Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steve’s fingers drummed against the gate to the scrapyard, making flickering shadows out of the steady glare of the floodlights through the bars. It was well past midnight, and Steve’s back and feet were killing him from the long shift at the docking array. But he didn’t dare miss his window of opportunity. The fresh hauls of junk were supposed to be dropped off in a few minutes, and they’d be sorted as soon as the day shift started. Everything would be melted down, recycled, or repurposed. Collectors and scavengers like Steve paid for the privilege of being allowed to pick through the junk. Proprietary tech went to a more secure facility, but even the dregs from corporations like Advanced Idea Mechanics, Hammer Tech, and Stark Industries were a gold mine for him.

Behind Steve a dozen other junk rats were waiting in line, each clutching some tribute to the Big Guy in charge. More lights flickered above, and Steve craned his face up to see the hovering junk haulers open their lower bay doors and pour out tons of technical detritus into the scrapyard. As soon as they had flown out of sight, the gate opened under Steve’s fingers.

The Big Guy was not all that big. He wasn’t a scrawny, undersized runt like Steve, but he wasn’t built like a lug-hauler either. He had dark, curly hair threaded through with gray, wore a grease-and-lube-stained coverall like the rest of them, and had old-fashioned vis-glasses on his face instead of the usual scan-tacts or the new vis implants. Steve pushed his own vis-glasses up his nose self-consciously. He could see the city’s augmented reality interface same as anyone, but the glasses were clunkier and more prone to failure than the scan-tacts or implants. Or at least so it was said. Steve couldn’t compare.

He'd been a natural birth, no selecting the best sperm and ovum his parents could muster, no in-utero growth monitors, no early trimester corrective gene treatment. Only after he’d been born and his lengthy list of problems had become obvious had his parents had to bow to outside pressure to get him “fixed.” They’d been forced to buy the corrective heart, lung and immune system packages for him just so he could legally attend school, and after Dad had died, Mom had scrimped and saved to get him the corrective spine treatment while it could still do him any good. They hadn’t been able to dial back his sensitivity to implants, nor able to get the growth hormone set that would have let him grow tall and strong. Steve hadn’t cared, not after what had happened to Dad, not after Mom had--

“What’ve you got there?” the Big Guy asked, interrupting his reverie. If he had a real name, it had never been uttered in Steve’s hearing. If it had, Steve would have pretended not to hear for both of their sakes. Steve held out the piece he’d made, a control module for a home security system, made to specs the Big Guy had told him, fitted and skinned so it could be virtually invisible where it would be installed. The Big Guy was smart, probably way smarter than Steve, but he had his own job, his own projects, and so let the junk rats scavenge if they did some little tasks for him.

“Good work.” The Big Guy took the module without another word, and waved Steve in. Steve scooted straight towards the left-hand pile, pushing the power-assisted wheeled cart that went nearly everywhere with him. He’d been certain to be first in line to get the best pick. He was smaller than every other junk rat, and not all of them were his friends. He’d had things taken from him before, and there was only so much damage he could show at work before people would start asking questions, or insist the police get involved…

Steve clambered up the heap of scrap, the metal pressing against his rip-stop coverall. Underneath that he wore homemade greaves and bracers, like a Stellar Marine’s hand-to-hand combat armor, to keep himself from getting cut to ribbons as he searched. The safety boots, gloves, and helmet from work served double-duty here. Even his vis-glasses were an advantage here, just in case some piece of glass decided to break or a power cell blew up. Carefully arranging his bin, Steve put in sequencers, inducers, transformers, circuit boards, likely pieces of good alloys, other bits of damaged tech. A few small half-broken bots and drones, even a few big pieces of hologlass, anything he could use in his projects. If he did enough, showed enough innovation, worked hard enough, he could translate school robotics club awards into a genuine ticket to a better job. Not that Solar System Retrofitting was a bad company to work for, but Steve would need years there to earn the money and experience he needed to reach his goals. He wanted more than that…

Moving an empty container out of his way, he spied a metal and plastic arm from a full-sized android. That looked useful, but when Steve tugged on it he realized it was still attached to a body. He shoved other junk aside until he could see the designation marks on the shoulder. Part of it had grease on it, but one half of it was clear. CK-1. Combat Killer, Prime Model. Steve’s mouth went dry. Start Industries had recently gotten out of the battle droid business; it had been the biggest thing on the newsfeeds. But CKs always ended up in secure recycling, not in the general scrapyard! The unit looked somewhat battered, and not just by the rough ride. It had definitely seen action. Steve shoved more junk around until he could see the whole chest. The Stark Industries logo was on the right, worn but visible, but the left arm, ah, the left arm had been blown clean off.

He dug around a little more, mostly out of curiosity. Clearly this had been a mistake. As much as he might like to take it home, it was both too heavy, and if anyone saw him it would be an awfully awkward explanation to any authorities why a civilian with no clearance had a CK model. He mostly needed to make sure any of the shadier folks, like Hodges, never got their paws on it, and in a few hours it would be safely recycled. He would tell the Big Guy, and he’d make certain it was taken care of. This wasn’t the first time something had slipped through the cracks and ended up in general scrap when it should have been proprietary. Probably someone had been taking a shortcut.

Steve exposed a little more of the right shoulder, using a rag from his pocket to clean off the rest of the designation so his vis-glasses could scan it. When they picked up information from the barcode, and he’d wiped the rest of the grease away, he froze. There was a B, and in a tiny dot, a small “u”. From a distance one might think that was a Beta Combat Killer Prime, the more advanced second generation. But with the small “u,” that meant it was a Bionic Utility model. This had to be a prototype unit, judging by the lack of a serial number, but why had they used a CK chassis? The BUs were marketed as servants, personal assistants, even sex bots. They were supposed to be the LMD for the “common man” (who still had a lot of money), with more predictive behavior and less need to spell out everything with coding or buy programed learning chips. These were learning machines, low-grade AIs. They had viral matrix learning systems and bioskin outer coverings on some parts so they could look more real without approaching the freakish imitation of an LMD.

Except… Steve squinted closer at the bar code, and the scanning function in his vis-glasses activated. If this unit had been properly disposed of, it would have given him a “scrapped” reading. If it hadn’t been, considering this was from Stark Industries, he would have gotten a commercial reading with all the usual manufacturer’s info, or a restricted reading, if ownership was active, just giving basic required model information and the owner’s contact link. This unit came up with a pictograph of a grid with a double-wide open square in the center. And nothing else.

“Oh, shit,” Steve whispered. It was unlicensed. This was potentially more dangerous than an unregistered weapon.

The mostly-intact chassis was a CK model, which were incredibly durable, and the head was missing but… Steve dove frantically through the rubble, and bit back a yelp when his hand got tangled, not in wire, but in hair. He pulled up gingerly, bringing a bio-skinned head. At least it wasn’t a human one. One of his fellow junk rats had found an actual corpse in his patch before, a victim of some dispute whose killer had used the junk haulers as a disposal method. Steve turned the head over to look at the face, and his heart skipped a beat. The head was beautiful, perfect, a masterpiece of a man’s face. Someone had taken immense care with the set of the cheekbones, the fullness of the lips, the longish wavy brown hair, and even the stark metal sides and chin didn’t detract from the effect. Why had anyone thrown him away?

Steve checked the connections, and found they hadn’t been severed. As a matter of fact, as his vis-glasses scanned the inside for him, he could see several active diodes. He gasped. It was still alive. There were memories in there. Everything coming to the scrapyard was supposed to be mag-wiped, but someone had missed doing it to this android. Steve lunged for the body again and dug until he had it freed to the waist, noting that its legs seemed intact, and then dug into his bin for a power source. It took him a few minutes, but he jerry-rigged it enough for now, strapped it in place, reconnected the head, and hit the power switch.

The eyes opened, blue-gray, clear, and so, so real. Steve hadn’t seen an LMD up close, but this had to be similar. “Can you hear me?” Steve whispered. It didn’t respond for long minutes, then made a tiny nod. “Can you move?” It flexed its hand, then started to stand. Steve helped it sit upright, seeing the jerkiness in its movement and wincing. There was probably a lot of system damage from the blast, the trip in the hauler, and the long fall to the ground. The android winced too, and used its right arm to hold the injured stump of its left.

It winced. “Oh my God,” Steve whispered. Who wanted a CK who winced? LMDs were supposed to imitate a pain response because of their purpose as decoys, but who else would want their androids to feel pain? BUs were supposed to be able to turn off their pain sensors if damage became intolerable. Suddenly the blast to the BU’s left side took on a whole other level of menace. “Someone used you for target practice and then threw you away.” Illegally too, or it wouldn’t be here.

As Steve looked at the android, he decided that, no matter what trouble it caused him, he wasn’t just going to leave it here.

“I want to fix you, make you better,” Steve said, looking up (because yes, he was even smaller than an android). “Do you have a designation? I’m Steve.”

The unit hesitated, mouth opening a closing a few times, then tapped its throat. Vo-ax problems, another thing for Steve to fix.

“How about, for now… B-u-C-K-1. Buckle? No. Buck. Buck-y. Bucky.”

Bucky smiled.

Jesus. Whoever had made him had not just been flirting with the edges of robotics laws, but had been way out on the bleeding edge of both technical skill and legality. LMDs could imitate their assigned human with near-perfect behavior, but they ran on a limited matrix constrained by their human “master’s” personality. A good BU, properly regulated, could learn and grow like a person. Combined with a CK’s chassis and combat ability, along with a little cosmetic doctoring, this android could be the perfect assassin. Bucky’s existence was a crime. No wonder he’d ended up here.

Steve had to get him out of here. Whoever had tried to kill him was probably hoping he’d be slag in a few hours. And if Bucky hadn’t been mag wiped… Steve did a scan for transmissions and found one in the blasted left arm socket. He didn’t have time to remove the tracker, so he pulled out a mag-cap. It would short out things in a small area, nulling the tracker for now until Steve could get it out of Bucky. He pushed it in and activated it, and Bucky jerked. Steve cursed at himself. The BU units were supposed to have good damage receptors, supposedly for superior maintenance, and clearly all of Bucky’s were still on.

“I’m so sorry. You had a tracker in you,” Steve explained, feeling both a little ridiculous and not ridiculous at all for explaining. Steve looked around quickly, grabbing a strut to dig through the scrap. CK chasses were heavy, befitting their original purpose, and Steve couldn’t handle Bucky, plus his haul, and everything he’d need to conceal Bucky on the trip home. He finally found what he needed, a pair of old repulsors. He could get them working long enough to effectively reduce weight on the cart for the trip home.

