Chapter 315: Outsiders

So now, right after returning from the honeymoon, he rushed over without wasting any time.

"Tell me what has happened to you. If I remember correctly, you should be...."

Jack pointed up as he looked at Howard, but he didn't say everything. He couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic.

"Well, I have to thank Bucky for that."

Howard smiled and shook his head.

"If it weren't for him, I would truly be dead."

At that moment, the door opened again, and someone familiar to Jack walked in.

"I told you he wouldn't dare to drink the coffee you make."

Bucky walked with calm while wearing a jacket and carrying a bottle of vodka in one hand and three cups in the other.

It's worth mentioning that his left hand was a black mechanical arm, unlike the elegant arm of the Winter Soldier in the original cannon.

Instead, it looked kind of rough and powerful, like something from the Soviet Union.

Jack's gaze shifted from Bucky's arm to his face.

The current Bucky was a little more mature and determined than before. Although he had a smile on his face, his eyes always seemed empty.

Bucky filled the three cups with vodka one by one. He raised his cup first and looked at Jack.

"To us being able to meet again!"

"To us being able to meet again!"

"To us being able to meet again!"

Jack and Howard raised their cups, and the three of them clinked them together and drank at the same time.

Cough, cough, cough!

This toast was so good. Jack and Bucky were fine, but Howard coughed because he was already old.

"Don't push yourself. You're almost a hundred years old and still drinking like this."

Jack reached out and moved Howard's drink away from him.

With a flick of his hand, a small cup appeared in front of Howard, filled with a transparent liquid that shimmered with a faint glow.

"Give it a taste."

Howard glanced at him and then used two fingers to hold the small cup. He drank it all in one go.

An icy sensation instantly reached his stomach, causing him to shiver uncontrollably.

However, this chill quickly changed into a warm current that passed through his stomach, moved to his internal organs, passed through his limbs, and gathered in his head.

Howard felt an unusual warmth, as if he had returned to the womb, with all the pressure and stress disappearing. The comfortable feeling of having a relaxed mind made him somewhat sleepy.

He couldn't help but think to himself how long it had been since he felt this relaxed.

Bucky's exclamation brought Howard back from his thoughts. He looked at Bucky and noticed the astonishment on his face.

"What happened to me..."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Howard realized something was wrong. His voice had changed; it became the same as when he was young.

His eyes flickered, as if he had guessed something, and he looked directly at the two-way mirror in the room.

In the mirror, he didn't see the image of an old man with a receding hairline. Instead, he saw himself as someone not even thirty, in the prime of his life.

This scene left Howard dumbfounded for a while. He couldn't help but walk up to the mirror and carefully look at his face.

The wrinkles had disappeared, the white hair had turned black, and everything described him as he had become younger.

"This is incredible."

Howard slowly put down his drink and turned to look at Jack.

"How did you do this?"

"Is there more?"

"Of course."

Jack shrugged. He had plenty of these little things, but first he wanted to figure out what had happened during the years he was missing.

Why was Howard still alive?

Why did they have to hide in this place?

Who were they keeping an eye on?

Facing Jack's, Howard sat back down and glanced at Bucky. He said,

"Why am I still alive? It's simple, Bucky saved me."

"To be more precise, he saved me."

Bucky took over and continued his story.

"Do you still remember December 16, 1991? At that time, I was still under Hydra's control. They gave me a mission..."

"To kill the Stark couple and retrieve the Super Soldier Serum they were carrying."

"I did as they ordered. At that time, I knew nothing and only focused on completing the mission."

Howard looked at Jack and nodded. He was still thinking about that night and felt a little scared.

"They almost succeeded. Bucky blew up my car tires, causing me to crash into a big tree. If it weren't for him regaining consciousness at the critical moment, I wouldn't have survived."

"You regained consciousness?"

Jack raised an eyebrow and looked at Bucky, asking,

"Did Hydra's brainwashing fail?"

Speaking of this, Bucky shook his head sadly.

"No, it didn't. Thanks to the magic Sylvie put in my mind, I regained consciousness at the critical moment. That magic sealed some of my memories and maintained my true self."

"Hydra's brainwashing weakened Sylvie's magic in some ways. Howard recognized me, he called my name, and it seemed to break the seal that Sylvie had put on me. Then I remembered who I was and woke up."

"..."

Jack didn't expect that the sealing magic that he had specifically requested from Sylvie to ease his troubles back then would end up saving Howard's life several decades later.

"So, you two formed this organization to secretly fight against Hydra?"

Jack shook his head and said.

"It makes sense that you were hiding so well. I would have never thought there was a secret base under Coney Island if I didn't know about it.

He looked at Howard and couldn't help but complain.

"Did you have to be so careful? You didn't come see me when I returned, even though you wanted to? And you!"

He turned to Bucky.

"You didn't even show up at Steve and my wedding. Just a sneak peek from far away. Was it important? Are you still that cautious around Hydra? And you had to use this thing to contact me?"

As he spoke, Jack threw a metallic card onto the table. The card had a bullet imprinted on it.

He was not unfamiliar with that bullet. It was the special bullet he used to deal with certain colorful characters.

The kind that could fly for ten thousand meters.

"Why not just directly tell me what's going on instead of all this mysterious nonsense?"

Bucky and Howard glanced at each other, and Howard gestured for Bucky to speak up.

Bucky sighed and said,

"It's not Hydra that makes us walk on thin ice. Earth has encountered some outsiders, and they're even more difficult to deal with than Hydra."

"...Outsiders?"

...

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