gone down with HYDRA but only in the vaguest way. No details. So he's managed to avoid the worst of the fallout.

    Until last week.

    He'd been on a mission in Puerto Vallarta, which was sunny and tourist-y and seemed a whole world away from any kind of HYDRA trouble. It was Avengers work, smalltime really, which was why only the Falcon was dispatched. He'd handled it, interfaced with local authorities in slow, careful Spanish (it's been a long time since high school), and gotten a hotel to sleep off the post-mission fatigue before his flight home in the morning. It'd been pure happenstance that he'd met Marcus in the hotel bar.

    They did the whole 'I'm not HYDRA, are you HYDRA?' dance for a bit, but Sam knew Marcus. They were tentative friends; they'd met at SHIELD HQ, had a few beers after work, that kind of thing. Hell, Marcus had talked to him about his marriage troubles, about how his job responsibilities were keeping him away from his wife. The man had shown him pictures of his *kids*.

    Which is why Sam, two drinks in, hadn't expected the knife in his back when he'd gone to use the bathroom. It's only the fact that it'd glanced off a rib instead of being driven in deep that he's not dead right now. The fight leads out into the alley behind the hotel where two more HYDRA turncoats are waiting, and Sam ends up on the run. They must have known he was there. It wasn't happenstance at all.

    He doesn't risk going to the airport, but he has to get back up to his hotel room for his wings, and of course there's someone waiting for him there. This time around Sam's the one who has the element of surprise, and he's angry enough--partially at himself for allowing his friendship with Marcus to cloud his judgment--that he doesn't just take the other agent out and fly home.

    Honestly, it's kind of personal now. So Sam is MIA for several days, taking out the small ops team that had apparently been sent out with the specific task of killing the Falcon (yeah yeah yeah, cut off one head, whatever, shut up). Half a dozen less HYDRA agents in the world is good work in Sam's book, and the intel he finds on the lab up in Maine, well, that's just icing on the cake.

James Barnes has posed:
    Keeping low to the ground, Bucky starts toward that cave. There's a rather large stretch of distance to cover between his hiding spot and the entrance, so he's ziggzagging it to make himself into a harder target to hit. But the bullets never come. Maybe the place *is* deserted?
    He's just about there, just about inside when rustling from the treeline opposite where he'd been hiding catches his attention. With no where else to take cover, he ducks inside the cave's entrance but stays near the outside, back against the wall of the cave opposite the rustling so he can peek out around and watch. Just an animal maybe?
    Come to think of it... where are all the sounds? The birds specifically as they're usually the most abundant noise makers in areas like this, but there are *no* sounds, no signs of wildlife anywhere.
    A shiver actually runs down Bucky's spine when he finally notices that.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    His back and arms still ache from making the flight across half of the North American continent, even though that was days ago. But this is the one solid lead Sam has to go on, and very few people he feels like he can trust. Not that he's sure it'd be safe to even try reaching out, at this point, so what option does he have except to put his head down and get to work?

    He wants to be flattered for the effort they went in to take him out, but... he's really, really not.

    Part of him doesn't expect the credentials he lifted from one of his would-be HYDRA assassins to work, because it almost feels too easy. Or maybe he just doesn't want to consider that HYDRA might be so well-entrenched that they have a HR department issuing IDs and processing paperwork, because that's too mundane. It's a little horrifying.

    But the door opens. He's in. Sam tucks the ID back into his pocket and glances around warily, because everything about this situation reads off. There are alarm bells going off in his head--no, klaxons, blaring--and his hand tightens around the barrel of the unfamiliar rifle against his chest.

James Barnes has posed:
    Inside the lab, things will read even more 'off'. It's dark down there, or darker than a lab should be anyway. The generator's kicked in to power the red emergency lights along the walls. Really, it might be better if it was just dark. Those lights only serve to bathe the area in an eerie glow that makes the room itself look as if it's bleeding.
    One ... is it a technician? Scientist? Whichever, doesn't matter, because they're obviously dead sitting there in that chair behind the desk, eyes open and milky white, body in the early stages of decay. No visible wounds.
    Signs of a struggle are there, but minimal. Some glass vials knocked off a table, a laptop on the ground, a shelf knocked askew, some papers littering the floor from a file that fell from a desk. The trail of minor messes leads to a cage at the back of the room. The stench that would have been noticeable and almost gag inducing as soon as the door opened seems to be coming from that cage, human waste.
    It's so quiet and still, but there's an unmistakable feeling of 'another' down here, of not being alone, of being watched. So many deep shadows in the room are unbroken by those emergency lights, including the ones deep inside that cage.

