Bucky gently put Sarah down, feeling a stiffness in his muscles.
You have been a problem, Sandhurst spoke in his head. I didn't know you were in a relationship with Ms. Wilson. That was my fault, I admit. Insufficient exception handling.
Bucky gripped the disc with his metal fingers. He would crush flesh and bone before letting someone have control of his mind.
The first few minutes are the hardest. Controlling the Winter Soldier is a challenge I've wanted to try. But your mind is already broken, isn't it?
Bucky's hand tremored. "What was the play?" he asked through numb lips. Keep the idiot talking. "Everyone knows Sam's compromised. Nobody trusts me anyway. Not too stealthy of you."
Sandhurst narrowed his eyes. Bucky's fingers tremored again, a shiver that ran up his arm.
"With Wilson," Sandhurst said, "it's personal. How do you think Karli Morgenthau stayed off the grid? How did she cover her tracks? Keep her face off surveillance a thousand times? I did it."
"Sam didn't... kill her."
"He weakened her. Made her doubt. He ended the Flag Smashers; he renewed hope in this country. Countries, greed, borders, I could make it all so much more efficient. Karli didn't understand, but I was going to ride her vision to success."
"So... you want to do what? Control Sam? Control the president? Won't work."
He gave a gruesome, secret smile. Won't it?
Bucky felt sweat soaking his shirt. He willed his fingers to crush the disc, but Sandhurst's force was there. His hand hovered, his fingers quivering.
Sandhurst wasn't strong enough to move his hand away yet; Bucky wasn't strong enough to completely throw him off.
Darcy met his eyes. She shifted her gaze deliberately to a cloth pouch dangling from Sandhurst's belt. It contained more discs.
She shifted her eyes to and fro.
Yes, Bucky got the message. She needed one of those discs in her machine to stop Sandhurst's transmission and free the others.
Unfortunately, he was so far from being able to lunge and get one, they might as well have been on the other side of the stadium.
This was very bad.
When Sarah began to come around—was that twice in one day?—she was crumpled on the floor. She felt Bucky's foot under her back.
Ugh. Her head throbbed, her arm hurt. Her body might burn through anesthetic quickly, but it made her feel like dirt.
She remembered why he'd done it. He was protecting her from Sandhurst, but still...
Sarah realized belatedly that Sandhurst was talking, and it wasn't in her head. He was right there in the room with them.
"Wilson is going to die today," he said. "No help for it, part of the plan. You, however," he grunted. "If I can get solid control, you would be very helpful to keep on staff. Every programmer needs to co-opt the occasional subroutine from a competitor. And what are you, if not free code, free for the taker? Your brain has been used and passed around like a whore, what makes you think you can keep me out?"
Sarah burned in anger. She risked a peek. She was at Bucky's feet; Sandhurst was across the room.
It would only be seconds before Sandhurst realized she was awake.
She thought of Bucky catching her before she fell. She thought of him protecting Sam's back on countless missions. Of him playing basketball in the driveway with Cass and AJ. He was part of her family and she would not let him go down this way.
In one quick motion, Sarah grabbed the knife from her pocket. The one she'd stolen when this first began.
She rolled to her knees; flicked opened the knife.
With a grimace, she drove it into Bucky's arm. Straight through the disc.
His blood trickled off the knife and down her arm. Kind of a lot of blood.
But his face relaxed and his mouth opened with relief. He took a huge breath. There were tears in his eyes. "Thank you, Sarah."
He charged Sandhurst and hit him in the torso. He hit him so hard, they both crashed into the huge glass windows in the front of the press box, which shattered outward. He and Sandhurst went flailing out of sight into the stands below, though Bucky threw something in the gaping window as he fell.
Sarah licked her lips and staggered to her feet.
"That was awesome," Darcy said to Sarah. She grabbed up the bag of discs that Bucky had wrenched off and thrown back to her. "I can see why Bucky likes you."
Darcy frantically got one of the discs—holding it like it was a roach—and pressed it into her modified spectrometer. "If Bucky can just keep Big Ugly occupied for a minute... and I can hack into his controls..."
Darcy rolled her shoulders, trying to focus on her program. The disc that was now attached to the base of her neck, just over her spine, seemed to itch. She'd heard what happened to Sandhurst's guys on the side of the highway. No way did she want to die in an explosion like that. No, sir, no, thank you.
"Okay, never mind," Darcy said. "I can't just hack into his system... but I can... I can probably modify the signal. It's a point-to-point network, each node communicates with the others."
Darcy bit her lower lip as she tried different configurations. "However, if I modify it the wrong way, it could send the kill signal. That would be a really sucky way to die."
Sarah gestured at the computer. "Don't waste time telling me!"
Darcy smiled tensely. "Don't worry, it helps me to talk while I work. I sound like an idiot, but I'm not. Though sometimes I wish to heaven my job involved normal daily stress and not sudden spikes of deadly danger. I need a vacation."
Sarah was silent as Darcy kept working.
