BUCKY

“They knew,” Sam muttered to himself angrily, leaned over with his elbows on his knees. “They knew we’d be coming.”

He was right. The Hydra cell we’d managed to corner with a suspicious amount of ease was ready and waiting when we’d rushed the short building, half-hidden in a snowbank. As soon as the five of us had made our way to the central chamber, the white-coated figures occupying the place had simultaneously dropped and begun seizing. Cyanide. Every one.

I stood against the wall while the task force — including Ben Grant who, I could grudgingly admit, was decent at his job — started collecting evidence to send back to Indy. My jaw was clenched tight beneath the metal hand that covered it. The bodies of the scientists, doctors, whatever they were… Well, they weren’t the only ones.

Horribly disfigured bodies trapped in nightmarishly familiar pods were contained deeper within. 10, in all. I had a pretty good idea what had been attempted that resulted in the bloating and fissuring of the skin on those corpses. Failed Super Serum.

The formula Zola had made functional so many years ago was long lost. I didn’t need forensic analysis to guess that someone was experimenting to figure it out. This, right after the nightmare I’d had the night before, had me glaring sullenly at the floor. Indy had been responding on comms the whole time, but had to sign off when the analysts of the task force began sending in digital photos and readings from little devices I was unfamiliar with.

We’d lost most of the potential information Indy had been so excited about. All we had to work with was the circumstantial evidence left behind by the dead. My muscles were twitchy and frustration was making me antsy.

“I need air,” I growled, storming past the rest of the dejected team and out of the door into the wintry air. Even in early summer, Wisconsin was chilly in the afternoon. I stood a few feet from the door and bounced my leg.

I was never this restless before Hydra got their hooks in me.

I was only outside alone for a few minutes before the door behind me groaned open again. I expected either a flock of task force operatives or Sam coming to check on me. It was actually Kate.

“You doing okay?” she asked, rubbing her gloved hands together and stepping up next to me, looking out into the loose stand of bare, pale tree trunks.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. It’s just…” She shifted back and forth on her feet. “The stuff we found in there... You don’t really seem too fine. And Indy would kill us if we let you run off and do something crazy.”

I frowned deeper. “I’m not going to go rogue or blow anything up. You and Indy can relax.”

“No, I mean-” She hesitated again. She usually spits her words out like there’s no filter between her brain and her mouth, thoughts running aloud like a commentary.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I just think if something happened to you, it might not be so good for Indy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, on top of the obvious with her job kind of depending on keeping you in line… She cares about you a lot. We all do.”

My frown softened a bit.

“But I think if something happened to you, Indy really wouldn’t take it well. She seemed nervous, watching you leave.”

I met Kate’s eye then. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t offer up a goofy smile like usual. She just patted my shoulder and turned to head back inside to the rest of the team.

Even Kate sees it now, hm?

The thought was oddly reassuring. Knowing that I wasn’t imagining whatever was suddenly happening on Indy’s end of things.

But vestiges of panic and worry were lingering around me. Anxiety curled in my stomach. I couldn’t shake the persistent feeling that I needed to be with her. Now. It was only exacerbated by the scene we’d found in the building behind me. Had we been intentionally distracted?

Flashes of Indy, half her face hidden beneath a mask, resurfaced in my mind. I knew it made no sense, but…

I need to protect her.

“Kate!” I called, spinning on my heel. “I need your help with something.”

INDY

I sighed and rubbed a hand across my eyes, beneath my glasses. There was a headache brewing between my eyebrows that even the meds from my top desk drawer weren’t cutting through. Probably exhaustion. I’d been running on fumes for a while now.

I need coffee.

Slouching to the kitchen to rinse and refill my mug, I caught my reflection in the glass panel on the refrigerator door.

“Ugh,” I groaned, poking at the purplish circles beneath my eyes. “This job is aging me.”

I froze with my hand on the handle of the coffee pot and cocked my head to the side. There was a weird whistling noise coming from somewhere. I stood perfectly still, listening hard. It sounded like it was coming from outside. It was getting closer.

“Shit,” I threw myself sideways behind the short end of the island just as the south wall exploded inward, windows and all.

