Obsession-Book Three (Steve Rogers)

12. DROWNING

When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
And don't resent me

-Leave Out All the Rest by Linkin Park

Sophia knew that something terrible had happened. She could feel all the pain from Tony, even with the distance between them. She could feel Wanda next, her power reaching out to her. The combined emotions threw Sophia down. Steve couldn't revive her, so he let her sleep. And prayed that everyone was ok.

Back at the compound, Rhodey was undergoing test. A rogue shot from Vision, in his attempted to bring Sam down, had caused the War Machine suit to shut down and Rhodey to fall. He was alive but couldn't move his legs. Tony and Natasha were discussing the results.

"The doctors say he shattered L4 through S1. Extreme laceration in the spinal cord. Probably looking at some form of paralysis." Tony looked down, afraid for his best friend.

"Steve's not gonna stop. If you don't either, Rhodey's gonna be the best-case scenario."

"You let them go, Nat."

"We played this wrong. They were protecting her more, why?"

Tony looked at Nat with malice not understanding her worry about Sophia. "'We'? Boy, it must be hard to shake the whole double agent thing, huh? It sticks in the DNA."

Nat looked shocked that her so called friend had dug a knife in her chest. "Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second? I let the man I love go to prison!"

Tony ignored her statement. "And I let my sister and my nephew go." He stopped. "T'Challa told Ross what you did, so . . . they're coming for you."

"I'm not the one that needs to watch their back," Nat threw back, disgusted with Tony's attitude. She walks away.

Tony looks out over the compound grounds. He was losing everyone faster than he thought. Where did it all go wrong? he thought to himself. He's taken out of his thoughts when he received an alert on his watch and he activates holographic images appearing on his wrist device. "What am I looking at, Friday?"

Priority upload from Berlin police.

"Fire up the chopper." Tony flies over a stormy sea in the chopper. He looks surveillance images on a tablet computer.

The Task Force called for a psychiatrist as soon as Barnes was captured. The UN dispatched Dr. Theo Broussard from Geneva within the hour. He was met by this man. An image of Zemo is on the screen.

"Did you run facial recognition yet?"

The fake doctor is actually Colonel Helmut Zemo, Sokovian Intelligence. Zemo ran Echo Skorpion, a Sokovian covert kill squad.

"So, what happened to the real Broussard?"

He was found dead in a Berlin hotel room. Where police also found a wig and facial prosthesis approximating the appearance of one James Buchanan Barnes.

"Son of a bitch. Get this to Ross."

Yes, Boss.

Tony looks at the images and curses at himself. Fuck, Sophia and Steve were right. I tore my family apart for the wrong man. He leans back in his seat. I'm going to fix this, he decides. I'm going to get them back. The copter hovers over rough waters.

This is the Raft Prison Control. You're clear for landing, Mr. Stark.

The Raft Prison rises up from beneath. A huge, fortified, circular structure with small lights around the sides. Two semi-circular doors open up in the flat circular top. The chopper lands on a helipad and the doors close above it. Tony, who's left arm is in a sling walks up to Secretary Ross.