?, France

October 14th, 1944

"Erskine gave me a gift. The strength to fight against the forces of tyranny. This is what I've been waiting for."


The rain pelts down over a base in France as two Allied soldiers walk to their position. The base is more of a trench system by army standards, long winding corridors cut out of the earth and supported by wooden flooring and walls, sandbags at the top for protection. They're safely in allied territory, and the fight has moved well inland. But the threat still remains, nonetheless. The war is a moving and unforgiving one, and the enemy is known to appear at any moment. Watch posts are still stationed along the trench systems and hundreds of men filter through them to their station, ready to keep watch into the dark and empty lands around them.

The two soldiers are frozen to the core as they walk, huddling tighter in their uniforms. Their rifles are clasped in one hand, safety off, metal cold against their skin.

"I tell you what; this isn't how I pictured France at all," one says.

"You said it. Not one day of sun in two weeks. And the only girls I've seen have had four legs and mooed."

The two make it to their designated post, footsteps loud on the wooden boards, and take a seat against the edge of the trench, rubbing their hands together to warm them. The tips of their fingers are a little blue, the skin pasty. One shoves his hands under his armpits, the other in his pockets.

"Did you hear who just showed up with D-company?" The first asks.

"Who?"

"The Captain." The words are spat mockingly.

His eyebrows rise in surprise. "He's here?"

"Yeah. Glorified poster boy – poses for pictures and then disappears when the action starts."

"I dunno," the second disagrees. "I heard he saved a bunch of guys in the one-oh-seventh that got captured. And apparently he and his team have done lots of other things as well…"

"Oh, wise up. It's all staged for the news reels. All that is for the folks back home. Nobody's coming to pull our butts out of this mess, kid."

"Yeah, but what about the raid on Hy– AHH!"

Suddenly, a massive claw reaches over the top of the trench and clamps around the head of the doubting soldier, cutting off his friends' words with a yell. A large robotic figure looms over the pair, making a screeching noise as it tears the soldier's head through his helmet, flinging him around like a rag doll. It lifts him from the trench and pulls him into the darkness of the night, only his terrified screams audible.

The remaining soldier jumps away, stumbling into the muddy trench floor. He watches in fright as his friend is dragged away.

Footsteps draw his attention and the soldier sees three men approaching him wearing all black and thick metal masks, holding shields in their hands. They feel omniscinent and imposing, and they raise their strange looking guns right at him. He immediately shoots at them with his rifle, but the bullets cascade off the shields with a loud metallic clunk.

Ditching his rifle, the soldier scrambles up and sprints away from the approaching attackers, winding through the trenches. Blasts of blue and yellow light hit the trench wall behind him, burning holes in the wood.

He stumbles into the wall in his haste but keeps going. He makes it out of the trenches, up the incline onto the land of the base that's muddy and churned up by the wheels of tanks and cars. A few hundred metres away is the tents, the mess hall, his fellow soldiers walking away with full bellies. An attack so close to the base, only a little way from where the men are living, sleeping, eating – its almost unheard of.

An explosion behind him frightens him enough to trip over his feet and throws him forward, rubble raining down on him from above as the explosion takes out the end of the trenh wall.

He looks up and the attackers are approaching, slow but steady. "Hail, Hydra!" One says, his voice muffled robotically by his mask. The Allied soldier lies on his back in the mud, frozen in place by fear. He breathes heavily, a white mist forming from his breathe.

Just as he thinks he's been had, a metal shield whirls through the air from behind him, coming from the direction of the base, and hits the first attacker square in the chest, sending him to the ground with a loud thump.

The soldier looks up just in time to see Captain America himself flip over from the top of the trench into the air and land steadily on the boards of the trench between the soldier and the Hydra goons. He catches the shield on its return.

"Captain Amer–" the man breathes.

"Fall back, soldier," the Captain commands, turning to assess him. "I'll take it from here."

The soldier wastes no time in complying, scrambling away across the open field to the tents of the base. Steve doesn't stop to make sure he's escaped. He and the Commandos had been eating in the mess hall back from the line when they'd heard the commotion, and Steve hadn't stopped to find out what it was then either. He's glad he didn't or else the man might have been killed and these Hydra agents may have invaded the camp. He assumes the other Commandos followed him, diving into the trenches at other points to help defend the camp. He'll find them later.

Steve takes off after the escaping Hydra agents, chasing them through the tunnels. He catches one within a few steps, knocking him forward into the ground with the shield. He adds in a kick for good measure, and the agent doesn't move again.

Steve continues and catches the second, sending a fist flying into the man's face. It causes a spurt of red blood to fly out of the mask after the crunching noise of bone. Steve punches again, this time into the man's cheek, before flinging the shield around to collide with the man's gut. The agent flies backward into the wall of the trench, but Steve doesn't stick around long enough to see him hit the ground.

Steve runs into a slightly more open area of the trenches and finds himself surrounded by a dozen or so Hydra agents. They hold small batons in their hand that crackle with electricity. They immediately engage in battle, and Steve ensures he stays moving long enough that they don't land a hit on him. He flings the shield around and lands kicks to their bodies, rolling away from the electricity. He takes down all of the Hydra agents with relative ease, stopping to catch his breath. The crackle of electricity behind him catches his attention and he turns just in time to block the attack with the shield before slamming it into the side of the man's head.

Steve looks around for a moment at the bodies, ensuring they're all dead. When none of them move, he surveys the area. The trench runs along one perimeter of the camp as a defence system. There aren't many camps like it, but a few months ago the area was a hot spot for invasion, being set up right along a main transport road, and so they were crucial. Since the Allies drove the Germans out of France, they haven't been as necessary.

In the distance, Steve can see a skirmish of explosions and gunshots littering the sky. He starts in that direction, running into a tunnel.

Suddenly, an explosion resounds right in front of him, the flames hot as they lick his suit. The force knocks him back and the tunnel collapses, blocking the route he was planning on following. Steve sighs as he stands and turns right down the free path into an area, surprised when Bucky rounds the corner to meet him. Bucky looks relatively unharmed beside a small scrape above his eyebrow.

"Bucky," Steve greets, approaching his friend for news.

"I've got it covered here, but some of the guys are pinned down ahead," Bucky informs him, pointing him onward. "Hurry!"

As Steve continues through the bunker, the roof wobbles worryingly, dust raining down on top of him. He hurries through the trenches, taking down the Hydra agents he encounters. None of them are much of a match for him, even with his shield plastered to his back. Many of them go down with one swift punch. Steve keeps low to the ground with his head ducked, the bullets whizzing overhead just missing him.

