𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆

𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒

As the lines of code drifted across the cracked, ancient laptop screen, Jamie could feel his headache worsening by the second. He idly tapped his fingers on the keyboard, not too hard that he would disrupt the program he was running, but hard enough to make an infuriating clicking sound that was the only thing keeping him awake.

He fiddled with the much too slow trackpad, his eyes following the cursor drifting across the screen. Sometimes it scared him how he always had to be doing something with his hands, playing with something, just moving. Always moving.

One, two, three, four. The green dots on the top left of the screen blinked in and out of view, the word processing whirring next to it. It'd been 'processing' for the past fifteen minutes, with no signs of the program having a successful result. Sure, he'd felt a bit guilty for breaking and entering into the avengers compound servers, but if Mr. Stark wasn't going to help him, he'd had to find his own way to go about things.

However, his servers had been remarkably hard to break into, he'd admit, but Hydra had left him with the skillset to do exactly that. It was surprising how much smarter eight years of methodical training could leave you, despite their methods being somewhat more on the harsher side.

Jamie would rather die than go back there, he knew that as a fact, as a personal rule he kept in his mental manuscript, 'Jamie's guide to living a not-miserable life.' Dying was the easy way out, simple, weak, but why go through all that pain again, when he could just... not?

His head began to pulse, the words muddling up across the screen. Hydra had wanted to dispose of Jamie when they had gotten word of his 'problem.' He couldn't keep letters straight, stupid of him, he knew, but there were just so many of them, and they all just seemed to jumble up with one another. The words seemed to make sense at first and then they didn't, and just when he finally thought he'd figured it out, they seemed to morph into something completely else. He hated it, hated himself for not being able to do something as simple as read letters off a paper.

Jamie could feel his eyes slipping shut, the darkening skies outside his grimy windows not doing much to keep him awake. Everything seemed to slow, the usually inescapable bustling of the New York streets reduced to a muted buzz. The world was reduced to the brief moments where his eyes were open, and the darkness when they were closed. Fuck, he was so, so tired.

A sharp knock echoed throughout the silent apartment. Jamie started awake, his heart pounding. No one ever came here. It wasn't the lawyer a few doors down, because Jamie would have been able to hear the dull thunk of his cane reverberating through the hardwood floor. And these footsteps sounded different. More confident, self-assured, unlike the more skittish pace taken by a blind man.

He reached instinctively for the thin blade under his recycled mattress, not that a pocketknife would be much use against a gun, or whatever else the person on the other side of the door held. But hey, if he bit the dust, at least it would be a quick death.

Muffled voiced penetrated through the thin walls, as Jamie's knuckles turned white from his stiff grip on the hilt. His heart went into overdrive, he wanted to scream, bolt, hide, didn't want to deal with this. Assess the targets, find the weakest, go for the kill to send a message, and deal with the others as they came. He repeated the steps methodically in his head, wincing as he recalled how long it had been since he had done this last. He was rusty and he knew it, but he couldn't let it show, especially not now.

An alarming thump echoed from the door. They were breaking it down. The shitty rental's door wouldn't last a minute against whoever they had out there. Jamie's thumb dug into his palm, reopening the cut from a few hours before. That had only been a few hours? It had felt almost as if it hadn't even happened to him, so hazy, despite it not have even been a day's worth of time.