We fed her and then she slept for another twelve hours. We took turns and woke her every hour for the first six, when she informed me, in no uncertain terms, that she would hang me off the balcony by my ankles with nothing more than my belt if I dared wake her again.

Bucky had roared with laughter and deemed her better if she could threaten that and neither of us had a doubt she would follow through if we pushed her to it. So, we just made certain she still lived instead of waking her. Bucky had given up his bed and crashed on the couch for a nap while I fielded phone calls about the destruction of the building. I was going through the list of the dead when I remembered I had missed the meeting with Dr. Kin. Turned out even if I had remembered it wouldn't have mattered. She'd been among the dead. The initial explosion going off next to the office she'd been in.

I had to wonder why the Doctor had been working so late at night, Rinn, I understood, her computer work often more easily done when there were few others about and it freed up processing on the servers she used. Her laptop had been destroyed, we'd found the bits, but unless the hard drive had been undamaged after fire, water, and simple crushing, the data on it would be lost. If it had been backed up onto the main servers and they had somehow survived, most if not all could be recovered.

Reconstructing the data, whatever it had been, would be a pain in the ass, but doable, I supposed. Wouldn't be the first time for her, I figured.

Dr. Kin being on site… that bothered me for some reason. Granted, not everyone worked a typical nine to five job these days, but, in truth, aside from helping with Bucky I had no idea what she did for her day job.

Something felt off, but I could not put my finger on what.

So, I did the only thing that made sense, I went to bed.

.

My phone ringing woke me up. I answered with a mumbled, "Rogers."

"What are you doing in bed, you lazy-ass, some of us have been up since before dawn." Sam sounded far too well rested for my still wanting to be asleep brain.

I glanced at the clock on the phone, noting it was all of 0830 then growled, "Some of us didn't go to bed till after dawn."

"How's Rinn?" he asked, ignoring my complaint.

"Well enough to threaten me bodily harm if I woke her again," I offered, as I rolled over and sat up, rubbing the side of my face that did not have a phone against it.

"Good girl," Sam praised sounding honestly proud of her. "Can she actually do that?"

"Uh, let's not find out." I suspected she could if motivated enough, but given she usually held her temper well, I hoped we'd never actually find out. "Everything all right?" There had to be a reason for this call besides annoying me into an unwelcome consciousness.

"Oh, right. Meeting at ten hundred. His majesty would like all of us there."

"Rinn too?" I asked, still sleepy enough to be stupid.

"Not as far as I know. Can't you find her a babysitter or something?"

"I'm going to tell her you said that." A threat to be sure, and Sam recognized it immediately.

"Don't do that. I want her to keep comping me upgrades. I meant if you don't think she should be left alone-"

I started laughing softly and Sam's babbling cut off abruptly. "I'll see how she's feeling. She should be well on the mend by now."

"I hope so. She looked like shit last… the other night."

We were all off a day at this point.

"Where's the meet?"

"Usual place. His majesty will meet us there."

"See you there, Sam." I disconnected and set the phone back on the night stand. I debated rolling over and going back to sleep, but sighed and threw off the covers. Might as well get the day started.

Rinn and Bucky sat next to each other on the couch. Nothing cozy or intimate, just there, him sideways to face her, her tablet in his hand.

"Morning, Steve," she greeted as I came out, dressed for the day.

I nodded. "Buck, we've got a meeting to be at in an hour."

"Debrief?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Maybe? Sam didn't give details. I'm pretty certain it's about the destruction of the building."

"Makes sense. Hopefully they'll have some answers." He shifted his focus to Rinn. "You still haven't answered my question."

She smiled wanly. She looked better, but I could see pain lines still etched about her eyes and lips. The cuts I had noted at the hospital had faded to faint lines and she had removed the half cast that had been on her forearm. The bruising from wrist to elbow still a deep purple that bordered on black, but I knew the nanties couldn't really do anything about it. Any bruising would stay until it faded normally. They could fix the broken vessels, but not remove the excess blood that had already invaded the tissue.

I moved over to her and set a finger under her chin to get her to look up at me. Her eyes were finally dilated evenly, which was a decent sign that the concussion had subsided enough for me to trust her alone for a few hours. "How do you feel?"

"Starved. I'll be eating like crazy for a couple of days to make up for the energy expense."

I glanced at Buck. "Hey, I fed her. Twice. I have no clue where she's putting it, especially when it looks like she's lost weight."

I agreed with his assessment, but understood. To rebuild bone and muscle the nanites had to use something, and because she been unconscious for most of the last thirty-six hours they scavenged from her. Stored fat turned into blood and bone as fast as they could make it. "I'll have food brought up. You should not be doing more than necessary, okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Head still hurts anyway."

