Author's note: Sorry to keep updating this chapter. The site is doing strange things to the formatting and I keep having to go back and fix them. Hopefully will be all straightened out this time...

"Hey cupcake."

Natasha drops from the rafters, feet hooking on either side of the man's shoulders and spiraling him neatly into the floor. She's got a knee in his chest and a pistol in his face before he even has a chance to register surprise. Sometimes her job is just way way too easy.

"You know who I am, don't you?" He nods frantically, murmuring in terrified Russian. He's big, but not very bright, she can tell. "I need a little information."

She notices him trying to subtly draw a phone out of his pocket and stomps down on the hand, kicking his phone out of his reach. She raises an eyebrow at him and he goes completely still.
"You're going to give me what I want, or we're going to see just how much I remember from the good old days." She smiles her most predatory smile "...335 ways to kill a man with a ballpoint pen." She plucks one from his pocket and twirls it between her fingers. The pistol never wavers. He actually whimpers. "Won't that be fun?"

Unsurprisingly, the office jockey doesn't know much, but he has a name. She'll take it.

She doesn't feel the need to bother with theatrics this time. Her prey is 89 and was hardly formidable to begin with, if the files are to be believed. Sometimes, if you want something, you just have to ask nice and say pretty please.

"Nice evening." Natasha melts out of the shadows of the darkened kitchen.

To his credit, her prey doesn't waste everyone's time demanding to know who's there, or what she wants, or any of the other stupid questions she tends to get.
Right, because the assassin who just appeared in your kitchen is going to answer all of your questions before they murder you?
It's nice to play ball with someone who actually understands the situation they're in, for once.

She waits patiently while he slams the silent-alarm button under the table. She waits while the reality that no one is coming to help him dawns. He knows better than to scream, because then she'd have to silence him. HYDRA taught him that much.

"Congrats, you had a pretty nice security set-up." She says conversationally, pulling up a chair to the table where the man's untouched dinner is slowly congealing. "Took me like 10 minutes to shut it down."
The old man stares at her in blatant fear.
"What do you want? If you're after money-"

Ah, there it is. There's the stupid. She's a little disappointed.

"Oh please, Gerhard." She sighs, turning a taser-disc over and over in her fingers. He watches her with morbid fascination. "If I wanted money, why bother talking to you? No, I think you know why I'm here."
"I don't work for them anymore. I-"
"Good. That means you might still be alive when we're done here. But frankly I don't really give a crap if you are or not, so quit stalling if you'd like to see morning. I need to know about the Winter Soldier project. Impress me."
"Winter Soldier? But I was only an assistant, fraulein… And the Soldier project failed. We lost the subject over two years ago-"
"You keep stalling and you'll be doing it with one less finger." She says lightly, as if they were discussing lunch plans. He blanches.

"We began under the Red Skull-" He begins, glancing at her. He's started to sweat, beading in thin wisps of white hair and dripping down crepe-paper skin onto his collar. She nods at him to continue.

"We had several test subjects who did not survive the initial procedure. Ten in total before we found success with an American Sergeant - Barneby or something like that."
"Barnes." She corrects lazily, taser still twirling in her fingertips.
"Ja...Ja. Dr. Zola had nearly perfected the formula, but it had side effects. We couldn't afford to waste the lives of our own soldiers until it was perfect, and Sergeant Barnes showed great promise of survival. I was sent to our core base with a copy of the Doctor's most current research, to be filed. Unfortunately, while I was away, our base was infiltrated and destroyed by Captain America." He spits the name bitterly. "Dr. Zola was able to escape with much of his research, but the subject was removed from our care. I don't know what other factors contributed to his survival, it's very unscientific-"
"Focus." She reminds him.
"...We recovered the subject -with a great deal of damage- the following winter. One arm had been completely destroyed, and had to be removed. We went to a lot of trouble repairing the asset, but were remarkably pleased at his ability to survive. We decided to continue the process and make use of this subject in the field. He rarely questioned anything after the first few wipes, you see, and Dr. Zola particularly appreciated the irony. American war hero, closest friend of Captain America," Again his voice drips with venom. "-now HYDRA's greatest weapon…"
He has caught himself saying too much. He shrugs, trying to seem casual.
"I had little hand in his care after that. I was moved to logistics and saw only occasional traces of his continued existence. I was amazed at how well he had been preserved when I saw the reports following the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D."
She catches the note of professional pride in his voice and her skin crawls. Gerhard Schultz has a subtle sort of creepiness.

"So how'd you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Don't fuck with me, Schultz. Your security boys are all taking a nice nap and if you piss me off you're going to take a lot longer one."
"I… I don't recall."
"Try again." She warns, leaning just a hair closer, danger in every line of her body.
He leans away.
"I don't remember, fraulein, please! It was over 70 years ago!"
"That's too bad." She draws and aims her pistol in one fluid motion and his eyes are the size of saucers. "Because I just wasted a lot of time on you in that case, and I've got way better things to do." She calmly thumbs back the hammer.
"Wait, wait!" He is trembling now, trying to get as far from her as his chair will allow. He knows better than to try to run. "I don't have the schematics, but I know where you can find them."
The pistol remains steadily pointed at his head.
"You have the next 30 seconds to prove that."

He gives her an address, then draws her a map.
A copy of Dr. Zola's notes had been buried in a lockbox under the floor of an abandoned compound in the mid 1970s, shortly before Zola's 'death', on the off chance that something might go wrong with the process of transferring his consciousness. Gerhard Schultz was the last living member of the team charged with their safe-keeping. Interestingly, there had been no official record kept of the box's existence. HYDRA really was paranoid.

"Now will you please let me be, fraulein?" He begs her, frazzled and skittish. She's fairly sure he's not hiding anything else. Fairly sure, anyway.
"One more question, Ger, and you'd better to be real, real honest with me." She smiles disarmingly, which should have terrified a smarter man. "What did your 'assisting' consist of, exactly?"
"I only administered the injections and took dictation." He says wearily, then realizes he's said the wrong thing when her head tilts and her eyes narrow.
"Really? You administered the injections? Now that's interesting." She's dangerously calm.
Natasha vividly remembers Bucky's nightmare screams, even from the few times he's fallen asleep in her presence. She knows from Steve that there were more. A lot more.
She remembers the harsh, palpable terror in his eyes when he told her about what little he could remember before Steve had found him. How whatever they'd given him burned in his veins until he'd screamed himself hoarse and his voice just disappeared. How they'd clinically noted his reactions before dosing him again.

She presses the tip of the gun against the wrinkled throat and the old man swallows hard against it.
"That wasn't very nice of you Gerhard."
"I was only following orders, fraulein."
"No you weren't."
"Please…"
"This is from Sergeant Barnes."

She has already holstered her weapon and is slipping out through a kitchen window by the time he hits the ground. If she did this right, and she knows she has, it'll be a good 5 minutes before he bleeds out down his own throat. There's no chance of survival, not even if medics were at his side right here, right now. It's faster than he deserves, but she's on a tight schedule.