Rewritten 2018
Make You Feel My Love ~Book II~
Disclaimer: I do not own The Winter Soldier movie! All rights go to Marvel. All I own is my own characters and their stories.
~Chapter 17~
Zola
"Here it is," said Natasha as she exited the car, her eyes scanning the area they had just arrived at.
The sun was setting, making the sky a beautiful orange color and the last sunrays shone down over the abandoned facility. From the way the buildings looked, Maria deduced that it was an old fashioned military base; long abandoned and never really reused since the day they decided to stop using it. It was positioned in the middle of nowhere and didn't bother anyone, though Maria still wondered why no one had decided to deal with it. Normally they'd build something new on land that had not been used in a long time; new houses or a mall of some sorts. However, this place hadn't been touched at all from the looks of it.
Perhaps someone was still paying to keep the land untouched? Perhaps someone was still using it? Well, that was the most logical answer, seeing as Hydra seemed to be doing something here. After all, why else would the USB stick that had been so important to Fury that he died over it (Maria's heart tugged at this thought) be leading them here?
As she exited the car, Steve turned the engines off and did the same as Natasha and Maria. He followed the two women as they walked over towards the metal fence and locked gate, the three of them stopping in front of it.
"The file came from these coordinates," said Natasha.
"So did I," said Steve quietly, earning a look from Maria.
On the fence, the name Camp Leigh could be read and as Natasha started to mess with the lock in order to open it, Maria stared at Steve, noticing how his eyes glazed over with an emotion she had seen far too many times. She almost immediately understood that this was the place where he had been training before he became Captain America and although she felt hesitant to do it, she grabbed his hand that wasn't holding his shield. He looked at her, seemingly surprised that she was touching him, though still squeezed her hand, the muscle in his jaw jumping slightly as he bit down his emotions, taking a deep breath.
As Natasha managed to open the gate, the three heroes entered, all of them looking around at their surroundings with curious eyes. All, except for Steve who seemed to be reliving memory after memory in his mind. They all searched the area, trying to find something that looked out of place. However, they couldn't find anything and since the daylight soon would be over, Maria started to give up on the only lead they had.
Using her sleeve, she wiped away some of the dirt from one of the windows on the larger building, glancing inside and seeing absolutely nothing. Not because of the darkness, but because there truly was absolutely nothing in the room to see. No furniture, no abandoned stuff; nothing. All she could see was a rat running across the room before hiding in a small hole in the floor and therefore, Maria sighed again and turned back towards Steve and Natasha.
She was positive they weren't going to find anything and after the long ride and the emotional day she had had, all she wanted to do was find a motel and go to bed; hide under the covers and escape the real world for a while. However, the look on Steve's face made her hesitant to start complaining. His eyes still held the glazed-over look they had had before and she slowly approached him as he stood there, looking out into the nothingness in front of him.
"You okay?" asked Maria.
"This camp is where I was trained," explained Steve, looking over at his friends.
"Well… does anything look out of place to you?" asked Maria.
Steve shook his head before suddenly tensing, a frown appearing on his face as his eyes caught sight of something. Hope filled Maria again as she walked over to him; "What?"
"Armory regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks," said Steve as he started to walk towards one of the smaller buildings.
Natasha and Maria both shared a look before following him, Steve continuing to talk.
"This building is in the wrong place," said Steve, stopping in front of the building and glancing back at the two women following him.
With a sigh, Steve used his shield to crack open the lock on the door before easily opening the seemingly heavy, metal doors, Natasha and Maria continuing to follow him inside. There was a flight of stairs down to a lower level and as Steve started to descend down, she followed him without hesitating while Natasha lingered behind, scanning the first room with her eyes first before following as well. The upper floor had been filled with ammunition and crates filled with unknown things and although Maria had wanted to check it out, she stayed close to Steve for moral support.
The three heroes found themselves in complete darkness as they arrived downstairs, however Steve seemed to know exactly what to do and he had quickly found the light switch in the complete darkness. Slowly, the lights were turned on, enlightening the entire room that was down there. Maria took in the sight of the multiple desks and old typing machines before them, the smell of old books suddenly entering her nostrils.