She hadn't argued, that could not be good. With care I ran my hand over of the back of her skull where she'd held the ice pack. There was definite swelling, but the bone underneath felt solid and I heard myself sigh in relief.

"Well, you seem to find this normal for her," Bucky grouched, but he glared at her.

I stepped back, caught the glint of mischief in her eyes and made my way to the kitchen to get some breakfast for myself. Well, coffee anyway. "Using the term normal loosely."

"Gee thanks, Steve," she muttered.

"You should be dead," Bucky said to her, waving the tablet about.

Looked like he'd taken Sam's advice and done his homework on her.

"So should you," she pointed out.

"I cheated," he argued. I didn't catch her reaction but Bucky clearly did and jumped on it. "Ah, you did too. That miracle cure never worked for anyone else, so why did it for you?"

I got the coffee brewing and scrounged for something quick to eat. I found bread and a jar of peanut butter and decided protein would do. I toasted a half dozen slices of bread intending to share with Rinn, then texted a request to the local delivery service that had come to know me well. Food for an army would arrive within the hour.

Rinn huffed. "Don't be dense," she told him, "you have all the answers you need right there," she waved at the tablet, "you just need to put the pieces together."

"Maybe I just want you to tell me," he said softly. "Maybe I need you to trust me, just a little."

I turned about in time to see her stiffen. "When did I ever even suggest I didn't?"

Bucky froze, a war of emotions chasing themselves across his face. He had just assumed she hadn't trusted, which probably made sense from his perspective. The Fist of Hydra, The Winter Soldier, his memories and personality scrambled. He didn't trust himself most days, how could he expect others to?

Then that look was back, the desperate one, the one that suggested he needed her to live. He covered it quickly getting a poker face back up, but I still saw it. And Dr. Kin had been killed.

And maybe that had been the point.

Oh. Shit.

With Dr. Kin gone, our chances of sorting this out had just decreased dramatically. Could it have been intentional? Could Dr. Kin have wanted Bucky dependent on someone? What else could have been implanted along with the inability to remember that one word. A word, he'd only half forgotten.

Son of a bitch.

"Rinn, we may have a problem."

"Another one?" she questioned, craning her head to look over at me with a grin. The instant she saw my face it faded.

"Were you working with Dr. Kin the other night?" I asked as the toast popped and I pulled them out to begin slathering on the peanut butter.

"And if I was?"

I saw Bucky stiffen. There could only be one reason the two of them would be working together. The neural mapping. Quite possibly Bucky's neural map to determine the best way to remove the Hydra programming completely.

"I think I know the target."

. . . . .

Our little group leaned against the wall in oversized conference room, the seats at the table already filled with others who had been called for this… meeting. The list of the dead and injured had been read. Damages, physical ones anyway tallied, cost of replacement impressively high. There'd been lots of research of varying types in that building, and all that work had gone up in smoke.

Various departments gave their initial reports, but none of them had the answers I wanted. Or, if they did, they had decided to not say them in this forum.

Well, I wanted answers. A friend had been hurt, another could be in danger and that made it personal. When we hit a lull I spoke up.

"Do we know if the initial explosion was accidental or deliberate?"

T'Challa turned to face me, look carefully neutral. "I believe it has been determined to be deliberate. The secondary ones due to damage sustained."

"And the target?" Sam asked, not about to let us lose the momentum here.

"A set of servers on the sixth floor."

"And what data was taken?" I asked.

T'Challa narrowed his eyes at me, as if unhappy I had brought that tidbit of information out into the open. "We don't know with any certainty-"

"Yes, you do," Bucky stated softly.

T'Challa inclined his head ever so slightly.

"They destroyed the servers to hide the fact the data was stolen. Question is who has it now?" I had my theories, but there were far too many players on the field and I had no way of narrowing the choices.

"That is a very good question, indeed, and I have my people working on it." T'Challa clearly did not want to share the details with us. We were not his people, and while he'd granted us sanctuary here, he could revoke it at any time leaving us with no place to go.

Still, I felt it more important to know the truth than hide. "We have learned through a reliable source that certain parties have acquired the technology that had been left at the Hydra base in Siberia." Vague, yes, but he knew what had been at that base.

"As have we," he agreed.

Laurin must have informed his people as well. Made sense, he protected the Winter Soldier, it would be his ass on the line if they went after Bucky here. Instead they'd gone after the data. The data that would let them remove the blocking programming and give them control of one of the most dangerous weapons on the planet. "The data theft-"

"Is deeply concerning and I have my best people working on resolving the situation," T'Challa stated, making it clear by tone alone he no longer wished to discuss the matter, at least not here and now.

