Everyone's rested up and recovered and enjoying a nice slow start to the term, but the spy is still out there causing trouble for our heroes. But the scales might be starting to tip the other way...
Their first week back, Peggy had the team coming in to get ready for another mission. Not a factory run this time, but they'd found a compound in Morocco that seemed to consist mostly of weapons storage and laboratories.
"There's not anything we want out of there," Peggy told them. She smiled. "Basically, we just want you to go in and blow the place to hell."
"You're serious?" Dugan asked, his eyes lighting up. "We're not saving anything, just blowing it up?" Steve chuckled at his excitement. It had been weeks since the poor guy had gotten to blow anything up.
Peggy nodded.
"Oh, Peggy Carter, I love you," Dugan enthused.
"That's Steve's line," Bucky said from across the table.
"Yes, it is," Steve agreed.
"I'll fight you for her," Dugan replied.
"As entertaining as that would be…" Peggy said with a smile. She drew their attention back to the briefing and planning for the upcoming weekend.
They finished up their planning, ready to go early Friday morning. Steve hung back as the others headed for dinner. "Hey, Peggy?"
She looked up from her tidying up. (Steve had offered to help with that before, but he wasn't allowed to—she had a system and he didn't know where everything was supposed to go.) "Yeah?"
"I, uh, I'm sorry I missed giving you this when we got back, but…" He held out a thin, green box that had been in the bottom of his school bag. "Happy birthday." She'd turned seventeen over the Easter Break.
Smiling, she put down her papers and stepped forward to accept the box. "You didn't have to do that," she said.
"Sure I did. Not every day your best girl turns seventeen."
She grinned and pulled the lid off, and he watched her carefully. Seventeen was a big birthday, and he really hadn't been sure what to get. He was aware that his choice was a little unusual, but he hoped it was the right one.
"Oh," she breathed, lifting out the shining silver knife. "Oh, that is lovely," she said, setting the box aside and examining the blade.
"You really like it?" Steve asked. He'd gotten it at the same place he'd gotten Bucky's knife. This one was smaller and thinner, meant to be hidden in a boot (or wherever Peggy hid things), but it had the same magically enhanced blade that would never dull or break. Steve knew concealable weaponry wasn't the sort of thing you usually got a girlfriend, but it seemed like something Peggy would appreciate.
"I love it," she declared. She bent and slid it into the top of her boot, smiling at the way it fit, then stood up and wrapped her arms around Steve's neck to pull herself up to kiss him. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said. He arched a mischievous eyebrow. "A good enough present to convince you not to leave me for Dugan?"
She laughed. "It certainly is a strong argument. Besides, I don't know about that mustache. It'd have to be like kissing a badger."
Steve laughed at that and picked her up off the ground, kissing her soundly.
"Mm, yes," she said when he set her back down. "I think I'll keep you."
"Good," he replied with a smile. He twined his fingers through hers. "Ready for dinner?"
The mission that weekend went fairly smoothly. They destroyed the compound, and though there had been more numbers to fight their way through than originally anticipated, they'd kind of been expecting that. Until they caught this spy, it just seemed smarter to act like every mission was compromised.
Peggy and Phillips were working hard to catch the spy, Steve knew. They were poring over every bit of intel they had, even set a trap or two, but this guy was good. He managed to stay out of reach, though Peggy's digging did uncover a couple of lower-level spies. Not that Phillips ever displayed a great range of emotion, but Steve didn't know if he'd ever seen him so proud as when she nailed them down. Steve was proud of her for that too, but she wasn't satisfied. The ones she'd caught hadn't caused near the damage this one had, and she was determined to track him down.
Every week or two, they would have another joint mission with the 107th and 89th to take out another factory. Each mission was ultimately successful, in that the prisoners were freed and the factories were destroyed. They were taking some pretty good hits, though—injuries were heavy on each mission, and the casualty count kept rising. By the time they had taken out five factories, the 89th had lost seven people, and the 107th had lost five. No matter how much Steve knew that that kind of thing happened in combat, it still tore him up inside that he wasn't able to stop it. If only they could catch this guy, maybe they could regain the upper hand. Steve knew that wouldn't guarantee anyone's safety, but it would sure help.
As the end of term came in sight, Phillips started sending them out on fewer missions, standing firm on his declaration that they be given time to fulfill the 'student' part of their student-soldier roles. Exams were coming up, with N.E.W.T.'s on the way for several of the upperclassmen. Steve was frustrated that they'd made no progress in tracking down the spy, but a break from combat would be good for everyone, and people would be safe.
A break was what they all needed, but a mission came up two weeks before exams that couldn't wait.
"I'm supposed to be studying for end of term exams and we've got a mission?" Jim whined as they gathered at their Wednesday meeting.
"You did sign on for this, you know," Peggy pointed out.
"Yeah, but you could give a guy a chance to actually pass some classes," he argued.
"I'm afraid we have to work to Hydra's calendar," she said, unperturbed. "I do keep trying to get them to work to your schedule, but they won't take the hint."
"It's bad enough to be evil incarnate, they have to be rude too?" Jim sighed, taking the folder she was holding out.
Steve chuckled and leafed through the folder Peggy had given him. S.S.R. spies had discovered what amounted, in essence, to Schmidt's summer home. It was a small castle in the Romanian mountains, misty and rainy and not really what Steve would call a summer home, but that was beside the point. They weren't looking to fight Schmidt—they had to go now because they were actually counting on him not being there—but the intelligence that could be gathered in a place like that was well worth the trouble of knocking down the front door.
"Sweet, we get a mission in a castle," Dugan said, flipping through his own folder.
Gabe looked up at him. "We live in a castle. Why is that exciting?"
"Because all our missions are in factories and shady neighborhoods and caves and crap. An actual magical castle that we don't live in and, thus, don't know anything about, is cool. It's like we're going on a quest or something," he argued.
"Again," Monty said. "We go on 'quests', if you want to call them that, on a fairly regular basis."
"I don't want to call them that," Dugan argued.
"Une mission dans un château en montagne est comme un film," Jacques put in. "Comme le Roi Arthur."
"Exactly," Dugan agreed. "Like a King Arthur movie!"
