The snow crunched under heel, as they crossed the stretch of ground between them and where Bucky was waiting with Strucker. Clint nodded towards Pietro, "We need to get him to the jet and some first aid on his back. He's got a good cut from some shrapnel."

Bucky nodded. "Here." He pulled Strucker up and pushed him towards Brock. "Take him, I need to cover something with Clint."

"Brock Rumlow?" Strucker stared at the man in actual surprise. "What a disappointment, you with these traitors. I thought better of you than that."

Brock rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well that's really going to keep me up at night. Now start moving."

"Clint," said Bucky, as they started the hike back to the quinjet. "We have a problem on our hands."

"Right." His memory of Bucky's reaction earlier in the base caught back up with him. It was hard though to get too concerned right now however. Everyone was alive and safe and they'd actually managed to retrieve the scepter. He was still enjoying the triumph of that, and his gaze flicked back to Wanda, who was carrying it. A brief, pleasant image of handing it over to Fury played through his head, and then he forced himself to turn his focus back on Barnes. "Those cryo-chambers. What was that about?"

"They should have had people in them. Winter Soldiers."

Clint blinked. "I thought you were the Winter Soldier."

"Hydra made more," he said grimly. "Took their most elite death squad, Josef Smirnov's team-"

"What?" Brock's head whipped round. "...Team Blackout?"

"You know 'em."

"Heard of them. They had more kills than anyone in the history of Hydra. They were legends. I always wondered what happened to them. And they were Winter Soldiers all along? That's how they did it?"

"No. They got those kills before being given the serum. Now imagine how dangerous they are with it. I'm a knock off. Dr. Zola did the best he could. Them, they got the real deal designed by none other than Howard Stark. What they can do working together, the skills they've got, what they're capable of-... Clint they should have been in those cryo-chambers and they weren't. The computers showed they've been out for about a month now, which means Strucker woke them up. If they'd still been at the base, we would have encountered them. Which means we have a very live and very dangerous threat out there somewhere."

They had reached the quinjet by now. Brock pushed Strucker, none too gently, down into a chair and added restraints, then grabbed a first aid kit from a storage unit and started work on Pietro's back.

Carefully, almost as if she was afraid it might break, Wanda set the scepter down in one of the storage units and then went to stand beside her brother.

Clint rubbed his face, his elation from the near completed mission, decidedly dying. "Right, this is bad."

"Strucker likely knows where they are and what they're doing," said Bucky carefully.

Clint pulled Bucky away from the others, not however before Brock met his eyes over Pietro's head. Well he wasn't going to have to ask Brock where his vote landed, he thought grimly. He lowered his voice: "You want to interrogate him?"

A flash of anger crossed Bucky's face but he stamped it down. "I don't want to, but..." he closed his eyes for a moment as if struggling with himself. "l really don't want to Clint, but I know what those soldiers are capable of. If this is what we have to do to stop them...Clint when I say, that them being out there is bad, I mean it. They are everything I was and worse, and they're not memory wiped, brained washed assets. They're volunteers who believe in everything Hydra ever pitched."

There was a murmur of voices and Wanda's laughter rang out. Clint looked over.

"It all very well for you to laugh," Pietro was saying, "you're not the one he's stinging."

"Do you want this thing to get infected?" snapped Brock.

"I still say you're doing this to pay me back for the punch."

Clint turned back to Bucky. "Not here on the jet, not in front of those two. You, me, Brock, we've seen and done enough to stomach it, but them...I'm not going to do that to them."

Bucky glanced towards Wanda and his shoulders relaxed. "No. You're right. Not here."

"Once we take off, I'll contact Fury and set up a meeting point to hand over the scepter. I'll tell him about Strucker and the soldiers. He can start monitoring for any sign of them and also decide what he wants done with Strucker. If...he asks us to interrogate him, we do it once we land. And on the flight, we can go though the files Brock copied. Maybe that'll point us towards what Strucker and the soldiers have planned."

Tony entered the common room where Nat was reading. "Hey, where is everyone?"

She nodded towards the roof. Tony headed to the glass doors which slid open to him. "Hey Steve! Can you give me a minute?"

Sam and Steve, who'd been conferring over by the railing, crossed the roof and came inside.

Steve eyed Tony's tux and glanced at his watch. "Isn't it a bit early to already be dressed for the gala?"

"Have some meetings and won't be able to change later. Hey Sam. Didn't know you were in town."

"Yeah, here for the weekend."

"Want to come to a charity gala? I can have Jarvis order a tux?"

"Uh, so very much no thank you."

"Sure? Cause Thor and Bruce still haven't shown up, even though they swore they'd be back by, so we've got extra tickets to spare."

"Thanks. But I can think of two, maybe three things I'd like to do less than spend an evening at one of those things. And that list does not include having a fight with a Hydra agent while a flying platform crashing into the building. Which should give you an idea of how much I do not want to go. I'll hang out on Steve's floor and take advantage of your excellently stocked alcohol cabinet here."

"You will, will you?"

"Oh yeah."

"You know, Bruce and Thor still have time to make it back before the party," said Natasha.

"They had better. If they don't- well I haven't decided yet what I'll do, but it's going to hurt."

Clint set the autopilot on and then pulled out his phone and dialed.

"Director?"

"Agent Barton. I hope you have good news for me."

"I do." And Clint could not entirely keep the smile out of his voice. "I've got the scepter."

