MAIL BAG:

None:-(

OVER 100 FOLLOWERS THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH

Disclaimer: Um...

Special Thanks and Shout-outs: fangtastic21; MehhHehh; imaddictedtoshipping; MayflyMortalityfly; WificrazedDreamer

Title: "Shadow of the Day" by Linkin Park

Camp Lehigh, Wheaton, NJ
18 March 2014
1747 Hours, EST

The dingy elevator shivers and rattles as Steve and Natasha file in after me. There isn't a lot of room, even less so with Steve's muscular frame taking up a third of the space. Thankfully, the ride is short and in only a few seconds, the two Avengers and I are let into a room just as haunting as the office above. The lights positioned above us must be motion-activated, because as soon as the three of us step out of the elevator, rows of sterile-white lights blink into life. If not for the stacks of some of the oldest computer servers I've ever seen lining the gray concrete-walled room, I would have believed this facility to be some sort of a bomb shelter. The size of some of the servers reminds me of the large, cube-shaped computers my parents owned back in the nineties, when I was younger. My friends and I called them "dinosaur computers" while jokingly referring to them as fossils whenever we found one tucked away in one of InFUSE's storage unit.

A pair of steps in the center of the room leads up to a raised platform that holds a U-shaped table. On that table are the main controls and a series of box-shaped monitors and connected cameras. Every single surface is... clean?

As we step onto the platform, I run my finger across a small, nearby screen, and then the table it's sitting on. I hum in confusion and search any visible corners of the room. "There isn't any dust and there's no cobwebs anywhere. Someone was here recently."

"Even so," Natasha ponders, "the technology here is ancient. There's no way this could be the data point on the flash drive." Luckily, the signal connecting my earpiece to Tony is strong enough to work underground. I just finish describing the bunker to Tony when Natasha's eyes land on a sleek USB port that couldn't have been built earlier than a few years ago. Natasha pulls out the flash drive and secures it into one of the ports. As soon as she removes her hand from the device, a soft whirring fills the room. The controls on the computer on the platform begin to flash. More rows of lights flicker on, revealing the true size of the room. Not only is the bunker twice the size of the office right above it, but the rest of the space is taken up by even more computers that blink into life row by row.

I jump at the sound of a deep, garbled voice asking a question sounds like "Initiate system?" I turn to the largest monitor, the one right next to me, and see the two words glowing bright green across the ancient screen.

I back away and look to Steve and Natasha, silently asking the next course of action. I'm answered when Natasha leans over the keyboard and types, "YES" before hitting the ENTER key. The three words disappear as the computer hums louder.

Natasha smirks. "Shall we play a game?" She straightens. "It's from a movie that's-"

"I know," Steve cuts her off. "I've seen it."

"Is that War Games?" I ask.

"Yeah."

I snort. "Even Steve's seen it before me."

Not a moment later, the computer emits a single beep before a jumbled, pixelated face forms onscreen. A chunky camera fixed to the top of the computer slowly swivels to face Steve.

"Rogers, Steven Grant, born nineteen-eighteen." My jaw drops at the sound of the clear, accented voice filtering through the hidden speakers.

The camera focuses on Natasha. "Romanov, Natalia Alianovna, born nineteen-twenty-eight."

Finally, the lens lands on me. "Beckman, Arianna Ranee, born nineteen-ninety-one."

"Fuck, that's creepy," I whisper.

"Some kind of recording?" Natasha wonders out loud.

"I am not a recording, Fräulein! Although I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in nineteen-forty-five, but I am." A smaller screen to the right shows a faded, black-and-white image of a man whose face can only really be described as toad-like, with his wrinkly forehead and bulbous eyes, which are framed in thick, round glasses.

"Who is this guy?" I ask.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull," Steve explains as he wanders off the platform.

"Great, he's a fucking Nazi."

"First correction," the nasal voice echoes, "I am Swiss."

I shrug. "Doesn't make a difference, you're still probably a racist asshole."

Zola ignores me. "Second, look around you. I have never been more alive."

"Steve, give me your earpiece. Trust me." He gives me a weird look, but he places the small device in my hand. I switch it on and hold it closer to the source of Zola's voice as he recounts his terminal diagnosis and the recording of his brain before he died.

"Tony, are you getting this?" I ask in disbelief through my own earpiece.

"Yeah. Holy shit, we literally invited Hydra into our security systems, through something called Operation Paperclip."

Operation Paperclip? I remember the book where I read about it, but I can't remember what was said about it. Still holding out the earpiece, I voice my question out loud, and Natasha responds, "After World War II, SHIELD recruited German scientists with..." she shrugs, looking for the right words, "...strategic value."

"They thought I could help their cause," I hear the smirk in Zola's voice, "but they also helped my own."

"Hydra died with Red Skull," Steve argues.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place!"

