Chapter 2: American Ghosts
Flying away from a HYDRA base in a half-broken jet with a brainwashed cyborg assassin at the controls isn't how I pictured starting my day—but I've gotta admit, it beats the cell.
Bucky—yeah, we were on mental nickname terms now—piloted like a machine. Focused, silent, steady. Meanwhile, I kept looking over my shoulder, half expecting a missile to punch us out of the sky. Probably because it almost happened three times.
"Anything you wanna tell me?" I asked as we cleared the last of the mountains. "Like, I don't know, where we're going? Who you are? Why you've got more emotional repression than Batman on a bad day?"
No response. Just a grunt.
I leaned back in the copilot seat. "Cool. Strong silent type. Classic. I'll just do the monologue thing, then."
We flew in silence for a while. Snow-capped forests rolled past beneath us. The kind of view people pay thousands to see on a nature tour. Me? I was seeing it from the escape hatch of a Nazi death camp. Five stars, would not recommend.
Eventually, the land gave way to scattered towns. Civilization. Roads. Radio towers. Bucky banked the jet east.
"You've got a place in mind?" I asked.
He gave the barest nod. "Safehouse."
"Sweet. You got snacks at this safehouse, or are we still on the trauma-and-regret diet?"
Still nothing.
Fine. If he wasn't gonna talk, I'd talk to myself. Again.
Let's recap: woke up in Siberia, no memories, weird lightning scars, some kind of Force-sensitive mystery goo running through my veins, and now I was escaping with the Winter Soldier like I just hijacked the MCU's darker fanfic.
Did I mention I hated Captain Marvel?
Yeah. Just a feeling. No memories, no logic—but the second I thought of her, something boiled in my chest. Like she stood for everything that had gone wrong in my life. Weird, right?
Don't worry, it gets weirder.
We landed just before dawn. Small town. Cold as hell. Bucky led us to a rundown cabin outside the city limits. Snow creaked under our boots. The place looked like it'd been abandoned since the Cold War.
Which probably meant it was one of his.
He keyed in a code—yep, totally not suspicious—and opened the door.
Inside was dusty but functional. Weapons rack. First aid. Ration packs. Not a single decoration. Felt more like a coffin with wifi.
I dropped into the nearest chair and exhaled. "Home sweet murder shack."
He started stripping out of his combat gear, and I finally saw the man under the metal. Scarred. Tired. Human.
"I know you," I said quietly.
He froze.
"I don't know how. But I remember you. Something about your eyes. Like I've seen you in another life."
He didn't answer.
But he didn't look away.
We stayed there for days. Bucky barely spoke. I trained. Meditated. Tried to pull more out of the strange, thrumming Force inside me.
Sometimes I could move objects. Sometimes I sensed emotions. Once, I bent a steel rod by focusing on it until it warped.
But I wanted more. Answers. Purpose. Memory.
Bucky, for all his silent ninja routine, watched me with increasing interest.
"You're dangerous," he said finally. "But controlled."
"Coming from you, that's either a compliment or a red flag."
He actually smirked at that.
It was on day six that the knock came.
Which was weird, because no one should know we were there.
I stood, power coiled inside me.
Bucky raised a finger—"Stay." He went to the door.
Then paused.
"It's them," he said.
"Them?"
He opened the door slowly.
Two figures stood outside in the snow—civilians. Not HYDRA. Not military. Just... lost travelers, maybe. Bucky watched them a moment longer before quietly shutting the door.
"False alarm," he muttered.
I raised a brow. "No secret allies? No psychic bald guys with British accents?"
"No."
Back to normal. Or whatever passed for normal with a metal-armed fugitive and an amnesiac Force-wielder hiding in a Cold War murder shack.
And yeah, that's when things got really complicated.
Dreams suck when you can't tell if they're memories.
Mine started on fire. I was strapped to a metal table, screaming through clenched teeth. White coats stood around me, barking in German. Lights flickered. The air smelled like burnt ozone and fear.
Then I saw him. A man in a black HYDRA uniform with eyes like dying stars. He leaned in close and whispered a name I didn't know—but my whole body flinched when I heard it.
I woke up gasping, sweat soaking my back.
"You dream loud," Bucky said without turning from the stove. He was flipping powdered eggs like a soldier who didn't care what breakfast tasted like. "Keep talking in your sleep like that and you're gonna give away our position to a deer."
I sat up, rubbing my face. "Sorry. I guess nightmares are my default now."
He shrugged. "Same."
We ate in silence. The only sound was the hiss of steam and the low hum of the heater. Outside, snow blanketed everything. The cabin might as well have been on another planet.
But inside? Inside my head, it was getting louder.
The Force was no longer just humming in the background. It was a drumbeat now. Constant. Rhythmic. Every time I meditated, I sank deeper. I didn't know what I was doing—no guidebook, no little green alien whispering wisdom in riddles. Just instinct.
But the instinct was sharp.
I could feel the pull of thoughts. I could feel emotions drift through walls. I could reach out and touch something bigger, something... cosmic.
