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peace in the madness (i) — john walker

⟢ synopsis. despite it all, you and john walker can make a pretty good team.

⟢ contains. plot from fatws, wakanda forever & thunderbolts*, violence, gore, death, murder, politics, morally ambiguous characters, john is a bad person, the reader is a bad person, fem!reader, slow burn, mutual pinning, reader is an assassin, action scenes, lots and lots of plot and words sorry.

⟢ wc: 14.4k+

⟢ author’s note. this started off as a thirst post for john walker but then i got ahead of myself and now we have a slow burn fic in the making with over 10k words per chapter, sue me. i just beleive john is such a complex character and i needed him under a microscope.

Present Day – 19:04 hrs

“Remember, this is a non-lethal op. Valentina says we can’t have any more bodies traced back to her.”

You shift your weight, the rooftop gravel crunching softly beneath your knee. A slow exhale fogs the air before you for half a second before clearing. The city stretches out in front of you, muted, restless. The sun had just dipped behind a jagged skyline of glass and steel, leaving behind a smeared amber haze. It painted long shadows across the streets below, where headlights flickered to life like fireflies.

Dusk was always the worst. Not dark enough to disappear, not light enough to see clean. But it was your best window. The fifteen-minute gap between the day shift clocking out and the night guards trickling in—eyes off monitors, radios switching hands, attention divided. Just long enough for Ghost and U.S. Agent to breach the perimeter, move fast, and get out clean.

That was the idea, anyway.

Beside you, a slim matte-black laptop sat open in the gravel, its screen casting a greenish hue on your gloves. A thermal overlay of the building two blocks down flickered on display, tracking body heat in faint red pulses. Two of those pulses—John Walker and Ava Starr—moved steadily toward the north service entrance, right on schedule. The building’s schematics hovered in the corner of the screen: lines of data flowing like code through a digital wireframe, green-on-black, flickering every so often.

Technically, Valentina had “acquired” the schematics through official channels. In reality, you knew she had someone twist the arm of someone important who owed her. Either way, it landed in your inbox. You wished she had managed to get access to the live security footage.

You adjusted your elbows against the ledge, the butt of your rifle snug against your shoulder. Custom grip. High-calibre suppressor. Nothing lethal tonight—just tranquillizers and a scope calibrated to tag a guard’s thigh at four hundred metres without alerting the guy next to him.

You had your knives, though, just in case.

And maybe you had real bullets too. You know, just in case.

Through the scope, the world narrowed to a single slice of reality: the street below, filtered in sharp contrast. A white utility van idled at the curb, hazard lights blinking in a slow, steady rhythm.

“You copy that, Walker?” Ava’s voice broke into comms, laced with sarcasm. You could hear her grin. “Means keep the temper in check.”

A burst of static, then a dry scoff. “Please. I’m the most emotionally stable one on this team.”

You smirked, never lifting your eye from the scope. “Anger still counts as an emotion. If anyone’s got a handle on their shit, it’s ‘Lena.”

“I’m more stable than you.” comes his immediate reply.

“Highly doubt that.”

“Wanna bet?”

There was the smallest pause, not long, just a breath, and you were already lining up your next jab when Ava broke in, her voice flat. “Can we not do this right now?”

You bit back your reply. She was right. You’d have all the time in the world for petty back-and-forths and real shoves later, once the job was over, once you were wheels up and back on the jet for a debrief with Barnes. For now, you just have to keep things tight.

You didn’t answer, but the faint grumble of agreement from Walker’s comm told you he was backing off, too. Probably reluctantly.

You glanced at the time: 19:05. “Fifteen seconds to breach,” you said, eyes flicking to the laptop beside you. The red tracker blips show you they were holding position just outside the perimeter, waiting for your go.

“North fence is clear,” you added. “No visible movement on cams. You’ve got a thirty-second blind spot, so move clean.”

You exhaled slowly, steadily. Finger off the trigger, but ready. The soft click of your rifle’s safety going hot was the only sound above your breathing.

The perimeter fence came into view on the feed. “Eyes on,” you muttered, tracking them both as they closed in. “Execute on my mark.”

Ava reached the side door first, already at the panel. Walker kept the rear cover, his silhouette tense and alert.

You adjusted your scope again, with an angle wide enough to catch both targets and the door in the frame.

You cracked your neck. “Three… two… one. Breach.”

A faint static came through the comms—Ava phasing through the doors and overriding the locks, letting John in.

“Entry confirmed,” she reported. “We’re in.”

“Alright,” you mutter and settle in. “Let’s steal a thing.”

The thing is a recipe.

A file. A set of encrypted protocols. A theoretical antidote.

Your objective is to extract archived material once belonging to OXE—an old failsafe from the Sentry program. Apparently, Val kept one copy tucked away in a black site R&D facility, just in case. And now that Bob’s officially on the New Avengers roster, she wants it out of any hands but her own.

She never said why, but the team figured it out anyway:

The recipe is a formula designed to suppress or stabilize Bob’s abilities—not a killswitch, exactly, but something close. A failsafe to reduce his emotional volatility during one of his manic spikes or episodes. Something to keep the Void at bay so that Bob could use his powers without turning into another anomaly.

You didn’t love the implications.

But you liked Bob.

He was sweet, awkward and out of place in every room, but in a way that made you root for him. Like watching someone try to stand up in a world that kept shifting beneath his feet. He reminded you of a neighbour you used to have when you lived in a shitty apartment.

You’d been there during the early days of his recovery. Helped Yelena guide him through the tangled mess of who he’d been and who he was now. Neither of you really had a plan. Honestly, you both just winged it. Gave him space. Gave him structure. Sometimes, you gave him snacks when he looked like he might cry.

Most of it, he had to figure out on his own. But none of you left him to do it alone.

Combat training fell to you because Bucky was too stiff and formal, and Alexei treated every session like a test of manhood and heroism. John tried once—just once—but walked away muttering, “How the hell do you teach someone who can melt concrete by accident?” So you stepped in. You didn’t think you could be any better than the rest of them, but Bob seemed to be learning.

Ava worked on basic life skills and academics with him—laundry, math, and how to boil water. Yelena handled the social stuff: conversations, sarcasm, and the difference between being funny and being rude.

It wasn’t always successful.

You liked to think the self-help books Bucky kept slipping him helped more than anything else.

You caught Bob reading one on emotional regulation over breakfast once, underlining passages with a pink highlighter. You didn’t say anything. Just sat beside him, poured a second cup of coffee, and read your own book.

“Ghost, keep moving east. You’re coming up on the lab corridor,” you say, your voice low in the comms. “The third door on the right should be the terminal. Look for a glass panel near the keypad—it’ll bypass the sound barrier if you fry the lock.”

“I see it,” Ava replies. “I’m clear.”

“Walker, shift south. You’ve got two patrols on a staggered sweep—one’s off-pattern. If they get eyes on you and hit the alarm, we’ll have a five-minute window before response units converge.”

“Five minutes is plenty of time,” John mutters, almost bored.

Ava snorts. “Is that what the girls you bring to bed tell you to make you feel better?”

Despite yourself, you huff a quiet laugh. The corners of your mouth twitch as John grumbles, deadpan and dry, “Funny. Truly hilarious, Ava.”

“Thanks. I try my best.”

You glance down at your laptop, watching the two red blips moving across the grainy schematic. Ava’s nearing the lab. Walker’s rerouting to intercept the patrols. The building layout’s a mess—half the blueprint’s been Frankensteined together from mismatched archives, with whole sections scribbled over in corrupted data strings. Which makes sense, because Val’s intel is always somewhere between half-baked and legally actionable.

“Still no eyes on that eastern stairwell?” Ava asks, voice tense but steady.

“Still dark. Feed cuts out halfway up the stairwell. Could be lead shielding or just bad wiring. Either way, be ready for when you hit the lab.”

You adjust your grip, gloved fingers ghosting over the safety as you settle deeper into a more comfortable position. The rifle’s cold beneath your cheek, scope zeroed in on the east-facing window of the building complex. Below, the white van is still idling. Its blinkers flash every few seconds.

A flicker cuts across your scope—too fast, too low. Movement. Wrong angle.

Through the long stretch of second-story window glass, you spot Walker moving just as planned, cutting across a side hallway, back hunched slightly to minimize his silhouette, hand resting near his holster.

But there’s another shape less than ten metres back, hugging the wall. No tag on your screen display. No heat signature. No digital marker to tell you what unit they belong to.

The figure moves with practiced precision, tight stance, smooth gait, rifle already drawn, angled for a clean line-of-sight. They’re trailing just far enough behind Walker that he hasn’t noticed. Must be soundless, too. He’d have heard the steps otherwise.

“Where the hell did you come from?” you mutter, adjusting your grip.

You shift your rifle, sighting them down the scope. No insignia, no armour signature. Their suit is matte, black, the kind that absorbs light and bends edges, stealth-grade gear. High-end. This wasn’t in the briefing.

You flick through the thermal overlay and find nothing. Either they’re cloaked, or someone scrubbed them from your network feed entirely.

Your finger brushes the trigger guard. You line up the shot.

