They made it out of the mall without anyone else recognizing them, but they had to get to Wheaton now. Steve's motorcycle was already out of the question, and no subway led to their destination. Stealing a car was their best bet, and thankfully they found a truck with no valuables inside it. Steve hopped into the driver's seat while Natasha slid into the backseat and Elsie took shotgun. Each of them removed their subtle disguises, the glasses and two hats tossed into the back seat.

Fatigue was starting to hit Elsie again, and she was regretting not sleeping enough in the hospital when she had the chance. She wasn't sure how long the drive would be, so she decided to lay her seat back and rest her eyes for a bit. Steve held her hand while he drove.

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Natasha questioned him as they crossed the New Jersey state line.

"Nazi Germany," he answered. "And we're borrowing."

Staring at his hand linked with Elsie's nail-polished one wrapped in gauze, she thought back to about half an hour ago at the mall. Her curiosity got the best of her, so she sat up a little straighter.

"All right, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer," she rambles. "I feel like you probably won't answer it though, but you're kind of answering it, you know-"

"What?" Steve replies in annoyance.

"Was she your first kiss since 1945?" Natasha nods to Elsie.

"That cheesy, huh?"

"No, I didn't say that."

"Well, it sounds like you were saying that."

Natasha shrugged. "I just wondered how much practice you've had."

Steve shakes his head. "You don't need practice."

"Everybody needs practice."

Elsie opens her eyes and sits up since she couldn't get much of a nap in anymore. "I was his first kiss since '45," she confirms.

"I knew it."

Steve just chuckles and shakes his head. "It's hard finding someone with shared life experience, but I took a chance with her."

She softly smiles. "I may not have a ton of life experience, but I want to share life experiences with Steve."

Natasha sighs happily, proud to see her friend in love. While she didn't know her that well yet, Nat had a feeling Elsie was going to be part of Steve's life for a long time. It wasn't because she showed him love or that he showed it back to her, but rather that Elsie wasn't afraid to fight for the man she loved.

By sunset, they arrived at the location in Wheaton and parked the truck in front of an abandoned, gated facility, which was an old training camp from the war. They hop out and take in their surroundings as they approach the wire fence. It was quiet with a light breeze blowing, and a dog barking in the distance was all that broke the eerie silence. The building itself seemed to have been sitting there since Steve fought in the war, and the stop signs lining the gate had faded over time.

"This is it," Steve confirms.

"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha agrees.

"So did I."

When they sneak in, the trio explores around as the sun sets. Natasha uses her scanner to follow a beacon on where they precisely needed to be in order to find what they were looking for.

"This camp is where I was trained, " Steve recalled.

Flashbacks of when he first entered the army pre-serum swarmed his thoughts. Most of the ruff and buff militia around him were the ideal people to fight for the United States, but he often was bullied and ridiculed by them. He was a scrawny twenty-five year old man with multiple health problems, but Dr. Erskine saw through the physical aspect and chose him to become the Super Soldier.

"Change much?" Elsie asked as she looked around.

"A little," he shrugs.

He could still hear the commanding officer calling out instructions during one of their training exercises, and he could clearly picture the exact spot where his smaller self often lagged behind his team and got yelled at by the commander.

"It's a dead end," Natasha's voice breaks him out of his thoughts. She was reading her scanner, but nothing came up. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio."

"Then, whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off," Elsie concludes.

Steve then spots something behind the girls. It was a facility Steve recognized, but it was out of place. He was starting to think that may be a clue to something.

"What is it?" Natasha asks.

With no hesitation, Steve beelines it to the structure, Natasha and Elsie following closely behind him. "Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place."

Using the edge of his shield, he breaks the lock on the doors, allowing them to enter and descend down some stairs. He then finds a switch and turns it on, overhead beam lights beginning to illuminate one by one. Multiple office desks, rolling chairs, and other supplies had been left abandoned there for who knows how long; but a certain insignia with a bird shape stood out to them on the back wall.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D.," Natasha realizes as they slowly walk through it.

"Maybe where it started," Steve guesses.

He then finds a door that was still unlocked and opens it, leading to another hallway. The first thing they spotted were three photographed portraits in what seemed to be the late '40s, one of the people pictured was someone Elsie was familiar with.

"Well, there's my grandpa," Elsie points out the portrait in the center.

"Howard," Steve adds.

"Who's the girl?" Natasha asks when she noticed the portrait by Howard's.

Steve doesn't answer as he just walks away.

