"Winter Soldiers?" Fury frowned, leaning back in his chair. "I sent a strike team to the Siberian Hydra base coordinates from your dossier yesterday."
"And?" Arthur asked, though he already suspected the answer.
"Rubble," Fury admitted, his expression darkening. "The facility was rigged to blow. My team found nothing but scorched concrete and melted steel. We were too late."
Arthur's eyes narrowed. "So your plan wasn't completely foolproof. Someone in Hydra noticed the personality changes in Pierce and the others. Maybe not enough to stop the purge, but enough to warn the other bases."
"That's my assessment too," Fury said grimly.
"You'll need to fix that quickly. If not, Hydra will go deeper underground. Harder to find. Harder to root out."
Fury nodded. "I have agents already on it. But first, what do you know about these Winter Soldiers?"
"Only a few things. There are five of them. Enhanced, but unstable. The serum they were given had severe mental side effects. Hydra couldn't control them reliably, so they were kept in cryostasis. Frozen between missions. If someone's woken them up..." Arthur paused. "You've got five uncontrollable super-soldiers loose in the world."
"Super-soldier?" Tony asked, perking up. "Like Cap?"
"Similar program," Arthur said. "Hydra's been trying to recreate Erskine's serum for decades. You should be especially interested in this, Tony."
Tony frowned. "Why?"
"I don't have all the details. But from what I know, your father was working on recreating the Super Soldier Serum. And he may have succeeded. Those Winter Soldiers... they might be the product of serums Howard Stark created."
Arthur had thought carefully about when to drop this bombshell. And he felt now was as good as any.
With SHIELD clean, with Pierce dead and Zola deleted, Tony was in no danger to pursue this properly now. He deserved the chance at closure. The same kind Arthur had given himself years ago.
Arthur felt this was the right time to tell Tony these things now that SHIELD was clean and Tony had the power to take revenge. Let Tony have a proper closure like he did.
The room went dead silent. The hum of the servers seemed to vanish. Tony didn't move. The manic energy, the quips, the restless genius - all of it froze solid.
"What did you say?" Tony's voice was dangerously low.
"Your parents' deaths should not be an accident, Tony." Arthur kept his voice level. "You might want to reinvestigate."
Tony turned to Fury. The look on his face could have cut glass. "Did you know?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me, Fury."
"I'm not lying." Fury met Tony's gaze without flinching. "When your parents died, I was a field agent, not the Director. I was not involved in that investigation. And by the time I took the big chair... with everything going on, it didn't cross my mind to reinvestigate a decades-old car crash that every forensic report classified as an accident."
"Because the reports were written by Hydra," Tony said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"Because the reports were written by Hydra," Fury confirmed.
Arthur stepped in. "You might find something in Pierce's personal files. He would have been involved."
That got Tony moving.
He was out of his chair and at the terminal in one fluid motion. It wasn't the frantic typing of a hacker; it was the cold, precise movement of an executioner.
"JARVIS. Pierce's personal drives. Encrypted, hidden, deleted. I don't care. Find everything. Cross-reference with December 16th, 1991."
"Searching, sir."
The room went quiet. Just the hum of data transfer and the soft clicking of Tony's fingers across holographic interfaces.
Fifteen minutes passed.
"Got it." Tony's voice was flat. Dead flat. "Mission report. December 16th, 1991. Asset designation: Winter Soldier. Objective: retrieve super-soldier serum."
Then, a video file popped up on the main screen.
Grainy, black and white footage of a winding road at night. A motorcycle forcing a car off the road. A metal arm punching through a windshield like it was paper.
And the brutal assassination of Howard and Maria Stark.
Tony watched it all. He didn't look away. Not once.
When the footage ended, the frozen frame lingered on an empty road. Tony stood motionless, his face a mask of grief and rage held together by sheer force of will.
"Who is he?" His voice was barely controlled.
"Captain James Buchanan Barnes," Arthur answered. "Bucky Barnes."
Fury frowned sharply. "Barnes? That name—"
"Steve Rogers's best friend. Served with the Howling Commandos. Reported killed in action in 1945 after falling from a train in the Alps."
"He doesn't look like a man from the 40s," Fury muttered, scrutinizing the frozen image of the assassin. "He looks... young."