Parts of the floor above began crumbling down, raining large hunks of plaster and drywall down on my head. I lifted my arms to shield myself from it, but mostly just bruised and cut my arms all to hell. My body felt like it was being tumble dried with bricks. When I raised my head, barely able to breathe through the dust that had coated me and everything else nearby, I was partially obscured by a leaning section of the floor above.

I could hear the heavy footsteps of booted feet behind me, entering the giant hole they had blown in the side of the building. I tried not to breathe too quickly; it was making my throat itchy. The last thing I wanted right now was to start having a coughing fit. I needed a weapon.

There’s a gun in my office.

As quietly as I could manage, I crawled on my hands and knees through the debris and started digging my way out of another section of blockage leading into the living room. My fingernails tore and bled, knuckles scraped open, but I was fueled by panic and adrenaline and knew I was almost there.

I choked back a relieved sob when my hand pushed through a thin section in the wall of debris separating me from my one chance at self defense. I almost couldn’t squeeze my hips through the opening, but managed to wriggle my way through. If those were tac-suited men behind me, they’d need a few minutes to sift through that if they didn’t plan on collapsing the entire building.

I scrambled to my feet and ran toward my office door. The lights had been knocked out in the explosion, but I spent enough time here to navigate it in darkness. I tapped the panel beneath the front of the desk and it slid out: a Glock 19 issued by my department. I sat on the floor behind my desk, holding it in shaking hands and wishing tearfully that these assholes had had the decency to wait to ambush me until I’d had a reasonable amount of sleep.

I had no idea what had happened to my phone, or I would have tried getting an SOS message out to the team, Fury, anyone.

Much sooner than I was counting on, the rubble clattered away and those heavy footsteps started drawing nearer, indistinct Russian chattering giving me an estimate of maybe six men.

That’s overkill, I thought pathetically.

I held my breath as a pair of boots came closer. The telltale clinking of a rifle gave me a good idea of where I was going to need to be in a moment or two. Without giving myself time to think about what I was about to do, I reached out and grabbed the barrel of the rifle and shoved it back hard. It smacked its owner in the face. He didn’t let go, but his grip loosened.

The other five guns in the room were just lifting to us. I let my newly fostered instincts carry me as I slipped beneath the arm of the man whose gun I was struggling against and aimed at the woman closest to us, taking her down before shooting behind me with my handgun, getting a point-blank shot on his lungs.

“Стоп!” three voices shouted at the same time.

As the man behind me fell, gasping liquidly to the ground, I swung my gun tremulously between the three remaining-

Wait, there were four more.

The butt of another rifle came slamming across my left cheekbone, knocking me to the floor on my knees. My gun skittered out of my hand and beneath the loveseat against the wall. I could feel my cheek swelling already. There may have been blood, too, but I was a little too dazed to tell, blinking through tears of pain.

I looked up blearily at two of the men standing further back. They were talking to each other in low tones, glancing back and forth between me and a picture one of them held. Probably my employee ID or something. They nodded, and the picture was tucked away in the vest of the man who held it. One of them jerked his head sharply back toward the doorway.

The woman stepped forward and roughly bound my wrists with a strange metal chain, then yanked me to my feet and dragged me from the room. I caught sight of the two people I’d just killed and felt… strangely empty. There was nothing. There should have been something… right? Something other than gratitude to Yelena for giving me the training that had helped me at least take two people out before I was incapacitated.

Instead, there was just grim acceptance. And a small measure of misplaced pride. If I died now, at least I had put up more of a fight than I ever thought I could. That didn’t stop me from being more than a little scared for my life, but it helped me hold my chin a little higher despite my weariness.

BUCKY

As soon as we were close enough to see the hole that had been blasted in the south side of the building, the screaming crowds fleeing the area, we started sprinting. We took the stairs, leaping over large chunks of broken flooring and pieces of wall. I made it up before Kate. Super Soldier benefits.

The fourth floor was wrecked. Apparently, the blast was concentrated here. The dining table had splintered, the fridge dented from whatever else had blown across the area. The fifth floor landing had fallen in at the edge of the kitchen and I had to search for the slight tunnel made in the wreckage through the living room. Indy’s office door was open.

