Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 72

Chapter 72

"You must move fast," the Friend said inside her mind. "While the Queen is still preoccupied with your military."

Bernice looked at all the people strapped into beds such as she had been strapped into, their bodies sedated while the Chitauri harnessed the power of their brains as a living computer. She had overheard Doctor Banner speak of such things when the engineers had been brainstorming as to why the Chitauri in Ambrym may have drilled holes into the children's brains. Scientists had figured out how to create computers out of the brain cells from rats that were capable of learning, but no one had ever been able to keep such 'living computers' alive for more than a few hours. The Chitauri had overcome this problem by keeping the bodies that housed the brains minimally alive. If such could be said to be living!

"I have to help these people," Bernice said. "Together, we are stronger."

"Look at them," the Friend said. "These people have been trapped here for decades. Look how thin their muscles have become from lack of use. They will slow you down."

"Once I have killed the queen," Bernice said. "I shall offer them the choice."

The door to the enormous room which housed the living computers opened. Several more guardian drones clomped stiffly in and were led over to where she had just finished hooking up her electrodes to an unfortunate looking, elderly man so wan and thin he appeared nearly a skeleton. All of the computer drones were male except for her. For some reason she did not need the electrodes to enter into the landscape. Eleven guardians had answered her call. One was larger and more intimidating looking than the others, nearly as tall as Steve, with a mechanical arm and other cybernetic components. He looked vaguely familiar.

"Bow to me, humble creature," Bernice spoke the words the Friend had told her would override the Chitauri safety protocols . "It is time to swarm."

"You summons us, young queen," the guardians spoke.

The big man wore an ocular that had been drilled in next to one of his eyes, the green tint to the lenses indicating they were some type of built-in night vision goggle.

"What is your name?" Bernice asked. "Before you were given a designation by the elder queen?"

"Name?" the guardian stated flatly. "Barnes. Buchanan. James."

Chills ran down Bernice's spine. Impossible! No ... not impossible. If Steve had been carried out of his own time and into hers, why not his best friend?

"He is Herr Kleiser's crowning achievement," the Friend said. "Second only to the one your husband knew as Red Skull. If any man is capable of bringing down the queen, it is this one."

"Come with me," Bernice told the eleven guardians. "The old queen has grown complacent and weak. I desire this hive for myself."

"You seek to give a challenge?" Bucky asked, his voice flat and unemotional. "You are smaller than I anticipated from the touch of your mind."

"You must do as I said," the Friend said.

Bernice reached up to touch his cheek. "Bucky ... I am so sorry."

She uplinked through the landscape the Other had foolishly not realized she could see, through the pathways that were really a living computer, until she connected to the place the eleven minds which stood before her now could be controlled. Stifling her feeling of self-loathing, she did what she needed to do to save her world.

All eleven of them snapped at attention, a maneuver that was alien to the Chitauri, but not to her, who had memorized every aspect of her husband's salute. She turned them, as though they were an appendage, eleven men and a lone former-Russian agent, and marched them straight out the door. Marched them towards the center of the ship where the Chitauri queen was currently occupied by the fighter jets swarming outside the ship, and therefore vulnerable. Marched them, possibly, to their deaths.