“Bucky, I need to get you out of here. Lay in the cart, and I’ll need to conceal you.” Bucky carefully picked his way down, then lay in the cart without further fuss, and Steve quickly covered him up with one eye on the other junk rats. Luckily the rest of them were more interested in their patches than in what Steve was doing. The hour allotted them was about up, and the junk rats started to plod back to the gate, a few exchanging a word or two, others scattering. Steve usually loved to talk shop with his few buddies here, but not today. Peter and Ned were waiting for him, but he waved them off with a quick explanation of “long day” and a quick smile.

He’d have to make it up to them later; they were good friends, and they might have some ideas on what to do, if he could figure out how to explain it without getting anyone in trouble. Right now it was more important to get to his cube before anyone figured out what he had. The repulsors on the cart made maneuvering it far easier – he’d have to do this regularly. His retrofitted lungs could handle standard loads and basic atmospheric pollutants, but when he really exhausted himself he could still end up wheezing and needing to lie down, if not to the point of needing his meds.

He walked the cart six blocks over, stood on the people mover for ten blocks west, then traveled up the freight elevator to the 52nd floor of Union Residential Tower #85. Cube 107, home sweet home. Smaller than the freight elevator, permanent desk, shelves and cubbies above, chair below, bed and sofa combined, single unit kitchen, single unit hygiene tube (both built into the wall), cupboards on the same side all full of his tools and parts, clothes stashed in nets on the ceiling. A basic cube, like millions of others in the city. The bin took up most of the rest of the floor space, but Steve didn’t begrudge it at all.

He powered down the repulsors and quickly put away the spare parts, slinging some of them onto the shelves that held his few awards from school projects. He got Bucky uncovered and started to pull him upright. With a whir, Bucky turned on, eyes opening. He just laid there, so Steve made sure he was in line of sight and said, “Hello? Bucky? Can you hear me?” Steve was tense and ready with a short-range boosted mag-lock in his hand. As much as he loved a mystery, as much as he wanted to help, there was no point in denying that part of Bucky was a Combat Killer, and if his damaged memories decided to pull some old soldier programming, Steve could be in deadly danger. As low-power as Bucky was, he didn’t think it was likely, but Steve liked himself with his bones unbroken.

Bucky slowly brought up his hand, angling it up, then down. Steve was relieved. He was using the RSL sign for “yes.” Some years back, Tony Stark had developed Robotic Sign Language as a way for robots and humans to communicate without either of them having to have deep knowledge of the other’s systems. A robot could tell a human what was wrong without the human needing to know code or having the right scanning software, and a human could get concepts across without having to do programming, or installing a full vocal learning package. The signs were simple enough to do even with a claw, which meant there wasn’t a lot of nuance, but it would work for basic things.

“Can you sit up?”

Sideways jerk of the hand. No. Then closed fingers, and slowly lowering arm. Low power. The cell Steve had used must have been nearly dry. Steve dug out a droid cord out of his reserve pile and plugged him in, not wanting any power interruption when Bucky’s memories were already likely damaged from his ill-treatment. Bucky sat up, head swiveling to look around with an apparent expression of interest.

“Can you stand?” Steve asked. Bucky put his good arm on the side of the bin and stood, getting out of the bin to stand on the floor. Without orders. Wow. Steve knew a BU unit could extrapolate logically like a human, but he’d never been close to one personally. No one in his circle could afford them. “How’s the mag-null, still working?” A nod of the head this time. “All right. Let’s try to get that tracker out of you.” Bucky might have a CK chassis, but he’d been a BU first. And anyone who’d put that kind of contradictory programming in an android and then blown him up… They didn’t deserve him.

Steve patted the bed, and Bucky sat with casual human grace, not exhibiting any of that earlier jerkiness. Steve pulled his tools from his belt and began to dig into the mag-locked shoulder. It was a damn mess. Had someone used a plasma beam? It didn’t seem melted enough for that. Electrical overload? Maybe.

Steve probed and cleaned, taking out damaged wires and connectors, trying to keep within the limited range of the mag-lock. Bucky seemed to have the same pain awareness as an LMD, which was above what the BUs were supposed to have, and like hell Steve was going to hurt him any more. Nevertheless, Bucky’s intact hand gripped his own knee, the servos whining as Steve fished past the tangle to get to a small, intrusive chip. Gripping it with tweezers, he carefully brought it out, then brushed off the char.

And dropped it.

A red, tentacled skull grinned back up at him. HydraCorp.

Steve looked at Bucky, swallowing hard. “How did you get away from them?” Bucky paused and then moved his hand in, then down, then pointed at Steve. I fell to you.

Steve looked at Bucky with new respect. He’d managed to survive HydraCorp, whether as their property or something they’d been tracking. But how? Bucky was a bundle of contradictions. His CK chassis was Stark Industries standard stock, but unregistered, which went against their company policy even before they got out of the CK business. Combining that chassis with a BU matrix and head didn’t make much sense for either Stark Industries or HydraCorp.

HydraCorp specialized in weapons systems, surveillance and counter-surveillance, PR and propaganda. Stark Industries did tech and engineering, everything from energy production to androids, consumer electronics and communication, along with dozens of other agricultural, pharmaceutical, medical, and who-knew-what else kinds of projects. Stark Industries had gotten out of weapons’ manufacturing a year ago, and HydraCorp preferred their battle droids far more obvious and intimidating. The idea Steve had had before, that Bucky might have been created to be an assassin, well, that could fit in either megacorporation. Megacorps were laws unto themselves, and their security forces rivaled armies. Conflicts between them could be nasty, and both sides would use every tool at their disposal. But which side had Bucky worked for? HydraCorp had their tracker in him, Stark Industries could have made him. Or was this whole thing something else entirely? A gambit from Assisted Idea Mechanics or Hammer Tech?

“Can you state your purpose?” Steve asked. Bucky shook his head, raised his hand to his temple and making a “no” sign. Memory damage. Well, that tracked with what Steve had seen. Whoever had blown Bucky’s arm off hadn’t been trying to miss. “What could you have been?” he asked rhetorically. Stark Industries could have been trying to find a new market for their old CK androids, maybe trying to make a bodyguard? Something less expensive and elaborate than an LMD, more versatile than a CK? That could track for HydraCorp too, because while they didn’t make androids, buying up defunct Stark tech and repurposing it for something shady would certainly be their style.

“A bodyguard?” he ventured. Bucky cocked his head, looking humanly curious, and nodded slowly, giving a wavering “maybe” sign. And if it was, then who had he been guarding? He wouldn’t have had a HydraCorp chip in him unless he’d been under their control, at least temporarily, but then he’d been dumped with Stark Industries scrap, so he had to have been at one of their facilities to get put in one of their collection bins.

Steve suddenly felt cold when he thought what might fit that scenario: corporate espionage. Someone had taken Bucky with them when they’d gone to steal Stark Industries secrets, run into security measures, and abandoned Bucky to die.

But he’d still been mobile! Only his batteries had been run down from the tenure in the bins, and his head would have only come off during the stresses of being transported in tons of scrap with the power off. Why leave a valuable prototype behind? Had his handler destroyed and abandoned Bucky to save themselves? HydraCorp was certainly ruthless enough for something like that. But if they’d destroyed Bucky as some kind of distraction, why did he end up in the scrap heap? Stark Employees knew how to sort their proprietary tech out before they loaded the junk drones; Steve hadn’t seen any errors in their heaps for years.

Mystery upon mystery…

“Well, HydraCorp can’t get you now,” Steve said firmly, popping the HydraCorp chip in a Faraday box and shoving it in a foil-lined lidded box just to be sure. “Let’s get you fixed up.” Sometime later, Steve really wanted to get to the bottom of this. Needed to get to the bottom of this, really, both for Bucky’s sake and his own safety. But Bucky was a BU as well as a CK, and he’d just been through some kind of hell and couldn’t even remember half of it. He couldn’t even speak, but he seemed to trust Steve enough to let him dig into him, and that was a lot for any independent unit.

Steve dug through his sorted shelves of scrap, the accumulation of years. He was always rotating things out, but sometimes he’d find an item so special he’d hang onto it until he had just the right accumulation of parts. He’d probably sucked up over half of his not over-generous floorspace in making more capacious cabinets, but as long as he had enough room to work and lie down afterwards, that was enough for him. Moving out of his cube really wasn’t much of an option, not without a lot more money.

“Found it!” he said excitedly, pulling out the core armature from an old battle android. Robot sports were still popular amongst a lot of people, though Steve didn’t like seeing androids going at it. It always seemed wrong for people to scream for dismemberment instead of a K.O. At least with regular battle-bots there was a learning experience involved. With fighting androids… well, it was just like watching CKs in action. It reminded him too much of war.

Bucky looked curiously at the armature, a sturdy metal skeleton onto which the necessary levers, fibers, and electronics could be grafted to give him back the limb he’d lost. It was slightly overbuilt, and looked like it could have been used to punch through a wall. Most CKs could punch through a wall, but it would have been too expensive to give them all such sturdy limbs. Easier and cheaper to just replace the parts. Just like the battle-droid arenas.

“You’re not going to lose this one easily, promise.” Steve closed that cabinet and hunted through several others, pulling all the necessary connectors, wiring harnesses, servos, motors, and metal plating he’d need. With a flourish, he pulled down his workbench from the wall, and slapped the on-switch to his torch.

Bucky examined the components, and then made a crooked-finger gesture at himself, then Steve. Help you?

Steve grinned. “Absolutely!”

Steve moved them over to the workbench, and ran the shaper over each piece of metal, carefully realigning it so it would fit the design he’d inputted. He wanted something a little more natural-formed to go under the clear plastic plating; he thought it would look elegant, and Bucky had smiled and selected that design promptly when Steve had given him a choice. Bit by bit, he fitted each into place over the servos, wiring, and articulators as Bucky watched or moved his arm as Steve directed, holding pieces with his other hand to help them fit into place as Steve worked. Whenever he glanced up, Bucky was watching him with patience and even a little smile. He looked… genuine. Steve held the opinion that since the advent of BUs, LMDs, and other, rarer advancements, that the androids ought to be treated as well as any person. Considering some megacorps’ treatment of their workers, they were about of equal worth to them anyways, an irony Steve did not fail to notice.

“There!” Steve said, after an hour of work, wiping off the last of the smudges with a soft cloth. “Better than new.”

