Later that day, the three went to a nearby mall to open up the drive.

Walking down the crowded main concourse past the fountains.

Nat and Laura hoodies with her keeping her head low.

She could feel her sore and aching back from the fall.

Along with the bruises forming.

Her head was also pounding.

Steve was wearing a baseball cap and pair of glasses.

Hoping she wouldn't be recognized.

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk." Nat told them.

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off." Steve muttered.

"Running won't prevent people from recognizing who I am." Laura said nervously.

They entered an Apple store and Nat logged into her SHIELD profile to upload the drive.

But the security software began to prevent them from accessing the files.

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are." she explained.

"How much time do we have?" Steve asked, glancing around the store for agents.

"Uh… about nine minutes from…" she said and inserted the drive.

"Now."

"Well if STRIKE is after us allow me…" Laura said and stepped over access the files.

Nat moving over to allow her to work on the security systems.

She pulled up the file from the Lemurian Star.

"Uh, this drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." she explained.

"Can you override it?" Steve asked her.

"Yep. Give me a second…" she reached for her jeans pocket and uploaded her own drive and began uploading a virus.

"Is this the same virus you uploaded on the helicarrier?" Nat asked her, slightly amused.

She smiled.

"Well, I figured Fury kicked me out since then but… it's always good to be prepared and make new ones." she shrugged her shoulders while the virus made its way past the firewalls but an employee walked up to them.

"Can I help you guys with anything?" he asked.

"Oh, no. Our friend is just helping my fiancé and I with some honeymoon destinations." Nat said in a sweet voice while grabbing his arm.

"Right! We're getting married." he improvised.

"Congratulations. Where do you guys thinking about going?" the employee asked.

Laura got passed the firewalls and a geographic map of the Northeast appeared on the screen.

Zooming in on New Jersey.

"Uh… Jersey." she said, not expecting that.

"Oh…" the employee said but narrowed his eyes at Steve's face.

"I have the exact same glasses." he realized.

"Wow, you two are practically twins." Nat said sarcastically.

Laura smiled faintly.

"Yeah, I wish. Specimen. Uh...if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron." the employee said and backed away.

Laura watched the screen farther zoom in on Wheaton, New Jersey

. She looked over to Steve and saw the recognition on his face.

"You know it?" she asked.

"I used to. Let's go." he pulled the drive out and the three walked out.


They were walking along the upper levels.

The HUD on Laura's glasses highlighted the STRIKE agents along with Rumlow, beginning to block their exits.

"Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us." Nat warned.

"If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro…" Steve suggested while Laura brought out her Stark phone.

"Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something on her phone." Nat ordered Steve while Laura brought her phone to the front of them.

"What?" he asked confused.

"Do it!" she hissed.

He did instantly and he and Laura laughed while two STRIKE agents walked by them on the top floor, not recognizing them.

They walked down to the end of the hall to the department store and turned to begin going down the escalator.

Laura's HUD zoomed in on Rumlow coming up towards them on it.

"Guys…" she warned.

"Kiss me." Nat told Steve.

"What?" he asked confused.

Laura bent down to pretend to begin tying her sneaker behind them.

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable." she explained.

"Yes, they do." he agreed.

She quickly pulled Steve's head down and kissed him.

While they kissed and Laura was hidden underneath her hoodie, under the railing, Rumlow was coming up the escalator.

Looking around and spotting the couple kissing on the crowded escalator he glanced away.

The three made it to the bottom and Nat stopped kissing him.

Laura walking past them.

"You still uncomfortable?" Nat asked him.

"It's not exactly the word I would use."


After "borrowing" a truck from the parking garage, Steve drove them up to New Jersey.

Laura sitting in the backseat.

Having her phone out and the Stark Maps app out which was directing them where the signal was.

"Good thinking with the phone." Nat complimented her.

"Yeah well, I've been having to use your training a lot lately. A little too much for my liking." she muttered, leaning her head back.

"Speaking of, where did you get the spear?" Steve asked her.

"Spear…?" Nat asked, looking back at her with an eyebrow raised and she sighed.

"Look, what I'm about to tell you stays in this truck. I'm serious! I'm sworn by secrecy." she warned seriously.

The two nodded.

She reached back for her gold spear handle and held it out for them.

The two looking back at it.

"I've had this for… a while. I can't explain the origins or how I got it but I took down one of those helicopters when Tony's house was blown up." she explained.

Not mentioning T'Challa or Wakandan.

"How…?" Nat asked curiously.

"You'll find out soon if I know where all of this is going." she muttered.

Reaching to strap it back on her.

Them falling into a silence while Steve drove them down the two laned road.

"Alright, I have a question for you…" Nat began to ask Steve.

"Oh, 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?" she rambled.

"What?" he asked back.

"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" she asked bluntly.

Laura smiled.

"That bad, huh?" he asked back.

"I didn't say that." she replied.

"Well, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying." he argued.

"No, I didn't. I just wondered how much practice you've had." she wondered.

"You don't need practice." he countered.

"Yes, you do." Laura spoke up.

"It was not my first kiss since 1945. I'm ninety-five, I'm not dead." he said while looking back at her in the mirror.

"Nobody special, though?" Nat asked curiously.

Laura raised an eyebrow as he chuckled.

"Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience." he said sarcastically.

"Well, that's alright, you just make something up." she suggested.

She and Laura sharing a smile. Remembering how they first met.

"What, like you?" Steve replied.

"I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I." she argued.

"That's a tough way to live." he stated.

"It's a good way not to die, though." she countered.

"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is." he said.

"Yeah. Who do you want me to be?" she asked.

"How about a friend?"