"This is SHIELD," said Natasha, having noticed the logo at the far end wall first out of the three heroes.
"Maybe where it started," said Steve as the three of them started to walk down the room, their eyes scanning everything there was to see.
"Let's fan out, search through this place," said Maria, earning a nod from both Steve and Natasha.
Maria walked towards the far end of the room, having seen a door there which had spiked her curiosity. While Natasha and Steve both went their separate ways as well, Maria turned the doorknob slowly before entering the room on the other side of the door. She peeked inside first, the dim light making it hard on her to see properly which made her cautious as she didn't want to run into some enemy or a cobweb. She hated those things.
The room was filled with bookshelves and a couple more desks, all of them empty in comparison to the others in the first room. Most books had been taken from the bookshelves as well and she wondered if they had been taken by the owners or by looters. However, she doubted that it was the last option since there had been a functioning lock on the front door.
On the wall closest to Maria, three paintings were hanging. She recognized the faces of two of the people; Howard Stark and Peggy Carter – the founders of SHIELD. Even though it confused her why SHIELD had chosen this place to operate in, she didn't linger on that question as she never really had gotten SHIELD's logic anyway.
Maria turned away from the paintings and continued to walk on, hearing Steve and Natasha enter the room as well. She frowned as she passed completely empty bookshelves covered in dust and cobwebs, her body tensing as her eyes suddenly started to search for spiders she could avoid.
"And there's Stark's father," said Natasha's voice, the two of them having found the paintings as well.
"Howard," said Steve's voice.
Maria made a disgusted gesture towards a small spider placed on a bookshelf to her left and when the spider moved, catching her off guard, she jumped slightly, accidentally bumping her arm against the bookshelf to her right.
"Who's the girl?" asked Natasha's voice.
Maria rubbed her arm where she had hit it, glaring at the bookshelf standing against the wall of the room. However, her glare quickly faded away as she noticed something odd. The cobwebs hanging over the small opening between the two bookshelves were moving slightly, as if a draft was doing so. She placed her hand in front of the cobwebs, indeed feeling the cool air of a draft which made her furrow her brow.
"Steve!" she called, Nat and Steve almost immediately appearing behind her. "Look. There's something behind here."
Steve placed his hand on the bookshelf and used all his strength to pull it to the side, a metallic clanking being heard which indicated that they had found a hidden door. A light was burning in the hallway and Maria placed herself next to Steve as she looked inside, seeing a pair of doors a little further down the formerly secret and hidden hallway.
"If you're already working in a secret office… Why do you need to hide the elevator?" asked Steve, Natasha joining them in staring at the doors.
"Come on," said Natasha, walking past them and towards the elevator doors.
Using her phone, which most certainly was not only a phone, she managed to decipher what the code was before easily unlocking the elevator doors. Steve and Natasha shared a look before entering the elevator, Maria following them swiftly. There were only two buttons in the elevator which could be pressed; one that was used for going down and one for going up. Maria pressed the one to go down and the doors quickly closed, the elevator starting to move downwards.
"What do you think is down there?" asked Maria quietly.
"Hopefully… something that can help us save SHIELD," said Natasha simply.
Maria and Steve shared a look before the elevator stopped and the doors opened, the three heroes being met with a pitch dark room, only the light from the elevator enlightened the floor a few feet ahead of them. A strange sound of wind blowing through the room was heard and Maria couldn't help but find it all quite spooky, more than the spider from before. And as she followed Steve out of the elevator, her heart beat quickened.
The elevator doors closed behind the three of them and Maria whipped back around at the sudden sound of it, letting out a long breath as she realized it was nothing. Even though she enjoyed the darkness, seeing as she used to use it to her advantage to take out criminals during nights in Hell's Kitchen, there was an eerie feeling in the room that caused her to wish for a flashlight or a light switch. Suddenly, her eyes caught sight of something blinking over by, what she assumed was, the far end of the room. It looked like simple squares in different colours simply floating in mid-air. Her eyes were locked onto those strange, floating lights when, as the three of them continued to walk, the lights were suddenly turned on.
Though the lights were not the only thing that had been turned on.