Gabe and Monty exchanged dubious looks.
"If we could get back to the mission at hand," Peggy interrupted, amusement twinkling in her eyes.
"Yes, Ma'am," Dugan said, turning to face her eagerly. "Tell us more about the castle."
"Well," she said, still smiling. "There is a lot that we want you to collect while you're there, but once you've done that, we want you to blow it up."
"Yes!" Dugan crowed, exchanging gleeful high fives with Jacques and Monty.
There were lots of things she wanted them to be on the lookout for, particularly any mention of the Valkyrie or Tesseract. Anything they could find in the house was fair game, though, and then when they were done, blowing the place up would give Schmidt one less place to hide.
"Hey, can I ask," Jim started curiously, looking up from his folder. "Not that I don't think we can handle this, but this is Schmidt's house. It's top-level stuff. Why are you sending us in instead of a bunch of Aurors?"
Steve looked up at Peggy, who was biting her lip in contemplation. He'd wondered that too, but he wasn't going to ask. Peggy had good reasons for sending them where she did.
Peggy sighed. "We're sending you because it's so important. That spy that's been making our lives hell is still out there, and…" She smiled up at them with a smile that was both proud and a little sad. "You're the only team we trust enough to do it."
The group was silent for a minute as they took that in. "We won't let you down, Pegs," Jim said solemnly. The other boys all nodded in agreement.
"I know," she said, a little waver of emotion in her voice.
Since they'd be gone over the weekend, Steve and Bucky spent most of the evening working ahead on their homework. In Potions the next morning, they groaned along with the rest of the class when Kendall set them a ten-page essay for Monday—a page for each ingredient of the Nine-Herb Charm, and a page on the final product itself. And that was on top of the studying for exams they were doing.
"Complain about it all you like," Kendall told them. "Ten pages from ten of you—you're not the ones who are going to have to read one hundred pages of your drivel."
"Well, then, why'd you assign it to us?" Jim muttered unhappily under his breath.
"Because you chose to take O.W.L.-level Potions, Mr. Morita, and that's the sort of workload you should really have come to expect by now," Kendall said and Jim grimaced. He'd evidently forgotten how sharp his hearing was. "And five points from Ravenclaw for cheek," he added, sniffing and pushing his glasses back up his nose.
Jim waited until he turned around before sticking his tongue out at his retreating back. Bucky snorted to himself and Steve shot Jim a sympathetic look, but just pulled out a sheet of parchment and started taking notes on stinging nettles.
"You know, I'm glad Phillips sends out notifications of who's going to be gone on missions and gets homework extensions," Bucky said as they left. He bumped Jim with his shoulder. "Can you imagine Kendall's face if you went up to him after that and said, 'Hey, by the way, I've got a mission this weekend, so I'm going to need an extension on that ridiculous essay."
Jim snorted. "Yeah, I can imagine the look, which is why, if it was our job to do that, I would have sent Steve."
"Hey!" Steve protested.
"You're in charge," Jim told him, clapping his shoulder. "That's one of the burdens of leadership."
"Yeah, well, considering I think Kendall hates me just as much as he hates every other student in his class, I'm glad that's Phillips' job," Steve replied. Bucky and Jim laughed at that, and Steve thought he even heard a chuckle from Ethan Green as he came out of class behind them.
They made it through the rest of the day with, all things considered, a light load of homework, so after working for an hour or so, he, Bucky and Jacques set the homework aside and started packing for their mission the next day. Dave was frowning from the other side of the room, because, sure, they were a specialty team and all, but did they really need keep their guns under their beds all the time? Jacques responded by pulling out several (unarmed) explosives that he kept under his, and though that might have been funny, it did nothing to make Dave feel better.
It was barely after sunrise when they left the next morning, but Peggy was there to see them off as usual and remind them to be careful. Becky and Esther were there too, as was Vicki Marlowe. She'd only started coming to see them off this term—it was part of that thing she and Bucky were doing where they were both putting a little more effort into their relationship.
"So, what's going to happen with you two when Vicki leaves in a couple of weeks?" Steve wondered.
"We'll keep working on it. What?" Bucky asked. "Stop looking at me like that."
"Nothing," Steve said, smiling. He bumped Bucky with his shoulder. "I hope it works out," he said sincerely. He'd always known Vicki was special to Bucky, the way he kept circling back to her. About time they got things figured out.
From the school gates, they apparated into the eastern Carpathian Mountains. They had a fair hike ahead of them—they were a couple of miles out to avoid any detection spells Schmidt had set up on the place. "Watch out for bears and wolves," Monty told them as they checked their direction and started hiking. "There's a lot of those around here."
"Just, like, regular bears and wolves, right?" Gabe clarified. "Not giant magic ones or anything?"
"Well, they do have werewolves, but not up here in the mountains, I would think."
Monty's knowledge of magical creatures was usually pretty trustworthy, so they were probably safe from werewolves. Wolves and bears were plenty to worry about.
It was only a couple of miles, but the way was rocky and steep and it took nearly all morning to reach where Schmidt's magical defenses began. They decided to sit down and have lunch outside the barrier before working on getting through. It was summer, so there wasn't any snow, but it was still pretty chilly this high up. Steve was glad their uniforms offered some protection from the cold, especially since building a fire was probably a bad idea. He took off his helmet and scratched the back of his head. He probably needed a haircut—it was getting long in the back and kind of itchy when he put his helmet on. He spun the helmet in his hands and contemplated the wing design on the side. Each of the Howlies had the little emblem somewhere on their mis-matched uniforms—most of them wore it on a sleeve (Bucky's was on his left, while his new Sergeant insignia was on his right.), although Jacques seemed to prefer his on a pocket. Gabe had sketched the design up not long after they got their name—he said they needed a cool symbol to go with their cool name, and they were the Howling Commandos and the wing had something to do with howling like the wind. Steve hadn't followed the entire explanation, but he traced his thumb over the symbol with a smile. Traceable reason or not, it was theirs.
After lunch, Jim and Dugan set to work on the barrier spell. It wasn't something they could just take down—they were giving Schmidt a little more credit than that—but patience and the right charms and tricks could get someone through it. It took another hour before they had it right. By combining a couple of physical charms they'd brought with them with the right incantations, one person could get through the barrier at a time. After going in, they'd take off the charms and toss them back across the barrier, then Jim and Dugan would repeat the process for the next guy. Eventually, they were all through and on the move again.
