walked through the maze of shipping containers that filled the wharf with only the sound of their soles scraping against the gray concrete to fill their ears. The metal boxes began to look identical after a while, only differentiated by the colors they came in and the ways they were stacked atop one another. Sharon naturally led the group as she was the one with intel on Nagel's whereabouts. Sam and Bucky strode in sync behind her with Zemo and Iris bringing up the tail.

"Madripoor could give New York a run for its money," Sam commented, being the first person to speak since they entered the maze of rectangles.

"They know how to party," Zemo affirmed.

Sharon focused on her phone screen, navigating through the twists and turns, "With that bounty on your head, the longer you're in Madripoor, the less likely you're ever leaving."

Her words made Iris' stomach twist ever so slightly. She had felt eyes on the group since they had exited the car but had been unable to spot any bounty hunters lurking about. The reminder of the targets painted on their backs made her even more paranoid. It was as if the number of eyes on them had multiplied.

Every moment the group was in Madripoor was another moment Iris had to spend looking behind her back to make sure no one about to kill her or her friends. Running off of little sleep and continuously keeping herself on her toes was becoming exhausting, both physically and mentally.

Carter finally came to a stop, "All right. He's in there. Container four-two-six-one." She stuck out her hand, five earpieces resting in her palm, "I'll keep an eye out while you guys talk to Nagel. But hurry. We're on borrowed time."

Iris was the first to grab the small communication device and promptly put it in her ear. The faster they gathered the intel they needed, the faster they could escape from Madripoor. She was well aware that their borrowed time was running out... and quickly.

The three men copied her actions and inserted their own earpieces while Sharon began to walk away. Sam was the first to approach the orange shipping container that Wilfred Nagel supposedly inhabited. He pulled open the right door which gave way with a deep creak, the hinges practically whining as they were forced to move.

There was nothing inside the container. Absolutely nothing except darkness and three solid walls of rusting metal. Sam's eyes scanned the box, Bucky leaning slightly to look over his shoulder.

"Hey, Sharon. You sure this is the right one? It's completely empty."

"Positive. It has to be," her voice replied in their ears.

Iris began to follow after the three men as they filed into the container one by one but promptly stopped when she heard a familiar sound. It started as a distant hum but quickly became a distinct whisper. As she began to comprehend the noise and pull coherent words out of the sea of nonsense, her stomach twisted exponentially more. She doubled over in pain as the muscles in her abdomen spasmed and her body was forced to convulse.

Borrowed time. The sand at the top of the hour glass is running thin. Soon, we will let another in.

Then it was gone - the gut wrenching pain, the whisper, everything. All that remained was a clear message from the dead, a warning, a promise: someone was on borrowed time. Someone would be joining the dead very soon.

The dead hadn't willingly talked to her since she arrived back on Earth. The fact that they had made their presence known and spoke in riddles once again set her on edge. Something big was coming... and soon.

The men had been too busy inspecting every corner of the container to realize what was happening beyond the inside. Luckily, the woman recovered before anyone noticed what happened so no questions were asked and no answers had to be given. Everyone else could focus on the mission in blissful ignorance and they could be out of Madripoor sooner.

"Doll, whatchya still doing out there? Zemo found something," Bucky announced, sticking his head outside to alert her. Without waiting for a response, he drew his gun and disappeared back into the container.

Pushing the warning into the back of her mind, she forced herself to focus on the mission at hand. There would be time to address the dead later. She entered the shipping container and followed the three men up a flight of stairs that had clearly been hidden before. Distant music could be heard in the stairwell and it grew louder as the group got closer to the source: a lab.

The lab was far more advanced than one would expect to see in a place such as Madripoor. It was especially impressive as it had been built inside of multiple shipping containers. Yellow hazmat suits hung near the entrance with face respirators in the same area to make a complete outfit if needed. Vials with liquids of all colors lined the shelves of the lab and several different tanks were stored throughout the area.

