They had all gathered around the table, listening to Rogers walk them through the situation.

"SHIELD just got back on its feet, with the idea of being what the old SHIELD was supposed to be," Steve explained, "I get that it's a risky move, but there are a lot of good men and women working hard to try and build what they know is right, to really protect people."

"So, SHIELD's back," Sam shrugged, "Why do I get the feeling we're not all here for a meet and greet with the new agents?"

"Because they're getting hit hard and fast," Steve continued, "And SHIELD hasn't been able to stop the attacks. They haven't so much as thrown a punch back, while agents are dying out there."

He paused for a moment, leaning against the table.

"What makes this worse is that we also don't know why they're doing this. Not much of SHIELD's intel is even a secret right now, and they haven't been compromised. The most she's taken is low grade weaponry."

"She?" Barton cut in, "I thought we didn't know what this was."

"SHIELD doesn't know," Steve corrected, "But...we have a pretty good idea. We only have this to go on."

He slid a folder to the middle of the table, before Sam quickly turned it and opened it. The only contents were four or five damage reports from SHIELD locations and one poor quality photo, which seemed to be the last thing recovered from the agent who took it. The photo was looking up at the attacker, over the barrel of a gun. The figure holding the gun was a young woman, dressed in an all black tactical suit, with blonde hair tied up into a ponytail. While the image was blurred, her features were still fairly well defined.

"So, she led all this?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"Led it?" Steve sighed, "No. Reports say she was the only attacker. She didn't just lead the attack. She was the attack. The closest reports that we can find suggest that she's either HYDRA or that she doesn't exist. Clearly, she's real. A rogue HYDRA agent with no sign of even slowing down. This is why we were hoping that Bucky might be able to help us stop her and save a lot of lives in the process."

"It's worth a shot," Scott agreed.

Sam slid the folder over to Bucky, who hesitantly looked into the damage reports. The damage was extensive and whatever security evidence that wasn't erased was the only witness. As he moved the reports, the photo seemed to jump out at him in his mind. No…

He vaguely remembered the training room that the two were always placed in. The floors were lined with pathetic mats that truthfully wouldn't make any fall easier. The room itself was dark and cold, save for a few flickering lights in the middle of the ceiling. He could hear the determined grunts and hit after hit was deflected easily by his arms. The woman was relentless still, throwing more weight into the attacks, but to no avail. Her sounds became increasingly agitated and frustrated as she realized the effect that she had. Finally, in a last effort, she grabbed onto his left arm and used it as leverage as she dropped her weight and swung her legs underneath him, knocking his own legs out from under him in the process. As he fell, she used her momentum to swing around to his back, shoving him forward onto the floor, with her knee firmly placed into his spine. It was a good attempt, but it didn't help her in the end. His left arm reached up over his shoulders and grabbed her with enough force to throw her forward off of him. He quickly jumped up, as she recovered from hitting the wall. She leaned against the cold cement wall, catching her breath and wincing at the new pain in her ribs and arms. After being quickly pulled back onto her feet and shoved back into the middle of the room, she looked up at him with weak determination.

"Again!" he barked.

"Bucky?" Steve pulled him out of his memories.

Bucky looked up at him, with a lost expression for a moment, before he quickly remembered himself.

"The date…" Bucky tried to explain, "The date on this photo is wrong."

"The date's right," Sam looked, "Was taken a week ago, right?"

"Yes." Steve answered surely.

"It can't have been!" Bucky protested with a sudden intensity that it caused a sudden nervous tension among the others, "This has to be five years old at least!"

"Why?" Clint wondered, "Could just be similar to another one."

"It has to be, because that woman...I know her!" Bucky continued, "And she's been dead for years."

"How do you even know for sure?" Sam asked, "I mean...we all thought the same about you for how many decades now?"

"I just know…" he insisted.

He could tell by looking around at their faces that they were all skeptical of how well his memory could be trusted. After all, this attack was a week ago. That was just the fact.

"Steve," Bucky sighed, looking up at his friend sadly, "I know she's dead, because I killed her…"

Before anyone could break the following silence, Bucky hurried out of the room.

"Buck?" Steve called after him, not hesitating before following him outside.

