clandestinement | Apocalypse children

Apocalypse children - for worthallthis

There's an alarm sounding somewhere in the compound, harsh and urgent and ignored, and somehow still less jarring than the occasional creak of metal. Beneath that, voices sound, quick and quiet and tense, the pitch entirely wrong for any technicians, any handlers, anyone who belongs in this room.

"...sure you did it right?"

"I entered the sequence exactly like I was supposed to!"

"Then why isn't it--"

The first voice cuts off at the hydraulic hiss of the cryo tube opening. The inrush of air brings with it the smell of smoke, and the acrid taste of heated metal, and the sound of nervous gasps and small feet on grated metal flooring.

Outside the cryo tube stands a group of girls, the oldest somewhere around twelve or thirteen, the youngest perhaps four, clinging tight to the leg of one of the older girls and peering at the tube with wide-eyed fascination.

The girl who positions herself at the front of the pack - and they are a pack, all but the smallest fierce-eyed and wary - doesn't look like the oldest, round-faced, blonde hair straggling loose from her braids, clothing and skin streaked with blood and a bruise darkening beneath one eye. She lifts her chin, and looks with bright defiance at the man she and her sisters have just pulled from the dreamless grip of cryo-stasis.

"Winter Soldier," she says in clear Russian, and despite her fierce air, there's something like hope in her voice. "Can you understand me?"

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That brings a strange lump to his throat that he has to swallow hard to clear. "Okay," he says when he thinks he can without sounding pained. And it's not just agreement because he doesn't care. He. He likes that. It makes him feel warmer than the blankets or the little girl cuddled up to his side. It feels... right. Like it's a word he's had applied to himself before, except he knows it isn't, so it's probably just all in his head.

But he still likes it.

As the girls return with the heaters, he finally stops shivering so hard. Alisa wrapped up around his waist helps, too. His hair is dripping and his cryo suit grows heavier with moisture, the chemical ice crystals melting. "How long," he asks. "There is a countdown. You said. How long is on it."

The children are quick and efficient; it doesn't take them long to get the heaters set up. Carting them in had been the hard part, sized as they are for adults to carry.

"Seventeen hours," she says, with an upward lilt to her voice, and a glance at one of the girls standing closer to the central console. At the confirming nod, she repeats, "Two days. We have time to strip what we need before the doors unlock. We do not know what will be waiting for us outside - satellite connection all went down with the meteor strike, and we lost external cameras this morning."

He still feels sluggish, but the warmth is helping. Usually there are drugs after the chair, he thinks. Something to wake him up faster once he's no longer half-frozen and disoriented. He doesn't know what they are, so he'll have to make do without them.

(There is something else that happens after the chair, too, but he doesn't think about that. He can't.)

"Is there recorded footage of the external cameras. To see what was on them before." He knows the layout of the base without knowing how he knows. There is a records room, but he doesn't know what they keep there, if they keep their own security tape records. But intel will help. If he wants to keep these girls safe, he needs to know more.

"There is," Yelena says.

One of the other older girls pipes up with, "I overheard the handlers saying the last two hours before the cameras went down were corrupted. So it won't tell us everything."

He nods, trying to force his brain to work. "Any intel is better than no intel. When did this. Meteor thing." Meteors. Jesus. Sounds like a penny novel. (What's a penny novel...?) He shakes himself, finishes the question. "When did it hit." How long have they been trapped down here, with handlers who wanted to kill them?

"Two days," Yelena says. "A little more. We had warning to evac, so we have been here longer, but the lockdown only started after it hit. We don't know how bad it is outside - the people, not the air."

That, at least, they have data for.

Winter takes that in with a sober expression. He doesn't know people in general. He knows targets, and handlers, and backup, and occasionally assets to protect. But from what he knows of handlers and targets and backup... "It might not be pretty," he suggests. "But that's why you have me." His eyes flick to the feet he can still see on the other side of the console. "And guns of your own. I can show you how to use them if you need help. Can you all fight?"

