Cupboards and Cryogenics

Chapter 3

The mission should have been simple. It had almost been complete, at least the Soldier's part of it. All it had left to do was keep Potter quiet in the back of the car, the last orders it had been given, as the escorts did their job.

The attacker has set the mission back by immobilizing the escorts and blowing out the car tires. The Asset had delivered the boy to the escorts, but now the escorts are stiff and useless, no longer capable of driving him back to the airport and flying him back to the HYDRA base.

The Soldier looks at the limp form of the attacker it had just knocked out, making sure he is completely neutralized and will not wake up for a while. The attacker has long, greasy dark hair and black clothes.

The escorts had not explicitly ordered him to fight the attacker once he had taken them out, but it had not been necessary. The Soldier could not let the attacker take Potter as it seemed he'd been planning to do.

The enemy asset had been a unique opponent with abilities and a weapon the Asset has not encountered before. Perhaps he is an asset for the enemy.

The Asset had defeated his opponent. Losing would have been mission-noncompliant and punished.

The odd, weaponized stick has fallen from the man's limp hand. The Asset quickly frisks the unconscious attacker, but finds no other weapons or any source of identification. All the man has is the weaponized stick. With it, the enemy asset had been able to project shields powerful enough to stop the Asset's bullets, and had shot out various energy blasts that the Asset had been able to dodge with its enhanced speed. Most people would have been unable to dodge greater than or equal to 90% of the man's attacks.

Some of the energy blasts the weaponized stick shot had set things on fire. The man had tried to burn the Asset's prosthesis, so he had not let those hit him like the one that was deflected off his prosthesis. The Asset had been sloppy in dodging and one blast had singed some hair, but otherwise no damage was sustained during the battle.

The man had been limited by only being able to perform one action with the weapon at once, and by having only one weapon in the first place. The Soldier had taken advantage of each limitation, as always.

The Soldier's metal hand hovers over the weaponized stick, which currently looks quite harmless. He does not know if the weapon will go off if picked up, nor does he know the extent of its capabilities.

HYDRA would most likely like to know about this new weapon.

The stick could prove useful. The Asset cannot teleport or make guns fly out of opponents' hands and petrify opponents like the attacker had with the weapon. It's as if the man was some sort of wizard with a wand, but both are fictional.

The Asset carefully picks it up, making sure to point it away from any body parts. The weapon does not shoot out any energy now, seems to be no more than an ornate stick.

Heading back to the car, he checks on the escorts. They have not moved since falling to the street. The escorts' bodies are frozen and rigid as if in cryostasis, like the Asset between missions, except the escorts' temperatures are still around the average of 37 degrees celsius, and their eyes are open and moving, indicating consciousness.

The Asset does not know how to reverse the effects of whatever the energy blast had done to immobilize his escorts, but he does not try to wave the weaponized stick to counteract their paralysis.

The escorts are now useless to the mission. The Asset will be punished for that, even though it was the rival asset who took them out.

The escorts' mouths are shut, preventing speech and rendering them incapable of providing further orders or corrective punishment.