Hello friends! Here's the next bit! It's a little shorter but that's okay because you know what's coming next chapter?! DO YOU!? AHH so close to some Bucky action! Well, I'm going to get working on that and get it out to you guys as soon as I can! I know you've all been patiently waiting for it! SO, with that being said, here's that daily reminder that I hold no rights over anything Marvel, which includes it's characters and events you find familiar! Enjoy this chapter and I'll update again real soon! Xoxo-NickyLynn
When Tessa swam back out of the darkness the first sensation that she registered was a tickle deep in her lungs. She began coughing to try to clear the feeling and found herself sitting up in the back of the truck as she tried hacking the dust from the collapsed bunker form her lungs. She looked into the front seat where Steve was driving, and Natasha sat leaning against the door's glass window with her eyes closed. All three of them were covered in scorch marks, blood and debris, but they were alive.
"What happened?" Tessa asked as Steve turned his head at the sound of her coughing.
"I pulled us out." Steve told her. "I'm taking us somewhere safe."
"The most powerful organization in the world is trying to kill us." Tessa told him, bringing her feet down to the floor. "I don't think safe is a word that applies to us right now no matter where we're at."
"Well, then the closest we can get to it." He amended with a sigh.
"And where exactly would that be?" she asked stretching out her sore back with a groan.
"I have a friend in D.C. who can help us." He told her.
"A friend?" Tessa repeated with lifted eyebrows. "And you're sure he can help?" she asked him, having no idea who he was talking about as he had never told her about this friend before.
"Let's hope so." He responded, pressing down harder on the gas.
Steve drove through the night and by the time he pulled them up to the house he had been searching for, the sun was already high in the sky again. Tessa looked at the house with a lifted brow. There wasn't anything remarkable about the house at all. It was just a normal house in the middle of a normal suburb and Tessa wasn't sure how this friend could help them, but decided to trust Steve and follow him up to the door along with Natasha. Steve knocked on the glass door at the side of the house and after a minute a dark-skinned man pulled back the blinds and was staring out at them, obviously not having been expecting company.
His eyes drifted from Steve, over to Tessa and Natasha, noting how absolutely terrible they looked. He pulled the sliding door open, having no idea what he was about to be dragged into. "Hey man." He greeted Steve, looking around their group in question.
"I'm sorry about this." Steve told him. "But we really need a place to lay low."
"And I really need a shower." Tessa said under her breath, feeling the thick layer of dust and ash clogging her pores.
"Everyone we know is trying to kill us." Natasha added with a sigh.
He looked around the three of them, the sudden turn of events leaving him nearly speechless. "Well, not everybody." He said after a moment, stepping to the side to let them in. Tessa followed Steve into the house, looking around the small space as she walked into the room.
"Guys, this is Sam Wilson. He's a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a friend." He said in introduction, motioning over to the man as he shut the door and turned around to face them. "Sam, this is Natasha Romanoff and my sister, Rose."
"You can call me Tessa." She said, holding out her hands towards him, not liking anyone but Steve refer to her as Rose.
"Nice to finally meet you." Sam told her, gripping onto her hand and shaking it. "Sorry it's under pretty crappy circumstances."
"Well, unfortunately, people trying to kill me has become the constant narration to my life." She told him with a sigh, finding the amount of times she had to evade death exhausting. "Thanks for helping us….it's hard to believe Steve wouldn't tell me about such a good friend." She said, rolling her head over to stare at Steve with a lifted brow.
"Yeah, well, no time like the present." Steve shot back to her, rubbing at his head tiredly.
"Shower?" she asked then, looking back at Sam.
"Down the hall, second door on your left, there's a spare room with an attached bathroom." Sam told her, nodding his head down the hall.
"Marvelous." Tessa said, walking away and following his directions to the bathroom. Once she was showered, she sat on the bed, drying off her hair as Natasha took up the bathroom after her. A few minutes later Natasha emerged, hair damp and skin washed as well. Tessa looked up at her as she stepped out and she had never saw her looking so lost in thought. "Penny for your thoughts." Tessa told her, wanting to know what was going on inside that complicated head of hers.
Natasha looked over at her and let out a sigh as she walked over to the bed, dropping herself down next to Tessa. "When I first joined S.H.I.E.L.D. I thought I was going straight." She said, looking over at Tessa as regret filled her. "I guess I just traded in the KGB for Hydra." She let out a deep sigh, dropping her gaze down to the bedding. "I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but I guess I can't tell the difference anymore." She said bringing her eyes back up.
"You didn't know." Tessa told her rationally. "S.H.I.E.L.D. fooled us both. I should have known better, but I trusted them anyways. I think we were both just trying so hard to run from the monsters of our past that we let them suck us right into their lie." She said, having been feeling the weight of guilt as well.