The sun was setting by the time they made it to Wheaton.

Steve pulling up to the gates of an abandoned army base.

Trees and brush overgrowing on the depleting buildings and old army barracks.

Laura pulled out her phone to see they were in the middle where the signal was coming from.

They got out and Steve grabbed his shield.

"This should be it. The file came from these coordinates." she told them.

Them walking up to a sign that said "Camp Lehigh"

"So did I. This camps is where I was trained." Steve let them know.

It was getting dark while they walked around the quiet, abandoned base to narrow down the signal.

"Changed much?" Nat asked Steve sarcastically.

"A little." he quipped back.

The HUD on Laura's glasses scanned the whole area.

Nothing coming up on the lens.

"This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. There's nothing here." she said.

"Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Nat suggested.

She nodded in agreement but Steve spotted the building in front of them.

"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." he told them.

He used his shield to break the lock and walked in.

Laura put her phone away and turned on the lights which slowly flickered on, revealing a SHIELD office.

Covered in dust and cobwebs.

The SHIELD logo on the wall in the back.

They walked into an adjoining room where framed photos of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Chester Phillips were hanging.

"There's Howard Stark, Tony's father." Laura nodded at them.

"Who's the girl?" Nat asked about Peggy.

Steve just walked away and she and Laura shared a look.

They walked down the hall but stopped at a large bookcase along the wall.

"If you're already working in a secret office…" Steve pushed the shelf back and it slid open to reveal an elevator.

"Why do you need to hide the elevator?"


Laura pulled out her phone and scanned the dusty key pad.

Highlighting the fingerprints for the password.

She typed it in, opening the elevator doors.

"Well, that was easy." she said and they walked into it.

The elevator taking them down hundreds of feet below the base.

The doors opened to a darkened chamber and they slowly walked forwards.

The doors closed behind them.

The lights turned on, revealing a 1970's computer farm, filling the entire room with an old setup.

A camera pointed downwards to the main chair.

"This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient." Nat argued.

Laura spotted a modern drive port and frowned.

"Look." she pointed at it.

Getting the two's attention.

Nat inserted it, turning on the super computer.

The camera tilting upwards towards their faces.

"Initiate system?" was heard from the computer speakers.

Laura approached the keyboard and tilted her head.

Typing "Y-E-S"

"Yes…" she said, powering up the setup.

Her and Nat smiled, sharing a knowing look.

"Shall we play a game?" Nat quoted.

She looked back at Steve.

"It's from a movie…" she began to explain but he interrupted her.

"Yeah, I saw it." he sighed.

"Wargames is a classic..." Laura began but a face slowly appeared on the computer screen of a guy in old round glasses.

"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Kosha, Watson, Laura. Born, 1986." it said as they camera scanned each of their faces.

Laura heard the thick German accent and went wide eyed.

"It's some kind of a recording." Nat suggested.

"It can't be. It used my biological name." Laura said, shuddering.

Her and Steve giving her a concerned look.

"She is correct. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am…" the other screen showed an old black and white photo of Arnim Zola.

"Do you know this thing?" Nat asked Steve.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." he said while walking around the setup.

"First correction, I am Swiss. 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 two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain." he revealed.

"How did your brain end up here then?" Laura demanded angrily.

"Invited." he answered smugly.

She frowned.

"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value." Nat explained.

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

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve stated.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Zola said while bringing up the heads of HYDRA.

"Prove it." Steve ordered.

"Accessing archive…" the other screen began showing how HYRDA was founded along with the war.

"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. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."

"That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you." Nat argued.

"Accidents will happen…" Zola said while bringing up old newspapers clippings of Howard and Maria Stark's deaths.

Along with the classified file of Fury's assassination.

Laura went wide eyed.

"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise…" Zola explained. Revealing that Project Insight will be used to enforce that security.

"We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero sum…" Zola began to brag but Steve punched the monitor angrily.

Zola's face simply reappeared on the other monitor.

"As I was saying…"

"What's on the drive?" Laura demanded forcefully.

"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm." he answered.

"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Nat asked quickly.

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it…" Zola said and began to close the doors behind them.

Laura brought out her spear and threw it and them but it was too late.

It struck the heavy doors.

The echo from the spear tip bouncing off the whole room.

"Shit!" she swore.

Running up to grab it.

"Steve, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." Nat warned, seeing the missile from her phone screen getting closer to them.

"Who fired it?" Laura asked, fearing the answer.

"SHIELD" she answered.

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain. Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time…" Zola said as Nat pulled the drive out.

Laura was glancing around for a way out nervously but Steve spotted a grate.

He ran to it and used his strength to pry it open.

She and Nat ran to it but the missile struck the base.

The large fiery blast engulfed the bunker they were in right as they were jumping into the grate.

The concrete and steel chunks were beginning to bury them but Steve was protecting them with his shield above their heads.

He and Laura screamed while she clung onto Steve as the seconds ticked by and they were buried alive.


The rubble eventually stopped collapsing and she coughed for breath in the dust.

She readjusted her glasses in the darkness and could feel Nat's limp body laying against her.

Her coughing in sever agony, pounding her chest for oxygen.

Steve eventually lifted the rubble off of them, revealing the fiery ruins of the base.

She and him lifted an unconscious Nat upwards to the ground but heard the roar of Quinjets in the distance.

Three flew low overhead with spotlights on and they shared a worried look.

Running out of their while Steve carried Nat.

The jets landing with the STRIKE team and Rumlow.

Them searching the ruins for signs of the wanted fugitives.

Rumlow aiming his rifle but the light spotted their sets of footprints leading out of the base.

"Call in the asset."