"Well done...I knew you wouldn't let me down. I'll text you the coordinates for a handover. It's a compound not far from New York."

"Right. I'm in a quinjet, so I should be able to reach you by tonight, your time. Currently flying over Russia."

"A quinjet? That was resourceful."

"Yeah, well, not my resourcefulness. A...friend procured it. Listen Fury, there's something else. There's a probable threat; the issue is we don't know exactly what the target is."

"We?"

"Yeah. We. I kind of...got a team to help me retrieve the scepter."

"I see."

"...Barnes wasn't the only Winter Soldier. Apparently there are five more. I never knew about it before today. Strucker, the man who had the scepter, woke them up out of cryo, but we don't know where he's sent them. We do have Strucker in custody, and managed to copy the files from his base, so hopefully we can figure out what he was planning."

"Good job again. You can hand Strucker over along with the scepter. I'll also reach out to some contacts and see if I can't find any trace of these soldiers. It may be I'll need to call on your...team, again, if they're willing."

Fury hung up. Clint wondered if he'd be so keen on using them again, once he saw exactly who the team consisted of. In the meantime, he plugged the coordinates Fury sent over into the auto pilot and moved to the back of the jet where the others were.

"We're should land at the rendezvous point some time tonight...we've got a long flight so you might as well get some sleep if you can. I'll watch Strucker."

Pietro, who did look exhausted, followed the suggestion without complaint, leaning his side against a corner and soon dozing. Wanda sat near him, clearly still shaken from earlier. She watched him for a solid hour before finally drifting off herself.

Bucky however took a seat opposite Strucker, who had lapsed into a sullen silence, and spent most of the time watching him. His tension was palpable. Clearly the thought of the Soldiers out there somewhere had shaken him. Clint returned to the flight controls, and Brock plugged the flash drive into the ship onboard computer and started searching through the files.

It was a long and dull flight. Brock took a break from the files after a few of hours when Pietro woke up, to check his wound once more, and then went back to searching through them. Bucky didn't sleep either. Clint began to wonder how much those two typically slept on a normal day to begin with. It occurred to him that any time he woke up in the middle of the night at one of the safe houses, no matter the hour, Brock could almost invariably be found glass in one hand and book in the other, sitting at the kitchen table. While Bucky it seemed invariably went to bed last and woke up first.

He sighed, and ran a tired hand across his own face.

The scepter was retrieved, the mission done. But it occurred to him, he still had a very long way to go yet...

Once they were both awake, Wanda and Pietro talked together in low voices for a little and then lapsed back into silence. Once, Clint noticed Brock looking towards Pietro, an unreadable expression on his face.

They'd been flying back through the time zones, but night had chased them down at last now. Clint had only once suggested Brock take a break and get some sleep, but the man had just shook his head. Around sunset, Clint had seem him pull his painkillers out of his pocket and take one, with a determined set to his shoulders that made it clear any comment would not be welcomed. And so Clint hadn't said anything. But he did wonder how much his burns and scars must hurt for him to actually break down and take the pills with Clint sitting beside him.

Shifting in his chair and stretching, Clint checked the auto pilot and called out behind him. "Not long now. We should be there in about half an hour-"

Brock swore.

"What?"

But Brock was already on his feet and stalking towards Strucker. "Do you know what he's done? Do you know what he was mad enough to bloody go and do?"

He had the attention of everyone in the jet now. Strucker, still restrained in his chair, looked up at him, a self-satisfied smile playing across his lips.

"It wasn't enough to have five super soldiers. He went and used everything they'd learned from their first round of experiments with the scepter and applied it on the soldiers. We're not just talking about Winter Soldiers anymore. We're talking about Winter Soldiers with enhanced abilities."

Bucky jerked. "What?"

"It's all in the files," spat Brock. He glared down at Strucker. "What were you thinking? You really think you can control that?"

"Unlike you, those Soldiers are loyal to Hydra. They will complete the mission and they will be the frontline fighters in the war that will see Hydra not just restored but its vision fulfilled."

"Hydra is dead! Can't you see that?" Brock demanded.

"Hydra will never die."

"It already has! And nothing you can do is going to bring it back. It's a corpse. What you're doing isn't going to bring order anymore. It will only bring more chaos. Chaos with no end, the very thing Hydra was fighting against."

"You lose faith so easily? It's pathetic. Hydra will rise again. Hydra always rises again. Stronger than before. We were believed dead before, and we rose stronger than ever, inside of Shield, taking out what was its greatest threat and feeding on its body. The Soldiers will take out its greatest threat now and Hydra will rise again. And you will experience all the pain Hydra can inflict. For the fate of traitors is excruciating and merciless."

"Well ain't that lovely," said Bucky coolly.

Clint froze. "What did he say?"

Brock rolled his eyes. "Oh now don't start him off again. You really want to hear the entirety of that crazy rant over?"

"No, no…he said 'the Soldiers will take out its greatest threat'. That's what he said, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Wanda had gotten to her feet and come over.

"Why?" asked Bucky.

But Clint wasn't listening. He was remembering. Remembering being back in that room in the Sokovia base. The chair in the back and Strucker standing before him…what had the man said?

"What I want from you now, is much less about what you can do and much more about what is in your head. There are many things I'd like to know. Who sent you here for the scepter is one. But the most important information you can give is about Hydra's current, greatest threat: the Avengers."

"The Avengers…he's sending the Soldiers after the Avengers." He turned, and reached the radio controls at a speed to rival Pietro's.