Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 12 (Patreon)

Brock Rumlow had no clue why he was being sent here to this old base in bumfuck nowhere, but he wasn’t paid enough or high ranked enough to ask those sorts of questions. The sooner that new kid Ward got that through his head the better. All that any of them needed to know was that if the boss needed an escort to this old abandoned SHIELD base in New Jersey, he got an escort to an old abandoned base in New Jersey. Besides, there were enough unspoken details to tell him quite a bit.

The other security staff on this mission told him that it wasn’t something that SHIELD would approve of, given how he had either trained, trained with, or worked alongside on enough missions to know their leanings. One would be an outlier, but all of them meant it was something that was tied to their true loyalties. Given the shit that had gone down in LA with the sudden blackout and the resulting “savior”, odds were good that something here was to be part of HYDRA’s response. Idly, part of Rumlow wondered if The Soldier was kept here.

“Keep an eye on the elevator, gentlemen,” Secretary Pierce said as he walked up to a bank of computer monitors that looked older than Rumlow himself. This whole place was clearly tied to early SHIELD, and thus the beginning of HYDRA in its current form. If Rumlow were more of a nerd, he’d be fascinated by standing where history was made. As is, he just focused on his job.

“Yes sir,” Rumlow said as he turned back to face the end of the room, even as he listened to the conversation. A little paranoia never hurts, especially when you’re in this line of work.

Secretary Pierce tapped a few computer keys, before the old time computers filling the room turned on and a German accented voice spoke up, “Pierce, Alexander Goodwin. Head of HYDRA. What brings you to me?”

“We’ve had a bit of a hiccup, Doctor Zola. What can you tell me about something called Project Shockwave?” Secretary Pierce asked.

There was a pause, and had Secretary Pierce been talking to a person, Rumlow would have called it surprised or confused. Still, whomever was on the other end of the line answered, “It was a project conceived of shortly after the official end of World War II, as a means of artificially enhancing an ordinary man to an intellectual capacity of myself, the late Dr. Erskine, or Howard Stark. If successful, it would have allowed HYDRA to develop advanced technology in a multitude of fields without the bottleneck of educating, recruiting, and indoctrinating researchers. It was deemed a failure and discarded in 1947, due to requiring access to the energies of the Tesseract being the only determined viable source of power that would facilitate the growth of neural tissue.

“Howard Stark kept too close an eye on the Tesseract and any of the energy cells that powered HYDRA Tesseract Weapons for any experiments to be conducted, and it was decided that such brute force methods were unlikely to result in long term success as opposed to the slower approach involved with the Insight Algorithm. Your presence here, asking me about a discarded project suggests that something has changed.”

Rumlow heard Secretary Pierce hum, as well as the sounds of his million dollar shoes on the concrete floor as he paced, “Apparently someone didn’t get the memo, and either found an energy cell or some other work around. There’s a man working with Howard Stark’s daughter who is on SHIELD’s, and HYDRA's, radar. So far he's developed over three hundred new advances in a six month period, that explicitly mentioned Project Shockwave, the old HYDRA logo, as well as your name, Dr. Zola.”

“That is…” the other voice began dismissively, before he trailed off. When he spoke again, there was a note of consideration and intrigue in his voice. “Very interesting. In the early days after the war, there were several of us brought in through Operation Paperclip. We were scattered, and most were directed into ‘civilian’ lives. I had believed that they had completely abandoned HYDRA, but perhaps they had the same idea that we did and took to the shadows.”

Rumlow’s eyes widened in surprise as the other voice on the line said that. Before a grin spread across his face. So even if Fury did find these new guys, they’d still be safe from Fury because they didn’t know about Project Insight. Cut off one head, two more take its place. The head of HYDRA had been cut off when they lost the war, and now there were two seperate HYDRA groups out there. Hell maybe more!

Fury would never see them coming, and one way or another HYDRA would rise and the world would be theirs.

[hr][/hr]

Alexander Pierce paced in his den at home. The information that Zola's primitive AI had revealed told him a great deal, but it also presented a few potential… issues. As useful as it would be to have Fury running around chasing HYDRA cells other than his own, it also meant that Fury would be keeping a closer eye in his own house. Plus there was the fact that this other HYDRA faction most likely wouldn’t be willing to accept his position as the Head of HYDRA. After all, if the positions were reversed, Pierce wouldn’t.

With a frustrated sigh, Pierce poured himself a glass of scotch and sat in his favorite chair, swirling the alcohol in the crystal glass as he thought. He needed to make sure that his HYDRA’s operations were hidden from Fury, find out where this new HYDRA was situated, and then find out if he could make use of them (either for their resources or as a distraction for Fury) or if he needed to send in the Winter Soldier to deal with them.

In the meantime, Gibson presented a potential risk. On the other hand, the sheer amount of technological advancements he’d been pushing was proving quite beneficial. The Winter Soldier’s handlers said that with some of the things that Gibson had patented let them upgrade the assassin’s arm and conditioning more in the last six months than the last twenty years.

