Camp Leigh, New Jersey. 2014.
It was dark when the truck finally stopped and the three of us got out, stretching stiff limbs and examining the location Natasha's phone had sent us to. My abdomen was still burning with pain, but the entire journey spent up here had been spent dissociating the way Montgomery had taught me to. That, and a hasty stop at a pharmacy meant Natasha had helped me temporarily stitch up the wound. I had explained to them both, mainly Steve about the soldier and what I knew, but it didn't seem to be much help at all. Steve was adamant that HYDRA had ended with the fall of Hitler's Third Reich and I'd been too exhausted to argue my point. It felt irrelevant at the moment anyway, our biggest priority was finding out what Fury had entrusted Steve with before he'd died.
"This is where the file came from according to the coordinates." Natasha said as we approached the locked gate. Steve looked at the sign as Natasha and I jumped the gate. After a couple of minutes, he dropped his shield over and followed.
We spent a while following the satellite on Natasha's phone, wandering amongst abandoned buildings and overgrown weeds. Metal stairs were rusted, and flagpoles didn't bear the nations stars and stripes the way it was intended.
"This is where I was trained." Steve said quietly as he stopped in front of one flagpole that seemed identical to all the others in the camp.
"Changed much?" Natasha questioned. But I didn't hear the answer as I kept my eyes trained on the dark undergrowth surrounding us, it was the perfect place for an ambush unit to hide and with my current injury, I was nowhere near my most effective should we be attacked.
"Leyna." I heard Steve's voice call over my own loud thoughts. He and Natasha had headed over to a bunker that Steve had determined was strictly out of place. One strike to the old rusted padlock, and it opened easily.
Stepping down into the depths of the concrete bunker, I began to feel uneasy. I would have liked to have put it to the knife wound but the steps I was taking felt all too familiar to Belarus and I had a terrible foreboding feeling that something bad was going to happen.
The bunker was revealed to be more of an office when Steve flicked on a light switch. On the far back wall was an older design, but the unmistakeable logo of SHIELD.
"Where SHIELD started." Steve commented as we slowly and silently walked amongst the desks. There was nothing out of place in the bunker, but it's general presence was very unnerving.
I followed Natasha and Steve into an adjoining room that housed a number of shelves and three portraits, Howard Stark, a military general and Peggy Carter. Natasha and I knew exactly who she was, despite having already retired when Natasha and I were recruited to SHIELD, she still used to frequent the offices in our early days. When Nat questioned Steve on her however, he simply stayed silent and walked away. We shared a glance and followed after him as he was examining an empty bookshelf.
"If you're already working in a secret office." He began as he pushed the shelf to one side, exposing a concealed doorway.
"Why do you need to hide the elevator?"
Natasha pulled her phone from her pocket and scanned the keypad, reminding me of when I had done the same thing at Senator Warren's house – exposing the oil left behind from fingerprints. We got in to the elevator and it travelled us even further underground to a room that stayed dark and eerie when the doors opened. Steve stepped out boldly first, Natasha and I following cautiously behind.
"There's not a lot that creeps me out these days. But this…definitely qualifies." I commented, shivering at the sound of the howling wind.
"It's just an empty room." Steve replied as the lagging electrics came on exposing a huge computer and banks of hard drives on either side.
"Weirdly, that doesn't make me feel better."
"This isn't it." Natasha stated. "This technology is ancient, it can't possibly have made that file." It was then that we both spotted the USB port on the desk, sleek in design it was years younger than the machines that surrounded it, causing only further unease to rise in my stomach. Nat stepped forward and inserted the hard drive. All of the machines instantly whirred to life and a small camera like device on top of one of the monitors began to move.
Initiate System? Appeared on the screen and Natasha stepped forward.
Yes.
The camera moved once more as a green and black blurry image came onto the screen.
Rogers, Steven. Born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born 1984. Marakova, Elena Nikolaievna. Born 1985.
"It must be some kind of recording." Natasha commented before the computer cut her off explaining that wasn't the case at all. Next to the large monitor came a black and white photograph of a small looking man, and round glasses and a displeased expression.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the red skull, he's been dead for years." Steve stated as he walked round the back of the machine.
The voice corrected Steve on its actual nationality before informing us;
You are standing in my brain.
"How did you get here?" Steve questioned.
"Operation Paperclip." Natasha said. "After World War II, SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value."
