Shadow Killer

Eleven

It had been ten months since I passed through Moscow. I am now currently in Budapest, where I have been for the last 10 months. Leaving Russia and making my way into Hungary was no easy mission. I had lost my fraudulent passports and documents, so I did what I could to get through. It was not clean, let me say that.

I was a wanted person in too many countries to count, which I guess you could say is an achievement of sorts. The trail I have left behind is not something that one should be proud of. I had no clue how many lives I had taken just to get to where I am now, although if I'm honest, I stopped counting that sort of thing when I was eighteen years old.

As said, I was now in Budapest, Hungary, where I was doing my best to locate James Barnes as well as hide from officials.

Needing a place to stay and hideaway, I found myself living in an apartment complex. Of course, I took the life of the person who lived here. But from what I could put together, nobody knew him as he seldom left his apartment. No one would ever notice, nor would they care about the old person who disappeared. They were just another tally to the list of kills I had made. No one special. I dumped the body in the outside dumpster, two blocks away, dragging the body in the middle of the night.

I spent countless hours pouring over documents and hacking into different agencies for the first five to six months. And slowly, as time progressed, I found myself struggling to find any form of motivation to do that.

Why bother?

I had come to the conclusion that HYDRA had fallen. If they were still out there, then the question remains, why not find me?

I had managed to score a shitty job in the local market, where once a week on a Sunday, I would help Joel sell his fruit. The pay was shit, and it was boring as hell. I wasn't a fan of the heat either because I had to wear long sleeves to hide my metal appendages, but it was different.

However, the one thing that entirely ruined everything was those pressure episodes, as I called them. They occurred so frequently that I should be used to it by now. I wasn't. The pain was unbearable, and all I wanted to do was rip my head off each time one came on. I don't know the root of the problem, but I had my money on HYDRA. They had screwed my brain entirely, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.

The other thing that sucked was the loneliness. I never enjoyed the company of people, but being alone for the last year of my life as I tracked down the Winter Soldier, was getting hard. I didn't want to admit it, but part of me missed the days where I would complete an assignment with The Winter Soldier. Before everything was uprooted, and I had to try to get by on my own.

All I knew was gone, and so all I could do was try my best to adapt, and here I was.

I heard a ding from my tablet, which was charging near the bed. I look up from my lukewarm soup, where I was reading my personal case file I had found in the Sokovian HYDRA facility, frowning. I sigh as I put the half-eaten soup in the sink, grabbing the file as I walk over to check the tablet to see what was happening.

It was a news notification alert. "The Avengers are to sign the Sokovian Accords in Vienna." I could only assume it was a result of the mess they made in Sokovia. It was all over every news outlet.

I read the article, but nothing interesting stands out when I see a second notification appear. The most current documents I had been trying to decrypt were successful. "Romania in Bucharest. Hmm... well maybe I'll start heading there tomorrow. Should make sure the car has gas first though."

It was the first bit of information that was new about James Barnes' location. For over a year, I had been trying to find him, and seeing that he was in Romania, sparked back the fire deep inside that had burned out long ago. Once I killed him, everything would be fine, and I could return to this shitty life I had made for myself.