    Outside, Bucky feels the same thing. That feeling of being watched. As of now, he doesn't move from his spot. He's still watching the treeline where he heard that rustling. He hasn't drawn the Glock from its side holster, not yet, but his hand is resting on the butt of the gun, ready to draw.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The suit's goggles come with nightvision, but the light level from the emergency lights is just enough to basically render it useless. So Sam is using the flashlight hooked to the top of his rifle again, slowly sweeping it back and forth. The cone of light it produces is just enough to make him uncomfortable with how much he can't see outside of it.

    "Fuck," he says under his breath when he finds the first corpse, but then he's quiet. Oh, in his head it's a running litany of FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK because those mental klaxons have reached a fever pitch, causing him to slow his steps, his breathing, everything. It's not fear, not entirely, because Sam is pretty intimately familiar with being afraid. He's got to the point where he knows the shape of it, and fear is now an awareness.

    In this moment it's the awareness that he's not alone. That he's very likely the prey to an unseen predator.

    He's here for recon but he only spares the fallen laptop and the discarded files the barest glance. Not important, not right now. The stench is awful and Sam's grimacing from it, but he's managing (mostly thanks to sheer will) not to gag as he takes in the room.

    And then he sees the cage.

    Yep, nah, nope, no thank you. Sam has the good sense to back completely out of the room when he catches sight of at the edge of his flashlight's reach. It's not until he's well past the door and ready, if he needs to, to slam it shut that he lifts his rifle to aim it (and the flashlight) into the cage's depths.

James Barnes has posed:
    At at almost the exact moment that something comes rushing out of the darkness of the room toward Sam... the rustling thing in the woods comes rushing out of its cover toward Bucky.
    Faster than the human eye can likely even register, Bucky's drawn that glock. One shot, two... both hit center mass and the thing still keeps coming. Third shot, nope, it's still coming. But it's just a person? It looks like a person? How in the hell. Not even Bucky could take three rounds center mass and keep coming! Zombie? But no, it goes against anything he's ever heard about those... it's *fast*. The keening sound it's making sounds as if it was born of pure rage. "Die you stupid motherfucker!" Likely Sam's first sign that he's not the only one shitting bricks about now. Fourth shot from the silenced weapon staggers the thing, but it pushes up to keep coming.

    Bucky's attacker is a little further from him than Sam's, so Sam gets a better look at the thing in the beam of his flashlight. Human for sure, but... its eyes. Blood red from corner to corner with nothing but a faint, milky pupil in the center. It's drooling and spitting and smacking its lips together in a wet, excited fashion. It knows... she knows, because this one is a woman in a battered, dirty, bloody lab coat.... she *knows* her goal is almost in her grasp. Greeting hands reach out toward Sam as she runs.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The flashlight's beam illuminating the cage means the barrel of Sam's pilfered rifle is aimed smack dab at the thing that emerges from it. He allows himself a millisecond to go "Nope" in his head before he squeezes the trigger, putting two bursts of automatic gunfire into the thing before he kicks his leg out to shut the door, then slams his weight into it to make sure it stays that way.

    There's a few seconds of lag before his brain really starts processing external stimuli again. And then it's mostly just the image of the figure, arms outstretched, running towards him. His heartrate ratchets up from its standard mid-op beat into something staccato, and he has the momentary, illogical urge to deploy the wings and fly straight out of here.

    Not that that would work. The halls and doorways are too narrow. But he thinks it, if only for the one irrational split second he allows himself before he tamps down on his nerves and steadies his breathing.

    He stands. There are gunshots elsewhere, and a voice yelling, and even if it might be some HYDRA thug here for a status check (arguably what Sam was doing, except how he was planning on some judicious use of force as a follow-up) Sam starts towards it.

    If only because "towards it" also means "out of this hell hole".

