47.
London, United Kingdom
July 12th, 1944
The Howling Commandos have only returned from the front for a few days before Colonel Phillips sends them off again, this time back to their usual agenda of taking down Hydra. The coordinates of a Hydra facility in Hamburg have been discovered and the plans have been made. All that's left is to wait for the time for them to depart.
The morning of, only a few hours before they're leaving, Isabel schedules a meeting with Doctor Lewis to see if she is cleared to go. She's been off her crutches for nearly three weeks now and she can walk without much pain, making her way around the infirmary and treating patients with little trouble. She spent most of June in the infirmary and in Howard's labs trying to distract herself while Steve, Bucky and the Commandos were out fighting in Normandy. That had been a long, long month. She hadn't heard anything from them since they were out with an infantry trying to make their way in to liberate Caen.
Dugan had been a little bummed, for some reason, about missing out on that mission. He'd still been in a cast when they'd left, but Isabel had taken his cast off about two weeks in, screening him and passing him to return to duty. He'd had to stay around the base for the remaining two weeks waiting for them. He'd been especially disappointed the night they'd returned to base and they'd all gone to celebrate at the Stork Club. They'd all shared tales of their adventures and of the fighting, which hadn't seemed too inviting until Morita had told him about his experience with the French woman who worked in the lingerie store.
As much as their tales of fighting had been terrifying and a gruesome, Isabel can't wait to get back out. She knows going out into the field will be a little different to working in the infirmaries, but she thinks she can do it.
Steve had spent a few minutes the night before they were scheduled to depart in a corner booth of the bustling Stork Club trying to talk her out of it. The dim lighting and their proximity had been a little too distracting for Isabel to listen, especially after their elongated time apart, and she was all too intent on collecting his plump red lips with her own. He'd just laughed and pushed her off, making sure she listened. Clearly what had happened to her was still playing on his mind.
"Belle, just think about it. You go back out there and your leg starts to pain you, it's going to be hell trying to make it back," he'd said, his voice low and anxious. "If we get caught in a dangerous position, if we have to run and fight, are you going to be able to?"
"Yeah, Steve, I will," Isabel had argued, frowning at him. "Worst case scenario, I can just jump on your back and you can carry me to make up for all these weeks where you refused to and then when you weren't here to anyway."
Steve had laughed at that, but his expression had still been serious. He'd been sure to point out if she needed piggy-backing, she wasn't ready for the field. "You don't see me piggy-backing any of the others. You don't get any special treatment."
"Oh, please. We both know I do," Isabel had said over a sip of whiskey, raising an eyebrow at Steve. "I'm your favourite, followed by Bucky. Don't even try to deny it. Besides, why aren't you talking Bucky out of it? He was concussed and beaten up by a landmine only four days ago!"
"Super serum, Belle. Remember?"
"Right."
Isabel shakes her head at Steve's worry from the night before as she makes her way into the infirmary. She meets Doctor Lewis in his temporary office and he ushers her in, sitting her on the examination bed in the corner. He tests her range of motion, examines the wound which has luckily healed nicely with only a small scar, gets her to walk up and down the hallway, and then to run, something she hasn't tried yet. As soon as she runs, she feels a bit of a pain in her hamstring, and when he asks her to jump, she doesn't make it far without a grimace.
"I'm sorry," Lewis says sympathetically. "I'm going to say no on this one. You go out there too soon, you could cause further, permanent damage and none of us want that. Sit this one out and jump on the next one."
Isabel resists the urge to pout and accepts her fate. "Hopefully I'll be able to jump by then. Thanks, Doctor," she says politely.
She stands from the bed and leaves the infirmary, walking as confidently and pridefully as she can. It isn't the news she'd been hoping for, that now she has to wait again, but she's just grateful she's being cleared to go back at all. Phillips could easily have looked at her records, seen a glimpse of the breakdown she'd had with Bucky that night in the infirmary, and sent her home with an honourable discharge and a ticket to a psychiatrist's office.
Just one mission and she can join them again. She knows the days they're away will go quickly, they usually do when she finds things to occupy her time, but knowing they're going back into enemy territory with only one medic is unsettling. What if something goes wrong? What if Morita gets hurt again, or what if they suffer a lot of injuries and Morita can't keep up? The multitude of terrible outcomes runs through her head as she walks through the corridors to the elevator and up to the lobby, and it makes her doubt her gratefulness.
Perhaps she could just pretend she was cleared and go with them? It'd take hours for the nurses and Phillips to realise she was gone and another long while to contact them, and by that time they'd be too far into enemy territory to force her to return. Her leg, though, gives her a painful twinge at that moment, clearly a sign that her body is saying no. She sighs and resigns to her fate.
The Commandos are all standing around in the lobby waiting for her to come back with the verdict, their weapons readied and their packs full. Surprisingly, Peggy is there as well to tag along, wearing her combat gear. When Isabel exits the elevator they all turn to her.
"What was the verdict, Baby Barnes?" Dugan asks.
"I'm not cleared this time, fellas and lady," she says with a sad smile.
"Damn, we better not get shot, then," Jones laughs. "Morita might just let us bleed out with how much we've been teasing him lately."
"Yous better watch out," Morita says, rubbing his hands together with a devilish smirk.
Steve comes up to Isabel. He's wearing the new uniform Howard hurriedly designed for him, made of similar material and style to his last, only hopefully this one really is fireproof. Steve had left Howard's lab with strict instructions not to get caught on anymore serrated edges of a burning, blown up plane, and to try to stay away from the fire. The uniform looks good on him, maybe even better than the last, and Isabel bites her bottom lip, looking up at Steve as he looks down at her, apologetic.