And then you freeze.

If you shoot, the alarm system triggers instantly. Shattered glass, body on the floor, muzzle flare from a sniper rifle in a supposedly dead zone, the AI security in this place will wake up screaming. Every unit on-site will descend to its position in less than two minutes. Mission’s a wash. Bob’s antidote, lost.

Too many variables.

You exhale through your nose, trying to slow the rising pulse in your neck. Your finger curls near the trigger, just shy of committing. “Walker—tail on your six. Armed.”

Without hesitation, John pivots. Clean. A soldier’s turn: weight shifted just right, elbow up, forearm slamming hard into the barrel of the oncoming pistol just as the hostile pulls the trigger.

The shot slams into the wall, sparks and marble shattering.

The two collide mid-hallway in a rugged scramble. No words, just kicks, elbows, and desperate force.

You track them both through the scope, struggling to find a clean angle as they slam into the corridor’s far wall, fists flying. John’s back hits hard enough to dent and break the marble tile.

There’s training in the attacker’s movements, but nothing polished. Just raw aggression. A blade flashes once. John knocks it aside. He locks the hostile’s arm and tries for a disarm. Gets a fist to the face for his trouble. The pistol clatters to the floor.

“Walker,” you say again, more urgently. “This is non-lethal. Do not kill him.”

“Yeah, I got it,” he snaps through clenched teeth.

Another thud as the two of them crash into a concrete column. John gets a hand on the guy’s neck and forces him to the ground, but the attacker rolls, swinging a knee straight into Walker’s ribs.

Your hands tighten on the rifle.

Seconds later, the lights inside the building shift, bleeding into crimson. A pulsing red wash blinks through the hallway in timed intervals. Then the alarms scream to life, shrill, high-pitched wails that rattle your teeth through your comms and cut through the silence like a blade.

“Shit.” The word rips from your mouth.

You spin toward the monitor beside you, flicking over to the digital feed. “Ava, babe, I’m gonna need you to move with those files. Now.”

“I can’t exactly control how fast these want to download,” Ava mutters through clenched teeth. “This terminal is running on—what is this, Windows 2000?”

You barely register the sarcasm. Your gaze jumps between tabs and windows, digital heat maps flickering wildly, red outlines of guards beginning to move in a ripple, breaking formation. Swarming. The entire eastern wing is lighting up. You track one group breaching a stairwell, and another cutting toward the lower hall. All of them converge on John’s position.

You drop your eye back to the scope.

John’s still locked in hand-to-hand with the hostile, barely holding ground. The fight is close-quarters, raw and ugly. The man he’s grappling with is vicious—fast, using tight elbows and low strikes. He’s fighting like someone who’s been told not to leave survivors.

You shift your position, adjusting the tripod, trying to align a clean shot. But they’re too close. Moving too fast. Every time you get the hostile in your sights, John shifts into your line—an elbow, a shoulder, a blur of movement that risks friendly fire.

“Give me a clear shot, Walker.”

“I can take ‘em,” he grunts, voice rough.

You watch through the glass as he slams a punch into the guy’s side, but it’s sloppy—his feet are too close together, too flat. A stupid habit of his, one he’s never really corrected, no matter how many times you’ve needled him for it during sparring sessions. You don’t even realize you’re muttering under your breath until the words slip out.

“Watch your feet…”

And sure enough, the hostile sweeps low, catching John’s ankle. He goes down hard, landing on one shoulder, barely catching himself in time to keep from getting pinned.

Your eye twitches behind the scope. “You’ve got twenty seconds until a half dozen soldiers are on top of you,” you snap. “You’re about to be outnumbered, John. Give me a shot.”

“You doubting me?”

“Not doubting,” you say, steady despite the thundering in your chest, “just asking you to hurry up or give me a fucking angle.”

There’s a pause—a grunt, then a huffed breath through the comms as John forces himself back onto his feet. You can see him through the scope, rising with the kind of tenacity only men like him carry—soldier-stubborn, blood in his mouth, grit in his bones.

“I got this,” he growls.

“Sixteen seconds,” you say anyway, flatly. No patience to deal with him. You don’t have time for his ego, not when he is about to be compromised and Ava still has a job to finish. You flick your gaze to the screen, watching her tag blinking steadily in the lab.

“Ava?” you call out.

“Almost got it.”

“Twelve seconds, Walker. Eleven.”

Your fingers hover over the trigger, steady but tense. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you remind yourself that even if you did accidentally graze John, the odds of a standard round doing real damage to a super soldier are slim. Still, the thought turns your stomach. It’s not the damage you’re worried about—it’s the principle.

He’s your teammate now, whether you want him or not. And sure, you won’t miss, but John’s too unpredictable in a fight. Sometimes he moves like he’s still in formation, clean and efficient, tactical. Other times, he throws that out the window, fighting dirty, using weight and brute force, slamming elbows, and breaking form. He leans on his strength like a crutch.

“Six seconds.”

The two tangle together again, this time in a headlock. John’s arm is locked around the hostile’s throat, but his footing slips, just enough to lose leverage. They pivot, stagger, and crash into the wall like bulls. You can see the tremble of strain in his shoulders.

You adjust the scope. Grit your teeth.

“Five seconds.”

“I got it. I got it—fuck!”

You don’t wait.

The shot cuts clean through the dusk—suppressed, but still sharp. A brief shudder through your body, a flash of recoil. The bullet punches through the reinforced glass, spiderwebbing the pane in a single fracture.

The hostile drops instantly. Like a puppet with its strings sliced. A dead weight slamming against tile. Head-first. Spine buckles.

John freezes, standing over the body as it crumples at his feet. Blood spatters in a fan across his neck and cheek, warm red across the sweat already beading at his collar. His chest heaves once. Then again.

You don't breathe until you’re sure he’s fine.

“Contact,” you call into comms, “Hostile neutralized. You’re welcome, Walker.”

Through the scope, you watch John pause, briefly, with blood on his face. He glances toward the window, eyes scanning the rooftops like he might catch a glimpse of you. But he doesn’t linger. He turns on his heel and bolts down the corridor, slipping into the flickering red wash of emergency lights, boots pounding against the polished floors.

The guards spill in seconds later, converging on the body you dropped. You shift your view, watching them swarm like hornets kicked awake.

Static hisses. Then John’s voice crackles through.

“So much for non-lethal,” he mutters. The sarcasm is brittle, but there’s no heat in it, more of a reflex than a complaint. Then, after a beat, “Good shot.”

You allow yourself the smallest smile, even as your pulse stubbornly refuses to slow, and you try biting down the way your heart stutters in your chest.

“It was an excellent shot,” you correct, smug as ever, already returning to the heatmap where John’s signal is pushing further away from the kill zone. You track him weaving through side corridors, putting distance between himself and the growing cluster of guards.

“Thanks for watching my flank,” he adds, voice faint but clear.

“Yeah,” you say, rolling your eyes with a half-smile he can’t see. “Can’t say I never did anything for you.”

Thirty-four months ago – 18:07 hrs

It was unusual for Valentina to pair you up with someone else during a shadow op. Sure, you knew she had other agents, mercenaries, and off-the-books assets scattered across the country—most of them names you weren’t supposed to know, and faces you’d never seen twice. But she never gave you a job that required backup. She never needed to. You were efficient, lethal, and clean. Whatever assignment she sent your way, you handled it alone.

And usually, Valentina would’ve given you a briefing over the phone—quick, coded, impersonal. Ever since she got Everett Ross arrested, she’d been keeping her head low, her name even lower. No texts. No encrypted drops. Just a voice in your ear telling you where to be and what to do. That was the new pattern.

So yeah, it threw you when you came home and found her already inside your apartment, legs crossed, mug in hand as if she’d always belonged there. You hadn’t even reached for the light switch before she looked up at you with that familiar smile—cool, polished like this was just another Tuesday.

You figured from that moment that whatever job she was about to give you would be different.

The scent of your coffee still lingered in the air. Strong. Burnt. She must’ve made it fresh. Bold of her, considering your kitchen was barely more than a rusted kettle, chipped tiles, and a dollar-store knife set you never used but let your neighbour across the hall, Peter, borrow when he needed it. The couch she lounged on was old, military surplus maybe, something you picked up off a thrift store for cheap a few years ago.

“You know,” Valentina said, swirling the mug with a faint look of distaste, “for someone I pay quite handsomely, this place is a crime against interior design.” She gestured vaguely at the peeling paint, the half-dead plant on the windowsill, and a rug that had definitely seen better decades. “At least get curtains. Or a new couch. God, do you sleep on this?”

“Good to see you too, Val,” you muttered, kicking the door shut behind you. You dropped your stuff with a dull thud by the wall and made a slow beeline for the kitchen, grabbing a half-drunk bottle of wine from the counter. “Always a pleasure.”

She watched you over the rim of her mug, something fond tugging at her smirk. “You know I’m just looking out for you, hun.”

When she stood from the couch, it gave a wheeze of protest. She wrinkled her nose at it with genuine offence. “I can’t believe you live like this. After this job, we’re going apartment hunting. Non-negotiable.”

