Psst… *looks around* hail hydra
The Office Of Naval Intelligence, Suitland, Maryland, December 13, 2012
Author's Note: When infiltrating clandestine agencies, I don't recommend the front door.
Which is what I'll be doing right now with our story! :-D
I tried to do this before 9/3/2020, when the new Avengers game came out and I got to go to my happy spot. Because there was some serious ass that needs serious kicking.
And I got my serious boots on (because according to the game, I live right in the heart of AIM territory!).
Time to get you some!
"Huntsman, Mongoose, Terminator, you are go for Phase Two. Happy hunting, gentlemen."
"Wilco, Big Momma. Moving forward to Phase Two", Captain Steven Grant Rogers replied as he turned to look at the man sitting in the passenger seat of the 2013 Cadillac Escalade, seeing James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes sitting with an intense look upon his face as the veteran stared at the building they were about to tackle. "You ready for this, Buck?" It was still so surreal to know that his best friend was not only alive, but sitting next to him looking as if he were merely thirty years or so old, long brown hair draping down his head and a thick close-cropped beard upon his face. Just a year ago, more or less, he had been mourning the loss of a man he called brother. Rescuing Bucky from HYDRA had been a powerful thing, but they were all learning of the horror that the soldier had faced since they found his body in 1945.
"Damn straight I'm ready for this." The cybernetically-enhanced man replied with a dark look upon his face, no doubt looking for some payback. Bucky wouldn't go off the reservation with the plan, but he was certainly looking forward to the plan. It was a hell of a gamble that they were about to pull off; walking through the front door of a HYDRA facility. The audacity of it was stunning, and it was a hell of a risk. Yet Steve had walked right through the front door of HYDRA facilities before (mostly by blowing them up and the courtesy of bullets from the Howling Commandos backing him up), the organization usually ill-prepared for the totality that was about to strike them. Jennifer Walters had come up with a plan that would have had the 107th Airborne Regiment, known as the Howling Commandos, stand up and take notice. It was a mission that would have had Colonel Chester Phillips' taciturn face grinning at the sheer balls of it. If HYDRA was expecting anything, they would be expecting some sort of shadow strike.
Instead, the Avengers took a page from the blind Greek poet Homer and were going to pull a Trojan Horse.
Steve nodded to his friend as he lowered his lower eyelid and put into his right eye a contact lens, and then he did the same with his left, blinking several times before feeling them resting in place. When he had finished, he dropped the sunshade and looked into the small vanity mirror to look at his reflection.
His eyes were now an ice-cold blue color; the exact same color as someone influenced by Loki's Scepter.
Rogers turned to look at Bucky, who had put his own contacts in, now sporting the same colored eyes as the two men wore clothing that matched what Barnes had worn when he visited the Office of Naval Intelligence last four months prior; black military-style combat boots, black slacks, a white button shirt and a simple black suit blazer for a semi-bodyguard look. Passing off James as still being controlled by the Scepter was a bit of a stretch, but theoretically possible. Passing off the man the world knew as Captain America would never sell though. Not unless they had an in.
God bless Kamala and her wondrous inventions; the young woman whose parents were murdered by HYDRA was about to return the favor.
"How are we looking, Nate?" Rogers asked the sole remaining occupant of the Escalade, sitting in the backseat.
"Like a sixty-three year old asshole Senator from Pennsylvania."
Steve turned the vanity mirror just enough to see Senator Gerald Stern (R-PA) of the Congressional Sub-Committee of Threats and Capabilities, whose well-aged face was looking back at him. Really, it was Nathaniel James Dugan, the former Navy SEAL wearing a manufacture apparatus on him that was the Miss Marvel Project that would holographically change his appearance to the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who had once demanded from Tony Stark the so-called Iron Man Weapon. Now that they knew that Stern was a member of HYDRA and quite high on the pecking order (thanks to Bucky), Kamala Khan had taken YouTube videos of the Senatorial Inquest to get the man's likeness and his voice, replicating it to fool the eyes and ears, and thus the mind. When Steve and Bucky went through the front doors of the Office of Naval Intelligence, they would be escorting an American Senator who was also a HYDRA member for access and authorization. Nate would be their pass card, his identity giving credence and believability to the fact that both Barnes and Rogers were supposed HYDRA members.
And they were going to walk right through the front door.
"You know, when this is all said and done," Nate said in Stern's voice, "I'm going to hit up Grandpa Dum-Dum and tell him all about this." The older man's face smiled, mimicking Dugan's own movements while superimposing Gerald Stern's face over his own. "I'm going to one-up the shit out of the old man while sharing a beer with him and told him I got a chance to kick some HYDRA ass so he can cry that he wasn't invited."
"Yeah, Dum-Dum would be right here with us. Probably punching the door guard before pulling out his shotgun and putting pellets in squids." Bucky said, a ghost of a smile on his bearded face.