Natasha's eyes bore into Tessa's. If there was anyone in the world who understood what it was Natasha was feeling in that moment, it was her. Natasha found herself, once again, counting herself lucky to call the woman in front of her a friend. "I owe you." She told her seriously. "You saved our lives back there." She said, knowing full well how terribly things would have gone had she not been there to block that explosion.
"What are friends for, right?" Tessa told her, the corner of her lip pulling up a little.
"Tessa, if it was the other way around and it was down to me saving your life-now be honest with me-" she said, searching Tessa's face for her answer. "You would trust me to do it, wouldn't you?"
Tessa looked over at Natasha and her mouth lifted into a full smile. "Like I said." Tessa told her. "That what friends are for, right?" Natasha smiled over at her at that.
A knock at the door interrupted the moment and they turned to find Steve leaning against the doorframe. "Hey guys, Sam's got some food made up if you're hungry." He told them. With that, they all made their way out to the kitchen where they sat around Sam's small table and ate the breakfast he had been kind enough to make them while they figured out their next move.
"Now the question is," Natasha began. "who at S.H.I.E.L.D. could launch a domestic missile strike?"
"Pierce." Tessa and Steve said at the exact same time. Tessa looked over at Steve before turning back to Natasha. "He practically told us he was the enemy during the shake down in his office." She scoffed out. "He reeks of bad intentions, and he just happens to be sitting right on top of everything."
"But he's not working alone." Steve added, looking over at Tessa, having agreed fully with her. "Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star."
"So was Jasper Sitwell." Natasha told him, referring to the high level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent they were tasked with protecting during their mission.
"So, the real question is, how do three of the most wanted people in Washington kidnap a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in broad daylight." Steve said, realizing they had to get their hands on Sitwell.
"The answer is you don't." Sam said, walking over to them and throwing a folder down on the table in front of Steve.
"What's this?" he asked, picking it up.
"Consider it a resume." Sam told him.
"Is this Bakhmala?" Natasha asked, reading over Steve's shoulder. "The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you?" she asked, looking over at Sam in surprise.
"You didn't say he was a Pararescue." Tessa said, looking down at one of the photographs that had fallen out of the folder.
"I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs." Natasha said. "What did you use? A stealth chute?" she asked him.
"No." Sam said with a small smile. "These." He said, handing over a separate folder. Tessa snatched it out of his hand before Steve could, opening it up to look at the contents. Her brow lifted as she took in the designs inside and suddenly the engineer in her was screaming to see the real thing.
"That could work." She commented as Steve pulled the folder out of her hand to look at it for himself. He let out a breath of disbelief as he looked over the flight suit for himself.
"I thought you said you were a pilot." Steve said, looking up at Sam in surprise.
"I never said I was a pilot." Sam told him with a smile as he shook his head.
"I can't ask you to do this Sam." Steve said, looking back down at the folder. "You got out for a good reason."
"Dude. Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in." Sam told him seriously.
"I like him." Tessa said from her seat, looking up at Sam with an approving smile before looking to Steve with a shrug. "We really could use all the help we can get." She told him.
Steve let out a sigh. "Where can we get our hands on one of these things?" he finally asked, holding up the folder with the flight suit designs.
"The last one is at Fort Meade. Behind three gates and a twelve-inch steel wall." Sam replied, having no idea how they were going to be able to get ahold of it.
Tessa tipped her head at that. "I can get in there and get it." She said, knowing that task would be far easier than trying to get ahold of any Hydra agent surrounded by the protection of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Are you sure?" Sam asked, looking down at her with his arms crossed. "I mean, it's going to be almost impossible to get in there. You'd have to practically walk through walls." Tessa looked up at him with a wide grin and his face dropped as he took in her look of excitement. "You're kidding right." He said in disbelief. "She can't really walk through walls, can she?" he asked, looking up at Steve.
Tessa transported herself behind Steve then, looking over at Sam with a smirk. Steve rolled his eyes at her. "She can get it." He told a shocked Sam with a nod.
Unsurprisingly, getting Sam's flight suit was nothing more than a simple in and out for Tessa. There were hardly any guards and she doubted that anyone would even notice it missing for several days at least. But that was the easy part. Getting their hands on Sitwell was going to be incredibly more challenging. Knowing it was an unavoidable necessity, they made their plan, loaded up, and headed into town to where Sitwell was supposed to be meeting with Senator Stern for lunch.
Everyone had their job. Tessa was currently hiding in the shadows of a skinny alley, waiting for Sam to direct Jasper Sitwell past her so she could grab him without anyone seeing. Obviously, Sam had played his part well because a few minutes later Tessa watched at Sitwell walked by in his expensive suit. She stepped out behind him and without giving him any warning that she was there, grabbed onto him with her powers and threw him against the wall with his arms spread out to the side next to him.