"I'll be fine," Isabel promises before he can speak, choosing not to show her disappointment, or else he'll spend the entire mission worrying for her. "You all be careful. I don't want any major injuries when you get back. Look after each other." She looks over to Bucky then, pointing to Peggy. "Bucky, you bring my friend back unharmed, you hear?"
"Yes, ma'am," Bucky says, giving her a salute and pulling Peggy just a little bit closer.
"Well, goodbye then," Steve says with a smile.
"I'll see you soon," Isabel promises.
Steve leans forward, kissing her with a cheeky smile, his hand coming up to hold the back of her head, tangling in her hair. After a few moments of bliss, they hear a wolf-whistle from behind them, though they can't tell who it is. Steve moves to pull away, his cheeks red with embarrassment, but Isabel grabs his neck and pulls him back in, making him elicit a small noise of surprise. She kisses him with a bit more urgency and he winds his hand around her waist, playing along. When she slips a tongue in for the sake of it, the Commandos cheer a little louder and Steve goes a little redder. They finally pull apart and Steve looks breathless, his eyes wide and his cheeks as dark as a tomato.
"One for the road," Isabel tells him with a wink and the famous Barnes smirk.
She watches as he turns around, a little stunned, to his men who all clap him on the back and cheer right in his ear. She shakes her head at them as Bucky puts an arm over Steve's shoulder, steering him out the lobby doors with a wave to his sister. Bucky's other hand pulls Peggy along behind him, who eventually pushes to the front of the group and leads them. Isabel waves back as they all leave, the ruckus moving outside and the lobby falling into a dismal silence once again.
Isabel sighs, turning around and getting back into the elevator. She rides it back to the basement and walks through the corridors, past the bustling SSR agents, to Howard's lab. She walks in and finds the inventor standing by a prototype gun, propped up on a stand on one of the tables in the middle of the room. When he hears her, Howard turns around with a smile.
"Hey, doll," he greets, but his smile quickly turns into a frown. "Why the long face?"
"Howie, distract me please. They've gone away again," Isabel begs, walking straight up to her inventor friend.
"Back to this, are we, doll? It's been a while since you got left behind. You weren't cleared to go along?"
"No, Lewis said I had to wait for the next one," Isabel says, pouting a little childishly. She feels it, too, but can't really bring herself to care. She worked so hard, doing her exercises and keeping off her leg hoping to be ready for the mission and now she's missing out.
Howard laughs at her pouting bottom lip. "Cut it out, Is, someone will think I'm not treatin' you right. You've convinced me, I'll distract you. But first, how's the leg?"
"It's going good. Doesn't hurt so much anymore. The scar's a little unsightly, but, eh," Isabel says, shrugging her shoulders.
"You're still beautiful," Howard reassures her. "Alright, first distraction. Come here, tell me what you think of this," he tells her, leading her attention to the prototype gun.
She looks at the weapon critically and curiously. It's big and bulky with a thick barrel, the metal freshly polished and shining in the light. It looks familiar though, and Isabel recognises it from one of the blueprints Howard had drawn up – it's a gun for Dernier to use to blow things up modelled off of Peggy's pistol. She knows Dernier is going to love it the second he lays eyes on it.
"This is for Dernier, right? He said he wanted a gun like Peggy's on my first visit into the depths of Hydra," Isabel asks.
"Sure is. It fires like a usual gun, you know, safety and trigger and all that. There is a mode for shooting your regular bullet, so he can replace his old Thompson with this beauty. But when you flick this switch, instead of firing bullets, it fires these," Howard says, handing her a small spherical object. It almost looks like a grenade, but it's made of smooth metal, cool to the touch in her hand.
"A bomb?" She guesses, remembering how Peggy's bullets had seen those three men explode where they stood.
"Yep. You're holding one of the most powerful, compact explosive devices known to man, courtesy of moi." Isabel's eyes widen slightly, and she quickly hands it back. "It's tiny, so he'll be able to hold spares in his pack, and the gun itself stores ten." Howard takes the gun from its stand and holds it, showing it isn't quite as big and bulky when it's being held by someone. "They have larger versions of these out in the field, but none that are so easily wielded."
"Looks good, he'll love it," Isabel promises. "Too bad you didn't show him earlier, they just left for the mission and he'd probably have loved to use it."
"Dernier can have it next time, we still have to test it a bit before it goes for a joyride out in the field," Howard says with a shrug. "I also have something else to show you."
Howard leads Isabel further into the labs to his desk and the board that he's been working on the serum formula on. He flips it over, revealing a completed formula on the chalkboard.
"I'm glad I didn't have this finished when those Hydra bastards infiltrated the base because otherwise they would have gotten their hands on the entire formula."
"You worked it out?" Isabel asks in astonishment, looking at the jumble of words and letters on the board. Not a lot of it makes sense to her, but she can tell that the formula is completed. There's no lose ends anywhere.
"Sure did, doll. At least, I'm pretty sure I have. It may still be a little ways off, but this is the closest I've ever been."
"Oh, Howie, congratulations!" Isabel cheers, throwing her arms around the inventor's neck in a tight hug.
"Well, I can't take all of the credit. I couldn't have completed it without you."
"We both know you could have," Isabel laughs. "When did you work it out?"
"A few nights ago when I was up into the late hours haunted by my inner demons," Howard says nonchalantly. "It just came to me, I wasn't even working on it. I just got this glimpse of an idea, went to the board and worked on it, and I popped out this baby. Now, we just gotta make it."
"You want me to help you make the serum?" Isabel asks.
"I need a helper. I'm sure you can keep up with what ingredients I get you to find me. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure it is complete or if it's even right, but I'm going to try to make it, see how it turns out. If it's wrong, we'll keep working on it. I'm calling it Attempt A. If we run out of letters, we start doubling them up."
"How will you know when it's worked, then?"