They found their target hunched over on the opposite side of the lab. Spreading out, the three Avengers stayed outside the scientists' range of vision while unknowingly surrounding him. The woman watched as Sam moved the needle of the record player, halting the music that played. Had anyone been paying attention to Zemo, they would have seen the pure disgust on his face as he saw the man that recreated the super-soldier serum for the first time.

The scientist spun around with an audible gasp, his eyes trained on Sam who had a gun aimed at him. Wilfred Nagel appeared to be the definition of a mad scientist if there had ever been such a thing. His hair was balding and his skin was deathly pale. The dark circles under his panicked eyes suggested he spent many sleepless nights pursuing his work.

"Dr. Nagel?" Wilson asked calmly, attempting not to spook the man any further.

"Who are you? What do you want?" His words were rushed. He was nervous.

"We know you created the super-soldier serum."

Sam's words hit a nerve. He knew too much for the scientists' liking. "Get out of my lab," he began to walk past the intruder and take a different route to get away from the gun being pointed at him.

He halted his steps when his eyes landed on the infamous Winter Soldier. His abrupt stop allowed Sam to grab ahold of his arm. "Hey! You know who he is, right?" Sam easily controlled the scientists body movements and pivoted him to the left so he could finally see Zemo as well. "This is Baron Zemo. I know you've heard of him, too, right?"

Whether Nagel wanted to answer or not, he didn't get the chance to. Sam jerked his body forward, practically pushing him to walk. He pushed Nagel into a partial wall made of metal wiring. It protected the rest of the lab from the more hazardous area that lay behind it. His back hit the metal with a loud racket but he quickly recovered.

"You seem like a pretty smart guy. So you better become conversational real quick," Wilson commanded.

"How about a counter proposal?" Wilfred Nagel seemed to have a surge of confidence as he lifted his head to finally meet the gaze of his assailant. "Make me a better offer and I'll talk."

Bucky watched the scene unfold without moving. His eyes only slightly twitched when Sharon's voice was heard in their comms again.

"Guys, we have company."

This made the super soldier move. Roughly grabbing ahold of the cocky scientist by the nape of his neck, he roughly forced him across the lab before pushing him into a chair. Without a word, Barnes aimed his gun at Wilfred's head, pointer finger on the trigger. The scientist could do nothing but stare down the barrel of the gun.

"Every bounty hunter in the city is here!

Bucky's jaw clenched. Emotionlessly, he pulled the trigger of his weapon, only moving the gun mere centimeters away from it's target at the last second. The target flinched. The loud sound filled Nagel's ears and they began to ring. He lost all the confidence he once add in a split second.

"Okay. Okay." Nagel's lips opened and the truth poured out like running water as the weapon aimed at his head was lowered, "I was brought into HYDRA's Winter Soldier program to pick up their work after the five failed test subjects in Siberia."

Still unseen by the scientist, Iris observed the reactions of those in the lab. For a fraction of a second, Bucky's eyes betrayed his stoic expression. The mention of HYDRA's Winter Soldier program and the five failed test subjects in Siberia brought back memories he had worked hard to lock away in the deepest parts of his mind.

"When HYDRA fell, I was recruited by the CIA. They had blood samples from an American test subject with semi-stable traces of serum in his system."

Sam's gaze swept across the room as realization set in. Nagel was talking about Isiah Bradley. Wilson looked at Barnes who was already looking at him. There was a common understanding between them in that moment.

The super-soldier serum had brought both of them pain. Nagel was forcing his thumb into freshly sewn wounds and tearing the stitches from the seams.

"After much labor, I was able to isolate the necessary compounds in his blood," Wilfred nodded his head, almost as of reassuring himself of his feats. "I was a god."

"You're no god," Iris stated, revealing herself to Nagel as she made her way from between the shelves and into his line of vision. She was done observing. She had made her assessment of the situation.

Sam studied the man's reaction to the woman, "It seems you know who she is as well."