They ran across a couple of traps before Schmidt's castle finally came into view, but fortunately, they'd been on the lookout. There were patches of ground laced with Incinerating spells, Freezing spells, powdered slowstone, Asphyxia curses, and something Dugan called a Vashta Nerada curse—he tossed a leftover piece of ham into the seemingly empty space and it was devoured before it hit the ground. There was one point too where Bucky yanked Jim back before he stepped into a bear trap, and Jim seemed personally offended that Schmidt would include among his defenses something so mundane. Though they could see the castle through gaps in the trees, with avoiding the traps it took them nearly an hour to cross the forest that stood between it and the barrier spell.
Finally they came to the edge of the tree line, and the castle was visible at last. It was a long, low building, with dark stone set at sharp angles, giving the place a heavy, sinister feel. It was a lot smaller than Hogwarts—if it wasn't shaped like a castle, Steve almost would have just said it was a big stone house. It was plenty big enough for an evil genius's lair, though. It was going to take them a while to search the place.
"That's it?" Dugan complained. "We finally get a mission in a castle and that's it? It's like a house with a couple of towers."
"What kind of defenses are we looking at?" Steve asked him before he could really get going.
"Fairly minimal, actually, since we made it through all that," he replied, jerking a thumb back in the direction of the forest and the barrier spell. "I mean, we still can't just walk in, but…"
"There are people in there," Jim said. "I count seven, all on the entry level, and they're probably guards with the way they're moving around."
"Grouped together?"
"No. We're gonna have to sweep through pretty quick once we're in. Or make 'em come to us," Jim replied.
"Coming to us might be better," Bucky said, casting his eyes around the surrounding rocks and trees for threats. "Who knows what the hell kind of spells Schmidt has sitting around in there. Running around sounds like a great way to accidentally trip one."
"Good point," Steve agreed.
"Well, if we can get in," Monty said with a smile. "I'm sure we could come up with something distracting to draw the lads our way."
"Jacques, scope out the entrances," Steve said. "See what you can find."
Jacques shot him a salute and vanished into the trees. Hardly five minutes had passed when his voice crackled through the radio. "La porte arrièrre du côté sud est ouverte à votre convenance, messieurs," he said, a smile in his voice.
"What? He got the door open already?" Dugan wondered.
"Six years in, man," Gabe said, standing up. "I don't know why he still surprises you."
They crept toward the south end of the castle, keeping in the trees until the door Jacques mentioned was visible. It did look open, and as they got closer, Steve saw Jacques poke his head out to beckon them in, and also what looked like feet sticking out of the door. About seven feet in the air.
"What the hell?" Bucky wondered.
Jim laughed. "Oh, man, he's good." At the door, they realized the feet belonged to one of the seven guards, unconscious and levitating near the top of the door, half in and half out. "Nice," Jim said, and Jacques grinned.
"I don't get it," Gabe said.
Jim pointed up at the hovering guard. "We're not allowed in, but that guy is. And the spell's reading him in the door, so it's open. So, if we go under him…"
Steve grinned, nodding his approval at Jacques. "Very nice."
They all went in, and after securing the kitchen, Monty set about the business of setting up something to attract the other guards' attention. Jim did another check now that they were inside, and didn't read anyone but the six remaining guards. They hadn't been sure what they would find here, and Steve was glad it was only guards. He wouldn't have put it past Schmidt to keep prisoners in his house, and, knowing Hydra's penchant for human experimentation, Steve really didn't want to know what kinds of experiments Schmidt might keep somewhere he knew was secure and close at hand.
With some help from Dugan and Jim, Monty figured out what kind of sound the alarm spell on the door should have made, and set up a duplicate on the kitchen floor. Once the team was in position around the entrances, Monty set off the spell, along with several small explosions, and the guards came running.
More intelligently than some of the Hydra soldiers they'd met before, while all the guards did come, they waited until they were all together before bursting through the kitchen doors. Steve's team still had the element of surprise, but these guys were good—Steve supposed Schmidt would want better than average soldiers guarding his house. The battle was quick, but it was brutal. Staggering to sit down before his profusely bleeding leg gave out from under him, Steve was supremely glad they'd decided to come when they were sure Schmidt wasn't here. He couldn't imagine what security would have been like with the head of Hydra at home.
Everyone was alive, but they were all bleeding or had something broken or worse. Jim was actually worst off—some curse had hit his leg, and though he'd managed to stop the bleeding and the pain, he couldn't move it at all. Everyone else was able to get themselves to him, though, and he was able to fix all of their injuries up—even Monty's left eye, which had taken a nasty curse and Jim had worried for a minute that he might lose it.
"Thanks," Monty said, blinking his eye experimentally. "Although, I imagine I would look rather dashing with an eyepatch."
"Nah, you're too skinny to be a good pirate," Dugan replied, looking up from where he was examining Jim's leg to see if he could figure the curse out.
"Anything?" Steve asked.
"No, it's one that just has to wear off," Dugan said, standing and shaking his head.
"Thought so," Jim replied. "Looked like two days to me. You think so?"
"At least," Dugan agreed.
Steve sighed. A man down and they were only one room in. "You're sure you're not hurt?" he asked.
"I'm sure," Jim said. "Actually, if you get me a crutch or something, I can move. I'm not gonna fight anybody," he added with a sigh as if he knew what Steve's next words were going to be. "But we're not picking anyone else up on the scans in the rest of the house, and if anyone else comes in, I don't want to be down a leg and hanging out by the back door."
Not that they would have left him here alone, but that was a good point. Besides which, if he really wasn't hurting, they could definitely use him checking for traps and spells through the rest of the house. "Okay," Steve said. He handed Bucky his shield and knelt down next to Jim. "If I carry you, can you keep up the checking for spells you're doing until we find a place further in to set up base?"
"Sure thing, Cap," Jim agreed, shifting around and looping his arms around Steve's neck as Steve pulled him onto his back.
