S.H.I.E.L.D briefing
In the sky, several thousand feet above sea level, floats the most advanced military deployment vessel known to mankind. S.H.I.E.L.D's helicarrier houses a number of advanced state of the art facilities. The least of which are its combat training rooms with solid light hologram projectors, allowing any sort of combat situation, no matter how unlikely, to be simulated right before your eyes. It is in one of these rooms that Steve Rogers, better known as CAPTAIN AMERICA, fights with holographic projections of both Bruce Lee and Cassius Clay. His fight is in progress when a ping indicates that there's a message for him.
"Computer, hold program."
At Steve Roger's command, the holographic projections freeze, leaving Cassius Clay in the middle of a haymaker and Bruce Lee at the beginning of a roundhouse kick. He then approaches the door of the holo-room and waves his hand over it, making it fade into nothingness. Stepping into the locker room to retrieve his comm. set, he places it in his ear and receives the call.
"Hello?"
"Cap, there's been a situation, I need you in the war room by 0720."
"That's five minutes from now, and the war room is several decks up…"
As soon as he finishes his protest, Steve smiles mischievously.
"I'll see you in three."
Turning off his communications headset, Steve issues a program termination command to the holo-room. This causes the holographic projections to disappear, and the holo-room's door to reappear sealing it then grabs a S.H.I.E.L.D hooded sweatshirt and hurries out of the locker room. By the time he exits he already has it on. He leaps over a railing to fall one floor and into a roll from which he rises to continue his brisk jog towards one of the high speed elevators. As soon as he notices that the elevator doors are closing and Steve executes a handspring cartwheel to make it through the doors just in the nick of time. His sudden acrobatics catch the eye of another S.H.I.E.L.D operative in the elevator; she is clearly surprised by Steve's behavior but says nothing. She instead turns to salute him at attention.
"At ease."
At his command she relaxes.
"Please get the floor for Command."
Instantaneously, the operative reaches towards the elevator button panel to call the floor. As the elevator whisks away Steve stares off into space. He thinks about how much more complicated the world has become. He was just fighting solid light and air not even a minute ago! He thinks about how unnatural his life has been, from the transformation of a scrawny teenager who only fought battles in the pages of his favorite war comics to Captain America, first agent of the Allied army's special forces against the Axis powers. He thinks about how a tragic accident on his last mission cost the life of Bucky, and incarcerated him in an icy tomb; His body to be retrieved and revived several decades later, leaving him trapped in a world far beyond his time to which he has once again been called to serve. Steve Rogers is merely a fading ghost of a simpler past, a past that can no longer exist. Something tells Steve that from the day he was injected with that Super Soldier Serum, Steve Rogers was put on ice, only CAPTAIN AMERICA remained… At this final thought the elevator's doors open and the Captain steps into a buzzing hive of operatives and equipment that comprises the command complex. He glances at his watch.
"Less than one minute left, better hurry…"
S.H.I.E.L.D Command Center is a multi-leveled open atrium buzzing with activity. On the first level, where Cap just arrived by elevator, there are at least a hundred SHIELD data officers and technicians monitoring the conditions of the ship's communications, defense and engine systems. This group makes the necessary adjustments to ensure that the Heli-carrier remains fully operational and is known as First Echelon. Cap quickly makes his way through First Echelon and climbs the escalator to the second level. The second level is the intelligence center of S.H.I.E.L.D as it is where mission analysts and field support officers are at work collecting all the data transmitted from the field into dossiers and files for S.H.I.E.L.D's memory banks. It's not the most exciting job, but it is privileged and absolutely essential to the function of S.H.I.E.L.D as an espionage and counter-intelligence agency. It's here that Cap's stopped by an intelligence officer that deliberately stands in his way. She's a particularly assertive and ambitious officer that is known as Hill, Maria.
"Captain Rogers, you seem to be out of uniform."
The Captain, looking over Maria's head to the steps leading to Third Echelon responds absent-mindedly.
"Yes, I'm in a bit of a hurry –"
"You're not seriously about to go into Third Echelon wearing your sweats?"
"I don't have time for this. Move. Now."
At the firm and direct tone of his voice, Maria knows that she has overstepped her bounds. She may think that Captain America is given too much latitude as S.H.I.E.L.D's golden boy, but she's military born, bred and raised. No matter what you may think of the man beneath the uniform, you always, always respect the rank. Grudgingly, she steps out of the way and says through gritted teeth,
"Yes, Sir."
