CH 41: HYDRA
Meanwhile, Brise raced through the mountain roads with its engine roaring against the quiet winter landscape. Snow was thrown high behind the modified Hummer as it carved through narrow passes before emerging onto another frozen valley. According to Cortana's battlefield analysis, a considerable number of escaped prisoners had chosen to remain near the Vault itself rather than flee immediately. It was a sensible decision. The prison's emergency evacuation tunnel leading toward the sea offered a far safer escape route than trying to outrun military forces through the Rockies, but before they could use it they first needed to secure the surrounding area and, if possible, regain control over parts of the facility.
The sounds of gunfire reached them before the battle itself came into view.
Sharon's eyes immediately shifted toward the valley below, taking in the situation almost instinctively. A group of SHIELD agents had established a defensive line behind overturned transport vehicles and scattered rock formations, returning fire whenever they found an opening, but they were clearly being pushed back. Their opponents possessed both superior positioning and stronger individual fighters. HYDRA agents advanced from multiple directions with practiced coordination, pinning the defenders down while three enhanced individuals systematically dismantled every attempt at resistance.
Steve's attention immediately settled on one of them.
"Rumlow..."
Brock Rumlow moved confidently through the battlefield, directing HYDRA's advance while engaging SHIELD agents himself whenever they threatened to regroup. Beside him fought a masked man carrying a metal left arm whose movements were frighteningly efficient. Every burst of gunfire, every knife strike and every step appeared calculated to waste as little motion as possible. Further ahead, a gigantic man tore through concrete barricades with his bare hands, sending armored SHIELD agents flying several meters every time one of his blows connected.
Sharon had already forwarded Brise's live camera feed to Cortana.
<Identities confirmed,> Cortana reported through everyone's communicators. <Brock Rumlow. HYDRA field commander. Winter Soldier. HYDRA assassin. Mister Hyde. Enhanced human following experimental chemical augmentation. Primary physical threat.>
That was all Sharon needed.
She glanced once across the vehicle before making her decision.
"Angela, take the wheel."
Angela didn't question the order. She immediately slid into the driver's seat as Sharon reached for the door, Steve doing the same beside her. Ava shifted into the front passenger seat without being told, already understanding what Sharon intended.
"Can we use the guns?" she asked, looking curiously at the unfamiliar dashboard.
Angela allowed herself the faintest smile.
"I think its engineer would've been disappointed if we didn't."
Her hand pressed one of the reinforced control switches built into Brise's console. Almost instantly, armored panels along both sides of the Hummer slid open with mechanical precision, revealing a pair of heavy automatic weapon systems concealed beneath them. The barrels rotated into position while holographic targeting displays appeared across the windshield.
"Oh..."
Ava's eyes lit up.
"...Those are nice."
Both girls immediately took manual control of the weapon systems while Regan calmly raised a hand from the rear seat. A wave of psychic power spread outward, wrapping itself around Brise until the entire vehicle seemed to blur against the snowy landscape. It hadn't truly disappeared, but anyone looking toward the valley would simply overlook it unless they already knew exactly where to search.
Beside her, Alison rested a hand against one of the mounted weapons. The thunderous roar that should have accompanied the first burst of fire never came. Instead, every report from the machine guns vanished completely, transformed into harmless light before it could escape the barrels. The only indication that the weapons had fired came from the stream of armor-piercing rounds tearing silently across the battlefield.
The effect was devastating.
HYDRA soldiers who believed themselves safely positioned behind rocky cover suddenly collapsed one after another before they even realized they were under attack. Others spun around in confusion, desperately searching for the source of the invisible assault while more silent bursts stitched across their defensive positions. Within seconds nearly half the HYDRA force had been eliminated, their coordinated advance collapsing into complete disorder as nobody could determine where the incoming fire originated.
The moment Brise opened fire, Steve and Sharon leapt from the moving vehicle.
Steve landed first, his shield already spinning from his arm before his boots even touched the ground. The vibranium disc ricocheted across the battlefield, smashing rifles from two HYDRA agents before rebounding into another man's chest hard enough to send him tumbling backward through the snow. Sharon landed only a fraction of a second later, immediately breaking into a sprint toward the largest figure on the battlefield.