"Alright," Steve said, shifting and adjusting Jim's weight. "Dugan, you take point. Bucky, you have our six?" Dugan moved to the front of the room and Bucky nodded. "It may take longer," Steve said. "But until we clear the place for spells, I think we should stick together. Let's move."
They slowly moved through the first level of the castle. Dugan was out front, checking for surprises, and Steve could hear Jim muttering by his ear as he sent spells out to scan the house. Away from the front and back doors, the first level was trap-free. Steve supposed that made sense, if this was where the guards stayed. There was a dangerous, but fairly simple spell blocking the door to the second floor, and Dugan was able to get it down. Steve's eyes widened a little as he took in the change in décor. Downstairs was obviously for the guards and, when Schmidt was around, the help. Comfortable, but utilitarian. Upstairs was obviously where Schmidt lived, and Steve was surprised at first by how luxurious it was—but then, he had only ever encountered Schmidt in his factories before, hadn't he? He supposed being the leader of Hydra paid well.
There were bedrooms and sitting rooms—not particularly well-warded. There was a library, a very large indoor garden, and several rooms that seemed to have no purpose other than to display some rather disturbing artwork.
"Guy likes to look at himself, huh?" Gabe mused, eyeing one of the larger paintings. It was a portrait of Schmidt as the Red Skull that took up nearly an entire wall. There were several like it, in this room and the next. As best Steve could tell, he was collecting portraits of himself in artistic styles from the past thousand years or so. There was even a stained-glass window.
"What in the hell is this supposed to be?" Dugan wondered, staring at a painting that was lots of lines and angles and, despite being almost entirely red, gave a distinct impression of teeth.
"I think it's a Cubist portrait of Schmidt," Steve said. "See, there's an eye over here. It's like five different sides of his face at once."
"Oh, yeah, I see it," Jim said from his perch on Steve's back. "Ugh," he said with a shudder. "Keep walking, Cap. That thing's gonna give me nightmares."
The third floor was smaller and mostly just storage, and the sun was starting to set outside by the time they had it and the second floor cleared. "Okay," Bucky said with a sigh. "I'm noticing a conspicuous absence of anything worth guarding this place so heavily for." He waved a hand back at the levels they'd cleared. "There's not even a study or an office up here."
"So, where does he keep whatever he's hiding?" Steve finished for him. He'd noticed the same thing. They weren't looking through everything, just clearing it for hostile spells at the moment, but there hadn't even been anything that looked like it warranted looking through.
"We still haven't done the dungeon level yet," Monty reminded them.
"That's where it's all gonna go to hell," Jim sighed.
"Thanks for that, man," Gabe said.
"I'm just sayin'," Jim protested. "Evil wizard scientist who lives in a castle in the mountains, basement level, dark, creepy dungeons, nothing of any interest up top…"
"Yeah, well," Steve sighed. "That's why we saved the basement level for last. Everybody ready?"
They nodded and descended the stairs. The entry to the basement from the main level was heavily warded, and it took Jim and Dugan a little while to get through it. Steve sighed. It wasn't going to be a picnic down there, but he really hoped Jim wasn't right.
The stairway down went on longer than Steve expected. It was dark and cold when they hit the bottom, and the corridor they were in felt cold and echoey. "How far down do you think we are?" Jim asked.
"I think we're inside the mountain now," Bucky said. He nodded at the wall. "Look." The walls were no longer the dark, heavy blocks that had built the upper levels, but raw stone.
Gabe let out a low whistle. "Man, this place could go on forever."
"Lemme check," Jim said. He waved his wand at the air, and though nothing happened that Steve could tell, after a minute, he nodded. "Oh, yeah. It's a hell of a lot bigger down here than upstairs."
Steve nodded. "Alright," he said, drawing in a deep breath. "We'd better get started."
The corridor they started in branched into others, with rooms carved out into the stone of the mountain. Some were small, some were behind locked doors, and some seemed to stretch out into vast caverns in the darkness beyond their doors. They didn't go into any of them. Right now, they focused simply on checking each door and hallway for trap spells and dismantling every one they found. They could explore once it was safe. The traps they found were nasty, but the sort of thing one would expect in an evil wizard's dungeon. As they went, Jacques crept along in the front with Dugan, muttering a map spell to help them keep track of where they were.
It took them three hours to clear the lower level. Once they were sure it was secure, they followed Jacques back to the entrance and set up base in one of the rooms by the stairs. They pulled out some lanterns and started unpacking their gear. Steve lowered Jim down to sit on the floor, and he felt kind of light-headed as he stood back up. It was well past time when he should have eaten dinner. It was past dinner time for everyone else too, so they set to lighting the fireplace along the back wall and getting out food. Bucky had brought a large frying pan in his magic bag, and Steve chuckled to himself as he overheard him instructing Monty on the best way to prepare the food. He'd really been paying attention when Mrs. Barnes taught them how to cook.
Gabe was pulling out and setting up the radio, pointing out some of the new features to Jim. They'd brought the heavier duty long-range one, and since Jim had a pretty good grasp on how the communication gear worked, he was going to be in charge of that since he couldn't walk anywhere anyway. Jacques was transferring his map spell onto several sheets of parchment so they'd be able to find their way around down here when they searched the rooms. Dugan and Steve busied themselves with setting up a security charm on the stairs that would only allow the seven of them in or out. Yeah, there wasn't anyone else here, but there was no point taking chances. By the time they were done with that, it was time to eat.
They all felt better after eating. Jacques handed around his copies of the map, and they looked over them and decided to start their search down at this end of the stairs and work their way to the other end of the level. Since the security spell was blocking the stairs, and Jim would be close enough to monitor it, they decided to split up to search. The place was huge, and they could cover more ground that way, but they double-checked all their radios and decided not to wander off too far from each other. Just in case.
The first couple of rooms Steve checked appeared to be holding cells of some kind. There were shackles on the walls and stains that looked like old blood on the floors, and Steve wondered how often Schmidt kept people chained up down here.