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve reiterated in the same way he had to the car journey here.
Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.
"Prove it." Steve goaded, and the machine started whirring as old newspaper clippings and grainy black and white footage filled the screens.
HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realise is that if you try and 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
70 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." Natasha commented as I gripped on to the back of a dusty old chair and the machine continued.
Accidents will happen. It brought up a newspaper clipping explaining how Howard and Maria Stark had died in a car accident and then a portrait of Fury with 'deceased' stamped over the front.
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 to the same as your life. A zero sum.
In a display of sudden rage I hadn't seen in Steve before, he launched his fist into the screen, shattering the glass only for the image to appear in a smaller one to the left.
As I was saying…
"What's on this drive?" Steve demanded.
Project Insight requires Insight. So, I wrote an algorithm.
"What kind of algorithm?"Natasha questioned.
The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you three will be too dead to hear it.
Suddenly, the elevator doors we had travelled down in sealed themselves shut, Steve hesitated for a few seconds before throwing his shield and it bounced off the metal doors having done little damage. Panic began to set in as I watched the image on the screen move as if it was laughing.
"Guys, we've got a short range ballistic missile coming our way. Thirty seconds tops."
"Who fired it?" Steve questioned.
"SHIELD."
I admit I've been stalling Captain. Admit it. It's better this way. We are both of us, out of time.
Steve yanked a metal grate from the floor exposing a small hole just big enough for the three of us, Natasha and I slid into the space just as the missile struck the building and tonnes of debris began to collapse in on top of us. Steve's shield was held above the three of our heads, his arm around Nat's shoulders and her own steely grip on mine. I cried out in pain when my leg slipped out and a chunk of metal and stone fell onto my calf, I instantly felt the skin cut open just managed to pull my leg closer to me before a larger chunk of rock fell that would have crushed it completely.
The heat was searing when the rocks finally stopped falling. The first thing I noticed was how lax Nat's grip had gotten on my shoulder and as Steve pushed our way out into the light of the burning flames I saw she had lost consciousness.
"She's breathing. There's no blood on her head, she should be fine." I coughed between words as I wiped dust and dirt from my eyes. I forced myself to my feet and examined my leg, there was blood on my jeans but not enough that I really needed to worry. Steve handed me his shield as he picked up Natasha and we began to climb out of the rubble. But almost instantly we heard the sound of incoming jets engines.
"Run." He said simply, and we quickly turned away from the rubble and out into the darkness of the other buildings, concealing ourselves in the overgrown weeds. As STRIKE searched the rubble, presumably looking for our remains, we slipped amongst the shadows of the buildings until we reached the front gate where Steve got back into the truck and I sat with Natasha in the back. She was still unconscious as Steve pulled away without turning any lights on and I found myself stroking her hair in a soothing fashion. It brought back the slip up that Fury had revealed in Moscow, 2000. He'd said my parents had been buried with both their daughters, I'd almost had a sister, but fate had had other plans for me. Now though, it felt like I got one anyway, Natasha was the one person who knew me better than anyone, she knew what I'd been through and what it did to a person and I knew the same for her. We didn't spend time hanging out at bars or gossiping about boys, but the bond was there regardless.
"How is she?" Steve questioned.
"She'll be fine." I answered quietly and as we joined other cars on the roads, Steve switched on the headlights of the truck.
"Where do we go now?" I questioned.
"I don't know yet. I'll think of something. Try and get some sleep."
SHIELD had been my safe place for the past fourteen years and in one day that had all changed. As I looked out of the window, my head resting against the glass. I found Zola's words bouncing around my head. There was never a time SHIELD hadn't been at the mercy of HYDRA's influence. By the time I was recruited it had been well established in the mainframe, influencing ideas and eradicated enemies. I thought I'd done so well to escape HYDRA when I was a kid, but they had always, always been one step ahead and I'd fallen into their trap, doing their bidding for fourteen years without even realising it. Now, everything that I'd been taught about SHIELD felt even more sickening, HYDRA kept tabs on potential threats, not SHIELD. HYDRA recruited people of strategic value, not SHIELD. How many people had I killed believing I was doing the right thing? How many people were now dead for the wrong reasons because they were a threat to HYDRA's regime. They'd got exactly what they wanted, I was doing the same work as the Winter Soldier.
Exactly like they had always wanted.