Winter Is Coming (A Bucky Barnes Fanfic)

Chapter 21: Sleet

"What are they?" Steve asks, clearly surprised that they're fighting anything but humans.

"Drones?" Bucky guesses, edging backwards with a steel grip on Harley's uninjured hand.

"No," Harley says. "They're like clockwork creatures or something. They're made entirely of metal and wires."

"So, robots," Steve clarifies.

"Yes. What do we do?"

"Run," Steve and Bucky say in unison.

The trio race down the rest of the hall, the click click whir of the creatures behind them motivating their speed.

"What happens when we have to fight them?" Harley asks as they turn down a more lighted area.

"We fight them," Steve says, just as he flings his shield in the automaton's direction. It clangs off the head of one, successfully decapitating it, but the body keeps moving as if it doesn't need the head. It seems to stumble blind, but that doesn't mean it can't attack. "Which may prove harder than anticipated."

"Do you think you can melt these things?" Bucky asks Harley.

"Maybe, but I think the blue fire would benefit us more here."

"Then use it!"

"I don't think I have control over it," Harley says. "I can only use it in big gusts, which I won't be able to do with one hand."

"Just do what you can," Steve says. "Any help is beneficial."

The automatons close in on them, the headless one getting caught in a tangle of others.

"Fighting stance soldiers," Steve orders. "Don't attack until they make the first move. We need to see what these things can do."

"Roger that," Harley says. "I've been waiting to say that for seventy years, and I just realized it now."

"This is no time for jokes," Bucky says, but can't help a laughing a little.

"Sorry," Harley agrees. One of the clockwork creatures aims a feral punch her way, and Harley moves aside in plenty of time. The creatures are slow moving, but that doesn't mean they're harmless. She sends a blast of orange flame towards the creatures head. When it extinguishes, only a wiry, metallic base is left behind.

Ahead of her, Bucky smashes their faces in with his metal arm, the material of it clearly more durable than the bronze. He takes down a whole cluster in less than a minute.

Steve's shield bounces off walls and heads, torsos and floors, resulting in sparking wires and little bolts of electricity being flung everywhere.

Bucky takes out the one Harley melted, and in a surprising amount of time they're standing in an electric graveyard of flickering red eyes and bronzed armor.

"Yeah, I can't do much," Harley says, gesturing to the only one she fought during the time Bucky and Steve took down twenty each.

"You're still important," Bucky assures her, kissing her forehead.

"This was too easy," Steve says suspiciously.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "There has to be more."

They listen to the air around them but hear nothing but their own breathing.

"I say we keep moving and take down anything we see in the process," Harley says.

The boys agree and they set off down the rest of the hallway, Steve pausing once to kick the head of an automaton that sprung to life into the wall.