You gave her a look, wine glass halfway to your mouth, then rolled your eyes and sipped anyway.

Val met you at the kitchen island and casually tossed a file down with the same effort someone might use to hand over a receipt. It slid a few inches across the counter. “Your next mission.”

The confidential folder was thicker than usual. Neat. Pressed. Clipped with that high-grade OXE stationery that always reeked of classified importance. Inside: brief logistics, heat maps, aerial photos of some sandblasted facility in the middle of nowhere. She’d labelled it Operation Ashglass.

The objective: extract a captured OXE-affiliated scientist from a rogue paramilitary cell squatting in a fortified complex along the edge of mountains—ambiguous terrain, west of Durango, Mexico, somewhere that made jurisdiction murky and involvement deniable. It was textbook Valentina: silent infiltration, no witnesses, no mess. Get in, get the target, and ghost out.

She never gave you full dossiers. Just fragments. A hint of motive here. A half-truth there. You’d stopped asking questions a long time ago—unless it was something mission-critical.

And then you turned the page.

There it was. A picture that stood out. It wasn’t the target—it was a personnel profile. Cleaner. Official. Military-standard. OXE clearance and an enhanced physiology tag in bold black text. That face you’d seen before—on the news.

“U.S. Agent?” you asked, brows furrowing.

“Oh, yes,” Val said with a little flourish, finally setting down the mug. She stepped beside you and tapped the photo like she was showing off a school project. “He’ll be joining you. Don’t mind all the printed fluff.” Her hand slid down, fingernail tapping a yellow sticky note beneath the paper. You recognized her handwriting instantly.

His desperate need for validation would be sad if it weren’t useful. Just keep stroking that fragile ego.

You stared at it. Then glanced at her.

“It’s how you’ll get along,” she said brightly as if it were obvious. Then she wandered off, opening your fridge like it was her own. You didn’t stop her.

You stayed rooted in place, one hand still resting on the edge of the file, the other loosely cradling your wine glass. You’d heard of John F. Walker—who hadn’t? His name and face had been splattered across the news for months. The rise and fall of America’s new golden boy. A war hero turned public tragedy, Captain America, stripped of his title, caught on video with blood on his shield.

How embarrassing.

You never knew he worked for Val.

But of course you didn’t. You were a ghost in her network, just like he was. No one was supposed to know who worked for her. That was the point. Still, it was hard to imagine him—the man who’d tried and failed to be a symbol—now skulking around in black ops missions under her banner.

You flipped through the file again. Standard OXE dossier layout, but chunkier than most. Half of it was redacted in black bars thick enough to cover small paragraphs. Still, a few key points caught your eye:

Name: John F. Walker Status: Active Rank: Former Captain, United States Army – 75th Ranger Regiment Service Notes: [REDACTED] Post-Service: Briefly served as Captain America until dishonourable discharge. Current Alias: U.S. Agent Abilities: Peak human physical condition from military training. Enhanced strength via hazardous self-administered Super Soldier Serum. Proficient in shield-based combat. Notable Operations: Led multiple military campaigns with a high success rate. Awarded medals for bravery and service. Prevented terrorist threat on U.S. soil. Demonstrated strong tactical leadership in high-stakes hostage recovery missions.

You read it all twice, then looked up. “He’ll be working with me?”

Val, now elbow-deep in your fridge, pulled out a questionable container, opened it, sniffed, then wrinkled her nose and tossed it in the garbage. “Somewhat. He has his own mission, but your paths will intersect.”

“Will his mission interfere with mine?”

“It shouldn’t,” she said, turning to lean against the counter beside you, “The two of you will drop in together. I can arrange an extraction zone a few miles from the compound. As long as you bring me Dr. Murphy, alive and unharmed, I’d consider it a rousing success.”

“And if someone gets in my way?”

Valentina smiled, slow and indulgent. “Take care of them. Any way you like. The plane leaves tomorrow morning. Seven on the dot.”

You were there by six.

And somehow, John Walker was already on board before you.

When you stepped into the cargo aircraft, the cold air hit first—sharp, metallic, familiar. Walker sat alone on the left side of the plane, smack in the middle of the row, already strapped in with his shoulders squared and his eyes locked on his phone.

He wore his suit.

The one the world had seen when he paraded around as Captain America.

Only now, the colours looked muted—bled out. The blue was deeper, like bruised skin. The red had faded into a muddy maroon, and the white was a grimy, bone-grey shade in certain places, streaked from too many missions and stains that no amount of scrubbing could fully erase. Blood, probably. You could see it in the creases of the fabric, in the weathering across the chest.

There was something unshakeably worn about him.

You took the seat directly across from him, surprised he hadn’t acknowledged you. Not even a glance. Just kept scrolling through his phone like he had all the time in the world. You watched as he scratched at his jaw, brushing over the faint scruff lining his chin. He exhaled through his nose, barely more than a tired huff, and dragged a thumb lazily across the screen.

His hair was longer than you'd expected, a light, muted blond that caught the edge of the sunrise through the open ramp. It slipped across his brow, unruly and unbothered. His helmet sat beside him, dull and dented, the star on the forehead barely visible anymore.

You turned away and counted your bullets.

Not because you needed to—you’d already counted twice before boarding—but because it gave your hands something to do. Something quiet.

About twenty minutes passed before he finally looked up from his phone. You didn’t move, but you felt it—that subtle shift in the air. The kind of tension that crackled in silence. His posture changed: back straightening, boots planted harder into the floor like instinct had kicked in. You glanced up just in time to catch his eye and the way his jaw clenched. He nodded once, tight-lipped, and you blinked at him in return.

That was it. That was the extent of your introduction before the plane took off.

Neither of you said a word.

You shifted your gaze past him instead, watching a pair of OXE field operators secure crates and compressed tanks into bolted brackets across the far wall. A reinforced cooler unit was strapped down beside them—probably med supplies or something volatile. You weren’t cleared to ask, and you didn’t care enough to guess. The faint smell of jet fuel and steel mingled with cold air circulating through the cargo bay. Somewhere near the cockpit, static cracked in and out over the intercom; it was radio chatter from OXE’s command channel, coded and low.

Your seat was hard metal with a worn cushion, bolted to the frame. No frills. No comfort. You adjusted your knife sheath against your thigh and leaned back.

Walker kept to himself. You did too.

Even if you’d wanted to speak, there wasn’t anything worth saying. You were here for your mission, and he was here for his. Separate, parallel objectives. No need for small talk, or whatever he might’ve been like when he wore the stars and stripes.

You moved on autopilot. Occasionally, you got up to stretch your legs, shake off the stiffness, and check the window. Once, you made your way to the tiny steel restroom toward the tail end of the aircraft—just a glorified metal closet with a drain. He waited until you were seated again before he stood and did the same.

It was a long flight.

Eventually, one of the pilots unstrapped and ducked below the low cabin ceiling, making his way back to you. He didn’t say much—just a nod and a flat “Drop zone in five. Gear up.” Then he was gone again.

You stood, boots heavy against the vibrating floor as you grabbed a parachute from the wall rig. It was a standard stealth issue: black webbing and a well-worn pack with a clean deployment record. You shouldered it with practiced ease, adjusting the straps as you moved toward the rear gate.

You felt Walker behind you a beat later, mirroring your steps.

The back gate began to creak open with a mechanical whine, the hydraulics groaning before the full force of the wind slammed inside. Papers whipped through the air—briefing pages, loose Velcro tags, anything unsecured. Your hair, pinned down before you left, was now fighting its restraints, strands catching in your face. You didn’t bother fixing it.

You stepped closer to the edge, peering out over the yawning drop below. The land stretched wide beneath you, jagged mountain ridges bleeding into open wilderness and fractured stone. Near the horizon, a river carved through the earth like a vein—narrow, silver, and winding. There was a cluster of small buildings there, the hazy blur of an old city built. Just visible in the dawn glow was a tall, narrow building, sharper and darker than the others.

That had to be it.

You heard movement behind you, of boots shifting against metal, a slight creak of worn floor panels, and you turned just in time to catch Walker stepping up close, too close. Instinct had you shifting a step to the side, pivoting until he was back in your peripheral vision. He didn’t flinch at the silent correction—just leaned forward slightly to look down at the terrain below, hands braced loosely on his thighs.

Then he straightened again and shook his head, exhaling sharply before pulling his helmet on. He strapped it tight with practiced ease. “Jesus,” he muttered.

You quirked a brow. “Never jumped out of a plane before?”

You doubted it. With his record—what you knew of it, at least—he’d probably done a dozen HALO drops. Maybe more.

Walker turned his head to you. “I have,” he shouted over the noise. “It’s just been a while.”

You caught the shift in his voice—slightly raw, not from nerves, but memory. The kind that stuck like shrapnel. You nodded slowly, eyes trailing him in your side view. Taller than you expected. Broader, too.

“I’m Walker,” he said finally, pivoting fully to face you. One gloved hand reached out, stiff but polite. Formal. The soldier’s way of making nice. A true gentleman when he tried. If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have thought this was the same man who tainted the symbol of Captain America in the span of four weeks.