"Peggy Carter," Elsie whispers to her. "She's kind of the reason I joined S.H.I.E.L.D."

With Steve's reaction, Natasha figured Peggy was an old flame of his. Elsie's response surprised her a bit, but she decided to put the conversation aside for another time.

A faint buzzing sound came from behind a dusty bookshelf, a spider web covering two conjoining shelves that didn't touch each other.

"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve says before prying open a hidden elevator behind the shelves, "why do you need to hide the elevator?"

Using her scanner, Natasha found the code to operate the moving transport. Once the doors were open with a ding, the three entered inside. Their only option was down, so down is where they went. When the doors opened once again, they were met with a pitch dark room. Walking through, it was a haunting silence until the lights came on automatically. Multiple computers covered in dust and other electronic gadgets sat dormant with cameras not in operation.

"This can't be the data point," Natasha shakes her head. "This technology is ancient."

However, one piece of equipment looked fairly up to date. A small, black, rectangular device with cobalt blue lighting seemed to be on, and it was plugged into the computer. Following a hunch, Natasha plugs the thumb drive into an open. Every device in the room immediately came to life as they powered on, and whirring sounds came from old tech lining the walls.

A robotic voice from the large computer in the center of it all then and green letters across the black screen asks, "INITIATE SYSTEM?"

Finding the chunky keyboard, Natasha spells out "Yes." The computer then powers up.

"Shall we play a game?" she jokes, quoting Saw. "It's from a movie that-"

"I know," Steve nods. "I saw it."

On top of the main computer screen, a camera from the 1970s pointed towards him, and a green face began to appear on the screen in a coded and warbled manner.

"Rogers, Steven," a warbled, robotic voice with a European accent recites his name, "born 1918."

The camera then moves around to identify the two women in the room. "Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. Walker, Elsie, born 1992."

"It's some kind of recording," Natasha downplayed.

"I am not a recording, Fraeuline," the computer insists. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am."

On a smaller screen, an image of a balding man in round glasses appears, and Steve immediately knows who it is.

"You know this thing?" Elsie questions Steve with a raised eyebrow.

He begins to walk around the giant system, wondering if this was all some sick joke.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull," he explains. "He's been dead for years."

"First correction, I am Swiss," the computer Zola sassed. "Second, 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."

Steve returns to the center. "How did you get here?"

"Invited."

Elsie then remembers something she had read in the S.H.I.E.L.D archives once. "It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value."

"They thought I could help their cause," Zola continues. "I also helped my own."

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," Steve shoots back.

"Cut off one head," -the HYDRA symbol appears for a moment- "two more shall take its place."

"Prove it."

The other small screens began showing images of old news clippings and footage of early S.H.I.E.L.D. days.

"Accessing archive."

A video then begins to play as Zola narrates the story. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly."

Some of the footage was of Steve in his early days as Captain America, and Elsie did her best not to blush. Why did she have to react like that at the worst possible moment?

"After the war," Zola continued, "S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. 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."

"That's impossible," Elsie chimes in. "S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you."

An article dating back to two months before Elsie was born pops up announcing the accidental death of her grandparents.

"Accidents will happen," Zola calmly answers. "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. We won, Captain. Your death amounts the same as your life. A zero sum."

In a fit of fury, Steve punches the large screen, a web of cracks causing Zola's face to disappear. The computer beeps, but Zola just reappears on another screen.

"As I was saying," he continued.

"What's on this drive?" Steve interrupts, demanding answers.

The drive. How long had they been listening to Zola? Elsie realized they could be targeted here now, and it wouldn't be long until they were caught by S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Project Insight requires insight," Zola answers Steve's question, his girlfriend trying not to panic. "So I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm?" Natasha asks. "What does it do?"

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."

"We need to go," Elsie says before the doors behind them begin to close.

Steve throws his shield to keep the doors open, but it is no use as it boomerangs back to him. Natasha's scanner begins to beep.

"We've got a bogey," she warns. "Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops."

"Who fired it?" Steve asks.

"S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain," Zola chimes in. "Admit it." -Natasha snatches the drive from the port- "It's better this way. We are, both of us, out of time."

Steve rushes over to a steel covering on the floor and yanks it open, revealing a hollow escape route. The girls jump into it after Steve just before the ballistic bombs the facility, Elsie screaming in fright. The trio lay low as Steve uses the shield to protect them from all of the debris crashing down around them. Elsie could hear the strain in his voice as he used his strength to keep them safe, and it was the last thing she heard before everything went dark.