Bucky smiled at him, and said, “Thank you,” in a soft, low voice. Steve started at the sound of his voice; he’d thought Bucky’s circuits were damaged. Or maybe it had just been the whole low-power thing. Bucky was so different it was difficult to know.

“Anytime,” Steve said warmly. And then yawned wide enough to nearly dislocate his jaw. “I don’t know if you need more charging, but I definitely do.” Bucky kept his seat on the bench as Steve rose to stagger the three steps to his bed, falling in and pulling the blanket over him without even bothering to change his clothes.

The last thing he saw before sleep pulled him under was Bucky, flexing his new arm as he surveyed the door like a sentry.

--

Steve had the next couple of days off, and he thanked his lucky stars that he did. His job at SSR was steady, and Peggy was a great boss, but he needed to figure out how to help Bucky, and he had other projects due that he couldn’t put off, not if he was trying to get even barely above Basic Income.

By the time he’d woken up, Bucky looked fully charged, and his arm was moving with integrated smoothness and speed.

“Good morning!” Steve said, grabbed a breakfast shake from the tiny kitchen unit just by stretching from his bed, and downed it in three gulps before standing.

Bucky looked a little surprised at the greeting, but smiled in response. “No threats last night. Noisy neighbors, mild illegal activity, nothing actively harmful.”

Steve shrugged, “They don’t bother me, I don’t bother them. But thank you for watching.” Though he wondered if Bucky’s sensors were sensitive enough to pick up people talking in the hallways, or if he had actually jacked into the building’s surveillance. He decided he could definitely ask that at some much later date. “Hang on a second, let me get sluiced off.”

He shucked his clothes and put himself into the hygiene tube for a quick rinse and dry, tossing his clothes in for their cleaning cycle once he was out, and redressing in a nearly identical coverall. Settling down at his workbench, Steve was about to pick up their conversation from last night when his cube computer cheeped at him, reminding him he had three hours to a delivery date.

“Damn!” He’d nearly forgotten about it in the rush of Bucky’s discovery, but if he didn’t make his delivery date, his ratings could go down, and he’d have bupkis to show when he was able to submit samples of his work for a better job. “Bucky, I-”

Without a comment, Bucky handed over a round, squat all-purpose helper-bot, the modifications three-quarters done.

“But you…”

“Don’t miss your deadlines,” Bucky said, his mouth firm and uncompromising. “That is a bad work ethic.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue, and Bucky pushed the bot at him just hard enough to rock Steve a little and make him lose his train of thought.

“You don’t mind?”

“I am alive. I don’t mind.” The sweet smile Bucky gave made Steve’s heart flip-flop, but he gave in to the inevitable and pulled the tools and materials he needed closer.

Steve wasn’t a robotics genius by any means. He had had basic robotics in school, and watched a lot of videos, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking he was the next Tony Stark. If someone came to him with a fried circuit board and replacing it didn’t work, he was logging on to support chat same as the next person. What he was good at was tweaking and repurposing. Yes, Mrs. Jameson needed a helper robot to clean the house and take deliveries for her. But Steve made it look friendly and cute so she would actually use it. His friend Sam used drones at work, and Steve made them look distinctive enough that no one ever tried to appropriate Sam’s redbirds ever again. Even the work he’d done for the Big Guy wasn’t anything that wasn’t in the basic manual, but had just been tweaked to fit into his office just the way he wanted it.

Steve wasn’t an innovator; he thought of himself as an artist. Putting together kits and parts he could do, anyone could do that, but he thought he made them look just like they needed to be. Bucky seemed intrigued by the process, and settled down on the bench next to Steve.

“I can help,” he said, holding out his hand to pick up the next piece of metal and put it in place so Steve could shape it.

Steve was a little startled, because, well, it had been a damn long time since anyone had wanted to help him with this kind of stuff, if it wasn’t something that would benefit them directly.

What he did was considered quaint and old-fashioned. You could get custom spray jobs and enamel-work, buzz engraving and etching to spec, anything you wanted at mod boutiques. Just put in the design, hit the button, and off everything went. Steve was one of the few who still did the work from design to final product. He felt it gave a better feel to things, a to-the-armature authenticity that mod boutiques lacked.

Bucky helped with getting him the right parts, often finding them in the various shelves and cupboards and bins before Steve could even point. He seemed a natural at it, and it took Steve a while to realize that Bucky kept looking towards the door while he handed Steve the parts. He was literally watching Steve’s back. Steve felt his throat get tight as he layered on the next coat of paint. When was the last time anyone had watched his back at home? His friends were good people, but he didn’t know anyone who’d be willing to watch his door for intruders while he worked.

To keep from marring his work with a saltwater rinse, he quickly fired off messages to Peter and Ned, enthusing about his upcoming projects and asking them about the Star Destroyer drone they were trying to get working. They had a great idea for some licensed products, and with both of them still in tech school, they actually had a good chance of getting picked up by ILM. They had the technical know-how that wasn’t Steve’s forte, and he knew they were going to do great stuff.

Messages sent, Steve got deep into the groove of creation.

As he was finishing the last finicky bits of detail painting, Bucky turned the Net feed on to the news channel Steve had had it on last. Unless you had vis-implants, having the screen was a nice option when you took out the scan-tacts (or vis-glasses in Steve’s case) at the end of the day. The channel was finishing up a story about trying to catch the “dangerous and illegal Pipe Racing rings” in the city’s underbelly, along with the usual warnings about “if you see something, say something.”

Steve snorted softly in amusement. If all Pipe Racing were shut down, the city would lose millions in gambling kickbacks, and everybody knew it. They just had to make the right noises about it from time to time, to show they were morally superior.

The news cut to commercial, with an older man in a conservative suit, blond and handsome, standing on a stage behind a podium, the HydraCorp logo behind him. The scene was annoyingly presidential, and Steve tuned it out automatically as CEO Alexander Pierce began talking about some Combat Killer improvements to “help our brave soldiers” and a bunch of other patriotic-sounding megacorp propaganda. He’d been tuning that stuff out since he was old enough to wear vis-glasses, and it just washed over him like white noise.

That it, it was, until he heard a faint sound of stressed servos.

Steve had just finished the last detail on the helper bot’s head when he heard the sound, and whipped around to see Bucky staring at the screen, left hand clenched hard, flexing and straining, his right hand over his left wrist, as if holding it back. His wide, dilated eyes were fixed on Pierce’s face, and his chest moved rapidly, like a human’s would if they were hyperventilating, his expression rigid and mouth slightly open.

“Bucky?” Steve whispered. No response, though Bucky’s head jerked slightly, like he wanted to turn away, but couldn’t quite do it.

Steve shut down the Net feed, and the screen went dark. Very slowly, Steve moved in front of Bucky, and just as slowly, reached out a hand and touched Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky abruptly unfroze, curling in on himself, shuddering hard enough to shake the bench. Steve went to his knees and put his arms around Bucky, holding him until the shivers stopped, resting his cheek against Bucky’s metal jaw. After long moments, Bucky reached out his right arm and hugged Steve back, whispering, “Thank you.”

They both sat up, and Bucky sighed, an unnecessary action for him, but one likely built in for BU models.

“I’m all right,” he said quietly. “The logo, I think.”

“Understandable,” Steve said, rising from the floor. “I get it.” Bucky rolled his shoulders and neck, loosening servos and connectors which had been so rigidly locked in place.

“I… I’m going to go deliver this bot. Do you want to come with me?”

Steve didn’t want to leave Bucky alone while he did his delivery. With the possible threat from HydraCorp, Stark Industries, or just anyone who wanted what a breakthrough like Bucky represented, Steve didn’t want him to be where he couldn’t try to protect him. Moreover, Bucky was a BU, and he needed more than just to plug into the Net, especially with all the dangers of seeing more HydraCorp commercials. He needed new situations, interaction with people, and Steve wanted it to be the good interactions of his customers and clients, not some jack-booted cyber-thug kicking down his door with EMP shots and a bad attitude.

The thing was, there was no way in hell someone like Steve could afford even a low-end full-body android, not even from scrap. A put-together helper bot, sure, but not a fully articulated CK-chassis with anything like Bucky’s beautiful head. No amount of tacking on extra bits could hide Bucky’s smooth-running limbs, and Steve rebelled at the thought of having to mar his features to make him look like something Steve could afford

The thought must have occurred to Bucky, because he looked regretful, but waved his hand in front of his face, fingers wide, then gestured at the floor. I’ll stay here.

“No, we can figure this out,” Steve said, staring around the room, eyes suddenly snagging on his paints and sculpt foam that he’d been using to finish up Mrs. Jameson’s helper bot.

He couldn’t make Bucky look any less human than he was, but he could make him look more human.

Steve pulled down on one of his storage nets and dove into the pile of clothes he’d gotten for free at a charity drive, stuff he either modified to fit his skinny frame or else used as parts in his work. But in the pile was stuff meant for bigger and taller people than him. He triumphantly emerged with a shirt, jacket, jeans, gloves, and shoes, handing them to Bucky before picking up the sculpt-foam and paint.

Bucky tilted his head, smiled, and abruptly hummed a few bars of a song from an old movie, one Steve had been playing in the background earlier.

He grinned widely and sang along, slightly off-key, “Mister, I’ll make a man out of you!”

An hour later, Steve sat back on his heels, triumph in his eyes. Bucky was smiling, the traces of paint were perfectly aligned, and the clothes covered him very convincingly. He looked as human as Steve.

“Yeah, let’s go give it a try!”

--

Mrs. Jameson’s cube was only one building away from Steve’s, and she was the last person on his delivery list today. Bucky had seemingly enjoyed the travel by people-mover and elevator, even a few short rides on the train. No one had even seemed to guess he was anything other than human, even when he ventured the occasional signed comment. More than a few people used RSL for simple conversations, particularly if they were watching or listening to something on their scan-tacts and didn’t want to take too much attention away from what they were doing. Some people in the bot-mod community used it as a sign of their interests, and a flag for others to let them know there were fellow bot-heads around.

But by this last delivery, Bucky had started to flag. It didn’t look like he was low on power, and Steve was getting worried that all of the contact with the outside world was getting to him.

“Want to go home? I can do this last one on my own,” Steve whispered.

Bucky’s hand jerked a negative, and then he covered Steve’s hand with his own. “Going home soon anyway. Don’t disappoint your client.”

Steve vowed to make the visit as quick as he could as he rang the bell at Mrs. Jameson’s door.