The next room was a lab of some kind, and Steve spent a while in there, checking through log books and examining a cupboard full of potions. The radio chirped at his shoulder from time to time—Jacques mentioning a box of books he'd found that looked interesting, or Bucky finding a set of floor plans to something. They decided that anything that looked like Peggy or Howard or Phillips needed to see it should be taken back to Jim in his front room. Steve scooped up a set of journals that seemed to detail Schmidt's attempts to study the serum in his own blood. They were old—Schmidt's interests had more recently shifted to the Tesseract, and Steve suspected he might not actually want to figure the serum out. He was all about the power, and power never wanted competition.
After taking the books back and checking in with Jim, Steve moved out again. He found a room filled with dusty, cobwebby machinery stacked around the edges. Once he got some light up, he was able to see it a little better and get a feel for the designs. They were similar to the guns and things they'd seen in combat before—early versions, maybe? He ran a couple of spells over them and tested a few of the ones that seemed safest. Nothing seemed operational, so, yeah, probably first drafts of more dangerous stuff. He didn't think any of it was worth lugging down to Jim's room to take back, but he did take the time to look over each piece carefully, and he took one of the newer ones apart and looked over the insides. Howard could look back at his memories of it and see if there was anything in the design worth knowing.
Gabe came over the radio and said that he'd found what looked like a parking garage. Dugan wasn't far from him and came to help him check it out—not just to examine the vehicles, but to see if, since it was a garage, if there were any entrances he needed to secure. Steve offered to come help, but Dugan said they had it, and they checked in with him every couple of minutes until they decided the garage was secure. Evidently, Schmidt got the vehicles in magically somehow, because there was no exit to drive through.
Steve felt like he'd hit the jackpot in the next room he came to. There was a large drawing desk in the middle of the room, and the shelves around it were stacked with rolls of parchment. As he unrolled them, he found architectural blueprints, weapon designs, anatomical drawings, sketches and diagrams of vehicles…One of them even looked a lot like the little submarine that Clemson had tried to escape from him with in the Thames after he'd taken the serum. On the desk itself was a diagram of some kind of machine—it was similar in shape to the capsule Howard had designed to help with the serum application, but it was bigger and more solid. Steve looked over it carefully, but couldn't figure out what it was for. The chemical notes along the sides seemed to suggest very cold temperatures—maybe some kind of storage. He unpinned it from the table carefully and rolled it up. He pondered the desk as he did so. The table was awfully low, and he knew Schmidt was very near the same height he was, if not a little taller. Zola was pretty short, though, and Steve's stomach turned as he realized he might be standing in the same spot the little scientist did when he worked up his twisted designs.
All the designs and schematics seemed like something worth saving, and it took him several trips back to Jim's room before he got it all out. He was pleased to see piles of things growing along the sides of the room. The rest of the team seemed to be having a productive raid as well.
Back into the corridors, and the next few rooms Steve went through didn't have much in them. One contained a bed—maybe for quick catnaps when going back upstairs was too much work. There were a couple of labs that didn't seem to have seen any use in a while—no notes or logs, glass beakers and heavy cauldrons coated in a thin layer of dust. Some of the rooms had nothing in them at all, and Steve guessed they were for storage, or had been carved out and not found a use for yet.
All the rooms were dark, and only a few of them had candles or light fixtures. All of the corridors were dark. Steve's wand lit his way, and the occasional burst of chatter from his radio reminded him he wasn't alone, but the further out he got, the darker and gloomier it felt. If he thought about it, he thought he could feel the entire mountain pressing down above him, the rocky ceiling groaning with the weight of it all. He shuddered and decided not to think about it.
He passed another empty room and wondered if maybe he'd gone farther into the space than Schmidt had gotten around to using when he rounded a corner and flung himself to the floor, his reflexes barely giving him enough warning to avoid the burst of magic that shot over his head and took a chunk out of the wall behind him.
Steve hit the ground and rolled, springing back to his feet with his shield and wand raised, then froze when he saw who was standing there aiming back at him.
"Bucky?!"
Bucky was standing eight feet away, his little light in a box from Becky in one hand and his wand—levelled at Steve's face—in the other. Even in the white light of the box he looked pale, and he was wide-eyed and vibrating with tension, breathing like he was on the verge of a panic attack.
"Whoa, Buck, it's me, it's okay," Steve said.
"Steve?" he asked, and he didn't sound at all sure about that.
"Yeah," Steve replied far more calmly than he felt, raising his hands slowly in a gesture of surrender. "It's me." He carefully snapped his shield back onto the clasps on his back and lowered his wand into his pocket. Bucky didn't look hurt, but something had clearly rattled him. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
Bucky didn't shoot any more spells at him, but he kept his wand up and continued to eye him uncertainly. Keeping his hands up, Steve stepped forward gingerly. He reached out a hand, arching a questioning eyebrow, and when Bucky didn't object, he laid it carefully on his arm. "It's me," he said again. "I'm right here."
Bucky looked down at the hand on his arm, back up at Steve, and then let out a long, shuddering breath, almost crumpling in on himself as tension drained away and he lowered his wand. "Steve?" he breathed, and this time it wasn't unsure—he knew exactly who Steve was and he desperately needed his help.
"Yeah, Buck, I'm here," Steve said, moving forward to catch him as his knees buckled. "I gotcha." What the hell had happened to him?
"Steve," Bucky said again, his hands pawing at Steve's uniform like he was looking for an anchor. "What's…what…I don't…" he stammered, his eyes darting anxiously around the dark hallway. "Steve, I…"
"Bucky," Steve said. "Bucky, look at me. Look at me," he told him. He didn't know what had happened to get him here, but he recognized that look in his eyes and knew where his head was right now. Bucky pulled his eyes back to Steve's and Steve gripped his shoulders tightly. "This isn't Zola's lab."
"It's not?" Bucky asked softly, and the fear in his voice sounded so much younger than seventeen.
"It's not," Steve said firmly, shaking his shoulders a little. "You're not back there, Buck. You're not at the factory and you're not in the lab."
"Are you sure?" Bucky whispered.
"I'm sure," Steve said. "I promise."
Bucky swallowed and nodded. "Okay," he said shakily. He swallowed again, got his feet a little more firmly under him. "Okay," he said again, sounding a little more like his normal self. His eyes roamed around the hallway again before coming back to rest on Steve's face, and he was back now, but he was still scared. "Steve, where are we?"
