INFERNO || Bucky Barnes

4

The door to her room slammed open, waking her from a mere three hours of sleep to the usual six. Two guards, both still in the fireproof suits, came in and one dropped a pile of clothes on the floor in the middle of the room. The other had a rifle trained on her the whole time, a red dot sat between her eyes. She hadn't even sat up yet. Without saying a word, the one who dropped the clothes undid her straight jacket and took it with him. They left and the door slammed and locked behind them. She sat and desperately wanted to stretch her arms out, but she didn't dare move. After a minute a voice came from the unknown speakers.

It had been two weeks since Fury had talked to her, and since that door opened wide. It made her thoughts race.

"You have five minutes to get changed. Then you will be released." A click came from somewhere, probably the microphone shutting off for one last time.

Without processing the information, she got up and got dressed into a plain black t shirt and jeans that smelled like second hand shops and cigarettes. She folded the uniform the prison had given her and sat back down on the shelf.

Only a moment after she sat down, the door opened again. The same two guards from before came in. This time they both held guns.

"Inferno Redman," the one who dropped the clothes before, "follow us to your release." Without question she got up and followed them. She hesitated at the threshold of the door. An odd, cold peace had found her in the concrete room and she didn't want to leave it. She didn't want Force Croixa to jump at her brain with renewed strength. The longer it lingered, it seemed, the stronger it came back.

"Come on." They grabbed her elbows and half dragged her out of the room. She shrugged them off.

"Okay. Okay."

She took in the room she had never seen before, for the FBI had blindfolded her when they brought her in the first night. A wall of monitors showed all four angles of the room and even the room they were in now, the elevator, and the hallway that led to the main prison complex. A desk sat in front of them and a guard in a normal uniform sat back and relaxed with his feet resting right by the key board. He turned around to look at her in person. He smiled like he was seeing an old friend. He put his fingers to his forehead in a friendly salute.

"Pleasure doing business with you these past months." He smirked and Inferno looked at the three guards in the room.

"Months?"

The man at the desk laughed as the other two shook their heads and forced her into the elevator. Right before the doors closed, she heard the desk guard say:

"Best part. Always the best part."

She looked to the two guards whose guns were still trained on her.

"What day is it?"

"You'll figure it out when you're out."

She wanted to argue, to tell them that she'd only been here four weeks. Only a month. A month and a day to be exact. But months? Plural? They had to be messing with her. A guard's cruel version of a prank.

The elevator only had two other floor options, and two minutes later the doors opened onto a private back drive of the prison. Guards with guns trained on her made a path to a black SUV sitting idle about ten yards from the elevator. Nothing surrounded the prison except for a simple- tall, but simple- fence. Like the kind she would see in people's back yards in her home town.

The guards gave her a little shove and she made her way to the SUV. About ten feet away, one guard grabbed her arm to signal to stop walking. The back door to the vehicle swung wide open and Nick Fury stepped out. He held his arms open wide and smiled.