Discovery!


In the lower level of the H.Y.D.R.A. facility…

Fury, Hill, Coulson, and a handful of other agents arrived at the lower level of the facility after returning the elevator to full functionality. Once the doors opened, the agents quickly flicked on the flashlight attachment to their pistols and disbursed out, covering each angle of a pitch-black room. Almost instantly, they felt the extreme rush of cold air course through the eerily quiet and massive level.

"Is there a light switch somewhere?" Hill whispered, glancing at the concrete walls.

Nothing.

As they progressed through the room, they found rows of metallic crates all labeled with the radioactive symbol. There was also stacks of cages that reeked a foul stench. To their subtle shock, there were skeletal human remains in them.

"What is this place?" Coulson wondered aloud, "What was H.Y.D.R.A. hiding down here?"

"These are probably their failed human experiments," Fury firmly answered, observing each of the crates, "These were people that didn't matter a care to anyone. Easy targets."

"It looks like they've been rotting here a while," Hill noted.

"There was a string of disappearances all throughout North and South America in the late 90s. Every cold case probably ended up here and other H.Y.D.R.A. 'black sites'," the director sternly told her, indicating his disgust with what they were seeing.

Some of the agents returned to the elevator to call for more troops to come assist and to search for a light source.

As they neared the end of the massive room, one of the agents called out to them. They calmly walked over to a giant block of ice, about the size of half a school bus, sitting in the middle of what appeared to be a platform used to keep the ice frozen over.

"What the hell is this doing here?" the director questioned.

"Wait… what's that?" Hill followed up.

They shined their flashlights directly into the middle of the block of ice. Frozen inside the block was a body.

"Why would H.Y.D.R.A. keep this guy down here?" Coulson firmly questioned, "It just doesn't make sense. Who is this guy? Is he one of them?"

"Maybe a mutant?" Hill suggested.

"No," Fury negated both their answers, "Look closely."

The figure wore a dark red hooded cloak that was lined with light-brown fur to keep him warm. He had some type of black flak-jacket with cargo pants and combat boots. In his right gloved hand was a black sniper-rifle with some sort of dark green covering on the scope and on the barrel.

The most distinguishable part was his mask. It was a golden brown mask with small slits to breathe and to see through. It was out of the ordinary, nothing that they had seen H.Y.D.R.A. ever wear.

"Perhaps a local? A soldier?" Coulson took another few guesses.

"I said look closer, Coulson."

He pointed his light directly at the man's right arm. There was a S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia patch embroidered on his suit.

"What the hell? He's one of ours?" Hill questioned in shock, "But, that can't be. We didn't know of this base until just recently!"

"It could be one of our agents they've captured in other operations. They probably brought him here just for him to end up like this," Coulson sighed.

"What do you think, sir?"

Fury studied the man closely, looking him up and down to try and gain a clue of who he might be. The iceman was enigmatic. Besides the mask, there was little to accurately identify based off physical appearance alone.

"I'm not sure. If he's really one of ours, then he must've been involved in an operation since before my tenure as director started."

"You've been in command a long time though, boss. What makes you think that?"

"Well, because there's two things I'm most certain of here. One, as director I'm fully aware of every operation that goes on, both secret and public. I'm too certain of it to know that I couldn't have miscounted one agent out of that mix. And two, we re-designed the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo twice since the turn of the millennium."

"Huh. The S.H.I.E.L.D. patch is the logo before the re-design in 2001," Coulson closely observed.

"Correct," the director remarked, "Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we have one of our missing agents."

"'Missing agents'?" Hill then skeptically asked, "Sir, agents don't just go missing, do they?"

"You joined the special operations section after we had made technological advances in the way S.H.I.E.L.D. tracks its special agents, Hill," Fury answered, "Before, agents went missing all the time. Some still do today but we have a better grip on finding them through our surveillance tech. Back then… well… it was a different story."

"When H.Y.D.R.A. was more spread out, more active, they'd capture, torture, and kill our agents. Sometimes we'd find their bodies hanging from a streetlamp in some back alley in Europe or find a bag full of their body parts in a sewer grate in South America," Coulson continued to explain, "Those were dark times."

Hill's eyes widened in disbelief that it really occurred.

"Yep, that's why it's important we bring this poor soul back home," Fury noted, "We'll find out his identity, notify his next-of-kin, and perhaps get a clue as to why he was out here and how he ended up… frozen."

About a minute later, a larger force of S.H.I.E.L.D. troops arrived to help secure the lower level and bring up light sources to fully illuminate the room. Cluttered with everything they had seen were weapons caches and light armored vehicles. A tunnel connected to the room that probably led out to the outside.

As they began to seize everything, Fury couldn't help but to fixate his gaze on the block of ice. It was very strange to him to see somebody, let alone a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, like that. The body looked like it was in the middle of falling through the water. It was almost as though the water around him froze up instantaneously.

He had heard of H.Y.D.R.A. tech that had the ability to freeze things, but he had never seen it in action or anything like that. He safely assumed that that's how the iceman ended up like that.

The agents brought aboard a pressurized crate and placed the block of ice in there, where it would remain in a cold enough temperature to keep it frozen until they thawed it back at headquarters.

With the operation a success, Fury returned to the Black Hawk, leaving a detachment to keep the facility secured and to investigate it further for any more information and leads as to the whereabouts of H.Y.D.R.A.'s leader, Baron Strucker.