Since seeing Bucky's ashen face, worry had been rolling in Steve's gut, but now it started to churn more forcefully. "We're in Romania," he told him. "That mission to Schmidt's house?"
"Mission?" Bucky asked, confusion furrowing his brow. "I don't…" He shook his head. "Steve, I don't remember coming here. How did we…What's going on?"
The only reason Steve's voice was still so calm was because he knew freaking out wouldn't help Bucky at all. "I don't know," he said. "But we'll figure this out, okay?" He looked at Bucky until he nodded, and he couldn't keep all the worry out of his voice as he asked his next question. "Buck, what happened?"
Bucky opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I don't know," he breathed. "Steve, I don't know!" That panic was starting to come back again.
Steve swallowed down a wave of anxious nausea rising in his throat. "Okay," he said, gripping Bucky's shoulders tighter. "Okay. Let's play it back. What do you remember?"
Bucky drew in a semi-steadying breath, his eyes narrowing in thought. "I…I don't know, I—I woke up on the floor."
"You woke up?" Steve asked, looking up at Bucky's hairline for any trace of blood. "Are you hurt?"
Bucky scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. "I don't think so."
"Okay," Steve said, not entirely satisfied with the answer. "Where did you wake up?"
Bucky waved at the darkness behind him. "Somewhere back there. I'm not sure. But it…it looked like a lab. There was a table and…stuff. And I had to get out of there. But it was just…dark. I walked for a long time. I didn't know where I was—I still don't know—but it was dark and there was no one around and I was really starting to freak out because I thought…That's why I was—wait, crap! Did I hurt you?" he asked, looking Steve up and down worriedly.
"No," Steve assured him. "You missed."
Bucky nodded, wincing. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Steve replied. "It was a good instinct. You generally want to shoot at things that surprise you in the dark." He got a ghost of a smile for that. He was going to ask why, if Bucky had woken up alone and unsure of where he was, why he hadn't called for help on the radio, but he noticed that it wasn't clipped to his shoulder anymore. It must have fallen off when he hit the floor. For whatever reason he'd hit the floor. Maybe he'd tripped a trap they missed or something. "And that's all you remember?"
Bucky nodded, swallowing nervously.
"Okay," Steve said, more confidently than he felt. "Okay. Let's go back and we'll get Jim to look you over, alright?"
"Jim's here?"
"Yeah, Buck. The whole team's here." What the hell had happened?!
"Cause we're on a mission," Bucky said, and it almost wasn't a question.
"Yeah," Steve said. He looped an arm over Bucky's shoulder and started steering him back the way he'd come. "Come on, we'll figure this out, okay?" The thought of whatever could have done this terrified him, but Bucky was scared, so, right now, Steve could be brave.
"Okay," Bucky agreed, falling into step with him, and if nothing else, Steve felt him relax a little as he leaned into him, so at least that was something.
Searching the rooms as he went, it had taken Steve a long time to get this far down the hallway, but walking straight back took about ten minutes. By the time they got there, Bucky was breathing easier, still obviously unnerved, but regaining his composure.
"Hey, guys," Jim greeted, fiddling with the radio as they walked in. "You bring me some more stuff to—whoa, what happened?"
"We're not sure," Steve said. Bucky was looking around the room like he was trying to remember if he'd seen it before, and with a little prompting he told Jim the same thing he'd told Steve.
"Uh huh," Jim replied, eyeing Bucky thoughtfully as he finished his story. "Okay, well, come over here and let me take a look at you. Grab a box or something for him, will you, Cap?"
Steve moved a box over so Bucky could sit in front of Jim's chair.
"Did something happen to your leg?" Bucky wondered, catching the way Jim's leg was propped on another chair.
"Yeah, I—oh, right, yeah, you don't remember. Got hit with a curse while we were fighting our way in. It'll wear off in a while. Here, lean in a little and let me see your head," Jim told him, gesturing with his hands for Bucky to move forward.
Bucky complied, and he looked mostly back to himself now, though Steve could still tell he was nervous. "Do you think we missed a trap spell or something?" Steve asked.
"Mm," Jim mused, running his hands carefully around the back of Bucky's head, then tilting his head back to check his eyes. "Maybe, but it would've had to be inside whatever room he was in. We got all the ones on the doors."
He continued his examination, and Steve took Bucky's wand and ran a check over it with Priori Incantatum to see if that yielded any clues. The last spell Bucky had cast with the wand was the one he'd almost hit Steve with, then various illumination or security charms before that. He hadn't fought anyone since the battle in the kitchen.
Jim sat back and waved his wand over Bucky, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, you're not hurt. Are you feeling any pain anywhere?"
"No," Bucky replied. "I feel fine. Except for…"
"Except for missing a big chunk of time," Jim finished for him. "How much time are you missing, actually? What's the last thing you remember?"
"Well, like I said, I woke up—"
"No, I mean before that," Jim interrupted. "You said you don't remember coming on the mission. But you don't seem surprised that we're on a mission, and you know who we are and stuff, so it's not like whatever this is affected your whole memory."
Steve hadn't considered that horrifying possibility until Jim said it.
"So, what's the last thing you remember before waking up on the floor?" Jim finished.
"Um…" Bucky considered. "We were in class. Professor Kendall had just gotten on your case for complaining about the essay, and we were talking about stinging nettles."
Jim and Steve looked at each other, and Steve wondered if Jim was as worried as he was.
"What?" Bucky asked, catching their expressions.
"Buck, that was…That was yesterday morning," Steve told him. He looked at Jim again then back at Bucky. "That was a day and a half ago."
"What?" Bucky demanded, his eyes widening. "I'm missing a day and a half? What the hell happened to me?!"
Jim tilted his head thoughtfully. "Hang on," he said. He pulled out his wand again. "Let me check something." He waved his wand contemplatively over Bucky, his eyes off to the side like he was listening to something. "Huh."
"No, don't…" Bucky said. "Don't diagnose me and then just say 'huh'. What is it?"
"Someone modified your memory," Jim replied. "That Obliviate spell we talked about in Defense Against the Dark Arts last term. Pretty well done too, although that transition gives it away."
Bucky gaped, uncertain of what to say, but Steve's brain caught on the way Jim had said that. "You said someone," he said. "What makes you think it was a person, not a trap spell?"