"Well, I'll have to test it the same way Erskine did."
"On another human subject?" Isabel guesses, jaw going slack. "But you won't be sure–".
"No way. Especially not after what happened with… Midnight Oil," Stark says with a cringe, having to force the words out. "Erskine experimented on mice first, as cruel as it sounds. I have all of his notes from those experiments. If we get the same results from one of our attempts, we've got a match."
Isabel follows Howard through the lab to the bench where he's got the equipment set out, a bunch of ingredients and chemicals already sitting out ready to be used. Howard starts throwing ingredients into a large bowl just as easily as if he's making a cake, Isabel handing him the things he asks for that are out of reach. She watches with interest as he puts a dash of a clear liquid and a splash of another, mixing it all together. The number of chemicals is actually a little worrying.
"You guys actually put all this into Steve?" She asks quietly.
"Apparently," Stark laughs.
"Without knowing what the outcome would be?"
"Don't look at me! I designed the chamber and made it happen, I didn't make the serum. If I had, we would have been saved a whole lot of time working out what the hell Erskine put into it." Howard fixes her a look. "You're still sour about that? Steve agreed to it, didn't he? And so did you, Erskine told me. He came to your apartment, gave you a vague proposition and you said yes straight away."
"Yeah, well once that capsule stood up and Steve started screaming, I started having an awful lot of doubts. And Steve's an idiot sometimes, surely you've noticed," Isabel says with a hearty laugh and without meaning it harmfully. "When he wants something, he goes after it with everything he has. He doesn't stop until it's his, whether that means it causes harm to himself or takes him fifty years to achieve."
"Speaking of…" Howard says slyly. "Remember our little conversation? Did you tell him?" Howard asks carefully.
"I did," Isabel says, nodding her head. "When we were locked up in the cells and you guys were all asleep. Like you said, thinking your life is at its end makes you realise the urgency of needing to do things and needing to tell people how you feel. I told him everything and I didn't hold back. Would have been nice to have been in a better setting, but a girl can only work with what she's given," Isabel notes with a shrug.
"Good girl," Howard smirks, patting her on the shoulder. "I knew you'd take my advice."
"How'd you know?" Isabel humours him.
Stark smirks at her as he pours a clump of a green-looking powder into the bowl, making its ingredients splash up with a loud plop. "Because, my friend, I am a genius."
Later that day, when Howard adds a pinch of sodium to the near-completed serum batch and the solution explodes in the bowl, they know that Attempt A is a failure. Isabel starts cleaning up the mess all over the benches and floor and walls and roof whilst Howard goes straight back to the drawing board, still a little dumbfounded by the sudden explosion and extremely sour about losing an eyebrow in the blast.
Hamburg, Germany
June 13th, 1944
The factory is empty, almost as though Hydra knew Captain America and the Commandos were on their way and evacuated ahead of time. Maybe that is what happened, maybe the factory had been abandoned long before then. They don't know. Despite this, they never let their guard down, walking carefully in a clump through the factory in search of intel.
This time on their raid, the Commandos are aided not only by Agent Carter but also by a nearby company of American soldiers who offer their services while they wait for their next orders. That makes their assault almost two hundred strong rather than eight strong, and Steve feels infinitely more powerful. There's two hundred sets of eyes, two hundred rifles, two hundred people to fight for the right cause. The surge of power Steve feels is momentous.
Steve leads the men and woman through the factory, sending them off in groups to scour every nook and cranny. He doesn't want to leave any piece of intel untouched, and he doesn't want any cowering Hydra members to get away. Anything they find on Zola, Schmidt or Madame Hydra he needs, especially if he wants to find a way to take them down. They've escaped his grasp too many times now and he's done playing tag.
The massive group of soldiers clear the entire first floor without encountering a soul, and Steve gets an unsettled feeling in his stomach. Something doesn't feel right – Hydra isn't the type to abandon a factory like this, not with all this machinery lying around. Everything is exactly where it was left, as though everyone had just stood up and left for the day without any cleaning up whatsoever. If they'd abandoned long ago, they would have had the time to take their belongings with them and it wouldn't have been such a rushed evacuation. Steve runs a hand over one of the benches in the middle of the room and only brings up a very fine layer of dust. It can't have been abandoned for long.
Steve feels unsettled and unsure, and his confidence falls rather quickly. Sure, Hydra likes to operate from the shadows, staying away from the limelight. That's how they've become so successful; they're parasitical, the silent killer. But a parasite doesn't leave its factory doors wide open for the enemy to invade and see all of their equipment and weaponry. It just goes against the laws of nature.
Something has to have happened, and it has to have happened recently.
Steve tells the other company to stay on guard on the top floors and keep scouring for information and any hidden tunnels or rooms while he leads the Commandos down into the basement they come across, a lone set of stairs in the middle of the factory floor leading into the darkness below. A few other men follow as backup, for which Steve is grateful for.
Steve descends the stairs first, shield raised in front of him. On the last step he peers around the corner, looking down a long straight hallway. It's the only place the stairs lead to, and there's only one lone door at the other end of the brick-lined corridor.
"Tell the other men to look for any other accesses to the basement. A factory this big doesn't have just one basement with one hallway and one room," Steve tells Jones at the back who relays the message to one of the other men.
The man runs off with a group to scour the factory. He comes back ten minutes later with a negative. This is the only entrance to the basement and the only basement on the site.
Confused, Steve looks back down the hallway, finding it empty. It's nearly silent apart from the drip of a leak in the roof somewhere. He slowly steps out into the open, making his way down the corridor and signalling for the Commandos to follow. He hears their near-silent footsteps behind him, all of them walking with their rifles and machine guns raised, listening out for any approaching enemies.