You turned to meet him halfway, fingers tightening around his hand with a steady, even grip. You told him your name. “Nice to meet you, Walker.”

His brows knit under the helmet’s brim. He nodded once, then let go, hand curling into a fist at his side like he didn’t know what to do with it anymore.

“I read your file,” he said after a second. “Gotta say, ‘t’s pretty impressive for someone not military trained. Did you come up through S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

You turned your face back toward the open hatch, letting the sunlight catch your cheek. “No.”

“Red Room?”

“No.”

“…HYDRA?”

You gave him a lazy side-eye, letting your head roll just slightly on your shoulders. “I’m not a Nazi, Walker, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

His lips twitched upwards and he cracked a light laugh—barely audible over the wind, but you heard it. He shook his head once, a faint breath escaping as he settled his weight back into his heels.

“Just tryin’ get to know you,” he shouted. “That’s all.”

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t have a reply, but because there was nothing else worth saying.

One of the pilots returned, bracing himself against the wall as the aircraft hit light turbulence. He made his way to the side panel near the rear, glancing down at a set of toggles before giving a sharp wave. “Reaching drop zone! T-minus three seconds!”

The signal was enough. You turned, grabbed hold of your chute’s harness one last time for good measure, and then stepped closer to the gate’s edge. The wind screamed past you, drying your lips and stinging your eyes. You didn’t flinch.

You threw one last glance over your shoulder, fixing your goggles into place. Walker was watching, head tilted just slightly. You could feel his eyes tracking you even from across the roar of the aircraft.

You raised your hand in a lazy wave. “Good luck!”

Then you stepped off the ramp and vanished into the wind.

The force of the fall sucked the breath out of your lungs, wind shrieking past your ears as it clawed at every seam of your suit, gravity tearing you downward. The world below hurtled toward you, a blur of ridgelines, lush foliage, and jagged rock—earth scorched by the sun but fractured with patches of greenery. Mesquite trees and ocotillo branched out of cracked soil, the brush scattering along the slopes of a low mountain range.

You shifted your weight, angling toward the drop zone marked in your HUD: a small clearing tucked just below a rocky bluff, just about a klick out from the compound’s edge. It wasn’t much; barely flat; littered with brittle stone, but it was good enough.

You counted the seconds. Then pulled.

The chute snapped open with a whipcrack, jolting your harness and pulling hard at your spine. You gritted your teeth and rode the drag until your boots hit the earth.

You touched down harder than you liked, rock bit into your knees as you rolled, shoulder catching the edge of a stunted bush, but you were up in seconds, chute already being detached and folded tight.

You dropped low behind a rocky ledge, body pressed tight to the ground.

You scanned the horizon and saw no movement yet.

The compound loomed ahead, wedged between the base of a canyon wall and a ridge of limestone hills. Not what Valentina’s file had suggested. Bigger. Smarter. Partially built into the hillside—worn roofs, sand-coloured siding, power lines strung low between towers disguised as agricultural silos. Fields of tall grass surrounded the place, and the gravel path leading in was bordered by fencing and barricades that didn’t look standard.

You didn’t have time to admire it.

A shout cracked through the silence, sharp and panicked.

Two guards crested the ridge behind you, rifles drawn, boots snapping over brittle underbrush.

They hadn’t seen your landing—but they’d heard it.

Fuck.

They weren’t supposed to be there. Valentina’s file had said nothing about scouts this close to the drop zone.

You froze, breath caught low in your chest.

If you moved now, if your boots scraped against rock or brush—they’d hear it. You knew that. So instead, you went still.

Your hand slipped silently toward your weapon, screwing the suppressor into place with one fluid twist. Then you rolled to your back, adjusted your position, and raised the sight to your eye.

They were moving between the mesquite and cedar, their camo blurring against the background. But the sunlight caught them, just enough. You tracked the first one through the scope and squeezed the trigger.

The shot hit his shoulder.

He didn’t drop.

Instead, he turned, shouting—gun half-raised—

Second shot.

Dirty. Right below his helmet. In his face, bursting through the side of his skull. He folded into the dirt like a dead weight.

The second one screamed, already firing as she charged. Her bullets tore the brush inches from your leg. You ducked low, teeth gritted, then surged forward as she closed the distance—no time to aim.

You met her halfway.

Blade out. You caught her just under the ribs, the blade biting deep as her weight crashed into you.

She rolled and hit the slope hard. Gravel tore into her palms as she scrambled to get up.

You tackled her, straddled her chest, and drove the knife in again, deeper this time.

Her scream barely made it out before your gloved hand clamped over her mouth. She jerked once, twice—then went still.

You exhaled and crouched low. Dust curling around your knees.

The quiet came back.

You stood and rushed to the body at the top of the hill. His uniform was cleaner. You could work with that.

You knelt beside the body, breathing steadily now, fingers already working. The man’s uniform was a local military issue—dust-faded fatigues, patched at the seams, boots scuffed but solid. You stripped him quickly, trading your own gear for his piece by piece: shirt, vest, gloves, boots. Loose fit, a little too broad in the shoulders, but it would pass under pressure.

His helmet, which had come last, the interior still damp with sweat and blood, had started to soak the back of it. You didn’t flinch as you strapped it on.

A radio unit was clipped to the front of his vest, already hissing with static. You clicked it once to check the channel.

A radio clung to the chest strap, crackling with static, and you pressed it once to check the channel. Foreign chatter. Spanish—regional accent. You knew it well. But that didn’t matter. You listened, not for words, but tone. Urgency. Panic. Nothing yet. No raised alarms.

You took his dog tags and shoved them into your thigh pouch. Just in case. Insurance.

Your own gear went into the ravine behind a cluster of brush, shoved deep and covered in loose dirt. You kept your weapons, though. The bodies were dragged into the shadow of a low rock wall, out of sight if no one looked too hard.

You scanned the ridgelines in the distance. No sign of movement. No shadow slipping between trees. No falling parachute.

You couldn’t tell if Walker had already landed or if he was just that good.

You doubted it; he didn’t strike you as the stealthy type.

You adjusted the rifle on your back, fingers tightening just once on the sling. Then you turned toward the slope.

From a distance, the compound had looked like a relic—half-sunken and silent, swallowed by the green swell of the mountainside. Vines clung to rusted scaffolding. Concrete blistered under heat and rain. Satellite dishes, three of them, were bolted at odd angles into a sloping rooftop like broken bones jutting from skin.

Abandoned. Or pretending to be.

And that was the first lie.

You moved uphill through the riverbed’s dry seam, low and careful, boots sinking in silt. Thorns tore faint lines into your sleeves. The sun had baked the path to cracked clay, and each breath burned hotter than the last. Your stolen uniform stuck to your spine like wet gauze. The guard’s blood had dried to a tacky smear across your gloves. You rubbed your hand along your thigh to clear it and kept going.

You told yourself you’d done harder jobs.

Val hadn’t said much. She rarely did. Only that Dr. Murphy had been taken—“kidnapped,” she called it as if someone had beaten her to the punch. And she wanted him back. Nothing more.

But the photo she gave you said enough.

A pale man with wire-rim glasses and sunken cheeks, skin thinned from stress and exile. His posture was a question mark. Eyes hollow. An Irish national, wrapped in a name you didn’t recognize and a face that felt too soft and mundane for the kind of work Valentina expects.

You crested the slope and paused.

Closer now, the compound wasn’t empty. Not even close.

The barbed wire was new. So were the floodlights, off for now, but pointed outward like they knew someone might come. Reinforced fences lined the outer edges, looped with security mesh you hadn’t seen from above. No cameras. No tech giveaways.

You spotted a garden first. Neat rows. Bright vegetables. Rich, real soil—someone had been tending it carefully. Too careful for a prison. Too careful for a lab.

A little farther, stables came into view. Cows. Horses. A few goats. Fresh straw.

You slowed.

A woman crossed the yard in a long blue dress, her gait gentle and slow. Pregnant. Eight, maybe nine months. One hand braced her lower back. The other shielded her eyes from the sun as she called something to someone you couldn’t see. Her voice was soft. The sound of it didn’t match anything in your training.

You stopped walking for the first time.

Just a second.

Just enough to feel the shape of something wrong twist in your chest—like a metal hook curling behind your ribs. Were you in the wrong place?

But then you moved again. Knife already in hand.

The dirt trail beneath your boots was narrow and winding, just wide enough for two people. You followed it like you belonged, shoulders loose, pace measured. A shape emerged ahead—a man in fatigues, walking toward you, rifle slung, hand on his belt. No urgency. Just patrol.

He didn’t know what you were.

You dipped your chin slightly in as he approached, a nod. He didn’t return it.

Instead, he squinted. Slowed. His mouth started to open, already forming a question you wouldn’t let him finish. Probably about the uniform. Or your face. Or your route. The sun caught in his eyes.

And in that breath of hesitation, you moved.

The blade slipped through the space between you like breath. You pressed forward, arm steady, cutting across the exposed skin of his throat—clean and deep. His eyes widened, and his hands caught yours too late, reflexes firing only after the damage had been done.

