Bucky
Barnes, the Winter Soldier, is sitting in his Indiana home when a team of armed
men burst in shooting. Bucky fights them off, grabs the cat, and flees on his
motorcycle….
Meanwhile,
Sam “Falcon” Wilson is looking for Sally McKenzie from his veterans’ support
group who went missing. His only clue is that Sally had been visited by agents
of the Office of Federal Utilities (OFU). Sam learns they are a secret
government organization that tracks down terrorist training camps in the USA
and sends a specialist to eliminate them. Sam visits OFU headquarters to find
everyone dead, murdered, and Winter Soldier is on the scene. It turns out that
Bucky is the OFU specialist, part of his conditional pardon from the Secret
Empire days. Bucky’s handler, Veronica Eden, is not among the dead; they go to
her house, pausing briefly to give Bucky’s cat to Misty Knight, who doesn’t
appreciate it….
Veronica
missed work due to a hangover and didn’t know about the killings at the office.
They use her laptop to research the situation and find there is a power
struggle within Hydra because of the death of Baron Zemo. It’s Zemo’s protégé
versus a new rival and they learn that the former is leaving New York by train
that day and they plan to intercept him. Then a young dude walks in, introduces
himself as The Natural, admits to killing the OFU staff, then beats the
stuffings out of both Sam and Bucky, all the while telling them that he has
always been one of their biggest fans. He tells them that he is disobeying
Hydra orders by letting them live but notes that the next time they see him, he
will kill them….