The front door to the Office of Naval Intelligence opened. The front door closed, and inside were three men in suits, with one of them wearing a tie and a small pin of the American flag on his left lapel. His well-aged face looked around the lobby as his two meaty bodyguards stood at his side, one a long brown-haired man with a few weeks of beard on his face and the other a clean-shaved blond-haired man with a classic haircut one could see in black-and-white movies. The older man with the pin on his suit looked like a politician should; a barracuda in human skin, sly and weaselly, ready to eat his own kind for a political profit. His bodyguards just confirmed his identity; one the very picture of the model bodyguard, tall and blond and muscular, and the other looking as if he had fallen off a Special Forces recruitment poster and put a wild beast into a simple three-piece suit. The face of the politician was a well-known one, seen in that very building on many an occasion. For the cameras that watched the movement of every living soul that not only walked within its confines but also any that dare approach its perimeter was logged, scanned, went through facial recognition software, had its background (public, private, social, electronic, monetary, and classified) checked and verified. When the aging man walked in, all this was done in less than a second, identity checked and verified before his second shoefall hit faux-marble of the building known as the Office of Naval Intelligence; benefits of the electronic age where a very real and very digital Big Brother existed, unbeknownst to most everyone.
The identity had been confirmed; Senator Gerald Lawrence Stern, Pennsylvania Senator and Sub-Committee Member of Threats and Capabilities.
The second scan was done on one of the bodyguards, the rough-looking one. James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes. Known aliases being 'the Asset' and 'the Winter Soldier'. Unlike the Senator he stood beside, a scan of his eyes showed that his eyes were the right shade of ice-blue. His presence had been missing for three days, even from the digital world, but the man had been trained by the best to be even better than they; the ghost of violence past. Many intelligence agencies had been hunting the man with the codename of the Winter Soldier for decades, and before the Artificial Intelligence had gone online four months prior, the brainchild of a Nazi researcher who had heavily invested in computer technology now twenty years dead, this man had given everyone the slip. That he could still do so was of no surprise, not really. Still, despite the disappearance, the acknowledgment of his Scepter-altered eyes meant that he was one of theirs. Like the Senator beside him, he had been given a green light and a pass for access before making his second tread.
The third man raised about a dozen flags. Most in the 'THREATCON ALPHA' Category, the highest level of alertness for a government facility that meant Clear and Present Danger and Attack Imminent/Underway.
The third man being Captain Steven Grant Rogers, also known as Captain America. Identify confirmed.
Yet that scan, done by cameras and biometric software that had mapped his face and matched it to a thousand instances of digital photographs and videos surfing the internet thanks to cell phones, security cameras, and even digital photography thanks to an agent now under the control of the Scepter, had noticed a few distinct differences with the man known most for wearing a star-spangled themed uniform and a four-foot diameter impervious shield. The first being that he was in black casual attire, a plain black three-piece suit that one always associated with business or asset protection. The second was that there was no shield; it was much too large to conceal, and there was nothing that size suggesting that he was hilariously trying to smuggle something the size of a manhole cover by disguising it as something else. It just wasn't there, Captain America bereft of his iconic invincible shield.
The third fact that was noted was the color of his eyes. They were the same exact shade as the Winter Soldier's. And everyone else that had gotten a taste of the Scepter, so to speak.
The Artificial Intelligence known as the Zenith Organizational Lexicon Algorithm, or ZOLA, pondered this for exactly fifteen milliseconds; an eternity for a learning program that rated at twenty-five trillion computations a second. There had been no report of Captain America's capture, the use of the Scepter on him, or the Scepter being moved from its location in a secret laboratory that really only about fifteen blocks away from ONI's location. The Winter Soldier had been missing for three days since ZOLA sent both the Asset and the Agent to Camp Lehigh when an old infrared beam had been tripped at the entrance of the old SHIELD bunker at the location in Wheaton, New Jersey. The Agent, codenamed Agent Venom, had returned not only empty-handed, but also alone. The report given by the agent in question had been clear and concise; the Avengers had been in the old SHIELD Headquarters, obviously searching for something. For what was a puzzle that ZOLA had pondered for approximately fifteen milliseconds; there was many things that had been in the old Headquarters that might be of interest to the group. The AI knew that the Avengers were at least aware of some things thanks to Edward Joseph Snowden, that cybersecurity asset who had purloined many terrabytes of information masquerading his requests as historical value and comparison to disguise his intent. The human hacker had fooled ZOLA, and if the program could feel emotion, it would have given a measure of respect to former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton.
For fifteen milliseconds, ZOLA considered the possibilities.
