In the end Rogers had to use brute force to get himself out of the plane. In the waist gunner's gallery a section of wall had been torn away by the impact of the crash. Out beyond it was the bluish glow of ice. Taking the jagged edges of the rip carefully in his hands Rogers expanded the rip.

The effort made him feel dizzy and he had to take a moment to catch his breath before feeling ready to continue. He thought back to the night-time talks he had had with Dr. Erskine so many years before. Concerning the super-soldier serum and its theorized effects.

Erskine had likened the body of a super-soldier to a white hot coke furnace. A terrific amount of energy could be stored away in such a small space, burning slow but hot. Rogers had listened as the old German doctor spoke about muscle fiber density, the role of mitochondria in enhanced human cells…all sorts of medical jargon that hadn't held much meaning to him at the time.

Back then he'd been a fine arts student, way in over his head, just as scared as he was determined to take on fascism and all of the evil that it represented.

He'd taken the time to learn more about just what the serum had done to him later…after Erskine had been assassinated, after the government had told him in no uncertain terms that he, Steve Rogers of Brooklyn, was the only super-soldier fighting for the cause of America. For the cause of freedom.

His muscles were denser. His cells different somehow, packed with energy producers and some sort of strange element that allowed him to heal and bounce back from things that would kill anyone else.

And all of that meant that he could go for a long time without food and water. Without sleep. Without anything really. He'd once gripped onto a fifty pound weight and sat at the bottom of an Army swimming pool for thirty minutes. Had come up more because he was getting bored than because of any pulmonary distress.

He was a super-soldier. That fact seemed even more blatantly obvious than before somehow. Anybody else would have frozen to death by now. Would have been killed by the blunt impact of the crash. By the hiatus between crash and consciousness…however long that was.

He squeezed from the downed bomber, pressed between the fuselage and what appeared to be a glacial creek. Splashing down, freezing water came up to Rogers' waist. He slogged against the current, around the shredded tail of the Nazi bomber, and sat gratefully down on an ice bank that had frozen over the side of the stream.

The bomber had slammed down along a creek bed, Rogers realized as he examined his surroundings. That had probably saved it from flying apart completely.

Rogers glanced around him once more. Waded upstream until he found a place he could climb out of the creek. Standing atop the bank, panting, almost blinded by the glare of sun on snow, he reached absently for his goggles.

Not there. His helmet had been dislodged…and he hadn't even thought to look for it.

The landscape around him was fairly flat, but for a curiously shaped mountain some miles away. It seemed to have had a bite taken out of its peak, and…and there was no snow on its slopes.

Huh.

Where the hell had he landed?

Somehow it seemed vaguely familiar, but then again he'd been plenty of places. Sometimes he had deva vu for no reason at all.

More mountains clouded the horizon behind the strange nearest peak. Rogers examined their topography. Thought back to the hours of geography lessons he'd taken while in training. Memorizing entire swathes of territory just in case.

But most of that had been in Nazi occupied Europe, or the United States. He, if he remembered the heading of his course correctly, was somewhere in eastern Canada.

Another curious thing…the weird snowless peak was shimmering. Like it was a hot day out. Rogers squinted. Tried to tell himself that he was seeing things, but that couldn't be the case. He had better eyesight than anyone on the planet.

Through the shimmers he could see bare expanses of rock, little streamers of smoke rising from a few occasional spots.

"Boy…this just keeps getting odder." He sighed and felt for his utility belt.

Gone. Figures…

Atop the peak…the 'bite' taken out of it looked an awful lot like a crater. Had he just missed the eruption of a volcano?

Rogers sighed. Tracked the trajectory of the creek idly. Supposed that he now knew why there was so much snowmelt flooding down from the hills.

"That would've been a neat thing to see…" He said absently, then turned his back to the odd mountain and scanned the horizon to his south.

A few battered looking trees, but for the most part just emptiness. The mountain range curved around to head south as well. Rogers stamped his feet in the snow, breaking through a thin crust of brittle, glassy ice.

"South," he said, and tested the death of the snow again, pleased that it didn't seem deep enough to prohibit easy travel, "I'll just head south until I hit a road or the U.S. border."

Simple. Easy.

