Italy was going to take the elevator but hesitated. It didn't seem to him that it was in a good state, it shook too much... Oh, wait, those were the Baltics; the three of them were in there, shivering. Italy couldn't blame them. He was terrified, thinking that Russia was in the same continent, but they, who lived next door...Lithuania would most possibly be the first of America's allies to be targeted by Russia, as a response for his call for help, and that meant his neighbors would inevitably get some shots. That was why both Ukraine and Poland didn't leave Lithuania alone, Finland visited and called Estonia all the time and Sweden had offered Latvia help arming himself. Had he been in their skins, Italy would have locked himself up, thrown away the key and asked someone to throw the crate to the sea. Surely that was what they and their bosses were muttering among each other. No one talked about anything else. Bosnia and Herzegovina were also there, discussing something with their president, and Hungary, showing something to hers on the phone.
"Hi, Italy." She smiled at him.
"Hello." Italy smiled. Though the elevator was a bit crowded, he managed to fit in.
"Crazy times, these, huh?" Hungary sighed, putting the phone away. Since the elevator wasn't moving, she was the one who pressed the button for it to descend to the ground floor.
"Can you sleep at night? Because I can't. I only ask myself who is going to shoot first..."
"It'll be alright. We've gotten out of worse situations."
"We didn't have nuclear weapons back then..."
"Hm. True...Well...If we're lucky, they will not miss the shot when they throw them at each other..."
Italy nodded, and almost immediately regretted it. He closed his eyes firmly.
"...You okay?" Hungary asked, looking at him with concern.
"...I feel a little...dizzy..." The trip down was making Italy's head spin...He had to rest against the walls of the elevator. Bosnia and Herzegovina stopped talking for a second to look at him. They resumed their conversation, now in whispers, glancing from time to time at him.
They reached the ground floor. Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Baltics and the presidents walked out, while Hungary and her president stayed there with Italy.
"Should I call someone?" Hungary's president asked.
Italy gently shook his head.
"No, it's gone now. Thank you." He quickly drew a smile. "Phew! I don't know what happened. My brains just went...whoop!"
"You think too much, Italy. Give your head a rest." Hungary smiled at him, now relieved to see he was alright.
"It may have been a drop in sugar blood." Her president guessed.
"Either way, nothing a good plate of pasta can't solve." Italy shrugged with a smile.
Working with America was fantastic. Most of the time, he preferred to play instead, always brought fries and soda to the meetings, never got angry...Never? Actually, it was just very unusual. It still happened. After Walter Williams' murder, his staff ran out of luck.
The FBI agents wondered what would become of them. He was back to those old times when he saw Russia's agents everywhere. It wouldn't take long before he started purging his institutions. His smiles and funny remarks had been replaced with a serious, inquisitive silence. When they saw him at the Pentagon, flanked by director Patrick Newman, no one even dared to say good morning to him.
The nation and the director reached a small room full of screens hanging on the walls.
"The only thing we know is that it happened the 2nd of May, between 5 and 6 in the morning. We've got cameras but look at this."
He pushed one button and the screens showed the entrance. There were three men guarding the door, as usual. The hour mark on the video showed 5:02. Then, suddenly, 5:04. The watchmen were almost in the exact same posture.
"What's with that time skip?" America frowned.
"Suspicious, isn't it?" Newman said, and pressed another button.
Most of the cameras were working fine and showed nothing remarkable between 5:02 and 5:04, but some others jumped a few minutes forward.
"Show me the room where we kept the intuition stuff." America ordered.
Newman complied. An agent appeared on the screen, standing by a coffee machine, deciding what to pick. He was standing just a couple of steps away from a door with a plaque on the wall. The hour mark on the video showed 5:10. They saw the man turn his head towards the corner. And suddenly, 5:39. The agent was giving the last sip to his cup, leaning against the wall with his legs crossed, then licked his lips, threw it into the trash can and entered the room using the card hanging from his neck.
"Don't we have the footage of the surroundings?" America asked, leaning closer to the screens, as if trying to see into the reflection of the glasses.
"No." Newman crossed his arms. "Curiously, the cameras all around this area", he showed America a map of the facilities, where he had already marked a route from the entrance to the room they were seeing, "skipped some minutes".
"Curiously." America remarked.
He used the main entrance. He didn't even try to slip in through some hole or anything: that son of a gun had the guts to walk in like he was at home.
Yeah, typical of Russia.
But there was something weird...America asked the director to replay.
Why didn't the agents stop him...? Why were they so chill...?
"Who's that guy?" America pointed at the guy by the coffee machine.
"Morgan Tyler's the name. He's here." Newman replied.
Guessing that America would want to ask him some questions, they had summoned him in a nearby room. Tyler was a pale man with bags under his eyes and now, having the nation in front of him and not for a good reason, he looked like a corpse.
"Mr. Tyler...Can I call you Morgan?" America started to say.
"Y-Yes, sir..." He could have probably allowed him to call him stupid if he wanted.
"Morgan...What happened the 2nd of May?"
"I...don't remember, sir..."
"That was kind of an important day, did you forget?"
"I mean...I know someone sneaked in but...It's...hard to explain..."
"Try."
Tyler fidgeted.
"You've seen the images, haven't you? Well, I...I really don't remember anything else...I don't have any idea of what happened before I finished my coffee...I can't even remember the moment when I clicked the button..."
"Someone approached. You heard them coming, for what it seems. Was it a partner of yours?"
"I don't know. I really don't know! Sorry..."
America frowned. Him and Newman left the room.