The old SHIELD Headquarters was known for many things… but PROJECT INSIGHT wasn't one of them. Nor was PROJECT FACSIMILE, the Project started by Doctor Armin Zola that would eventually lead the to the invention and programming of the many watchdog programs that infested the internet for HYDRA. The thought of electronic snooping and information collection had been introduced before the internet was the internet, back in the days when DARPA (the Defense Advance Research Project Agency that was the American Military go-to research and development program) had began connecting computers with the thought digital transference to save on waste of paper, time, and transportation. Doctor Zola had seen the future in the idea of a 'world wide web' of computer connections, and had written the first program to collect data between two computers long before the idea of cybersecurity had even been a thought.
Of course, Doctor Zola had invented the 'anti-virus' program. It was really just another monitoring program that people and business paid for to give his programs access to everything electronic.
So with the coming of Captain America into ONI alongside Bucky Barnes and Senator Gerald Stern, ZOLA was at a quandary; this wasn't a part of its prediction model. Captain Rogers was a soldier; his entrance would mean fighting. 'Seeing' him in a suit and without his iconic shield meant that fighting wasn't what he had come for. There was no suggesting that this was a form of espionage, and a quick query of videographic material over the past twenty-four hours didn't show any other kind of intrusion from any other member of the Avengers. Captain America was many things, but subtle wasn't one of them. While ZOLA didn't have an update to Senator Stern's itinerary (that in itself wasn't unusual with his extracurricular activities concerning female constituents and avoiding his wifes' attention of such things), the AI did note that the Senator had gotten into an Escalade of the same make and model a few hours prior, even the same license plate. The vehicle had been monitored (like all vehicles had been monitored) and it had seen the Cadillac drive along the Suitland Parkway and right into the parking lot of ONI.
ZOLA sent a discrete query through its programs, and via the various biometric devices installed into the building, took a scan of Captain Rogers' blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and minute scans of perspiration, minute trembling, and anything else that would indicate nervousness, fear, anxiety, or stress. Everything that was scanned, read, checked with baseline marks from not only other humans, but Captain Rogers himself, indicated one thing and one thing only.
Cool as a cucumber. Completely without fear or stress.
Fifteen milliseconds after scanning Steve Rogers as he entered the front door of the Office of Naval Intelligence with his too-blue eyes and his calm heart, ZOLA reached its conclusion.
It gave him a pass.
"Big Momma? No alarms, no gorilla linebackers trying to tackle them, and no guns out.
"They're in." Kamala Aisha Khan said outloud in a whisper that was somewhere between joy, awe, and disbelief. She looked over to the lawyer who was looking at the broad Organic Light-Emitting Diode electronic monitor that displayed an Augmented Reality Display upon its paper-thin plastic surface, who was giving the young Pakistani woman a smile. Phase Two had been a hell of a gamble, but there was no way around it; the front door was a necessity. James 'Bucky' Barnes hadn't been shy in naming off every detail he could think of in terms of HYDRA security, both with the Office of Naval Intelligence building as well as other facilities he had visited in the past. Kamala knew that Jenn had been rather cross with just how good HYDRA had failsafes and safeguards on their installations; the organization that had evidently infiltrated everyone was rather paranoid of the same thing happening to them (no surprise, really). Despite all the blueprints, schematics, intelligence, reconnaissance, and preparation they had done since hitting Camp Lehigh three days prior, there was just no way around it.
As Clint Barton had pointed out rather accurately, there were just too many Goddamn cameras.
"Have Artemis know that she's on stand-by in case we need a diversion, a distraction, or some destruction." Walters told the fifteen-year old woman as the lawyers' eyes went back to the series of monitors that portrayed various views, details, and life signs of the various monitors, a momma bear worried over her cubs. With nearly less than forty-eight hours until the execution of the Rot Schrader deadline, they were pushing things rather close. There was a Plan B, of course, but Plan B wasn't really so much an option as it was a last ditch, really final ditch, effort. If shutting down ZOLA didn't pan out or something unforeseen happened where the plan didn't work, Plan B would be invoked.
It wasn't something any one of them was looking forward to.
"Artemis? Little Sister." Kamala touched the earpiece that was her communication device out of rote; it was just one of those things people did out of habit, and in such stressful times, everyone needed their little comforts. "Hike is successful. Ball is moving down the field." Doctor Doreen Greene spent too many years in the University of Michigan not to know American football. The young tech genius had a small holographic list of 'taboo' words to avoid using in case their communications was intercepted, intentional or not. Some of the more obvious ones were their real names and codenames. Also anything that sounded like a mission. When one was pitting themselves against an Artificial Intelligence that was pretty much overlording the internet, it paid to be anonymous. "First and ten."
