A Birdie Lost in Time | Bucky Barnes

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The engineers and doctors explained it would stun her, causing muscle contractions that would incapacitate her until agents could retrieve her. Although, if there was a chance of being exposed, they could engage a setting which would kill her almost instantly.

The Russian made sure every agent knew that if they had to kill her for whatever reason, they would be answering to him.

It was an unnecessary precaution, of course. The mission proceeded exactly as it needed to; her and the Soldat removed the issue of exterior security while an agent extracted the computer disk drive.

Big, she'd thought when she saw it.

The Soldat carried it in what that resembled a suitcase, yet from what she'd been told, there were seventy megabytes of storage within it. For some reason, that number seemed so small. Such little storage for something so big.

Her brain told her that that wasn't even enough for five songs, although she wasn't exactly sure what that meant. She hadn't listened to a song in... well, the only song she remembered ever hearing was an anthem played by the agents sometimes, and that was from a vinyl record—those weren't measured in megabytes.

Despite seeming like a small amount of data though, it was apparently all they needed. A successful mission.

She sat through the debrief beside the Soldat, recognizing but not really comprehending the approval from the Russian, or the satisfied comments from the others around the table.

Comments meant little to her though; she was fulfilling her purpose as necessary, as required. So, when she was called on for another mission, she followed orders. Never arguing or commenting unless she was asked to analyze an objective or find a solution. She wasn't glad to do it, nor was she opposed to it, she simply was.

With each mission, her status grew, being recognized not necessarily at the level of the famed Zimniy Soldat—she was nothing more than a foot soldier, after all—but enough that the Siberian personnel weren't the only ones to know about the Russian's ptichka.

And while she rose in ranks, Siberia's engineers worked on a suit.

They needed more information, though. They were close—so close that heated debates often erupted, ending in curses being thrown in every which direction before everyone would have to take a breather.

This wasn't just about getting the girl a suit—it was obvious she was capable without it—no, they were nearing understanding a type of energy no one, save Hank Pym, had even come close to harnessing.

And if there was anyone being cursed regularly within that lab, it was Hank Pym.

After what happened with that Jacobs girl, Pym had decided to up the security around his research, and in particular, the Particles. He no longer left them in his lab but travelled with them, carrying them in a case which he was never seen without.

This, of course, caused headaches for Agent Richardson, who was still tasked with sending information on Pym's experiments when he could.

The constant hounding from the engineers frustrated Richardson more than the bumbling idiots he had to work with.

He went to Lehigh hoping for a nice, quiet desk job to ease into his retirement with—not to be a mail dog. Despite being disgruntled about it though, he did it. And in the early months of 1972, he'd gotten exactly what the Siberian engineers needed.

Although he didn't even know what it was when he found it.

He was one of the agents tasked with clean up after some brawl between S.H.I.E.L.D. Ops and a corrupt science foundation, though he didn't have clearance to actually know what happened. As Richardson's agents and the restoration crew began combing through the warehouse, a small piece of metal had caught his eye.

First, he thought it was a child's toy; something from a science fiction movie he may have brought one of his sons to back in the day, but that red center was familiar. It almost glowed, similarly to that of the vials he'd seen in Pym's lab.

He didn't know whether the strange little disk was actually something important, but he boxed it up and sent it to Siberia anyway, which, only seconds after analysis was complete, had the engineers toasting over schematics.

They now had Pym's Particles—which they realized worked by decreasing the space between atoms, thereby making it possible to decrease the size of an object when saturated by those particles.

But they weren't toasting because they now knew how to adjust the size between atoms—no they had bigger interests that that formula could bring into fruition. They wanted to understand how to harness the energy that radiated from the electrons of an atom—how to harness quantum energy.