In the Still of the Night
A/N: So. Um. It's been a while, I know. And I won't try to give you all a lame excuse for why this chapter took so long to get written...so I'll just distract you from your anger with a new chapter. Yay!
Once again, I am very grateful to everyone who has read, reviewed, and supported this story thus far. I really appreciate the comments and criticism that everyone has given me to help me make a great story. Even months after I've updated I'm still getting views, favorites, and follows, which hopefully means that new people are discovering my story even though it's still a work in progress. So to my new readers – welcome! And to the readers who have stayed with this story still – welcome back!
Thank you all, and I hope you enjoy this chapter! :)
-PenPaperParadise
Chapter Fifteen: Blues in the Night
SHIELD had been interrogating the burglar that they had captured for a week now and still he gave them no information. Well, no useful information. They had managed to get out of him tiny little bits of information, the most useful of which was his name, Lukas. But that was about it. Tall, dark-haired, and stone-faced, he was the only one that SHIELD had captured during the break-in but they might as well had not taken him in at all; he wasn't helping them get any information.
It made Natasha frustrated. She decided to stay back and observe the skilled SHIELD-trained interrogators try to extract information from him, keeping her distance so that she could remain objective about the situation. But that was getting more and more difficult as the days passed by without any progress. She was itching to jump into the interrogation room and get the information from Lukas using the many, many tactics of interrogation that she had accumulated over the years.
However, Natasha decided to give it some more time. They would wear him down eventually, it was just a matter of being patient.
Feeling restless, Natasha stepped away from the two-way mirror in one of the SHIELD investigation rooms that housed Lukas. If she was going to wait it out for Lukas to give them the information, then she might as well devote her time to something useful. She left the interrogation area and found an empty office room, sitting down at one of the vacated desks and pulling out her laptop from her bag. Desperate to get some answers, Natasha went to work and brought up everything she had on the recent museum break-in.
She was able to find the logistics report of the computer she and Steve had discovered at the Smithsonian that had been hacked. When she read it over, she found a Smithsonian employee I.D. number that had most recently accessed the computer. She looked up the number in the employee database and found that it had belonged to Vera Rochester. According to the report, Vera had used her Smithsonian employee password to retrieve the file, but then used a different password to open it. Natasha looked up the second password and it struck her that it seemed somewhat familiar.
Seems like a SHIELD password, she thought vaguely. And when she hacked into the SHIELD database to retrieve Vera's password using her SHIELD I.D. number, sure enough, the two passwords matched.
So Vera used her SHIELD password to open that file, which worked because she was never taken off the SHIELD record, Natasha reasoned. Was it Vera's password specifically that was required to open that file, or would any old SHIELD agent's password have worked?
It suddenly struck Natasha that several months had passed between the time Vera first tried accessing the file to the date of the museum break-in. If her SHIELD password was the only one required to open the file, wouldn't she have just used her password to open it those few months ago? The only reason she wouldn't have opened the password back then was because she didn't know her SHIELD password was required to open it. Then she must not have known how to open it until recently.
Also the file was several decades old, so that ruled out Vera being the one who created it. Maybe Vera just stumbled upon that file and it took her a few months to realize that a SHIELD password was needed to open it...Maybe when "Agent Rushman" visited her the day of the break-in she realized the file was important to the government and she made the connection to SHIELD...
Maybe, Natasha realized, Vera Rochester was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That makes sense, Natasha thought, she doesn't have any history of being a hacker or working for HYDRA or something. She must have been telling the truth when she said she didn't know anything.
But why did it seem like she was hiding something? The contents of the file, Natasha concluded. She was the only person who ever saw the contents of that file that disappeared. It probably held some sort of information like a keyword, or a name, or coordinates. So she must have realized she needed to keep it from people she didn't trust. And, well, given that SHIELD hasn't done much to earn her trust, it makes sense she didn't trust us.
Natasha felt a little guilty that she had judged Vera so harshly. But hey, she wasn't wrong about the fact that she was hiding something; she just had better intentions than Natasha originally thought.
Better go tell Steve...she thought reluctantly.
But first, Natasha realized that the best thing to do now was pay Lukas a little visit. The contents of that file, whatever they are, have to be important to someone, Natasha thought. And I bet Lukas and the organization he works for were trying to get that information.
Natasha closed her laptop, put it into her bag, and sauntered back to the interrogation room confidently.
"Hi, my name is Steve Rogers. I was told to speak to a nurse named Cindy?"