Mrs. Jameson was a white-haired old woman, fit and healthy, with a dozen cats, a collection of aprons that likely outmatched the rest of her wardrobe, and a stubborn refusal to use any helper bots but what Steve made for her.

“Oh, it’s perfect!” she gushed, patting the peach and raspberry-colored rounded bot, a kitty-like face painted on the front, the whole of it softened with foam.

Bucky twitched as Mrs. Jameson tapped her ‘bot on the head panel. “Wake up, there’s a good boy!” she chirped. The ‘bot chirped in response, eyespots illuminating as it went through its booting cycle.

“Hello, Ella! Ello!” it said, its mechanical voice similar to a kid’s show mascot Steve had watched growing up. Mrs. Jameson smiled and crooked her finger at it. “Cycle 1, clean, sweep, and spin, please!”

The ‘bot started to putter around the cube, sweeping the floor and bringing out brushes to dust off any level surface it encountered – table, counter, or tablet. The cats either casually jumped out of the way, or a few leapt on top for a free ride. Bucky watched it work, his head shaking in a subtle way that started to set off alarm bells in Steve’s mind. His left hand started twitching too, and he brought his original hand across to grab it, gloves tightening across his knuckles.

“Oh thank you, Steve! I just missed little Smitty so much. Those out-of-the-box ‘bots are so bland and lifeless. Would you like some tea?”

Steve normally would happily accept a cup of real tea, along with the good cookies, cake, and sandwiches Mrs. Jameson would make for him; his food credits only covered the basics, and he didn’t get homemade stuff often. A couple of hours of gossip with her was always fun, but Bucky’s eyes were starting to look glassy, and Steve was getting scared. Besides, he’d made a promise.

“Rain check? I’ve got a couple of special deliveries, but next time, okay?” Steve said with the most sincere smile he could manage, stepping backwards into the hallway before he could get sucked in with a well-intentioned, “Well, I insist!” and a motherly pat on the arm. Usually he yielded to that without a peep of protest, but not today. Mrs. Jameson sighed but smiled at him, wishing him good-bye before shutting the door.

Bucky’s grip on his own arm hadn’t slackened, and his eyes were darting around but not seeing anything around him. Was he reviewing old data? Had he uncovered a memory from one of the blocked and damaged portions of his mind? Had that HydraCorp ad shaken something loose?

“Bucky?” Steve whispered. He wanted to get him back home as soon as possible, but wasn’t sure if he could touch him right now. Bucky looked like a wire under high stress, ready to break at any second. Any more stimulus could cause an overload. He suddenly clamped his right hand to his stomach and stretched out his left to sign. Fingers opened and closed like a spasming heartbeat, a sign of distress that meant, “danger”.

“What danger? Bad memory? Old programming?”

Bucky nodded minutely at the second. “Partial… access. There was a reboot cycle. New data. Conflicting priorities. I…” Bucky looked at Steve, and he looked so lost that Steve put an arm around him without thinking. The wire-tight trembling stopped. “Access seems to be sporadic. But it was important. It was prior to my fall.”

Steve’s shoulders slumped and he nudged them both into the lift, then onto the people mover to get back to their own cube.

“We need to find a way to get you full access to your memories again.” It wasn’t fair to Bucky to have no idea of where he’d been or what had been put into him. He wasn’t even aware of his full capabilities, and Steve didn’t have the programming expertise to go digging through his neural matrix and bypassing any damage or blocks.

“I don’t know if that would be a good idea. I’m an illegal chimera with a criminal termination.”

Steve swallowed, remembering the HydraCorp chip from Bucky’s shoulder, but firmed his chin.

“Someone did that to you. And you get to decide what to do about that,” Steve said fiercely. “You need your memories to decide what to do.”

Bucky blinked at him, blue eyes luminous. “I get to decide?”

“It’s your life,” Steve said, pointing out the obvious.

“I’m not alive.”

“You’ve got more of a mind and heart than some people I’ve met, so you count.”

Bucky was silent until Steve brought them back to the cube and shut the doors behind them. Steve dove into one of his scrap bins, hunting through one particular box until he found a small container he’d marked “special”. Opening it up, he spilled a fine silvery mesh into his hand that moved like liquid silver.

Steve gently flattened the mesh on his palm and looked it over critically at the highest magnification on his vis-glasses, setting it to scan for weaknesses once he’d checked it over physically. Everything seemed to be intact, so he turned to Bucky triumphantly.

“I can’t give you back your old memories, though I know someone who probably knows someone who can. But I can make sure that no one else can try to erase you, not ever again,” Steve said, holding out the mesh on both hands. “If I line your head case with this, it will shield your memory storage and processors.”

Bucky looked relieved and enchanted and deeply, utterly grateful. “Please,” he whispered. “I want this.” Another look at it, this time with a more discerning eye and a small nod. “Thank you.”

He had to know how much shielding mesh cost; the length of silken circuitry Steve held in his hand could pay his rent for six months… if he could find a reputable buyer. Large companies used it on their servers and critical mobile components. With most data being held in clouds of servers, only large lengths of shielding mesh were usually used. But some enterprising folks used it for data smuggling, thievery, drone hacking, and other crimes, and a little length of shielding mesh like that could be valuable to anyone on that side of the law. Steve hadn’t wanted to waste it on a small drone, but hadn’t found anywhere else useful to put it. Giving it to Bucky was the only safe choice for both of them.

Bucky set himself down on Steve’s bed, tapped a seam under his hair, and put himself into low-power mode without hesitation. Steve shivered at the trust that represented, and spent an hour meticulously sliding the mesh into Bucky’s braincase and fixing it into place with finicky, delicate care. The moment he had it secure, he tapped the seam closed, and Bucky powered fully back on. As if there had been no pause in their conversation, he said,

“How can we get my memory back?”

“That’s not my area. But I know somebody who knows somebody. I hope.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“You like Pipe-racing?”

--

There was a reverberating roar coming down the tunnel that was making Steve’s ears ring when they were still two blocks away. If it wasn’t for the fact that it just wasn’t cost-effective to police the Undercity, the Pipes would have been easily shut down in a heartbeat, if the city had wanted. They certainly didn’t bother to conceal themselves, and if the network had allowed for more advertisement down here, they’d probably be spraying their attractions all over the local AR feed. As it was, Steve had to tap into a private network (the site and connection spray-painted on a few walls amidst a ton of other graffiti) to see the roster. He was relieved when he saw the red flame-and-white-wing logo of his favorite racing team, and hustled down the walkway with a lot more enthusiasm. Bucky followed silently, much more sure-footed than him. His new hand closed on Steve’s elbow when oily water turned the pavement slick, saving him from pitching down the uneven sidewalk. Steve turned to smile at him out of gratitude, then winced as another burst of noise echoed.

The cacophony of the Pipes was matched only by the lights and unfiltered AR, turning the huge old sewers into something glorious. The place was packed with fans and the occasional bot, with AR ribbons holding people back from the racing pits (giving people nasty visuals and ear-splitting noise if they violated the barriers). Steve tapped the icons in the air until his pit pass popped into the local network, and hopped down into the lower levels, Bucky following after.

Jubilee was there, and Pyro, butting heads with Jonny Storm and Iceman at the same time, which boded for an interesting race if they didn’t destroy each other’s racers before start time. He slid past the arguments until he saw the flashes of pure crimson that heralded the Maximoffs’ pit. Pietro was leaning over the sleek, pointed nose of the pure white racer with red flame holo design AR, holding tuning instruments to one port after another, looking up at Wanda as she tapped away at the air, making one minute adjustment after the other. For other people, they were just making a bunch of arcane gestures. For Steve, he could see her tweaking parameters here and there. Pietro might be one of the fastest racers in the Pipes, but his twin sister Wanda was the best mod wizard he’d seen down there in an age. Racing was how they made their bread, but Wanda enjoyed a challenge in all kinds of technical arenas.

Wanda might be the one to backtrace Bucky’s mods. And as for the tracker chip… Well, he had some ideas, but he needed a better letter of introduction before he tried to put out feelers. HydraCorps tentacles were in everything, and Steve wasn’t going to let his curiosity get the better of him, not when Bucky was on the line.

Wanda waved Steve over, her fingers sliding through the air to give him pit privileges for their specific area. He pushed past the light barriers and grinned at Wanda before she disappeared under the engine panel of their racer. A flurry of icons and plans were dancing in a haze around her, invisible to anyone who wasn’t inside their pit. Her hands danced amongst the options, changing a parameter here, tweaking a setting there, the racer purring in response.

Wanda was probably the best mod wizard outside the pro circuits and equal to any in the megacorps, able to do things with racers most said were impossible. The only one who could keep up with her was her twin brother Pietro. He had the fastest reaction times Steve had ever heard about, and could pilot Wanda’s racers like they were meant to be run. Anyone else would just end up crashing into a wall, if they were lucky.

Steve held out a refurbished synchronizer to Wanda, one he’d shaped specifically to fit the tight specifications of their racer, and she took it absently, scanning it with eyes that flashed red, then smiled at him.

“It’s perfect, Steve.” She still had a Sokovian accent, her and her brother both. Neither had taken the usual KwikSkan Colloquialism program that was supposed to let you talk like a native of your chosen country or geographical area in thirty minutes (at least that was their advertised claim). People employed by megacorps had them issued as a matter of course, the exact reason the Maximoffs didn’t have them; they’d given them up, scrubbed them out of their own heads. Deliberately.

The Maximoffs had been scooped up by HydraCorp when they were teenagers, when one of the megacorp’s feeder educational companies had spotted their potential (and confirmed they were orphans). HydraCorp had brought them in under all kinds of false pretenses, and given them mods still illegal on the open market. Wanda had a brain implant a few generations ahead of anything available, able to connect to the Net with built-in keys to a lot of restricted areas. Pietro had reflex enhancers and had been given a lot of combat training. HydraCorp hadn’t been able to contain them once the Maximoffs realized their talents were going into corporate espionage and assassination, instead of research and protection. They’d gone rogue, and Wanda had ruthlessly found and scrubbed out every bit of HydraCorp’s trackers and back doors they’d put into them. They’d lost a lot of the perks of being ‘corp-kids, but they’d gained their freedom.

To find someone else with better knowledge of the inner workings of HydraCorp, Steve would have to go to their headquarters and ask. Not a good idea, unless he wanted to disappear forever. And the Maximoffs were always happy to find new and creative ways to screw over HydraCorp.

“You got a minute?” Steve asked her.