Which left Pierce in a bit of a conundrum: send the Winter Soldier to eliminate Gibson and Howard’s girl, or let them be and reap the rewards of Project Shockwave. It was a few moments before a happy middle ground came to him. There was even a convenient patsy to take the fall that had already taken a pot shot at Stark!

An hour later, and Pierce went to bed, the order sent.

[hr][/hr]

“Yo, kid. Up and at ‘em, we got a job,” the merc snapped while kicking Erik’s leg hanging out of the cot.

Rolling his eyes, he got up and followed the merc to the briefing room. It was his third mission as part of a JSOC unit, and his first one where he was working without most of his unit. Just him and Kyle Jordans, undercover in a paramilitary merc company.

Nodding to the other undercover SEAL, Erik focused on the briefing. It was rather surprising, since to his knowledge, this particular merc company hadn’t taken jobs on US soil. Yet, they were going to LA, to kill some rich bitch, her boytoy, and steal any shit they could. Erik honestly had no problems with any of this, the woman looked like the standard rich white bitch that had been looking down on him for as long as he could remember, the boytoy looked like a fucking idiot, and he didn’t give two shits about whatever company they were part of or were hiring international mercs to kill a competitor.

The plan was simple: go in, kill everyone, put in a zipdrive that would download everything on the white bitch’s computers, then make it look like a gas leak was responsible for the deaths. In and out, quick and quiet. Maybe when the mission was over he’d swing to Oakland and visit some of his old stomping grounds, he’d left before he could order at Joe’s Bar after all.

The pre-mission routine was the same, it didn't matter if you were in a merc outfit or military unit. Banter, to lighten the mood, break the ice, and kill the pre-mission jitters you got, no matter how vicious a killer you were. Nine times out of ten, they were “yo mama” jokes.

“Yo mama’s so fat,” Jordans began, “if she were a Star Wars character, her name would be Admiral Snackbar.”

There was a round of laughter, but Erik had a better one, “Yo mama’s so nasty, they used to call them jumpolines until yo mama bounced on one.”

“Ooooh,” the rest of the mercs groaned appreciatively, before one of them passed a small tube to Jordans.

He took it with a look of puzzlement on his face, before snorting. Turning to look at the man who handed it to him, he held it up and asked, “Burn cream? Really?”

“I save it for the recipient of the best burn each mission,” the man said, moments before the mood in the back of the van settled. It was game time, and there’d be no more jokes until after the job was completed and they’d gotten paid.

“Anderson, you’re up,” the head of the merc outfit said as they came to a stop outside the fancy gate.

A pasty faced asshole got out of the van and made his way to the security panel. With a few minutes work, he had the panel hotwired and the gates opened. The van drove up to the front, and they got out, ski masks on and weapons hot. Jordans and Hendricks brought up a ram and forced the front door open, and Erik moved in.

He just barely managed to catch a flash of brown and white, the rich bitch based on the height, before it disappeared around a corner. Eyes scanning the room and his corners, Erik moved up. Upon reaching the spot where he’d seen her, he checked the floor. Water and footprints. She’d probably been in the shower, but she’d already been moving before they forced entry.

“Anderson, you’ve got any outward signals locked down, right?” Erik called back.

“Yup, ain’t nothin’ getting outta here without my say so!” was the answer.

Almost as soon as Anderson said that, all the lights shut off, plunging the room into darkness. Immediately, Erik pulled out his night vision goggles and put them on. Just in time for there to be the crack of a gunshot. There was a cry of pain, Jordans from the sounds of it, moments before something slammed into the back of Erik’s knee. He fell onto his back, before rolling to the side just in time to hear another gunshot.

Two shots, the time between them suggesting single action, but not a semi-automatic. Looking up, Erik scanned the doorways, just in time to see something floating in front of him before there was a blinding flare of light.

“Motherfucker!” Erik screamed in pain as he turned to look away, but his training held strong. Even without looking, Erik brought his rifle up and sent a short burst into whatever the fuck had been floating in front of him. There was a third gunshot, and Erik felt like he was suckerpunched in the gut.

His off hand left his rifle to cradle his stomach as he dropped to the ground, feeling the bullet caught in his kevlar vest under his jacket. He liked this jacket, and clearly the boytoy was armed, so there went any reason to be gentle with him. Once he got his hands on him, Erik was going to take his time, make it hurt.

That plan went out the window almost as soon as Erik thought it, on account of something flying into the room from elsewhere in the house. Pulling off his night vision goggles just as the lights came back on, Erik stared in stunned confusion at the red and gold plated figure tearing through the merc company, all while a small number of floating drones surrounded her. A glance in front of him showed the shattered remains of another, with an acetylene torch attached to the front.

The mission was clearly a bust, so Erik did his best to stay low and avoid Red’s attention. Military crawling across the floor, Erik froze as one of the drones drifted in front of him, followed by two more with…

Was that an anvi-