X-Marks the Heads

Prologue

There is constant thickness in the air of every Hydra rats-nest. The cavernous base camps are dug deep like living coffins. Every morning in your cell when you open your eyes and return from your death like sleep the first thing you feel it's the sharp sting from that thick fog of damp and chemicals. It clouds your vision and grabs your senses.
    You had been in an uncomfortable sleep like most other times when they allowed you the luxury of rest. The nightmares and visions kept you writhing and sweating through most of it and then there was the Rapture. Hydra's key to complete control of your soul. The potency of the drug keeps you zombified and willing to do anything for your next fix. But it burned through every nerve, vein and cell of your body as if you touched hell. So painful you would often vomit.
     The guards would be coming for you soon.
You had been given a mission to track down another of Hydras pet experiments. The one they called the Winter soldier. He had escaped the previous base camp 3 months and 12 days prior according to the scratch checks you had engraved into the small rough walls of your cell. You were tasked to track him down and terminate him as you were Hydras most elite weapon. Although to them you were also bait to be prayed on and picked apart in exceedingly vicious ways - as was he. You didn't know him personally but you had been fully aware of the treatment he was receiving. You had felt pangs of guilt striking you daily from the wretched things hydra made you do on missions and to targets. Your abilities were more that any feat of strength and fight tactics. You had dangerous scionic mind powers. You could completely delve into the depths of a being and pull their soul apart to dust. You thought Maybe you could shed some of the gnawing guilt by helping the Soldier.
    3 months and 12 days ago you had put your plan into action and helped him escape. You had to mine deep into his mind to pull him back to the surface. He was given coded messages from an anonymous informant - it was too big of a risk for you to reveal to him you had helped him as hydra would be relentless in their punishments - he was prompted the previous night and again the hour before the attempt. You had been able to lead him with messages to a small winding exit that crept round the back of the tombs. There was only one guard that would need to be taken out. Fuck him though, you knew the tortured soldier would have no issue with that. Having taken some form of abuse from every single guard it seemed in his lengthy stretch as prisoner. He would be able to acquire a vehicle after going through the first gate and drive through the second gate and beyond the brush undetected. You had been able to leave one last crumb trailed fact that would point him in the direction of Tony Stark.
    You had uncovered a file during a briefing of a weapons tech related mission and had managed to keep it hidden. You had read all the information about Tony. He would be the Winter Soldiers best bet.
    His chances of survival were 1 in an unfathomable number of odds. Yet he escaped and back in the present it was your turn to taste a drop of delicious freedom. You stood on your stone cold floor and prepared yourself to be escorted to the briefing room, where you would be given the orders of his pursuit. The thumps of the thick soles from guard boots slammed down the dark hallway. This was a hauntingly traumatic sound and it bellowed in your ears, louder in the empty darkness of your cage.
    "X you better be awake", taunted one of the guards. "Open the cell!" The other guard called harshly on his radio.