The group makes it all the way to the end of the empty hallway. There are no windows along it and only a door right at the end, apart from the staircase they came down. It's dark and eerie and creepy, and it makes the hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
Steve uses the shield to bust the lock on the door to the room at the end of the hall, carefully stepping inside with his gun raised. He looks around, but it's just an office of some sort. A desk, chair, lamp and a radio. That's all there is. The Commandos still search the room, but they find nothing. For an office, there's no paperwork in the desk drawers or even any stationary, as though the desk had just been bought and moved in, still unoccupied by a user.
"It all seems too perfect and tidy, almost like it's been set up," Peggy notes, running a finger along the top of one of the filing cabinets and finding no layer of dust. She peers at her still-clean finger and then wipes it off on her jacket.
"Like a set from a film," Steve agrees. It makes Steve's stomach swirl infinitely more.
They walk back out into the hallway, and Steve looks around. He frowns, feeling as though he can hear something on the other side of the wall. It could be coming from upstairs from the other soldiers, but he just has a hunch. He puts his hand on the brick of the wall, and then his ear, listening. Jones begins to ask him what he's doing, but Steve raises a hand to silence him, straining his ears. The walls must be very thick, but Steve hears a very faint noise coming from behind the wall – the rustling of paper and the echo of footsteps.
Suddenly, Steve draws back and kicks hard into the wall. It sends a bit of a jolt up his leg into his knee, but he ignores it. The bricks concave a bit but stay otherwise in place. Steve kicks again, harder this time, over and over, the bricks cracking and bending. Suddenly from the other side of the wall, they hear the slide of a heavy-sounding metal drawer and the shot of a bullet. Over and over, bullet after bullet. Steve only pauses for a second before he keeps kicking, his powerful foot finally forcing through the barrier to the other side.
Steve quickly pushes on the bricks, a hole forming in the wall large enough for him to crawl through. Steve scrambles through, Bucky right on his flank, followed by the others. Steve stands and looks around, his shield already raised considering they'd heard gunshots only moments before. He looks around the massive room quickly, noting that it looks very similar to the room he'd found Bucky in all those months ago; an experimentation room. Everything looks extremely sterile, monitors and equipment lining the far wall, a row of metal slab tables right in the middle of the room. There's no body on them, only a small drip line of blood leading from one table across the floor to a wall of drawers. That is not so sterile.
"A secret basement, nice," Dugan notes, looking around with a fascinated smile.
"Someone must have been here, we heard gunshots," Steve says. He walks up to one of the desks and the piles of cardboard storage boxes behind it. They're all covered in a layer of dust, except one that has finger prints on the lid. "These files have been moved, the dust pattern doesn't match its neighbours," Steve continues, gently touching the lid and then opening it, finding the box full of files and paperwork, likely taken from the office next door.
Steve moves away and slowly scours the room, not finding any sight of anyone. He wonders if maybe the sounds came from above. There's a metal door in the corner, but it's bolted shut, and even Steve can't get it open with his increased strength.
"What is this?" A man's voice asks, but Steve doesn't recognise which of the Commandos it comes from.
"It's an experimentation room, I think," Steve says unnecessarily. "If its hidden, there's something here they don't want anyone to find. See what intel you can find on Zola or the others and keep someone on your flank, there still could be someone here," Steve tells the soldiers, and they immediately separate into pairs through the room in search of any of Doctor Zola or Schmidt's experiment information.
Steve moves back to the experimentation table, his eyes flicking back to the blood. He carefully steps along the blood line, Bucky on his flank with his rifle still raised. He walks to the wall of drawers, carefully pulling one open. Steve gasps when it reveals itself to be a morgue. He's staring down at a cold human body, the eyes unblinking as the deceased man stares upward, his skin cold and frosted as though he's been on ice. Steve feels inside the drawer and it's freezing in there. He withdraws his hand straight away and lets the draw shut.
"What the hell?" Bucky breathes, opening another drawer and revealing another deceased male, this one no older than eighteen, a fresh gunshot through his head.
They open a few more, five in total, two of them with bullet holes through their foreheads. Steve has to stop when he opens one drawer and comes face to face with a young woman, no older than twenty, with bright red hair and blue, unblinking eyes. She has a gunshot wound through her nose, distorting her entire frozen face. He lets the drawer close gently, running a hand through his hair.
"Who are they? Why are they here?" Steve whispers to himself.
"I think I know," Bucky says solemnly.
Steve turns and sees Bucky standing alone in the corner over a small briefcase. He's flicked the latches open to reveal small packets of a grey fluid laying strategically inside. Bucky's looking down at them with a horrified expression. Steve leans past him and picks up a packet, squashing the thick liquid in his hand.
Steve turns around, seeing that Peggy is on the other side of the room with Dugan and Falsworth, reading through some files. They're distracted enough they don't notice Steve and Bucky speaking in the corner.
"This is what they injected you with," Steve realises in a whisper so the others can't hear, looking at Bucky with a frown. He has no idea if Bucky told Peggy about what happened to him.
"I think so," Bucky nearly whispers. He swallows loudly, adjusting his coat collar. "They must be still working on that, trying to make more people like me and you. Looks like they aren't having much success," he says, looking back to the morgue of dead bodies.
"Why would they leave the bodies in the morgue?" Steve wonders.
"Because they're dead?" Bucky suggests. "They're no use to them anymore, except to see where they went wrong."
"And why would Zola leave this here?" Steve ponders, holding the package of grey fluid. He looks around, seeing that the other Commandos are reading through the boxes of files, each one containing notes on the people in the morgue, the details of their experimentation. "Why would they leave all this evidence?"
"Maybe to throw Stark off? Maybe it's all a hoax? Stark's still trying to recreate the serum, isn't he?" Bucky suggests.
