remains • b. barnes

15

The electricity had gone out across the entire new facility. Dark parking lots, dark sidewalks, dark windows. I could barely make out the shape of the main building in the moonlight.

I swatted a mosquito from my arm. Loki had left me to find my own way out of the tunnels, and I had; I'd memorized the route we took. But I knew he'd be back whenever he decided he needed me.

I didn't regret the moment of trust. Even if I hadn't trusted him, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Was it really even trust if I felt like an object being tossed around? If the outcome would always be the same, because powerful people were always going to do whatever they wanted anyway? I didn't have any power—don't you have to have some kind of personal autonomy in the first place in order to give it up to trust?

The moon was bright. The clouds had parted. I needed to get to the mechanical floor to fix whatever had happened to the compound's electricity.

I'd just made it to the sidewalk in front of the main building when I heard hushed, urgent voices from behind the tree line.

"I don't know what it was," Sam was saying.

"Go inside." Bucky's voice. "I'm gonna look in the ruins."

"I'm not leaving you out here. Something wants us dead."

Then there were bright, flickering lights emerging from the trees, leading their shadows in the darkness. Closer, I realized they were holding makeshift torches.

"I'll be fine. Go make sure—" Bucky cut himself off. "Grace?"

I was standing there frozen in front of the compound. Somehow, I was surprised when he noticed me. I felt like I was still invisible. I couldn't stop nodding as they approached me, a little too adamant in confirming my own identity.

"Make sure she's real, would you?" Bucky said. Sam reached a hand out, touching mine long enough to verify. I kept looking at Bucky because he wouldn't touch me, and then I noticed his left sleeve in the darkness—empty, without his arm.

"All clear. I'll be inside," Sam said, already turning away, sounding defeated.

I did a double take, watching Sam leave, and then looking back at Bucky's sleeve. I opened my mouth to say something, to voice alarm about either or both—I hadn't decided yet. Bucky cut me off: "Where the hell have you been? We were out looking for you."

He held the torch up to study my face. I took a step back and glanced around, looking for an acceptable location to have been. "Here," I decided.

"Were you out here looking for Stark?" he asked.

I nodded. I couldn't think of any more words?

"What happened?" He was scanning over my face, my bloody lip.

"Fell," I said.

In the distance, Sam pried the sliding glass doors open and pushed them closed again. There was no security system without electricity.

Bucky waited until Sam crossed the entryway of the first floor, the light of his torch disappearing out of our sight, before he spoke. "There was something in the trees that lunged at us—an animal. I don't know. But Sam says his friend Riley chased it off. Riley's dead."

A light wind rustled through the trees behind him. I looked back at the dark compound where Sam had disappeared. Bucky followed my gaze. "Give him some time on his own," he said. "I'll check on him later."

"What about you?" I asked. "You didn't see a ghost?"

"No." He paused. He looked at the trees over my head. "I saw my sister."