He made a sound; a wet, helpless choke. You caught him before his knees hit the ground.

For a moment, his weight hung in your arms. Then you shoved him forward, over the railing and down the scrubbed hill, where he vanished into the brush. The woman in the blue dress didn’t look up.

Inside the barrier, it was cooler—shadows stretching long beneath shaded walkways and low-slung rooftops. Vines clung to the brick walls in tangled loops. Wind whispered between them, thick with the scent of soil, animals, and sweat.

You kept your head down and slid wordlessly into a small group of guards heading toward a steel-frame building near the centre of the compound. No one spoke. No one noticed you didn’t belong.

It should’ve felt like progress.

Instead, your nerves started to itch.

There were more civilians than you expected—dozens, maybe more. Not ragged hostages or frightened prisoners. Just… people. Unarmed. Unbothered. Some walked slowly, pushing wheelbarrows or balancing crates of food. Others leaned in shaded corners, talking low in multiple different languages; French, Polish, Portuguese, Mandarin, even English, no tension in their shoulders.

Your eyes swept over them. No cuffs. No guards herding them.

Some even smiled as they passed.

It didn’t make sense.

The more you looked, the more it felt like you’d dropped into a place that didn’t match the mission. A compound built into a mountain like a military secret, yet soft with domesticity. Not a prison. Not a lab. Not exactly a village either.

You recognized the insignia on a few patches of the guards—an old empire symbol rebranded into a paramilitary logo. Val’s notes had been vague on who these people actually were.

Then, a gunshot rang out.

Sharp. Clean. Too far off to see, but close enough to feel in your chest. Somewhere on the far end of the compound. An echo down the mountain’s spine.

Everyone stopped moving.

The group around you stiffened. Radios crackled to life. Static turned to shouting. Orders flying in Spanish. There was a breach.

Walker.

That son of a bitch.

Your jaw tightened as the guards broke off and scattered—some charging toward the perimeter, rifles drawn, boots pounding through dust, others ducking into buildings, already shouting instructions to unseen teams.

Two peeled off toward the civilians—or the not-quite civilians, whatever they were—and barked orders you couldn’t hear through the panic.

People started running, the calm unravelling around you.

You didn’t move right away. You stood there, your hand hovering near the rifle strap at your chest, eyes scanning for anyone watching you. The disguise still held. No one here questioned your face, your gear, or your presence. But that wouldn’t last.

The weight in your chest hadn’t lifted since you entered this place. And now it pressed harder. Urging you forward. Urging you to finish what you were sent to do. Get in. Find the doctor. Extract him. No wasted bullets.

You broke from the disbanded group without a word, slipping behind a low stone wall where the vines grew thick and unkempt. Your boots moved silently through dirt and shadow. You pressed yourself to the main building’s outer wall, tracing its curve until you found a utility door slightly ajar. Unlocked.

Inside, the air was cooler.

A damp kind of cool, like the breath of an old basement. The hallway you entered was lined in unfinished concrete, walls painted in faded beige, the lights overhead buzzing softly in their sockets. A bunker of some sort. But it wasn’t the layout that caught your attention.

It was the smell.

Food.

Vegetables. Meat. Something frying. Something human and warm.

You kept moving. Slow, steady. A rifle slung on your shoulder, boots muffled against the floor. You scanned faces as you passed them—some armed, others not. Some men. Some women. Some too young to be either. Some looked like families, ushered into rooms you could barely get a glimpse into by other guards.

You kept moving, and the further in you went, the more it looked like a living space rather than a bunker. You followed the map layout etched into memory—three more turns and you’d be near the wing where Murphy was meant to be stationed. Meant. That word was becoming less and less comforting the deeper you went.

You turned a corner and stopped.

It was a cafeteria.

Open floor, long metal tables, cafeteria trays still left out on some of them, one rocking slightly from a recent disturbance. A refrigerator hummed in the corner. The overhead lights flickered, catching on linoleum floors half-mopped and still wet.

There were coffee mugs scattered across a serving counter, half-finished drinks gone cold. One still steamed faintly.

You stepped in. Slowly. Rifle angled downward.

You glanced at the side wall. More drawings. Children again. You wondered if it was a school, a compound or a prison or all three. A cartoon sun, smiling with sunglasses. Scrawled beside it in crayon: “Dr. M gave us watermelon today!”

Your stomach twisted again. This time, you didn’t ignore it.

Then, behind you—

A voice. Close. Sharp.

“¿Qué haces aquí?”

You turned.

A man in uniform stood in the doorway. Maybe early thirties, pale skin, square jaw, sleeves rolled to his elbows. His rifle wasn’t raised, but his suspicion was instant. You knew that tone. That shift in posture. He was doing the math in real time, and he didn’t like the numbers.

You tried the same trick—rusty Spanish, something casual, something quiet.

“I got turned around,” you said. “Comm’s out.”

His frown deepened. Eyes narrowing. Let me see your badge.” He gestured toward your chest strap.

You hesitated.

Only for a second.

That was enough.

His hand twitched—toward the rifle, maybe the radio—it didn’t matter.

You moved first.

You crashed into his space and knocked his wrist sideways with a sharp upward hook. Your blade flashed up and sank deep, between ribs, under the vest, angled through soft muscle. His breath hitched. A raspy gasp tore from his throat.

You shoved him back, hard, slamming him into the metal counter. Your hand clamped over his mouth to stifle the noise as he choked on his own blood. You felt the shudder run through his body, sharp, then weaker.

Blood spilled fast, hot and sticky over your gloves. It pooled at your feet in uneven circles, trickling along the seams of the tile. The gurgle in his throat was louder than you'd expected. Messier.

You jolted upright, and the crackling shriek of an alarm finally kicked in overhead, shrill and sharp enough to rattle your jaw. The stolen radio on your belt hissed to life: static, then screaming.

“Shit.” You cursed.

You heard the crackle of rushed instructions, shouted orders. They plead for backup and medics. A sharp gasp. Someone sobbing into the mic. Gunshots cracked loudly through the speaker.

Behind you, there was another noise. Closer. A chair scraping across the floor behind you. You turned just in time to see a shadow slip through the far door—someone bolting, slamming it behind them.

Didn’t wait to see if the man behind you was truly dead, or if someone else had entered the room, or if the blood still dripping from your blade would give you away.

You ran after that figure.

The door flew open under your shoulder. The stairwell greeted you like a wound torn open in the building’s side—grey, industrial, the air tasting like metal and dust. Your boots pounded upward, two steps at a time, too fast, too loud, but stealth was already dead.

Footsteps above echoed in a frantic rhythm, more than one. You could hear stumbling. A voice muttered something. Then: “Doctor Murphy—come back!”

There.

The building rumbled, dust falling from the ceiling; an explosion. Standard military grenade, you assumed. Screams followed soon after. What the fuck was Walker doing?

You blew past two guards barreling down from the next level—one shouted something clipped and aggressive, but you didn’t hear the words, only the fear behind them. Civilians clung to their sleeves, dazed and panicking, one woman barefoot and bleeding, one man with soot—no, blood—streaking down his temple.

You pushed higher.

And then you saw them. Just a glimpse of a pair of shoes, clean and narrow, more academic than military. Soft-soled. Moving fast. They disappeared behind the door on the twelfth floor.

You slammed the door open, and there was movement at the end of the hall. A figure sprinting, lab coat flaring behind him. He turned his head just long enough for you to catch a flash of his face—pale, wide-eyed. Recognition sparked, and he nearly tripped. A deep, soul-deep kind—the kind that said he knew what you were. Knew why you were here.

You didn’t need confirmation. That was your target.

You charged after him.

His shoulders bucked, and he yanked himself around the hallway bend, disappearing behind a pair of tall frosted-glass doors that swayed in his wake like they were still unsure whether they should have let him through.

You reached them seconds later.

The lab wing.

You tried the handle—locked. A clearance pad flashed red. Denied.

You didn’t miss a beat.

One bullet to the pad. A second into the hinge.

The reinforced glass spiderwebbed—fractured light slicing across your face like veins of lightning. You didn’t flinch. The following shot cracked it wide. The whole pane gave way with a sound like shattering ice, shrill and sudden, followed by distant screaming from somewhere inside.

You stepped through, boots crunching across shards, gun raised.

The space beyond the doors was vast and cold, the air tinged with a faint antiseptic scent. A hybrid between a medical bay and a research lab, containing pristine surfaces, chrome equipment, and overhead lights casting a sterile glow across white tile. It might’ve once been a conference room, or an entire floor converted in haste. Drawn-back curtains hung from ceiling tracks, revealing narrow beds tucked into corners. Machines blinked softly beside them, most unplugged. Others still hummed.

You moved deeper.

There were signs of haste—boxes stacked along the walls, half-open, papers spilling from the edges. One lay kicked over, its contents scattered across the floor. Medical files. A child’s crayon drawing pinned to the corner of a corkboard beside a schematic of a human nervous system. Someone had been packing up. Rushing. Or running.