I clenched my jaw and let it drop… for now. Dr. Kin had been killed over this data, Rinn could be next, and Bucky's existence potentially hung in the balance. They could control him again and I wouldn't matter if it were Hydra or the Avengers, he would still be nothing more than a puppet dancing to the tugs of the strings tied to him.

I glanced over at Wanda, whose lips were a thin line of worry. She could be in danger as well, her abilities had been instrumental in locking the programming away. Three sessions instead of a dozen to set the hypnotic suggestions. They might very well want her if they were looking to break the programming.

We had some protection thanks to Wakanda, but plainly not enough if they got to Dr. Kin and the data so very easily. How hard would it be to get to one of us?

Granted none of us would be easy to kill, but until now we hadn't been expecting any kind of trouble and we should have. We'd become complacent and settled and permitted others to protect us, and it had cost us. Dearly.

I permitted the meeting to get back on track, but pretty much ignored the rest of it. The four of us huddled together discussing in quiet voices how we would protect ourselves with no money and no resources to call our own. Yes, we had use of Wakandan tech, but I could guarantee it was all monitored to one degree or another.

We needed to figure out where to go from here and soon.

. . . . .

The apartment was empty when we returned. All four of us, intending to discuss our next move, with Rinn, only to find her gone, bags and all.

"What the hell?" Bucky bitched, as he stalked about the place as if she might be hiding in a closet or something.

The food had been delivered based on the glee in Sam's voice when he opened the fridge. He grabbed beers for all and handed them around. I had the bad feeling we were going to need them.

I pulled out my phone and sent off a text.

Where the hell are you?

Such language. Came back a moment later. At a guess Nat had told her that story too. Maybe Tony. They both lived to embarrass me when I went all archaic on them. Hold on, let me check.

I waited impatiently for a response. I figured she'd gone back to her hotel room.

Over the Mediterranean, apparently. Lovely view.

I had to resist the sudden need to crush the phone in my hand.

"That Rinn?" Sam asked and I nodded.

"Where is she?" Bucky asked, half in anger, half in relief.

I showed him the text and watched him deflate noticeably before downing the entire beer in a long swallow. "Why?" he questioned as he went to get another one. Sam handed it over wordlessly.

"Does she realize she could be in danger?" Wanda asked, and it was a good damn question.

Answer your phone. I sent, hoping she'd comply, yelling via text just didn't have the same impact.

I dialed, hit the little video button and a few seconds later her face appeared on the screen. Her tablet, I realized. Her phone had been killed in the same collapse that had destroyed her laptop.

"What's up?" she said far too perky for it to be real.

"Why did you leave? Doc said-"

"Doc presumed I'm normal. I'm not. And let James figure it out on his own. No helping."

Behind me Bucky swore and Rinn grinned.

"You're in danger, kiddo," Sam tossed out loud enough for her to hear.

"Tell me something I don't know. I'm superhero adjacent, I'm always in danger." She shook her head at me. "I have things to do, guys, and I can't get them done there."

"Your work with Dr. Kin-"

"Is on hold till I can reconstruct the data or steal it back from whoever grabbed it."

I tried to hide my surprise at her knowing what had been stolen, or that anything had been. How the hell had she figured it out given she'd been unconscious most of the last twenty-four hours. "You can do that here," I argued. "We can protect you here."

She sighed and turned the tablet so that another woman appeared. "This is K'Tana, she is my bodyguard. I will be just fine."

"Bodyguard?" Bucky echoed, surprised, looking over my shoulder at the screen in my hand. "Why'd you do that?"

"I didn't. T'Challa insisted."

"Wait. What? T'Challa knows you left?" I found that hard to believe.

"Who do you think provided this nifty transport I'm in? Steve, I'm good. I promise, but I need to do this."

I paced out onto the balcony, away from everyone else, not liking that she and T'Challa had gone behind my back to do this. Then again she did not answer to me and his majesty most certainly did not either. She'd come at his request, she could just as easily leave on it.

"Rinn, the timing-"

"Is bad, I know. Look, I'm not an idiot. Something weird is going on with James and I thought it best to remove myself from the equation and hope it allows him to figure it out."

Well, at least she had indeed noticed Buck had fixated on her, but that meant I would need to worry more about him now that she had run away. "And if you leaving makes things worse?"

"How can they get much worse? He either wants to hit me or fuck me," a snort from the bodyguard could be easily heard and Rinn shook her head, look serious, "but it is in his head. I was not supposed to be the anchor, and the fact that I am..."