"You ballsy bugger," Darcy suddenly exclaimed. "He's got them on a fail-safe. I mean—if the frequency stops, they'll blow. If he dies, they'll blow. If I take down the network..."
"They'll blow." Sarah twisted her hands.
Darcy typed furiously. "Which means I got to figure this out before Bucky kills him. Sandhurst is smart, but he didn't count on me. I eat gods for breakfast."
Bucky managed to land on top of Sandhurst, who took the brunt of the fall. His exoskeleton was still in bad shape from their fight earlier.
This part of the stands had cleared—which was half of a miracle Bucky didn't have time to contemplate—and they leaped to their feet, both balancing on benches. Sandhurst had the higher ground, but Bucky didn't care.
This time, Sarah was safe. No discs were nearby. Bucky just needed to keep Sandhurst busy. He didn't hold back.
Bucky got the knife out of his arm—bless Sarah a thousand times for her quick action—and used it. It wouldn't cut through the exoskeleton, but Bucky managed a jab at his ribs, another at his thigh.
They cartwheeled through the aisles. Twice Sandhurst tried to use his repulsors to fly away, but Bucky tackled him back to the stadium.
"You don't get to walk away this time."
Darcy began to smile. "I'm copying the signal from Sandhurst's node. I'm going to make this one the command node. We won't be able to use it like he could—unless you're telepathic at all, please speak up if so!—but it will keep the signal uninterrupted. No kill switch."
"So, he's got a disc on himself?" Sarah said. "I didn't see one."
"Probably hidden. Seems like they work anywhere on the body."
"And... copied. We're in business now." Darcy pointed to the disc in her spectrometer. "No more fireworks today."
Bucky's fight with Sandhurst was punishing, but he didn't let up. Couldn't let the man regroup. Couldn't let him control Darcy and Sarah.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Sam coming toward them. That did seem to be Sandhurst's hail mary.
This time Sandhurst sent Sam slicing by Bucky, catching his arm with the tip of one sharp, metal wing.
The cut stung but wasn't too deep. Maybe Sam managed to pull back slightly?
Sam came around again, and Bucky ducked lest he get sliced across the back of his neck.
In ducking, he gave Sandhurst an opening, and got a knee in the face. He reeled back.
Sam was coming around again.
This time, as Bucky fought, he maneuvered Sandhurst's back toward Sam. Bucky couldn't perfectly control his position, nor could he control how Sam came for him. But Bucky thought... there might be an opportunity.
Just as Sam reach them, Bucky executed his plan.
He couldn't count on Sam's exact movements, but he could count on where his wings would have to be as he came at them.
Bucky surged in close to Sandhurst, nearly cheek to cheek, and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's hold.
Sam's wing carved across Sandhurst's back.
Sam was good about being in the right place at the right time.
When Sam saw Bucky hoist Sandhurst into his path, he leaned into it. He couldn't do much, but he'd fought for a little mental wiggle room during the fight, and now he used every inch of it.
He felt his wing slice across Sandhurst's ribs and through the spinal column of his exoskeleton.
"Yeah!" Sam shouted. He came around, and... he was flying under his own power.
He landed next to Bucky, shield up, ready to help finish the bastard.
Sam didn't think he'd given a killing blow, though certainly the exoskeleton was done for, but Sandhurst lay on his face now, barely moving.
There was a long flesh wound diagonally across his back, but really little more than a scratch. It wasn't much compared to what he'd taken before, like the bullet in the leg.
Bucky reached down and cracked off what remained of the exoskeleton. Hidden under one section of the metallic spine, was a disc. Sam's wing had cut right through it.
Sandhurst coughed and rolled himself over onto his back, looking up at them. "I lost, but so did you. You never grasped the genius of my plan." He bared his teeth. "I want to see it..."
They both frowned. Waited.
"What do you want to see?" Sam demanded. "Cause I'm pretty sure my friend here is ready to crush you the minute I give the word."
Sandhurst blinked, looked at Sam in confusion. "My disc... it's offline. You're dead. You're all dead."
Sam looked at Bucky. "Do I look dead?"
Bucky was still breathing heavily. "Shockingly alive. Darcy must've done it."
Sandhurst's eyes blazed. He began to rise and Bucky planted a foot on his chest. "Stay down."
Up in the press box, Sarah was reporting to Darcy. "They got him down. Some blood but they look okay."
Darcy exhaled long and slow, peering at the humming lines of communication visualized on her screen. "Sandhurst's disc is definitely offline. You and I are okay; and Sam. That must mean it worked." She tapped at the keyboard a couple more times. Her pointer finger hovered over the space bar. "The question is... I could reverse the failsafe back on him. His disc is offline but the explosive capability is still there. One tap and it's done. He's dangerous, for sure. But I know Jimmy would say we need to do things by the book—"
Sarah bumped Darcy's hand out of the way. Slapped the button.
"Whoops," Sarah said, deadpan. "My bad."