“Soon. Almost done with the mods.”

Bucky pointed at a graph that indicated a power output curve, and signaled “danger” at the peak of it, raising a concerned eyebrow at Steve.

Steve gestured at the acceleration modifications, then pointed at the fuel transfer protocol. Bucky’s second eyebrow joined his first in a show of surprise, and he crouched to stare, fascinated. Wanda finally finished her work and Pietro slammed the last panel shut as the announcements for the race started. Wanda tugged Steve back into the pit viewing area as Pietro hopped in the racer and brought it to life with a deep hum. It glided smoothly out to the line as the other racers began staging, and Wanda finally nodded at Steve.

“I haven’t seen you with an android before.”

He goggled at her; Bucky had been fooling everyone all day, how the hell had she known? Then he mentally shook his head. Wanda might have scrubbed out all of HydraCorp’s interference from her head, but she could still use her mods in ways that HydraCorp had likely only dreamed of. Maybe she could scan beyond skin-deep; he certainly wouldn’t put it past her. Bucky seemed fairly calm around her, so at least it didn’t seem to be bothering him.

“I found him in the scrap yard. He’d been trashed. And modded by HydraCorp, I think.”

Her eyes flashed scarlet, a side-effect of her brain implant, and Steve swallowed as he handed her the fried tracker chip in its small Faraday box. She opened it briefly, and shut it again, lips pressing together, eyes stormy.

“And you want to know who and why and how?” The question was rhetorical. “Androids aren’t my area, but whoever put this into him, yes, I can find that for you. What does he know?”

“My memories are restricted and damaged,” Bucky said, and Wanda looked fascinated.

“I know who you can talk to. She won’t do it for a stranger, but she’ll answer this call as a favor.”

Steve saw the indication that he had a new message, opened it and memorized it quickly before it deleted itself.

“Good luck. Oh, and here, you’ll need this. You were due for an upgrade anyways,” she added, touching her hand to his.

Steve felt the slight tingle of a one-use chip on his fingertip, and stuck it to his vis-glasses, watching the download. The chip disintegrated right afterwards into harmless dust, and now he had Wanda’s latest version of anti-corporate filters. There was a lot of stuff the megacorps hid in plain view, overridden by layers of AR, but if you had the right filters (most of them deeply proprietary) you could see concealed doors, notes, logos, pass phrases, all kinds of useful stuff. Steve didn’t need it as much as the Maximoffs, but it was very nice to have when he needed a quick escape route. He had gotten mugged or robbed a half-dozen times, getting his parts stolen or losing his vis-glasses, before Wanda had made him a bargain. He modified his scrap finds to their specifications to keep their racer winning, she gave him the tools he needed to stay one step ahead of bullies and thieves.

And there was no bully or thief she hated more than HydraCorp. Steve gave her a little salute before turning his attention back to the race, shouting in excitement as the Maximoff’s Quicksilver Witch blazed past them through the tunnels to the finish line.

--

Three days later, Bucky looked over the wide expanse of green, hemmed in but not overshadowed by the tall buildings around it. His hand moved in a subtle “yes” sign, and he began to smile.

“Yeah,” Steve said softly at his side. “Welcome to Central Park.” Bucky looked around with wonder clear in his expression, which was what Steve often saw on visitors and residents alike. It felt like taking a trip back in time, to be in a place so open and free of the cramped cubes and crowded subways and mag-lev trains, a place where public AR was permanently off and everyone was seeing the same sights, where the entertainment wasn’t VR, but as real as you could get; and it didn’t cost a thing.

After visiting Wanda, Steve had followed the link she’d given him, and was given a date, time, and location to meet with someone who could help fix Bucky. Wanda herself was still working on backtracking the chip, but in the meantime, maybe this android medic could help them find answers another way.

When Steve had seen where the meeting was going to take place, he insisted on going hours early. Central Park was guaranteed to be free of commercials, to be something completely different and peaceful. And Bucky definitely deserved that peace. He had been restless in the cube the past few days, and helping with bot modification when Steve wasn’t working was only so much of a distraction.

Steve just wandered along the paths as Bucky explored, tendering an opinion if they were growing closer to an interesting statue, a cool formation of rocks, or a particularly large tree. As they wound around, Steve nodded down a path to where an open-air amphitheater was sunk into the ground, and a small crowd was seated. A small, physical signboard was positioned at the top of the seats.

“It’s a play. They do Greek theater and Shakespeare here in the summer. Want to watch?” Steve asked. Bucky looked surprised, but nodded a yes and trailed after him. They sat on the stone benches and watched as the human players, with nothing but costumes, makeup, props, and masks, no more lighting than the sun, no sound effects other than real instruments and some mics for people’s voices. The play was A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and Steve was laughing most of the way through it. He kept stealing sideways glances at Bucky, who was watching with a small smile on his lips at all the antics of mistaken identities and fairy mischief.

Steve needed this, and he thought Bucky would too, something good and fun before they met Wanda’s contact. With what Steve was worried they’d find out, both of them were going to need this moment of fun before the storm.

--

Steve sat nervously on the appointed bench later that afternoon, Bucky at his side. Bucky’s false Net signature was as bland as Wanda could make it, meaning AR and vis recognition on surveillance couldn’t ping him, but he could still be recognized by a plain old person’s eyes. If, of course, that person was looking for a scrapped illegal android in the middle of Central Park who currently looked very human.

The warnings Wanda had given him about the danger reminded him of a recent remake of an old flatvid called Rear Window. The new holovid had a young man recovering from a mag-lev accident. Legs still in braces and unable to walk, with a head injury that made it impossible for him to use AR, he’d been so bored he’d taken to watching his neighbors through their windows. He’d thought he’d seen a woman across the way get murdered, but calls to authorities had come to nothing, because her apartment AR showed all evidence of having gone on vacation, and no one would go inside. Steve had been biting his nails all through the ‘vid to see everything play out.

Bucky nudged him gently and Steve brought his attention back to the here and now. There was a woman sitting next to them, maybe Steve’s age or a little younger, long dark hair, dark eyes, wearing a black jacket and a blue scarf. Her AR signature was set to private, and she was seemingly ignoring them, focused on the invisible AR feed in front of her. Steve had never seen her before, but she was wearing what Wanda’s info said she would. If it hadn’t been for Wanda, Steve would have never gotten a meeting. He might have seen her online avatar if he’d been lucky. Or very unlucky.

Steve took off his jacket for a moment, revealing his Icarus tattoo on his shoulder. The wing symbol was the logo of the first extra-solar exploratory ship, now out there seeking another sun and world for those of humanity who wanted to give it a go out in the final frontier. If Steve had been genetically qualified, he would have signed up, but they’d blasted off ten years ago, before he’d had the guts to think about finding another way on.

The young woman’s eyes slid over his tattoo, and suddenly her AR signature became visible; a translucent blue sky haloed around her.

“Hello, boys,” Skye said, smiling.

Steve was in no little awe, but held it together for Bucky’s sake. “The Witch sent me,” he said quietly.

“And the Sky found you,” she said in return. The old-fashioned passwords were nowhere near as hackable as a modern key code, hence why they’d come back in vogue in the city’s underground. “Come on, let’s get under cover.”

Skye took them to a quad-cube penthouse with skyline views – the rent for a month could have paid Steve’s for two lifetimes. A window was a luxury, a glass wall like this, priceless. It was sparsely furnished, mostly a few small tables and a couple of chairs, a few pieces of expensive but bland art on the walls. The only thing of note was the extravagantly large bed with a fancy nu-silk cover in the master bedroom, visible through the wide-open double doors. Glass doors. Apparently the owner didn’t mind an audience…

“Crash pad,” Skye explained succinctly. “Some bigwig uses it a couple times a year for meetings. And mistresses. Security’s high enough no one will be looking in. So.” She paused and faced them, hands on her hips. Skye was very famous online, advocating for freedom of information, transparency in government and megacorps who acted like it. She also advocated for the compassionate treatment of androids, being one of the founders of the biggest organization for their rights.

“Wanda said you’re the only person from the Free Circuit movement who might be able to help,” Steve said. Bucky took that as his cue, taking off his glove to reveal his metallic hand.

Skye only raised an eyebrow. Then Bucky took off his jacket and shirt, and she stared. She came closer, checking his bar code and designation, then examining the left arm Steve had made.

“Damn. You are something else-”

“Bucky,” Steve supplied, and she nodded.

“Did Stark make you himself?” she asked Bucky, looking directly in his eyes. He shrugged, and looked at Steve, nodding.

“We don’t know, exactly. He’s got a lot of memory blocks. I shielded him from a repeat, but breaking down blocks was never my area. Or Wanda’s.”

“Wanda knows I like a challenge. Bucky? You want this too?”

A nod, sincere and heartfelt.

“This won’t be easy,” she warned.

Point to himself, then hand in a fist. I will endure/I can handle it/I am strong.

“Yeah, you are. Okay, Bucky, your vo-ax working?”

Nod.

“And non-voax package, obviously. You want to talk to me?”

Bucky wavered his hand. Maybe.

“Well, talk if you want to. May I access your memories? I want to see if I can unblock them.”

Bucky walked over to Steve and bent down to his ear. “She’s wanted for headcracking,” he said. “She’s a founding member of Free Circuit.”

“Exactly,” Steve said.

Bucky smiled.

Steve had worked on lots of dumb droids before. Delving into their inner workings was no mystery – he’d adapted and repaired dozens. But Bucky… He’d made him a damn fine arm, but thinking about delving into his complex memory banks or personality drive, no. He adapted things, made them better, matched them to people. He helped machines bridge the gap between “bad genes” and what they needed to do, bringing them onto the same playing field as the rest of the world. But to help Bucky, Steve needed better than bridging a gap. He needed the best.

Skye inserted tiny probes into Bucky’s head, then stepped back and told him what to do. “You know what hurts you.” Bucky tapped the CK part of his designation, and Skye nodded. If any old programming activated, it was better that Bucky be the one to do it, and that no one be within reach. Bucky waved at Steve to back up, and he did so reluctantly. He wanted to know what was going on, but he wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t like lining his braincase, with Bucky at low power and weak, and Bucky was not going to go into low-power mode around a stranger now, no matter how much they were vouched for.

Combat Killers had been designed to put an end to waste on the battlefield, and minimize property damage. Without the property damage from tanks and heavy artillery, robotic soldiers could use their deadly hand-to-hand skills against enemy troops, sparing massive property damage, decreasing the need for battlefield clean-up and lowering the cost of war. The whole policy honestly made Steve want to puke a little if he thought about the whole thing too long. But none of that was Bucky’s fault. He’d been made the way he was, like Steve had.

