These words had to rest in his mind a moment. Wrap his mind around it. They cared so that he could complete his missions. Right? Yeah. That's why they give you a drink, and by the way, you really ought to drink that. No more upgrades. No more programming. No more training. He knew everything. He'd hit his peak and they were--what, maintaining him by destroying what he'd done before?
Knocking it down. So you can rebuild. No, that wasn't right. Of course it's right. Even you could see your programming had flaws and you just didn't tell anyone. That was right. It was deeply flawed; memories trickling back that didn't belong. False memories, false images. Except they're not false, are they?
"So the agents handling me before," he said, slowly choosing his words. "I didn't belong with them?" That didn't make sense, did it? Prisoner of war, James. Remember what that means? But would being a prisoner of war explain faulty programming? Unless he'd been misappropriated by a HYDRA department. That must have been it.
He reached for the root beer with his right hand and opened the lid. "So the department that oversaw my operations before had misappropriated me from the department that I belong to," he said. "Is that right?" He hoped so. This was hard to make sense of.