The office had avoided most of the structural damage, but whoever had done this had made sure nothing went untouched. The bookshelves had been smashed in powerful downward strokes, probably with a bat or… the leg of a table. Indy’s desk was tilted slightly, the front leg on the right side snapped off. Her books, pictures, knick-knacks, computer system, files. All of it was in pieces at my feet.

But where is Indy?

I ignored the rapidly expanding feeling of despair that almost deadened my good hand’s fingers and forced myself to examine the area. Think logically. Her life could be depending on it.

The slight singe of the blast area was still sizzling. This attack had been recent. They wouldn’t have gotten far yet. I stood at the edge of the four story drop and stared down, scanning the drive in front of the compound. One of the hedges near the front drive was lop-sided, like something heavy had knocked into it. And a couple feet past that—

Tire marks. Headed south. I spun around immediately and booked it back to the stairs, blowing past Kate just as she was coming in.

“What happened?” she asked, panting slightly.

“They took Indy!” I called over my shoulder, not slowing.

I heard Kate turn behind me, still trying to catch her breath, but moving slightly quicker now. We ran back through the excitable crowd on the first floor and made it down to the Garage in almost no time, but it still felt much too slow to me.

“Get on,” I said firmly, grabbing the keys to the motorcycle I kept parked here.

Kate hopped on behind me as I kicked it to life and we took off, speeding south through traffic.

INDY

At first, my captors didn’t bother with any other form of restraint than guns trained on me and the chain around my wrists. They shoved me into the back of a windowless black van, completely missing the stereotypical kidnapping step of putting a bag over my head. I pointed this out more out of nervousness than actual forethought. After that, my mouth was duct taped; once I’d started talking, frenetic energy had forced more and more criticisms and nonsensical questions out of me. I didn’t know if they understood any of it, but I knew it had annoyed them. Then came the tape.

I knew we were headed south, but that didn’t really help me figure out what our destination was. I shifted a little uncomfortably on the bench seat next to one of the men, attempting to get a better view of the windshield.

He spat something out in Russian that was hard to distinguish with the cotton mask over his face. Then he rammed a fist into my ribs. I grunted behind the duct tape and leaned further back against the cool metal of the inside of the van.

I just wanted to close my eyes and not open them again. Maybe if I lost consciousness, they’d lose interest. That would never happen and I knew it, but these were the thoughts of a woman at the edge of her body’s limit. I had barely slept over the last few days. I was wired on caffeine and adrenaline, but that was starting to wear off slowly despite the lingering danger. Then I’d had half a building come down on me, been knocked around and abducted by angry Russians and I was expected to stay awake? Ugh…

I swiveled my head back around to the front, a little less conspicuous than before. I saw the Hamilton Avenue drawbridge, shaded from the last thin red rays of the setting sun by the expressway above.

Where the hell are they taking me-?

The darkness of the Gowanus Expressway overhead and the emptiness of the drawbridge, whose freight-hauling travelers had likely gone home for the day, made me extremely uneasy. My stomach hurt like hell. I hadn’t eaten in a few hours and I felt like throwing up.

I had just hunched over, thinking I was about to vomit, when the windshield shattered. The woman in the passenger seat was screaming. I turned my head to see that an arrow had punched straight through the woman’s shoulder and her seat, pinning her painfully in place.

Kate.

I shoved down my exhaustion for what I hoped would be the last time tonight and braced myself with my back against the wall of the van and shoved both of my feet into the stomach of the man across from me while the guy next to me was distracted. Before he could attempt to restrain me further or help his comrade, the van swerved sharply, gaining in speed; trying to make an escape.

I crouched to the floor of the van to avoid being tossed around too much and saw smashed wood fly up across the windshield before one of my two guards stepped in the way and blocked my view. He was raising his gun to point it at me when the van came slamming to a halt and he flew backward, getting stuck in the small space between the front seats. His gun slid beneath the passenger seat.

“Shit,” the driver swore in a low voice that cracked.