He could walk. The breeze would wick the water from his clothes and the sun would cheer him. The exercise would loosen his muscles and along the way he could stop by a thicket and get himself a walking stick.

As he decided this he supposed that it had to be sometime in late spring. It was warm enough to be May or even early June. And if that was the case then he'd been out cold for one or two months.

Long enough for the bomber to have settled into the creek. Long enough for the dead Nazi in the cockpit to have begun to decompose. Short enough that everything he knew would still be there.

He just had to go and get it.

But even as those happy, satisfied thoughts crossed his mind, he heard a distant chopping sound. A thwack-thwack-thwack that seemed to punish the very air. Rogers hadn't heard anything quite like it before. The only thing he could compare it to was the engine of a piston fired fighter plane…only much slower. Heavier.

It was coming from the south, at least a thousand feet above him. Rogers still wasn't entirely sure how he could tell the altitude of aircraft just by sound…but somehow he knew. Somewhere deep in his mind unknowable calculations played out. And returned right answer after right answer after right answer.

He stood stock still.

A new type of plane? Maybe a civilian plane…Canadian…curious to see the volcano. It made sense to him.

But rather than a plane, Rogers caught sight of something entirely different.

It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. Somebody had taken the heavy, brick-like body of a cargo plane, shortened its wings and fixed great big upwards facing propellers atop them. Another rotor buzzed like a hornet on its tail and Rogers cocked his head, perfectly confused.

He had seen early, experimental helicopters in Army storage before…but those things had been meant for one person. They buzzed like wasps when they took off and had an alarming habit of crashing the moment equilibrium even flirted with the idea of unbalance.

This…this monstrosity flew in a heavy, straight line, utterly stable, trailing diesel fumes behind it.

"The hell have you done Stark?" Rogers wondered aloud. But there was no Stark logo on the approaching helicopter. No U.S. or even Canadian military emblems either. Just…a great big crimson V.

Rogers took a step backwards, almost unconsciously. There was something very wrong about this. But before he could decide whether to remain in place or beat a retreat back to the creek bed, a great voice thundered from the helicopter. The machine, Rogers realized faintly, had an enormous loudspeaker wired to its front.

"Ungood comrade! Ungood!" The voice boomed and Rogers saw the helicopter dip lower, still heading directly at him, "current dayorder minipax: vacate doubleplushasty! Fullstop! Fullstop!"

Rogers was caught completely off guard. The voice certainly sounded right, full of military vigor and iron authority…but what the hell was it saying?

He'd never heard anything like this strange, broken language being bellowed at him. Rogers held his arms up in display that he was unarmed, clearly alarmed.

"My name is Captain Steve Rogers!" He shouted back as the helicopter came to a hovering halt about a hundred yards in front of him, floating maybe fifty feet off the ground. "I was shot down in that bomber over there!" He wasn't sure if the people inside of the weird helicopter had even heard him. The voice started up again.

"Speedwise retreat now comrade! Ante-unlife now!"

And suddenly there were men leaning from the sides of the helicopter, rifles aimed. Rogers stared for a half second, just bewildered enough to hesitate.

From what he could see, the men in the helicopter wore dark gray uniforms, baggy and strangely utilitarian. Like he was being threatened by the world's most fascistic janitors.

Then he whipped his shield around rifles cracked. A bullet caromed off of one side of the shield and Rogers zigged to the right, another round zipping wide to his left. The helicopter was lowering, preparing to set down. In just a few moments the soldiers inside would come spilling out.

And that would be their mistake. If they were in the air then they might have given Rogers some serious trouble, if only because he couldn't easily reach them. But on the ground…

Another bullet hit the shield. Rogers kept low, hiding his legs from view, making a wide arc towards the creek bed. The helicopter bounced down to earth, none too gently, spraying snow and ice everywhere. And soldiers jumped out, at least a half dozen of them, wide eyed, gloved hands clutching rifles.

They stuck close together, almost in a phalanx, recognizing that Rogers was unarmed but for his shield. Behind them the helicopter stayed put, rotors still spinning. Behind the glass Rogers could see a pair of similarly uniformed men. One was still holding a radio transmitter, Rogers supposed that it was him who had spoken.