The look Yelena gives him is almost offended. "We know how to fight, and how to use a gun, except for Alisa. She is too little. And Sofia and Rose are just learning."

She pauses for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek, before admitting, "Katya and I are the only ones who have been on high-contact missions, but the rest of the girls have training."

He nods to that, expressionless. He... knew that, to some extent. He knew at least some of the girls could fight. He just needed to ask to remember, apparently.

Knowing which ones can't is useful, too, and his curls his arm more protectively around Alisa. He will make sure nothing harms her. And that if she doesn't want to learn to fight, she doesn't have to. That's his job. (Why would she not want to learn? That seems like a strange thought.)

"If they want. If you want. We can keep training. But anyone we come across. Will probably not need high-contact mission skills." Most people, he thinks, will be injured or sick or at the very least untrained. Easy enough for him to pick them off himself. Little girls should not need to murder people.

Should not need to murder people again. Since they have clearly done so to get him out.

Alisa presses her face into his side, shaking her head at the prospect of more training. Yelena watches them, something like regret flickering across her face.

"Maybe," she says, though she doesn't sound convinced - what little she's seen o the world in the course of her young life has taught her that there are far too many people willing to hurt children they see as helpless, and while they awakened him in part to protect them, there's still only one of him. "But it's better for those of us who can to keep in fighting shape. Just in case."

If you want a hug, Yelena, all you gotta do is come snuggle, too. Despite knowing at least some of these children are deadly, he finds he isn't particularly afraid of them. It's a strange feeling, to not be afraid of a person. Maybe it's because they are so small. Or because this one calls him Brother.

He nods. "All right. Not now. You have. Clearly just had practice." He shoots another look at the boots, gives Alisa a pat in warning, then eases to his feet. He isn't shivering anymore, and while he still feels a little ice in his veins, it's tolerable. It's the lack of the predictable routine that has him feeling off balance, but in a way like he's waiting for the hammer to fall, more than out of actual discomfort. He doesn't look at the Chair, across the chamber. He doesn't look at it.

"Show me what you did to the handlers," he says first. Seeing them dead with his own eyes feels. Necessary. He can catalogue them all, help drag them somewhere that the children might not have had the strength to do. Get them out of sight. "And someone take Alisa for me."

It's not so much a hug that she wants, as the level of innocence required to seek out physical affection so readily. She's learned better, over the years, and that's a lesson that will take time to undo.

One of the older girls hurries over to shepherd Alisa away, The girl clings for a moment, trying to attach herself to his leg, but in the end, she allows herself to be led with only a few sniffles, quickly quieted. She might have retained some measure of innocent trust - but she's also learned to obey.

"Most of them are not in here," Yelena says, but she starts with the one who is, dutifully leading him around the console. There's no mystery as to what killed this one - there's a cluster of bullet wounds punched through his chest. If this were a shooting range, it would be a tidy firing pattern. Since it's blood and bone, 'tidy' is the last thing it is.

He gives Alisa's hair a stroke in parting, idly and distracted, following Yelena to the first body. He regards the man steadily for a long minute before deciding he doesn't actually know his face. It doesn't matter. He's dead and he deserves to be, for what he'd agreed to be part of. Hurting little girls.

He grabs one of those boots to start dragging him to one side, well away from the cryotank and the rest of the girls. Might as well start the clean-up now.

She tilts her head, watching him curiously for a moment, then follows in his wake. She doesn't offer to help with the body - it would, she thinks, be a little insulting, considering the difference in their sizes and the fact that it's probably screamingly obvious why the girls hadn't moved the man themselves.

Namely: he's big. Not as large as a super soldier, but big enough they would have struggled to move him.

"We stripped his weapons," she says after a moment. "We stripped most of their weapons. If you want to be armed."

Being armed would be better. It would be... appropriate. So he nods. "I would be better able to protect you with weapons," he agrees. "We can clean up. Then I will load up with weapons." He heaves the dead body out into the hall behind his cryotube, letting it block out the sight of the Chair temporarily.