You swept your pistol across the room, careful, quiet. Something clanged in the distance, a dropped tray, maybe. Another gunshot echoed from outside. Closer this time. A window somewhere behind you cracked violently, a bullet spiderwebbing the glass.

You ducked instinctively and turned toward the sound. A scream from inside followed. Short. Muffled.

You pressed forward, voice low but firm.

“Doctor?”

Your own voice sounded strange in here. Thin. Almost drowned by the alarms blaring on the lower floors.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

The further you stepped into the lab, the more it felt like something was watching you. You checked the corners. The dividers. Empty. Machines lined the walls, humming, blinking—monitors showing idle vitals. Your breath grew tight in your chest. Not from nerves, but from frustration. If he ran again—

You caught movement. A flutter of shadow beneath the wide metal desk stationed near the entryway. Not the kind of shift a draft would make. Something human. Something scared.

You approached, gun still raised.

Another gunshot thundered from outside, closer than before. A thin scream trailed off into silence. You crouched beside the desk and shoved it aside.

And there he was.

The man—older, beard streaked with grey—threw up his hands, trembling so hard his entire frame seemed to flicker. His eyes were wide, wet with panic, mouth moving soundlessly like he was trying to form a plea he’d already choked on. Behind him, a woman sobbed softly into her sleeve, her face pale with terror. And tucked into the woman’s side, a girl—barely a teenager—curled in on herself, her small hands fisted into her shirt, knuckles white. She wouldn’t look at you.

Your finger hovered near the trigger out of habit, then eased off.

“Doctor Murphy,” you said quietly.

The name landed in the space like a verdict. And for a moment, everything inside you stilled.

It was him. Really him. You blinked as if the image might shift or disappear, but the details held. That same sharp jaw softened by age, the faint scar near his left temple.

A breath left you—part relief, part disbelief. You found him.

Mission halfway done.

You dropped your gun a fraction, and let your eyes sweep over him again. He looked… fine. Better than expected. No bruising. No dried blood. No signs of restraints. His clothes weren’t torn, and his posture wasn’t hunched with pain. If anything, he looked… fine. Scared, but he was fine.

Not the version of this man you’d imagined while memorizing building schematics and infiltration routes. You’d been prepared to cut him loose from chains, drag him out of a locked basement, and maybe carry him if his legs were broken. Not chase him through a medical wing like he was running from you as if you were the threat.

Your brows pinched.

“Why the hell did you run?” you asked, not really expecting an answer.

He opened his mouth and then closed it again. His eyes darted between you, the girl and the woman behind him. His body shifted, ever so slightly, like a shield trying to form between them and you.

“Please,” he rasped, voice hoarse and breaking. “You don’t understand.”

You stepped forward, boots crunching softly over broken glass, hands lifted in a gesture of peace that didn’t quite suit you. He didn’t relax. Not really. Just stopped trembling long enough to stare like he was trying to find a crack in your expression. Like maybe you’d give him mercy if he begged hard enough.

“I’m here to take you home,” you said, slow and even, stripping the threat from your tone as best you could. You reached up, popped off your helmet, and let him see your face. You met his eyes, trying to ground him as you knelt to meet his level.

You’ve dealt with your fair share of difficult extractions, and you knew that showing humanity allowed them to ease into the thought of your help.

But his gaze slid right past you. Focused somewhere far away, somewhere terrified. His lips quivered.

“No…” he whispered, voice ragged.

“Valentina sent me,” you added as if a name he might recognize would help.

But that was the moment everything split.

“No!”

It was raw, panicked. His voice cracked in half, and his body surged forward instinctively—not to attack, but to block. Like the name alone had ignited something in him. A sob tore free as he clutched the woman and the girl tighter behind him.

“Don’t hurt them,” he begged. “Please. Please.”

You stared, jaw tightening as the pieces tilted in ways you didn’t like. He hadn’t just flinched at you—he’d flinched at her. At Valentina. Like her name alone had teeth.

Your gaze fell to the girl, small, trembling, her knees drawn to her chest like she’d folded herself in half to disappear. Her eyes darted to yours for only a second before she buried her face again. The woman had gone completely still, one hand protectively over the child’s back. Her shoulders were braced for impact. Neither of them looked like they’d been taken hostage.

No shackles. No cages. No signs of forced detainment. Just… fear. The real kind.

You finally put your gun on the ground. You think you have seen this before—his fear and reluctance, refusal to return.

“You ran away,” you said, more to yourself than him.

The doctor didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

You looked at the way his arms curved protectively around them. The desperate panic in his voice. And—shit—you saw it now. The resemblance. The girl’s nose. The woman’s eyes. The ring.

Wife. Daughter.

They weren’t in your file. They should’ve been.

You cursed under your breath.

You prepped for a quick extraction. For fast exits, bleeding targets, safehouses and helicopters. Not… this. Not families. Not a coward trying to shield his kid from you like you were the monster.

You breathed in deep, chest tight.

This wasn’t what you were told.

“I'm bringing you back,” you said, your voice clipped, hardened. “De Fontaine’s orders.”

“Please—wait. Wait. You don’t know the half of it.” He rasped. “She told you I was taken, right? Right? You think this is a prison? You don’t know what she’s using you for.”

Your jaw clenched. He was making this harder than it needed to be. You didn’t care what this place was—a hideout, a home, a bunker carved out of loyalty or desperation. It didn’t change the assignment. Valentina had wanted this man back, and you were going to bring him back.

And if she’d wanted you to take his family too, she could’ve said that. You would’ve planned accordingly. You would’ve brought more cuffs.

He backed a step when you rose from your crouch and snatched your weapon off the floor with a frustrated motion.

“She’ll kill me,” he said, shaking. “She wants me dead.”

You sighed. “If she wanted you dead, she’d have sent me to do that.” You flicked the safety off for emphasis. “She wants you back in her lab. That’s all.”

In all honesty, you don’t know if that’s true. You don’t know if you’re bringing him back to Valentina’s doorstep just for her to shoot him herself or hire another person to do it. You doubt she wants him dead, though; she wouldn’t have put you through all the trouble to bring him just for that.

“No. No, I’m not going,” he said, his voice rising, cracking under its own weight. “Don’t make me go back. You don’t understand—she’s not just experimenting. She’s accelerating trials. Human trials. She wants to start now. Hundreds of people will die—under her name. Under mine. That’s why I ran. I couldn’t do it.”

You didn’t answer. Not right away.

Because something in his voice stopped you.

Not defiance. Not arrogance. But fear. Raw, blood-deep terror. Not just for himself, but for what would happen if he gave in. If he lets you take him. You opened your mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to lie—but the moment never came.

A shot tore through the air.

The woman jolted violently like someone had yanked her backwards on a string. Blood exploded from her shoulder in a wet, arterial spray, streaking across the white tile behind her in a brutal arc. She crumpled with a boneless thud, her limbs folding under her, and a gasp caught mid-scream in her throat.

“Mom!”

“Ciara—Ciara, stay with me, baby, stay with me—”

“I’m okay,” she choked, her face twisted in pain. “It’s just my arm, Kieran, I’m okay—”

You weren’t sure if she believed it, or if she was just trying to quiet the panic that was overtaking her daughter. The girl was sobbing, rocking slightly, her hands fluttering around her mother’s face, too afraid to touch her, too afraid not to.

The doctor’s hands were slick and trembling, slipping as he tried to apply pressure. You could see it in his eyes—he was calculating the damage. Tendons. Arteries. She was going into shock already.

You turned quickly, gun raised, your heart clawing its way up into your throat.

And then you saw him.

Walker stepped through the shattered entrance like a shadow breaking into sunlight. Forty-five long-barrel pistol raised. Seemingly a bit annoyed. Restrained. You knew that stance. You’d used it yourself.

Another shot cracked the air, just barely skimming over your shoulder.

You flinched, and the back of Ciara’s skull erupted like a dropped melon. A hot mist sprayed across her daughter’s face. The woman’s body jerked, her limbs flailing once in some primal response, and then slumped, twitching. Her head lolled sideways, half her face caved in. Blood spilled from the fresh ruin in thick, gloppy ropes, pooling with the rest. Brain matter clung to the tile like wet paper.

The girl let out a sound, high-pitched and animal. Her fingers scrabbled at what was left of her mother’s hair like she could pull her back from it.

The doctor wailed. “No—no, no, no!”

He threw himself over her body, sobbing into the wreckage of her shoulder and chest, pulling her close like he could hide her from the horror of her own death. You saw the way he rocked her, back and forth.

The girl hadn’t moved. She sat stiffly beside them, soaked in her mother’s blood, jaw trembling but silent. Her hands shook in the air, fingers curled and useless. Like she didn’t know what to do with them.

You stepped forward, placing yourself between them and the one who pulled the trigger.

“Agent.”

Walker turned his head, a soldier’s stiff stance in response to being called. Dust and ash clinging to the sweat on his face. Blood streaked down from his temple. It had started to dry there, dark and crusted. His uniform was torn in places, parts of it scorched, the deep blue now a mottled patchwork of soot and crimson. His shield, tight in his arm, was smeared with something thick and brown-red.

