by Alex Irvine
Daybreak.
Yelling now, Bucky started to break free of the vessel.
Furnace.
Nine.
Benign.
Homecoming.
Bucky had almost hammered through the reinforced wall, screaming with each punch. Zemo read a little faster.
One.
Freight car.
Bucky smashed through the wall and stumbled out. For a long moment, he was still. Then he stood, hands at his sides and eyes empty.
“Soldier?” Zemo asked, still in Russian.
The answer was barely above a whisper. “Ready to comply.”
Zemo had waited a long time for this. “Mission report: December sixteenth, 1991.”
CHAPTER 15
When Steve got to sublevel 5 in the east wing, he found technicians and guards sprawled, unmoving, all over the place. Sam was right behind him. The psychiatrist lay in the room near the containment cell. It had been broken open. “Help me,” the psychiatrist called weakly. “Help?”
Steve hauled him to his feet. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The impostor didn’t seem bothered that Steve had seen through his ruse. He smiled. “To see an empire fall,” he said… and that was when Bucky charged out of the shadows.
No, it wasn’t Bucky. Not anymore.
It was the Winter Soldier.
He got the drop on Sam and knocked him out cold. Then he went after Steve, driving him back with unstoppable punches from that metal arm. If Steve had been able to use his shield, it would have been an even fight. Without it, he didn’t have much of a chance. The Winter Soldier drove him back and pinned him to the elevator door. Steve held the metal fist back with both of his own, then the elevator door caved in and Steve toppled backward through it. He banged off the walls of the elevator shaft as he fell away into the darkness below.
Sam came to his senses and saw the fake doctor slinking away around a nearby corner. “Hey,” he said. The doctor ran. Sam got to his feet, his head still spinning, and went after him.
On the main level, Everett Ross was issuing orders. “Evacuate all civilians. Give me a perimeter around the building and gunships in the air.”
“Please tell me you have a suit,” Natasha said to Tony as they passed Ross.
“Sure do,” Tony answered. “It’s a lovely three-piece, two-button.… I’m an active-duty noncombatant.” What did she think, he had extra Iron Man armor stashed in his shoe?
Sharon caught their attention then. “Follow me,” she said. She knew where the Winter Soldier was. Downstairs, Sam was chasing after the fake doctor in the darkness of the sublevels.
Tony paused inside a doorway as the Winter Soldier battled through a group of soldiers trying to keep him from escaping. He hadn’t told Natasha the whole truth. He did have a little emergency Iron Man tech on him. Tapping the screen of his smartwatch, he transformed it in to an Iron Man gauntlet. He stepped into the room and hit the Winter Soldier with a sonic pulse from it while the repulsor powered up.
The Winter Soldier staggered but didn’t go down. Tony fired the repulsor, but that didn’t take him down, either. They exchanged a series of punches, Tony mostly dodging, and then the Winter Soldier brought up a gun he must have taken from one of the soldiers. Tony blocked the shot with the gauntlet, looking in shock at Bucky and the gun that would have put him down. The repulsor wasn’t going to work after that. He took one last desperate swing at the Winter Soldier, but an elbow and a kick to the stomach left him gasping on the floor across the room.
Natasha and Sharon tried to tag-team him next, each delivering a coordinated flurry of kicks and elbow strikes that connected but didn’t slow the Winter Soldier. He slammed Sharon through a table and got his metal hand around Natasha’s neck. “You could at least recognize me,” she choked out.
T’Challa saved her life then, coming out of nowhere to crash into the Winter Soldier and blitz him with a series of kicks and punches that actually drove him back. He took a solid punch from the metal arm and got up again, wrestling the Winter Soldier into an open stairwell and shoving him over the railing. Then T’Challa jumped down after him, eyes full of cool confidence.
But when he landed in the main lobby with doors in every direction, the Winter Soldier was gone. Outside, Sam had lost the fake doctor, too. He had gone into the crowds.
By the time Steve climbed out of the elevator shaft and burst through the door to the helipad, the Winter Soldier was already lifting off in a stolen chopper. Steve sprinted across the helipad and jumped to grab one of its landing skids. The chopper dipped sideways, and Steve caught the railing that ran along the edge of the roof. He held on, straining every muscle in his body to pull the helicopter back. The Winter Soldier saw he wasn’t going to be able to pull away. He slammed the control stick to the left, angling the rotors down toward Steve, who barely dodged them. The rotors chewed into the concrete helipad, and the helicopter crashed back down onto the railing. Steve got to his feet.
The Winter Soldier’s metal arm smashed through the cockpit window and grabbed Steve around the throat. Steve braced himself and pulled back but couldn’t get free. As they grappled, the shift in weight tipped the helicopter off the edge of the roof. It fell, trailed by pieces of the roof railing, and splashed into the River Spree.
CHAPTER 16
Zemo sat in Berlin’s airport listening to a voice mail from his wife. “He asked me again if you’re going to be there. I said I wasn’t sure. You should’ve seen his little face. Just try, okay? I’m going to bed. I love you.”
He put away the phone. How her voice made his heart ache. He wished he could hear his son’s voice, too.
