Steve floated through the dark, numb. Images flashed across his disoriented vision like lightning in a storm. Peggy. A woman in white. Golden scales. Blood. Strands of a brass band whispered in his ears. The darkness shifted and Steve was back in the dance hall. Peggy wrapped in his arms.
"Peggy," Steve whispered.
"Steve."
The pain came back, in the same places. Duller than before but still painful enough that his mind couldn't stop thinking about it.
"Steve? Are you okay?" Peggy asked.
I'm dying again. How many times is this?
"My God, Steve you're bleeding!"
There was his red palm and the dance hall was gone, he was in the darkness again. He wasn't sure how many times he experienced the illusion, but he was beginning to memorize the sequence. First Peggy, now the pain and blood, next came the mysterious woman with the hard face and all-seeing eyes.
There was a golden flash and there she stood. The golden scales glinted at him, taunting Steve with the promise of light. But there was only darkness and his ever escaping mind.
"Your heart beats strong but your soul weighs heavy with all that you've lost. Your war comrades, your mother and father, the only woman you ever loved, the only family you ever had."
Images, glowing like projections on an old movie screen, drifted past. The Howling Commandos. His Mother. Peggy. Bucky…
"You don't belong here. You're a relic from a bygone era. You ended your life so theirs could continue. So, why are you here?"
"You told me… "
"Yes, I did."
"But I can't remember."
She held her scales out to him, Steve saw himself in the reflection. The jungle. The field of dead soldiers. The man in gold armor. The same three images every time and yet he was still unsure of their consequence.
"I serve a greater purpose."
The woman nodded, her face still grim. The wind around them gusted, howling in his ears and distracting him.
"My fate is written in the stars. I fight for those who can't and I stand for the values I was built upon. Freedom and justice."
"And what else?" she encouraged him.
The wind grew stronger still. In previous encounters, he tried to question the woman. Ask her who she was and where she was from, but she pressured him to answer her questions. He gave in.
"There will come a great war that I am the key to winning. I will save the universe."
"You have done well Steven. You've found your purpose, now don't lose sight of it."
A swirl of gold dust surrounded the woman and she evaporated, her golden scales clattering to the ground. The sound reverberating in Steve's ears and shocked him awake. His chest inflated with intense pain, he winced.
Fluorescent light berated his sensitive eyes. The smell of bleach burned his nose, a light fragrance dancing overtop. Earthy and floral. Sterile grey walls and a tiled ceiling. Mechanical beeps and muffled voices. A melodic humming.
A woman stood with her back to Steve, in a white lab coat. Her dark hair in a long braid down her back. She turned around. If she was surprised that Steve was awake, she didn't show it. She simply sat down beside the bed and picked up the clipboard.
Her face brought back the woman from the visions. The same sharp angles and grey eyes. Except the wild curls were tamed into a braid with a few errant curls escaping around her face. There was something restless about her.
"Good morning, Mr. Rogers. I'm Doctor Ana Pallas. You're at the Triskelion, safe and sound. If you don't mind uncovering your torso so I can change your gauze."
Steve felt his face grow hot. He glanced at his hands, then back at Ana as she wrote on her clipboard. Her attention was elsewhere. God, after ninety-four years, he was still nervous around women. He knew he shouldn't be, the serum was a huge help in that department, but something in the back of his mind brought out his timidity.
He swallowed down the insecurity and pushed himself up on his elbows. A dull ache spread through his torso, Steve grumbled at the discomfort. He eased the hospital gown off his sore shoulders and saw the bandages on his chest. They were large, the wounds under them itch as they healed. An added bonus to being a super soldier, Steve healed at a much faster rate than other humans. Images raced through his mind at the sight of his wounds. Golden light. His blood covered hand. His pain and confusion.
"Captain Rogers?"
Steve glanced at the doctor.
"Are you alright?"
"Sorry. I, uh, got lost in thought," Steve sputtered. Words always escaped him when he needed them most.
Ana raised an eyebrow. Whether she was judging the truth of his lie, Steve couldn't tell. The doctor only sighed and pulled on a pair of medical gloves.
"The Avengers? Have they left yet?"
"I believe they're waiting on you, Captain. Now, I'm sure you're dying to know how many injuries you've managed to rack up. This one-" Ana peeled the gauze off a sewn up gash and pointed- "punctured your lung, if the blade had been any longer, it would've pierced your heart."
The stitches over the heart created an unknown shape. It looked like the letter "T", with two large end caps on the top line. Ana paused, a death grip on the gauze.
"Is everything alright?"
Ana shook her head, "I wish I could say yes."
That was never a good sign. She reached for a file and pulled out a page. Steve's confusion grew as Ana took the gauze off his last two wounds. They were shaped weird as well.
"What are they?"
"They're symbols." she reached for one of the files at the end of the bed, "Ancient, if I'm not mistaken, and the same ones that cover your paperwork."
Sure enough, the paper she showed him was covered in the symbols.
"If you think that's weird, check out this one."
She handed him another piece of paper. The symbols overlapped so much that it was hard to make them out. The page was nearly black.
"Where are these from?"
"They're bloodwork results. Yours is the one with significantly less obstruction."
Steve watched as Ana took the blank notepad from the bedside table and sketched out the symbols.
"Who found me?"
She didn't look up from her sketching as she responded, "Agent Hill and I were in the area. And you're lucky we did. I imagine you would've been quite the spectacle in an ordinary emergency room."
"I'm sure I would've."
Ana opened her mouth to say something when her pager beeped. She looked down at it and groaned.
"I'll be right back," she apologized as she hurried from the room.
Steve looked at the two pieces of paper then the files at the end of the bed. The names on the tabs were familiar. Fosley, Jackson, Fasotti, Pavlov. Why did she have files for a case the Avengers were working on? Well, she was a doctor. Maybe Fury asked for her professional opinion on them. But most of the medical language was translated into general terms before being stored.