"You can't use Obliviate in a trap like that. I mean, you could, but it would just take out everything. To take out specific things, you need someone controlling the spell, directing it," Jim explained.
"Wait, this memory is actually taken out of my head?" Bucky asked.
"Maybe," Jim allowed. "It might just be covered up."
"So I could get it back?"
Jim shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. There's a lot of factors involved in that. Things like how powerfully the spell was cast, how much was erased and how old or significant it is…"
"You're telling me I might never get this back?!" Bucky asked, a nervous tightening in his voice.
"I don't know," Jim said. "I'd say your chances are better since we caught it so soon, but I don't know enough about it to say. This is a Rains and Phillips question."
"So, there's someone else here," Steve said. The fact that someone had messed with the inside of Bucky's head—again—was infuriating, but the presence of someone hostile was more immediately threatening.
"We should warn the other guys," Jim said, reaching for the radio.
"Wait!" Steve said, shooting out a hand to grab Jim's wrist. Bucky's radio was missing. Maybe he hadn't just dropped it. "Whoever did this, they might have Bucky's radio," he said. Both Jim's and Bucky's eyes went to Bucky's shoulder where the radio should have been. "Use a Patronus."
"Right," Jim agreed. "Don't want to tip him off." He waved his wand and four little silver otters popped into existence in front of them.
"Tell them to pair up," Steve said. "We don't want anyone else getting jumped."
Jim nodded, then spoke to the Patronuses. "Guys, we've got an unknown hostile in play who may have one of our radios. Pair up and keep an eye out and do another security sweep. Report back in with Patronuses every ten—" He looked up at Steve and corrected himself. "Five minutes. Every five minutes to either me or Cap." He nodded and the little otters dashed off into the darkness.
Steve's mind was overflowing with questions, but for the moment, he just pulled up another box and sat down next to Bucky, close enough that their shoulders were touching. Bucky didn't look like he was about to panic anymore, but he kind of looked like he wanted to throw up.
"Alright," Steve said, looking over at Jim. "Whoever this is, how did they get in here?"
"I've been checking that spell you and Dugan put on the door every few minutes," Jim said. "It hasn't been touched. They didn't get in that way."
"So, there's another entrance."
"Must be."
"It'd have to be someone who's familiar with the layout of the place," Steve mused. "Since no other doors turned up while we were checking things out. Some kind of secret entrance, maybe. Can you tell if they're still here?"
Jim shook his head. "I checked as soon as I sent the Patronuses off. That spell doesn't have the range for a place this big."
Steve nodded. He'd thought that would be the case. "Why would somebody do this?" he wondered.
"He must've seen something they didn't want him to see," Jim replied.
"Yeah, no, I know," Steve protested. "I just mean, this is Hydra we're dealing with. Why not just kill him?"
Jim opened his mouth, then closed it again. "That…That's a good question."
"I mean, I'm glad they didn't," Steve continued. "But it doesn't make sense."
"Because I knew them," Bucky said quietly, startling them both.
"You remember?" Steve asked hopefully.
"No," Bucky said, shaking his head. "But think about it. You checked my wand," he said, nodding at Steve. "Except for what I shot at you, I didn't attack anybody or even cast any defensive spells. If I'd come across some random Hydra agent, I wouldn't've just stood there. But if it was someone I knew…"
"Then you wouldn't attack," Steve agreed.
"I might be surprised, but not on the defensive," Bucky went on. "I…" His mouth dropped open as realization dawned in his eyes. "The spy," he said. "It has to be the spy."
"How d'you figure?" Jim asked curiously.
"Because it's someone I must know, but someone who shouldn't've been here," Bucky said. "Like, okay, I know it's not anybody on our team, but just for example's sake, say Dugan was the spy. If I saw him going through stuff in a room down here, I'd just be like, 'Well, that's his job. Okay, I'll go to the next room'. But if it was like, Howard or something…"
"You wouldn't react like he was hostile but you'd wonder why he was here," Jim concluded.
"And no matter how well he explained it, he couldn't risk you saying anything about it once we got home," Steve finished.
"Exactly," Bucky said. "So, whoever it was would have to wipe my memory of meeting them or just kill me. And they didn't kill me because, I mean, what would you guys have done if you'd found my dead body on the floor?"
Steve shoved that image out of his head and just answered the question. "We'd lock the place down." He was tracking Bucky's train of thought now. "And whoever this was, killing us wasn't their goal; they were here to get something out before we found it. They were short on time."
"Going off your last check in," Jim said, pondering his copy of the map. "You were a few rooms down, but in the same hallway as Gabe. And the spy may not have known that Gabe was that close, but he'd know we were all here and someone would have to be close."
"So he buys himself time," Bucky said. He huffed a disgusted sigh. "He probably got out while I was wandering around and freaking out."
Steve inclined his head. Bucky was probably right, but it was hardly his fault. "Buck, you can't blame yourself for that. Besides, even if one of us had found you right away, the spy would still have plenty of time to get out—we still would have regrouped and tried to figure out what was going on just like we're doing now."
They were interrupted just then by the Patronuses reporting in—Dugan's giant dog and Gabe's bobcat both had nothing to report. Jim sent the otters out again to let them know odds were good that if they found someone, it would be someone they knew.
"So now what?" Bucky asked.
"Now we need to get you back to the infirmary," Steve said.
"The mission's not over," Bucky argued.
"Buck, you don't even know what the mission is!" Steve snapped. He regretted that the second the words were out of his mouth. "Sorry. I—"
"It's alright," Bucky said. The look in his eyes told Steve he understood. "But I'm not hurt, and I want to help."
Steve looked over at Jim. "If he stays, will that decrease his chances of getting his memory back?"
"No," Jim said.
"But you said something about catching it so soon," Steve argued.
"Yeah," Jim replied. "But it's not…It just targeted a specific memory. It's not still eating away at his brain or anything. What I meant about catching it so soon was that the longer you go without realizing your memory was modified, the harder it is to find what needs fixing. Your brain starts to normalize it, work around the glitches and stuff to try to heal itself. Especially if it's a smooth transition. If it's just a big old hole, you're gonna be aware of it no matter how long it is, but if whoever did the modifying was careful about starting and stopping, it's hard to figure out what to fix. It's a more noticeable gap, and Bucky caught this almost right off, so his conscious brain's not gonna let his subconscious brain gloss over it. It'll be equally as easy or as hard to fix when we get home as it would be right now."
