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. ** .

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"What the actual flying fuck!?! Did they bloody weld the entire fucking bottom!?!" Valeriy seethed, and I half expected a foot in the face in her mad attempt for more leverage.

The pliers slipped for the twelfth time, sending her backwards. I managed to grab onto her wrist with my good hand before she crashed into the wall and floor. Flopping onto the bed, she grumbled into the sheets.

"Are you sure you broke all the tacks?" I asked, hoping that she'd calm down. Her frustration could cause a slip in judgment and set off the whole house.

"Yuuup. There's too much movement for it to be welded down.... I've got no idea why it's bloody stuck like that.... Eve?"

"I have nothing to add. I haven't figure it out either."

Valeriy sat up. A large frown on her face before it turned to confusion. "The hell? It's all twisted.... God damn it, you've got to be shitting me."

She went back into the arm with the pliers, twisted her hand, and lifted out a thumbnail sized box.

"That was... easy...."

A little circular nub with a notch stuck out of the bottom of the box. The feature that kept it attached in the arm. Rather amazing that it held up to the young woman's abuse.

Valeriy set the first device against the box and grinned. "Yup, they combined the tracker and explosives. That's one less thing to deal with."

"That little thing is able to take out this house?" I questioned, trying to wrap my head around that. It's so small.

"Yup," she chirped, opening a metal container, and dropping the bomb inside. "Let's make quick work of the other thing before getting the viruses out."

She got right down to marking the placements of the plates, removing them, and setting them aside on the night table in their proper places.

Gingerly, the arm was draped over her knees. A laser cutter made quick work of the weld tacks. A twist of the tweezers pulled out another tiny box of explosives.

A beep confirmed that another tracking devices were removed. Took a total of a ninety seconds flat opposed to the half hour of screaming with the first bomb.

"Alright, all things that go boom are in the safety box," Valeriy announced, slamming the lid shut. "Eve will have these far far away by this time tomorrow. Probably use them to have Hydra chasing their tails."

"You can't use those," I blurted out, pleading to the camera in the corner of the room. "The people transporting the trackers. They'll be tortured to get to me. You don't know what Hydra can do. The things they'll do to get what they want. Your people won't be able to handle it.... It'll be a mercy if they don't survive...."

Valeriy lightly wrapped her fingers around my arm. "Bucky... Eve's Pup–people, they'll be fine. They have Eve."

"You have no idea who these people are! They're everywhere! You can't beat them!"

"But they're spread thin, scrambling with what's left of SHIELD and others for the upper hand. After their failed genocide, they desperately want you back. Your skills and reputation are valuable, the Winter Soldier. Almost everyone who's anyone is looking for you. Revenge. Induction. Whatever it is, I am the only one outside of this house who knows where you actually are, Mr. Barnes, which means I'm not spending anything on trying to find you.

"Thanks to all that, I've almost never come across a situation where I can move under the radar easier than I can now. Fuck with one group, blame it on another. They'll destroy most of each other before they have a clue. I could do a lot of damage if that's what's in the plans. With whatever it is I do now, I won't lose people over it. My people are never pawns. They are my hands and feet. Each is precious."

I glanced at Valeriy, who had called herself a pawn. Their words weren't matching up.

"Not her who uses me? Kind of?" the young woman offered with a shrug. "And she hasn't lost me yet? She probably has an easier time keeping her people safe than me. We're pretty good at ghost trails, Bucky. I'm probably partying it up across Europe to the rest of the world."

"Actually, you're currently traveling through Egypt or Peru. The other trails mostly died."

"Ooo, fun. Ancient ruins.... Shall we get those virus thingies out? From what I've figured out, they're buried pretty deep in your shoulder...."

Eying her waving hands warily, I sighed heavily. Easy enough to know what she wanted of me. Me on my side. Her behind me. Again. Piling up pillows on top of me and the arm. What I didn't expect was her fingers running through my hair, tucking it behind my ear.

"Just a bit longer," she whispered. More to herself than to me.

With tweezers in steady hands, she got right down into following a red wire deep into the shoulder from what I could figure out with the image on the tablet from her glasses.

"Hmmm, I think I've found it? Mind handing me the laser thingy, Bucky?"

This was a very different experience from all the other times the plates were removed from the arm.

A soft bed to replace the hard tables and chairs. Pillows instead of restraints. Slowly piled upon me over the hours. Not cuffs or guns pointed at me. A television constantly playing Mythbusters as a distraction. An entertaining series. Valeriy would keep explaining what she was doing in the arm or talked about random things. Interacted with rather than treated like one of the equipment.

All of it was to keep me here. In the present. Not in some memory of the past.

"Thank you," she chirped, blindly plucking the laser cutter from my fingers.

Thirty seconds later, I felt something move. A nudge in my chest where metal and flesh melded together. Usually, any sensation in that area came with me using the arm to bash things in.

"Oi, try not to move too much, Bucky," the young woman grumbled, tucking a short cylindrical tube into another box and tossing it across the room without a care of it breaking. "Three down. One to go...." She slumped over my side, over the arm.

"Valeriy?"

"Tummy's a little unsettled."

"Don't throw up on me," I tried joking and got a laugh for it.

"That's what the bucket's for. To avoid that particular scenario.... The thing left in your arm is harmless without its other half, so you can relax about the whole virus thing. I just need a minute. Sorry."