"He is, Belle's helping him…but it just doesn't fit. It doesn't make sense."
Steve pockets one of the bags of the substance, giving another to Bucky, who pockets it with a look of disgust. On a whim, Steve rips open one of the remaining bags, the gloop going all over his hands.
"What are you doing?" Bucky hisses. "That could affect you."
"I'll be fine," Steve waves him off, feeling the apparent serum in his hands. It feels a little sticky, very wet, thickening on his hands like porridge. It makes him feel a bit sick and he quickly wipes it off on his pants.
"This file says that not all of the people in the morgue died from an initial serum injection. A serum of what, that's the question," they hear Falsworth say and the two Brooklyn boys turn to him expectantly. He's reading through a file, his eyes scanning wildly. "Three of them – two men and a woman – they're on ice. They're being… preserved. They're kept alive by a grey liquid, a… food source with nutrients and vitamins to keep them alive without having to wake them up?" He says, but it's phrased like a question. He holds the file for Dugan to read, who nods in agreement. It must contain a lot of science jargon.
Steve looks at the gloop in the packet in his pocket again. It fits the description of what Bucky described as the serum, but Bucky may also have confused the food source with the serum. They won't know for sure without testing it.
"Those three have been shot through the head, Falsworth," Steve tells him. "Even if they were alive, they're dead now."
Steve crosses the room and Falsworth hands the file to him. It's for the first man Steve opened the drawer on, his picture stapled to the top left. It has all his information, and then the procedures Hydra has done on him. A lot of it is similar to what Bucky described happened to him – successfully injected with the serum (but maybe not the substance he just got all over his hands), time in the chair to wipe his memories, waterboarding to break him down, and testing of his new healing ability by mutilation.
"They're trying to make their own army of super soldiers," Steve realises. "Those men, they're soldiers. And the woman was a nurse. Hydra must have captured them to experiment on them. I-That's what they were going to do to all of you. Schmidt said he wanted to experiment on you all, make an enhanced army to fight me and get me to turn over to Hydra. He wanted me as part of that army if the brainwashing worked."
"I still don't understand why Zola would have left them here, though? And why they've been shot?" Bucky wonders, looking extremely pale. "Aren't an army of super soldiers, or even three of them, more useful in the field rather than in a giant freezer?"
Steve nods in agreement, flicking the page. That's when he gets his answer, Doctor Zola's scrawled handwriting crossing the page in hurried flicks. He pauses when he sees a section about himself, reading it aloud to the others.
"Further study of the American super soldier has led to a grand departure from my prior approach. Captain America approaches combat with limited firearms, and I now understand why. The average Hydra soldier is well-trained in ballistics, but woefully unprepared for hand-to-hand combat. It is this weakness I shall exploit. A heavy dose of the enhancement serum leaves surviving subjects – for which so far there are three – resilient, strong and nearly suicidal with rage. They will be outfitted with high-powered stun batons that output 900 Kilovolts of lethal amperage on contact. Protected by a compact ballistic shield, the troops can swarm entrenched enemy positions and engage in close quarter combat. Once the distance is closed, the enemy has little chance against these deadly, unfamiliar weapons.
However, this plan will need to be put on hold until such time as issues with the enhancement serum are fixed. The assets show negative reactions to the super soldier serum. While they show advanced tendencies, such as strength and stamina, they suffer adverse reactions such as severe nausea, internal bleeding, overactive and underactive organs and mental instability. The assets have been stored in containment as they show no signs of improving from their physical ailments and also do not comply with orders. They have their own agenda. Lieutenant Wilkinson has proven the most violent – eight scientists have been killed or injured by his hands. However, they are all dangerous and are to be restrained at all times until these issues can be corrected. The memory wipes provided by the chair are necessary on a regular basis to retain a lack of memory functioning. The longer the assets are free from conditioning, the faster their memories return, causing them to revolt. Their memories cannot be wiped until the chair has been recreated after its destruction by Captain America."
Steve finds himself smiling just a bit at the thought that they'd been the ones to destroy that damned chair. He sends a silent thanks to Isabel for the idea.
"They know what they're doing, they just can't get the experiments to work. The serum they give them is a replication of mine but it either kills the subjects or makes them physically sick and mentally unstable," Steve deduces. "They were holding them here until they could devise a plan to fix the issues… I don't think we were meant to find them."
"That explains why the factory was abandoned. Perhaps, if these soldiers are as unstable as Zola makes it out, they thought it best to evacuate in case they broke free and wrecked havoc on the factory? Or, maybe it's all just for show, or perhaps the entire factory is devoted to this super-soldier army? If we thought it wasn't being used, maybe we would have just blown up the levels above ground and left the basement unharmed?" Falsworth suggests.
"Also explains the gunshots. Last ditch effort when they knew we were coming?" Jones guesses.
Steve reads on and finds it in Zola's own writing – "Should the American super soldier arrive and uncover the experimental chamber, all subjects (if still alive) are to be disposed of and rendered useless to ensure the Americans cannot use them for their own advantage. A bullet to the head should suffice."
"Exactly. Whoever was guarding these people knew they weren't a match for us, especially when we showed up with an entire platoon in tow. They were instructed to take out their assets rather than letting us get our hands on them. Even if they are sick and cannot fight for Hydra, there's a large chance that we could save them, that we would be able to fix whatever is making them sick or even that they would fight for us. They can always steal another subject and do more experimenting," Steve says thoughtfully.
Everyone is silent for a moment, reminiscing how now these men and women will never have the opportunity to be fixed. Their last moments were spent being experimented on, scared and in pain, captured by the enemy. At least, they think, they hadn't been awake when they'd been killed. In a way, they've been spared.
"It leaves us with a lot of questions, but one I think is most important," Peggy says, trailing off and looking around the room again. "Where's the guard?"