Neither pilot seemed to be armed with anything long range, and from what Rogers could pick up the helicopter was unarmed as well. This was a troop transport, he deduced as he picked his way towards the creek bed, the grey uniformed soldiers racing to intercept him.

They were firing in volleys now, solid sheets of lead cracking against his shield like a series of hard punches. It bruised his arm, rattled his teeth, but Rogers hung steady. Waiting for them to get closer.

From the moment they had bunched up Rogers had known what he was going to do. If they had spread out then he would have jumped into the creek bed immediately, to limit their mobility, to use the bomber as shelter. But the strange soldiers, each with an ominous crimson V on his right shoulder, no other rank insignia, had crowded together. Clearly hoping to knock their adversary off balance and then shoot him dead when he tripped up.

And that might have worked on nearly anyone else…but they weren't messing with just anyone.

They, Rogers thought vengefully, had picked a fight with Captain America. And it was time for them to pay.

A volley slammed him back, but instead of holding firm Rogers rolled with the impact of the shots, spinning around in a graceful circle, like an Ancient Greek discus champion. And just like that old champion, at the end of his turn he let his discus fly.

The shield weighed somewhere between thirty and forty pounds, and it hit the bunched squad of soldiers like a fully loaded cement truck. A rifle barked helplessly into the sky, the soldier who had born the brunt of the hit flipped completely over, landing on his head in the snow.

Rogers raced forward, muscles burning, adrenaline and righteous fury making up for injury and cold and fear. Only two soldiers had been left standing. One raised his rifle, only got it halfway up before Rogers wrenched it out of his grip and grabbed him by the front of his uniform.

He had just enough time to see utter terror form on the face of his quarry before he whipped him into the other soldier, knocking them both headlong into the snow.

A hand gripped his ankle. Rogers twisted free and stamped down on the man's arm. Heard his elbow pop like a firecracker. Kicked another soldier in the jaw as he attempted to rise, cracked the butt of the rifle down on the helmeted head of another.

And then it was quiet, but for the rising whine of the helicopter rotors. The pilots were attempting to escape.

Rogers took a step back, raised the rifle to his shoulder. Put a shot through the windshield, starring the glass and spraying blood from the pilot's shoulder. And suddenly the helicopter was dipping to the side, the pilot yanking hard on the controls in utter panic. The rotors met snow and the helicopter tipped onto its side in a plume of snow and ice crystals, the rotors shattering into a thousand pieces.

He strode forward, fired a shot into the co-pilot's side door as the man tried to open it. Heard a choked scream from inside, then shouting.

"Big Brother! Big Brother!" Over and over again. Like a deranged sort of chant. No reply from the beaten squad that had been sent after Rogers.

Rogers stepped around the front of the helicopter, staring through a windshield webbed with cracks. The co-pilot stared wildly back at him, blood running freely from his nose. He was struggling with the flap on a hip holster.

"Don't." Rogers said. The co-pilot ignored him, muttering his strange chant under his breath now. Rogers shattered the cracked windshield with the butt of his rifle and dragged the co-pilot out, throwing him headlong into the snow. His pistol bounced free and Rogers stepped firmly on top of it. The co-pilot huddled into the snow, wide eyed with fright and a horrible sort of fanaticism that Rogers had only ever seen before in the eyes of the most heavily indoctrinated SS butchers.

"Who are you?" He growled, aiming his rifle at the co-pilot, glancing back to make sure that the beaten squad was staying still (they were), "and what the hell are you doing on Canadian soil?"

The co-pilot stared, confusion momentarily winning out over zealousness. Then he sneered.

"Ungood," he said, almost mockingly, "unCanada, unAmerica…all doubleplusOceania!"

Oceania?

What…?

Rogers worked a kink out of his shoulder and sighed. This was all too weird for him. He couldn't understand much of what these guys were saying, and even after he'd killed a few of them and utterly humiliated the rest…they still acted like they were in charge.

Kinda like the Nazis come to think of it.

But if Rogers was sure of anything, it was that these…Oceanian(?) weirdos weren't members of the Third Reich.

He had an uneasy feeling in his gut that the entity these people swore their allegiance to was much, much worse.