The video began to play.
It was raw, grainy surveillance footage—fixed on a dimly lit street beneath a lamppost.
The setting immediately made Tony uneasy.
He glanced at the label on the tape.
"December 16, 1991."
The date hit him like a gut punch.
That was when his parents died. A "car accident," they'd called it.
Tony's face tightened. "This road... I remember it," he muttered.
Onscreen, a car suddenly appeared—out of control, skidding violently before crashing into a roadside tree.
The hood burst into flames.
A motorcycle arrived a moment later, its rider dismounting swiftly and walking straight toward the wreck.
From the driver's seat, a battered Howard Stark weakly pushed open the door and tried to crawl out.
His body was broken, blood running down his forehead.
"Help... please... my wife and son... save them…"
The sound of the motorcycle had given him a sliver of hope. Maybe, just maybe, someone would help.
But the rider approached, grabbed Howard by the hair, and yanked him upright.
Even through the smoke, Howard recognized him.
"Sergeant Barnes?!"
It was James Buchanan Barnes—Bucky. But not the man Tony knew from history books.
This Bucky had cold, dead eyes and a metal arm gleaming in the firelight.
Howard seemed to realize what that meant.
There would be no rescue.
Only death.
His expression went from desperation to something closer to acceptance. A quiet resignation, as if he understood he wouldn't be leaving this place alive.
Outside the screen, Tony's breathing grew heavier, his fists clenched so tightly that blood rose to the surface.
And the tape kept rolling.
"Howard… Howard…"
Maria's voice was weak, barely audible from the passenger seat. She was just regaining consciousness.
But Bucky didn't hesitate.
He punched Howard several times, knocking him out cold, then shoved him back behind the wheel.
Walking around to the other side, he reached through the window and clutched Maria's throat.
Her voice rasped with desperation. Still, she cradled a baby in her arms and tried to shield him.
"Please… save… him…"
But her pleas were met with silence.
Her body went limp seconds later, her arms falling away from the infant.
The child—tiny, swaddled, vulnerable—began to cry, sensing the warmth beside him fading away.
Bucky didn't flinch.
He reached in, grabbed the baby, unwrapped the cloth, and twisted it around the child's neck.
The crying stopped.
The infant's skin turned pale, purple.
Then, without a second glance, Bucky tossed the lifeless body out of the window and onto the roadside.
A perfect crime scene.
A tragic accident—two parents dead in a fiery crash, the baby ejected and strangled by the swaddling cloth.
Even the most seasoned investigator would call it misfortune, not murder.
Bucky moved under the camera's lens and fired, destroying the evidence.
HYDRA would handle cleanup.
His job was simply to kill.
The footage ended.
Natasha ejected the tape, her expression grim.
Beside her, the two Stark brothers stood frozen—one seething with rage, the other barely able to breathe.
Tony's eyes were bloodshot, pure fury radiating off him.
Malrick said nothing, but the fury beneath his silence was volcanic.
He had seen himself—just a baby—murdered by the Winter Soldier.
And he had watched his adopted mother die begging for mercy.
"Where is he?" Tony growled, his voice low and violent.
Malrick closed his eyes. Super hearing and vision activated at full range. Among billions of signals and frequencies, he locked onto the target.
"HYDRA's base in Johannesburg, South Africa. He's guarding Baron Strucker."
Malrick didn't wait.
He grabbed Tony by the arm, biofield shimmering.
The two vanished from the Siberian snow.
---
Gold City, Johannesburg.
A HYDRA facility—nuclear-proof, concealed, and heavily fortified.
Its front gate was 2.8 meters of solid reinforced steel.
It exploded inward like a paper door.
The force of the blast tore the gate into hundreds of fragments, shredding the corridor behind it.
Malrick and Tony stepped through the wreckage.
Their movement synchronized—left foot, then right.
Dust and light streamed behind them. One in a cape, the other in a suit of armor. Angels of wrath descending from the sun.
To HYDRA agents, the sight of Malrick's red and blue uniform triggered pure terror.
They bolted.
But it was hopeless.
Malrick's heat vision scorched through the halls, disintegrating anything in its path.
Tony swept the rest with repulsor blasts, systematic and merciless.
They weren't here for justice.
They were here for vengeance.
And today, no one would be spared.
Within minutes, the entire facility had been purged.
Baron Strucker burst out from a chamber, waving a white flag with trembling hands.
"I surrender! I surrender!" he cried, falling to his knees. "Mr. Superman! Mr. Iron Man! I'm defecting—defecting to the United Nations! I swear! Mercy! Me—"
The heat vision came before the plea finished.
Strucker's body split down the middle.
Malrick and Tony walked past the corpse without even blinking.
At the end of the hallway sat the Winter Soldier.
He was strapped to a cold metal chair, expression blank, surrounded by mind-wiping hardware.
He didn't move. Didn't blink.
He hadn't been given an order.
And without that, he was a shell.
Tony stood in front of him, repulsor at the ready, glowing inches from Bucky's face.
"It's him," Tony said. His voice wasn't a question.
Malrick nodded, heat vision burning brighter. "It's him."
Tony hesitated. "But… he was brainwashed. No free will. That matters, right?"
"Legally, yeah," Malrick replied. "In court, they'd say he's not responsible."
Tony's repulsor light dimmed, the uncertainty rising.
But Malrick didn't flinch.
Without a word, two beams of red heat lanced from his eyes—clean and precise.
Bucky's head was gone in an instant.
Malrick turned and walked away.
"Legality doesn't matter here," he said coldly. "This was personal."
Behind him, the Winter Soldier's body slumped forward and hit the floor.
Tony stared at the remains, conflicted.
His fingers twitched. Then, silently, he raised his arm and fired.
The blast reduced the body to ash.
He didn't know if it was justice, or vengeance, or something darker.
But he did know one thing.
If Malrick was going down that path, he wasn't letting him walk it alone.
They would stand together.
Right or wrong.
"I'm forming the Avengers when we get back," Tony said, catching up to him.
"And you're joining."
---
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