Not two seconds later, the guard makes his presence known. The locked metal door at the other side of the room opens slowly with a loud squeal, the hinges needing to be oiled. It's loud, echoing through the room. Steve raises the shield and pushes the others behind him when he spots a large robotic suit inside the cramped closet-like room. It takes a step forward, the metal of its feet clanging against the concrete, arms raised with large blasters in hand. At the head of the suit, Steve sees a glass panel, a man's face visible from inside. Whoever has been guarding the soldiers shot them when they knew Steve was breaking in before hiding in the room to put on their exo-skeleton suit. It's genius, Steve has to admit. The suit looks almost unbeatable. But Steve's a super soldier, and not a lot has proven to be indestructible around him.
The gun in the suit's hand whirrs, a bright blue light visible down the barrel. "Get down!" Steve yells just as the machine blasts a ray of blue energy straight for them.
The Commandos dive to the side, taking cover. Steve crouches in front of them makes sure the shield absorbs the brunt of the impact while the Commandos scramble behind anything that provides cover.
When the robot turns to walk further toward them, the blast of blue energy blows the metal door of the closet off its hinges, sending it flying toward them. Steve drops the shield in favour of catching the metal door, just managing to stop it before it hurdles into his men who have piled behind the metal operating tables, the others escaping back out into the still empty hallway. Steve slams the door down on its side to use as cover beside the tables, Dugan and Falsworth holding it upright.
Bucky's picked up Steve's shield and hurriedly ducks behind it, dragging Steve down too as the machine blasts again, the bolt bouncing off the shield with enough force to nearly knock Bucky backward had it not been for Steve's hand over his shoulder. Steve grabs Bucky and drags him to the side behind the metal door, taking the shield back from him.
"What do we do?" Bucky yells over the whirring noise of the machine as it steps closer to them. They still hear silence above ground, there's no battle engaging. This man must be the only defence. Clearly, though they'd somewhat prepared, Hydra hadn't expected Captain America to find their hidden experimentation room.
"Keep behind the door and stay down. Just back me up," Steve tells him and Bucky nods.
Bucky prepares his rifle, resting it on the top of the distorted metal as Steve stands, jumps the door, and storms forward with the shield. The robot, however, suddenly fires the tesseract energy again in rapid succession, bouncing off the shield and hitting everything around them, sparking flames in all of the equipment and material scattered around the room. The force of the blasts sends Steve flying backward into the back wall, hitting it hard and falling to the ground. He's up quickly just as the robot nears the cowering Commandos. Bucky's been shooting heroically at the metal of the suit since Steve was shot backward, but it doesn't seem to do anything, the bullets ricocheting off on random angles into the walls.
Just as it seems like they might be done for, Steve surges forward again with the shield, colliding with the chest of the massive robot. It's a good foot taller than Steve, but he manages to send it flying backward through the fragile wall into the corridor they'd come from in an explosion of rubble, both of them landing on the ground in a heap of smashed brick. The hidden room is opened up now, becoming a large room along with the corridor.
The man inside the suit shoots upward at Steve from the ground, frantic as the Captain stands over him. The blast narrowly misses hitting Steve in the chest, Steve just managing to raise the shield in time to deflect it. Steve gets a good glimpse of the face behind the robot's actions. He doesn't recognise the man – it isn't Zola or Schmidt or even Madame Hydra. It's just another Hydra goon taking on weaponry he can't handle and fighting a hero much stronger than him. Steve feels a little bad for him, knowing the man is probably only following orders, just like Steve does. But the man's chosen to follow pure evil, and for that, he'll pay.
Bucky rises above the metal door and shoots at the robot on the ground, the bullets lodging in the legs and chest of the armour but not reaching any higher. He tries to get a hit to the glass panel, but he can't without risking hitting Steve's moving form. When the robot tries to stand, it's a little off balance, but manages to re-engage Steve in the fight, slamming a metal fist down onto Steve's back and sending him down momentarily. Steve makes a noise of pain and hits the ground face first.
Bucky continues to shoot at the robot, careful not to hit Steve as he jumps up from the ground just in time to raise the shield. The robot's fists lands on the vibranium, the force causing the robot to shake, the vibranium sending the energy back toward it. Steve then punches and kicks wildly at the exo-skeleton, jumping around as he fights.
Bucky eventually gets his opportunity, the suit facing him and Steve out of the way. He lands a hit on the glass of the armour. It rebounds off the glass, but causes a slight crack in the clear protection, and the man inside looks at the crack in fear.
"Fire again, it'll break," Steve commands, busy forcing the strong arm of the machine down so that it won't shoot at Bucky who's ventured out from his vantage point to get to a better position for shooting.
Bucky aims to fire again, but Peggy beats him to it. She fires from the gun Howard fashioned for her, the bullet, not an explosive one, piercing through the glass casing and sending shards everywhere. The man inside screams, the glass cutting his face and most likely his eyes. Steve takes the opportunity, jumping up and reaching inside. He grabs the man's face, managing to get a hand around his neck, and squeezes until his face turns blue and his head goes limp in the armour. Steve looks at his still features for a moment, recognising that his face is entirely plain and unremarkable, before he lets go and jumps away as the robot falls to the ground, unmoving.
"That was easier than I expected," Peggy notes confidently, fixing her hair.
Morita, Jones and Dernier hesitantly walk down the hallway where they'd run to escape the crumbling wall. "What was that?" Morita asks, staring at the exo-skeleton they'd just watched Steve take down.
"Some type of armoured suit, probably something Schmidt requested to protect this place. They need to try a little harder," Steve says.
He then looks around the room, seeing that it's all been destroyed by the fireballs, every piece of evidence smouldering in fire, the files turned to ash except for the ones Falsworth and Dugan still hold in their jackets for safe keeping. The morgue is untouched though, the bodies still securely inside.