James Barnes has posed:
    On the other side of the closed door, that person-thing is still coming. She slams against the door over and over again, proof that she's lost her mind enough to have forgotten all about doors and how they open.
    'It' is just at the top of the stairs leading down into the lab at the cave's entrance still. ...and the one that's run out of the woods, a man wearing a uniform clearly marked with a HYDRA insignia, has nearly reached Bucky by now. "Fucking son of a bitch, fall the fuck down..." he mutters under his breath. "Just DIE." Maybe the voice is familiar by now? He fires off another shot, this one to the head and the thing *finally* falls. Huh. Should have started there. "Since when do zombies *run*?" he asks... the air.
    Someone coming up the stairs behind him now. He spins, glock raised, ready to shoot whatever comes up those stairs right between the eyes. Everyone knows The Winter Soldier rarely, if ever, misses his mark.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's not even to the bottom of the stairs before the familiarity of the voice he hears penetrates the intensely honed-in focus that is currently his best defense against rattling apart. It's not the right place or time to allow himself to process that he's just come face-to-face with what seemed to be for all intents and purposes an actual fucking zombie.

    He can handle it. Right now, he can compartmentalize. Later, he's probably going to have nightmares, but that's a foe he's much more adept at fighting.

    Whatever Bucky's shooting at doesn't seem to be going down easily, and he has another one of those split-second moments of horror at the realization of what precisely that implies. But then he shelves it. "Buck!" he calls out, just as he's rounded on, a gun aimed at his head.

    Instinctively, Sam drops. His hands come up, rifle falling against his chest to hang from the strap around his shoulder. "Hey, it's me!" No more than a second. "I'm not with HYDRA," he adds, to account for the fact he is absolutely walking out of an underground HYDRA base right now.

    And, y'know, the fact that SHIELD was apparently just a front for HYDRA all along. Yeah. Sam's still mostly compartmentalizing that particular brand of horror for now too.

James Barnes has posed:
    Anyone else with their finger tightening on the trigger like that wouldn't have been able to 'pull the shot'. For once it's a good thing to be on the business end of the Winter Soldier's gun barrel. A millimeter to go before the trigger would have been all the way back and Bucky eases his finger off. "You fucking idiot!" he barks. Fear to anger, it's his go to. He's not really *mad* at Sam, he's terrified that he just about shot his friend in the head.
    He also looks like shit. Seriously, if shit were a human being, it would look like Bucky Barnes. His eyes are red-rimmed and those dark circles should have their own zip code. He hasn't shaved in days, his hair's a stringy mess. He even looks like he's lost a little weight. Two and a half months ago he was very nearly thriving... insomuch as he could ever really thrive after everything HYDRA put him through.
    "Stay close," he snarls before he turns away from Sam to walk right on up to that thing he just put down. He squats down to get a better look. It doesn't *look* like a zombie. Sure there's those red eyes, but the thing's wounds are actually bleeding.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    There's something about Bucky that just makes Sam want to bite something back. It's not hostility or anything, it's just that smartass comments come tumbling out of him with approximately 500% more ease than it usually does.

    Not today, though. Sam tells himself it's just the blood still rushing in his ears, or the harsh expand-compress of his chest as he breathes pulling at the self-done stitches in his side, but it's really just that Bucky looks... a real fucking mess. That's why he doesn't say anything, just acknowledges his perceived blunder with a sharp jerk of his chin, and climbs the steps up to the landing.

    "In the lab. There's another one," Sam says as he falls into step behind Bucky, and he gestures with one hand backwards, down to where he'd just come from. His voice sounds shaky even to himself, how out of breath he is shocking even though he can feel the burn in his lungs.

    "Fuck." He puts a hand on his thigh, bends over with a wince, and gives himself a couple of moments to focus himself. Inhale-two-three-four hold-two-three-four exhale-two-three-four hold-two-three-four. Repeat. "What the fuck," he spits out with vehemence. "What the fuck, HYDRA."

    He's trying to calm himself but he's also not stupid enough to take his eyes off the thing that Bucky's put down. Which, free of the red emergency lights, looks a lot more like a human being. Definitely not normal, but less horrifying.

    Maybe that's why he's so rattled.