You raised your gun, the barrel pointed squarely at his chest.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you asked.

His gaze barely twitched. He looked through you. Past you. His expression was unreadable.

“Completing my mission. What does it look like I’m doing?”

You shifted your stance, feet braced. Your arms didn’t lower.

“Valentina said no harm was to come to Murphy,” you said slowly, words carefully chosen. If he tried to get in your way, you had no problem shooting him down. “That was my directive.”

“I’m not here for him,” Walker said. Then he nodded toward the space behind you. “I’m here for them.”

You heard the words, but your body didn’t move—couldn’t. Not until the soft, broken murmuring behind you twisted into something sharper.

The doctor whispered into his wife’s hair, lips barely forming words, breath catching in his throat. The girl’s breathing was growing ragged now, her gasps shallow and quick, panicked like a cornered animal. You turned, slowly, lowering your gun just as the air cracked.

The next shot hit before you could even react.

It punched into the girl’s chest, a single snap of violence that echoed like the room itself winced. Her back hit the wall with a dull thud, body folding like paper, knees giving way before she slid limply to the ground. Her head lolled to one side. Blood pooled beneath her.

Dr. Murphy didn’t move at first.

It was like the world had gone quiet in his ears. He still held his wife in his arms, rocking gently, whispering her name, some prayer or plea that was already too late. But then his head turned. Slowly. Mechanically. His eyes fell on the still figure of his daughter crumpled against the wall, and something inside him broke.

His mouth opened in a soundless gasp.

“Valentina sends her regards,” Walker muttered.

The words felt like gravel in your throat, even though you hadn’t said them. Your gaze dropped to the floor, to the blood painting the edges of your boots. Your arms were leaden at your sides as if the weight of the silence and the gore had pressed into your joints.

You’d done things before. Seen things. You’d killed. Followed orders. But never—never—had you lingered long enough to see what happened after.

The doctor began to shake.

His hands twitched, then clawed at his daughter’s body, dragging her closer, like he could hold her soul in place if he pressed hard enough. His voice came out strangled and raw, a broken incantation of disbelief.

“No... no—my girls—my life—”

His scream wasn’t a cry for help. It was the sound of something tearing in two. A howl dredged from the deepest pit of grief, so guttural and primal it didn’t sound human.

You didn’t look away. Maybe you should have. But you couldn’t.

He pulled both bodies into his arms, one cradled against his chest, the other draped across his lap. His sobs were jagged and helpless, filling the sterile, blood-streaked air with a kind of mourning that left no room for anything else. It drowned the fluorescent hum of the lights, the shuffling of Walker’s boots, even your own thoughts.

And you just stood there. Letting it soak into your bones like smoke.

You were supposed to bring him back alive. But what did that mean now?

What the fuck was left of him?

His life was smeared across the ground—blood and bone and heat barely fading from the bodies he once lived for. There was no man left to extract. Just grief hollowed out and dressed in skin.

“Fuck,” you muttered, jaw tight as you took a step forward. “Doctor… we need to leave. I need to get you out.”

His shoulders convulsed, a sound escaping his throat—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Something feral. A humourless bark of disbelief.

“Leave?” he echoed, turning on you, eyes rimmed red, face a ruin of despair. “You want me to leave?” His voice climbed, then cracked into a full-throated scream. “You want me to leave?!”

And then he lunged at you.

It was messy, erratic—he wasn’t trained for this, but grief had given him teeth. He grabbed at your gun, and though your instincts screamed to stop him, to put him down cleanly, your mission brief roared louder: Do not harm the asset.

You hesitated and let the man land a weak punch on your cheek, which had Walker take a step closer as if to stop him.

The doctor ripped the gun from your hands before the soldier could get any closer, stumbling back on shaking legs. You stayed your stance, hands up in a signal of mercy, your heart hammering, and the side of your face stinging. Walker, of course, didn’t hesitate—he raised his weapon, eyes already calculating the best spot to drop the doctor in one shot.

“Don’t,” you snapped at Walker, stepping just enough to obscure the shot. “Put it down.”

“He’s armed.”

“He’s not a target.”

“He hit you.”

“And you killed his family. He’s just retaliating. Drop the gun.”

Walker scoffed, but he listened anyway, lowering his gun begrudgingly.

The doctor moved between you both now, wild-eyed and trembling, blood all over his coat, his hands, his mouth. He swung the barrel at Walker. “You… you took everything. You killed my—” His voice cracked, eyes darting from Walker to you. “Why would you—how could you—”

“Doctor, please.” You took a breath, steady. Your hands still raised, your body tense.

“Shut the fuck up!” he bellowed, the sound tearing straight from his ribs. He aimed again at you this time.

You held your breath, every muscle in your body coiled and ready. If Walker took one step closer—

But he didn’t need to.

Because the doctor’s grip on the gun shifted, he turned it, not toward you or Walker, but toward himself.

He lowered his head, mouth trembling, teeth clenched as his fingers searched for the trigger. Pressed the muzzle under his chin. Closed his eyes.

“No—no, no!” you shouted, launching forward before you could even think.

Your body collided with his just as the shot fired.

The sound rang through the lab like a hammer to steel.

You crashed hard against the ground, tangled with him, skidding across the slick tile. Something warm sprayed across your shoulder. For a moment, you couldn’t even breathe.

The echo of the shot was still bouncing off the walls.

And then silence.

You didn’t move.

You didn’t even know if you could move.

Eyes wide, lungs stuttering, you slowly pried yourself off the doctor’s chest. Your hands trembled as you cupped his face, fingers brushing away blood and sweat, searching for wounds.

He flinched under your touch but didn’t resist—just sobbed, quietly and broken. You turned his face, checked his hairline and his neck, and pressed your gloved hand to his chest. Alive. Breathing. Unharmed.

You exhaled sharply, the relief hitting you like a wave. The gun slipped from his fingers, landing with a clatter on the floor as he curled in on himself, burying his face in his hands like he could smother the sound of his grief.

You stayed straddling him a second longer, sitting upright as your own breath steadied. Your heart still thundered, but at least it was still beating.

Walker rushed into view, fast and heavy, combat boots crunching over shattered glass and blood.

“He’s fine,” you managed, voice thin and breathless.

“You hurt?” he asked, stepping around to study you from above. “Did it hit you?”

You looked up at him, blinking against the sting in your eyes. “I’m fine.”

He squinted, head tilting as he motioned with his shield. “No. You’re hit.”

You followed the direction of his gaze—down to your arm. The black fabric of your suit was torn clean open, the edges soaked through with dark red. You hadn’t even felt it. But now the burn was starting to settle in. Dull. Hot. Sharp around the edges.

A graze. Not deep enough to be dangerous, but enough to sting like a bitch. You pressed your palm to it, feeling warmth leak through your gloves. “It’s fine,” you said again, firmer this time.

Still kneeling, you leaned over to retrieve your gun, stuffing it back into the holster with one smooth movement. Then you turned to the doctor.

“Up,” you muttered, reaching for him. He didn’t respond, didn’t even look at you. His body had gone slack, boneless in grief, still rocking slightly where he sat in the blood of his family.

You grunted, grabbing his arm and trying to haul him to his feet, but he didn’t help—not even a little. Just a sob, a choked sound that made your skin crawl as he caught another glimpse of his wife’s body from the corner of his eye. He whimpered and covered his face again.

You huffed, digging into one of your pouches. “Fine,” you muttered.

The cuffs clicked cold and metallic around his wrist before he even noticed. He flinched when you pulled his arm toward you, but he didn’t resist. Just stared at the floor, wide-eyed and hollowed out. The second cuff snapped around your own wrist, the steel biting against your skin.

“You’re coming with me,” you told him. “Whether you like it or not.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He sat there, tethered to you, shaking like a leaf in the wind, breathing shallowly through the stench of gunpowder and blood. You watched him a second longer, long enough to see the tears still clinging to his lashes, long enough to wonder how the hell any of this could ever be justified.

“Pull that shit again,” you muttered, dragging him upright, “and I’ll break your fucking nose.”

His legs buckled halfway up, dead weight dragging you sideways until another arm helped steady him.

Walker.

You shot him a glance as he stepped in, sliding his arm under the doctor to haul him upright. His grip was firm, but not needlessly cruel. But it was the look he gave you as he steadied the man that made you pause.

Not a command. Not approval or disdain. Just a nod of his chin.

Then he unlatched his helmet.

You watched as he pulled it off, and his hair spilled free, dark and damp with sweat, falling across his brow in uneven strands. Dust clung to his temples. A bruise had already started to bloom high on his cheekbone, dark and ugly beneath the dirt.

The blood on his jaw had dried into the stubble there, and he clipped the helmet loosely to his belt.

“Place went up faster than intel said it would,” he muttered, voice low and even, like none of it surprised him. His eyes flicked to the ruined hallway beyond the lab. “We’ll need to move before reinforcements circle back.”

You nodded, adjusting your grip on the doctor’s wrist. He was barely walking, feet dragging more than stepping, eyes still fixated somewhere behind him—on what he’d lost, maybe, or just the thought of going back to whatever Hell Valentina had waiting for him.