I sighed heavily. "Yeah. And with Dr. Kin gone we have no idea how to fix it. Could it be because you were the last one to use the trigger words?" That had been the only logical reason I could come up with, but even that didn't feel quite right.

She shrugged. "Not a clue. We're in uncharted waters here, Steve."

"And here there be monsters," I finished the quote.

"He's not a monster," she argued, tone adamant. "He's forgotten who he is, but that's all. Look, I programmed my contact info into his phone. He can call me anytime and right now I'm the only one with any clue how to deal with his deprogramming for all the good it'll do him. Completing the work is more important than holding his hand, I'm afraid."

Shit. That might be even more important than having the keys to unlock him. Laurin would be a target if those who wanted to control Bucky learned she had the potential to prevent it. Hell, to prevent any others from being created. While I could not see the US government using the torture techniques needed to create another Winter Soldier, others not only could but surely would given the opportunity. And… and they might not even be needed if Wanda could duplicate the programming. Wipe the mind and have her fill it with the command code.

They would be after both girls.

And that they could include the remnants of Hydra.

With her neural mapping technique applied to the mind wipe tech-

I did not want to think about the abuses that could be achieved.

"Rinn, come back, please."

"Can't, past the halfway point, we wouldn't have enough fuel. I'll say 'hi' to Sharon for you, shall I?"

And that told me she was heading to Germany. "Sure," I responded, wondering why she would return there, back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. "The JCTC need you for something?"

"Ah, no. Not specifically anyway. I, uh, shit," she muttered. "You guys are all over the Net and they wanted to chat with me about the… incident."

"What do you mean we are all over the Net?" I asked, sudden confusion and worry settling low into my belly.

"Video, sweetheart. Lots of them of you guys playing hero the other night. Some from inside the hospital. None of me, thankfully, but Ross knew I was heading to Wakanda so…"

I walked back into the living room, everyone watching me expectantly and pretending they had not overhead most of the conversation from the balcony. Bucky looked unhappy, but resigned to the situation.

"Sam, fire up the tablet."

He did so waiting for the why for it.

"Where, Rinn?"

She grinned. "Google 'superheroes in Wakanda'."

Sam did so and seconds later whistled. "We're internet famous." He turned the tablet so I could see.

Not good. So not good. Me and Bucky had our faces covered, but Wanda and Sam were each distinctive in their own way. "Well, least they can't say Bucky is here with any certainty."

"Wait for it," Rinn commented. "When he goes down he shreds the jacket, remember?" She hadn't been there, which meant she'd seen the videos enough to know what they had recorded.

Sam found the one in question. "She's right, Cap. New arm, but it won't be hard for anyone to figure out it's Barnes."

"That leaves only you unidentified." Wanda waved at in my direction.

"Nope. Like I said there's hospital vid. Clear face shots of both of you."

"Son of a bitch," Bucky groused, looking as thrilled about it as I felt. We would need to leave, and soon, to prevent pressure from being placed on T'Challa in specific and Wakanda in general to turn us over.

"Jeez, guys, calm down. The responses have been nothing but positive if you'll read them. No way these would have gotten out if His Majesty hadn't wanted them to."

"Is he trying to chase us away?" Bucky complained bitterly. "He could have just asked."

"No," Wanda said, headed tipped slightly to the side. "He is on our side in this. Wants the world to see they still need us." She looked me in the eye. "To remind us that we should be out there saving people and not here hiding."

"Do you want that? To be out there saving people? Risking your life for others and the potential of being sent back to the Raft?" Might as well take the opportunity while it had been given to me. I met each of their eyes in turn and not a single one turned away.

Sam shrugged. "You'd just break us out again."

Wanda nodded in agreement.

Bucky, I could tell, thought we were idiots, but nodded. "Might as well prove that Bucky Barnes is not The Winter Soldier."

"Woot," Rinn cheered. "Now go watch the international news. Wakanda wasn't the only location to have a surprise explosions two nights ago. Seems it was a coordinated attack on dozens of servers all over the world. Sounds like you guys have work to do."

I met her eyes over the intervening miles. "If we need help? Of the technical type?" I did not want her fighting on the front lines and she did not want to be there.

She grinned. "I wondered how long it would take you to ask. Have T'Challa show you the studio."

"The what?" I probably looked like an idiot.

She laughed. "Just do it. You'll be pleasantly surprised. Have fun guys." And with that the screen went dark.

"Glad she's on our side," Sam muttered, watching something else now. "She's right, and those attacks all occurred at the same time. Who the hell has access to that many different servers around the world."

"Looks like maybe we should find out," Bucky suggested.

I nodded in agreement.

We had work to do.