He makes it into the next bunker where Falsworth and Dugan are working, Dugan pouring over a map of the trench system around the camp. They're working out tactics for fighting the invading army, since fighting Hydra is much different to the usual Nazis.

"Rally some men and secure this section. I need a working radio ASAP," Steve instructs Dugan as he passes through.

"I'm on it, Captain," Dugan promises.

Steve passes Falsworth who bunkers down by the opening with his rifle at the ready. This area of the trenches is in an intense skirmish, with explosions and gunfire covering every inch of the trench. Steve ducks as he runs through, the shield on his back providing some protection.

He approaches another opened section of the trench, a barricade of equipment and wooden boxes stacked in the middle of it and set on fire. There's no way around the barricade and no way under, so Steve takes his chances at clearing the flames. He runs up a small ramp of boxes and launches himself over the fiery flames, the bullets whizzing past him just grazing his skin.

He lands and finds himself on raised land outside of the trench again, inside the boundary. He's faced with another group of Hydra soldiers who have somehow managed to clear the trench and are heading toward the camp. From a distance, using a wooden crate for cover, Steve throws the shield at the agents with deadly accuracy, taking them down one by one before they can advance on his position.

He continues forward toward the massive explosions ahead, which are worryingly close to the mess hall, just as a group of Allied soldiers come scrambling from the hall toward him, petrified.

"There's something huge up there. I don't think it's human!" One of them tells him in a flurry as they run for cover.

Steve ascends a tiny hill, not much more than a mound of dirt, and ducks down at the top, just as another explosion rattles the earth. He looks down over the dirt at the mess hall. A few of the tents around it are on fire, and soldiers are running everywhere. In the midst of it all, he spots a strange robotic figure in the fiery field. An allied tank is positioned toward it, and it shoots at the robot, but it survives the explosion and continues to shoot back at the tank, the blue energy of the Hydra weapons disintegrating the tank easily. The robot is clunky in its movements, but Steve recognises it. He's fought one before, back in one of the Hydra factories in Hamburg. It's an exo-suit. There's a person inside, and that's its weakness.

Steve rushes across the field before the robot can notice him. He jumps into the air and flies toward the robot, bringing the shield down on the gap between its helmet and shoulders. The robot manages to fling Steve off and he goes flying into one of the still-standing tents, the canvas falling on top of him. Scrambling to get free, Steve recovers quickly. He runs circles around the robot, keeping moving, and the robot doesn't seem to be able to keep up. Steve lands hits onto its back, sneaking around to its front to dent the metal of the helmet with the shield. Eventually, the robot's movements slow and with every beating it seems to become weaker. With one final leap, Steve turns in the air as he advances on the root, sending a flying kick to the face of the mask. The crippling strike makes the man inside the suit cry out as he falls backward, and then he's still.

The machine gun the robot carries makes a whirring sound as it fires down. Steve steps up to it and looks down at the familiar weapon. He hears footsteps behind him, the two soldier who'd run from the fight re-approaching after it became clear Steve would defeat the robotic figure.

"What the hell's going on?" One asks. "Since when does the enemy have ornaments like this?"

Steve turns to him, recognising him as the man he'd saved at the very start of the infiltration. "They don't yet," Steve says, sharply. "This is a different enemy than you're used to."

"Hydra attacking random Allied camps for seemingly no reason?" A familiar voice drawls, and Steve turns to see Bucky approaching, a black smudge on his cheek and a line of blood falling down his cheek from the slice above his brow. "That's new."

"Yeah," Steve says in agreement. "Except that we're here. They must have known. I doubt they'd risk their firepower for any other reason that to get to us."


Bavaria, Germany

October 24th, 1944

The following day, not even twelve hours later, Steve sits on the plane all alone.

Well, he isn't technically alone because Howard is flying in the cockpit, but he isn't much entertainment this time around. Once they crossed into enemy territory he had to concentrate on where they were flying. After what happened on the way to the Greece Hydra base, they don't want any repeats, and Howard must always be on guard, prepared for evasive manoeuvres.

Steve had still taken the opportunity to ask about the strange creature the Commandos found at the u-base. It's been a few weeks now that Howard has had the creature in his care, and Steve is hopeful he would have found a solution.

"I'm afraid it isn't pretty, Rogers," Howard said with a sigh. "I looked at it for weeks, took bloods and scans and tried to work out what had happened. That was the easy part. The whole separating those poor people into their individual selves again – impossible. There's no way. They've been merged together as one organism. There's no way to separate them again."

"Oh," Steve mutters sadly. "Well, what now?"

"I told… them… my diagnosis," Howard explains. "And they seemed like they already knew that would be the case. And they wrote on the wall… well…" Howard runs a hand over his face, rubs his eyes. "They asked me to end it."

"That's what they wrote on the wall in the u-base," Steve mutters, eyes downcast.

"Yeah, I read the report," Howard whispers. "I couldn't deny them, not when they wanted it so badly. So, that's what we did. We did it humanely, of course. A few injections and it overdosed. We had to cremate them, buried it in a cemetery in London. They got what was best for them. It wasn't a life for them, Cap," Howard comforts.

Steve is silent for a moment. "I understand that," he says, nodding and swallowing down the lump in his throat. "Thanks for trying," Steve allows with a small smile. He pats Howard on the shoulder.

"Guess it brings up a whole new set of questions, though," Howard notes.

"Like what?"

"The things Hydra is experimenting with are dangerous. Are we going to find an accident like that again?"

Steve hums. "Well, I wouldn't put it past them. Their safety measures aren't always up to standard, and neither is their weaponry. All that experimentation they're doing with a serum, who knows what we'll find."

Steve goes back to his seat and sits in silence a while, thinking about it. Howard lapses back into concentration as they cross enemy lines. After that, it's a rather long flight with no one to speak to. Steve sits and nervously twiddles his thumbs until there's movement from the cockpit.

"Cap, Carter is on the line for you!" Howard yells out from the cockpit, the first words he's spoken in hours.

Steve gets up from his bench seat and walks to the radio by the front of the plane, engaging it from the hook. "This is Rogers. Go ahead, over."

"Steve? It's Peggy. I've got some last-minute things to discuss before the drop. We investigated the munitions you recovered last night at the Allied base in France. We thought they'd be typical Tesseract-fuelled weaponry, but Howard found that the firing chamber was made of a rare metal found only in the mountains of Bavaria. It's different to all other Hydra weaponry we've recovered so far."

"It was no small feat, I promise you," Howard says from the cockpit.

"Our sources were able to narrow down the location to a large castle in the Bavarian mountains that has been commissioned as a Hydra compound. It seems Hydra is using local resources to produce some of their weaponry, and we assumed they have a complex somewhere in the area. The castle doesn't show up on any of our liberated Hydra intel, so we can't be sure what we're up against. We sent an intel plane over early this morning and they reported that this is the largest Hydra complex yet, and word is it stretches far underground as well, if we can go by the standards of other medieval castles."

