Howard looked at his son, his eyes firm: "We should rely on our wisdom and capabilities to deal with HYDRA, not by exploiting someone who is already scarred."
Tony fell silent, and finally nodded.
So Bucky was hidden away, living a life of anonymity.
Stark Industries provided him with a full set of identity cover, including a part-time job at a small auto repair shop in Brooklyn.
Bucky went to the repair shop three days a week to fix those old cars.
The work was simple, mostly replacing parts, tuning engines, and repairing car bodies.
But for him, this repetitive, focused physical labor had a strange healing effect.
When his hands were busy, his brain could temporarily stop recalling those bloody scenes.
The customers were mostly local residents, ordinary and friendly.
It was just that late at night, when he returned to his apartment alone and looked at the city lights outside the window, the shadows of the past would still quietly emerge.
Had HYDRA found him? Was Pierce still searching for him? If he were discovered, would it implicate Howard's family?
These questions haunted him like ghosts, preventing him from ever fully relaxing.
But at least, now he was free.
He could decide what to eat today, watch TV until late at night, and go for walks by the river on weekends.
These things that ordinary people took for granted were precious gifts to him.
Meanwhile, at the Stark Industries headquarters in Manhattan, Tony Stark was entering the busiest period of his career.
Having taken over the company for eight months, Tony had hardly had any rest.
Working fourteen hours a day was the norm; meetings followed one after another, documents piled up like mountains, and branches around the World required his attention and decisions.
But Tony's Talents were fully displayed at this time.
His intuition for mechanics and engineering, his keen insight into market trends, and his demanding standards for management efficiency—all these traits combined to make Stark Industries radiate amazing vitality under his leadership.
"We need innovation, not incremental improvements, but thorough innovation." At the first full board meeting, Tony said to a room full of faces, some skeptical and some expectant.
"Stark Industries cannot rely on past glories forever. Yes, we are the largest arms manufacturer in the World, but that is not enough. The World is changing, threats are changing, and our products must change too."
Thanks to these forward-looking projects and Tony's visionary technical insight that was ahead of his time, Stark Industries' stock price rose by 47% within eight months, with its market value exceeding $100 billion, making it the undisputed largest arms and high-tech group in the World.
Orders flew in like snowflakes, from the Pentagon, from NATO allies, and even from some strictly vetted private security companies.
Production lines ran around the clock, R&D laboratories were brightly lit, and more than 30,000 employees worldwide were contributing to the "Stark Renaissance."
But Tony was not satisfied.
"This is not enough." Late at night, he said to Mavuika in his private workshop on the top floor.
Mavuika leaned against the door frame, holding a can of cola in her hand; this was an Earth beverage she had recently taken a liking to.
Tony walked to the window and looked at the night view of Manhattan outside.
Looking from this height, the city was like a brilliant galaxy, beautiful and fragile.
"My father almost died on a remote road, Bucky was controlled for seventy years, and you..." Tony paused, not finishing his sentence, but Mavuika understood what he meant.
As the sun goddess of Asgard, Mavuika had seen too many rises and falls of the World, too many civilizations rising and falling.
She knew the anxiety in Tony's heart, that anxiety of realizing the World was far more complex and dangerous than he had imagined, and that his own abilities were limited.
"You cannot protect everyone, Tony," Mavuika said softly.
"Even I, having lived for thousands of years and possessing divine power, cannot do it."
"But at least I can protect a few more people." Tony turned around, his expression firm.
"At least I can protect the people I care about. For that, I need Stark Industries to be more than just a money-maker; it needs to become a true fortress, a true power."
Mavuika nodded without saying anything more; she knew this was the path Tony had chosen, and everyone had their own road they must travel.
Meanwhile, in the shadows of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury was waging a lonely and dangerous war.
The Skrull prisoner handed over by Howard was held in a secret prison established by Fury; Fury would go there personally every two weeks to interrogate the green-skinned alien.
But progress was minimal.
The Skrulls were clearly strictly trained and highly skilled in resisting interrogation.
He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was mostly misleading or lies.
Fury had tried various methods: gentle persuasion, harsh threats, and even some less-than-legal means, but the results were limited.
From the fragmented information, Fury had barely pieced together some outlines: the Skrull Empire was a vast civilization spanning multiple galaxies, skilled in mimicry and infiltration.
Why did they come to Earth? Some kind of resource? A specific goal? Fury was not sure. The prisoner kept his mouth shut about this.
What was more unsettling was that ever since this Skrull was captured, his accomplices seemed to have Vaporized, showing no signs of activity.
Fury mobilized all the resources he could, satellite surveillance, communication monitoring, and analysis of anomalous event reports, but found nothing.
Compared to the complete lack of clues regarding the Skrulls, the investigation into HYDRA actually had some progress.
Fury had established a completely independent database that only recorded information related to HYDRA.
He carefully combed through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s historical archives, analyzed personnel promotion patterns, and reviewed the flow of project funds.
Like a detective, he looked for those unnatural details.
He discovered some patterns: the funding for certain projects was abnormally high, but the progress reports were very vague; some Agents promoted too quickly and always received key appointments at critical moments.
Access records for certain classified documents showed strange patterns, always being accessed by the same group of people outside of working hours.
Fury marked these clues, established connections, and gradually outlined a vague network.
HYDRA's infiltration within S.H.I.E.L.D. was deeper and more extensive than he had imagined.
But whenever he thought he was close to a key figure, the leads would suddenly be cut off.
Documents disappeared, witnesses died accidentally, surveillance footage was erased... HYDRA clearly had counter-intelligence awareness, and their actions were clean and efficient.
"They are growing like cancer," Fury wrote in his encrypted log.
"It has already Swirled through the whole body, but it still looks healthy on the surface. To excise them, one needs to know all the locations of the malignancy, needs a scalpel sharp enough, needs a surgical environment that won't be infected... but I don't have any of those."