Jasper Sitwell is thrown from the roof, and Sam's the one who tosses him back on.
"You ready to talk?" Carol asks. "Natasha here can be really persuasive, but you already knew that."
Sitwell holds his hands out and takes a frightened step back.
"They'll kill me!"
"Danvers and I will do worse," Natasha says with a sweet smile. "And our handler was more capable than you were. Tell me, did Hydra order the hit on Coulson, as well? Or was he in on the entire thing?"
Carol snorts, grasps Sitwell by the shoulders and shoves him forward to he's kneeling before them all. "Coulson loved Cap too much to go Dark Side on us."
"Agent Coulson's death was completely out of our hands—"
"Enough," Steve says. "Start talking. Zola's algorithm."
"It's a program!" he shrieks, cowering away from them. Carol rolls her eyes, but Sam looks mad enough for the both of them. "It chooses and takes out targets, please—"
"What targets?" Carol asks, kicks him over and ignores Natasha's smirk.
"You," Sitwell gasps. "Rogers, Stark, Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to the system."
Steve scowls, not pleased with his answer. "People with… abilities, is that it?"
"I—"
"Some of us didn't choose this!" Carol grabs Sitwell by the collar and lifts him until he's dangling two feet from the ground. "We didn't ask for—"
"Danvers!" Natasha barks, and when she looks over, the assassin has pulled out her gun. "You need to calm down. If you're a threat to anyone in this vicinity I will not hesitate to take you down."
Carol looks down, and she's floating as well, the skin visible from her flight jacket lit up with a strange iridescent glow. She drops Sitwell and lands lightly, apologizing under her breath. The redhead nods once and clicks on the safety of her gun.
"Continue," the captain says to Sitwell, casting a wary glance at Carol's retreating form.
The Hydra agent chokes on a sob. "I-it cancels out anyone who's a threat to Hydra. Now or in the future."
"The future?" Steve furrows his brows. "How could it know?"
"How could it not?" Sitwell throws his hands in the air and laughs. "The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught Hydra how to read it. Your bank records, medical history, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. All of them just a button click away. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future."
"What then?" Natasha demands. What if it makes a mistake?
"It eliminates them. Oh god, Peirce is gonna kill me—the Insight helicarriers scratch them off the list. Millions at a time, worldwide."
Carol's hands are shaking when she snaps her head back at them, her body pulsating with a familiar heat. "You want to kill millions of people."
"It's all for the greater—"
"So help me god, if you say 'greater good', you sonofabitch, I will tear you limb from limb, no matter what Natasha says."
The master assassin looks as if she wouldn't lift a finger if Carol were to carry out her threat.
:::
"Hydra doesn't like leaks."
"If you say that one more time, I'm gonna open the car door and let DC traffic take care of you," Carol says. "It'll save Hydra the trouble."
"Insight launches in sixteen hours," Natasha leans forward in her seat. "We're cutting it a little close."
"Between two superhumans, a master assassin, and a guy with wings packed in the back seat, I think we're gonna be fine," Sam replies easily.
"Can you turn the radio on? He's breathing really loudly and it's throwing off my feng shui."
"I'm nervous—"
"Feng shui's got to do with your surroundings, Danvers."
"Well, his breathing is surrounding me, Romanoff."
Natasha opens her mouth to reply, but the car door is wrenched open and Jasper Sitwell is unceremoniously thrown out screaming.
"That solves that problem," Carol quips, but then the man on the roof of their car is shooting at them, and the bullets are barely glancing off of her skin, but all she hears is, "Fuck, this is a rental!"
Steve reaches over and slams on the brakes and the man is launched onto the road, and she thinks that's the end of that. But then he gets to his feet and starts shooting again, and between finding out she was on a major hit list and being shot at by a guy with a metal fucking arm, she decides that today is definitely not her best day.
Cars are honking, and most are just swerving around their little Prius (she decides to punch Sam for his bad rental choices another day), but suddenly, the car lurches forward and is sent barreling right towards creepy-metal-arm-dude.
"Why didn't you just get a hummer like that guy?" Carol exclaims, and Sam turns around and shouts that the rental agency gives you discounts for caring about the environment.
She has a thoughtful 'oh ' moment before the guy who threw Jasper Sitwell out the window launches onto the fucking car like he's Sonic the Hedgehog.
"Where the fuck do they breed these guys?" Sam shrieks, but Carol's already clambering out of the broken window and shooting right back at the man she'd less-than-fondly dubbed Super Mario. "Carol, get down from there!"
Then the car's flipping and her and Sam leap out of one side while Steve and Natasha are surfing on the goddamn car door. "You attract all the weird ones, you know that?" She shouts at Sam right before she dodges a grenade, of all things.
"You're the one who had sex with an alien from outer space!" He yells over his shoulder and ducks behind an abandoned car.
"You mistake me for being ashamed," she grins at him across the highway and he grins right back.
"Just like old times?"
"Yep," she jumps and lets off two shots before ducking once more. "Did I hit 'em?"
"Nope."
"Then it's just like old times."
"A little help here!" Natasha says as she stabs a guy twice and dodges twenty bullets aimed her way.
"You're doing just fine, Romanoff, don't worry."
"Damn you, Danvers, you're indestructible! You take a turn!"
Carol rolls her eyes, but next thing she knows, she's sprinting forward and launching herself at Super Mario. He ducks her punch, rolls away, and let's off two shots to her chest. Carol freezes, and that's enough time for the man to grab her by the throat and fling her off the ramp.
"Carol!"