"Oh yes, Mr. Rogers," said a young blonde women with a strong British accent. "Cindy's been chatting with the police but they've probably gone by now. I think she's still in Miss Carter's room, though."
"Thank you," Steve said curtly and immediately headed toward Peggy's room.
He was currently in Winchester, England to check up on Peggy. He had received a frantic call earlier that morning from Cindy the nurse saying how Peggy was going on and on about a man that had broken into her room, and since Steve was listed as one of her emergency contacts ever since she relocated from her D.C. convalescent home to this one, he was the first to be notified. Thanks to Tony, Steve had jumped on a Stark Industries private jet and rushed over to England to make sure Peggy was alright.
Steve had visited Peggy at this home once or twice before so he knew how to find his way to Peggy's room. As he approached it, he saw a thirty-something nurse with black hair stepping out of Peggy's room.
"Are you Cindy?" he asked as he approached her.
"Yes," she responded. "You must be Steven."
He shook her hand and inquired, "How is she?"
"She's a little shaken up, but otherwise okay," Cindy explained. "When I first heard her yelling about how a man had been in her room that night I thought it was her Alzheimer's acting up, but I could tell she was in her normal state when she told us. And we noticed the window latch to her room had been broken from the outside last night."
Steve breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Peggy was alright, but he still felt concerned for her. "Who was the man that broke in?"
Cindy shook her head. "We're not quite sure. Peggy kept saying something about a soldier, though; one she said she hadn't seen in a long time."
Steve swallowed. Could she mean – ?
"I'd like to speak with her, if that's alright," Steve requested. "If she's still shaken up it might be good for her to talk to someone she knows well."
"Of course, Mr. Rogers. Go ahead in."
"Thank you," said Steve and he stepped inside Peggy's room.
Peggy was lying in her bed, gazing out at the trees beyond her window. She looked contemplative and thoughtful, her soft brown eyes squinting in the sunlight that poured in from outside.
"Hey, Peggy," Steve said gently as he approached her bedside. She turned from the window and smiled at him.
"Steve," she voiced with brightness in her eyes. "I take it you're here because of the incident last night?"
"I am," he replied, thankful that Peggy was calm and coherent (which was not what he had been expecting given that Cindy had said Peggy was still "shaken up" about last night). "I just wanted to make sure you're okay, Peg."
She hummed contently. "You are sweet," she said. "But I'm fine, really. A little out of sorts, but that's just because I wasn't expecting to see him last n–"
She stopped herself, giving Steve a look. Steve, though, knew what she was thinking.
"It was him, wasn't it?" Steve asked quietly. "Bucky?"
Peggy stared back at him with wide eyes. "How did you – ?"
"The nurse outside said you called the man a soldier. One you hadn't seen in a long time."
Peggy shook her head. "But it's impossible, Steve. He died many years ago."
"So did I. Yet here I am," he half-joked. "Listen, do you remember when I saved Bucky in Italy and I found him on one of Zola's experimentation tables?" Peggy nodded. "Zola and the rest of HYDRA were trying to recreate the same serum they used on me, and I bet they experimented on Bucky. That's how he survived the fall from the train, and they've somehow been keeping him alive as an assassin ever since."
Peggy looked off in the distance thoughtfully. Steve was afraid for a second that he mind was going, but then she said, "That explains the fact that he seemed confused last night. And he was asking about you."
Steve swallowed. "About me?"
"Yes. He was asking about how I...how I know you."
Steve raised his eyebrows. "So he knows who I am...and clearly he knows who you are...Does he know who he is?"
Peggy shook her head. "He said he couldn't remember."
Steve sighed slowly. It was difficult for him to hear that his former best friend was so lost and confused to the point where he didn't even know himself, much less who Steve was. But the fact that Bucky was seeking out answers about his past gave Steve hope because it meant that Bucky was probably starting to remember. He also didn't hurt Peggy when he could have easily done so, which indicated that Bucky may be less unstable and unpredictable now than he was before. If Steve could just track him down so that they could talk, maybe he could get him to remember his past –
"Steve?"
Peggy's voice broke him out of his reverie. Steve looked over at Peggy, whose eyes were wide and she looked white as a sheet.
"Yeah?" he asked quickly in concern.
"You're–you're alive?" she asked incredulously. Steve's heart sank. He had heard her ask this many, many times before. And he always had to give her the same answer.
"Yeah, Peg," he said, giving her a sad smile. "I'm here."
"It's been so long," she whispered tearfully. "So long."
Steve swallowed the lump in his throat as he thought, I guess this means it's time to go soon. She's not going to remember any more about last night.
