Who Am I? » [Stucky]

107. Reclaiming Property

"Now what?!" Steve spluttered, shielding his chest and gawking at Bucky with frenzied wide eyes, a surge of panic rushing through his system and submerging him entirely.

The policeman who had been standing guard outside rushed in, barging the door open with his bony shoulder and a guttural grunt, whipping his gun from his holster with a rattling click and aiming at the offenders. His eyes flittered to the blood deluged body of the chief superintendent slumped lifelessly over the backbreaking table.

Bucky ripped the pistol from Yelena's belt and took an impetuous shot, precisely and cleanly, executing the policeman with precision. The bullet perforated his vulnerable skull directly between the eyes, penetrating one side of his skull and whizzing out the other side. The cop drooped to the floor, his sentience flooding from him with his life's blood.

"We need to get out of here now!" Bucky barked at Steve.

He spotted the weapons that had been seized from the during the arrest and quickly reunited himself with his tools of trade and pulled his favourites from the sacks, planting them on his body and chucking Steve a gun. Steve fumbled with his clammy hands, his finger slippery like butter, slick with anxious perspiration.

Before they had time to react, police officers from all over the building had emerged from the corridor, popping out of the doors, leaking into view. Bucky reacted mercilessly, recalling his training: still embedded in his skull - though most of it was just muscle memory, thoughtless reaction. His heart clenched with guilt and regret as he gunned down man after man, blasting the consciousness right out of their heads. It terrified him sometimes how the sight of blood no longer made him gag or retch: it was routine, it was mission. The red seemed like nothing more than a splash of colour, and the thought that it was lives he was ending dripped from his mind. Only then did he realise Steve was screaming at him, shaking him by the shoulders to try and get him to snap out of it.

"Bucky! Bucky stop! Leave them alone! Just run!" Steve was screaming at him throatily, tears rolling down his cheeks at an alarming rate, tears engulfing his face. Steve's hands were trembling and he was cowering behind Bucky whose face seemed to be blank of any expression. He was ruthless and unfazed.

Steve resorted to leaping in front of him and deflecting the bullets being fired back at them with his shield and dragged Bucky from harm's way. "Out the window, behind us, now," Steve commanded in an emotionally drained voice, sounded rugged and jittery.

Bucky blinked out of his haze, snapping out of his murderous hypnosis and rushing hastily to the window and practically launching himself through the slit that had been opened to ventilate the room, falling a storey and landing gracefully in a squat, his feet patting down the snow beneath him.

Steve, sliding out a leg: kicking the door shut to buy some time - hearing the incoming threatening rumble of approaching feet - like the drumming hooves of the cavalry, darted to the window and slid through the gap and landed directly to the left of Bucky.

The two sprinted over to the parking lot, nearly slipping over as they skidded over the icy surface: the ground glistening with a thin film of ice.

"What the fuck happened in there?!" Steve hissed to Bucky, both of them running flat out, their legs a blur as they rushed along to find a vehicle to hotwire and escape in.

"I'm sorry... I just- I don't know what overcame me! Okay? Sometimes the red mist just descends and I can't stop it!" Bucky roared back, in a state of heightened emotion. He was fuelled entirely on adrenaline, practically high off the capacious dosage flowing through his pumping veins.

"You were acting like a bloodthirsty machine! You were thoughtlessly gunning them down!" Steve reprimanded, genuinely shaken by the automaton his friend he had become, like a child possessed he had murdered them thoughtlessly and heartlessly; and instinctively as a lion, hunting and slaughtering his prey without remorse.