Ana returned soon enough.
"Sorry about that. Some intern forgot how to administer and IV. That patient is going to have one sore arm," she joked, resuming her position on the chair.
She put a new pair of latex gloves on and picked up the gauze.
"Please don't tell anyone that I left these open. The staff will have a fit."
"Your secret is safe with me," he chuckled.
"Thank you. I'm always harping on them about sterilization. Not that it matters for you, these wounds will be healed in another twelve hours at least."
"What makes you so sure?"
"The fact that I wrote my senior thesis on Superhuman biology. Well, cellular regeneration rates in biologically advanced individuals depending on the severity of laceration. But superhuman biology sounds much cooler."
She secured the last piece of gauze and sat up to admire her work.
"Those files?" Steve motioned to the stack.
"Fury put me on investigating them. They're all related to the attack on Agent Stone. And you."
"He's got the Avengers on the case too. We don't know why. Normally Shield points and the Avengers shoot. It makes more sense for you to be involved than us."
"I'm not a field agent. At least, not anymore. But Fury still finds ways to drag me in. There's got to be some sort of rule against that."
"I don't think Fury cares much for rules."
The thought of Director Fury following rules brought a smirk to Steve's face. Ana shared his smile.
"I suppose you're right." she handed Steve a file, "Since we're both stuck here, you might as well help me."
It was Pavlov's from 1986. Suffocated, but with the odd set of glyphs behind the ear. Steve looked at the inset, then at Ana's sketches.
"Aren't these the same symbols?"
Ana rolled her stool closer and peered at the photo. She took her file and held it up. Her victim had the same symbols.
"They are, just in different places. And those."
The set of three marks were similar, but there was a fourth that was different. On Steve's, it was two curved lines with a straight through them. One Ana's, it was two parallel waving lines.
"What are they?"
"They're Zodiac signs. Pisces and Aquarius."
She grabbed the other three files and looked, mumbling to herself. She laid them across Steve's legs in order.
"Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio… you would be Libra."
"Do you mind translating?"
"Oh, sorry. Pisces is fish, Aquarius is the water bearer, Capricorn is the sea-goat, Sagittarius is the archer, Scorpio is the scorpion, and Libra is the scales."
Steve just blinked. He had no clue what all of those meant, nor how it was relevant to the case.
"The zodiac is twelve signs that coincide with constellations in a circle around the Earth. It's a very complicated pseudo-science."
"How do you know so much about it?"
"I'm a Libra. And my niece Brittany is really into it, makes family get-togethers interesting."
Right. Yet another thing about the 21st century Steve couldn't wrap his head around.
"It makes sense. The golden scales."
A vision of the golden scales glinting at him from the mysterious woman's hand formed in his mind. How did Ana know about the visions? He could ask her, but he feared the answer. She could've been the very woman in his hallucinations.
"What about the other marks, the ones that every victim has?" he asked instead.
"Those are older than the Zodiac themselves. But I think I might have a reliable source we could talk to."
"We?"
"Of course." Ana started closing the files and restacking them.
Steve was still confused. He was still healing. Was leaving the medical wing a good idea?
"If it wasn't abundantly clear already, I'm breaking you out."
"But, you said I've still got a few hours before I'm fully healed."
'That's just a rough estimate. I'm a medical professional, I wouldn't do something like this if I knew it affected your body in a negative way."
She tucked the files into a bag and stood, looking at Steve with anticipation.
"Okay… but what about this." He gestured toward the IV bag attached to his arm.
"Right," Ana realized.
She set her bag down and set to work removing his IV and placing a bandage in the crook of his elbow. Steve re-tied the hospital gown and remembered that his street clothes were in the garbage. He was about to point it out to Ana, but she was already leading him down the hall and through a door marked "Medical Staff Only".
It was a locker room. Ana unlocked one of the cubes and took out a duffel bag and handed it to him.
"I'm always prepared. Men's scrubs and I snagged your tennis shoes from personal effects."
She disappeared behind a row of lockers leaving Steve to change.
Steve was so used to entering or leaving the Triskelion through the aircraft hangar that he never thought about the other was Roosevelt Island was accessible by. And he certainly never imagined that he would be seated on the employee only ferry from the Triskelion to the employee only parking on the river bank.
Roosevelt Island was no longer open to the public because of the Triskelion. They tried to leave the north side open in the 80s when it was first constructed. Then some civilians got too close during an experimental flight test and it had to be shut down. Now S.H.I.E.L.D. used the north side for Academy training.
The sky was still overcast like yesterday, the wind still bitter. Ana helped Steve into the company issued vehicle so he wouldn't rip his stitches, even though she stressed that they weren't necessary anymore.
When she started the car, the car-infused AI came to life and filled with the windshield with statistics. Depending on the mission, it displayed different information. The standard view should have been live traffic patterns, fastest routes, and a live feed to HQ. Instead, Ana's showed frequently driven routes, suggestions of restaurants, and a list of recently played music.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Pallas. Are we heading out for lunch today?" the smooth male voice of the AI prompted through the sound system.
"No, Paolo, just going for a drive."
"You named the AI?" Steve questioned.
"No, I named the car. The AI just happened to be part of it."
Steve cracked a smile.
She pressed some buttons on the center counsel and the technological view of the world disappeared.
Steve just stared at the dashboard. Every time he had to drive a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle he wasn't allowed to disable the AI.
"They don't let you disable the GPS do they?"
"Never," Steve frowned.
"I'm not supposed to, but once I figured out how they couldn't stop me. I've lived in New York my whole life, I don't need some satellite telling me how to get around."
'Where are we going again?"
"To meet with an expert."