It's the one that leads to the medical rooms rather than records or dorms. There are probably more bodies in the dorms and training rooms, he's guessing, but probably not many in medical. He has no desire to go into the medical rooms to check. The girls probably did that already, and he can just. Leave any that were in there, where they fell.

He realizes he has no idea of the regular complement of this place, beyond the guards he remembers seeing trained on him before the put him in the ice. "Is this all the girls left?" he asks, looking back over the motley collection clustered around his cryotube.

Yelena's silent for a long moment, then nods, gaze flicking towards the hallway he's just turned away from. There are bodies in those medical rooms. They just don't belong to the guards or the handlers.

"Some of the older girls were relocated to another facility," she adds after a moment. "But I don't know where."

It's possible that those girls are dead, too. It's possible that they also led a revolt. It's possible that they were the ones considered worth keeping, and the ones here left to dispose of. He doesn't know.

"We can look for them later," he suggests, turning towards the hall leading to the storage and records rooms. He can clear out any bodies there, too, and check for previous security logs at the same time. "Do you want to stay with them or come with me," he says. It's meant as a question, even if it doesn't really sound like one.

"I'll come with you," she says. One of them needs to - they don't know how recently the codes might have been changed, what he may or may not have access to. And besides, "No one goes alone. That's what we decided, when we moved against the handlers."

That's a sweet sentiment. Maybe not always feasible, with him, depending on what they will need to do in the future, but sweet and something he wants to encourage with the girls. "Okay," he says, starting that way.

After a few steps of silence, he asks, "Did they ever put you or the other girls. Did they ever." He frowns and points in the direction of the Chair, which is also the direction of the cryotube. Either one. He'll take either answer, really.

Her brow furrows slightly, and she glances in the direction he's pointing, maintaining a puzzled silence for a few seconds before she realizes what he must be referring to.

Well, what there's a 50/50 chance he's referring to, at least. Fortunately, the answer's the same either way. "No," she says. "Maybe the older Widows, the graduates, but I've never heard of it. I think we're meant to be a different kind of weapon."

"Good." That's good. Maybe it was just for him, he doesn't know. There's only one cryotank, anyway, and the Chair is... it's too big for the little girls. Even the older ones would be able to slip their arms out of the clamps, duck away from the halo. And that's good.

He moves into the hall, turning the corner, and frowns at another body before kicking it to one side. He'll drag it out on their way back out. "I don't remember much," he warns her. "You know I don't remember you. Not really. But that thing. It. It takes everything except the training."

"Then we'll break it before we leave," she says, matter-of-fact and unhesitating. "So no one can ever use it again."

She reaches up to rest one small hand on his flesh-and-blood arm, squeezing gently. "It's okay if you don't remember us right now. You will make new memories, and we won't let anyone take them away."

He twitches once at the touch, and drifts to a stop again, not shaking her off, but having to actually process what she said and what it means. He can't envision a future where he has a past. He doesn't know what that feels like. He doesn't even know if it's possible.

But breaking the Chair. He wants that. (The soldier is not supposed to want. He does anyway.)

Finally, after a long pause and a heavy swallow, eyes burning a little with some unfamiliar emotion, he says, "Good. That's. Thank you."

He doesn't have to shake her off. When he twitches, she withdraws her hand as though her fingers have been scalded. Two steps carry her beyond him, and then she stops, turning back toward him with a look of slightly-uneasy concern on her face.

"You're one of us now," she says. "We protect each other."

For someone who has never in his remembered life been protected, it doesn't even really compute. He doesn't know what that looks like, either. But he thinks maybe he wants that, too.

Not even an hour out of the ice, and the programming is already degrading this much. But if there's no more Chair (no more Chair no more Chair), then there's no way to fix it. He thinks these girls wouldn't try to fix it, anyway. New memories. New programming, maybe.

He swipes at his face with the flesh hand and resumes walking. "The records room is in here," he says.

Apocalypse children - for worthallthis

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And I realize my rewrites a few tags up ate the original "it's been two days", oops

oh THAT'S what that meant XD I thought it was an edit mistake on the timer

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