"I've got the special teams ready to go for either a kick-off or a field goal." The slightly-synthesized voice of the Veterinarian replied. Her voice was disguised as, since she had been taken by HYDRA, it was likely her voice would be monitored and recognized unlike some of the others. Kamala found it interesting that of all the Avengers (both present with them on this mission and abroad… wherever they might be), it was quite possible that Doreen might be the most powerful of them. Not the strongest, and she certainly didn't possess some object that made her more capable such as a mythical hammer, an invincible shield, or an incredible suit of iron. No, Doctor Doreen Greene, the animal-lover and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, had an ability that was certainly hard to deny, not to mention quite impressive. Kamala had to think over and look up anyone in comic book history that had the ability of what she called zoopolyglotic telepathy; the ability to converse with many species of animals mentally. Arthur Curry, better known as Aquaman from the DC Comics like Justice League, had the ability to talk to various aquatic species, but had to be in the water to do so. It also wasn't telepathy, but actual speech. There was of course Harry Potter, who inherited Tom Riddle's Slytherin ability to talk to snakes, but again, that was physical speech. Dar, from the movie Beastmaster with Mark Singer, actually communicated with Animal Empathy, using emotions. As far as Kamala could tell, Doreen was utterly unique in that regard.
It was also very possible she was a one-woman army.
During the three days in which the Avengers were preparing for the infiltration and strike on the Office of Naval Intelligence, Jennifer Walters had but one order for Doctor Greene; to practice her powers. HYDRA had been only interested in using her as a weaponized tool and a killing machine. Even Kamala could tell that the Veterinarian with the soft spot for 'cute animals' was wracked with guilt with the things that she was forced to do, reliving those memories in her nightmares. Jenn had talked to the Doctor about it, telling Doreen what she saw; a woman with an opportunity to make a difference in both her life and in others. The lawyer had wanted the Vet to move away from the idea of a killing machine and instead to something a little more amazing; a woman who could summon a legion of animals to turn the tide of things when times were at their most dire. Who was to say what someone with Doreen's gifts could have done during the Battle of New York, ushering civilians away, some of the more dangerous species turned into protectors and guardians to fight the Chitauri? Jenn had wanted Doreen to explore what she could do, to learn for herself instead of having just what HYDRA wanted. For three days, the Veterinarian had done just that, discovering her range, her strength, what species she could contact, how far her control was, how far they could be pushed, and how to use them in more ways than just assault.
Kamala had watched as the Veterinarian sat upon the cargo bay floor of Gungnir with her eyes closed and her legs in a lotus position as she willed herself from being that killing machine and molding herself into the kind of woman she wanted to be as well as the kind of hero she wanted to be. The Ann Arbor-born woman had worked herself hard (mentally, mostly, but also emotionally) to explore her own capabilities, to learn the things that she could do that HYDRA wasn't interested in with their so-called 'pet killing machine' (what the jerks called her). HYDRA had put her through a series of tests that Kamala knew she hadn't been informed of due to the fact no one likes telling a minor that they were probably tortured and not just in the rough-interrogation type of torture, so Doreen knew that she was invulnerable to a certain degree like pistol rounds, fists, and knives. But Kamala heard the words that weren't said; those people that had thought mind-control and human experimentation fun and proper had probably stuck the Veterinarian in front of several different kinds of weapons and shot her to see what would and wouldn't work. How did someone reach the point in their lives that just gunning down innocent people seemed a good idea to them?
Well, I've actually met a few immigrant Muslims that I was rather leery of, the young woman thought to herself, not really needing a big reminder of what people were doing in the name of her religion. She really didn't fault Americans for being a bit harsh and wary of Muslims, not when one could look at the past century of the Middle East and see its plethora of problems spanning decades. It wasn't quite as bad as some places in Africa, but only just. Practically every nation in that section of world had rather rampant insurgencies, revolutions, overthrows, oppression, tyranny, or terrorism. The past year or so had been particularly awful with the Arab Spring which saw the overthrow of four Presidents, major protests in six countries (which went right to violence on both sides), and major demonstrations in thirteen more. Now there was a civil war in Syria, Libya's was still petering out, Egypt was still trying to make their government work, Iraq was in the middle of a mini-civil war along with Islamic State trying to be the new face of fundamentalist oppression and tyranny, and Yemen looked like it was spiraling out of control. Here she thought that such things as governmental overthrows and coups were a thing of third-world countries.
Now it was happening in America. Her home.
Abbu and Ammi left Pakistan because they really thought there would be a nuclear battle between Pakistan and India, Kamala thought to herself as she monitored the screens, knowing the story from her parents. When her father had been a young man living in Karachi, the economy had been booming, and Yusif Khan had gone into banking during a time of fortune when Pakistan was one of the biggest and fastest-growing economies in South Asia. But in-fighting between the majority political parties in Pakistan had the Pakistani Muslim League (Nawaz) with a supermajority in Parliament at the same time India was conducting its second nuclear test more than twenty years after its first set. Pakistan had tested its own nuclear devices, and Yusif had seen what he thought was inevitable; a war between India and Pakistan where both nations were poised for war and armed with more than just soldiers, tanks, and planes. He had taken his wife and immigrated to America, Muneeba being three months pregnant with their daughter. Kamala Aisha Khan had been born in Hoboken, New Jersey, officially an American Citizen by rote instead of Pakistani, living in a world so natural to her yet so strange for her parents. She didn't even remember the 'tough' times right after September Eleventh, something her father was grateful for.