"We can never be sure what we're up against. If it's Hydra, it could be anything," Steve agrees.

"But there's something else about this. Those trenches that you helped liberate a few weeks ago, the one's with the machine guns set up on the enemy side?"

"They were protecting this facility as well?" Steve guesses, thinking back to the location of the stalemate they helped liberate, right on the edge of the Bavarian Alps.

"Exactly. It's only a few miles away from where the fight was, on the other side of the mountain. Hydra must have commissioned the Germans to help defend it when the Allies approached."

"That explains why they had a hold of Hydra technology," Steve notes.

"Take a look at the dossier. It contains all the information we've managed to get so far. It can't tell you much mre than what I already have, but it can tell you a bit about Doctor Zola and his projects. Some of it comes directly from a file of his that you found at one of the other factories. Now everything makes sense. From a quick glimpse, I believe it may have to do with all the experimentation they are doing regarding the serum that you found in the factory in Hamburg. Turns out it might be more widespread than just at one factory," Peggy says.

"Exactly as we thought," Steve says. "Bucky's experimentation at Azzano, the Hamburg experiments… this isn't a one or two-off thing. Hydra will try to recreate the serum until they're successful."

Steve picks up the file and sifts through it, memorising every last word. He recognises the handwriting as Zola's from the patient files from the factory in Hamburg.

After years of planning and research, my time has come at last, it reads. Project Master Man is a reality. History shall record that Dr. Armin Zola was the first to unlock the secrets of the human genome. And thus, my immortality is assured. Using the blood of my benefactor, Johann Schmidt, I have and will continue to replicate and surpass the work of the traitor Abraham Erskine.

Steve feels his blood boil, not only at the mention of Doctor Erskine, but because of the picture of Bucky attached to the page. It must have been taken whilst Bucky was in captivity, when Zola was experimenting on him and gave him the beginning injections of a super-soldier formula. The picture is of him asleep lying on the metal table Steve found him on, his mouth open, a speck of blood on his cheek, dark bags around his eyes and a large cut across the delicate skin of his neck, half-healed and red raw.

Steve feels a little sick. He forces himself to look away and keep reading.

The Americans believe they have created a perfect human specimen in their precious super soldier. And yes, we are attempting to similarly create this. But they are fools, and we are as well to believe that perfection can be attained in the human body. It is a false goal. What does it profit us to perfect something inherently limited? No… to truly evolve we must improve upon it. Herr Skull has secured a remote research facility and outfitted it with Hydra forces for my protection and assistance. The Skull has also honoured me with the loan of the Tesseract Cube to aid my research – under his supervision, of course. I shall do what I have been tasked and Herr Schmidt shall have his army of super soldiers; but when he sees my innovations, he shall not be disappointed. I shall work tirelessly until I have unlocked Erskine's secrets and taken them to places he never imagined, or perhaps feared to tread. It is my goal. My purpose. My destiny.

"Zola needs to be a little less open in his diary entries," Steve snarks, closing the file.

"Agreed," Stark says. "Zola's technology with the serum is getting dangerously close to Erskine's work. Isabel and I are behind him, which pains me to say. If Hydra succeeds, they'll be unstoppable. If they work out how to fix their flawed formula, the one they used on Barnes and the others, we'll never win this damned war."

"But what does he mean about adding to the human body?" Steve asks, re-reading that part.

"Well, their exo-suits might be a start. Armour? Extensions on the limbs? Who knows," Howard supplies. "Also, we're nearing the drop zone. Better gear up, Cap."

"Steve," Peggy says hurriedly, having many things to tell Steve before he jumps into the Hydra faciltity. "Before anything else, your job is the shut down the long-range air defences. There are three cannons positioned around the base that you'll need to disable for the other Commandos to be able to drop in without being shot down. The cannons are the castle's primary defence. They're abomindable, you can't miss them."

"Got it," Steve says as he double checks his weapons and pockets, taking his shield from his back. Howard said it may be able to be used in exchange for a parachute, and Steve is about to test that.

"Once the drop zone's secure, find a radio and we'll give the other Commandos the go ahead. But Steve, be careful. There's so much we don't know about–"

Suddenly, the radio fizzles out and a massive explosion rocks the plane, making a small crack in the wall of the plane about as long and thick as a metre ruler. The wind whistles in loudly, making the papers fly around everywhere.

"Not again!" Howard snarks. "It's too much! I'll have to pull away!"

"Wait! I'll drop from here!" Steve yells. "Get out as soon as I'm clear, understood?"

"Don't have to ask twice."

Steve approaches the door to the plane and kicks it open, the metal flying off into the wind and down to the earth below. He props himself in the doorway for a moment and evaluates the height before jumping, letting the wind carry him from the plane.

Steve freefalls quickly, just dodging the explosions as they rise up from the ground toward him. He hears the engines of the plane scream above him as Howard makes a sudden turn right and hightails out of the area, hoping to get back into Allied territory should the plane need attending to.

As Steve falls through the thick clouds, they part to reveal a massive complex set into the forest below. The complex where Hydra is operating from is an old late-medieval castle, set atop a massive mountain that is circled by a rushing river that serves as a moat with multiple bridges stretching from the mainland to connect it to the mountain society. The castle is an impressive structure dating back at least four-hundred years, from what Steve can tell. It has an entire town within its walls, with streets and tenements set lower than the castle which looms above it. There are a few other buildings scattered around like factories and production faciltities, as well as an open area for a motorpool that is loaded with vehicles, and another hole in the ground that resembles a mineshaft in the middle of the castle grounds. Next to the mine, Steve can make out a large open and paved courtyard, the castle's buildings built around it in a square. Steve has no doubt, though, that Hydra's tentacles stretch below the castle and the town into the mountain below.

Steve just thinks it's a shame such an impressive historical monument is about to be ruined.

Steve turns himself so he's pointing downward and falling faster. He falls overhead and approaches one of the towers on the outskirts of the castle walls. Holding the shield out in front of him, Steve dives headfirst through the thick wooden roof, smashing the wood into splinters and causing the roof to collapse. The shield takes most of the force, but he still rolls to a stop to break his fall, feeling a twinge in his right shoulder. He stands and finds he's landed in one of the guard towers, the broken beams of the roof pinning the guards to the ground.

A siren starts overhead, indicating the castle has been breached. It's loud and echoes through the buildings. Steve doesn't stick around long, hurrying onto a catwalk between two buildings outside. He spots one of the large long-range air defence on the roof of another building, a massive cannon-like structure pointing its nozzle up toward the skies. It seems an intimidating feat to take it down, but Steve's never backed down from a challenge before.

