A Dark Truth
The trio made sure that they wouldn't be immediately recognized in their clothing, down to Steve wearing a cap and some glasses and of course, Tom's appearance was still altered to make him look like a different person.
They had to go to a mall to find somewhere for them to learn what's in the harddrive.
"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk." Nat told them, clearly knowing what she's talking about.
"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off." Steve said.
"Just keep calm." Tom assured him as he made sure his backpack was secured on his shoulders.
They went to a computer store and got on a laptop to check. Tom got on a laptop next to Nat to make him look like he was someone looking through, unrelated to what they're doing.
"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D. will know exactly where we are." Nat warned them.
"And how much time would we have?" Tom asked.
"About nine minutes from… now." She said, inserting the drive into the laptop.
"Fury was right about that ship. Somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of A.I. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." Nat then said as she started digging in.
"Can you override it?" Steve asked.
"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." She said.
"You do realise that they might be here right now." Tom said, wanting her to keep focused.
"Just keep calm, Tom. They wouldn't know you if they saw you." Ghost pointed out.
"I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from." Nat explained as a satellite image showed the East Coast.
"Hey, can I help you with anything?" An employee asked Tom.
"I'm fine. Just here with my friends, checking these laptops out. The usual." Tom said, pointing over to Nat and Steve, acting normal.
"Right. If you need, let me know." The employee said before walking off. Nat managed to find the location, which was New Jersey.
"How much longer?" Tom asked Nat as Steve checked his watch.
"Relax. Got it." She said and Tom looked over and it turns out that it all came from Wheaton, New Jersey. Steve seemed a bit freaked.
"You know it?" Nat asked.
"I used to. Let's go." He replied as he pulled out the harddrive.
The three then walked out and through the mall. Tom stayed behind slightly, making him look like he wasn't with Nat and Steve.
"Standard tac team. Two behind, two across, and two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you two hit the south escalator to the metro." Steve said.
"Shut up and put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said." Nat ordered him.
"What?"
"Do it."
He did as told and laughed, unnoticed by the two men walking past them, not even giving Tom attention.
"Thank the universe you can do this, Ghost." Tom said.
"No problem." Ghost shrugged off.
They eventually reach an escalator and both Nat and Tom spot Rumlow coming up past them.
"Kiss me." Nat tells Steve.
"What?" He questioned.
"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable." She explained in a fast pace.
"Yes, they do." He agreed with that before Nat suddenly kissed him on the lips, already making Tom awkward. Thankfully, Rumlow shrugged them off and continued on. Nat then stopped the kiss.
"You still uncomfortable?" She asked as she continued down the escalator.
"I know I am." Tom muttered as he and Steve followed her.
"It's not exactly the word I would use." Steve added.
Eventually, they left the mall and got in a truck, driving non-stop to New Jersey and where they needed to go. Of course, Tom's appearance went back to normal as he sat in the back seat with Nat in the passenger seat as Steve was driving.
"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Nat asked the super soldier.
"Nazi Germany." He answered.
"Good enough answer." Tom shrugged.
"And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash." Steve then told Nat, who did as ordered.
"Alright, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer. I feel like, if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know." Nat then said.
"What?" Steve groaned.
"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" She smirked.
"Can you not? Please?" Tom groaned, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, this is just all kinds of awkward." Ghost groaned as well.
"That bad, huh?" Steve questioned, thinking that she's saying he's a bad kisser.
"I didn't say that." She tried to say otherwise.
"Well, that kind of sounds like that's what you're saying."
"No, I didn't. I just wondered how much practice you've had."
"You don't need practice."
"Everybody needs practice."
"It was not my first kiss since 1945. I'm 95, I'm not dead." Steve revealed. Tom just sat there, accepting this conversation and just looked out the window.
"Nobody special, though?" Nat questioned.
"*chuckles* Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience." Steve reasoned.
"Well, that's alright. You just make something up." She argued.
"What, like you?"
"I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people, all the time. Neither am I." Nat confessed herself.
"That sounds like a tough way to live." Tom pointed out.
"It's a good way not to die, though." Nat replied to him.
"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone, when you don't know who that someone really is." Steve expressed his opinion.
"Yeah. Who do you want me to be?" Nat asked him and Tom.
"Just be a friend." Tom said.
"Well, there's a chance you guys might be in the wrong business." Nat warned them and then they didn't speak for the rest of the drive.
The sun was setting when they arrived at the coordinates, which was located at a fenced off location with a sign saying 'Camp Lehigh',
The three exited the truck with Tom having his backpack on and Steve walked out with his shield in his hand.
"This is it." Steve said.
"The file came from these coordinates." Nat said as they walked up to the fence.
"So did I." Steve revealed.
"This was where you trained?" Tom asked for confirmation and Steve nodded.
"Why would the coordinates come from here?" Ghost asked in confusion.
They entered the camp and searched all the way into the night where the coordinates were precisely.
"Has it changed much?" Tom asked Steve,
"A little." He replied, looking up at a flag post.
Tom looked back at Steve, who was looking with a reminiscent expression. He was remembering his time at the camp, training as a soldier.