Kamala had always thought things like government coups, overthrows, collapses, and implosions were the things of Central Africa and the Middle East, where a government didn't seem to last even a generation.
But now it was happening here, in the country of her birth.
When war had loomed over Pakistan, when nuclear tests were being done and the armies of Pakistan and India had been mobilizing for a war that would involve the second-most populated and fifth-most populated countries in the world with militaries to match, Yusif had elected to move his growing family as far from the conflict as he could. He was a banker, not a soldier, living in Pakistan's largest, most populated city. He knew that any conflict would have his family in danger, yet he without any means to protect them… save one. It had been at great risk that Yusif Khan had smuggled his pregnant wife and unborn daughter to America, entering the United States properly and beginning the naturalization process when arriving in New Jersey, seeing his daughter born to a country where education was free and provided to all, where there was a church for just about every religion imaginable to be found, where communities of many ethnicities existed without any of the real issues one saw in other places in the world. The war between India and Pakistan had never happened, but Yusif knew that he had done the right thing though it had broken his heart to leave the country of his birth. He had always talked of it with pride, vowing to take Kamala there to see where he had grown up and where her heritage was from. That… never happened.
Now a war was looming over America. And it had already cost Kamala her parents.
Abbu ran because he knew he couldn't fight back, so he did the only right thing he could do in that situation, Kamala looked upon the screen where she saw a slaved camera feed of Captain Steve Rogers, James 'Bucky' Barnes, and the disguised form of Nate Dugan posing as Senator Gerald Stern make their way through another check point with ease. He did it for me, but I always heard it in his voice whenever he talked of home, his home, how much he missed it so. Growing up a Muslim-American in the 2000's hadn't been the easiest, but Kamala only needed to turn on the world news to know that she still had it luckier than even Muslims living in Muslim countries; no one in America cared if she were a Sunni Muslim, not even the Shia'a Muslim-Americans! Kamala had gone to school with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and others… and hadn't cared once about what religion another person might have; a far cry from a vast majority of the nations of the world. Kamala had been born free, lived free, and free to choose what to do with her life (though Abbu really wanted her to be a Doctor, a profession of respect and wealth). In America, a woman could hold just about any position she chose, while Kamala knew that in many Middle Eastern countries she wouldn't be allowed to drive a car or even walk down a sidewalk without a masculine family member or a husband to escort her as if she would get lost along the way. She knew that her father wanted her to see Pakistan, and she probably would have enjoyed it… but Kamala knew in her heart she would never live there, be happy there. It was too different, it wasn't home.
Home was where the heart was, and someone was going and breaking her heart.
If HYDRA succeeds, there won't be anywhere to run, Kamala watched as Sam Wilson and Hope van Dyne, the Ant-Man and the Wasp, were stationed at a security junction box in which they had added microchips right to the motherboard. Edward Snowden had come up with the idea of 'hardware hacking' by creating physical chips that would grant their infiltrators access without having to digitally do so, hopefully blindsiding the organization. If they succeed in taking over America, which is what it looks like they're planning on doing, they'll have access to everything. Kamala didn't even want to think of what a future like that would be like; a fascist police-state filled with military-style checkpoints, travel vouchers to limit movement, and security with technology far more advanced than what cops and the military had now. And it wouldn't stop with America, would it? It'd be stupid to think that they aren't in other countries. I found some lists that had names from other nations on it too. America had the absolutely largest Navy in the world; armies were nice, but American Naval vessels could obliterate most every nation on the planet and then some, and that wasn't counting their nuclear-armed submarines! Kamala vaguely remembered Mongoose saying that even the smallest American Aircraft Carrier was still forty percent bigger than the largest foreign Aircraft Carrier in the world… which was Italy. And the Italian Navy only had three aircraft carriers, all dwarfs compared to their American breathren. Simply put, America owned the International Waters, and its Air Force was considered by damn near everyone with brains to be the best in the world.
If HYDRA takes it over, they take over the world.
The only roadblock that existed… was the Avengers. HYDRA had a solution for everything else save for the people that were flown about on-board the Gungnir. HYDRA had control of the satellites, the cell phone towers, its fingers in the internet, the intelligence community, and what appeared to be every decision-making process in the American government. Edward had e-mailed the Central Intelligence Agency over his concerns and earned himself a cyborg assassin for his efforts. And though they didn't say it, Kamala knew that Bucky and Doreen were used to 'silence' those who were discovering the plot in its final countdown, keeping it as quiet as possible until it was too late. All that stood between HYDRA and the world… was fourteen people in a Boeing C-17 Globemaster named after the Allfather's weapon-of-choice.