Steve crosses the catwalk into the next building, finding himself in a corridor with dull green wallpaper and personalised portraits along the walls. The castle is in immaculate condition, having been lived in before Hydra took over it. Not one part of it has been left to ruin.

Steve hurries through the corridors, hoping to be headed in the direction of the cannon. Along the way he encounters the rare Hydra soldier, and he takes them down efficiently, not even halting his run.

He slows as he enters a large room, hiding behind the corner and peering around. He's on the second level balcony overlooking a large ballroom with brilliant crystal chandeliers hanging from the starry-night painted ceiling. The stain-glass windows along the wall are mostly intact, the sunlight outside filtering into the room in a glow of yellow and blue. But the room has been converted into an operations floor, the polished wooden floorboards now stained and scratched by boots and machinery. A large structure extends up through a hole in the roof, the long-range canon above the factory outside.

Steve ducks behind the banister along the edge of the balcony, evaluating the room. He sees multiple Hydra agents on the ground floor near large computer-like machines, a superior officer in a slightly more intricate uniform pacing behind them.

"How many times must I come down here? You have an eighty-eight-millimetre automated cannon! How difficult is it to shoot down one target?" The superior bellows followed by an apologetic response from a lower-level Hydra agent. He's referring to the fact that they failed to shoot down the plane that brought Steve to the base. Truthfully, Steve is surprised they missed as well, considering the technology they have at their disposal.

Steve knows that they'll see him from a mile away should he attempt to rush them, so instead he makes use of his hiding spot and the shield. He lines up carefully and throws, the shield bouncing off the back of the superior's head. All eyes immediately turn to him and the shooting begins. The shield flies off the machinery and comes back to Steve. He'll still never understand how it happens, but he doesn't question it. He throws again, the shield hitting one soldier, then bouncing off to the other two, coming back to him. As it smacks into the final goon's cheek, it sends him flying to the ground, and in doing so, the man shoots rapidly with his Tesseract gun, his finger locked on the trigger in shock. The energy hits the factory machinery, causing three parts to explode in a massive fireball. It catches on, and Steve watches as the entire room explodes below him. On the roof, the cannon bursts into flames. The crystal of the chandelier obliterates, millions of glas shards falling into the fiery mess.

Steve's eyebrows rise at his apparent luck, watching the fire take hold, until his eyes fall on the canisters of explosives on the ground level. The fire reaches the canisters. Steve dives for one of the stain-glass windows just as the entire room explodes. He bursts through the glass at the same time as all the other windows explode with the force from inside. The fire licks at his back and singes his uniform, and he feels a slight panic at the memory of what happened last time he was caught in a fire. Steve swings himself around on the window frame with an agility he finds hard to believe is his own and flings himself across to the neighbouring building. He grabs hold of a metal rod, flipping through the air and landing precariously on a ledge protruding from the building. He tries not to look down at the ground so many metres below as he lines up the next jump, swinging from another metal pole and vaulting himself through a hole in the side of the next building. Steve lands agile as a cat on top of a stack of scaffolding set up to repair the wall, another ballroom-like area below him.

"That was close. One down, two to go. I'd better radio in and report," Steve mutters to himself, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead beneath his cowl.

Just as he prepares to jump from the scaffolding and search for a free radio, he hears the rumbling of a door lifting. On the level below him, a line of Hydra agents files out of the roller door heading off into the rest of the castle. They've got regular rifles rather than Tesseract-guns, which surprises him. It makes his work easier, though, so he won't complain.

"Wie gehen sie davon aus, dass er reingekommen ist? Es gab keine Anzeichen für einen Fallschirm. (How are they supposing he got in? There were no signs of a parachute)."

"Es ist der Über-Soldat der Amerikaner. Er braucht keinen Fallschirm. (It's the American's super-soldier. He does not need a parachute.)"

"Er ist ein Mythos. Ein Propagandamittel. Sei nicht so naiv. (He is a myth. A propaganda tool. Don't be so naïve.)"

Steve doesn't know a lot of German, but he knows a lot to recognise they're doubting his existence. It seems that the USO Tour, comic books and film reels sold the idea of Captain America, but not the person. Many people fighting on the front lines truly believe Steve is just an actor in costume, and he supposes he can't blame them. The idea of a genetically engineered super-soldier is far-fetched and futuristic, enough that if it weren't Steve himself that was changed, he most likely wouldn't believe it were possible.

"Hörst du etwas? (Do you hear something?)" One asks, turning.

His eyes widen at the sight of Steve, who flips off the scaffolding, landing crouched in front of the soldiers. He hears the click of their rifles as they load and then the bang and turns just in time to block the bullet with his shield. Steve flicks the shield, sending the bullet straight back into the Hydra soldier's chest. He takes down the twenty soldiers with ease, none of them managing to even take a step closer to the Captain.

Steve quickly checks the room for intel but finds it empty and abandoned. He has a feeling much of the castle complex will be in the same state. Surely, they couldn't fill the entire castle and town below with their work.

Over a PA system speaker in the corner of the room, a crackly voice comes over and fills the room. Steve pauses to listen to the feminine voice. "Attention all security forces. We have a saboteur in our midst. Converge on the area around the Western cannon. I want him found and neutralised immediately on pain of death. Hail Hydra!" Steve recognises the voice immediately as belonging to Madame Hydra. He's only met her twice, but that sneered sultry voice would be recognisable anywhere.

Steve continues through the hallways, getting lost with every twist and turn. He needs to get to the next long-range cannon and disable it. All of the doors are locked, not that it would stop Steve, but it makes him curious as to what's inside. Still, he follows the main hallway, climbs a set of stairs, and finds himself inside another open room. Computers line the walls around one side, beeping and flashing lights. Steve hides behind a pillar and listens to the conversation between two Hydra agents in the far corner.

"Have you seen Dieter, lately?"

"No. He crossed Herr Schmidt. He was sent to the dungeon. A mercy compared to what the wrath of the Red Skull would have done to him."

"I am not so sure. The dungeon is no safe haven. Where do you think those monstrosities in the labs come from?"

Steve stops listening at that point. Those monstrosities they speak of, he assumes, are the attempts at replicating the super soldier serum. So now Hydra will even experiment on their own men, those who are considered insubordinate.

He peeks around the pillar and evaluates the agents. They stand by the computers, typing and printing and entering codes. They don't wear the usual black uniform of the Hydra agents, and Steve wonders whether they have a different role within the organisation. Steve throws his shield, and immediately knows the men are not agents or trained in fighting. They attempt to flee rather than fighting back and are lacking any weapons to protect themselves. The shield smashes hard into the computers and they explode, taking the rest of the computers and the men with them, leaving a mass of burnt bodies on the floor. Steve dislodges the shield from the cindering computer wreckage and straps it onto his back.

