Pain had soaked his body in cold sweat, as if he were a damp rag being viciously wrung out. The pain instantly swept through his entire body, every nerve ending seeming to have been brutally pierced. The man's expression appeared disconnected from his body's reaction. He did not frown as he pushed the tweezers beneath the wet wound in his calf. Even though the messy black hair on his forehead was plastered tightly to his skin with sweat, and his unwashed clothes, reeking of gunpowder and sweat after many days, had made his whole body itch, he remained focused on feeling the tweezers through his fingertips—amid the softness and pain, he found his target. After several attempts in the slick blood, the tweezers finally clamped tightly around the bullet. Drenched in cold sweat, the man yanked it out with force, then tossed both the tweezers and the bullet aside and let out a long breath. He felt the dizziness rolling in after the pain and allowed blurred points of light to flicker beneath his closed eyelids.
Only after tending to the wound did he reach for his spoils with his washed hands.
It was a notebook the assassins had carried with them. The repeatedly read and written-in notebook recorded a list of names. His name ranked near the top of the ever-shortening list, marked by someone. James Buchanan Barnes—that was his name, and the people who wanted to kill him had already had their necks twisted by his mechanical arm. Though he was somewhat puzzled as to why those people had carried such an important document on them, reality no longer allowed him to dwell on it. This was the most important clue he had obtained since taking part in Hydra's rebellion within S.H.I.E.L.D. Other items, such as safe keys