After a few tense moments, Bucky had the probes seated, and had opened his own head. He pulled at the head plate, laying the shining neural network bare. Parts of it were scarred with lumps of dead silicon, and Steve winced at whatever had caused such horrible damage. Bucky delicately inserted the connector cable he’d been given, and attached the other end to a small device Skye proffered. Though she didn’t say anything, Steve could see the fury in her expression when she looked at Bucky’s brain, and he felt a lot better at her sharing his anger.

Silent for long minutes, Skye tapped at the keyboard with single-minded concentration. Steve stared at the old-fashioned physical interface with bemusement. It didn’t seem like the thing a state-of-the-art headcracker would have, but Skye had muttered something about two keyboards and virtual keyboard tracking, then absently tuned him out again as she kept working.

“Yeah, he’s got a lot of blocks in him. Looks like someone tried to bypass the Master Controls… Since he’s a prototype, he didn’t get the standard Stark Industries security package, but someone tried to button him up good with some kind of custom program. Then someone else smashed their way in like a damn wrecking ball, some kind of nasty malware. They patched the wall pretty good, but left some stuff behind. There’s some embedded commands, but they’re aural-only and voice-printed, so unless someone gives me a voice to match the recognition codes with, there’s no way of saying who the commands will recognize. That sucks, but at least we know they’re there. I can’t excise them right now because I’d have to take Bucky off-line and from the death glare he just shot me that’s a no-go. So if someone starts babbling what sounds like nonsense words at you Bucky, run away and stick your fingers in your ears.

“Some of this is straight-up fried, probably the stuff directly around his initial damage, but I think we can get some transcription, maybe a little visual/aural of some of the blocked-off parts. Maybe.”

Skye was quiet for several long minutes, and Steve tried not to hover or bounce with impatience. He knew how he could get during a creative jag, and Skye would definitely not appreciate anyone jogging her elbow while she was in the zone. Bucky remained still, but one hand was clasped within the other, shaking slightly with tension.

“The shielding you put in, nice work. You’ve got a deft touch,” she said absently, out of the blue.

“Thanks,” Steve said, startled. “I’m not much of a programmer, but after I go in with mods, it’d suck if someone accidentally got too close to a mag-lev line or badly-shielded transformer and wiped out my work on someone’s custom.”

“That might actually help with the aural commands. It’s likely linked to the malware effects, but since you’ve been putting new memories over it, Bucky, it’d mean that whatever rat bastard did this to you would have to really do some damage to get it going again. Shock might let the first commands get through, though, so you’re going to have to fight it. If you let me, I can give you an impulse mapping program, and if it ever lights up, it’ll give me a road map to burning it out.”

Bucky gave a quick and enthusiastic thumbs up.

“Good, good. Okay… huh. Um… you got something pretty heavy… What the hell did that bastard infect you with that needed that much power to open your core? I mean, your custom security program for that was tight, but if that bastard wanted you for some kind of mayhem, why do that? If he’d been trying to overclock you, you wouldn’t have made it into the scrap bin when you got shot.”

Bucky repeated the thumbs up, looking thoughtful. Overclocking Combat Killers made them faster and stronger, but basically also made them walking bombs. Why do that to a custom model and then shoot it? That would have been catastrophically stupid.

Bucky’s brow furrowed as he considered the implications. “I don’t… I’d have to look.” He disconnected the cord from his brain and closed up his head. He reached out to Steve for some tools, tapping his chest plate.

Bucky made a few small adjustments at Skye’s direction, digging the slim probes into the nearly-invisible lines between his plates. There was a pop, and part of his chest opened up, light spilling out. At Bucky’s clear-eyed, calm nod, Skye and Steve came closer. Steve opened up Bucky’s chest plate to check his core systems for further damage, and gasped. Inside there was a shimmering pale yellow orb that connected all of his systems, glowing like a miniature sun. Only one thing looked like that.

“He’s got a soul matrix,” Steve breathed. Skye looked awed, Steve no less so.

Soul matrices had been on the market for about five years, rocking the Stark Industries Expo at the time. They went beyond the behavior-mimicking of LMDs, beyond the learning AIs in BUs, into real consciousness. They were actually forbidden from being put in LMDs, on the grounds that no one wanted two of anyone running around.

A soul matrix went beyond learning AI, right into metaphysical realms. This gave an android the ability to not just extrapolate and apply knowledge with human-like creativity, but to imagine, even dream. Very, very few had successfully been brought online over the past five years, and Bucky was not one of the known elite pantheon. Some had turned out protective, others not as much, though all had found a place in the world. Vision, Ultron, Aida, those were all important names in the annals of robotic history, for various reasons. Bucky would be amongst them. But why? Why give a soul matrix to a hybrid soldier/companion? Steve could think of a few scenarios that fit all of the data, none of them good. And all of those scenarios started with corrupting the soul matrix. The idea made Steve want to gag. The only good thing was that Bucky’s matrix looked intact.

Skye shook off most of her awe and offered the cord again. Bucky plugged it in above the matrix, and Sky examined her AR readout with rapid flicks of her eyes.

“Ok, I see the programming blocks. Damn, this physical damage is wicked bad. Someone seriously had it in for you.” Bucky put his left hand in a fist again, and looked positively defiant. “Hell yeah,” she said, bumping her fist against his. Bucky reached out and took Steve’s hand, holding it loosely. “I need to clear out the drek in your head. It’s not going to be pleasant.”

Bucky gave a small shrug of his shoulders.

“Yeah, but I can help you turn off the pain receptors while I fix you,” she said.

Bucky smiled.

Skye smiled in return, but Steve could see the fierceness in her eyes. She’d figured out what Steve had seen when he’d first found Bucky; he’d been fully awake and aware during the whole time the rat bastard had been going at him.

Even with Steve’s help, it was well after midnight when Skye was able to pry out the last of the dead silicone lumps from Bucky’s brain, and fix all the physical damage she could. Steve felt limp with exhaustion just from sheer nerves, and Skye had gone through three cans of energy drinks.

Sighing, she let Bucky secure himself up to his satisfaction and sat back in the fancy office chair she’d been using. She sat there for a few minutes, eyes closed, rubbing her temples, as Steve watched Bucky anxiously. He reactivated his own sensory receptors, and after a small shudder, looked pleased.

“It hurts less,” he said, reassuring Steve. “I feel… better.”

“Oh, good,” Skye said, not opening her eyes. She sat there for another minute before looking at them both again. “Okay, I’ve bypassed where I took out the dead stuff, but it’s going to take a while for everything to process, so give it time. Anything you’ve still got in there will come back eventually. I’m going to try to backtrack the damage from the malware that was used to figure out what they were trying to do, and who made it. And then I’m going to do something about it.” She said the last through gritted teeth as she pushed off the chair and started packing up her gear.

“Not before I do,” Steve said, standing, Bucky at his side, nodding.

“I’ll get the maker of the poison, you guys get the poisoner, deal?” she said, holding out her hand.

Bucky clasped her hand in return. “Deal.”

She swung her bag to her shoulder. “You guys have my contact info. Don’t use it unless it’s a screaming emergency. I’ll let you know what I find out on my end.” With that, Skye flicked her fingers in a small wave, and left.

Steve sagged, the events of the last few hours catching up with him. “Let’s go home.”

--

Over the next few days, Bucky seemed a lot calmer, losing some of the brittle tension and uncertainty that had cropped up before. Answers were coming, it was just a matter of time. They had friends, allies, who were working on finding out more. Things were going to be all right.

After work, Steve was diligently putting together a new bot as part of a job application. Bills didn’t stop needing to be paid just because he was helping Bucky figure out his memory gaps, which were likely tangled up in HydraCorp, who would probably kill Steve or whisk him away to a corporate compound for virtual slave labor if they caught him…

Little things like that didn’t matter when your bank account was low and you’d like to have more than barely above Basic Income.

He’d been working on a different version of a helper bot, one with some modular designs that would let people do some of their own customization, while still keeping his original friendly aesthetic. Luckily this company respected its applicants, and did not demand that he hand over the rights to his design for free, just for the privilege of trying to get a job.

Steve set the packing material around the newly-modified helper bot with exacting care. Bucky looked at him with curiosity. “Why are you nervous?”

“It’s just… this one’s important. Really important. I want to get into a better job and this might be my ticket in.” Steve fiddled with the packing with finicky care, still amazed that Bucky could identify nervousness, even when Steve was hiding it. He’d had human friends who couldn’t figure that out.

Bucky handed him another soft block of packing. “You have a job.”

“Yeah. And it’s steady work, which is more than I can say for a lot of people. And Peggy’s an amazing boss. But I can’t go any farther there. I can’t get a pilot’s license because of my genetics. Even if I have all the credits to sit for the exam and try for the license, fat chance on getting anyone to take a risk on a guy whose heart might skip out on him at a crucial moment. I don’t have an engineering degree because I don’t have the time or money. I’ve got some vocational certificates, and Peggy knows my experience, but that doesn’t translate outside of SSR.” He sighed. “But Stark Industries has some merit contests, and if I can show good examples of my work, it’s a route to a job. They’ll get me the time to get the degrees, and they’ll pay me to get them while I’m working.”

“You should be able to download. Oversight in your design,” Bucky said, and smiled. Steve grinned back at the joke and shook his head.

“Yeah, well, I know some people who could do that and they gave it up because other people could download stuff inside them and they decided it wasn’t worth it. Besides, I’ve got an implant intolerance. My brain would spit it out so fast I wouldn’t have the chance to download so much as a ‘zine.”

“Hmm.” Bucky made a non-committal interrogative noise and fitted the last corner with the final wad of packing material. “Then we are the same. Our brains reject things.”

“Things other people try to put in them,” Steve said, and raised an imaginary glass in a toast. Bucky met him halfway, and solemnly said, “clink.” Steve laughed; Bucky was one of the most hilarious people he’d ever met.

--

The precious package sent, Steve and Bucky didn’t have a lot to do other than wait for something to happen. Wanda and Skye hadn’t contacted them yet, and Bucky hadn’t had any sudden revelations. That was, until the fourth day, when Steve came home to find Bucky digging through his box of connecting cables.

Steve dropped his hard hat and boots on the floor and immediately went to help him. “What do you need?”

