Cupboards and Cryogenics

Chapter 11

Despite realizing he is in the freight train instead of a HYDRA base, the Asset's heart hammers and his breathing falters as images from the dream continue to flash through his head. The punishment scene wasn't unfamiliar, and his back burns with phantom pain.

THE ASSET DESERVES PUNISHMENT FOR DEFECTING AND- The first voice in his head starts to say, sounding slightly disoriented.

Negative. HYDRA cannot find us like that. The second, newer voice, interrupts. The mission is to keep Harry Potter safe. The boy needs the Asset, and he will not be safe with HYDRA. The Asset supposes that 'he' could apply to both of them- neither would be safe in HYDRA's clutches.

Perhaps, like in the dream, HYDRA has additional ways to track the Asset's location, instead of only having the device in his prosthesis. Removing just that tracker could have been useless if there is another he had not dealt with. They could be headed towards him now, ready to drag him and Harry the Handler back to a HYDRA base for real...

The Soldier quickly frisks himself for any more tracking devices. Failing to do so before, in the shed, was a major tactical error.

He lets out a small exhale when he finds no devices clipped to his clothes or anywhere on his body. His HYDRA handlers would not have expected the tracker in his prosthesis to be removed, and certainly not by the Soldier himself. They did not anticipate the possibility of their Asset defecting.

So HYDRA doesn't have a direct pinpoint on his location anymore, but it would be preposterous and stupid to assume that HYDRA is not searching for the Soldier and the boy in other ways.

Harry the Handler sits 3.3 meters away from the Asset, hugging Nighty the dog and watching the Asset's every move worriedly. His vision is obviously worse without his glasses, but he seems used to the dark. Then again, the Soldier is fairly certain the boy had been locked under the stairs at the Dursley house was a regular occurrence.

"Are you hurt, Nighty?" The boy whispers as he hugs the dog, even though asking a dog anything is pointless.

"He was pinned down but sustained no permanent injuries." The Asset replies after a bit, even though his handler was addressing the dog, not him.

Technically, that is true, but the Asset had been very close to shooting the dog when he first woke up, before Harry the Handler had brought him out of his haze. He is certain the real Harry would have reacted in similar horror to Nighty being shot to the Harry in the Asset's dream.

"Nighty's sowwrry." Harry the Handler almost sobs. "I told him not to, but..." The child glances towards something worriedly, and it's only now that the Soldier notices that the dog had gotten into their food stash while he was sleeping.

A few packs of sausages have been ripped open and devoured by Nighty (including some of the plastic wrapping), and the box of Harry's favorite animal biscuits has been torn apart, the contents scattered and broken.

He wonders if Harry had eaten some of the food as well. The boy is trembling slightly, and it isn't hard to guess that he'd tried to eat food in secret at the Dursley's' and was most likely caught and punished. Mrs. Dursley had been watching the boy to make sure he hadn't stolen food.

"Pinning the dog- Nighty- down was not a punishment for eating food. The Batman was unaware of its surroundings. " His explanation is not an excuse. There is no excuse. He should not have been so unaware, he should not have lashed out blindly just because of a nightmare. What if it had been Harry the Handler who'd touched him, and he'd pinned the boy down instead?

If he had attacked a HYDRA agent like that upon waking- not that he has much experience with sleep, and the cryo tank doesn't count- he would have been punished.