Mister Hyde noticed her approach almost immediately.
With a roar, the chemically enhanced giant abandoned the SHIELD agents he had been battering and charged straight toward her. Even from a distance Sharon could tell he was physically stronger than she was. Every stride cracked the frozen ground beneath his boots, and when he swung his massive fist it carried enough force to pulverize stone.
She had no intention of meeting that strength head-on.
Sliding beneath the opening punch, Sharon drove a sharp kick into Hyde's lead knee before flowing past his flank. The blow barely staggered him, but that had never been the objective. She struck again before he could fully turn, this time targeting the opposite leg with a short, explosive punch. Hyde answered with another furious swing, only for Sharon to duck beneath it once more, remaining constantly just outside his reach while refusing to give him a clean target.
Each successful strike quietly fed her Quirk.
The increase wasn't dramatic at first, barely noticeable even to herself, but she could already feel the familiar accumulation beginning. Every impact against the same opponent strengthened the next one, turning precision into momentum. Hyde possessed overwhelming raw power, yet every missed attack forced him to rotate his enormous frame through deep snow while Sharon continued circling him with disciplined efficiency, attacking joints, tendons and balance rather than trying to overpower him outright.
Across the battlefield Steve had reached the remaining enhanced opponents.
Rumlow met him first, drawing a combat knife while barking orders to the surviving HYDRA agents, but Steve never slowed. The shield intercepted the knife in a shower of sparks before Steve's shoulder crashed into Rumlow's chest, forcing the HYDRA commander backward. Before Steve could capitalize, however, the Winter Soldier was already there.
The metal arm slammed toward Steve's head with terrifying speed.
Steve barely managed to raise his shield in time.
The impact echoed through the valley like a cannon shot, forcing Steve several steps backward through the snow as he immediately recognized the difference between the two opponents. Rumlow fought like an elite soldier.
The masked assassin beside him fought like a weapon.
Steve barely had time to recover from the impact before Rumlow came at him from the opposite side. The HYDRA commander moved with the confidence of someone who had studied Captain America for years, his combat knife flashing through the air in quick, disciplined strikes that left little room to breathe. Steve caught the first slash on the rim of his shield before twisting sideways to avoid the Winter Soldier's metal arm crashing toward the back of his head. The blow missed by inches, smashing into the frozen rock instead and scattering fragments of stone across the battlefield. Fighting either one of them alone would have been manageable. Fighting both simultaneously demanded that Steve abandon any thought of pressing the attack.
His shield became less a weapon than a moving wall. Every movement flowed into the next as vibranium intercepted Rumlow's knife before immediately shifting to absorb another crushing punch from the Winter Soldier's metal arm. Steve refused to stay in one place for longer than a heartbeat, constantly repositioning through the snow so neither opponent could properly flank him. Rumlow tried to herd him toward Bucky while the Winter Soldier silently cut off every escape route, the pair moving with practiced coordination that only years of fighting together could produce. Even so, Steve's own decades of battlefield experience showed through. He yielded ground when necessary, redirected momentum instead of contesting raw strength, and forced both men to continually adjust to him rather than the other way around.
Several dozen meters away, Sharon's own battle had reached a turning point.
Mister Hyde bellowed as another of his punches shattered a waist-high boulder, sending chunks of rock flying across the valley. His strength was monstrous, each swing carrying enough force to cripple most enhanced humans outright, yet none of that mattered if he couldn't land a clean hit. Sharon flowed around him with disciplined precision, ducking beneath one punch before stepping inside his reach and driving her fist sharply into his ribs. She pivoted away before the counterattack came, her heel smashing into the side of his knee as she passed. Every successful strike quietly fed Assault, the Quirk steadily amplifying the force behind her attacks against the same opponent.
Hyde finally managed to catch her shoulder with a glancing blow, the impact launching Sharon several meters backward through the snow. She rolled once, planted a hand against the frozen ground and sprang back onto her feet before the giant could capitalize. The strike had hurt, far more than she cared to admit, but it had also confirmed something important. Hyde relied almost entirely on overwhelming physical strength. His technique was crude, his balance poor, and every missed attack left him overextended for just a fraction too long.
