"New Jersey? That's an… unexpected development."
Out of the story Loki had been given, the location the USB had linked back to caught him most by surprise.
"Not every super villain has a flair for the dramatic, you know." Natasha turned from the front seat to smirk at him.
Loki shifted, stretching out to lay across the back seat of the truck. "No? I suppose that's why I am wasting away in the backseat of a stolen truck instead of anyone else." He scowled as his wound ached. From his vantage point he had been watching Steve closely between shifting in and out of consciousness.
By far the most expressive and open of the group, Steve had always been easy to read. It was simply his nature. Now was no different. He was trying to put on a brave face, responding as he should to Natasha's kissing jabs, but Loki saw how tense he was. Loki was sure Natasha knew it too, she more than likely felt similar just didn't show it. There was a grey area in what happened, something that Loki was more than familiar with but that clearly did not sit well with Steve. The man possessed a conviction Loki had to admire but without a clear enemy Loki could tell he was shaken.
Knowing this, Loki took care as he broached his next topic. "So… Why was it that I, of all people, you deemed trustworthy enough to contact? Other than my distaste for S.H.I.E.L.D., that is."
Steve and Natasha exchanged a glance and a silent conversation passed between them. At Steve's nod Natasha turned back to look at him, sliding her arms around the headrest of her seat. "It really was my executive decision. Don't flatter yourself too much." She held up a hand and began to count on her fingers. "Thor is wherever, Tony has helped S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past and he's halfway across the country, Bruce is too vulnerable and also out of our reach, and Clint… I would have preferred him but he's across the globe and surrounded possibly corrupt S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Are you seriously suggesting that any of them may have any knowledge of this? That's laughable."
Natasha glared at him momentarily. "There's also that whole deal with any communication I send out being monitored. And before you say anything; I figured you were adept enough at this kind of espionage to figure things out without me having to spell it out for you. That's not necessarily a good thing, by the way."
Despite her tacked on jab, Loki smirked and closed his eyes. Letting the sound of the truck and the weariness of extreme blood loss lull him to sleep.
Hours later the sound of a door slamming next to his ear roused Loki from his sleep. He rose slowly, the chunk missing from his arm still shooting bolts of pain through his body. In front of them stood a fenced off facility, long abandoned. Once he exited the truck he could see the doubt on Natasha's face and a more complex emotion on Steve's.
"Where is this place?" A sign hung on the gate that read: Camp Lehigh. He could read it just fine; what he wanted was a response from Steve.
"This is it?"
It seemed Natasha too wanted more than that, as she prompted Steve again. "The file comes from these coordinates."
"So did I." Steve's voice sounded distant.
Allowing Steve to be lost in his memories, Loki dealt with the locked gate. Tearing the lock apart with a solid tug from his good arm, not the most elegant solution but an effective one. He pushed the gates open and was followed by Natasha and Steve as the sun began to set. In the growing darkness the buildings of the decrepit camp loomed over them menacingly. The camp was silent, seemingly undisturbed for decades.
"This camp is where I was trained." Steve's wistful voice cut through the dark.
"Change much?"
Loki noticed Steve stop, his voice was soft when he spoke. "A little."
Not much later Natasha spoke up again, frowning at her phone. "This is a dead end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio." She pocketed her phone. "Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off."
The expression on Steve's face changed and Loki glanced behind him to see what had caught his attention. "What is it?"
Steve answered him as he began to jog toward his focus. "Army regulations forbid storing munitions within five-hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place."
Loki smirked as they approached the building. "Sometimes you remind me remarkably of Thor… He surprises me with all sorts of military information, Asgardian, though, of course."
With a single swipe of his shield Steve snapped the lock and the three of them stepped inside.
The sight that met them was rows of dusky desks, an older looking version of the eagle crest of S.H.I.E.L.D. emblazoned on the far wall. Dim white baleful lighting gave the place a ghastly feel. Loki grimaced as he ran a finger along the surface of a desk and picked up a thick layer of dust.
As they passed through the rows of long abandoned workstations Natasha murmured in astonishment. "This is S.H.I.E.L.D"
"Maybe where it started." Steve spoke in the same hushed tone.
The rows led them to a back room; where the portraits of three people hung askew in a place of honor. Loki faintly recognized the trio from his studies of his companions. He saw easy resemblance to Tony from the man in the center, mostly the eyes.
Natasha echoed his thoughts. "There's Stark's father."
"Howard."
The man on the left was a general of some kind by the look of his garb, Loki passed him by. The woman on the right struck him as more familiar. He remembered seeing her face in pictures, dark hair, dark lips in the grey toned photograph, there significance of her in Steve's previous life. Though her name escaped him.
"Who's the girl?" Natasha glanced at Steve, Loki saw in her eyes that she already knew the answer. She wasn't oblivious, she was testing Steve.
Steve passed on her comment, moving on with a clenched jaw and a downward gaze. The soldier paused in front of one of the many empty shelves. "If you're already working in a secret office…" Loki watched as Steve shifted his weight and hooked his fingers between a crack in the wall of shelving. With a heave the shelf gave way and revealed a secret elevator. Steve turned to look at them. "...why do you need to hide the elevator?"
Impressed by Steve's keen eye, Loki merely smiled and strode past him.
The elevator was activated by a number pad combination; something Natasha cracked with ease. Soon they were on their way down. Nervous silence engulfed them as they descended into the bowels of the earth. The elevator doors creaked open after the long descent.
A dark room met their eyes, Loki could barely make out what looked to be rows of primitive machines. Lights flickered to life around them and lit the room; which was vast in a scale Loki had not expected, filled entirely with similar blocky machines.
