Even though it was late, Ezekiel and the others decided to go over other issues and projects while they waited. After two hours, Hank and Bill left. They weren't really needed for the next part and wanted to keep working on the quantum tunnel. Tao also left not long after and said to contact her when they were ready to go.
Fury ended up leaving once he received a call from Hill. He needed to take care of some issues back at Shield. Peggy also left and said to contact her if something important came up. Once Steve and Ezekiel were alone, Ezekiel said, "You don't need to wait here, I will contact you once I find their base."
Steve shook his head as he said, "It's fine, I'm not really tired… About Bucky…How are you going to fix his brain washing?"
Ezekiel grinned as he said, "Same way I fixed Laura's trigger scent issue and Erik's anger issues. It shouldn't be that hard, it might take a day or so."
Steve nodded his head but looked a little relieved. They enjoyed a comfortable silence as Steve watched the jet and Ezekiel worked on his computer. After a few more hours the jet landed at some base in the middle of northern Siberia. Ezekiel looked up and watched as Bucky walked out of the jet and went inside the base. The jet took off right after and the entrance to the base closed back up. From the angle of the satellite's view, the base disappeared completely. Even the landing pad for the transport didn't look like anything.
Ezekiel smiled as he said, "I knew there was a reason I couldn't find this place with all the satellites I have." Ezekiel played back the footage with the entrance open and it was still extremely hard to tell anything was there.
Ezekiel typed on his computer for a few moments before he looked at Steve as he said, "Let's go meet Tao and Kaecilius to scout the base."
"You want to bring both of them?"
Ezekiel nodded his head as he said, "Yes, I want both of them with us when we take the base."
They both walked in silence as they went to the portal transfer station of the base where they met Tao and Kaecilius. Tao pulled everyone into the mirror dimension, before she made a portal to the front of the hidden base.
Standing at ground level on the landing pad you could easily make out the front of the base. But it was still well hidden since the closest settlement was over two hundred miles away. This place was also considered restricted because the U.S.S.R. did nuclear weapons tests in the area at some point. Honestly Ezekiel was impressed, he had scanned this area before and never noticed anything here or in the records he found.
It took them a few hours but they scouted the whole place pretty easily from the mirror dimension. They infected the main servers with Ezekiel's program, which uploaded a copy of all their files to his hidden network. When Bucky was found, Steve ended up staying there to watch his friend for a while. It seemed a little creepy to Ezekiel, but he wasn't going to say anything about it in front of Steve.
After they had collected everything they needed, Ezekiel and the others went back to their base to make a plan and collect Ezekiel's other clones. It went quickly enough and within an hour they were back at the base. The plan was simple, they took control over the main security room. Then Ezekiel's clones blitzed through the whole base putting everyone in a special timed release genjutsu. The genjutsu was actually custom made for large groups of people but it required everyone to be affected or it would fail.
Once they had finished, Ezekiel and his team took some samples from the super soldiers, removed all important documents, files and records. Kaecilius helped Steve take Bucky back to base to begin his deprograming. Then Ezekiel, Tao and the base commander Colonel Vasily Karpov stayed behind in the communications room while they waited for the genjutsu to go off. After half an hour everyone moved, the super soldiers were already thawed out and started to attack everyone in sight. Everyone else responded to the attack, the alarms were going off and every available soldier was rushing to contain the super soldiers.
Colonel Vasily Karpov's eyes moved around wildly as he walked past Ezekiel to an encrypted radio. He picked up the receiver and punched in some numbers before he said, "This is special base L73-L96, I am base Commander Colonel Vasily Karpov emergency code, sierra, five, seven, delta, three, romeo, golf, one, eight, india, kilo, oscar, six, nine, whiskey, four, zulu.
After a few seconds the line connected and a man said, "What happened, Commander Karpov?"
Vasily sounded a little panicked as he said, "The super soldiers are free and rampaging throughout the base, I am requesting assistance to help contain them."
The line went quiet for a few moments before another person came on and said, "How did the super soldiers get free? They should have been in hibernation."
Vasily's voice still had a hint of panic, but he calmly said, "Dr. Nagel wanted some new samples from the super soldiers, he said he had a breakthrough and wanted to run some tests with new samples. We were careful, but they broke free and attacked. We have lost the winter soldier, Dr. Nagel and about thirty other personnel so far."
"I will send you reinforcements, but it will take at least three hours before they arrive. You need to keep them contained until they arrive and make sure you backup Dr. Nagel's rese..."
Another different alarm started going off as Vasily said, "Fuck, someone overloaded the reactor!"
"Forget the base and everyone else, just get Dr. Nagel's research and get out. I should have a rescue team there in an hour for you."
"Roger." Vasily hung up the receiver and then started to move out of the room before Ezekiel stopped him with a new genjutsu that knocked him out. He picked him up and glanced at Tao who nodded her head and pulled them into the mirror dimension. They waited for about five minutes before the base erupted in a massive explosion. The main outside structure of the base somehow survived. But the inside of the base was ruined completely.
Ezekiel and Tao walked through the devastation for a while to make sure nothing important survived the blast. They checked where the servers were, the secure safe in Vasily's office and a few other spots. Nothing was left besides wreckage, Ezekiel and his clones had already removed everything important and wiped the servers. But Ezekiel wanted to double check that everything was still destroyed. It would be weird if something was found in good shape yet it was empty.