"You're sure?" Steve pressed.
"I'm sure," Jim said. "I'd grab him and apparate him home myself if I thought he needed it."
Bucky glowered at that, but Steve chuckled. "Okay." He knew Jim took the health of the team very seriously, and he trusted his judgement.
They decided to wait until the other four had finished their security sweep rather than try to get in the middle of it. The dog and the bobcat came back a few more times to report, but by the end they said that they'd run every scanning spell and security check they could think of, and they hadn't found anyone but themselves. The spy had gotten away. Steve and Bucky moved out again to resume their searching of the rooms, and Steve told the other teams to stay in pairs and to keep communicating only with Patronuses, just in case. He had Jim radio back to Peggy on a different frequency to tell her what happened and have her be on the lookout for anyone coming and going suddenly.
"You're sure you're okay?" he asked Bucky as they searched another lab.
"No, I'm not okay," Bucky said, flipping through a log of experiments. "They got in my head again, Steve, and they took something out, and…" He swallowed hard and looked up from the logbook. "And I'm…I feel angry and I feel scared and I feel…violated. But they're not gonna beat me." His voice shook a little bit, but resolution crept back into his features. "I decided that a year and a half ago; they are never going to beat me. I'm gonna finish this mission, because Johann Schmidt and everything he stands for deserves to burn in Hell. Then I'm gonna go home, and I don't care what Rains or Phillips has to do to get these memories back—I'm gonna let them do it, because that spy deserves to burn with him!"
Steve nodded and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Let's do it, then."
They worked throughout the night. It was a long job, and they could have slept in shifts back in the base room with Jim, but nobody felt like sleeping after what happened to Bucky. Everyone wanted to get out and get home. Bucky was working with a cold, silent determination, and Steve didn't try to distract him. Bucky was right, this needed to get done, and he didn't know what to say anyway to make what happened better. He hoped that just being there was doing something to help, and though Bucky never lost his intensity for the task at hand, he did seem to settle as the night wore on.
Around seven in the morning, they stopped and regrouped back in Jim's room for breakfast and to touch base. Based on the map and where they'd been, they guessed they had a little over two thirds of the place done. If they kept up this pace, they should be done this afternoon and home around dinner time.
"This is it," Bucky said as they stepped into a new room. "This is where I woke up," he explained. Looking around the large room, Steve could easily see why a memory-wiped Bucky would have been afraid he was back in Zola's lab. The place was definitely a lab, and while one half of it appeared to be for machinery, the other half was very clearly used for work on people. There was a blood-stained metal gurney, tables of syringes and beakers and vials with the dried residue of questionable-looking liquids inside, and a shelf of surgical equipment that, on closer inspection, had not been well-cleaned after its last use. Over to one side was a desk littered with scraps of paper, its drawers and those of the filing cabinet next to it empty and hanging carelessly open. Someone had been in a hurry.
"I guess this is what they were after," Bucky said, looking over the desk. Nothing remained to give any hint as to what the contents may have been. The scraps of paper littering the top were just that—scraps. Even the trash can was empty.
"They must not have gotten word we were coming until we were already here," Steve said. "Otherwise they would've gotten here before us."
Bucky nodded in agreement. "Does that mean we're finally starting to catch up with him?"
"I hope so," Steve said. "I've just about had it with this guy."
Bucky huffed a laugh. "'Just about'? He's almost gotten you killed, like, twenty times this year. How many more is it gonna take?"
Steve snorted but he smiled, glad that Bucky was back to making jokes and complaining.
By midafternoon, they'd completed their sweep of the dungeon. Their haul was quite substantial, and it seemed like the easiest way to cart everything back was via the fireplace. Jim and Steve worked on setting up the connection back to school while Monty, Dugan and Jacques swept through the rest of the place laying their explosives. Once they got the fireplace going, Gabe went through, and Steve and Bucky carried things to the fire and tossed them in for Gabe to catch and set aside. They were going directly into Phillips' office—no one else needed to see what was coming through.
After everything was through, Steve radioed Dugan to let them know they were heading out. (Dugan, Monty and Jacques were going to leave the house and flip the detonators on the explosives from a safe distance. Once the warding went up in flames with the castle, they would apparate back to Hogsmeade.) He picked up Jim again, and, after some debate, they decided it would better if Steve carried him against his chest instead of on his back—less chance of their heads knocking together as they spun. Bucky grabbed the rest of the gear and followed after.
Stepping in to Phillips' normally immaculate office was like stepping into a junk shop. A small path between the fireplace and the door was all that remained clear. Phillips was grumbling to himself, already sorting the piles of things they'd brought back. He gave them a quick analytical nod, then grunted in greeting and returned to his work. Peggy and Gabe were there too, along with Nurse Rains.
After they gave a quick report, Rains started to shuffle them towards the infirmary, Jim on Steve's back again.
"Wait a minute, Gwyneth," Phillips said, and it took Steve a second of wondering who he was talking to before realizing that Rains must have a first name.
Phillips stepped away from his sorting. He nodded his head in Bucky's direction. "If you end up needing help with this one, don't ask anyone but me. If it's beyond us together, we'll send him to St. Mungo's, but no one outside this room needs to know what's wrong with him. If whoever did this realizes we're trying to get this memory back, they'll try to kill him." He cast a sharp eye over all of them, then looked at Gabe. "Jones, you head for the gates, meet the rest of your team, and make sure they know not to say a word."
"Yes, Sir," Gabe said, nodding quickly and heading for the door.
"We'll need to put him in a private room," Phillips went on, looking back at Rains. "And we'll need some sort of excuse—"
Rains cut him off with a smile that scared Steve just a little bit. "Oh, don't you worry," she said. "I've got this well in hand. And when this works, you save a piece of this snake for me."
Will Bucky and Steve run into another dead end, or has the spy made a fatal mistake? Tune in Friday to find out!