Maria nearly gasped at the sight before her. There, in the room she had thought was small, a hundred silver boxes were standing all around them in what would be more accurately described as a hall. There were pillars keeping the ceiling from breaking down on them and in the middle of the room, not at the far end of it, a large screen was placed on a desk surrounded with several more monitors. The strange squares were still there, only now Maria saw that those were small lights coming from the device on which the monitors were standing. Maria did recognize the silver boxes in the room as what the very first hard drives looked like back in the days, however she didn't understand why there were so many or even why they were there to begin with.
"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient," said Natasha, shaking her head.
However, Natasha frowned as she looked at the strange, dust covered desk in the centre of the room, causing both Steve and Maria to look at her with curious eyes. Maria followed her gaze as Natasha walked over to the monitors and she saw that there was something very out of place there. A small, black device seeming to have multiple USB-ports, was standing in front of the monitors, the dust around it have been touched by someone who had been down there before them which only made the entire thing even more spooky. The mix of new and old technology made it obvious that this… computer… was still being used.
As Natasha placed the USB into the black device, the monitors lit up and the silver boxes suddenly all roared to life, a buzzing noise filling the room as even more lights were turned on, showing off even more of the massive room.
On the monitor straight in front of them, two words suddenly appeared and a strangled voice was heard coming from the computer.
"Initiate system?"
Natasha was the one who walked towards the keyboard resting in front of the machine.
"Y-E-S spells yes," said Natasha as she typed in the word before pressing enter.
The sound of even more of the strange computer coming to life was heard as Natasha glanced back at Steve.
"Shall we play a game?" she said, clearly quoting the Saw movies. "It's from a movie-"
"I know. I saw it," said Steve, causing Maria to smirk as Natasha looked away again.
Maria nudged Steve slightly, offering him a grin since she knew that he had struggled before with understanding quotes like that. However, he didn't react to her and so, she simply let her grin fade away as she looked back at the computer. There, on the monitors, a strange image appeared on the screen of what looked like a pair of glasses and a face with neither a nose or a mouth. The strange, old fashioned, security camera that was placed above the monitor suddenly turned to look at Steve before a strange voice came from the computer.
"Rogers, Steven, born 1918." The camera turned. "Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. Dalton, Maria, born 1990."
"It's some kind of recording," said Natasha, her voice sounding unsure.
Maria had noticed how the camera had moved over to each and every person before having said their names and something told Maria that it wasn't a recording.
"I am not a recording, frulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am."
Maria's lips parted slightly in shock and fascination, her eyes staring at the monitor intently as a second monitor showed the picture of a man wearing the same glasses as the ones being shown on the larger screen.
"You know this thing?" asked Natasha.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years," said Steve as he rounded the desk.
"First correction!" the computer suddenly spoke again. "I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnoses. 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."
"Impossible," said Maria.
"No, not at all, little Dalton. Not at all…"
Maria frowned at the strange way he addressed her, however, she stayed silent about it as Steve came to stand next to her.
"How did you get here?" asked Steve.
"Invited."
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II," said Natasha, seeming to remember something that she had read somewhere at some point; "SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value."
"They thought I could help with their cause. I also helped my own."
"HYDRA," concluded Maria, already knowing that is was those who had infiltrated SHIELD.
"But the Red Skull, he was the leader of HYDRA-" started Steve, however, Zola interrupted him.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
"Prove it," said Steve simply, earning a look from Maria.
"Accessing archive. HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realise 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 with new leaders and new recruits. 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," said Zola, showing pictures of files on the second monitor as he spoke, even showing the Winter Soldier at the end.
"Why did SHIELD not stop you?" asked Maria. "Surely there were those loyal to SHIELD?"
"There were but, accidents happen."
As Maria saw the file of Fury being shown on the second monitor as well as other people who had been killed off, amongst those Howard Stark, her heart sank and anger started to bubble up inside of her.
"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."
Steve did what Maria had wanted to do since the very first beginning, hit the monitor and breaking it into several pieces. However, it didn't help.
"As I was saying-" he continued, his "face" appearing on the second monitor this time.
"What's on this drive?" asked Steve, gesturing towards the USB.
"Project Insight requires insight. So, I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm, what does it do?" asked Natasha.
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."