After they confirmed everything and checked the outside of the base, they portaled to the cloning facility. Ezekiel left Vasily in one of the cells and then they portal to the main base. Ezekiel checked in on Ino and her father who were already working on Bucky, while Steve watched over his friend. Fury, Coulson, Hill, Hank and Peggy were currently going over all the physical documents that were recovered. Ezekiel joined them after checking in with Steve, he used his computer and started to sort through everything that was on the base's servers.
Hours passed as they worked and it soon became morning. After a while Steve walked into the room and smiled brightly as Bucky walked in behind him. The thing most people noticed first was his metal arm with a red star on it. Bucky stood a few inches shorter than Steve, while his dark brown hair was loose and stopped at his shoulders. His brown eyes looked haunted, but there was also a spark of relief in them.
Steve looked at everyone in the room as he said, "Bucky, this is part of the team I have been working with."
Steve started to point out everyone to Bucky and when he got to Peggy he said, "You remember Peggy Carter?"
Bucky looked at her for a moment before he said, "You aged well, Peggy."
"Steve agrees with you on that one."
Peggy glared at Ezekiel for a moment before Steve said with a smile, "That is Ezekiel, he is the main reason we are all here. He also likes to joke around a little too much."
Bucky nodded towards Ezekiel as he said, "Thanks for the rescue and for fixing my head."
Ezekiel smiled as he said, "Glad to help. I am sure you wouldn't mind some rest, Steve can show you to some temporary quarters you can use."
Bucky shook his head as he said, "Thanks, but with my head clear for the first time in ages I don't feel like resting. I wanna make amends."
Ezekiel nodded his head as he said, "I can understand that. What do you wanna do?"
Bucky frowned a little as he said, "When I was under control they mostly used me for assassinations. But they also sent me to this place called the red room a few times. They had me training girls in hand to hand combat. I think they were training the girls to be assassins."
Ezekiel sounded excited as he asked, "You know where the red room is located?"
Bucky nodded his head as he said, "You have a map?"
Fury glanced at Ezekiel as he said, "If we do something to the red room now, won't that ruin the timeline?"
Ezekiel paused for a few moments before he said, "Probably…"
Ezekiel shook his head as he said, "Let's find the place and check it out. After that, I will talk with Tao about trying something before we make a move."
Fury nodded his head in agreement and everyone else but Bucky seemed surprised because he didn't argue with Ezekiel for a change.
Ezekiel typed on his computer before a map of Europe and Asia popped up on the main monitor of the room. Bucky studied it for a few moments before he said, "It's located in Belarus, just a little north of a city called Minsk."
The view changed as Ezekiel typed on the computer and zoomed in on Minsk, after a few moments a current satellite view of a compound was on the screen. It didn't really look like much from the outside, just a big walled off area with a few buildings. Ezekiel started to look into the building and found nothing that stood out about it. Bucky nodded his head as he said, "I never saw it from this angle, but I am sure that's it. The way the wall is oddly shaped around the outside, the way those buildings are laid out."
Ezekiel looked over to Steve as he said, "Go grab Shisui and the others. I am going to dispel and let my main body know what is going on. I will have Tao and Kaecilius meet you in the portal room to go scout the place with Bucky."
Ezekiel pulled out a usb drive and tossed it to Steve as he said, "You know what to do with that. Once it's in place I will start my side of things from here. Once you guys are done we will plan out what to do next."
Ezekiel typed on his computer for a few moments before he turned into a puff of smoke. Bucky glanced at Steve as he asked, "What just happened?"
Steve patted Bucky's shoulder as he said, "I will tell you about it as we go grab the others."
It was twenty minutes later when Steve, Bucky and Ezekiel's clones arrived at the portal room. Ezekiel, Tao, Kaecilius and a few more clones of Ezekiel were already there waiting for the others. Ezekiel finished talking with Tao as he waved at Steve and the others as he said, "Good luck everyone, I will monitor you guys from here."
Steve nodded as he said, "Thanks, we will see you soon."
Tao pulled everyone into the mirror dimension as Ezekiel went back to the room Fury and the others were using. About ten minutes later Ezekiel's computer started to beep before he typed some stuff on it and connected into the red room servers. He started to back up their servers before he started to look through the files from the winter soldier base.
A few more hours passed before Steve and the others returned. When they did everyone except Ezekiel and his clones took a break to go eat a late breakfast. When they came back Steve and Bucky both voiced their desire to launch a rescue for all the girls currently in the red room.
Ezekiel shook his head as he said, "Trust me, I want to help them just as much as you do. But I want to make sure the timeline won't be destroyed if we do this."
Bucky was the only one who was confused as he asked, "Fury and you talked about that before we left. What does that mean?"
Ezekiel made a few hand signs before he looked at Bucky. Bucky relaxed in his seat a little as his eyes lost focus. Ezekiel smiled as he said to Steve, "Giving him a fast crash course on us and what we are trying to do, he should be done in half an hour or so."
As Steve nodded in reply, Ezekiel looked at Tao as he said, "Do you think my idea will work?"
Tao nodded her head as she said, "It has merit and might work, but we would need your real body to try it."
Ezekiel nodded in agreement as he said, "Well no time to waste then, go to the portal room and I will have one of my clones meet you there."
Tao nodded as she got up and left the room as Ezekiel typed away on his computer for a few moments. Ezekiel looked back up at everyone as he said, "Let's wait for Bucky and then we can talk about a possible rescue operation. Till then, have you found anything interesting in the winter soldier files?"
I don't need stones, but let me know what you think about the chapter.