He'd seen a lot of horrible things, being a soldier in World War Two to start and a Hydra Experiment to boot- Hell, he'd done plenty of horrible things as the Winter Soldier, and even before he'd been captured he'd done things that made it a little harder to sleep. He'd seen people die, at his hands and standing beside him and strapped to tables with drills and needles in their bodies. But, thinking back on them all, he didn't think any of them had given him such a sense of horror as he got then- was she really even Alice anymore? Was she only the asset? Was she neither?- watching her seize and scream and kick uselessly at nothing and finally just go limp and still with the vitals monitor blaring angrily in the background.

The doc immediately started chest compressions, no doubt having plenty of training for situations like- well, probably not like this, but similar enough. Stark was swearing and typing and running programs- simulations maybe- running through all the coding he'd ripped out of her skull. Meanwhile, he just stood by, watching Natasha speed around the lab with supplies before they were needed.

The doctor swore, attempted to force air into her lungs, and swore again when he tried more chest compressions. "I can't get any depth! Jarvis, is there reinforcement in her ribcage?"

"Scans showed an unidentified, non-metallic substance in 64% of her skeletal system. It's likely providing some strength to her ribcage as well."

"Barnes, Take over!"

It felt like autopilot when he folded his hands over her sternum and started pushing. The world on autopilot. He could see the difference between his compressions and the doctors- he was honestly concerned he was pushing too hard, but the doc snapped at him when he tried to ease up, so he pressed her ribs in further than he was comfortable with and didn't stop until he was told, and Natasha squeezed a bag to push more air into her, then he was pushing again.

He felt something under his hands pop, a few compressions later felt a sickening snap, and he still heard Stark swearing in the background. Compressions, pause, breathe, compressions.

Stark shouted, rather suddenly, something 'download it now,' and a few compressions later Fox/Alice siezed again, coughing violently, and he yanked his hands away.

Her legs flexed randomly, like she was looking for grip on the tabletop, and her head swung around a bit despite the cables still hooked into her skull, like she was waking up groggy and confused and still coughing sporadically. The doc shined a flashlight at her eyes and she flailed, jerking away from the light and only managing a light slap to his arm, far from the trained and lethal asset he'd brought along with him from the asscrack of nowhere.

"Stark, what've you got?" He heard someone ask.

"Essentials. Jarvis and I managed to separate most of the background programming into essential and nonessential, though I can promise if she tries to do much of anything she's gonna cause god knows how many cascade failures. All the coding is tied together, everything operates together, and cutting out anything is gonna take hours of reprogramming and testing to make sure the whole system still functions. She's got just about nothing in there right now- I think we isolated bodily functions, but there's probably other shit in there that's just tied in too deep to pick apart on short notice, and almost definitely something missing that'll make it hard to talk to her."

There was a moment of silence, broken by Natasha. "So, to say what's on everyone's mind- this is so far beyond what we expected we have almost no idea what we're doing anymore." No one looked at her, or really answered. "A few things haven't changed. We need to know Hydra can't use any of her trackers to find her, or us. We need to know what happened to her. We need to know how to keep everyone safe from her- and her safe from everyone, and herself. Apparently they managed to wire the tech into her vital systems- Why? And How? Obviously there's something in that coding they didn't want anyone to see."

"Bad enough they'd kill her to keep it safe. If it wasn't Jarvis, we wouldn't have gotten the download finished before it all wiped."

"But you did get it all. Look for anything that doesn't fit. Anything that isn't a program or operation- something that doesn't need to be run."

"I'll see what I can do while I'm hunting down all the vitals killswitches."

"Barnes, you got her this far. You certainly hit a lot of Hydra bases. What did you find on her?"

"Not much. A basic folder, like a reference file. It didn't have a lot of details, but it had trigger words, killswitch passes, access codes." He thought for a moment, then added, "I thought they meant for her digital files, which are probably a lot more thorough, but if she's literally got a computer in her brain, they might have been meant for her. If we could get into the Hydra file on her, they might have more detailed records of the coding they used, probably more on what kind of things they did to her."

"I'll dig through everything that got dumped on the internet, see what I can dig up. Reference for Foxhole Program, right?" He nodded, and she continued. "What about this reinforcement on her skeleton? What do we know about that?"

"It's not organic, but it doesn't register as any kind of metal. There's only so much Jarvis can pick up in a scan, and I'm really not big on the idea of cutting into her bones for a sample. It's non conductive, probably to protect it from causing damage they couldn't repair when they shocked her. Relatively lightweight, best guess it's only adding maybe twenty pounds to her weight. Mainly on the parts of her skeleton that would take a beating- forearms, shins, spine, ribs, and skull. Maybe to make up for what the serum lacked in power?"

"Barnes, you can help me search the publicized Hydra files; keep an eye out for anything that relates to nonmetallic compounds or that mentions the Foxhole Program. And she said that they can access the cranial HUD and use that GPS- is there anything you can do to lock them out? Or block her from transmitting or receiving?"

Stark shrugged, huffing out a heavy breath that wasn't quite a sigh. "An isolation room would be safe and the most easy to establish, but I don't know how fast I can get equipment set up in there, and if she crashes again I'll need to have it within a minute or we'll risk serious trauma. We could make the lab isolated but it'll be the difference between a smokescreen and a steel wall at first. Long term, I'll have to break down the firewalls and reinstate new passcodes for access to the system, but that could take hours, could take a month, could be anywhere in between."

"We'll get some of your geniuses in R&D to help get the tech set up in an iso and move her as soon as it's prepped. In the meantime, Barnes and I will work from the lab hunting down her files in case we need to intervene while you do what you can with the coding and tech. Doc, We'll need you nearby in case something happens."

"Won't be my first stay at the tower, Miss Romanoff." The doctor gave a dull half-smile as he continued checking over Fox. "Mr. Stark knows that I am always on retainer."

"Alright, Super-Scouts, lets get out there and do our best."

Why is it so short? Because I'm a terrible person and Depression is a terrible monster.