He spots a ladder extending toward a manhole in the ceiling, a faint beeping sound coming from above. His bet is on there being a radio up there, and he just hopes the signal will be strong enough to contact base and the Commandos. Steve hurries up the ladder with clunky metallic steps and emerges into the upper level. There's another row of computers, a few files on desks, and in the far corner, a clunky radio.

Steve fiddles with the controls until he gets a strong enough signal before picking up the receiver. "Captain America to Headquarters. Come in. Over."

There's a second of white noise before Peggy's British accent crackles to life. "Cap, this is Peggy. Are you alright? That drop…"

"That was the easy part," Steve reassures. "Be advised, the flak's so heavy I could have walked down on it."

"We know. The Howlers are on their way to back you up, but we need you to take out the rest of the long-range AA cannons before they can safely airdrop."

"Copy, I know," Steve says, formulating a set of plans in his head. "Maintain schedule. By the time they get here, the skies'll be clear. Cap, out."

Steve hangs up the radio before turning and leaping back down the manhole, landing on his feet. He hurries through the hallways in the direction of the second cannon he'd seen. Hydra soldiers attempt to rush him from a few doorways to the side, but he pushes through them easily, striking them cripplingly to the sides of their heads. They go down without another movement.

"It has come to my attention," the familiar voice of Madame Hydra crackles over the speaker system, "that our uninvited guest is none other than the American's Super Soldier. This is causing some concern. I remind you that the weapons and armour Herr Zola has equipped you with make you his equal. His better. We are one man, and we are Hydra. Bring me his head in time for Herr Schmidt's arrival!"

Madame Hydra's message is clearly directed at her men, but it gives Steve intel he hadn't been aware of before – not only is Madame Hydra within the castle's boundaries, but in time, so will be the Red Skull. It's been a long time since all of them were present when Steve was infiltrating the factories. Should Steve be able to find them, he could take them both down once and for all, along with the rest of Hydra. Quite quickly, Steve gains himself another objective, this one more major than any of the others. No longer is he just destroying this one base, he's destroying the entire organisation. Today.

Steve opens the door at the end of the hallway, finding himself in a large abandoned library. The walls are fitted with floor to ceiling bookshelves, old ladders still attached that can be moved along the wall. Many of the books are missing, large patches of the bookshelves destroyed. Steve's spots a large machine working at the end of the library, set into the wall. It clunks as the cogs inside it turn, and it blows out hot air as he steps closer to it. He deducts it must be a cooling machine for the cannons, because by his calculation, there should be one right above him. If he can take them out, he can disable the remaining cannons a little more quietly than the explosion he'd accidentally caused previously.

Steve forces a metal cover off of the front of the machine, exposing the wiring. He grabs a handful and pulls them out, discarding them aside, and the cogs and parts of the machine immediately grind to a halt. Steve waits as the machine grows hotter and hotter as the minutes pass, beginning to shake violently. A pipe near the top bursts from the pressure and its lid flies off, white smoke billowing out toward the roof. Steve takes a step away, raising the shield in anticipation. Like a boiler exploding from the pressure, the machine bursts open and a rush of flames fly out as it explodes from overheating. Steve ducks down behind the shield as it takes the impact of the force and the heat.

Above ground, Steve hears another massive explosion as the second cannon overheats, causing it to explode and rip open the roof of the library. The cannon sits inside a brick tower extending from the roof, which explodes into a shower of rubble with the force of the explosion and showers Steve below in the library with brick and debris. Steve ducks down under the shield and waits it out, working up a sweat beneath his cowl from the heat, until eventually the fire dulls down. Peering out from under the shield, Steve finds himself buried in a pile of rubble, the building he'd been standing in almost entirely demolished. He can see the entirety of the outdoor ground in the middle of the castle's territory.

Knowing the explosion will draw the Hydra goons to the area, Steve quickly digs himself out of the fiery rubble, thankful that this suit is more fireproof than the last. He looks out from where the wall once was across the castle and spots the final canon across the complex on top of one of the larger buildings of the castle. That's his destination. He takes a running start and launches himself from the building, jumping strategically down the debris until he lands within the narrow streets of the castle's city.

Steve runs through the cobblestone streets, preparing himself to run into the attacking Hydra soldiers. He suspects they'll deploy a large chunk of their security to the area. Not two seconds later, they round the corner toward him.

"There's the welcome wagon," Steve notes.

Steve decides to avoid the goons for the moment, hoping to have a few minutes to regain his breathe from being caught in the tower collapse. He dives into an abandoned building and ducks below the window ledge, waiting it out as the footsteps pass outside, thundering along the streets toward the tower, having not seen the man with a walking target on his back.

Once they've passed, Steve continues through the eerily abandoned. Army trucks sit at angles on the road, and the buildings look worse for wear, crumbling where they stand. Steve supposes Hydra doesn't have time to restore their castle considering how time consuming their quest for world domination is.

Steve lets himself into a busy looking building, quickly discovering it's a bunkhouse for the Hydra workers. He passes hundreds of beds in dormitory like fashion before entering the mess hall. The long dining tables are deserted, all of Hydra busy dealing with Steve's invasion of the complex. He finds a wall of lockers and quickly searches through them, hoping to find one that may belong to Zola, but comes up empty, only finding the soldier's clothing and possessions.

With one more cannon to take out, Steve decides to search the barracks for a radio and check in with the SSR base before continuing. He makes his way to an upper level where a radio lay waiting for him to use, unattended by Hydra soldiers.

"This is Captain Rogers to HQ. Do you read?" Steve asks into the oblivion.

"We read you, Cap. What's your status?" Peggy asks immediately, indicating she's been awaiting his check in.

"I took out a second gun. Now I've entered a barracks area. It's hard to navigate without prior intel about the layout of the castle. I still have one last cannon to neutralise. I know where it is, I've seen it, I just have to get to it"

"I was in correspondence with Stark. He is still flying back to base. He informed me that long-range guns need open vistas to be effective. He put his money on the roof of the Estate Building, he thought he spotted it whilst dropping you off."

"Copy, I think that's what I saw" Steve agrees. "I'll head in that direction and create some diversions along the way."

"Good thinking," Peggy praises. "If you can distract them and damage their supply chain at the same time, so much the better. Over and out."


As Steve makes his way across the grounds and streets of the castle, he sticks to the walls, ears listening for any movement. He encounters the odd small group of Hydra soldiers that attempt to stop him, but nothing that threatens his mission.

