INFERNO │ Marvel

5.7 safe place

The four had no idea where they were headed after being thrown into the back of a van, no doubt to be quietly executed and kicked into a ditch. All they could do was sit and wait for it to come. Amelia kept shifting her neck, hating the feeling of the shock collar's metal. Her throat was already aching from the Winter Soldier strangling her through the metal of her suit. She wished she could put on the bracelet tucked into her sleeve back on and call for her brother, but the metal cuffs prevented it. She had been restrained at the ankles and stomach like Steve next to her. Noticing her discomfort, he had leaned his shoulder against hers the best he could in an attempt to keep her grounded, a habit he had made ever since she had moved to DC. It often happened to and from SHIELD missions.

"Bucky Barnes," she said, trying to picture the face she had once seen in the Smithsonian. All she could see now was his long hair, metal arm and gun in his hand. "That was really him?"

"It was him," Steve confirmed. Amelia silently thought that him connecting their shoulders had been to ground himself just as much as her. "He looked right at me like he didn't even know me."

"How is that even possible?" Sam asked. "It was, like, 70 years ago."

"Zola," Steve explained. Amelia felt a lump form in her throat as she remembered the man-turned-supercomputer. "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and..."

"None of that's your fault, Steve," Natasha cut in. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall of the van. Her shoulder wound was still oozing blood.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky," he sighed.

"We need to get a doctor here," Sam said to the two guards when he looked at Natasha. "If we don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck."

"Look I can cauterize it," Amelia added. "If you just let me-"

One of the guards whipped out an electrical baton, causing her to shut her mouth. When she had expected an attack on them, what they actually got was an attack on the other guard that sent him to the floor of the truck. The assailant removed her mask, revealing none other than Maria Hill.

"That thing was squeezing my brain," she remarked. She looked to Sam. "Who's this guy?"

-

Maria had taken them to a safe location, apparently courtesy of Nick Fury's overwhelming paranoia. Amelia couldn't blame the man. It also turned out he wasn't as dead as they had thought. Maria had taken them straight to him, and the man had explained how he faked his own death with Tetrodotoxin B, developed by Bruce Banner, that slowed his heart so much that he managed to appear dead only to be whisked away to a private doctor.

Now that Amelia was free from the grasp of HYDRA/SHIELD, she had put her bracelet and earpiece back on. JARVIS had been very concerned but hadn't snitched to Tony this time. The AI had promised to only call on her brother if her life was in imminent danger from that point forward.

"This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize," Nick said as he looked down at a picture of a young Alexander Pierce. They had all gathered around a table in one of the location's poorly lit rooms. "He said peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility. See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues."

"We have to stop the launch," Natasha commented, her wound now seen to by a doctor.

"I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore," he replied and opened the case that had been lying on the table. Inside were three large data chips.