"We need to get both the suit and these bodies back to Stark. Howard would kill me if I didn't give him a look at the suit, he'll be amazed by it. And the bodies, well, they were obviously made enhanced by Zola's serum. Maybe Stark can get the serum from their blood to help with his own study."
"Even if Stark and the SSR aren't interested in what they've had done to them, they deserve to be given back to their families. They deserve a proper burial, and their families deserve closure," Peggy decides, looking uncharacteristically solemn.
The men all speak their agreement, moving around the room to start collecting the bodies. They'll steal one of the Hydra cars above ground, maybe two, and cart everything back to base as best as they can. The bodies are the priority, not the exo-suit. That's just an added bonus for Stark.
Steve moves over to the closet-like room the guard emerged from. He pushes on the other side of the wall and finds himself in the empty office again, the bookshelf swinging out as a hidden door. Bucky follows and stops leaning against the desk, watching Steve.
Steve looks around again, making sure there's no more hidden rooms, but comes up empty-handed again.
"Who knows if they're the only ones of their kind?" Steve says quietly. "For all we know, Hydra could have more super soldiers at their other bases. They were experimenting on you at a different base. Who's to say this isn't a widespread project? How do we know this isn't a part of their whole plan?"
"There's only a few bases left that we know of, Steve. They're running out of places to operate from if it is," Bucky reminds him.
"That's in Europe. We haven't even started looking anywhere else."
London, United Kingdom
July 16th, 1944
"While I appreciate that you brought me back the exo-skeleton, the bodies were a bit of a downer, Rogers," Howard Stark is saying, leading a freshly showered and rested Steve, Bucky, and Peggy through his lab toward Isabel, who stands beside the five deceased bodies, each of them covered by a white sheet. Colonel Phillips tags along to inspect the damage.
"We thought you'd appreciate the suit. You ever seen anything like it?" Bucky asks.
"Nope, never," Howard admits. "Hydra has quite a few inventions that no one else on Earth has ever even imagined, like that one-man submarine Cap punched in the first day in his new body. I'd never seen anything like that before either."
"Let's stick with the issue at hand," Phillips cuts in, coming to a stop beside the first body. "The men and women in the morgue, who are they?"
"Hydra did all the identifying for us. We have all of their names, dates of birth, countries of origin, next of kin. All we need to do is contact their families," Peggy says, handing a few of Hydra's charts over to Isabel, who begins to read them, cringing as she reads what medical experiments were conducted. "The men were soldiers, the woman a nurse. They were either taken from the front lines or from one of the captured units, like the one-oh-seventh."
"And what happened to them?"
"Hydra experimented on them," Isabel answers, flipping the files shut. She's read them enough times over the last few days. "They're enhanced, just like Ste– Captain Rogers. A version of the super soldier serum is present in their blood and all of their cells. Howard and I have been testing them for days, comparing what we can to Steve's charts. It's hard to say, but we have a pretty good guess that if they were alive they'd be of similar strength, stamina and physical ability to Captain Rogers; maybe even mental competence as well," Isabel tells them. Her eyes say something else to him, flicking to Bucky. Steve knows she's saying they'd be similar to Bucky too.
"No doubt this was intentional," Steve continues. "Zola said in the file that they planned on creating their own super soldiers that would be equal in strength and skill to me in order to take me down. They were going to convert the Commandos into super soldiers as well, or at least, test their serums and torture methods on them. Most of these experiments were done before our time with Hydra, though. Most of them didn't survive the initial injection or had some very serious negative reactions to it, debilitating enough to warrant them being frozen until a cure could be found. Judging by the look of their appearance, some of them have been dead months, others weeks, some just recently. But something is majorly wrong with Hydra's version of the serum if these are the side effects, if it kills them."
"Question is, how did Zola work out the serum?" Phillips asks.
"The Red Skull was given the first version of Doctor Erskine's serum, it's what turned him into the Red Skull in the first place. It wasn't ready, and it had the adverse reactions on him that we see today. It exacerbated the evil already within him," Howard explains. "Erskine initially worked on the serum with Doctor Zola under the direction of Schmidt. Zola most likely synthesised Schmidt's DNA and combined that with what he remembered of the formula to make his own version. They've most likely been testing on soldiers for years, long before the one-oh-seventh found themselves captured. We can't test whether any of their attempts were successful or not because these poor bastards are dead and we don't know how many there are or where they've been kept or buried. For all we know, some may have survived, or maybe none were successful. We won't know unless we find them all."
"There's a lot of unknowns there, Stark," Phillips notes.
Howard nods. "We're all on the same page, sir. We only know what was uncovered at the factory and what we deduce from the bodies."
"So, these may not be the only successful Hydra super-soldiers," Phillips hisses, clearly frustrated. "There could be hundreds more in the other factories we haven't found yet. Hydra could have a whole army of them somewhere else waiting to unleash on us and we'd be none the wiser."
"That's what we were thinking, Colonel," Steve says. "The Howling Commandos haven't even combed through all of the factories in Europe, let alone the rest of the world, if there are any. The one we raided this time was very remote, abandoned. It was by pure luck that we found these people. We could have easily missed them at others, or we could be looking in entirely the wrong place. It's going to take a long time of searching to track them all down if there are any more."
"Don't dismiss the work you and the Commandos have done, Captain. You've managed to intercept a lot of their important business deals and put a halt to Hydra's plans. Without you, Hydra would no doubt be like a plague over us by now," Peggy berates, looking like a proud mother at Steve and Bucky.
