I had recommended the body control gas because I was here, in theory, to deal with the Maximoffs. The inherent instability of the client regime in Sokovia was Strucker's problem. And I figured it would be a good test run, to see how crowds responded to the gas being used as a pacifier with a regime I felt no real desire to prop up. The local regime was a disaster and I didn't care if it lived or die. We could always run Sokovian defense team members (all Hydra, obviously) for office there later, it wasn't as if we didn't have lots of potential candidates.

"You need to tell me," I said as I rocked Persephone in my arms. It was impossible to get this baby to sleep for stretches at a time. She could probably hear a pin drop across a football field. Something was always going to wake her up. "If you want me to deal with your Maximoff problem or your regime problem, because I don't think there's a way for me to do both."

"If you remove the Maximoffs, there will be no regime problem."

One of Hydra's ideological weaknesses, that it was impossible to say aloud lest you be seen as a brainwashed lamb of the oppressing society, was that Hydra did not believe that common people existed in any meaningful sense. They saw the whole world as populated by, in effect, non-player characters. So to Strucker, his regime problems were his Maximoff problem, singular. The unpopularity, the primarily international defense problems, the fact that they hadn't really disciplined a proven pedophile, all those things were not problems unless some Heroic Character appeared to make them problems. This was a stupid point of view, even in a universe where people like Tony existed. "Look, I just don't want to deliver you the Maximoffs' bodies and then you complain to me when your own mistakes topple this little colony of yours."

"If the Maximoffs bodies are delivered to me," he said, "You will have my support on the council."

"Great," I said. It wasn't great, but we'd tried apprehending them alive and that had not worked. I probably would've taken the crowd captive and used them to get the Maximoffs to surrender, but the political damage this method had done was fine. So far the official account was all I had access to, that the mob panicked and the Maximoff escaped using human shields, but no doubt there were muttered rumors in the street by this point. The body control had helped identify leaders and organizers, but there were simply too many people to put in jail and too many with connections to the security forces. Sooner or later, the mind control story would get out and even if it would be dismissed as, 'panicked superstition' in the west, people in Sokovia might come around to believing it. Especially if the bodies of the twins turned up later in shallow graves.

"Do you need anything to make that happen?"

"I'm going to need the Winter Soldier."

—

Wizard software phones were cheaper than iPhones and they were harder for outsiders to crack, so they made sense in terms of what sort of phone a Sokovian might pick up. They were cheap, they were energy efficient, and they were secretly bugged by the most powerful intelligence organization in the world.

Me.

I'm sorry, I have to brag internally because I basically never mention this to anyone. If the ability were used regularly, people would've figured it out. And if the other Hydra heads knew about it, they would use it regularly. Nobody respects my process.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Wanda and Pietro didn't carry phones anymore, they'd resorted to passing messages in person. Analog, the great equalizer. But Sokovia had not had amicable relationship with its neighbors and the borders were secure and, right at this moment, they believed that the twins were dangerous, enhanced terrorists. That meant that they would need to return to society within Sokovia.

And when they did that, as they had to, it was the Wizard phone of the young man hosting them that caught enough of their voices to find where they were hiding. They'd gone from Novi Grad to one of the smaller towns which fed into it.

So we sent a Nemo by, being "driven" by a Ken Life Model Decoy, and it drove by the house where they were at and found a suitable tree to wrap itself around.

I stared through the Nemo cameras as Wanda and Pietro came outside. They looked almost the same as I had left them. Pietro darted toward the car and ripped the hinge off and that was when we set off the bomb to the driver's seat.

It wasn't the largest possible bomb, but as I toggled over to the Winter Soldier's monitoring location on a nearby roof, I could see that Pietro was shredded. His body might have been recognizable, but only in the most generous of senses. Wanda rushed over immediately.

"Take the shot," I said.

The Winter Soldier fired, hitting her in the leg, and she started limping toward her brother. She was crying and furious, looking for whoever had shot her as she moved to get Pietro clear.

"Don't stop till she goes down."

The Winter Soldier fired again and again and again. What you have to understand is almost no one in this universe has good aim. Maybe it was overconfidence from my previous life, but it seemed like he should have hit more by now.

"Close the gap and finish her."

Wanda made it to Pietro and picked him up as the Winter Soldier leapt down from the roof to pursue her, she tucked him onto her shoulder and started moving as fast as she could, grabbing the door to the car for a shield.

The Winter Soldier ran her down and she lowered Pietro to the ground, apparently realizing that outrunning the Winter Soldier wasn't feasible. She charged like a football player straight into the Winter Soldier and knocked him down, hitting him with the door of the car, doing her best to bludgeon him unconscious or dead. For a moment, I thought she might succeed and that I might have to once again bless and damn the power of a being a main character in this universe.

But the Winter Soldier managed to wrench the door away from her and land a hit with his metal arm to her chest. The wind knocked out of her, she reeled for a moment and that was all he needed. He twisted, wound up on top of her, yanked his side arm out and blew her brains out.

I felt tears roll down my face. I hated them. I hadn't wanted it to come to this. But it had and the regret was pointless. I had made my choice, I had driven this long road and it was more than a few left turns out of here. If I was on the road to hell, this was me setting up a home in the sunny downtown area. If I was saving the world, this was a necessary sacrifice and not even a large one. It felt to me like both.

"Put a bullet in the other one and return to base," I said, my voice choking up.

The Winter Soldier returned to where Pietro was bleeding and unconscious and emptied his clip into Pietro's face.

It was over.