The sky is beginning to darken as the day transitions into afternoon, and Steve knows he needs to work fast if the Commandos will have a chance to get into the compound. He rounds the corner and emerges from the narrow city streets, coming across a red painted building that somewhat resembles a stable. In the top level of the stable he spots two snipers aimed toward the town, prepared for his advance. They see him and they immediately fire. Steve hides behind the shield, the bullets pinging off the metal, and ducks behind a thick wooden silo.

"Gun nest in the barn. Couldn't have picked a more obvious place if they tried," Steve mutters sarcastically to himself.

However, the first shot from the sniper sends fear through Steve's gut. The guns they use are grenade launchers rather than ordinary semi-automatic rifles or even Tesseract rays. The grenades pelt into the wooden silo, causing it to catch alight. Steve dives out of the way, cowering behind an abandoned metal car instead. He waits as the Hydra soldiers deploy all the grenades in their rifles. It takes a long while, and the car he hides behind looks a little worse for wear, but eventually they need to reload. Steve takes advantage of the lack of shooting for the few seconds and makes a break for the stable, managing to get inside just as another grenade hits the ground a few feet behind him. The blast throws him forward into the barn and he lands heavily on the ground with a surprised grunt.

Steve quickly gets to his feet and hurries up the ladder to the upper level, turning just in time to deflect a shot from the sniper's pistols they pull from their pockets. Steve hurries around the balcony toward the two snipers, sending the shield flying in front of him to take them out. The first is sent hurtling over the balcony to the barn floor below, whilst the other slumps over the grenade machine gun set up.

Outside, Steve spots a wave of Hydra soldiers approaching, most likely called to the position by the snipers. He pushes the dead agent off of the machine gun and takes the grips in his hands, pointing the gun toward the approaching men. Finger on the trigger, Steve shoots the grenades in a line across the scene, taking out all of the Hydra soldiers in a blast of fire. They scream as they're thrown around by the fire. Steve shoots until there's no more movement below, the grass and objects lying around simmering with fire.

Moving away from the machine gun, Steve drops down onto the ground level of the stable, landing in a pile of old, rotten hay. His eyes land on a decipher machine on the wall beside a closed metal door he hadn't noticed before in his haste to take out the grenaders. He goes up to the keypad and smashes the shield into the machine, causing it to spit out sparks and shut down with a funny whirring sound. Seconds later the metal door opens with a metallic grind revealing a tunnel that slopes down underground. From what Steve can see, it runs straight ahead underground in the direction he's trying to go. It may be quicker for him to go this way, undeterred by soldiers above ground.

Steve runs through the damp brick hallways, hearing nothing other than the sound of his echoing footsteps and the drip of a water leak along the ceiling. He supposes it's a supply tunnel, or perhaps one for escape.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel to the right, Steve turns, eventually emerging on the grounds of the motor pool. The yard is littered with damaged and destroyed car bodies, as well as many tanks awaiting to be used, many sitting in worn tin sheds to protect them from the weather. Steve sneaks his way between the buildings and sheds, hiding behind cars to wait for agents to pass before continuing. He's not entirely sure where he's going, as long as it's away from the last cannon he destroyed. As he goes, he throws his shield into any of the car's engines, petrol tanks or into tanks of gas, setting them alight. Before he escapes the motor pool, he sets every salvageable car alight, ensuring that the Hydra agents have no vehicles to evacuate in should they need to.

He runs circles around the motor pool but can't seem to find a way out. The outsides of it are fences, with the only foreseeable exits through the garage at one end that leads out of the castle across one of the bridges, or through the mechanical workshop at the other end. Not wanting to risk actually leaving the complex, Steve opts to go through the workshop. Steve sneaks inside, undetected by the patrolling agents and mechanics, and uses a few more of his explosive devices to set the workshop alight, sticking them to the sides of the cars being serviced. As the Hydra goons approach the fiery chaos, they're taken out by unsuspected explosions. Those who make it to the Captain are knocked down by the shield or by a flying kick to the chest. Eventually, Steve leaves not only a mass of scorched cars behind, but also a scattering of bodies.

As Steve makes for the exit, the door opens to reveal another robot-enclosed agent, walking clunkily toward Steve. In his hands he holds another electricity-charged gun, which crackles as he raises it and shoots. Steve dodges to the side, narrowing avoiding being hit by the bolt. He throws the shield, hitting the man in the face. It sends him flying backward a few steps. Steve rushes him, jumping and rolling to the side just as the machine shoots another bolt. This positions Steve behind the robot and he brings the shield down on the back of its head. He skirts around in front of the attacker and lands three kicks to its chest, sending it to the ground with a thud. Steve leers over the top of him and grabs it by its uniform chest, pulling it up with one hand. He prepares to draw his fist back to land a final blow when the robotic man grabs his fist, dragging it back. With one last ounce of energy, Steve pulls his hands free and steps backward, only to stomp forward with his booted foot right into the robot's face. It makes the mask fly off onto the concrete floor, revealing the man's bloody face.

Steve makes note of the gun used by the robot. It's the same as the one he uncovered the day before in the trenches. Stark had said it used the power of the Tesseract to run but did not harness its energy. It's essentially a modified flamethrower with a plasma output rather than Tesseract energy. The gun launches a stream of superheated plasma powerful enough to vaporise the air around it, a beam of scorching gas. Essentially, Howard had warned, don't get hit. It wouldn't vaporise the soldier like the Tesseract beam would, but it would most likely scorch him irreparably if it didn't kill him.

Steve hurries up to the office above the garage, which overlooks the floor. The massive windows have been smashed by his explosive adventures a few moments before. There aren't any Hydra agents in attendance, but inside is a security lock. Steve spends a few minutes decoding it before a door at the end of the garage opens, revealing the exit. Steve leaps out of the broken window at the side of the office, grabbing hold of one of the pipes running along the ceiling. He swings off it onto a catwalk and runs along the top of the factory to the opened door.

The opened door leads to a small balcony. The balcony sits right on the edge of what once would have been a courtyard of gardens, but has been entirely dug out like a mine, leaving a massive whole in the ground. The mine stretches from the edge of the motor pool he's just emerged from, to the buildings on his left and right. There's no foreseeable way to get around it or to cross it from this side. Far down, Steve can see digging machinery. He supposes this is where they began digging for the metal present in their new weapons.

Across the gap, Steve spots the rest of the courtyard that hasn't been damaged, as well as a large factory-looking building. A truck drives away from a garage point and putters off down the road around the perimeter of the mine. Steve would bet his last nickel the building is an armoury.

