Control (A Bucky Barnes Fanfiction)

Chapter 11

Emmett let out a wheeze as he shakily reached for his water, bringing the straw to his lips. Adeline was astonished to see him before her in such a state. His eyes had sunken in and he looked ... weak. He looked nothing like the man who had stood before her with an arguably handsome smile as he killed Agent David.

"You look just as ravishing as before," he said.

"I see you haven't aged as well as I have," Adeline commented icily, eliciting a choking laugh from him.

"Have you come for your revenge? Have you come to kill me?" He asked, humor lacing his voice.

"I want information," Adeline said, anger simmering beneath her eyes.

"I'm sorry to say that I passed on leadership of Hydra to the late Alexander Pierce in the late 70's. I'm hardly up to date on anything useful," he said.

"Don't bother lying," Adeline seethed.

"It's a shame my pupil is dead," he said. "But of course all the information once held close by Hydra is out there for the taking after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. A shame, really."

"I need a list of all your testing facilities," Adeline said. "I need names."

"Or what? You'll end my life a few months sooner than expected?" He asked. Adeline thought for a moment. Despite her anger, his suffering, slow death was something she longed to watch.

"No," Adeline decided. "But you could maybe save your son. And your grandchildren? You must care somewhat about them. Sending them money every month. Your son cared about you enough to put you here rather than in a jail cell. Must've done something right in the fatherhood department." His smile fell and he looked at her evenly.

"You want to know? Fine," he said. "Just leave my family out of this."

"That's what I wanted to hear," Adeline said with a smile, sitting across from him, on the edge of his bed. "Talk."

"Everything you need to know is in my notebook," he said, his eyes glancing over to the bedside table, which Adeline opened, revealing a beautiful leather bound notebook. Its pages were yellowed from age and it looked to be well used. Adeline opened the notebook, seeing neat notes on test subjects, facilities and staff.

"You truly are a man of taste," Adeline said, noting his neat cursive handwriting. "Did any of your other tests succeed?"

"None like the original. Captain America," he spat. "We had some successes with the Winter Soldier. With you." He let out a wheezing cough again, taking a sip of water. "Most of the time they were too uncontrollable. What we really needed was something that didn't question our orders. As time went on, technology advanced that's when the idea of the helicarriers came about. At that time I was ready to retire and Alexander was ready to take charge into the new era. He continued work on the serum, hoping to get a weapon that took care of those the helicarriers were unable to perform." Adeline thought back to Alexander's words, what they did to her. He was going to make another soldier. One more compliant.

"What happened with these facilities?" Adeline questioned.

"Some got shut down, some were still running, others were abandoned," he said.

"And the experiments?"

"Maybe you'll find some like yourself. Frozen in time," he said. "Hard to keep track when we had to move constantly to keep ourselves undetected. We eventually faded from the priority list."

"How did no one notice that they just dropped an entire string of investigations?" Adeline asked.

"A lot was going on at the time. Investigations of war crimes, post war cleanup, political upheavals. You can't keep track of everything," Emmett said.