Sharon surged forward again.
This time she attacked without giving him an opportunity to recover. A rapid series of punches hammered into Hyde's abdomen before she swept his already weakened leg out from beneath him. As the massive man dropped onto one knee, Assault reached the point she had been building toward from the very beginning. Sharon twisted her hips, driving every ounce of accumulated momentum into a single compact right hook that crashed against the side of Hyde's jaw.
The giant's head snapped violently sideways.
His enormous body swayed once before collapsing unconscious into the snow with a thunderous crash that shook the mountainside.
Without wasting even a second, Sharon looked toward Steve.
He was still holding his own, but only barely. Rumlow had abandoned trying to kill him outright, instead focusing on restricting Steve's movement while the Winter Soldier relentlessly attacked from every opening created. The strategy was working. Steve remained entirely on the defensive, forced to spend every second reacting rather than acting.
Sharon crossed the distance in an instant.
Rumlow sensed her too late.
Her first punch slammed directly into the reinforced armor covering his side, the impact denting the composite plating with an audible crack before launching him several meters across the battlefield. He hit the ground hard, rolled once and somehow forced himself back onto one knee, though the fractured armor hanging from his chest made it obvious he had no intention of taking another blow like that.
Steve immediately recognized the opening.
For the first time since the fight had begun, he stopped defending.
His shield left his arm in a blur of vibranium, forcing the Winter Soldier to raise his metal arm to block before it ricocheted back into Steve's waiting hand. Steve closed the distance behind it, driving a heavy punch into the assassin's abdomen before following with a sharp elbow across the side of his head. The Winter Soldier staggered backward only briefly before answering with a brutal hook from the metal arm, but Steve was already moving. He slipped beneath the punch and brought the edge of his shield upward beneath the assassin's chin.
The vibranium struck the lower edge of the black mask.
With a sharp metallic crack, the fastening gave way.
The mask spun away into the snow.
Steve's next attack never came.
His entire body froze.
"...Bucky?"
For the first time since entering the battlefield, genuine emotion crossed Steve's face.
The man standing before him wasn't just another HYDRA assassin.
It was James Buchanan Barnes.
The friend Steve had mourned for decades.
The hesitation lasted barely a second.
It was enough.
The Winter Soldier's metal fist crashed squarely into Steve's face, sending him skidding backward across the frozen ground before he managed to stop himself with the edge of his shield. Yet even then Steve wasn't looking at the metal arm or preparing another attack.
He was staring into Bucky's eyes.
"Bucky... listen to me."
There was no recognition.
No hesitation.
Only cold efficiency.
The assassin stepped forward again without a trace of emotion, prepared to continue the mission exactly as before, but Sharon intercepted him before another blow could land. Sliding between them, she caught Bucky's next strike on her forearm while driving her shoulder into his chest, forcing him off balance just long enough for Steve to recover. The two of them moved almost instinctively after that, years of similar training allowing them to complement each other's movements with surprising ease. Steve controlled Bucky's metal arm with his shield while Sharon swept his legs from beneath him, and before the assassin could recover Steve planted the vibranium shield firmly across his chest while Sharon pinned the metal arm against the frozen ground.
"Is he really is Uncle Bucky?" Sharon asked quietly, glancing toward Steve without taking her weight off the restrained assassin.
Steve never took his eyes off the man beneath them.
"I'd know him anywhere."
Sharon looked down at Bucky for a brief moment before nodding once.
"I believe you."
Steve let out a slow breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"They've done something to him. Brainwashed him... conditioned him... whatever it is, this isn't Bucky."
"We'll figure it out," Sharon replied calmly. "We'll ask Lex. If anyone here can help him, it'll be him."
For the first time since the mask had fallen away, Steve finally managed a small nod. Around them the remaining SHIELD agents were already moving in to secure Rumlow, Hyde and the Winter Soldier, while Brise continued racing deeper toward the Vault, carrying the rest of the team toward the next battlefield.