"Needless to say, he's suspended and will have to make an effort to remember in front of court." Newman said.
"How old is he? Forty? Fifty? A little too young to have Alzheimer." America said.
"It must be something in the water, because the guards at the door claim the same."
"Are you telling me that four people couldn't see that someone got into a restricted area early in the morning? Who was it, a ghost or something?"
"I don't think it's a ghost, but he was surely smart. They just cut the bare minimum for us to overlook it. Just the few minutes needed to cross the corridor, and they walked seemingly fast."
Newman gazed at America.
"America, if Russia did this, he's got moles in here, because they knew exactly where to go and wasted no time, and see the faces of the agents who saw them? They don't show any signs of alarm. They knew them..."
America covered his mouth with his clenched fist, deep in thought.
He was aware that Russia had a way with technology, but this...this was almost like a magic trick. How did he do that? How did he mess with his cameras? And most importantly, how did he mess with his agents' minds? Did he drug them or something?
He turned his face towards his director.
"May I have the recordings?"
He knew who could help him solve this mystery, and it wasn't the FBI. Sure they had mighty good technicians who could have restored the files, but now he wasn't sure he could trust them on this. Not until he was one hundred percent sure that they weren't making things easier for Russia. So he took the file and paid a visit to his old friend Lenny.
Lenny still lived with his mom. He was thirty-something and didn't find it necessary to shower frequently (frequently being at least once a week); he had never had a date with a real girl and those who accused the nation of being the embodiment of a very bad health lifestyle said that because they didn't know him—but when it came to computers, he was the best. America found out about him when he messed with his president's private mail and social media profiles and instead of joining those who wanted to throw him in jail, interceded in his favor, with the condition of using his superpowers to protect his databases from hackers. He was the guy he always recurred to in predicaments like these.
Lenny's mom offered America a sandwich, anything he wanted. "You need to eat well, now that you're going to war", she said. She escorted him to Lenny's room, even though America knew the way. Lenny was playing Among Us when he knocked at the door. He was about to shout at him to leave him alone, mistaking him for his mom, and changed his expression upon seeing him.
"US! I thought you were putting your boots on to crush some vodka lover!" Lenny quickly closed the game and turned his chair around to look at him.
"I'm on it. I just have something delicate to deal with before I beat him up." America replied.
"Ooooh. I'm listening."
"What you're about to see is top secret, okay? So if this ends up on Youtube or Wikileaks..."
"I'll take it to my grave, man." Lenny rose a chubby hand, solemnly.
"Take a look at this."
America showed him the chopped recordings.
"I see...Someone used scissors on this and overwrote the file, yeah." Lenny nodded. And, without asking for America's permission, understanding that he had it, inspected the unit.
"How did they do it?"
"A Trojan." Lenny replied, typing like mad. "Yep. Someone introduced a Trojan into this unit and gained remote control over the unit."
"Can you see who was on the other side?"
A lot more typing. "Mmmm. No. Darn, whoever did this is good. And clean. I take my hat off to them." Lenny stopped and looked at America. "The only thing I can say it's that it's probable that the virus entered through some infected device, like a USB pendrive or a phone. I am aware of the Pentagon's security measures, and I'm guessing that's the only way they found."
"So...they walked in, did their thing, infected the computer to erase any trace and left..." America muttered.
Russia had always had a way with computers...
"Can you find the original files?" He asked Lenny.
"Sure I could! There must be a copy around here. I've got a few tricks: system restore, temp files...I'm gonna need a few passwords, and your word that I won't end up in jail for messing with this thing."
"You got both."
"So you think Russia did it?"
America wished he could have given him a convinced, overwhelming yes.
«Whoever did this, he was someone my men didn't identify as a threat...It had to be a friend...Someone they knew well...»
He refused to believe someone close to him could have done something of the sort. Unless they had sold themselves to Russia...
His president wouldn't have liked the idea of him leaving these sort of things in the hands of a civilian like Lenny, but...He didn't know who he could trust anymore. And that hurt a lot more than any missile Russia could throw at him.
"Call me when you find something." He told Lenny.
And went off to his house to prepare himself to fight. Because he didn't need to unveil Russia's tricks to punch him in the face.
He had a cabinet full of weapons. The best, the most precise, the most modern. An assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a pump action shotgun, a shoulder-fired antitank weapon, a box full of Glocks, a combat drone...He had way more in a storage unit, but he felt confident: he needed nothing more to sweep the floor with Russia's face. He removed his glasses and tried a pair of spectacles he had been working on which not only were anti-fog, but also had a tiny computer incorporated which tracked up targets and show maps; and his bullet-proof vest as well (it was at that moment when he saw it was time to go back to the gym and reduce his fries ingestion).
The phone buzzed. America, still dressed with the whole equipment, picked it up. It was his boss.
"Yeah?"
"America, Lithuania's president just called me. It's Shishkanov...He's been found dead in his cell..."
Silence.
"He apparently used his bed sheets to make a cord and strangled himself tying it to the bars of the cell."
"...Sure..." America broke his mutism to spit.
"You're thinking what I'm thinking, right?"
It wouldn't be the first time someone who opposed him committed suicide, or suffered an unfortunate accident, or some sudden, lethal sickness...
Russia's tentacles were long...
"Tell her to keep a close eye to Lithuania. He will be next, I am sure of it." America replied.
He hanged up, and looked at his reflection in the mirror of the room.
Russia had always thought he could impose his will with terror...with dirty tricks...Well...He would put an end to that...He would be the one who stopped that psychopath once and for all...