"Prove it."

"I will, but first, what I am about to say is for your ears and eyes only." I hear a crackling fizz in my ear, originating from the earpiece I'm wearing. I pluck it out and frown at it before placing it back in my ear. I press the button and call out, "Hello? Tony, are you there? Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

I press the button, but the white noise doesn't end. Frustrated, I pull out my earpiece again and shove it in my pocket before returning Steve's. "He's jammed our signal, I... I've lost contact with the Tower."

"We're on our own for now," Steve speaks solemnly. "We'll be okay."

"And now we can get to business," Zola announces. More screens switch on. "Accessing archives. Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity couldn't be trusted with its own freedom." Videos of Red Skull and Nazi and Hydra soldiers play across the screens. "What we did not realize, is that if you try to take that freedom, they resist." Shaky footage of Captain America and the Howling Commandos is shown.

"The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded, and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew, a beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crises, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed." I frown at the images of war, despair, and fire, before my eye catches the image of plated silver metal adorned with a red star.

Wait a second. "And what about InFUSE?" I demand as a feeling like ice envelopes my heart. "InFUSE was founded closely with SHIELD; surely you managed to slip some of your rats into its foundations." I feel so selfish. How could I not even think of everyone at InFUSE, or even my teammates- my friends- at Savior? Did they know about the Hydra leak? Did Lazarus or Cassidy know about it?

Or worse, is it too late to warn them?

"As you should know, Fräuline, Hydra is everywhere! We have spread our reaches far into the governments of the most powerful nations."

Natasha shakes her head. "That's impossible. SHIELD would've stopped you."

"Accidents will happen."

"Holy shit..." I breathe. I raise my eyebrows at the images of Director Fury, but my eyes bug when shots of news clippings of Howard Stark and the fatal car crash he and his wife were in slide on and off screen. "The Starks... It was Hydra all along. They're the ones responsible. They're the ones who killed Tony's parents." I turn to Steve and Natasha. "They must've known about the leak."

Zola continues, "Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, Hydra's New World Order will arise. We've won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life- a zero sum!"

I jerk in surprise and almost drop the earpiece in my outstretched hand when Steve shatters the main computer with his fist. The now spiderwebbed screen goes dark, but that doesn't stop Zola's activity. His face soon reappears on a smaller screen almost directly to our right.

"As I was saying-"

"What's on this drive?" Steve demands.

"Project Insight requires insight, so I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Natasha adds.

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."

An ominous clang resounds throughout the bunker. The three of us whirl around just in time to see the doors to the elevator slide shut. Steve throws his shield in an attempt to block the door from closing, but he's too late. The shield ricochets off the wall to the right before spinning back to Steve, who angrily catches it.

Almost immediately after, a frantic, high-pitched beeping fills the room. Natasha pulls out her phone and grimaces as she reads the screen. "Guys, we've got a bogey," she reports hurriedly, "a short-range ballistic. Its ETA is thirty seconds, tops."

"Who fired it?" Steve asks disbelievingly.

"SHIELD. The missile is under their authorization."

"SHIELD?" I shriek.

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain," Zola reveals.

Natasha snags the drive from the port.

"Admit it; it's better this way."

Steve's head whips around as he frantically searches for a place to hide.

"We are both..."

"There!" I yell, pointing to a large, covered drain embedded in the floor.

"...men out of time!"

Time slows, yet everything fades into a blur.

Steve stalks towards the rusty grate and rips it from the ground.

Natasha seems to fly through the air in an effort to make it to the ditch.

The entire bunker shakes with the force of the missile's impact. The farthest wall bursts like an overfilled balloon, and tendrils of orange fire invade the bunker as I follow Natasha into the gutter. I reach my two teammates just as Steve raises his shield above him and Natasha, and at the last second, I rip my off my sweater, causing my hat to fly off, and engulf them with my wings in an attempt to block them from the fire. I gasp as chunks of the ceiling batter and bruise my wings and my exposed back.

My ears are numb.

My head is pounding.

My breathing is too jagged.

I can see slabs of concrete shifting and collapsing amidst the fire in the corner of my eye. Steve's shield isn't enough. My wings aren't enough. I see a chunk of crumbling material fly straight towards a gap where the shield and my wing don't connect, right at the side of Natasha's skull. I swipe my hand outwards, throwing up a small telekinetic barrier just in time. I try to expand the field of the barrier to cover us, but the force of the falling concrete proves to be too much. The barrier wavers and begins to disintegrate. The throbbing in my head grows. I scream in agony as I force the shield to hold steady for just a little longer-

Sup homies

I was able to find a video for the Zola scene, so I kept true to that as much as possible (with my own additions, of course).

Bet y'all're surprised that I updated this soon. You're welcome ;-)

THIS STORY IS SO CLOSE TO 18K VIEWS