“Need to show you, on screen,” Bucky said, his voice very soft and neutral, like he was trying not to disturb something. Steve dug through the cables unerringly to find the one Bucky needed, and sat down as Bucky connected himself.

The screen flickered, and a slightly flickery image of a large space… a warehouse? came into view. The scene bobbed slightly, like someone was walking, then turned to see someone with short dark hair, back to the viewer, bent over a workbench. The person got up and waved a good-bye without ever turning around, heading away. The sound was oddly muffled, but Steve thought he heard the person say, “’Night, don’t let the place burn down!” Or else something about churning a gown.

The viewer waved back, the hand looking exactly like Bucky’s original. So, okay, this was definitely Bucky’s memory…

Bucky said, “I won’t,” laughed, and walked to the far end of the building. There were a lot of workbenches as well as crates, so it seemed this was a working facility as much as a storage one. The logos on the crates were Stark Industries. There was a chirp of a door and the sound of footsteps out of Bucky’s view, and then everything turned white.

Looking at Bucky’s face, it had gone pale and still. Steve put a comforting hand on his, and Bucky gave him a tiny smile.

“Just a little more.”

The scene faded back, not quite understandable at first until Steve realized it was a view of the building’s ceiling, with its structural beams, HVAC ducts, and light bars. There was a split-second glimpse of someone’s face before everything abruptly went black. Bucky shuddered, head hanging down.

“May I?” Steve asked softly. Bucky nodded. Steve very slowly rewound the file, one frame at a time, until he got a better view of the face. Even though it was distorted and warped, it was clear enough.

Alexander Pierce, CEO of HydraCorp.

“Fuck.”

Bucky yanked the cord out of the wall and his head, sealing himself back up. He sat on the bed next to Steve, chest moving like he was taking deep breaths. Next to him, Steve was trying very hard not to panic. He’d thought Bucky’s bad reaction at the sight of Pierce in the HydraCorp commercial was just from the logo. But what if it had been Pierce himself? Had he managed to get into a Stark Industries facility with the intent of getting at Bucky? And why go in person?

Skye’s warning about the voice-printed implanted commands loomed in Steve’s memory.

How could he and Bucky go after someone like Pierce? Skye might be able to track who Pierce got the malware program from, and Wanda could figure out where the signal from the tracker chip was going to, but neither could bury Pierce legally; it would probably all be circumstantial. And going after him with mayhem on their minds would be stupid as hell.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, sitting up. “At least I know something more.”

Steve was about to respond when a new message alert flashed across his vision in his vis-glasses. He had very few contacts that would give an alert so blatantly, and when he saw who it was, his mouth went dry.

Stark Industries – Merit Application

The link blinked insistently in the center of Steve’s vision. He took three deep breaths, Bucky quickly squeezing his hand with a smile of affirmation, before tapping it.

Abruptly his vision was filled with an attractive red-haired woman in a business suit sitting behind a desk. Steve’s sample bot was sitting to her left, and a screen with his portfolio was visible in the lower right corner of his vis-glass screen.

Quickly Steve added a command to let the glasses show what he was seeing on both the interior and exterior surfaces. It would make for a small screen, but then Bucky could see what was going on too without him being seen by the woman at the desk.

“Steve Rogers? Natalie Rushman, Stark Industries Human Resources,” she said. Below Ms. Rushman’s view, Bucky kept his grasp on Steve’s hand as he tried not to faint. Human Resources! Not just someone to handle simple contest wins, or a low-level satellite flunky, but honest-to-space Human Resources!

“Yes, please, thank you,” he stammered out.

Ms. Rushman smiled slightly, and nodded at the bot. “This is fine work, Mr. Rogers, and from your portfolio, your references, and the testimonials from your customers, we think you could be very happy working at Stark Industries. We have been developing a bot customization and adaptation department for the past few months, and your skills are precisely the sort of thing we’re looking for. You’d get in on the ground floor, and if everything pans out, you’d have a decent shot at a supervisory position once we’ve seen your work in-house.”

Another link blinked, and Steve activated it to see the glorious legalese of an employment contract and a lengthy section of NDAs. Even on a quick scan, the salary was enough to make his head spin, and the benefits would remove an enormous weight from his shoulders. Basic Income covered, well, the basics, but there was a lot more he wanted to do, both personally and professionally, that this would cover.

“If you’d be interested, please do take a week to review the employment contract and come back to us with any questions.”

A raised eyebrow invited comment, but Steve could only manage to say, “I will, thank you, thank you!”

She smiled again, paused long enough for him to get his aplomb back, but he still couldn’t think of anything to say. His return smile said it for him.

“Then I hope to hear from you by week’s end, Mr. Rogers. Have a lovely day.”

Steve let out a huge breath and laughed at the same time as the meeting terminated, flopping down on his bed to stare at the crowded ceiling of his tiny cube.

“Wow.”

Bucky squeezed his hand once more before letting go, lying down next to him. “Is the contract good?”

Steve opened it up again, putting the display on the cube’s screens and reading it slowly. Usual NDAs, benefits package that would take a huge load off his mind, allowances for his own intellectual property, salary that would let him live someplace where he could have more room to create…

“Yeah,” Steve said softly. Bucky had been reading along, and nodded in agreement.

“The benefits package is similar to my own.”

Steve turned to look at Bucky so fast he nearly got whiplash. “What?!”

Bucky looked about as surprised as Steve felt. “I have read this before… I worked for Stark Industries!”

“Do you know where?”

Slowly, but with complete confidence, Bucky nodded, eyes full of dawning wonder.

“Holy shit,” Steve whispered. “We gotta sort out this thing with you before next week.”

Bucky cocked his head, asking why.

“Because if I’m going to get arrested figuring out who hurt you, I don’t want to add corporate espionage and violating NDAs to the charges!”

Bucky grinned outright. “Let’s get moving.”

--

“So this is the place?” Steve asked, feeling very small as he looked up at the windowless wall of the mega warehouse. Bucky nodded, a faint frown on his face, his left arm spasming slightly before he stilled it. He looked to the left, then back to the right. Steve followed his gaze, and saw the blank façade had a very faint AR overlay of the Stark Industries logo, something he doubt he would have seen without Wanda’s anti-megacorp filters in place. In the distance, towards the city center, he could see the silvery tower that marked the company’s main headquarters, and not too far away, the darker building marked with Hydra Corp’s logo.

Looking back down at the warehouse, Steve hazarded, “Secret testing facility?” Bucky nodded. That made sense; close enough to be a convenient distance for the Stark Industries’ staff, far enough away to keep things quiet. Anonymity was the name of the game here.

“Anything familiar?” Steve whispered. Bucky looked uncertain, but moved up to the door and placed his right hand on the recognition plate. It swung open with a slight whoosh. Steve blinked, surprised it had been that easy. Inside was dark, aside from a few low security lights and the gleam from various panels. He almost winced, wondering how long it would take Stark Industries’ private security to arrive to deal with the two strangers who’d gained access to a secure lab, then stopped himself. Places like this didn’t have some standard security measures, because what didn’t exist couldn’t be stolen by rivals or mercenaries or disgruntled employees.

Instead, Steve felt a low flutter of fear in his stomach. Places like this could hide anything. His impending employment to Stark Industries suddenly seemed like a trap. Yes, Bucky had had Hydra Corp tracking technology in him, but someone at Stark Industries had made a soul matrix for him first. Creating one of those was so fraught with difficulties and legal and ethical minefields that it made Bucky a very valuable and extremely dangerous commodity. And with Alexander Pierce himself somehow in the mix, Steve felt like he was balancing on a precipice over a very deep ocean.

But Steve had to see this through. Bucky deserved to know the truth, and he deserved to find out who was after him, and why.

Bucky moved through the corridors with ease, as if tracing a route long-remembered.

“I was… security. I helped… I helped them test the new designs for the aerospace equipment too. I helped with defense of this place,” he said slowly. “I was… a colleague.”

Steve felt stunned and vindicated and relieved all at the same time, with an intensity that was almost painful.

“When… Mr. Stark shut down the Combat Killer division, I was asked if I would seek out illegally unreturned units and bring them back to be recommissioned for a different purpose. Mr. Stark felt I was the only one who could do the job.”

Tony Stark himself had talked to Bucky, possibly made him. And treated him like a person. He’d asked (asked) Bucky if he’d find others, not to destroy them, but to help them!

“Someone brought a guest here. HydraCorp. He wasn’t allowed, and I intervened, but Stane had brought shutdown shackles.” Paralyzing cuffs, something that did a small local override for androids to keep them from moving. And illegal as hell. And Stane… Obadiah Stane! He’d been in Stark Industries for years before leaving in clouded circumstances, abruptly popping up on HydraCorp’s top echelon staff list a short time later.

“Pierce, he… He wanted a killer, someone undetectable, someone trusted, someone who could be overridden.” Bucky stopped abruptly, standing in a cargo bay at the end of the building, the bins of scrap half-full, a workshop for cutting rejects into manageable pieces off to one side. One of the tables had some ground-over marks that were in the right places to have been restraints. “I was… He used a time extender and implanted malware and a tracker. Used pain to disrupt my soul matrix. Implanted commands. Wanted an assassin. I was going to be sent to kill rivals. I fought through the commands, but it was so hard-!”

The strength and combat expertise of a Combat Killer, the ability to adjust and adapt his behavior like a Behavioral Unit, and the soul matrix to make him pass as human. Such a being could go anywhere and eliminate anyone. With a shiftable skin and some bodywork, Bucky could have been an assassin of a thousand faces.

Steve put a hand on Bucky’s left shoulder, gentle as a feather, and Bucky turned, folding himself against Steve, hiding his face as shudders wracked his frame.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve whispered, hugging him. “It was theirs. Only theirs!”

“I got free and was glitching. Pierce reacted badly, and he grabbed a plasma cutter and shot me into the bin. That set off the fire alarms, and they had to leave before the suppression systems activated.”

“Damn inconvenient, if you ask me.”

Steve and Bucky whirled, Bucky abruptly putting himself between Steve and the distant form of Alexander Pierce.

“You had to come in person,” Steve said, stunned, all the clues falling into place. Pierce wanted his programmable assassin, but he wanted him under perfect control. He couldn’t risk an ambitious underling trying to get control of Bucky.

Pierce sighed. “So necessary these days. Who can you trust? CKs are too obvious. BUs are too weak. Humans are too unreliable. But a soul matrix hybrid could be programmed to be perfect, and perfectly obedient to just me. We just had a little setback, and I’ll admit, I didn’t expect him to fight so hard. Thank you for finding him for us. We’ll get everything right this time. We’ve had plenty of time to perfect it.”