The terminal TVs showed footage of the day’s events. “James Barnes, the suspect in the bombing in Vienna, escaped from prison today. Also disappeared are the Avengers Captain Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson.…”
Perfect, Zemo thought. Over the sound of the newscast, he heard the first boarding call for his flight to Moscow and walked toward the gate. From Moscow, he would complete the final stage of his journey.
Berlin was a big city, and that made for lots of good places to hide. Steve and Sam had Bucky shackled in an old warehouse near a railroad siding that looked like it hadn’t been used since the end of the Cold War.
Steve was at a back door, keeping an eye out for search parties, when Sam called, “Hey, Cap!”
The Winter Soldier was awake. He looked around, not trying to escape. “Steve,” he said.
“Which Bucky am I talking to?”
“Your mom’s name is Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.” Bucky chuckled at the memory.
Good, Steve thought. The shock of the crash had reset Bucky’s mind and freed him from the mind control. “You can’t read that in a museum,” he said.
Sam wasn’t quite ready to believe Bucky was back. “Just like that, we’re supposed to be cool?” he wondered.
Bucky caught Sam’s tone of voice. “What did I do?” he asked. It was clear he was dreading the answer.
“Enough,” was all Steve had to say.
“I knew this would happen,” Bucky said. Steve felt terrible for him but didn’t know how he could make Bucky feel better. “Everything Hydra put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the words.”
“Who was he?” That was the important question. They couldn’t start looking for him until they answered it.
“I don’t know,” Bucky said, his tone just short of despair.
Steve had been trying to go easy on Bucky, but time was getting short. “People are dead. The bombing. The setup. The doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than ‘I don’t know.’”
Bucky paused. “He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where.”
“Why would he need to know that?”
Bucky’s face was bleak as he answered. “Because I’m not the only Winter Soldier.”
Bucky told Cap most of the sto
ry. The 1991 mission. The extraction of extra Super-Soldier serum samples from the back of the crashed car. His return to Russia and the brutal experiments. A month later, there was a group of Winter Soldiers. Over the next two decades, they trained together, fought against one another… and then one day all turned on the guards… except Bucky.
“Who were they?” Steve asked.
“The most elite death squad. More kills than anyone in Hydra history,” Bucky said. “And that was before the serum.”
“They all turned out like you?”
Bucky shook his head. “Worse.”
“The doctor, can he control them?”
“Enough,” Bucky said. “He said he wanted to see an empire fall. With these guys, he can do it. They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. They can take a whole country down in one night. You’d never see them coming.”
Sam took Steve aside. “This would have been a lot easier if we could…”
“If we call Tony,” Steve finished.
That was not what Sam had meant. “Oh, he won’t believe us. Even if he did, who knows if the accords will let him help?”
Steve nodded. “We’re on our own.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. He got back to the original point he’d been trying to make. “I know a guy.”
Back at the base in Berlin, Tony and Natasha were meeting with a quietly furious Secretary Ross. They sat while he stood and read them the riot act about their mistakes, finishing up with an elaborate dig about Captain America, Falcon, and the Winter Soldier, all still missing. “And I don’t suppose you have any idea where they are.”
“We will,” Tony answered. He listed the assets involved in the search. “We got the borders covered. Recon’s flying twenty-four seven. They’ll get a hit. We’ll handle it.”
“You don’t get it, Stark,” Ross said. “It’s not yours to handle. It’s clear you can’t be objective. I’m putting special ops on this.”
“And what happens when the shooting starts?” Natasha asked. “What? Do you kill Steve Rogers?”
“If we are provoked.” Ross didn’t seem bothered by the idea. “Barnes would have been eliminated in Romania if it wasn’t for Rogers. There are dead people who would be alive now. Feel free to check my math.”
Tony thought Ross still didn’t understand exactly what he was up against. “All due respect, you’re not going to solve this with boys and bullets, Ross. You got to let us bring him in.”
“And how will that end any differently from the last time?”
“Because this time I won’t be wearing loafers and a silk shirt,” Tony said. This time Iron Man would be leading the search. “Seventy-two hours, guaranteed.”
“Thirty-six hours,” Ross said. He walked toward the door, calling out names as he went. “Barnes. Rogers. Wilson.”
“Thank you, sir.” When Ross was gone, Tony rubbed his chest. “My left arm is numb. Is that normal?”
Natasha patted him on the shoulder. He wasn’t used to taking the kind of beating the Winter Soldier had given him. The whole right side of his face was battered and bloody. “You all right?” The last thing they needed was for Tony’s heart problems to come back.
“Always.” He paused. “Thirty-six hours, jeez.”
“We’re seriously understaffed,” Natasha observed.
“Oh yeah.” Tony had an idea. “It would be great if we had a Hulk right about now. Any shot?”
She shook her head with a smile. “No. You really think he’d be on our side?”
Tony couldn’t argue with that. “I know.”
“I have an idea,” she said.
“Me too.” He looked at her, wondering what she was thinking. “Where’s yours?”
“Downstairs.” Now she was wondering the same thing. “Where’s yours?”
CHAPTER 17
Queens, New York
Peter Parker came out of the elevator and nodded to his neighbors as he went into the apartment he shared with his aunt. “Hey, Aunt May,” he called as he dropped his keys on the table and took out his earbuds.