"Every scientist does," Nagel admitted, looking at Iris as if she was a specimen to be studied under a microscope. "I was told about her by a fellow colleague upon the reversal of Thanos' plot. After the world learned what she was capable of because of Captain America, the scientific community was propelled into a frenzy. We can claim to be gods all day long but actually finding a way to manipulate life and death with such ease like her... would make anyone a real god. Every scientist worth anything was itching to get their hands on the woman who almost single handedly killed Thanos but sadly she disappeared like all the others."

"You wouldn't be able to find a way to harness my abilities even if you tried. There's no component in my blood stream to isolate, no cell to extract. You would have to manage to tap into my very essence, the source of soul. But then again, you wouldn't be able to even do that. As I said, you're not a god."

Nagel let out an airy laugh, rolling his eyes. He refused to be reduced to nothing by this woman. He had accomplished things other people in his field could only dream of. His arrogance urged him to remind the people in his lab of that. "It doesn't matter what you think I am because I did what no other scientist since Erskine was able to do. But mine was going to be different. No clunky machines or jacked up bodies. Mine was going to be subtle, optimized, perfect."

"Except it wasn't perfect!" Iris snapped, anger trembling through her body. This man had reopened the wounds of her family and might as well have been smiling at the blood that gushed from them.

She stood directly in front of him now, her hand wrapped around his throat. "Your little experiment fell into the wrong hands. The hands of a group of murderers." The flesh of his neck was beginning to turn grey as she squeezed harder.

"And if you kill me, how are you any different?"

Horror flashed across her eyes and she immediately retracted her hand from his throat. It appeared as if he had somehow burned her. No, he had pierced her heart. He had managed to open up her own wounds.

"Enough!" Sam shouted, "How have we never heard about this?"

"Because... Before I was able to complete my work, I turned to dust. Then when I returned, it was five years later, program had been abandoned, so I came here. The Power Broker was more than happy to fund the recreation of my work."

"How many vials did you make?"

"Twenty," Nagel paused as he allowed his answer to settle over the three Avengers. "Karli Morgenthau stole those, so... I can only imagine what the Power Broker has planned for that poor girl."

"Where's Karli now?" Sam pressed on.

"I don't know where she is. But a couple of days ago, she called and asked if I could help someone named Donya Madani. Poor woman has tuberculosis. Typical of overpopulation in displacement camps like that."

"Well, what happened to her?"

"Not my pig. Not my farm."

Iris had to fight the urge to steal the life from Wilfred in that moment. If she were able to, it would have been one of the very few lives she had truly enjoyed taking. She didn't understand how someone simply couldn't care about others like Nagel did.

"Is there any serum in this lab?" Bucky asked.

The scientist didn't reply. He simply let the question hang in the air. This pushed Barnes over the edge. He pressed the barrel of his gun to Nagel's temple. He was no longer asking. He was demanding.

Nagel hesitated, cowardly looking up at the man threatening his life, "No."

Bucky looked at Sam, "Now what?" He dropped his arm to his side, the scientist breathing a sigh of relief as he did so.

"Guys, we're seriously outta time here," Sharon announced, running into the lab to join the rest of the group.

In slow motion, Iris watched as a bullet flew past her face and lodged itself in Nagel's chest. The momentum sent his body backwards, the limp corpse falling with the chair. She watched as blood splattered across his plaid shirt and more began to seep from the wound.

Now he could bleed like the rest of them.

"No!" Sam yelled.

"What did you do?" Sharon exclaimed.

"Iris!" Wilson shouted, grabbing her attention. Her head snapped from the body to her friend who was aiding Carter in restraining Zemo. "Bring him back! Use your powers and bring him back!"

Borrowed time. The sand at the top of the hour glass is running thin. Soon, we will let another in.

It had been Wilfred Nagel who was running on borrowed time, who was joining the dead.

