Can't Catch Me - Bucky Barnes

Flashback

Her eyes narrowed on the being in front of her. She released her hand from the throat of a young man. He dropped limp to the floor.

Kill Switch stood up in a robotic manner. As though her limbs were following the commands of someone else. She looked at the small child watching from a distance, yelling out the name of his parents in a language she barely recognized. She moved toward the child in a fast motion.

She couldn't stop herself or even remember what was going through her mind except the undying thought that this child needed to die. It was a means to an end.

She raised the gun to the center of the boy's skull while he cried hysterically. She pulled the trigger and her vision changed.

. . .

"What is your mission?" The operative leaned into her face and watched her mouth twitch.

Her body strapped down by cold steel. She clenched her palms as the operative repeated his statement.

"What is your mission!" He spoke to her in Russian. Blood poured down her nose.

"Valet, Eight, Channel, Recover, Crowd, Riposte-" The operative started chanting. She slammed her arms against the restraint. She tried to bend the steel but the minute she even creaked the metal with her mind the men standing behind her jolted her body.

"Station, Broken, Leisure, Serpent." The operative finished and looked at Kill Switch. Head facing the floor and body stiff waiting for someone to control it.

"Ready to Comply" She replied. The Operatives laughed to eachother happily.

"Using the same tactic on the weapon as we used on the target. Ironic." One of them commented. The other leaned forward to Kill Switch.

"Who are you?" They asked.

"Kill Switch"

"Your target" He showed an image of a man which instantly started getting run through her memory. Like she was being hardwired to hate, hardwired to attack.

"Now what is your mission today?"

"Take out the target" She spoke. The Operatives smiled to eachother and seemed to nod as a job well done.

. . .

It's both hard and easy to remember memories you try to forget. Especially the ones that haunt your dreams and you beg that they be just that, dreams. Nothing more than a hallucination you endure every night. Leave the day to forgetting and let the nights remind you they were nothing more than dreams.
You don't control these things but instead quite the opposite. They hold you so accountable for your actions that you'd rather wish you were dead than admit you are capable of such behaviors.

Erika was Kill Switch. For more years of her life than she'd like to confess. Given the same treatment her biggest enemy had. Frozen until she was a suitable asset to the organization. Frozen at 6 years old before being released just to grow up for only 14 years of extensive torture and training before being frozen again.

Counting the years she'd been unfrozen you could say Erika Callahan was late twenties to early thirties. But no one ever cared for Erika Callahan, it was only Kill Switch that seemed to catch everyone's eye. Perhaps it was the fact she was employed and used by a group that makes an enemy of the country itself. Discipline and Procedure thrived through Kill Switch, but mostly the mental manipulation made the biggest impact.

It was during this night she started remembering almost every face of every person she'd killed. Shot, stabbed, choked, crushed, or ripped apart. She remembered the monster that lived inside her. Kill Switch had been necessary for survival and at this point she was needed for deception.

Erika hated Kill Switch and yet needed her. She hated herself, she hated the part of her that has never really gone away. She flees Hydra, year after year. She can still recall the day she escaped, although it wasn't the prettiest.

. . .

The Levitskys were high on Hydra's radar. They destroyed, raided, and released Hydra's creations. They spun their world upside down in an attempt to slow them down. It's still surprising that the Avengers never saw them for what they were. Heros, who strived to do good.

Hydra pillaged the Levitskys. Killed generations of them. Yet they came back ready for more.

It was in winter when they came to the Hydra base Kill Switch was located at and sleeping in a cryo state. They came in search of their recent kidnapped family members. They broke down the walls of the building and started havoc. Killing operatives and opening any cage they saw with someone inside. Of course that didn't always help in their favor. Especially not when they released the Cryo Chambers.

Erika had been released and with that so was Kill Switch. There wasn't a thought process to her actions other than she was told to kill so she did. She battled the Levitskys, she became their enemy and yet the whole time she injured and brutally attacked them they tried to save her. Shouting counter chants they'd used before.

Kill Switch was there and Erika wasn't. The humanity was turned off like a switch. With a simple click she became a monster.

"Stop! You don't have to do this. Your name is Erika right?" A tanned skinned curly haired boy said. He set down his weapons and started stepping closer to Kill Switch. Erika hadn't known at the time but Hydra had pinned a note to her shirt identifying her, she hadn't known that was how they had known her name.

Kill Switch watched as he approached her. "My name is Sergei Levitsky, my family is here to save you." He had claimed that day.

"Sergei stop, they can't understand you in that state. You're trying to create empathy with someone who only knows kill." A girl with bouncy curls said.

"It worked for that one man in Munich. Why not now Nina?" He stepped closer to her.

"Are you listening Erika?" He asked her. Her response was to wait. He still stood at least a good seven feet away from her. While she waited. She raised a gun to someone heading towards her with the same weapon that jolted her everytime she disobeyed. She shot the operative without making any eye contact with where she was aiming and nailed a bullet between his eyes.

"I know you can hear me. I know this is scary." He stepped closer. She gripped the gun in her hand.

He moved closer once again and she raised her gun equipped hand.

"Sergei No!" The girl who she would later learn was one young Nina Levitsky jumped and pushed him out of the way of the bullet. Kill Switch shot Nina Levitsky in the side. Blood had filled the fabric of her shirt almost instantly.

"Oh Nina I'm so sorry I thought-"

"Shut up and call Marisha for medical care." Nina held her side before looking up to realize Erika had raised the gun once again to Nina's eyes.

"SHI-" Nina had started but as soon as Erika's fingers hit the trigger someone knocked her out with one hard swing.

Nina had been lucky that the gun had run out of bullets in the barrel when Erika had attempted to kill her.

But at the moment Erika's visions had gone dark and she woke up.