Project Alpha

Ch. 6 - Memory Machine

"Oh my god," Bucky says out of nowhere, startling everyone during their search for answers.

"Oh my god, what?" Steve asked his friend while a look of horror spreads throughout Bucky's face.

"Oh my god, I knew him... Peter was in the cell across from me at Hydra," Bucky replies, "I forgot about him, when I escaped from Hydra after the bridge battle. (A/N: the one during Winter Soldier)

"Do you know what base you were at?" Natasha asks eagerly, desperately yearning to save her son from the living nightmare known as Hydra.

Bucky concentrated for a moment before shaking his head. "He was my best friend, I've known him since he was seven."

"Where was he before then?" Bruce wondered aloud, "I mean, he had to be somewhere, right?"

"He might've been in a different base than Bucky for all we know," Steve theorized.

"He must still be there then!"

"What are we going to do?"

"There must be a way..."

The team argued back and forth, brainstorming of possible solutions. It was no use though, as all the ideas required them to know the base Peter was at. Tony, who had been oddly silent, finally spoke up, "What if..."

"I know that look, spill, Tony," Bruce peered at the billionaire while readjusting his glasses for only the fifteenth time in that hour alone.

"What if there was a way we could look in Bucky's memories for the base location, like while he's leaving on a mission?"

"That... Might work," Clint thought about what could go wrong, but came up empty handed seeing as he is not a genius in any way, shape, or form.

"Let's do it!" Bucky said, excited about the fact that he would finally see his best friend (other than Steve) again. It had been far too long and the guilt was crushing his heart.

"How long will it take to build, Stark?" Fury suddenly came out from the shadows, once again scaring the living daylights out of everyone except Natasha and Clint. They both had already known he was there.

"Okay, one, stop doing that," Tony glared at the director while saying this, "Two, maybe a week, and three, stop doing that."

Bruce agreed to help Tony, and soon, the two scientists were off to the lab again. The rest of the team continued to scan more Hydra records, looking for a miracle that they would just casually find the exact location of their top secret project.

Eventually though, they concluded that they wouldn't find anything and walked off to do their own thing. Meanwhile in the lab, Tony had locked the doors and vowed to not exit until the 'memory machine' was completed. Bruce didn't take a liking to this idea, but now he was stuck in there, FRIDAY refusing to override the bosses lock.

"Do we have any more vibranium in the back storage?"

"I don't know, Brucey-Bear, how about you go look?" Tony didn't look up from the blueprints he was writing on while Bruce scribbled one last thing on another set before heading to gather more supplies.

It was going to be one, excruciatingly long week.

***

To say the experiment was going well would've been only a half truth.

A week and a half had gone by since Tony and Bruce had started the machine. They grew more and more frustrated by the hour. Then again, neither of them were sleeping, especially the billionaire Playboy.

Dead end after dead end after dead end.

They had only had one prototype that was almost ready, or so they thought. It had soon erupted into violent flames, causing a chorus of maniacal laughter from Bruce who managed to avoid getting burnt. Tony couldn't say the same. Although, the overhead sprinklers sprayed both men with streams of water.

Vibranium and other materials piles were growing smaller everyday too. More orders were placed to Wakanda and various dealers throughout New York.

They were about to give up until they struck gold. Literally. Gold was the last metal both of the scientists thought to use in their tired states of mind. Bruce soon realized this to be a colossal mistake, as the electron structure actually fit quite well with the vibranium interworkings. (A/N: keep in mind that I'm not at all a qualified scientist and I don't care if it's accurate)

"Shit," Tony exclaimed while staring at the successful example of a test run that FRIDAY was computing.

"Language," Steve's voice came from the now open door. The only way they had gotten in was to ask someone with more power than Tony, that person being Pepper.

"Finally finished?"

"Yeah, I'm one hundred percent sure that it'll work!" Tony exclaimed while the rest of the avengers breathed out a sigh of relief; they could finally locate Peter!

Steve turned to face Bucky, who was deep in thought, "You sure you want to do this, Buck?" Bucky in turn cracked a small grin.

"Whatever it takes..."

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