The Family Business (Steve Rogers)

Chapter 38: Lets Get to Work

The three of them entered the board room immediately sitting down around the table with the others. Wanda had clearly been crying not long before this meeting, and several others were angry or sad looking. Steve tapped his foot anxiously for the meeting to get started. It finally did when Loki strolled in, a look of reserve on his face. Steve's full attention was on Fury and Tony.

"As you all know by now, we have a situation." Fury started.

Sam scoffed, "ya think?"

"We need to know what all we know so we can get to the bottom of this and get out there and get her back." Fury continued ignoring him.

"What I would like to know, is why there is no alarm system to prevent something like this." Wanda said still upset.

"Seriously, if Steve hadn't stopped to go over their training for tomorrow, we wouldn't have known she was missing until tomorrow!" Clint yelled angrily.

Fury looked over at Steve who ignored him, looking at Tony.

"I'll admit, it was a design flaw that will be corrected immediately. But who would have thought somebody would ever be stupid enough to attack a tower full of Earth's Mightiest Heroes I mean come on, it seemed like such a trivial thing to have." Tony said.

"Well somebody did." Steve said coldly, "and now one of us has been taken."

Tony looked down swallowing hard, fiddling with a pen as he began to pace. "The best of us was taken." He whispered more to himself than anyone. You could see the sadness in his eyes and the concern on his face as he made his way to the floor to ceiling window at the back of the room. Staring out into the city, he continued to fiddle with and twist and turn the pen, lost in his own thoughts.

"Enough! Mistakes were made and we are correcting them! Now can we please focus." Fury said angrily.

Everyone looked at Fury except Tony. Letting him go, fury leaned over the long table staring at each of them before he looked down briefly before he spoke.

"Agent Hill, what do we know." Fury said.

Maria Hill stepped forward with a tablet, typing on it furiously at times as she spoke.

"We know an assailant, probably an enhanced one, attacked Agent Barton, there was a struggle, she was injected with an unknown substance, and she was taken out of the only window where a stealth jet was waiting. We have no idea where it came from or where it was headed, our satellites didn't pick up any trace of it within the half hour of when she was taken, to when Steve discovered the scene."Hill reported.

"Anything else?" Fury said to the room.

"Actually the substance isn't unknown. I ran it through the lab computer and it got a hit soon after." Bruce said reluctantly.

The hairs on Steve's neck stood up. He was hoping deep down that Bucky's hunch had been wrong.

"Well please don't leave us in suspense Doctor, what the hell was it?" Fury said in his usual tone.

Bruce looked around the room regretfully before he spoke.

"It's a concentrated form of the super soldier serum. It has similar structure to what Cap and Bucky would have received but doesn't need to be as large a quantity and does not require a form of radiation to be activated. It simply, runs it's course." Bruce said finishing sadly.

Everyone was eerily quiet for what seemed like an eternity. Finally Clint spoke up unable to be silent any longer.

"What does that mean?"

Everyone remained silent and Bruce dropped his head looking into his lap. Clint slammed his fist onto the table growing angrier.

"What the hell does it mean?!"

"It means that it has to run through her system and it either works and she becomes enhanced in some way like Steve or me, or..." Bucky said trailing off, looking down before looking at Steve.

"Or what?!" Clint pushed.

"Or it kills her." Steve said without looking up.

A single traitorous tear was running down his cheek as he answered, not looking away from the spot on the table he had zoned out on. Clint sat down quietly, the information sinking in. Wanda stood, uttering something quietly to herself in Sokovian as tears began to form in her eyes again. Fury even hung his head briefly before continuing.

"Do we have any information on who possibly could have done this?" Fury asked. "And don't one of you dare just blurt out Hydra. We know it's Hydra. But we haven't seen techniques like this or Paris since-"

"Since me." Bucky interrupted.

Fury and Hill looked at him questioningly as some of the others turned to him in surprise. Tony still staring out the window, still didn't react or speak. Reluctantly, Steve cast his eyes upward toward Bucky, waiting for him to continue. Nodding slightly, he swallowed the lump in his throat before continuing.

"I wasn't the only Winter Soldier that Hydra created, I was only the first. They were the most elite death squad. More kills than anyone in Hydra history, and that was before the serum."
Bucky started, solemnly.

"They all turned out like you?" Sam asked curiously.

"Worse."

Everyone looked at each other a little uneasy before Bucky continued.

"They speak 30 languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. They can take a whole country down in one night, and you'd never see them coming."

The room was absolutely silent as Bucky spoke. Before he continued, he uneasily looked over at Tony standing at the window. The next part was not easy for Bucky to say. By now, Tony, as well as everyone else, knew the story of how Hydra had got their hands on the serum, and what Bucky had done to get it. It didn't make it any easier to talk about though, especially in front of Tony.

"Hydra used Howard Stark's version of the serum to create them. There were severe side effects with that serum though, things went wrong and they were put back under indefinitely, considered too dangerous, especially if Hydra couldn't even control them. But it looks like one of them is awake."

"Then that's where we start. Where can we find them Barnes?" Fury said sternly.

"Siberia, Russia. There's an abandoned facility there. We brushed it off last year when we began to clean up Hydra, knowing it was abandoned. Guess that's another mistake I'll have to fix." Tony said finally, still not turning around.

"We." Steve said seriously.

Everyone looked from Tony to Steve. Even Tony had looked lowly over his shoulder at him when he spoke.

"Something we will have to fix. As a team. And it's going to take all of us." Steve elaborated looking around the room, then at Fury so he knew he meant business.

"Alright, then let's get to work." Tony said turning, leaving abruptly.