The Captain runs up the last escalator to the third floor of the Command Center, known as Third Echelon. This is where commanding officers brief and debrief all field operatives for missions executed by S.H.I.E.L.D. It also holds the Heli-carrier's war room where Nick Fury, executive director of S.H.I.E.L.D, convenes with his commanding officers to strategize battle plans that repel and neutralize any super-human threat to America's safety and security. Cap steps into the force field barrier that surrounds the war room while meetings are in session. As the field puts him into stasis to perform a bio-metric scan, Cap wonders how many minutes it's been since he left the locker room. The barrier recognizes that Cap has been authorized to attend the ongoing session and releases him from stasis and into the receiving area of the war room. As he approaches the door and is about to place his hand on the door's recognition panel, it immediately opens revealing Nick Fury in his operational uniform, with an unlit cigar in his mouth.
"Bout time you got here! Have a seat scout, we've got some serious issues to work out."
"Uh, Sure"
The Captain hastily grabs a seat next to Senior Command Chief Dugan. Fury continues,
"Let's get you caught up to speed; At approximately 0655 an attack was launched on Wakanda by an unknown agent, and it was successful."
"T'Challa…"
"Seems to be fine, or as fine as you can be when someone knocks down your front door with not one, but two vibranium dirty bombs. They've already identified an attacker; Man-Ape, one of the Panther's oldest enemies, but it's the other guy, the one that managed to steal large quantities of Vibranium from the mound buried beneath Wakanda that we can't get a bead on."
"How much Vibranium did they take?"
"Something close to 1.5 metric tons of the stuff. Here's the kicker though, the guy managed to remove and transport all this vibranium by himself without being recorded on any of Wakanda's surveillance equipment! We only have a couple of eyewitness reports to go on for a description."
At this statement, Dugan pipes up, "I still think that this sounds a bit like Castle." Fury responds,
"I know, but we checked and Frank is most definitely still dead, although it wouldn't be the first time a schmuck has managed to crawl out of a grave and cause some trouble. Plus, Frank may be a homicidal maniac, but he's not in the habit of murdering civilians."
Captain America asks "HYDRA?"
"I guess all my talk about crawling out of graves clued you in eh? Yeah, that's what we're currently thinking, that this mystery guy is somehow connected with a splinter group from HYDRA. Intelligence says they hired this man to do the job."
"The list of people able to pull off an attack like this isn't very long, and it gets even shorter when you take out all the people who would never work for an organization like HYDRA."
"I know, that's why we think that a resurrection was involved. This mystery agent is more than likely superhuman, perhaps even a mutant."
After a moment of thought the Captain responds,
"So what do we do? Where am I going?"
"That's where things get really hairy. All investigations into this sub-group have come up with little to no intel, and all our infiltrations have been absolute failures."
"Why?"
"These guys appear to be farmers, they grow crops, package and ship their goods through a local processing center. Yet they seem to have advanced brainwashing and retraining techniques. Every single agent we've sent into the field stopped reporting. When we recovered these agents they had forgotten everything about their identity and have been unable to recover it ever since."
Command officer Dugan elaborates, "Mental shields don't work; the intellect's still there but there's no twinkle in the eye, nothing to let you know that they're still in there somewhere. They're wiped clean."
"Tabula Rasa. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, there's a chance that you won't be coming back from this one. But you're the best we've got, and we've the best supporting you. Speaking of which, there's someone you need to meet..."
Fury's words catch the Captain by surprise. Fury is normally straight forward at briefings so the cryptic nature of Fury's last statement piques the Captain's interest.
"Who?"
"You've worked with him quite often but never on a job like this. He's gonna be your tech support, making sure that we got a back-up of your brain in case things go bad."
Captain America takes a second to think, and when he puts two and two together, the realization causes him to object with exasperation.
"Oh no... Not him? He's barely tolerable on our Avenger missions! You can't expect me to depend on him to save my memory?"
"You're going to have to, He's the only one in existence who's been able to transfer biological memory into electronic data and re-upload it successfully. He's only agreed to work with us on this because of you Steve."
Steve Rogers spends a moment in deep thought contemplating the situation, but then he remembers who he is. He is CAPTAIN AMERICA, the living embodiment of the American spirit, fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for not just all Americans but for every nation in which America has a vested interest. He loves his nation, he lives for its people, and he would gladly lay down his life a thousand times over if he could to keep her safe. He speaks with determination,
"When do I leave?"
"There's a quinjet on deck waiting to take you to Manhattan. Secondary briefing will commence there by secure-link. He'll be happy to work with you on something like this... Dismissed."
Captain America stands up to salute Nick Fury, then proceeds towards the exit of the war room.
"At least one of us will... Keep an eye on my memory banks will you? Stark has a bad habit of messing with things he really shouldn't."
Fury smiles as he returns the salute to Captain America.
"Don't worry, we won't let you come back any more scrambled than you are already. Knock 'em dead Cap!"
Captain America turns about to salute one last time
"Sir, yes sir."