I moved a table. Then a bookshelf. Then I crushed a steel can in midair like it owed me money.
Bucky watched it all. He didn't say much, but I could tell he was calculating. Measuring whether I was asset or threat.
I beat him to the punch.
"You think I'm dangerous."
He blinked. "I know you are."
I nodded. "But not to you."
Silence again.
Then: "Not yet."
That night I dreamed again. Different this time.
I was floating in space. A sea of stars all around. I saw Earth below. Then I saw something else—something wrong. A rift. Like reality itself had been torn open.
Through it poured shadows. Not creatures. Not even forms. Just... hate. Raw, focused hate. And behind it, a voice.
"You were born from fire. You will return to it."
I woke up mid-scream, the cabin lights flickering. Bucky was already at the foot of the bed, gun in hand. The stove had rattled. The window cracked from pressure.
"I'm losing it," I muttered.
"No," he said. "You're waking up."
And just like that, I knew—something bigger was coming.
Something tied to me.
Something old.
And I was going to have to face it.
But first?
I needed answers. Real ones.
And if no one would give them to me, I'd rip them out of the world myself.
Meditation was supposed to bring peace. Focus. Clarity. What I got instead was a psychic face-punch.
I sat cross-legged on the floor of the safehouse, snow falling just outside the windows. My eyes were closed. My hands rested on my knees. The Force swirled around me—restless, uncertain, like it knew I was asking too much.
I didn't have a lightsaber. Didn't even have a damn name. But I had something HYDRA didn't give me. Something they didn't understand.
I had questions.
And I was done waiting for someone else to answer them.
At first, I saw flashes. Glimpses of a corridor lined with black glass. A voice barking orders in German. A burning room. Screams. My own, maybe. Maybe someone else's.
I pushed deeper.
The Force cracked like lightning across my spine. I fell forward, forehead smacking the wooden floor.
Bucky appeared beside me a second later.
"You okay?"
"Define okay," I croaked. "If you mean 'just got sucker-punched by the Force,' then sure. I'm peachy."
"You were convulsing," he said flatly.
I pushed myself up. "I saw something. A facility. Different from the one we escaped. Darker. Older. It was buried underground."
"HYDRA?"
"Maybe. But I don't think they built it."
His eyes narrowed. "You want to go there."
"Hell no," I said. "I need to go there."
We spent the next two days preparing. Bucky raided a nearby stash—clothes, gear, a battered SUV with more hidden compartments than a magician's suitcase. I meditated when I could, trying to repeat the vision. Pinpoint the location.
I started picking up echoes. Not full scenes, just fragments. Feelings. Names.
Project Leviathan.
Subject 09.
The deeper I dove, the more I understood that whatever was buried in that place—it wasn't just mine. It belonged to the entire messed-up web of this world.
We headed south. Long drive. Forests faded to hills. Snow to slush. I watched the world go by and wondered how many people were walking around, living their lives, never knowing what monsters slithered beneath the surface.
Then I remembered—I was one of those monsters.
"You think I volunteered for whatever they did to me?" I asked Bucky one night at a motel outside Minneapolis.
He looked at me. "No."
"Think I wanted this power?"
Still no answer.
But I saw it in his eyes. He knew what it was like to be remade into something else. Something other.
We weren't so different.
The location was in Missouri. Near an abandoned missile silo. Took us two more days and a few near misses with state troopers to reach it.
We parked in a dead grove, under a sky full of gray clouds. The place reeked of metal, rust, and secrets.
A concrete dome jutted from the frozen ground like a blister. Faded HYDRA symbols marked the doors, mostly covered in graffiti.
"This it?" Bucky asked.
I nodded. "This is where the ghosts live."
We entered.
Inside, it was like walking into a grave.
The air was stale, untouched by time. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, barely alive. The walls were lined with steel and sealed bulkheads. Symbols—Russian, German, HYDRA—layered over one another in a collage of secrecy and death.
The Force pulsed around me, sharp and acidic. Not angry. Not sad. Something worse.
Regret.
Bucky took point, moving like a man who'd cleared too many rooms in his life. I followed, every step dragging memories from the dark corners of my skull. Whispers. Screams. Chains.
The facility went down, level by level, like a staircase to hell. The deeper we went, the more the Force screamed.
"I was here," I said under my breath.
Bucky glanced back. "When?"
"Before the crater. Before Siberia. This is where it started."
We found the first room at Sublevel 3.
A lab, long abandoned. Broken equipment scattered across the floor. Cracked monitors. Blood stains.
But it was the mural that stopped me cold.
Painted across the far wall—half-erased, half-defaced—was a symbol. Not HYDRA. Not Russian. Something else. A spiral of flame wrapped around a black sun.
I stepped closer.
The moment my fingers brushed the wall, the Force snapped.
I fell.
Not physically. Mentally. Spiritually. The world twisted and I was there—years ago.
Men in black armor. Scientists in hazmat suits. I was in a tube. Fluid surrounded me. My eyes screamed but didn't open.
"Subject 13 is unstable," someone shouted.
A bald man with gold-rimmed glasses slammed a hand on the control panel. "Run the simulation again!"