With no way to cross the mine, Steve resorts to climbing around the outside of the building to his right. The brick and ledges will allow him a foothold to climb along and skirt along to the other side of the mine. Careful as he can, Steve takes hold of the brick with his gloved hands and finds the foothold for his feet. He edges along, careful not to look down at the mine hundreds of feet below him. After an agonising few minutes of heavy breathing, Steve gets close enough to solid land that he can jump to it. He dives for land, rolling as he hits the ground, and comes back on his feet to continue running toward the supposed armoury.

At the front of the building, he greets a bunch of Hydra agents who somehow hadn't noticed the brightly painted shield shimmying across the outside of the grey building. He throws the shield ahead of him and takes down two of them with one hit, the shield returning to him loyal as ever. The third has a gun that fires the plasma energy, and Steve has to approach him slowly with his shield raised to avoid being hit. When he gets close enough, he smashes the side of the shield into the man's head.

Steve bursts through the doors of the armoury, guns blazing. The Hydra agents go down victim to Steve's pistol before many of them can turn around, slumping over the tables and rows of weaponry littering the floor.

Steve takes a look around at the armoury. The plasma energy guns that Hydra has begun using have been packed tightly into wooden crates to be sent out to the rest of the Hydra stations, presumably around the world. There are hundreds of crates of the weapons ready for dispatch. Steve walks up to one and picks the gun up, examining it. It looks no different to a regular machine gun, but he knows better, he's been on the receiving end multiple times in the last twenty-four hours.

"God and country," Steve breathes, attempting to calculate how many there would be. "If these reach the front lines, they'll cut the boys to pieces."

Steve's got to destroy it all, fast. Igniting a few ammo caches should blow the place sky high. Steve may not know everything about ammunition and weapons, but he certainly listens to Gabe's translations on what Dernier discusses.

Steve plants an explosive device on one of the ammo caches in the corner. The timer begins the countdown from thirty seconds, and Steve makes for the exit. He's halted by two approaching Hydra agents, one of them wearing the robot exoskeleton. Steve knocks out the unarmed soldier first before turning to the robot. He lands a punch upside it's head, then pulls it downward and knees it in the chest. He pushes the suit to the floor and stands over the top of it, throwing as much force as he can into a punch to its face. Before checking if the man is unconscious or dead, Steve scrambles up the main stairs entering the armoury. The explosion detonates behind him, the entire building exploding high into the darkening, cloudy sky above.

Steve turns to admire it for a second. With the armoury and all of its weaponry destroyed, Steve can rest a little easier. Hopefully that was all of that type of machine gun and they won't have to worry about any of it making it to the front. Weapons like that could turn the tide of the war toward a Hydra victory.


Steve managed to find a blueprint of the castle in an abandoned office and used it to find his way to the last air defence. He's found himself in a walkway of overgrown greenery between the high concrete wall of the castle's perimeter and the side of the mountain that the castle sits upon. He runs along the muddy ground until he makes it to the base of the mountain. A large service elevator is fitted into the rock wall, waiting for him. The lift, he supposes from the map, will take him up to the roof where the last cannon waits to be destroyed. There probably could have been an easier way to get there, but this was the closest and least conspicuous. Steve steals a glance at his watch, finding he's cutting it close with the time. He brings the shield down on the keypad again, the elevator doors crawling open. Stepping inside, he presses the button for the rooftop, waiting patiently as the doors close behind him and the lift jolts to life, taking him steadily upward.

The doors open, and Steve is confronted with a rooftop filled with shipping containers, a crane extending upward in the distance. It looks like a scene from the docks and the shipping yards in Brooklyn. Steve spots the cannon close to the crane, suspended in the air on a metal catwalk level. There are wire supports extending out around it to keep it upright and steady. It will be hard to reach, but maybe if he–

"It's the American!" A heavy German accent yells, cutting off Steve's train of thought.

The Hydra agents appear from between the metal shipping containers, shooting immediately. Steve blocks with the shield, using his pistol to load their bodies with bullets. He smashes them with the shield as he gets closer, sending them flailing into the metal with a bang, their bodies slumping to the ground.

Steve starts off through the shipping containers, quickly getting lost. They form barriers like a maze that he has to meander his way through, and he quickly gets frustrated. Hydra goons constantly dart out at him and throw out his sprint. As he comes around one container, a Hydra agent lands a hit on him, the bullet grazing the skin of his shoulder. The uniform protects him from most of the damage, but he still feels the sting. He repays the man with his own precisely aimed shot to the chest.

As Steve runs, he tries to survey the thick cables running from the cannon platform to the surrounding buildings and to the ground. The cable looks tough, but he bets his shield is tougher. Steve aims and throws the shield as hard as he can, the metal snapping the cable easily. The cable swings down and Steve dodges out of the way as it smashes into the fencing behind him. He looks back and sees that the platform has already begun to wobble in the wind. If he can take down the other anchor points, it should go down.

Seconds later, Madame Hydra's voice comes over the PA system once again. Steve hasn't heard from her in a while. "How does one man elude Hydra's elite? Bring him to me, now! I want to choke the life out of him myself!"

"Harsh," Steve retorts.

He makes use of the hole the cable left in the fencing, squeezing himself through. Between the cargo containers, he sees a second cable, this one tied to the ground. It's surrounded by Hydra agents, but he doesn't need to get close to take it down. Steve aims again and throws the shield, slamming through the cable. The cable flicks up with the lack of force and slams into a few of the agents, flinging them into the far wall and leaving them with bloodied gashes. The platform sways dangerously in the distance, unable to hold its own weight. One more cable and it should fall.

Steve cuts through an open container where one of the exoskeletons waits for him to emerge. Steve sneaks up behind him, grabbing its arm. He manages to restrain the suit, grab its weapon, and control its actions from behind, weaponizing him. Using the plasma gun, Steve forces the suit to take down his own men, all of them burning to a crisp as they come in contact with the yellow beams. Once they're all dead, Steve flings the suit away from him and lands a critical hit on the back of its head.

The final cable stands bolted to the ground in front of Steve. He flings the shield one last time and cuts through the cable, causing it to fling dangerously over the containers. Seconds later, the platform and the cannon on top of it sway and fall to the ground, the concrete pillars snapping with the weight of the platform. It hits the ground with a massive thud and with a cloud of debris, shaking the entire building enough to make Steve stumble on his feet.

"So much for their long-range air defences," Steve mutters, watching as a fire starts up where it had fallen. "Now to find a radio…" He mumbles to himself.

"You've already lost, American. Strike one of us down and two more will take his place. No one can overcome such odds. Surrender now and I will show mercy… The mercy of a quick death," Madame Hydra's voice comes again, but Steve doesn't even pay her any mind.


Finding the radio is relatively easy. Steve finds his way to a radar dome and inside there are multiple radios ready to be used. The room is most likely a major communications operation.