Bucky stared out at the dirt path that barely qualified as a road. He didn't even realize that his hands formed tense fists at his sides as his jaw clenched. He recognized Steve's presence behind him, but made no move to turn toward the man.

"I killed her. It's over."

"Well...I'm sorry, but she doesn't look dead to me," Steve replied, "And she wasn't dead to those agents that she attacked either. Since she's not dead, you wanna start telling me what she is?"

"Zola...when he got let go, he started working in SHIELD," Bucky recalled, "He fed HYDRA intel from SHIELD. This...this included Urskin's research about the Super Soldier program. With the research, they kept something else under wraps."

"What was it?"

"What they thought was all that's left of you: blood."

"SHIELD tried to recreated the serum, but there wasn't enough. I remember."

"Maybe not enough of that formula, no, but they were obsessed with trying to make a new one from it," Bucky explained, "None of the test subjects were surviving any of the fake serum's, so they didn't use the blood. They didn't want to waste it on a weak lab rat."

"Rat meaning a person?"

"Yeah," Bucky sighed, nodding solemnly, "But in the late fifties, they brought in this kid. She was an accident from one of the agents there. The red room, they sterilize their agents most of the time, but this one was from somewhere else. This other place - the "Dollhouse" - they got sloppy. When the agent brought in this kid, the little girl was dying. Her mother would rather give her kid up for the good of HYDRA than have her die without serving the "greater cause." It makes me sick thinking about it."

"She gave up a kid as a lab rat for HYDRA?"

"In a last ditch effort, they put her through the tests, trying the variations of the serum."

"Which variations."

"All of 'em. Some didn't have any effect. Some almost killed her. Zola got desperate. He had to make it work. His obsession with you led to more and more tests on-...well, they eventually created one out of all the blood they had from you."

"Did it work?"

"Enough. She wouldn't be lifting any cars, but she was faster and stronger. She recovered from a place there should have been no coming back from."

"Where did you come into all of this?"

"When they did all of the testing on her, project Winter Soldier was still a work in progress. They were still trying to…"

His voice faded out as he gestured weakly to the side of his head.

"When they messed everything up up here," he continued, "Eventually, they thawed me out and made me train her. I didn't have a choice. She would train half to death and, when she was well enough, do it again and again and again. She became one of the best agents the hard way."

"The hard way?" Steve wondered, raising his eyebrows in question.

"She was always so angry," Bucky continued to remember, "When another agent would appear to be better than her...she would break the competition. Sometimes for good."

"Geez…" Steve huffed, "She ever try to beat you."

"She knew better. I was in charge of her whenever I was awake. She always listened to me like she was told. We trained together, worked together...hell, half the time, we were even frozen and stored in the same warehouse together. I was the only S.O. she never tried to lash out at."

"What happened? You said you...you know."

"It was years ago. We'd worked together, but I could barely remember any of it. I knew who she was, but...it was blurry. She got loose from HYDRA. She wanted to run away. They couldn't have her getting out like that, so...they sent me. I had to kill what I'd spent decades helping them create. I did it."

"It doesn't add up, Buck."

"I watched her bleed out on the ground at my feet, Steve! She was dead!"

"Somehow she's back," Steve insisted, "I don't know how. All I know is that if we don't stop her, people are gonna die. Could you find her?"

"Yes."

"Then you know what we have to do."

"Steve…" Bucky pleaded, voice cracking ever so slightly, "Don't...don't kill her. It's not her fault. She was just a kid."

"And now she's an assassin. I don't wanna hurt anyone, but, if it comes down to it, she's HYDRA and she's gotta be stopped."

Steve began to walk back toward the door to the compound, but Bucky instantly turned and grabbed his arm.

"You're not going to kill her. No one is," Bucky rephrased, a sudden intensity crossing over his face, "I won't let that happen."

"Alright," Steve agreed with a calm and steady tone, "You know I don't want to kill anyone. You know that."

"I don't know about your friends."

The words sounded almost like a threat as they poured out, but Steve recognized the intensity.

"You knew her," Steve realized.

"I told you. I trained her."

"Yeah, but you knew her."

Steve's arm was released and he took a few more steps toward the door before looking over his shoulder.

"What's her name?"

"Katya."