"This is a dead end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Nat told them all and Steve looked over at a part of the camp, making Tom look in the direction.
"What is it?" Nat asked and they walked over.
"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks. This building's in the wrong place." He told them. He saw that the door was locked so he smashed the lock open with his shield. The trio entered and walked down some stairs and Nat flicks a switch that turns on lights and on the wall the three saw a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo.
"This must be where S.H.I.E.L.D. came from." Tom said as they looked around. They then walked into a section closed off from a door and they saw three framed photos on a wall.
"Are they the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Ghost asked seeing that two of them were Howard Stark, Tony's dad and Peggy Carter.
"And there's Stark's father." Nat confirmed.
"Howard." Steve added.
"Who's the girl?" Nat asked but Steve doesn't answer and walks off.
"Clearly someone important to him." Tom whispered to her, knowing that it was Peggy Carter. Tom caught up with Steve and he saw that there's a draft coming from a gap in the shelves due to cobwebs moving.
"If one is working in a secret office, why hide an elevator?" He asked Steve and Nat as he pushed the shelf to reveal said elevator.
Nat used her phone to figure out what the code is on the pad next to the elevator and found that it was 8539 and with that code, they entered the elevator, which lowered them underground into a dark room. They walk in cautiously, looking around and as they approach a computer, the lights all turned on and seeing all the tech that's there confused Nat.
"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient." She told them but then she saw on the worktop that a piece of more modern tech was attached to the computer. With this, she inserted the harddrive and this activated all the tech and more lights, showing computer drives and there was a camera on top of the computer moving slightly as the computer turned on.
"Initiate system?" The computer asked and Nat typed in yes, making the computer power up.
"Shall we play a game?" She smirked, making Tom raise an eyebrow.
"Did she just quote War Games?" Ghost asked Tom.
"It seems that she did." Tom replied.
"It's from a movie that was really-"
"I know, I saw it." Steve cut her off, having seen War Games with Tom.
The monitor in front of them then started to show a face forming in green code and it looked to have glasses on.
"Rogers, Steven, born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. Wron, Thoman, born 1986." A voice said, greeting the three.
"It's some kind of recording." Nat said, slightly freaked out.
"I am not a recording, Fraeuline. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am." The voice replied, a side monitor showing an image of a man with glasses, a man that Steve knew too well from WW2.
"Steve, who is he?" Tom asked.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve explained as he started walking around the computer.
"First correction, I am Swiss." Zola said, offended.
"Who cares?" Tom spat.
"Secondly, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving, on 200,000 feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain." Zola continued on.
"How did you get here?" Steve asked him as he stood next to Tom and Nat.
"Invited."
"It was Operation Paperclip after WW2. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value." Nat explained.
"Idiots." Ghost snarled.
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own." Zola explained, hinting towards HYDRA.
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve immediately said, not wanting to believe they were still around.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Zola quoted the HYDRA motto, visually showing the logo and showing two faces.
"Prove it." Steve requested.
"Accessing archive." Zola said and the various monitors turned on, showing archived files and one monitor showed the Red Skull when he looked human.
"HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realise was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist." Zola started off, showing footage from the war, even showing Steve in his prime.
"The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited." Zola continued, showing an image of Carter and Stark and then himself and the HYDRA logo.
"The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed." Zole revealed the biggest bombshell: S.H.I.E.L.D. was controlled by HYDRA all along, shocking the group to their core as they saw footage and an image of the Winter Soldier.
"That's impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you," Nat said in disbelief.
"Accidents will happen." Zola replied, showing a newspaper headline of Howard and Maria Stark's deaths and then Fury's.
"HYDRA killed Tony's parents." Tom said to Ghost.
"Those sacks of meat!" Ghost roared in disgust.
"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once a purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise." Zola bragged, showing footage of Project Insight, all part of their plan.
"We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum." He then pushed some buttons, making Steve smash the monitor in anger. The one on their right turned on and Zola's face showed up on it.
"As I was saying…." He said.
"What is on this drive?" Tom questioned him.
"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm." Zola answered him.
"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Nat then asked.
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." Zola stated right before the doors to the elevator closed up. Steve threw his shield to stop it but it didn't hit in time and it bounced back to him.
Nat's phone beeped and she looked to see something worrisome.
"Guys, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." She informed them.
"Who fired it?" Steve asked.
"S.H.I.E.L.D." She replied.
"DAMMIT! You've stalled us, didn't you?!" Tom bellowed out.
"You are correct, Thomas Wron. Admit it. It's better this way, Captain. We are, both of us, out of time." Zola answered as Nat pulled the harddrive out and Steve smashed open a grating and all three jumped in just in time as an explosion rained in and both with Steve's shield and Ghost's mass forming, they were in cover from the falling debris until it all stopped and both Tom and Steve pushed the rubble away for them to get out and were coughing from all the dust in the air as fires lit the area.
"Tom, Nat's unconscious." Ghost informed his host and he turned to see that Nat is indeed unconscious.
"Steve." He called out to the super soldier and nodded to her and they both grabbed her and pulled her out of there with Steve carrying her, bridal style. They got out and saw Quinjets approaching and they made it out of there before they could be found.