"Well, I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance..."
Natasha smirked as she stepped into the interrogation room. Lukas looked up at her with a surprised expression on his face, which made Natasha's smirk grow even more.
"So here's what's gonna happen right now," she told him. Still smiling. "You're going to give me the answers that I need, and you're going to be a good boy and give them to me right now."
Lukas stared back at her with a neutral, yet quiet look.
"I get this whole 'I'm not gonna talk' thing," Natasha went on, "which is really admirable and cute or whatever. But there's no point keeping it up now. You're tired, I'm tired, and there's some new information that I just gathered about why you and your friends broke into the Smithsonian so there's no point in keeping it to yourself.
Lukas' expression changed – he smirked, just like Natasha was doing, which took Natasha aback a little bit but she didn't show it.
"What time is it?" he asked.
Natasha furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "What?"
"What is the current time?" he asked slowly in his thick Eastern European accent.
"Why do you want to know?" inquired Natasha in annoyance.
"Depending on what time it is, I may or may not be able to give you the truth."
Natasha hesitated, but realized he must be playing some sort of game with her and if she wanted answers then she was going to have to play along. She looked at her watch and said, "It's twelve forty-two a.m."
The sick smile on Lukas's face grew. "I can tell you now. Ask any question you want."
"Just like that?" Natasha inquired and he nodded. Not wasting any time, Natasha immediately asked, "Why did you break into the museum?"
"I am part of HYDRA," he answered as simply as if he were stating the current weather. "You, SHIELD, have been systematically finding and wiping out most of us, but there are a group of us that still remain strong in hiding. And we can get stronger and make a full comeback, but only if we can erase all of your SHIELD files and replace it with HYDRA intel – essentially, rebooting HYDRA via your computer systems."
He shrugged off Natasha's confused look. "You are wondering what this has to do with the Smithsonian?" Lukas continued. "Many years ago, when HYDRA first started under Johann Schmidt, one of our founding fathers, Dr. Arnim Zola, had anticipated a fall in HYDRA could happen so he created a failsafe to bring us back to life. Cut off one head, and two more shall appear," he added in a cocky voice.
"What was the failsafe?" Natasha asked. "A computer program?"
Lukas shook his head. "A password. We who have heard of this refer to it as the Keyword. It is a password, one word, that is the key to bringing HYDRA back to life. We have the program necessary to reboot HYDRA; all we were missing was that Keyword to access it. Over the years it was lost, until we recently discovered that it was buried deep in the Smithsonian among other artifacts that were found and used for research on Captain America –" he said the name like it tasted bitter and scoffed – "can you imagine, Agent? These researchers held the key to bringing one of the most important organizations in history back to life, and all they cared about was some steroid-injected soldier?"
Natasha didn't respond to that, only looking back at Lukas with determined, slightly narrowed eyes. He continued, "The Keyword, it transpired, had been protected by a SHIELD password ever since HYDRA secretly integrated with SHIELD after World War II was over. And it didn't require just any password – only a level ten archival clearance could access it. We found out that someone had accessed it the night we broke in. We acted fast and tried to get the girl who did it, but of course, the steroid soldier showed up."
"The girl?" questioned Natasha. "How did you know it was a girl that accessed the Keyword?"
Lukas scoffed. "Did you really think we weren't monitoring that museum worker who had tried accessing our file a few months ago? We've known Vera Rochester knew about that file for months. We just let you all assume she had something to do with it so the investigation would be diverted to her and not us."
Natasha felt something in her stomach sink. She did not like the sound of where this was going. "So you know Vera Rochester accessed the file, and was the only one to see the Keyword before it deleted itself?"
"You are smart, Agent," he replied with a devilish grin. "But if you were smarter, you would have asked why it was important to know the time before I answered your questions."
Natasha felt cold. "Why did you need to know the time?"
Lukas looked up at her with practically giddy eyes. "Because, Agent, by now my men probably have Miss Rochester in their possession. We will have no problem getting that Keyword from her in no time. So there's no way you can stop us once we know the Keyword, because HYDRA will soon become stronger than you can possibly imagine."
He started laughing as Natasha jumped up from her chair and rushed to the door, cell phone in one hand and gun in the other.
We have to go save Vera, Natasha thought in a panic, or Steve Rogers is gonna kill me.
A/N: Gasp! What's going to happen to Vera?! You'll just have to stay tuned folks...I can't say when a new chapter is coming but since I'm on summer break now I will hopefully be updating sooner! Don't forget to favorite, follow, and review! :)