Chapter Three

Peggy had other dreams of Steve as the months trudged past, as she moved from Europe to England to New York. Sometimes he turned up at her door—sometimes he fell from the train like Bucky, his fingers just slipping past hers. In one thoroughly confusing dream, he turned up as both her own dead brother, and the priest officiating the funeral.

They were normal dreams—jumbled bits and pieces of her life turned over by her subconscious while she slept.

But the instant this dream began, even in her sleep she knew it was different.

She was back at Camp Lehigh, though it took a moment longer than it should have for her to recognize it. The place was empty and abandoned, with an air of long-undisturbed stillness, but everything about her was oddly crystal-clear in its clarity, despite the state of neglect. Before her stood an arms depot, far too close to the other buildings—an odd incongruity in a dream so otherwise realistic.

And then she saw Steve.

He was dressed in civvies this time. She had hardly ever seen him in civvies, but still recognized him at once even though his back was to her. He walked quickly towards the depot, a shorter redhead keeping pace at his side.

Unseen, Peggy hurried after.

Inside the building, everything was covered in dust. Drifting to the side, Peggy automatically scanned their surroundings, looking for threats. She might be invisible to the other two, but that didn't mean she couldn't watch their backs.

When she turned back to the others, her heart skipped a beat as she saw Steve looking straight at her, his face filled with a desolate grief that she could read even through the stoic set of his jaw.

Peggy's throat closed. "Steve," she whispered hopefully.

"Who's the girl?" the redhead asked.

Steve just turned away, and Peggy's heart sank as she realized somehow she was still invisible. Turning, she saw her own picture hanging on the wall beside a crookedly-hanging portrait of Howard.

He hadn't been looking at her—he had been looking straight through her to the photograph behind. But why had a simple portrait caused such loss and grief in his eyes?

She had to hurry to catch up with them.

They went down a hidden elevator, down and down and down for what seemed an age. Then the world slipped, shifted as dreams do, and suddenly they were in a bunker set far below the arms depot.

The room was filled with whirring machinery of some kind. Steve stood several yards away before a shattered television screen on some kind of low central dias. His shoulders heaved; even at that distance she could tell just how upset and devastated he was, though she wasn't sure why. Clearly she had missed something important when the dream slipped.

"Steve, we have a bogey."

It was the redhead, speaking from so closely behind Peggy that she nearly jumped out of her skin. Turning, she saw the odd electronic display the other woman was holding.

The technology might be different, but Peggy knew what an incoming rocket looked like.

"Take cover!" she cried. "Steve, get down, GET DOWN!" But there was nowhere—no, yes there was. A grate was set in the floor beneath her shoes. She stomped on it—solid, but no match for Steve's strength.

"Here," she shouted, hoping that somehow he would hear her—and then Steve was so close beside her that suddenly she couldn't breathe. With one hand he wrenched the grate free, sending it hurtling across the room. With the other he seized the redhead, plunging them both into the yawning pit beneath Peggy's feet.

Then the rocket hit, a blinding inferno springing up all about her.

Steve's cry of pain rang in her ears even as she started awake.

"I don't see why the SSR won't let me build a new lab under the building," Howard complained when Peggy arrived. He was tipping back in his chair at an impossible angle and scowling at the blueprints spread out on the table in front of him. "My last lab got blown up, and the telephone exchange is a great cover for the new one."

Stepping closer, Peggy pretended to nod in sympathy to Howard's stream of complaints.

"You'll get to build it sometime," she reassured him, idly scanning the sheets. "If not now, then maybe in a few years when the SSR builds that new building Thompson's been dreaming—"

Then the words shut off in her throat, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Because she recognized this. There was the hall, the concealed elevator shaft…

Fingers trembling, Peggy seized the papers, flipped through them, ignoring Howard's yelp of dismay.

And there it was, the basement level. It was rough, only a draft as yet, and there was no machinery in it, but Peggy recognized the general outlines, the central display dais.

"What is this room?" she asked hoarsely, her voice strange and distant in her own ears.

Howard's answer meant nothing to her, though he was clearly very excited about it. Apparently it was a space for developing a new Electronic Delay Storage something-something.

"It's the way of the future, Pegs," he insisted.

The way of the future.

The future.

Peggy swallowed hard.

Steve Rogers was dead. That fact was incontrovertible. But he had gone down with the Cube in his possession—an element of inconceivable, barely-tapped power. What if somehow…

The idea was too wild, too implausible. She couldn't even think it. Besides, this blueprint was only a pipe dream that would probably never be built.

"You need a grate here," she said instead, tapping a blank spot on the blueprint with her lacquered fingernail. "A shaft about eight feet deep. Make sure it's reinforced."

Howard's mouth was open—apparently she'd interrupted him mid-word. He leaned forward, inspecting the paper. "I guess I could put another ventilation shaft through there," he said after a minute. "After all, my baby's gonna generate a lot of heat, and we'll need good air circulation. But eight feet?"

Peggy licked her lips. Her mouth had gone dry. Surely she was imagining this whole thing. All blueprints looked alike. That odd dream was simply still on her mind.

"Because," she managed anyway, "if your electronic storage device blows up, you're going to need a place to take shelter."

It was weak and she knew it, but Howard didn't even blink.

"That's a good idea," he said, and drew the grate in.

Author's Note: In 1949, a team at the University of Cambridge developed the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC)—an early computer. Even though this chapter is set in roughly 1946, Howard is already thinking ahead along similar lines.

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