"Captain America to base. Come in, over," Steve says, hopefully for the final time.

"Cap, it's Peggy. Go ahead," Peggy replies swiftly.

"Long-range air defences are down. Repeat, the Commandos are clear for drop."

"Copy. Just in time, too," Peggy says gratefully. Steve sneaks another look at the time and feels a sense of relief rush through him. He had just a few minutes spare.

Suddenly, a third voice comes through on the channel. "Rogers, Carter, this is Falsworth," the British voice says. "We heard your transmission… Are you certain you took out all the long-range guns?"

The ground rumbles a little, and Steve looks up, straining his ears to listen. "Why? What do you see?" Steve asks carefully.

"I wish I knew," Falsworth says vaguely.

Steve drops the receiver and hurries out of the room to a balcony that looks over the rest of the castle from where he stands on the roof. On top of the castle's buildings opposite him, across the courtyard, a sophisticated looking cannon rises out of the building and points toward the sky that the Commandos will be approaching from. On another building much closer to Steve, the roof is a circular dome shape, and Steve watches helplessly as the dome opens up to reveal a massive radar dish that will direct the cannon's fire.

Steve hurries back to the receiver. "They're deploying something new. I had no idea it was here. More of Zola's hellish machinery. It's definitely a gun."

"Can you reach it?" Peggy asks hopefully.

"Not in time."

"Should we abort?" Steve pauses, looking back out at the machinery. He hears Peggy's worried voice again after a few seconds of silence. "Cap, repeat, should we abort?" She pronounces more clearly, desperate for an answer.

"Negative, proceed as planned," Steve decides finally.

"But the gun–?" Peggy tries.

"It aims with a radar dish," Steve tells her. "And that, I can reach. Captain America, out."


Conveniently, a cable runs from the balcony of the radio tower to the dome containing the radar dish. Steve grasps the cable with the shield and uses it to fly across the gap between the buildings. If he can wreck the dish then the guns will be firing blind, giving the Commandos plane a fighting chance of landing safely, or at least allow them to safely parachute into position.

Steve flies down the cable, bracing for impact as he approaches a large window in the side of the circular building. He smashes through the glass, sending the shards raining down on the Hydra agents inside. Many of them cower from the shards, others stand prepared to fight the invader. As Steve lands in a crouch, he smashes the shield down into the ground. The force sends a wave of energy across the ground, knocking the closer agents off their feet. Using the shield, he bounces it off the walls and each agent, taking out a majority of them within one hit. He flies through the air and kicks another two at once, landing on top of them in a crouch.

"Kill him, or Red Skull will have our heads!" One yells from the distance, egging on his fellow soldiers.

Steve knocks the two approaching out with the shield before turning to their instructor. "Schmidt is the least of you worries," he tells the man before throwing the shield at him, sending him backward into the wall with a pained yelp.

Once all of the men have been taken care of, Steve sets off in search for a way to take down the radar dish on the floor above. He spots a column rising up to the roof that looks load bearing and important. He sticks an explosive device to it, before running upward to find another. If he can set multiple explosives quickly, the force will be enough to take down the level and the radar dish. He's running on limited time though, with the Commandos scheduled to arrive any minute.

Steve sticks some more explosive putty to another beam, right on the join between the two bits of concrete, its weakest point. A group of soldiers appear from below as Steve is sticking the explosive device. Instead of dealing with them, he pulls a grenade from his utility belt and drops it off the balcony, hitting one of them on the top of their head. It explodes between the group, sending them flying to all corners of the room like rag dolls.

The explosives will take out the supports, but maybe not the dish itself. Steve hurries up to the top of the dome, climbing ladders and jumping between catwalks. Through the opening of the domed roof, Steve spots the Commandos' plane far off in the distance. The adrenaline rush kicks in, and he finds himself running faster than he ever thought possible. He takes out the Hydra agents surrounding the radar with an animalistic rage, stealing one of their plasma guns and using it for himself to take them out, leaving none of them breathing. He steps over the charred bodies and up to the radar dish.

He quickly sets the bombs on each side of the square base of the dish near the control panels, acutely aware that the gun outside has already begun shooting at the plane. Whoever is piloting it is expertly swerving to avoid the beams of plasma energy from the cannon, but Steve knows they won't able to forever.

As soon as they're all set, Steve sprints from the dome, jumping down through the levels in a free fall. To halt his fall and avoid injury, he reaches out an arm and grasps a railing, feeling a painful pull in his shoulder. He jumps again from there, his descent slowed, and lands safely on the wooden floor below. He sprints from the building as the explosives detonate, the building and radar dish disintegrating in chaotic fire, rubble flying everywhere.

Steve makes it outside into the fresh air, but the sound of loud gunfire continues. The cannon continues to shoot manually, the yellow blasts shooting across the sky. It's moving around in rapid succession, whoever is controlling it unable to keep it steady enough to aim for the plane without the radar dish to inform its direction.

Steve watches from the ground as, suddenly, a beam manages to hit the wing of the plane by luck rather than skill, a ball of fire bursting out of the engine. It's just like the last plane crash all over again, Steve watching as it goes down in an uncontrollable spiral. The plane quickly falls to the left, plummeting toward the ground and the castle below it. Steve waits and waits, and finally multiple white parachutes emerge from the back door of the plane. They float slowly toward the ground, though Steve can't count how many bodies there are attached to them. All he can hope is that they all made it.

Suddenly, Steve realises the plane has veered off course, heading toward him. It flies straight into the remaining walls of the dome building above him with a massive crash, sending the entire structure to the ground in a fiery explosion that almost deafens Steve. It hits the ground and a massive energy force blows out, throwing Steve backward with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. Steve goes through the wall of the building behind him, hitting his head hard against the next brick wall and then the concrete floor. He feels a wet spot form underneath his head, and without looking, he knows it's blood. He tries to sit up, but his vision is a little too blurry. His head falls back to the ground, and he groans. He takes a minute to recover, hoping his head wound will heal itself.

He pauses, holding his breath, when he hears and feels a heavy thumping of footsteps coming toward him.

Managing to lift his head, Steve sees a large exoskeleton suit approaching him through blurry vision. It looks different to other's he's fought though – stronger, larger, made of a more durable metal. The suit grabs Steve's ankle and throws him up into the air roughly, before flinging him back out of the building and across the courtyard in the middle of the castle grounds. Steve lands hard on the concrete ground and rolls to a stop on his stomach. Trying to collect himself, he barely gets onto his hands and knees before the bot is over him again. It turns him over as though he weighs nothing and the brings down a metal fist on Steve's face.

It's the last thing Steve remembers before the world goes black.