And none of us are running, Kamala thought to herself as she watched the screens to see the teams of infiltrators work their way to their objectives, Captain America and his team reaching the last checkpoint before they reached what Bucky had simply called 'the Vault'. The fake passes were checked and acknowledged (thanks to the contributions to their two tiny infiltrators) as the three men walked into a server room that looked about as well protected as a bank vault. She could see the door that looked to be a high-grade version of an anti-intrusion accessway, a thick metal door that looked tough enough to take a rocket and spit it back out. There were security goons in the same room as Cap and his team, and none of them looked alarmed as 'Senator Stern' was verified as being able to access the data vault. Kamala was glad that HYDRA didn't use fingerprints for biometrics considering how easy it was to pull a fingerprint with something as simple as tape.
No, there would be no escape if HYDRA succeeded in their plan; to launch a worldwide hostile takeover of the internet with the thought of complete digital monitoring and control of data while putting into the air seven heavily-armed flying aircraft carriers with weapons more than powerful enough to bring a city to it knees and take down any naval vessel and fighter craft launched against it. The hit list that Kamala and Edward had found had been a list of targeted persons that would fight HYDRA, that would rally a resistance, so they had to be eliminated. It only took one look at the HYDRA Helicarriers to see how they would do so with the many guns coming out of the airborne vessels that were almost right out of a Sci-Fi dystopian movie featuring global domination. With all the watchdog programs connected to cell towers and the internet, those people on the list would be quickly eliminated, and anyone added on later also taken out just as fast in a world filled with cameras, internet access, wi-fi, facial recognition software, and prediction model theory based upon movements, purchasing habits, and search histories. This was literally the very scary version of what James Cameron envisioned with the Terminator series; of a malevolent digital takeover of the world by a technologically superior foe. Instead of cyborgs and robots, HYDRA would be using Helicarriers, experimented-upon people turned into enhanced individuals with superpowers, and the Scepter to overthrow the world.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
None of us are going to be running though, Kamala thought as she watched the massive metal door open to admit 'Senator Stern' and his two bodyguards into the holy of holys; the data vault that contained the HYDRA Artificial Intelligence Mainframe known as ZOLA.
Not even me.
[Hello, Captain. I vas vondering ven you vould show up]
James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes stood beside Nathanial James 'Nate' Dugan in his disguise as Senator Gerald Stern, the sound of a synthesized accented voice coming from the ceiling as the three of them stood in what was a very secured data vault that housed an array of state-of-the-art servers that seemed to go a good distance. While he only had a moderate understanding of the technology of the time he was aware of now, he knew that servers were constant computers known for their processing and connectivity for such things as the internet, effective when they were on. Unlike a computer, their value laid in their processing speed and some kind of storage called 'cloud' that housed information over wide areas that weren't necessarily physical or even present in one specific location. The last time he had been here, he had dully watched on as the Zenith Organizational Lexicon Algorithm was turned online and connected to the internet to 'learn' at a geometric rate, its computation ability as well as its learning program more sophisticated than any other machine or program on the planet (or, at least that was what said around him). The brainchild of Doctor Armin Zola, he had invented the first spyware as well as a way to create digital safes called 'firewalls' before the birth of the first internet, constructing adapting programs that would lure people into thinking their privacy was safe… while practically giving the man and his plot the so-called keys to the kingdom.
HYDRA had reared its ugly head in a way no one could have imagined.
"Zola." Captain Steve Rogers spoke taking a step forward as he looked upon a large pain of thin translucent plastic in which an image was displayed upon its surface, showing an electronic facsimile of a face of a Swiss scientist who had been captured by the Howling Commandos in 1945. The same mission that he had been lost on. "If you knew this was a trick, then why did you let us in?"