Bucky stepped between Pierce and Steve, hands up and in a position of battle readiness. Pierce smiled at them, his warm and grandfatherly smile from the commercials, shot something at Bucky, a pulse of something bright that made Steve’s vis-glasses go blank momentarily as they shut down to avoid the mag-pulse. Hard on the heels of that, Pierce began reciting a string of words in what sounded like Russian. Steve’s vis-glasses obligingly translated as they rebooted.

Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car.

Steve started shouting wordlessly shortly after Pierce started speaking, kicking himself for letting Pierce speak at all. He’d just been so surprised, both of them had, that they had stood there like a couple of holo-vid slasher victim idiots!

Bucky shook his head, trying to raise his hands to his ears, but seemingly unable. His eyes locked on Steve’s in a blank and confused stare as the last word fell from Pierce’s lips.

Bucky’s eyes flashed as the last word was spoken, going from a real, living blue-gray to a glowing, murderous red. CK-mode activated. Target acquired.

“Kill him,” Pierce said.

Steve scrambled backwards as Bucky stalked towards him with a hunter’s grace. All those upgrades to his systems that Skye had noticed, all the work Steve had put into Bucky’s new arm, all of that was against him now. Steve could probably disable him if he really, really had to, but he’d need to get close, touch him, and right now Bucky would kill him without a second thought. Hell, all Bucky would have to do was grab his arm and break it, or crush his hand. Even just backhand him hard enough. Steve’s pain tolerance wasn’t that high, and he knew he’d be in debilitating agony long enough for Pierce to do whatever he wanted to him.

But Steve had to try to get through to him. The last thing he wanted to do was betray Bucky, take away his trust by using his knowledge against him. He needed to keep trying to get through Pierce’s control until Bucky- He had to try, no matter the cost to his body. He and Bucky, they’d been protecting each other. Steve had pulled Bucky from the scrap heap, but Bucky had been showing him what was possible. Bucky had been keeping him safe from other aggressive junk rats, Steve had kept Bucky safe from HydraCorp and had done what he could to get him free. They’d learned from each other, and right now, there was no one Steve trusted more.

“Bucky, it’s me, Steve!”

“That’s your target, kill him,” Pierce said, sounding bored and a little impatient.

“You know me!”

“His memory banks have been wiped, Mr. Rogers. He’s back on program. Thank you for replacing his arm.”

Steve backed up, trying to keep some distance, but Bucky was relentless.

“He’s a valuable asset to HydraCorp, whereas you… are an impediment.”

“Bucky, you can reboot that command. Come on, you know me!”

“Not anymore,” Pierce said nastily.

Bucky closed the distance in a few strides, looming over Steve, eyes red, red, red.

“Hurry up, BuCK-1, or we’ll take you back to Reconditioning. Speed it up.”

Bucky reached for Steve, grabbing his arm in an implacable grip. Steve’s heart nearly stopped, before he realized that the metal-plated fingers were firm, but were not so much as bruising his flesh.

“You’re Bucky, you’re Bucky, you don’t belong to HydraCorp. You’re my friend!”

Pierce made a strangled sound of disgust. “You’re a Free Circuit freak? Should have guessed. You belong on the scrap heap, same as this thing before you fixed it.”

“Method of disposal?” Bucky said, his voice much more metallic and stilted.

Pierce frowned momentarily. “Strangle him. I don’t want to have to put you or this room through deep Decontam.”

Bucky’s other hand went to Steve’s throat, leaving Steve’s left arm free. He had no tools, nothing but his own words and vis-glasses. He opened his files and memory to Bucky completely, taking down all his firewalls and exposing himself as completely as he could.

“You know me,” he whispered, letting the memories of taking Bucky home, of watching the races in the Pipes, of working together on his chassis, of talking with Skye, of watching the sun set over Central Park, letting all of that flow as pictures over his vis-glasses in a steady stream of remembered experiences. “I know you.”

Bucky’s eyes flashed, and Steve had a burst of memory of them watching the actors in the park. Stupid. Fear had made him dumb.

“You mag-wiped his memories,” Steve said in a strangled voice, around a robotic hand that wasn’t so much as impeding his breathing.

“Why isn’t he dead yet?” Pierce said, sounding very irritated.

“But I shielded his memories,” Steve said.

Pierce lost his cocky expression as Bucky turned, eyes back to their normal blue. There was enough evidence in Bucky’s memory banks to bury Pierce until he couldn’t see daylight.

Steve didn’t see the gun until it was in Pierce’s hand, until there was a muted pop and a curious dullness in his stomach. Warmth poured over his fingers as he pressed them to his middle. He was bleeding. He’d been shot.

Bucky surged forward, roaring. Pierce frantically voiced a command, and electricity sparked all over Bucky’s body.

Pierce’s scream of panic was the last thing Steve heard before blackness claimed him.

--

He awoke itching. Bucky was sitting next to him in bed, a line running from Bucky’s core to Steve’s elbow. It was filled with a red-silver fluid; Steve stared, fascinated.

“Nano blood,” a female voice said. It sounded familiar, but what the owner of that voice was doing in his cube was beyond him. A red-headed woman came into view, her AR stats curiously inert in the way that indicated they were being controlled for his benefit. He recognized her as Natalie Rushman, the woman from Stark Industries. “Some O-cloned cells, with a good percentage of healing nanobots. BUs use some and carry a reserve for emergencies. Using the reserve is supposed to put out a pulse for med services and police, but since this unit is a prototype, it just sent a pulse to Mr. Stark’s private line. I took the job of doing follow-up.”

“Bucky,” Steve corrected quickly. “His name is Bucky.”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, checking something in her field of vision he wasn’t authorized to see. “Bucky, got it.”

“He’s… He’s alive,” Steve blurted out, afraid for Bucky, afraid this woman and the megacorp backing her would take him away. Any prototype who had a direct line to the owner of Stark Industries…

“He saved your life. His reservoir ran dry, and when I answered the call he sent out, he’d only give his location if I promised I’d bring more. That’s the only reason I’m here instead of clearing up what remains of HydraCorp.

Steve blinked. “Wha?”

“Bucky put out a public pulse of his recovered memories of abuse, along with your efforts to save and aid him, befriend him. And also your final confrontation with Pierce. Bucky’s got quite the devoted following. You both do.”

“Huh,” Steve said, nonplussed. Bucky put his hand on Steve’s shoulder and smiled proudly.

“He also broke Pierce’s gun hand so badly they had to amputate. The judge wasn’t impressed when Pierce tried to get Bucky decommissioned and destroyed because of that. Listen.”

She opened an audio file and played it openly on Steve’s public circuit. A dry, precise voice said, “You used illegal corrupting malware on a soul matrix with bio-learning and a CK base and expected docility and compliance after an artificially time-extended period of prolonged abusive learning. You attempted to murder the unit’s chosen protectorate and were surprised at its reaction. You were expecting a bodyguard to turn into an assassin on your say-so after your controls were defunct. Considering your extreme abuses of BuCK-1’s soul matrix as well as physical dismemberment while full BU sensors were active, that constitutes torture under the Vision Act.

“It’s a machine!” Pierce bleated, and Steve could hear a few small sounds of disbelief and exasperation in the background.

“Androids have rights, Mr. Pierce, rights you flagrantly violated. And shooting an unarmed civilian after you’d tried to get BuCK-1 to violate its underlying directives-.”

“He turned my property against me!”

“Your property? BuCK-1 is imprinted with proprietary Stark Industries logos and technology. There are no records of ownership or purchase from you or any HydraCorp accounts, nor could they have been, as BuCK-1 was a prototype unit that was never meant to be sold. On top of which BuCK-1 was found in EGRM’s scrap piles to be recycled. As soon as items are part of an authorized scrap yard, they are the property of the owner, in this case one B. Banner, who is free to sell or trade away any of the scrap in his possession. There is visual and auditory evidence of BuCK-1’s deposit and subsequent trade.”

There was a sound of a mouth opening and closing with nothing being said.

“You have no claim. Your pending charges for attempted murder, theft, abuse of robotics, corporate corruption, and a laundry list of other unpleasantries will be forthcoming after your arraignment tomorrow.” A gavel sounded, and the clip ended.

Steve stared at the woman and blinked once.

“You took HydraCorp down in your sleep. Congratulations.”

Bucky looked over at Steve, then carefully plucked out the IV, bandaging Steve’s arm with a self-sealing skin patch. Steve felt oddly well for someone who’d been shot in the stomach, but Bucky was still hovering over him, a concerned expression on his face.

“I’m still healing,” Steve said quickly, not daring to move. “I know, I’ll try to be good.”

Bucky’s expression was skeptical, but his hand on Steve’s arm was very gentle.

“That should sort that out,” Natalie was saying, ignoring their moment.

“Huh?”

“The rest of the legal side of things. Bucky is free. You took possession from a junk yard. It’s one of those times the saying ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ actually holds up in court.”

Steve knew she was right; there were stringent requirements for the rights of an android with a soul matrix or BU learning capabilities. It was above the laws about pets, nearly on par with the laws for people. Bucky had essentially freed himself.

A cold line of panic touched Steve’s spine, and he turned to Bucky frantically. Bucky just smiled and held onto Steve’s shoulder.

“I’m staying,” he said softly.

“Good, great, you want your old job back? Stark’s been missing you, and by the way, thank you heartily for fingering Stane as the backstabber he is while you were taking down Pierce. He’s nailed to the wall as well, the bastard. And somebody, or a couple of somebodies, anonymously left the chip that had been implanted in Bucky with a direct link to Pierce’s personal line, and a lovely link to the dark web asshole who supplied the malware program and who he sold it to, right in our lawyers’ inbox, so thanks for that. Those were the final nails in the coffin, so to speak.”

Bucky grinned. “I will come back, only if Steve still gets his job.”

She nodded, as if it had never been in doubt. “Just waiting on your acceptance, Mr. Rogers.”

“Um… I kind of broke into your secret facility?”

“I believe Mr. Stark said that it ‘shows you have a brain’ or something like that. Either way, you just proved your worth some more. Not that you need it. See you at the end of the week,” she said, giving a wave before heading out the door.

Steve stared at the door for a few long minutes, and then turned back to Bucky, a smile slowly stretching across his face. He reached for him, and Bucky held him close for long minutes.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Steve whispered into his ear.

“So am I,” Bucky said, “so am I.”