James Barnes has posed:
    With the immediate threat down and the nearly shooting his friend over, Bucky hears the pounding on the door to the lab clearly. In fact, it echoes loud and menacingly in the absence of any other sound save the ocean in the distance. "You hear that?" he asks. "Nothing, not even gulls." He glances down at the body on the ground, but he's smart enough to not touch it. "He was alive," or he wouldn't be bleeding... "I dunno, fuck I dunno."
    He straightens and glances toward the caved entrance to the lab. "Do we kill it? Shit, this is way out of our collective wheelhouses. Fuck... FUCK!" That last 'fuck' is growled out, loud and irritated. "They don't know I'm here, Sam. ...and I gotta report this."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "Yeah. Fuck. Had a bad feeling when I landed, should have listened to it. This is some Hereditary-level horror shit and I don't know how I'm not dead already." Sam rubs a hand against his forehead but that's it, that's the last bit of stress he's going to allow himself to feel right now.

    He gets his hands back on his rifle and turns, to face the drum beat of the thing he'd left inside. He's got this. He's solid. At least for the next however-many minutes it takes to deal, he's got this. "I don't want to leave that thing for the next person who comes along. That's just asking for a zombie apocalypse." His shoulders go rigid and his jaw ticks, but the grip on his rifle is steady. He's *got this*.

    Sam's head snaps up, the motion jerky. "Wait, who are you in contact with?" he asks. "Is there some sort of anti-HYDRA guerrilla squad I don't know about?" He lets out a breath that was probably going to be a curse before he reigned himself back. "You can fill me in later; I'm completely out of the loop here. We need to deal with this first."

James Barnes has posed:
    "We need to see what's down there anyway," Bucky begins before he puts one more bullet in the brain of the ... man-thing on the ground. Just making sure. "...we have to see if there's anything down there to tell us what this is, if it's something airborne..." Then neither one of them can leave this island until they know they're not infected.
    He walks back toward the cave's entrance with a purpose in his step. "You go down, open the door and make sure you're tucked in behind it when you do." It's not the way he wants it to be, he'd much rather be the one at the bottom of the steps with that thing so close. But of the two of them? Who has the best chance of taking it down with one shot?
    For all that he looks like complete shit? He seems to be handling this well enough, maybe too well? Kind of like he's just shutting down, calling up the bits and pieces of himself that are still that cold, calculating killer?

Sam Wilson has posed:
Bucky's right, and Sam knows it. So they're going to go back down there, and Sam grits his teeth at the thought but he doesn't fight it. Oh, he fights like hell, but mostly the rise of bile at the back of his throat. "Fucking HYDRA," he says, and then shakes his head. "Sorry. Let's go."

    He's ready.

    Until Bucky provides an absolutely bullshit plan, and Sam's head swivels. "Yeah, no, absolutely not. We're doing this together or not at all, there's nothing good to be gained by us separating even a little bit. We have to have each other's back."

    And to forestall any arguments, he lays his rifle back against his chest and lifts up his hand to touch his left gauntlet. Redwing detaches from the back of his wingsuit, gives a trilling noise that almost sounds like birdsong, and comes to hover in mid-air between Sam and Bucky. Sam taps at the panel on his gauntlet and Redwing turns, almost like it's looking at Bucky (technically though it has 360 degree vision). It gives a couple of beeps that are almost like a "hello!" at Bucky, and then it zips down the steps, a spotlight coming on to light the way as it detaches the grapple-line from its undercarriage and latches it onto the door handle.

    "Redwing will open it on your signal, just give him the go." Sam tucks his rifle back against his shoulder and looks down the sight. "Ready when you are."

James Barnes has posed:
    He still hates that thing. Bucky snarls at it when it 'looks' at him. He's just about 2.2 steps away from being 'pissy enough' to back hand the thing with his left hand. He doesn't though.
    Instead he just raises Glock and takes the lead going down the stairs. There is zero debate, if Sam was to try to get in front of him? SAM would get the backhand. Bucky's made of tougher, less squishy stuff, that's just the facts of it.
    "Open the door..."
    And the second that happens, the woman pounding on the other side of it comes flying out of the room toward the stairs and up them.
    One shot, one kill. Now that he knows the where of it, it'll just be that way. One shot, one kill. He keeps going. How many shots has he fired? He's sporting an expanded thirty-three shot clip in that sucker so they should a'ight, right? A slight jerk of his head and a motion to the left with his left hand tells Sam which way he's going. Go right, Sam, I'm going left.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Redwing gives a confirmation beep and its thrusters fire, the line between it and the door going taught for the millisecond before the pulling force is enough to wrench the door open wide.

    Bucky's gun isn't the only one that fires.