"He's already gone," she declared. "Besides, if he's a god like he claimed, he will never know death as anything more than a close friend."

"He wasn't a fucking god! You know that!" Sam yelled at her.

Her eyes met Zemo's at he stared at her, "Then may his soul rot wherever it may be." Had the Sokovian not pulled the trigger, the witch would have used magic.

Sam didn't get the chance to make another remark as a sudden explosion violently rocked the lab. Fire erupted through the ruptured metal wall and tried to engulf everything it could, including the people inside. Bucky managed to throw Iris and himself onto the ground before it got the chance to.

The fire alarm blared in her ears as the woman attempted to gather her bearings. With a grunt she turned onto her side to see Bucky shakily standing. It wasn't just his sore muscles that were shaking but the structure itself as it became unstable. The lab apparatus clinked loudly as the foundation moved.

"Anybody seen Zemo?"

Able to recover more quickly than the others, Barnes first helped Iris to her feet then Sharon and Sam. "Let's go!" He urged the three, ushering them towards the exit.

"Zemo..." she uttered to herself, eyes frantically searching the destroyed lab. She couldn't see him. "We can't leave him!" She declared, refusing to move any closer to the exit.

"Doll, let's go!" Bucky argued, his hand clasping around her wrist. He began to drag her unmoving body towards the exit.

She dug her heels into the ground, using all of her body weight in attempt to stop the soldier. "I'm not leaving him!" She argued loudly over the blaring alarm and general chaos.

"Fine!" Bucky snapped. In a fluid motion, he threw the woman over his shoulder as if she was nothing. "I'm not going to let you die for some terrorist!"

Iris screamed in protest, moving her body as much as she could in attempts to free herself from his hold. Bucky knew she wouldn't use her abilities to harm him so he actively used her love for him against her.

"Bucky, please!" She cried in desperation, her nails digging into his skin.

A harsh whistle filled the air and every single person in the group understood what it meant. The sound made her attempt to free herself once more. "Zemo!" She called out, nothing except a grand explosion answering her desperation.

In a blaze of smoke and chaos, the entire lab was blown sky high. The entire infrastructure failed and metal containers were sent tumbling every which way. The four managed to narrowly escape certain death just in time.

Once Bucky confirmed that the group was safe enough, he set his best friend down. She merely collapsed to the ground, her shaking body unable to hold her. While Barnes wished to console her in anyway possible, he knew there was no time.

"All right! Wait for my signal!" He told Sharon and Sam, the two people who were able bodied at the moment.

That was the last clear thing Iris heard as the sound of bullets and metallic ricocheting became nothing more than distant background noise to her. All she could focus on were her trembling hands as the world fell away from her.

Borrowed time. The sand at the top of the hour glass is running thin. Soon, we will let another in.

It hadn't been Wilfred Nagel who was running on borrowed time. It had been Helmut Zemo. It had been them.

"I thought we were gonna go left?"

My child, why do you weep?

"You went the wrong way!"

He's gone!

"I was clearing the way!"

Bring him back.

"I came out first. You are supposed to follow me."

I can't!

"And where are we now?"

Death always brings new life.

"Guys, not the time!"

Death?

"I'm out!"

Death, my child.

"This is a barricade."

New life?

"It's in every action movie!"

Life.

In another lifetime, far from their current one, she was lying in his arms, the room filled with the sound of their laughter. But in this lifetime, no such thing had ever happened nor would it now. Her heartache filled her body as her sobs grew audible.

"We need her help!" Sharon's voice was distant, worlds away.

"Don't Sharon! She's unstable!" Sam.

"We have no idea what will happen." Bucky.

"It's the only choice we have."

She saw his smile. She heard his laugh. She felt his touch.

"Iris! We need you! Please!"

"Sharon, stop!"

"Momento mori, vöglein."

"Yes Helmut, death is inevitable. But a reminder that you must die is a reminder that you must live. You are not living, not yet. I refuse to let you die until you have lived."