You didn’t pity him.

But you understood the kind of pain that makes a man want to disappear.

“Got a route?” Walker asked, keeping pace with you as you started moving.

His voice was nonchalant. Too casual for a man who had just torn through an entire building and left two corpses cooling in a corner. But maybe that was how he did it—cut quick, cauterize faster. No time to feel it.

“Extraction point’s two klicks west. There's a dry riverbed just outside the ridge—Val set up a drop zone there.”

He gave a grunt, the sound more acknowledgment than response. “I saw a few M-ATVs on my way in. Might still be operational. We could hijack one.”

“You don’t need to stay with me,” you muttered, eyes scanning ahead, boots crunching over broken tile and scattered brass. Your hand burned from where you were pressing into the bullet graze on your arm, warmth still bleeding through your suit in slow pulses. You let go to get a better grip on the doctor.

“I know.” He gave a half-shrug. “Just don’t feel like walking alone.”

You didn’t respond to that. You didn’t know how to. You just adjusted the dead weight of Dr. Murphy, who hadn’t said a word since you cuffed him, and kept moving.

The hallways had gone still now.

All that remained were the wraiths—blood smeared on cracked tile, flames hissing from ruptured walls, shattered glass crunching beneath your steps. A few papers fluttered in the breeze.

You weren’t used to working with other people like this. Not side-by-side, not shoulder-to-shoulder with someone like him. Someone who didn’t ask. Who didn’t need you to explain yourself.

Walker, you assumed, had spent years learning how to work in teams. Probably knew how to cover a partner’s blind spot without even thinking. Maybe that instinct never left him. Maybe that’s why he was still here with you.

You could tell he was trying—trying to be useful, or civil, or something close to decent. You noticed it when he helped you get Dr. Murphy down the stairwell after the man tried to throw himself down it like a live grenade, uncaring that you were still cuffed to him. You’d warned him you’d break his nose if he pulled that again, and when he did, you made good on your word. Walker hadn’t said anything about it. Just grabbed the doc by the other side again.

You wondered if this was his first time getting paired up on one of Valentina’s assignments. If you could even call this a partnership. You’d both been sent in for different reasons. The only thing you shared now was your trip home.

The doctor had gone quiet, dazed and small as he stumbled beside you, cuffed to your wrist. His breath came shallow, nose crooked and bloodied, but at least he was upright.

The silence didn’t ease when you stepped outside.

Smoke choked the air, thick and cloying, fires spitting from crumbled rooftops. Bodies littered the sand, some still twitching, others broken in ways that made you squint. Civilians peeked from corners and alleys, eyes wide, clutching children to their chests as they shrank away from you like you were another weapon aimed at their door.

But no one stopped you. No one dared. Not anymore.

Walker didn’t look at any of it. Not the blood. Not the children. Not the lives smeared across the concrete like warnings. He just kept walking, his shield slung across his back, helmet clipped to his belt, jaw locked tight.

You glanced sideways, just once.

He didn’t flinch at what he’d done. And maybe that was the part that unsettled you most. You’d killed before. Too many times. But you did it with precision. Purpose. A clean exit. You didn’t revel in it, and you didn’t leave a mess unless someone else had already started it.

But him?

You wondered if his orders had been to burn the whole place down. Or if that was just his style.

You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to hear the answer.

You just kept walking, your cuffed arm aching from the weight of a broken man, the throb in your wound matching the pace of your heartbeat.

The vehicle bumped along the uneven path, its engine grumbling beneath the weight of three people and too much blood. The windows were cracked halfway down, letting in the dry air, thick with dust and leftover smoke. You sat in the passenger seat, your arm aching under the hastily wrapped dressing you’d pulled from your kit.

The doctor slumped in the backseat, quiet, now cuffed to the truck’s grab handles. He seemed to have fallen numb to everything now. Good. That meant it’d be an easy rest of the trip.

Walker kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on the gearshift. His sleeves were rolled up now, sweat and blood drying against sunburned skin. He didn’t say anything for a while. You didn’t either.

Then, without looking at you, he said, “If we get there before o’ two hundred, I might make it back in time for my son’s birthday.”

You blinked. The words felt like a glitch in the moment. So strange. You tried to make out what they meant. But it seemed that he just wanted to talk to you. How funny.

You tried to meet him halfway at his attempt in conversation; you really did try.

You turned your head slightly, eyes dropping to his hand. His gloves were torn and frayed, the knuckles stained with blood; it was hard for you to tell if that was an outline of a ring or not. Was he married? Did he have people waiting for him back home? White picket fence and everything? Or was he lying to talk? He must be lying. It was practically impossible to have a family and do this kind of work.

“Your son?” you asked, cautiously.

He looked at you for just a breath—just long enough for you to catch the flicker in his expression—then turned his eyes back to the road.

“Yeah. My son.”

You waited a beat, watching the side of his face. There was something unreadable there, something tight in the way his jaw set.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Just... surprising, that’s all.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Didn’t expect it.”

“You didn’t expect me to have a family?”

“Didn’t expect you to be a father.” You said, letting your eyes linger on his suit, “How old is he?”

He hesitated. You caught it instantly, the pause was too long, too stiff. You frowned. Did he not even know his own son’s age?

Then he said, “It’s his first birthday.”

You sat back slightly, digesting it.

“...And you’re here?”

His eyes narrowed just barely. “So are you.”

“So what?”

“So, you’re no better than me.”

You let out a short, disbelieving laugh, shaking your head. “Jesus.”

He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. “Why’re you laughing?”

You met his gaze, something sharp in your smile now. “I never said I was better than you, man. Besides, me being here is completetly different than you.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m not missing my son’s first birthday. That’s for sure. I mean, what father agrees to work on his kid’s first birthday?”

“One who makes sacrifices.”

“Right. Of course.”

“I’m not doing this for free, you know. I do this for them.”

“Right, yeah. You’re the man of the year.”

The silence that followed was thick enough to chew on. Even the engine seemed quieter, the tension swallowing up the rattling hum between you. Dr. Murphy continued to stay silent.

Walker didn’t say anything else right away. His fingers flexed once against the steering wheel, mouth stitched into a deep frown.

Then he said, dryly, “You got a family back home?”

You froze and shut your mouth. Then, just stared out the window, watching the desert smear past the glass in shades of dust and ash. You didn’t think the kid living across the hallway counted as such.

“Not anymore.”

“Then maybe you don’t get to judge.”

That made you scoff, “You’re the one who brought up your son. No need to get so defensive about it.”

He turned to look at you again—a sharp snap of his neck, hair falling over his forehead. “I was just…!” He started loudly, practically shouting, then caught himself, jaw clenching. “I was just starting a conversation. Y’know? Like normal people do? I don’t need you making up ideas on my life choices, you don’t even fucking know me.”

You shrugged, eyes still on the horizon. “Could’ve just asked about the weather.”

“And say what? ‘Wow, look how dry and empty it is here’? Would that have worked better for you?”

“It’s a start.”

He glared at you again, jaw twitching. That almost made you laugh. He looked genuinely irritated as if your audacity personally wounded him. Was it that easy to piss him off? Maybe the father comment struck deeper than you’d expected. Maybe he was just weak under all that bark and bravado.

He threw up a hand in frustration, like the words were choking him. “You’re so—” His voice cut off mid-sentence, strangled. He shook his head, scoffed through his teeth, and turned back to the road. “Never mind.”

“What? Please, do tell.”

“Forget it.”

You rolled your eyes. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

You shrugged, watching him. “Alright.”

“What do you mean ‘alright’?”

“It means alright. End of conversation. Since you want to forget about it.”

He leaned against the window, propping his head on his hand. “Alright.”

“Alright.”

“Fine.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”

Walker looked straight ahead, deadpan. “Doing what?”

“You’re literally copying everything I say.”

“Uh, no. I’m literally not.”

“Yes, you—” You cut yourself off, biting down on the argument before it spiralled further. Your arm throbbed again, sending a sharp spike of pain through your side. You sucked in a breath and muttered, “Whatever, man.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“Asshole.”

He arched a brow. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said asshole.”

“Asshole?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m an asshole?”

“Yeah.”

“How am I an asshole?”

“Because you are.”

“Oh wow. Solid argument. Very compelling. Really makes your case.”

You gave him a sideways look, exasperated. But you didn’t say anything.

He scoffed. “You know what? I should’ve just left you in that compound.”

You barked a laugh. “Yeah, and you’d be what—driving in circles trying to find the extraction point without me? You didn’t even know where it was.”

“I was in the army,” he snapped. “I would’ve found it just fine.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Jesus Christ. Remind me never to work with you again.”

“It’s not exactly a choice.”

“Oh, I’m making a choice. Next time Val tries to team me up with anyone, I’m putting in a request.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“FINE!”

You turned your head back toward the window, jaw tight and eyes burning from more than just dust. Outside, the desert stretched endlessly and uncaring, the kind of heat that made even anger feel like wasted energy.

And yet... it was hard for you to bite it back.

“…dick.”

“Fuck you.”

part two: check it out!!

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