“Hey,” she called back. “How was school today?”
“Okay. There’s this crazy car parked outside.…” He froze as he turned to face Aunt May and saw her sitting on the living room couch.
With Tony Stark.
“Oh, Mr. Parker,” Stark said.
Tony Stark. Tony Stark! Peter had no idea what to say. Tony Stark was maybe one of his favorite people on the planet. Maybe ever. Engineer, scientist, visionary… all the things Peter wanted to be. Plus there was the whole Avengers thing. “Umm, what—” He stammered and started over. “What are you doing…?” That didn’t work. He tried again. “Hey. I’m… I’m Peter.”
Stark nodded. “Tony.”
“What are… what are you doing here?” It was kind of rude, but Peter was too shocked to think about manners.
“It’s about time we met,” Stark said. “You’ve been getting my e-mails, right?”
E-mails? What e-mails? “Right?” Stark said again.
All Peter could do was agree. “Yeah. Yeah. Regarding the…”
“You didn’t tell me about the grant,” Aunt May said.
“About the grant,” Peter echoed. He had zero idea what they were talking about.
“The September Foundation,” Stark said. Peter nodded. “Remember when you applied?”
“Yeah?” Peter said.
“I approved,” Stark said. “So now we’re in business.”
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Aunt May said. “What’s up with that? You’re keeping secrets from me?”
He could tell she was both proud and a little upset. “Why, I just, I just…” Come on, Pete. Say something. Anything. “I just know how much you love surprises, so I thought I would let you know…” He looked back to Stark. “Anyway, what did I apply for?”
“That’s what I’m here to hash out,” Stark said.
“Okay. Hash—hash out, okay.”
“It’s so hard for me to believe that she’s someone’s aunt,” Stark said, looking at Peter.
A little embarrassed, but also pleased, May said, “We come in all shapes and sizes, you know.”
He held up the snack she’d served him while they were waiting. “This walnut date loaf is exceptional.”
“Let me just stop you there,” Peter said.
Stark looked back over to him. “Yeah?”
“Has this grant, like, got money involved or whatever? No?”
“Yeah,” Stark said. “It’s pretty well funded. Look who you’re talking to.” He turned to Aunt May. “Can I have five minutes with him?”
“Sure,” she said.
They went into Peter’s bedroom. The first thing Stark did was pitch the rest of the snack into the trash. “As walnut date loaves go, that wasn’t bad.” He looked around Peter’s room, noting the old computers all jerry-rigged together. “Oh. What do we have here, retro tech, huh? Thrift store?”
“Uh, the garbage actually.”
“You’re a dumpster diver.”
“Yeah, I was…” There wasn’t any way to talk about that, and Peter was getting even more nervous with Stark in his room. “Anyway, look. Umm, I definitely did not apply for your grant.”
“Ah-ah.” Stark held up a finger. “Me first.”
“Okay.”
“Quick question of the rhetorical variety.” He spawned a hologram video from his phone: a red-and-blue-costumed figure swinging past a car and knocking someone to the ground. “That’s you, right?”
“Um, no. What do you… what do you…?” How did he know? Peter was flat-out terrified now.
“Yeah,” Stark said. Another video appeared—the same figure swinging down to block a car that was about to T-bone a bus. “Look at you go. Wow, nice catch! Three thousand pounds. Forty miles an hour. It’s not easy.” He put the phone away. “You got mad skills.”
Peter flailed around for an excuse. “That’s all… th
at’s all on YouTube, though, right? I mean that’s where you found it. ’Cause you know that’s all fake. It’s all done on a computer?”
“Mm-hmm,” Stark said.
“It’s like that video that records…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… oh, you mean like those UFOs over Phoenix?”
“Exactly!” Peter said as Stark got a broom handle and poked it up through the hatch leading to the crawl space above the ceiling.
The same red-and-blue costume that was in the video fell out. “What have we here?” Stark said.
Peter caught it before it hit the ground and shoved it onto a closet shelf. He stood in front of it, arms crossed. “Uh… that’s a…” He didn’t know what to say.
“So. You’re this… Spider… ling. Crime-fighting Spider. You’re Spider-Boy?”
“S… Spider-Man,” Peter corrected him.
“Not in that onesie, you’re not,” Stark said drily.
“It’s not a onesie.” Peter blew out a long sigh and crossed the room to his computers. “You won’t believe this. I was actually having a real good day today, you know, Mr. Stark? Didn’t miss my train. This perfectly good DVD player was just sitting there and… algebra test. Nailed it!”
Stark let him ramble for a moment, then got to the point. “Who else knows? Anybody?”
“Nobody.”
“Not even your… unusually attractive aunt?”
“No.” That thought frightened Peter all over again. “No, no. No, no. If she knew, she would freak out. And when she freaks out, I freak out.”
“You know what I think is really cool?” Stark sat in the room’s only chair. “This webbing. Tensile strength is off the charts.” He threw a ball of it at Peter—who caught it without looking and then sighed again. Stark had fooled him into showing some of his… some of the things he could do. “Who manufactured them?”