Steve ducks his head, still unable to take a compliment. "We don't do it for recognition, Agent Carter. We do it to–"
"Enough of the justified hero sap, Rogers," Phillips snaps, cutting Steve off. "Are these the only successful experiments that we know of? Are you sure you can't identify any others and haven't found any others at previous locations? We need to start tracking them all down, every last one. We can't have Hydra with their own unit of super soldiers," he says with a scowl.
Isabel's eyes flick subtly to Bucky, who's gone extremely pale. Everyone watches curiously as Bucky walks up to the closest body and pulls the sheet down with a shaking hand, looking into the man's lifeless green eyes. That could have been him. He could have been the one being held in that morgue-like freezer, eyes lifelessly staring up at the ceiling, just waiting to be unfrozen so that Hydra could continue to unravel his mind and make him into what they wanted.
"No, they aren't the only ones," Bucky eventually says, realising everyone is watching him expectantly.
"Do you know of experimentation at other factories, Sergeant Barnes? Do you remember hearing of it in your time in captivity?" Peggy asks professionally, but the worry in her eyes betrays her affection for the sly brunette American.
"No, no, you've got it wrong, doll," Bucky tells her quietly. "I'm talking about me. Zola experimented on me, just like these people. He injected me with the serum. He… He made me a super soldier."
Everyone is silent for a long moment. Phillips and Peggy's jaws drop, Howard looks both delighted and disgusted at once, and Isabel and Steve look sheepish.
Phillips turns toward Steve, seeing his kicked puppy expression, and then to Isabel, who at least has the decency to try to hide it. "You two knew about this, didn't you?" Phillips asks, his voice surprisingly even.
"I asked Isabel not to tell anyone, and then spilled accidentally to Steve while I was a bit intoxicated," Bucky defends. "I was too… afraid that I would be experimented on again, that you guys would want to pull me apart to see what Zola had done to me. I couldn't even stand the sight of a stethoscope in my sister's hand, let alone in Stark's. No offence," he adds to the inventor. Stark shrugs, unfazed. "Isabel understood. She's been monitoring me ever since, making sure nothing happens to me and nothing goes wrong. There's been nothing like these people," Bucky explains, motioning to the dead.
"And what did you find, Miss Barnes?" Phillips asks patiently, turning to Isabel, who looks a little like a deer in headlights.
Isabel sighs, thinking. "The serum had a great effect on Steve that we've been able to track through his actions in combat, and my presence on the missions has been particularly helpful with that. Captain Rogers presents symptoms of what medically is called "physical perfection" – the peak of human potential or the next step in human evolution, something Doctor Zola also mentioned, I believe. He's strong, fast, durable, agile, with increased reflexes that are nearly instantaneous. He can see faster, meaning he can pretty much dodge bullets. He runs at approximately sixty miles per hour, bench pressed two-thousand two hundred pounds as a warm up, and his one-rep maximum would likely be much, much higher. The serum prevents the build-up of fatigue poisons in his muscles, so he never tires and can exert himself physically for extraordinary lengths of time. He's immune to any diseases and recovers from injuries around five times faster than the average human."
She pauses, licks her lips. "It's been a bit harder to measure the changes in Bucky because he doesn't push himself the way Steve does, and we were working on the downlow, so we didn't have access to any special equipment. Most of it has been based off my observations, comparing his records to Steve's, and what Bucky detects within himself. He isn't as strong or powerful as Steve. He doesn't heal as fast or run for quite as long, but truthfully, he isn't too far off. The serum he was given must have worked to some extent, but not to the extent of Project Rebirth. It's a knock-off, after all. For all we know, Bucky may not have even been given a complete dose, there may have been another part to the serum that he wasn't given. It may have been modelled off of Schmidt's failed serum, or it could have been entirely new. There's not much we can do to find out."
"But who knows, by now they could have improved it from what they gave me, made it better. That was months ago. These people," Bucky puts a hand over the white sheet, hovering above them like he makes to comfort them, "they could have been stronger. Better super soldiers. But something must have been very wrong with this version of the serum for them to become so ill, or to not survive the experiment. They must be doing something wrong. Or, I dunno, maybe I got lucky."
Peggy just stares at Bucky, stuck somewhere between shock and admiration. She looks a little heartbroken, though whether it's for Bucky or because Bucky didn't tell her, Bucky doesn't know. Bucky meets her eyes and hopes his cerulean blues provide enough apology.
Phillips' eyes flick between all of them, seemingly in thought. "You've been very brave, Sergeant," Phillips says. "I don't think anyone could truly understand the extent of what happens within Hydra's walls and I don't blame you for keeping it to yourself. But thank you for telling us now. It gives us just that little bit more insight into what Hydra's up to." He starts to pace then, past the covered bodies.
"Hydra's making an army of super soldiers, or trying to, at least," Peggy says, watching the Colonel pace. "But if they're willing to put a bullet through the head of each of them at the approach of Captain America, clearly they aren't confident in their ability to do so."
"We have the advantage," Phillips continues. "We know what they intend to do and we know how. We have to get one step ahead of them, find all of their super soldiers before they work out how to fix them, how to make them obedient. If we can take out all of their factories, we can make sure they have nowhere to keep them and nowhere to store their damned memory wiping chair. We wipe out all of their defences, they have nothing to fight back with."
"We send Hydra to the ground," Steve says in agreement, nodding his head. "We burn every head and every corner of their structure until there's nothing left. We break them down until they can't recover, and then we keep fighting. Only then can we be sure that it's over."
"Can you do that Captain?" Phillips asks sincerely. "Not just wipe Hydra off the map, but wipe them out of existence?"
"With respect, sir, that's what I've been trying to do since the beginning."
A/N: So there's some obvious foreshadowing in this chapter for events much further into this story within the CA:TWS and CA:CW timelines. Hydra's quest for a super soldier army will continue much further into the future.