[Zee same reason why you captured me all zho years ago instead of killing me on zee spot, Captain; to flout.] The digitized face spoke, its tone somehow smug over the speakers. Barnes knew that the real Armin Zola had died decades ago due to colon cancer, sometime in the early-Nineties. Yet that voice was his, that projection his, his works displayed right before them. [Ven you brought me in, your esteemed Colonel offered me zee chance to work with zee Americans to stop zee Fuhrer and zee Third Reich. Ven zee offer came, I accepted. It vas known as Operation: Paperclip, vere zee Americans brought in Nazi scientists to advance zere own scientific research in zuch zings as rocket technology, advanced mechanics, and chemical weaponry. I, of course, vas under orders to accept the Americans' possibility of parole and conditioned employment. To spread HYDRA, to grow it right under zee very noses of zose who sought to destroy us. I verked on zere projects, and my own. Everything zat I made, I seeded, like zee Greek zailors who would bring sheep to small izlands to feed zemzelves on future voyages. Ven zee first computers came on-line, it vas I who wrote zee programing languages that served as zee basis of all zat vwood be zee operating zystems of zee future. Zee future iz a digital book, and I its author]
"Holy shit. That can't be possible." Nate said beside Bucky in the Senator's voice, his holographic face stunned. "If this was responsible for the very first programs…"
[Indeed, Lieutenant Commander Dugan], the digital specter replied, somehow knowing the holographic illusion and identity of the man within. [I created a digital facsimile of my intellect into an algorithm to continue my werks, to achieve zee goal I started zo long ago] Bucky just found himself looked at the holographic image of a man he once knew to be the enemy so long ago. [I have created an algorithm zat takes all zee complied personal information of every man and woman in zee world and computate it zreu a prediction analysis program to discover who zee threats are both in prezent time and in zee future. Wherever zey may go, whatever zey may do, zey will live in a world of order and peace where zee agitator and zee criminal are eliminated before zey are ever a threat. Because of my program, zere will finally be peace on Earth, and it will be HYDRA that will guide zee future of mankind]
"Great, the whole New World Order bullshit through a computer. Some real Skynet shit." Dugan replied, somewhat confusing Barnes. He had heard the name Skynet more than a few times from the Avengers, some cinema twenty years prior that evidently deal with cybernetic assassins, time travel, and some man made out of liquid metal.
"Seven Helicarriers won't help you conquer the world, Zola. Other countries will fight back." Steve replied, his tone assured.
[Do you really zink zat ve vould have infiltrated every azpect of zee American Government without having ozers in ozer nations, Captain? No, ven ve rise in forty hours time, ve will have ze aid of members in every First World Nation in zee world to align zemselves to our cause, insuring zat there vill be no resistance, no agitation. Ve vill dominate ze greatest nations on zee planet, and with zere mutual powers of economy and military, ze rest vill accede to our authority or zey vill be eliminated]
"Then I guess the only think stopping you is us." Steve replied, making Bucky almost snort from the memory of a shrimp who never knew how to back down from a good cause or a fight he couldn't win. "The ones you couldn't subvert, contain, or control. The ones that threw your operation earlier. Something that Jenn did."
Bucky remembered hearing that from both HYDRA Agents as well as the Avengers, that the timeline had been moved to the left. Bucky hadn't known the details, and neither had Doctor Coreen Greene, who had been present during that particular conversation. There had been discussions and arguments on how to move the projects faster, the risks that were involved. James remembered that the boon that HYDRA had on their side was the Scepter of Loki, giving HYDRA complete loyalty and dedication to all whom it touched. Bucky would know; he had been the first they had used it on, testing what it could do. Then they had started poking people in earnest, fueling a metahuman project called PROJECT ARGUS where HYDRA had taken people in and experimented on them using some sort of formula that was a genetic modification that would enhance people… if they survived. Select qualifying personnel from basic training for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Qualification Courses for the Special Operations Command, and Personnel Change of Station of US Military Veterans with high degree of combat experience. Bucky didn't know how many had been entered into the program, but he knew that the survival rate was something like five to ten percent. Doctor Doreen Green and Jessica Drew had been the ones of their CIA class to have survived the transformation process; he was sure if he considered them lucky or not considering what HYDRA did to them and with them under their complete and under control.
That was something that he hadn't bothered to tell Jennifer Walters yet, and Doreen certainly wasn't filling in those blanks either.
[Yes, your Jennifer Valters. I vill admit that she stymied us with her arrival], the computerized voice replied. [She vas already a target based upon her voting history and choice of cases before she vas brought to New York to provide control and oversight to zee Avengers, a program ve had zee World Security Counsel shutdown numerous times. I had predicted zat zee Avengers vould be nothing more zan a fad, too many svollen egos to exist long in such a small space. Frau Valters superseded my prediction analysis with her radical movements and actions, changing zings and foiling plans zat she had no idea of. Zee success of defeating the plan to prevent zee insurance companies from paying out zee American public for zee damages done by zee Chitauri. Zee court ruling zat would defame Thor Odinson and make him look like a fraud. Yet it vas her plan to denuclearize zee world and bereft us our arsenal that we had been building up with politics and conflict zat forced us to speed up our timeline 'lest she began her initiative that would have nations disposing of zere nuclear arsenal. She vas zee outlier, the monkey wrench, so to speak. Zee prediction model of zee effectiveness of zee Avengers grew increasingly erratic and erroneous with zee leadership of Frau Valters, leading to zee conclusion that to vait vould lead to zee discovery of our efforts as vell as zee elimination of our future endeavors. I vill have to admit zat zee Frau has proved to be a vorthy adversary]
Bucky was a bit stunned at the revelation. Despite the reputation and the abilities of the Avengers, it had been a normal woman that had given HYDRA pause. Not men with Super Soldier serums, men in iron suits, demigods, or beasts of rage. No, decades of planning and infiltration, of seeding themselves in the shadows waiting for the their moment to strike, and they were being thwarted by a woman who, by all accounts, was dead set into changing the world for the better. That was why she was in the top position in HYDRA's hit list; Jennifer Walters was the opposite of all that HYDRA stood for. Selfless, giving, promoting peace and justice with compassion and fairness, Jennifer Walters had come to the scene and defied all expectations and rationale. In what amounted to a mere six months worth of time, HYDRA had gained itself an enemy worthy of the name, an adversary of equal value. Despite all that HYDRA had done in preparation in their plan to take over America and the world, the Avengers couldn't be infiltrated, compromised, or pushed out of the equation. HYDRA had written them off as a temporary measure but had been sadly mistaken. For all its vaulted plans and gloating, it had underestimated them.
