Insanity

Prologue

Song: Seven Nation Army remix by The Glitch Mob

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"I'm gonna fight 'em all,
a seven nation army
couldn't hold me back."

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December 15th, 1991

General Vasily Karpov, son of General Vladimir Karpov, paced the halls of Hydra's Siberian base, a file folder clenched tightly in his right hand. Since he had been put in charge of this task, things were seeming to go rather rocky and nothing ever worked out in quite the way that he wanted them to.

He had things, so many things he wanted to do, but he never had the resources to do any of them. Right when he had everything in the palm of his hands, it always slipped right through his fingers. But then again, that's how everything at Hydra seemed to work since Arnim Zola had passed away in 1972.

Karpov stopped his pacing, pausing to take a moment to inspect the folder in his hands for the eightieth time. He hadn't slept a wink since receiving the folder just yesterday, spending all of his hours trying to devise the most perfect, foolproof plan possible.

He scanned the file: Howard Stark created updated version of the Super Soldier Serum. Expected to be transporting it to the Pentagon on December 16th. Use the Winter Soldier to stage an accident. Sanction and extract. No witnesses.

December 16th? That was tomorrow! Karpov groaned, running a hand across his shaved head. How did they expect him to get this done without giving him any sort of a plan to follow aside from waking up the Winter Soldier? He was just a sleeper agent for the Russian Armed Forces, his forté was taking orders, not making them. So how was he supposed to issue a full-blown attack plan when he'd never come up with a plan before?

Then, he realized: maybe the Winter Soldier himself did the planning. Maybe he only had to give the Winter Soldier the basic outline of the plan.

Karpov beamed as he hurried to room 126, reciting the code to unlock the door over and over in his head. This could work, he thought to himself excitedly.

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The light hit his eyes like a thousand suns were before him as the the cryostasis chamber was lifted over his head. His breaths were muffled by the thick mask over his face, pumping oxygen into his lungs. The air around him felt hot as he exited the icy chamber, melting frost dripping down his arms and face and collecting in messy puddles on the ground around him.

His limbs felt as weak as he felt half asleep, and before he could even take a step forward three guards rushed towards him and two grabbed him by the arms, the third holding his torso and head. They pulled him forward and out of the chamber, the guard to his left's hand slipping as he tried to grip Soldier's cybernetic arm.

They stumbled down dark hallways, but Soldier still felt too groggy to pay much attention to where he was being taken. His vision was blurry with the offset of a deep, deep sleep and he walked with the gait of a drunken man, using the guards surrounding him for as much support as possible.

The only reason he was aware that he had entered a room was because of the creaking of a large door being shut. Before he was fully aware of what was happening he was practically dropped into a chair, the back of his head slamming into the metal chair's headrest. Something hard and cold snaked around his limbs and torso as an ominous machine resembling a metal eye mask hovered over his face.