    After a moment, Sam allows himself a breath, and then they're descending. Sam checks his own ammo count and then gives a nod, followed by a roll of his eyes so blatant that it's obvious even in the dim lighting, behind his goggles. "Yeah, hell no. I have your six. Move." He takes up a position behind Bucky, ready (and not willing to even consider any other potential options) to fall back into the familiar pattern of clearing rooms.

    But after this? Bucky's gonna have to do more than just fill Sam in. He shoots a knowing look at the back of Bucky's head, but like a lot of things he's done in the last few minutes, he shelves it for now.

    Just until they're not in the middle of a crisis. Fuck. When are they not?

James Barnes has posed:
    The pair won't find any more monsters lurking in the lab and damned if Bucky doesn't seem almost disappointed. They will find another body, in the cage. It looks as if the man locked himself in there to avoid the woman laying dead on the stairs and then... slit his own wrists with a scalpel when it became apparent help wasn't coming. Guessing from the amount of piss and shit smell, he lasted around three days.
    Bucky's so quiet through it all that it might be a little unnerving. No quips, no grousing and bitching... nothing.
    He starts flipping through a file on the desk. "I don't know what any of this means." So he hasn't forgotten how to speak. "It's talking about a chemical agent and the limbic system." He picks up the folder and hands it off to Sam.
    "We need to do a sweep of the island, make sure there's no other means of transportation off it still functional."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It'd be more unnerving if Sam hadn't seen some shades of the same person staring back at him in the mirror once upon a time. He doesn't quite fill the air to compensate, but he doesn't purposefully keep quiet either: he says Bucky's name to bring his attention to things, makes sure to vocalize any observations he thinks are worth making (he's a good judge of that), that sort of thing.

    He's still on edge when they've cleared the place, like a raw nerve exposed to the air, but having Bucky here is somehow helping him keep it together. It's easier when Sam has someone else to focus on. That's always been his nature.

    "Let me see," he says, and he comes to stand next to Bucky, leaning over to squint at the text on the page. "Hmm." He takes over, moving from one page to the next. "The limbic system controls emotional and behavioral responses, like the four Fs: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and... mating." The corner of his mouth lifts but he doesn't quite have it in him, though he tries. "I don't have a lot of pharmacological background but if I had to guess this seems like some sort of mood alteration drug, maybe to... fuck. Fuck."

    Sam closes his eyes, snarls HYDRA out like it's a swear all on its own, and then frowns. "It looks like they might be trying to develop some sort of mind control drug."

James Barnes has posed:
    Mind. Control. Drugs. Bucky's head snaps in Sam's direction, the full weight of those pale blue eyes, always so intense fall on his friend. Only this time it's not BuckyStare(tm), no, it's not that sort of glowering cranky face. That's fear. But only for a second and he slams down the lid on it.
    "A'ight, do a fly-over, disable any boats aside the one near the big rock on the northwest side of the island. That's my ride. Do. Not. Land your ass anywhere on this rock. Once I see you're heading away from this fucking hell, I'll meet you in... nine hours in Manhattan." He rattles off an address, likely a little hole he keeps to tuck himself away in should the need arise.

    During his fly-over, Sam wouldn't notice any more of those things, but there are whole lot of trees on this island, maybe more caves, lots of places they could hide. What he will notice? Is the town... and the dead... one man cutting grass that seemed to just stop where he was, a woman sunning in her back yard that never got up, another man that was walking his dog is just lying on the sidewalk, the dog lying next to him... dead as well. It's as if the entire town, or at least half the population of it, just stopped what they were doing and... died.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's never had an issue meeting the BuckyStare(tm) head-on. Too much practice with too many vets he's counseled and what feels like every old friend from back in his deployment that he meets on the other side. So he's looking, and he acknowledges Bucky's fear with a grim nod, before they get back to business.

    Being in the air grounds Sam, despite the obvious contradiction. Part of him wants to just fly circles over the island until it feels like his insides aren't going to shake apart at any given moment, but at the same time he'd really, really like to get away from this nightmare hellscape of an island. So he redeploys Redwing to cover double the ground in the same amount of time and, man, does he not like what he sees coming in through the feed from Redwing's camera.

    But he archives the footage, follows every routine procedure about aerial surveillance that's been pounded into his head during his training, and gets the job done before he returns to the lab.

    He does a few eye-catching swoops in the air overhead and then purposefully kicks up the thrusters of his suit into high gear so that his exit stage left is not easily missed.