Gold Rings ⚜️ Bucky Barnes X Reader

14: Neural Scan

--- JUNE 20th 2017 ---

Bucky was adjusting well to the village, but today he was set for city skylines once again. Just as before, Shuri came to drive him to the Wakandan capitol to get his vitals checked, undergo another round of neural reworking, and his follow-up therapy session with Okoye.

Oh joy.

Just as before, he went into Shuri's miniature lab to have his brain worked on. After the procedure was some minor physical therapy to make sure his body was still functioning as intended before going to talk therapy.

Double oh joy.

"Are you ready for our next session?" Okoye said as clinically as she could.

"What do you think the answer is?" Bucky sneered.

Okoye sighed, gesturing for Bucky to enter the room before closing the door behind him. "If this is going to work, I am going to need your full cooperation."

"And you have it."

"No, I don't." She quipped. "You may be in this room talking to me, but you aren't actually listening. For this to work, I am going to need you to be open to my guidance and your own introspection." Okoye got settled into her chair. "Do you think you can do that for me?"

Bucky let out a low grumble.

"I'll take that as a yes." She smiled. "Last time we went over a brief overview of your life. Now, let us focus on the present. How have you been feeling these last few weeks?"

"Pretty normal." Bucky shrugged, leaning forward in his chair with his forearms resting against his knees. "I've been working with the townsfolk with projects and Songbird has been helping me with a few things."

"That's what you've been doing. How have you been feeling?"

Bucky shrugged. "Neutral."

Okoye blinked at him.

"What?"

"Have you felt any emotional moments over the last few weeks? Calm, Joy, Anger?"

"Calm for certain. It's nice to be closer to nature and away from all the tech I just don't understand." He chuckled. "I guess a bit of anger too, though moreso frustration. Hunting was a challenge with only one arm."

Suddenly, his brain jumped back to hunting with Songbird. Her hand closely guiding his. Her chest pressed against his back. Her breath lightly brushing his skin.

"... And I'd say a good bit of joy, too."

"Well that all sounds wonderful." Okoye smiled, noting a few things in her journal. "Have you had any problems with managing your emotions in the past before we started the therapy process?"

Bucky scoffed. "I didn't really have emotions before. They're not exactly the most useful thing for a supersoldier to have. It's one of the first things they train you out of."

As Okoye scribbled down more notes, Bucky's eyebrows began to furrow. "Wait, what's with all the questions about emotions anyways?"

"The previous subject showed emotional instability during testing. We want to make sure that doesn't happen with you."

Bucky was about to nod in understanding, but stopped his head mid-motion.

"-- wait, I thought this had only been tested in simulation."

Okoye looked up from her notebook for a moment, making piercing eye contact with Bucky. Their gazes were locked on each other, chain linked together as they both tried to read each other's pupils for answers.

Okoye looked back down at her notes. "That's true. When I discuss the first subject, I'm referring to the simulation. It just feels more human to refer to it as Volunteer #1, so we do so."

Bucky continued to stare at her, but her gaze was firmly secured to the tip of her pencil as she drew doodles in the margins of her paper to appear to look busy. Eventually, Bucky turned his gaze to his hands.

"Makes sense." He stated in a monotone voice. "I'll be sure to monitor any emotional shifts."

"That would be advised." Okoye responded, finally turning her gaze back up from her paper. "Shall we continue?"

---

Once their session completed, Bucky left the room with a freshness in his step. He wouldn't admit it, but it was obvious in his demeanor that the therapy was aiding more than just his neural renetworking.

"Looks like everything checks out!" Shuri beamed. "We just need to take some vitals before we drive you home."

Bucky nodded, joining Shuri and a nurse by some clinical equipment.

"Decreased body fat percentage... Increased muscle mass... Regular blood pressure... You're handling this well!" Shuri beamed.

"Well, everything is easier the second time." Bucky joked back, looking at the files Shuri was sliding on-screen.

"So this is the progress that we have seen in your brain between sessions." Shuri commented. "As you can see, there has been some great improvement in the prefrontal cortex, but these connections closer to the brain stem are more firmly secured and tied closer with your base survival instincts, making them stronger and harder to reconnect."

Bucky's eyes bounced around the screen, trying to keep up with Shuri's words. However, he was quick to catch onto an inconsistency.

"That's not my brain."

Shuri paused. "What do you mean?"

"That." He pointed at one of the photos. "The others all match, but that one is obviously different. That can't be my brain."

Shuri glanced at the image before her eyes went wide. "That is NOT your brain!" She stated, startled. In one quick motion, she had the image closed and opened the correct file. Even in her haste, Bucky was quick to catch the image title before she closed it.

Sample #4.

"Sample?" He questioned.

"Different experiment. That got put in the wrong project folder, I'll get that resorted later." She stated with a slight waiver in her voice.

Shuri immediately jumped back into her analysis, but Bucky merely nodded along. It was obvious from more than just the pictures that he had a lot more thinking to do.

---

While Shuri's team would drive him close to the village, he requested that they stop a few hills away as to give the village people their technology-light peace. Besides, he had a lot of thinking to do on the walk.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to know Okoye and Shuri are hiding something. It was growing increasingly obvious that there was something strange with this neural simulation.

Okoye slipped up, referring to the so-called simulation of Volunteer #1 as if they were a person. If they are lying about the volunteer's personhood, then could they also be lying about their volunteering status?

And then there's these samples. There's got to be at least four of them, possibly more. What is different between a sample and a volunteer? Is sample only part of the brain? Or are samples from people who didn't volunteer?

And if they didn't volunteer, then how did they get those brain scans?

The whole thought made Bucky feel sick. And the worst part of it is that Songbird is likely involved. She was shady during their last conversation, making it sound like she was hiding something from him as well.

If he wanted answers, Bucky was going to need to asks a whole lot of questions. And if people weren't going to give him answers, then he was going to seek them out for himself.