Certainty (A Bucky Barnes Fanfic)

━◦○◦1.1: The Soldier Next Door◦○◦━

episode 1 - New World Order

New York was loud. It felt disorienting at times and congested always. The Blip reversal hadn't helped the chaos and noise, even if the pollution improved. But it was the only place where it was possible to stay invisible in the numbers of people. The only city loud enough to quiet her nightmares.

Mostly.

Shamara stood on her apartment's roof, looking down at Brooklyn as dawn touched the sky. It had been six months since she moved to NYC, but it felt just as foreign. Maybe that meant she was doing something right. Maybe it meant she was just as torn. She scratched the Hebrew numbers inside her wrist and fought a shiver.

Two more months. Just make it eight months, then you will know if you are really safe.

Eight months was the longest any of her colleagues had made it before begging to be sedated again.  The withdrawal did not gradually improve but worsen. When the body wasn't used to relying on its own strength . . . things got bad. Especially when the mind wasn't used to pain or feeling. Shamara had never been allowed to try withdrawing, hopefully, because she didn't need the sedation. She doubted that was the case. She had been on the drug since she was old enough to fight back—sixteen.

She didn't know what she would do when withdrawal kicked in. She couldn't go to a hospital; she couldn't have them searching for information. She knew no one safe, and she couldn't go back to Jerusalem. The Israeli officials that remained would shoot her on-sight. The drug likely wasn't around anymore, not after the old Israeli government had been investigated by the UN. (They had not liked their findings.) Besides, she couldn't let herself be trapped again.

But if her mild, cautious investigations had any accuracy . . . all her colleagues were dead. Poisoned, most of the news said, but nothing should have reached their immune system after being sedated.

It had killed them.

She was the last one, which meant she was easy to track. But after eight months, her former managers would assume she was dead. She could restart in just a little bit more time. As long as it didn't kill her.

If I die, I die free. That is worth it.

Shamara shook off her restless, gloomy thoughts and rolled her shoulders. She spread out her arms in the cool wind. The best part about New York was the colder weather, especially compared to Jerusalem. Her decades of sedation had left effects. She always felt hot.

"Shay?"

Shamara turned a little too fast, her heartbeat quickening. An elderly woman with dyed red hair feebly stepped onto the roof.

"Angie," Shamara hurried over. "Angie, what are you doing up here?"

Shamara's quirky old landlady grinned, catching her hand before Shamara could support her, "Don't worry about me, doll. I can still walk upstairs."

"We have an elevator."

"Exactly. I could make it up here in a walker," Angie hobbled over to a lounge chair. "Up with the sun again."

"I'm an early bird," Shamara cleared her throat.

"So you have mentioned nearly every time I find you up here."

"Didn't say my mind is happy about my morning habits."

Angie laughed, "Cute, hon. You gonna sit out here a while?"

"I don't know. I should exercise and eat breakfast."

"You are the most disciplined young person I have ever met," she heaved her eyes to the sky.