"Maybe Hydra recovered him after the fall. Found a way to keep him young - cryostasis between missions, same as the five Winter Soldiers. He's suspected to have been injected with an experimental version of the serum while he was captured during the war. The serum could slow aging on its own. Combined with decades of cryo..." Arthur shrugged. "We won't know the full picture until we capture him."
"He looks brainwashed," Fury observed.
"Clearly." Arthur gestured at the dark screen. "Barnes knew Howard Stark personally. But in that footage, there's no recognition. No hesitation. No pause. He moved like a machine following a program. That's not a man making choices. That's a weapon being fired."
Tony was quiet. Arthur let the silence sit.
He could have pushed. Could have made the case for Barnes's innocence. Could have preached forgiveness and the complexity of mind control.
But Arthur didn't.
Because honestly? When Arthur had hunted down the people responsible for his own parents' deaths, he hadn't wasted time on moral philosophy. He'd killed them. Every last one in the chain, without a shred of hesitation.
He wasn't going to be a hypocrite.
Arthur wasn't even sure what decision he would make if he were in Tony's position. Even knowing Barnes was a puppet, could Arthur let the man who killed his mother walk away?
He'd like to think he could separate the puppet from the puppeteer. He'd like to think he was rational enough to see Barnes as another victim.
But he wasn't sure. And that uncertainty meant he had no right to tell Tony how to feel.
So instead, he just laid out the facts. And let Tony make his own decision.
Fury broke the silence. "Now that I see him... I remember a report. Agent Romanoff reported fighting someone matching Barnes's description last year. Enhanced. Metal arm. Extremely dangerous." He paused. "It was one of the very few missions Romanoff has ever failed."
Arthur blinked. That was new. Neither Natasha nor Ariadne had mentioned facing a super-soldier. Then again, Natasha wasn't the type to advertise her failures and Arthur did not pay any attention to their work.
"So he's still active," Arthur said. "Still out there."
"I'm going to find him," Tony said. His voice had dropped to something low and quiet and dangerous. "And I'm going to kill him."
Arthur didn't argue. He leaned against the desk, crossing his arms.
"If you want my advice, Tony: Capture him first. Don't just double-tap him from the sky. Get the full picture. I can help you read his memories to find everyone involved in that mission. Everyone involved in that order."
"I don't care about them right now," Tony spat. "I care about the man who took my parents from me."
"After you learn everything, what you do is your call," Arthur said calmly. "Not mine. But you will need to consider some extra variables while making your decision."
Tony turned on him, eyes blazing. "Like what? His tragic backstory?"
"Your father," Arthur said.
"My father?" Tony's voice turned bitter. "Because he admired Captain America? Why? Just because my father made him that suit and that ridiculous shield, I'm supposed to care about his best friend's feelings?"
"Do you not know anything about your father, Tony? Not the weapons contracts and the drinking. The actual man. Steve Rogers was one of the few real friends Howard ever had. Maybe the only one. They fought a war together. He spent thirty years looking for Rogers in the Arctic - not because Captain America was an asset, but because he'd lost a friend."
Tony said nothing, but his jaw clenched.
"Talk to your Aunt Peggy," Arthur said softly. "She knew them both. She knew Barnes too. She can tell you who your father really was during the war. It might change how you see things."
Silence stretched in the room.
"Consider this, too," Arthur added. "Once we capture Barnes and break the conditioning... he might be happy to be killed. A man like that? A hero forced to be a monster for seventy years? He's probably living in a hell we can't imagine. Killing him might be a mercy. Or it might be the easy way out."
Tony looked at the screen, at the metal arm frozen in a blur of motion.
"JARVIS," Tony said, his voice clipped. "Find everything on the Winter Soldier program. Every base. Every sighting. Every shell casing."
"Yes, Sir."
Tony looked at Arthur. The anger hadn't gone. It wouldn't for a long time. But the immediate, blinding urge to destroy had been tempered by calculation.
"I'll capture him," Tony said stiffly. "No promises beyond that."
"That's your right," Arthur said. "I'm just putting facts in front of you. What you do with them is your decision. I just don't want you to regret anything later."
Tony held his gaze for a moment. Then he gave a short, sharp nod and turned back to his screens.