And it was thanks to an attorney, of all things.
"As long as there's breath in our bodies, we'll oppose you." Steve said with righteous cause, never an ounce of give in his voice. If anyone knew how to stand up to a bully bigger and stronger than he, it was most certainly his best friend. "You can corrupt those who seek power or money, but there will be those who will see you for what you are and will rise to fight you. And we'll be standing there right beside them."
[Brave vords, Captain. But sadly irrelevant with zee drei of you here in my grasp], ZOLA announced, its digital face smirking. [I vill be online in thirty-nine hours, and zen any hope you have of defeating me will be zero-zum. My prediction analysis iz flawless, Captain America. Your chances of stopping this… iz nil]
[Can I offer a different prediction theory for you, War Games? It's called a shell game]
Bucky snorted at the new voice coming in from the rig that Dugan wore, his Life Model Decoy having connectivity to the Gungnir. Their resident teenage genius was about to have her druthers on the AI that had likely ordered the murder of both herself and her parents.
[All team members? Lock and load for Plan: Agent Smith]
And within the facility of the Office of Naval Intelligence, where hundreds of employees worked under the guise of HYDRA, hundreds of fabricated Miss Marvel drones that had been shrunk and carried by ants thanks to the Pym Particle were embiggened and released to not only create hundreds of holographic images resembling the present Avengers, but also turning every facility member into their holographic facsimiles as well.
Author's Notes: Yes, you remember Agent Smith from the movie Matrix: Reloaded? When he showed up with like a dozen to fight Neo, and then ended up populating that courtyard with a hundred? That's what I'm going for; a False Flag Operation from hell.
I meant a few 'animal talkers' in fiction. Arthur Curry, better known as Aquaman, can talk sea creatures, but must be in/near water to do so. Of course, Harry Potter can talk to snakes (I seem to remember the talent had a name that the original Slytherin and Tom Riddle had, but can't recall it). And then I mention Dar the Beastmaster, which I believe was a comic book first before it became a movie. We don't mention the comic book movies from the Eighties. With the exception of Superman with Christoper Reeves and Tim Burton's Batman, they all fucking sucked. Try Dolph Lundgrun as The Punisher, David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury, some bozo as Captain America, the Red Sonya movie, Howard the Duck (in the top ten worst movies of all time category, and no-bullshit fits into the implied-bestiality category), Supergirl, The Toxic Avenger (technically that one's considered a cult classic, and you can see a very young Marisa Tomei in this!), Swamp Thing, Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe (He-Man with Dolph once again), and the 80's version of The Spirit (which the new one sucked too). Somehow, the Seventies had iconic TV Superheroes like Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, and the true classic; the Batman television show with Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo. POW! The Incredible Hulk TV show spawned five seasons, I think five TV-movies, and two straight-to-VHS (God yes… I just said VHS :-p) movies.
While the holographic facsimiles fool the naked eye, ZOLA would know that something was different due to biometric data (which doesn't use light) and the fact that Stern would likely be in another location, seen by a random camera. ZOLA wanted them to enter just so I could give you the Bond Villain Soliloquy while also explaining why Jenn Walters hit the top of HYDRA's shit list; the few things she stopped, and her plan to denuclearizing the world. It also gives me the chance to highlight that America wasn't the only country that HYDRA had infiltrated. It would make sense that if they had seeded SHIELD and the American Government, then all the major acronyms as well as places in England, France, Germany, and a few other nations would have a serpent problem as well.
I did try to go for that classical German Villain accent where the 'w's are 'v's and the 'th's are 'z's. VE VILL ASK ZEE QUESTIONS, HERE!
Since the release of the Avengers game (and me subsequently dropping about forty hours into beating the main campaign), I was struck that the plot of the game was pretty damn similar to what I had well over a year ago for what would happen after ARC: WINTER IS COMING. I will incorporate some ideas, but won't spoil. Surprisingly, more than a few characters in the game were already brought in and fleshed out. So like with Kamala Khan ending up something similar to Spider-Man: Far From Home's villain Mysterio (somehow, I ended up with Kamala doing the same thing that Quentin Beck was doing two weeks before the movie came out), you'll see similarities that I actually hit upon before the game came out.