Can't Catch Me - Bucky Barnes

Chapter 7

Erika woke in a cold sweat. She was gripping the covers of her mattress as she tried to blink away her memories.

She'd never experienced her memories in vivid flashbacks like this. She'd gotten incredibly good at burying everything deep down but now it was ready to erupt.

This was the worst timing for any sliver of her past to come creeping back.

She wasn't Kill Switch anymore and yet every part of that identity was still in her programming. No special Wakanda tech to erase it. She was no White Wolf.

Erika centered herself and tried to blink away the hazy vision that greeted her when she awoke.

She looked at her alarm. Three minutes till it was planned to go off. She groaned. Her head still pounding in pain. Her first thought was she wasn't regenerating properly but then her second thought was Karma. This pain was the least of her worries.

Erika dismissed her alarm before preparing to go to work with the same people she'd been fighting the day before.

She took a pill to ease the pain in her head and then got dressed in a light Blue pantsuit paired with a white top.

Erika put her watch back around her wrist and the flash drive in her pocket. She also never forgot to bring a vial of the metal shards and dust to be a last resort in case she was ever injured as Erica Hodge and needed to seem a little more human.

Erika felt a buzz from her phone.

This is Nat, you take your lunch breaks right? Bucky wants us to spend our breaks going over Kill Switch reports. You down?

Erika laughed to herself. She had a close call the other day but she knew exactly how this would give her an opportunity to act as though she was on their side. She had to find a way to slip on the information that she'd found the previous living location of them.

E: Sounds like a plan. Where are we meeting?

N:Just the Lab

E: Alright I'll be there.

Erika placed her phone back in her older shoulder bag. Much more out of shape than her trashed one. It was unfortunate she had to throw away a perfectly good outfit but you could never be too careful.

Before Erika left her apartment she stopped for a minute. She remembered a face she'd had a dream or a vision or whatever it was. She'd seen Sergei. Part of the Levitsky family and now amongst the stars. Her heart dropped. She could only think about his passing and how he left this life. She blamed herself of course. That's all she could blame. Nina's family had already been a target but the minute Erika was taken in they became a mission. Erika's thoughts were disrupted by a vibration on her wrist.

Dr.Bruce Banner, Lab, 23

"Shit" Erika muttered. She wasn't even at the avenger tower and Dr.Banner was calling in for her help on a tech related project. Erika took this as a sign to get her butt our the door and to her very temporary job.

. . .

"Was this everything you needed Dr.Banner?" Erika said, finally bringing all the supplies he called for about an hour before she arrived.

Dr.Banner looked up from his work and blinked at her arrival.

"So great for you to join us." Natasha said sitting in a seat behind Bruce observing him work.

"Sorry, but technically you sent the message to the watch about ten minutes before I was technically on shift." Erika shrugged as she set down the box of materials and supplies. Bruce appeared beside her and started filtering through everything, pulling out things he thought valuable.