"Good to know I'm not going to be eaten alive by a virus."

"Amber's air quotes means it just looks like that. Probably?"

"...."

I almost jumped when her fingers threaded through my hair, combing out knots as they went. That gesture was far more comforting than her words. The fact that the arm no longer had multiple ways to kill me helped a lot more.

Elbow to the ribs. Puncture lung. Target incapacitated.

She would no longer pose a danger sitting behind me. But half the virus cocktail would be left in the malfunctioning arm.

The head scratching continued for a bit before Valeriy decided to pile more pillows atop of me. "This is not as soft as I thought it would be..." she mumbled, returning to her spot with a few pillows covering the arm. "Metal plates are harder than I thought."

"Why are you flopped over me?"

"Thought you might make a good heat pack? And you do. Are you running a fever?"

I flicked her hand off my forehead. "I'm not."

Valeriy chuckled, peeling off me with a stretch. "Let's get the last little bugger out." A soft push to my back later, she got back to digging around in the arm. "So, Bucky, tell me about space. I could use a good distraction."

I rather her not be distracted working so close to my actual flesh, but she'd be distracted either way. So I talked about the various documentaries the A.I. ghost found for me. I only managed to get started on black holes when I felt another nudge in my chest.

She pulled out the other cylindrical tube and stored it away in a separate box from the other half. "And that should be everything, besides electrical mayhem stuff... to which I'm going to have to figure out by looking at everything... yay...."

"We should break for the night," I suggested, almost feeling a weight lift off my shoulders as I got up from my side. I grabbed a few plates, clicking them back into place. "You could use the break."

"Actually, I can use some grub. How does frozen pizza sound?"

.

. ** .

.

0245. Dawn's not for another 178 minutes. I could go outside now. Walk beyond that measly meter of space the jammer allowed. I could leave. As a ghost.

Nobody would know where I was.

I wouldn't have to worry about triggers and snaps. I wouldn't wake up to a friend's lifeless body. I wouldn't be constantly watched by the A.I. ghost. I would be free.

Just had to take the few steps through the back door.

But the arm would be left rather useless.

"Would you like to go for a walk, Mr. Barnes?"

I nodded. It would be great to be outside again.

"I don't doubt your abilities, but at the very least, I would like to inform you if you've been compromised, so you wouldn't return here. Val still can't be moved at this time."

The second drawer next to the door opened up.

"Take an earbud or two. I can have your back, if you don't mind it. It'll allow me to warn you of potential troubles."

"You'd try to track me either way."

"I have some fun with it. You tend to get me to think outside of the box, Mr. Barnes. Though, I can't guarantee your safety in the least if you leave at this moment in time. Not because you're leaving, but because your arm is rather useless. It'll take a miracle for you to lose Hydra when they catch up. And we both know they will catch up... eventually."

"...You wouldn't force me back here?"

"Nope. You're free to do whatever you like. I've merely been ordered to help you as you see fit, at least for now. All you need is an internet connection for me to communicate with you."

With a slight shrug, I plucked an earbud from the drawer.

"Feel free to leave it in your pocket. It'll vibrate if I need your attention. This neighborhood is currently clear."

I dropped the earbud in a pocket and reached for the doorknob only to hear another drawer open.

"Before you leave."

A Glock 21 sat in the drawer. Next to three mags.

"When... did these...? They weren't here...." I checked the house the first few days I was in here. These weren't in this drawer.

"Val put that in there a couple days ago, and it merely looks like a Glock. It's been modified. Heavily. Electronic firing mechanism."

I nodded. I understood what that meant. Knew I've used it before. Couldn't recall any memories of having actually used one.

"You're giving me a gun?"

"If you're going out, better safe than sorry. Have fun, Mr. Barnes."

The A.I. ghost shut the door behind me, and I slipped into the shadows created by the back stairs, tucking the Glock under my belt.

Nothing moved in the shadows. They were empty of eyes and people. But I couldn't be sure. Found myself pulling the bill of the cap on my head further down. Hide more of my face.

Now to check the house and assess everyone in the neighborhood. Something I've been itching to do for weeks. Ever since I had arrived here.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The window to my right, there was the old man, moving about the dining room with the light on. There were no lights on in the rest of the house. Except I knew that there were ten dimly lit nightlights plugged into parts of the halls and a couple of rooms. They were always on. The rest of the house shouldn't be dark.

Now that I stood outside, there shouldn't be any men in the house. But there he was, a man sitting at the dining table hunched over a laptop. This was what the outside world saw of us.

They didn't see us at all.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I climbed onto the roof. The master bedroom was empty. The sheets looked slept in, unmade. Missing twelve pillows and a young woman. The lamp on the night table was different. The tools weren't scattered on the floor.

Like we were never here.

Never existed.

Once I deemed the nondescript house fortified far better than I thought, I moved onto the house the left door. Had to figure out who lived there. What they did. Some reassurance that they weren't obviously Hydra spying on us. I made my way around each house in a spiral. Peering in through the windows to assess.

I had to skip a part of the house across the street. The young boy of the household was reading under his blanket. Again.

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Author's Note:

If you enjoyed this part, please consider leaving a vote. They're very much appreciated. ^^

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AND THAT'S ALL OF CHAPTER TEN! YAY!!!