Oh, now they speak English, I thought sluggishly, trying to sit up so I could see what had stopped us. The two men in the back of the van with me struggled to their feet and grabbed me while I was trying to master my shaky limbs. One pair of hands clamped around my arms, one around my knees.

Kicking feebly, I turned my head. Through the shattered windshield, I was able to see a familiar motorcycle parked sideways. A tense, wide-shouldered form stood in front of it, blocking the only way across the drawbridge. Kate, descending on a wire from the viaduct overpass, stepped up next to Bucky and the two of them marched toward us. The sight was impressive enough that even I had to fight back a shudder at how intimidating they were.

I could feel the rising panic of the four very unlucky people who surrounded me as Kate raised her bow, the arrow very obviously pointed directly at the driver. They couldn’t drive away. Kate stopped at the driver’s side door, still aiming at the him, but Bucky continued to the back.

There was a god-awful screech as one bay door was torn from its hinges. Bucky tossed it behind him, furious eyes falling on the two men who held me wrangled down between them. The one holding me by the arms slid a knife out of his vest and held it beneath my throat, threatening Bucky in Russian.

I froze, fighting the urge to gulp beneath the too-firm press of that sharp blade. Bucky’s eyes narrowed dangerously on the man as he responded, also in Russian.

I’m really gonna have to learn more Russian than just expletives.

The tense conversation continued for a few moments before the man holding a knife to my throat became distracted and glanced away from Bucky, toward his companion, for only a split second. Bucky wrenched a pistol from beneath his coat, managing an impressive (and terrifying) shot on the man’s hand just next to my head. He dropped the knife with a howl of pain.

Bucky’s next two shots were quick as snake strikes. One to the forehead of the man who’d dropped the knife. One through the temple of the man holding my knees, who had just reached for his own gun.

I fell to the ground and groaned, the sound muffled by duct tape.

“FM OM A MMCH!”

“Indy,” Bucky breathed, looking at me for the first time since showing up like Batman. He climbed inside the van and lifted me in his arms, and relief hit me like the thousandth wave of lethargy tonight. He stepped out of the back of the van and I heard Kate calling in orders, probably to Fury.

After setting me on my slightly unsteady feet, Bucky grabbed the chains binding my wrists in both hands and snapped them with a quick jerk. His fingers hesitated near the red skin there. I pulled the duct tape from my mouth, turning to him with an expression I couldn’t even feel.

“Bucky,” I exhaled, flinging myself onto him in a hug.

“You’re okay.” His arms tightened firmly around me and I felt my horrendously fast pulse begin to slow.

“Good shot.” I pulled back and glanced behind me at the two men who had just been attempting to hold me captive. Three shots within just a couple seconds. Quick enough to free me from a knife to the throat.

His chest was still rising and falling rapidly with heavy breaths, forehead still creased in anger and worry. But suddenly he was smirking cockily at me, head tilted slightly back. He looked so like the young guy I’d seen military pictures of in black and white.

“D’you forget what I did in the army, Doll?”

I closed my eyes for a moment, sighing out the relief and adrenaline still rolling around inside me. “Sharpshooter,” I said, sagging a little and patting him on the chest weakly. “Right.”

His smile was anxious, and I thought maybe his hands hesitated to release me for a just beat as I turned to join Kate at the front of the van.

BUCKY

I forced my fingers to uncurl from around her, finding it excruciating to watch the way she limped toward Kate. I started to follow after. But then I saw the little piece of white sticking out of the vest pocket of the guy who’d held a knife to Indy’s throat.

I had a horrible feeling about it. But I reached out and pulled the paper printout from the body. I opened it slowly, like somehow that might help soften the blow I knew was likely coming.

On the folded piece of paper was a photo taken months ago, just after Christmas. Indy and I outside Cellar Dog, the bar and game hall. She had both hands around my arm, pulling me toward the door with her eyes rolled upward and a grin on her face. I was staring down at her with a fondly exasperated expression. It was clear what this would look like to anyone else.

The exact thing I had been trying to avoid had happened, anyway. Indy had been targeted… because of me.