"Y-you?!" Sitwell said as he looked down at Tessa with wide eyes.
"Hello Agent Sitwell." She greeted as she stepped up to his hovering body. She reached into his jacket pocket and dug out his phone as she kept him suspended above her helplessly. "I don't think you'll be needing this." She said before she crushed the device with her powers and let the ruined carcass drop to the ground.
"What do you want?" he asked her.
"I want to have a chat." She told him. "I've heard that you've been a very naughty boy Mr. Sitwell." Tessa then reached out to him and transported both of them up onto the roof of the building where Steve was waiting with Natasha. Once they were up in the open space, Tessa threw the agent down on the roof in between her's and her brother's feet. Sitwell scrambled back up, looking up at both of them with fear-laced eyes as he did.
"Tell us about Zola's algorithm." Steve ordered him.
"I-I've never heard of it." He muttered out, coming back up to his feet and backing away from them towards the edge of the roof.
"Okay, let's try another one. What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?" Steve asked then, stepping after him.
"Throwing up. I get seasick." Jasper said as he hit the edge of the roof and nearly went falling backwards off of it before Steve reached forward and grabbed hold of him to keep him steady. "Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're going to throw me off the roof?" Sitwell asked him with a smirk. "Because it's really not your style, Captain."
"You're right." Steve said in agreement, letting go of Sitwell. He brushed down the lapels of his suit jacket as he tipped his head back and motioned towards Tessa. "It's hers."
Steve stepped to the side and Tessa gave Sitwell a smirk before sending out a blast of blue that hit him on the chest and sent him flying over the edge with a yell of terror. Tessa shared an amused look with Natasha as Sitwell's screams faded away. Just as they were about to cut out completely, however, they began to grow louder again. Sam came flying up the side of the building, carrying a terrified Sitwell under him as he swept above them, dropping Sitwell rather harshly back down on the roof before he dropped down himself. His wings folded up behind him into the storage case strapped to his back, and he turned around with a smile, having found it as entertaining as Tessa had.
She stepped over to Sitwell and used her powers to lift him back up into the air. His nearly white eyes stared down at her in true fear as she, Steve, and Natasha all stepped up to him. "Let's try this again." Tessa told him as they came to a stop in front of him. "Answer the questions or your ass is going to go free-falling again, only next time Sam's not going to be catching you."
"Zola's algorithm is a program!" he shouted down at them without hesitating. Tessa lowered him down until his feet were touching the ground again, but kept her powers wrapped around him just in case. "It's a program for choosing Insight's targets!" he said, breathing heavily.
"What targets?" Steve pressed.
"You!" he said, motioning over to Steve. "And you." He continued, sweeping his hand over to Tessa. "That TV anchor in Cairo, the Under Secretary of Defense, some valedictorian from Iowa, Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange…anyone who's a threat to Hydra. Now….or in the future." He told them.
Tessa looked over at Steve and Natasha in concern. "The future?" Steve asked him. "How could it know?"
Sitwell began laughing over at them. "How could it not?" he shot back at them, some fire nipping at the edge of his words now that his fear as subsided slightly. "The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught Hydra how to read it. Bank records…medical histories…voting patterns…emails…phone calls…your damn SAT scores! Zola's algorithm evaluates people's pasts to predict their future."
"What then?" Tessa asked as a new wave of fear pulling at her guts as he spoke. "How are you targeting the people the algorithm chooses?" she asked him.
Sitwell suddenly dropped his gaze to the ground, realizing how much he was willingly giving up. "Oh God..." he muttered under his breath. "Pierce is going to kill me."
"I'm going to kill you!" Tessa shot out at him, stepping up to him as her eyes burned blue. "WHAT THEN?!" she asked again, her mood having shifted as she realized how large scale this was.
Sitwell looked up at her in fear again. "Then the Insight hellicarriers scratch people off their list." he told her. "A few million at a time."
Tessa searched his eyes for signs of deception, but when she didn't find any, she turned around to face Steve and Natasha. "When are they launching those new carriers?" she asked Natasha, remembering that Fury had told her months ago about the new line of hellicarriers going up.
"Maybe sixteen hours, give or take." She responded, looking around the group as everyone came to terms with what this meant.
"Well, looks like we have sixteen hours to stop Hydra from taking over the world then." Tessa said with a sigh. "Do you know where they're launching them from?" Tessa asked her.
"Yeah. Right from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s front lawn." She said.
"Alright, let's get moving then." Steve told them all, knowing they were running against the clock.
"What about our friend here?" Sam asked, bringing his hand down on Sitwell's shoulder.
"Oh, he's coming with us, aren't you Jasper?" Tessa said, walking up to him with a smile. "After all, you're a liability now. You're a dead man walking if Hydra gets ahold of you. Which makes us your new best friends."