"What is this machinery? I've yet to see it before…"
They stepped up on the platform in the center of the nest of machines, dark screens surrounded them. Natasha half laughed as she looked around at it all. "This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient…" She trailed off as she spied a small, modern day, port for the USB.
Loki, realizing what surrounded them, watched as she plugged it in and the computers around them shuddered to life, clicking and groaning.
Lettering typed itself, a mechanical voice read out the words: "INITIATE SYSTEM?"
Natasha shrugged at the two of them and laid her hands on the keyboard. "Y-E-S, spells yes." Whirring machinery filled the air and Natasha grinned, lowering her voice. "Shall we play a game?" She looked over at the two of them. "It's from a movie that was really pop-"
"I know, I saw it." Steve shut her down, rather bluntly in Loki's opinion. The soldier focused on the screen in front of them as it came to life.
A blocky camera on top of the computer swiveled to face Steve. A staticky human face flickered to life on the screen. It listed off his name and birthdate in a thick accent. Next was Natasha, the program called her by her Russian name. Lastly Loki; to his surprise the thing didn't draw up entirely empty. It named him, "Odinson", though it listed his date of birth as "unknown."
Unsettled, Loki glanced over at the others briefly, hesitant to take his eyes off the screens in front of them. He saw the same uncertainty in their faces.
"It's some kind of recording..?"
"I am not a recording, Fraulein." The face admonished her quickly. "I may not be the man I was when the captain took me prisoner in nineteen-forty five. But I am alive."
Loki turned to the screen closest to Natasha as an old picture of a pudgy man appeared on it. His identity was a mystery to Loki but Steve seemed to recognize it, as he glared darkly at the monitor.
Natasha expressed similar confusion. "You know this thing?"
Turning his full attention to Steve, Loki watched as the captain looked from the monitor with the picture to the staticky green face that shared its likeness. He could practically see Steve's mind racing. Angry disbelief plain on his face as he began to pace around the main console, inspecting it. "Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull… He's been dead for years."
"First correction: I am Swiss." The scientist snapped. "Second, look around you I have never been more alive. In nineteen-seventy two I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving… On two hundred thousand feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain."
Loki couldn't help but laugh. "That's ridiculous since when did Midgard-"
"How did you get here?" Steve, now back next to him, looked deadly serious and cut off Loki's outburst.
"Invited."
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value." Natasha recalled, just as serious as Steve.
The face of Zola shifted, Loki could swear it smiled. "They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."
"Hydra died with the Red Skull!" Steve countered the machine's statement roughly. Both Loki and Natasha turned to him cautiously. There was more than anger in Steve's voice, there was a definite note of desperation present.
"Cut off one head-" The scientists face shifted to what Loki recognized as Hydra's symbol briefly before switching back to the face, which then split in two. "Two more shall take its place."
Voice lowering, Steve advanced on the monitor. "Prove it."
Images began to flicker across the screens in front of them. "Accessing archive… Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom." Images of old war soldiers blew past them. "What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded and I was recruited." More images flickered past, Stark's father, the woman, Zola again. "The new Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For seventy years Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war-"
Significantly more somber, Loki still scoffed openly at the prospect. "What a mad concept. Taking credit for everything that has happened. There is living contradiction to that in this room-" Loki cut short as the broad side of Steve's shield struck him in the stomach hard enough to wind him.
The machine detoured its speech momentarily. "The Red Skull would have been fascinated by you…" It regained its pacing and continued. -Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and history did not cooperate… history was changed." More images flicked faster and faster acrossing, blurring.
"That's impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you." Natasha stepped closer, breathless disbelief in her voice.
Loki swore he heard contempt in the robotic voice as is responded. "Accidents will happen." Death certificates appeared, Loki saw Tony's father among them. At the end of the list Nicholas Fury's face filled the screen. "Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once a purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum."
With a great smash of glass Steve's first interrupted Zola's speech. The blonde soldier fumed in front of the shattered screen for a few moments.
The screen next to them started up and the scientist continued. "As I was saying…"
Intense with anger, Steve rushed over to the flash drive, pointing at it. "What's on this drive?"
"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Natasha joined Steve.
"The answer to your question is fascinating… Unfortunately you shall be too dead to hear it."
At the first sound of scraping metal Loki turned on his heel and saw the heavy elevator doors begin to close. He summoned a dagger and flung it toward the doors with his good arm, hoping to catch the doors and force them open. Something large whizzed past his head and he realized Steve had the same idea. The dagger and shield clanged uselessly against the just closed doors.
"Guys, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. Forty seconds, tops." Natasha held up her phone, nervous fear in her eyes.
"Who fired it?" Steve caught his shield and approached her.
She looked up. "S.H.I.E.L.D. Loki can you get us out of here?"
Bitterly gesturing at his wrecked arm, Loki grimaced. "Not three people. Not after what I did to this thing."
Zola started up again as they surveyed the room. "I am afraid I have been stalling, captain. Admit it, it is better this way. We are both of us, out of time."
"Here!" Steve leapt toward a grate in the floor, ripping it away.
Loki and Natasha sprinted toward the hole as the bunker exploded around them. He locked eyes with Steve as they leapt in and saw him mouth "shield". He grimaced but nodded and flung his good arm above Natasha. A golden barrier flickered at his fingertips and lights from the explosions disappeared under rubble and dust that rained down on them. Loki shuddered as his body went numb and cold. He barely saw Steve also hold up his shield above the three of them, taking some of the weight off Loki.
For what felt like ages they suffered through dark and deafening noise.
AN: Still chugging along. Thanks for the comments!