Pain. Fire. Darkness. My mind cracked in the scream.
I was on the floor of the lab, clutching my head, trembling.
Bucky stood over me, his jaw tight. "What did you see?"
"My origin story," I wheezed. "Starring trauma and guest-starring involuntary genetic enhancement."
I stood on shaking legs. Looked around the lab again. Everything about this place felt wrong. Like it had never been meant for humans. Or maybe it had, but only after they'd been hollowed out.
We kept moving.
Deeper levels. More rooms. Empty containment units. Files left to rot. The name kept appearing:
Project Leviathan.
And then—
Subject 09: NULL Protocol Active
That's when I found it.
A pod. Still intact. Still powered. A soft hum filled the air.
Inside floated something that looked almost like a person. Almost.
Hairless. Pale. Veins glowing with golden light. Scarred from head to toe. Eyes closed. Barely breathing.
A clone? A prototype? A failed version of me?
"Kill it," Bucky said.
I shook my head. "No. It might be the only one who knows more than I do."
As I stepped closer, its eyes snapped open.
And it looked right at me.
The clone's eyes glowed faintly in the pod's blue fluid, golden veins pulsing like circuitry gone mad. For a long moment, neither of us moved. The air in the room felt dense—pressurized, humming with restrained power. The Force was louder than it had ever been.
It was like standing at the mouth of a storm.
And somewhere behind that storm, I heard something.
Not a voice. Not words.
A presence.
Something ancient. Watching.
Bucky raised his weapon slowly, but I threw out a hand. "No. Let him speak."
"I doubt it talks," Bucky muttered. "Whatever that is, it's not human."
"No," I said quietly. "It's not. But I think it's something worse. Something older."
The pod beeped.
Then the fluid hissed away.
The thing stepped out.
It looked like me—almost. Taller. Leaner. Eyes that weren't just glowing—they were burning. Not fire, but light twisted into unnatural patterns. Like starlight filtered through a broken lens.
"I know you," it said. Voice rough like broken glass. "I was you."
I swallowed. "Subject Nine?"
It smiled, but it was a cruel, tired thing. "I have been many things. That name is just one of them."
Bucky circled slowly to flank it. His posture said threat. Mine? I wasn't sure what it said. Maybe curiosity. Maybe destiny.
"You were created here?" I asked.
It nodded once. "We were all created. Me. You. The Others."
I frowned. "What others?"
The clone—Subject Nine—closed his eyes. And the Force around us shuddered.
"I remember them now. A world outside this world. A plane beyond flesh and matter. There were three—ancient, immense. The Father. The Daughter. The Son."
A chill rippled up my spine.
He continued: "The Ones of Mortis. They ruled over balance. But even they were torn apart by what they could not contain. A wound. A hunger."
He opened his eyes.
"And she came through it. Abeloth."
I didn't know the name. But my blood froze just hearing it.
"She whispered to our creators," Subject Nine said. "Offered them power. Offered them a piece of eternity in exchange for a home. Project Leviathan was born in her shadow."
I shook my head. "That's not possible. This is Earth. This is the MCU. This isn't some twisted galaxy from—"
But I stopped.
Because I felt it.
That crack in the Force. That endless scream hiding just beneath the edges of thought.
"She is here," Subject Nine said. "In the places between. Buried under your world. And she is waking."
I turned to Bucky. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had.
Subject Nine stepped forward, slow and deliberate. "They thought they could use her. Contain her. Harness her essence to unlock the true nature of the Force. But Abeloth doesn't share power. She consumes it."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked. "Why now?"
He tilted his head. "Because you are the key. You were created not just as a weapon—but as a bridge. You feel it, don't you? The pull toward both light and dark. The knowledge you shouldn't have. The voices that whisper in languages you don't speak."
I clenched my fists. "I've felt... something. But that doesn't mean I'm some chosen one."
"You're not," Subject Nine said. "You're something worse. You are new. A singularity. You are what happens when mortal flesh is fused with echoes of gods."
Bucky raised his voice. "Enough. This thing's trying to manipulate you."
He wasn't wrong.
But neither was Subject Nine.
I could feel it in the Force. Truth and lies braided together. I needed clarity.
And that meant diving deeper.
Subject Nine extended a hand. "Let me show you."
For a moment, I hesitated.
Then I took it.
The moment our hands touched, the room vanished.
I was elsewhere. A cosmic plane. Stars drifted by like dust. Before me stood visions—ghosts—of the Father, the Son, and the Daughter. Behind them, in the distance, something slithered. Huge. Endless.
Abeloth.
She turned her face toward me—shifting, inhuman, beautiful and monstrous at once.
And she smiled.
Then the vision shattered.
I was back in the lab, gasping, knees on the cold floor. Bucky knelt beside me, gun raised at Subject Nine, who had not moved.
"She sees you," Nine said softly. "She remembers you."
My heart thundered. Because I did so as well but from another time and place.
[End Chapter]
To my readers
This is my first Fanfic ever so please be kind however i can promise that that the story will get far better in arc 2!