Chapter 7 - June 23, 1943

Stevie checked her reflection in the rearview mirror and tried to smooth her hair. She had a huge sleep crease running down one side of her face. She sighed. I will go to meet my destiny looking like something the cat dragged in, she thought. As for Peggy, after a quick touch up of her powder and lipstick, she looked as fresh as she had ten hours ago - her dark brown hair still somehow in perfect waves. How does she do that? Stevie wondered as she stepped out of the car.

The store where they had stopped looked like any number of antique stores along this street - the windows full of old toys and dusty furniture - but inside there was a closet whose back panel opened into a long, white hallway. Just like a spy novel, Stevie thought. At the end of the corridor, a stone-face MP opened a set of double doors, and she and Peggy stepped through onto a catwalk overlooking a large, circular chamber - from spy fiction into science fiction.

The walls were lined with banks of blinking, beeping machines attended to by squad of men in white lab coats. In the center of the room, a large, open, metal pod stood on a raised platform, looking to Stevie like a very small spaceship. Or a very fancy coffin, she thought. She tried to swallow and found her mouth was suddenly dry. It was hard to believe this whole set-up was for her, that within minutes, she would be transformed. Or not. Or dead, whispered a traitorous little voice inside her.

Peggy and Stevie descended into a swirl of activity. Colonel Phillips was shaking hands with a smiling man in an expensive suit. Doctor Erskine was talking to a pair of nurses. The lab-coat men were reading dials and calling out numbers to a man whose sleek, black hair and pencil moustache made him look just like Howard Stark.

Wait, Stevie thought. That is Howard Stark. Peggy had told her he was working on the project, but it was still a bit surprising to see him here. In this environment - sleeves rolled up, frown of concentration creasing his forehead, surrounded by machines rather than chorus girls - Stevie could believe that he was a real inventor and not just some rich dilettante. She thought he looked better here in a knitted vest and shirtsleeves than he had looked strutting around on stage in that spiffy tuxedo.

Behind a white folding screen, Peggy helped Stevie exchange her Marinette uniform for some loose, pajama-like trousers and a white T-shirt. Stevie was glad Peggy was with her as she walked across the room to the pod - she felt small and exposed in the baggy pajamas, with all the scientists and men in suits watching her and muttering to each other. When she reached the pod, Stevie handed Peggy her glasses.

"Watch these for me, will you?" she said.

Peggy nodded, serious and silent. Wow, even Peggy's nervous, Stevie thought. The thought was not reassuring.

A solemn Doctor Erskine helped Stevie step into the pod and lean back against the leather headrest. Three sets of pads were pulled into place around her - one set on her shoulders, one on her abdomen, and one on her thighs. She had a sudden memory of riding a roller coaster at Coney Island with Bucky - the padded bar descending over her chest. As she recalled, Bucky had enjoyed the experience much more than she had.

"Comfortable?" The doctor asked softly. Up close, he looked like he hadn't slept any more than Stevie had - his eyes were bloodshot behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and his greying fringe of hair was even more disheveled than usual.

"It's a little big," Stevie said. Erskine smiled and took a stethoscope out of his coat pocket. "Hey," she continued, as he checked her pulse, her breathing. "How was the rest of that schnapps?"

"I had a little more than I should have," he said, ruefully. "We'll stick to coffee next time." He put his stethoscope away. "How are your levels, Mr. Stark?"

"Levels at one hundred percent," Stark replied, with a rakish grin. "We may dim half the lights in Brooklyn, but we are ready."

Erskine nodded. "Good." He turned to Peggy, who was still standing by the pod, holding Stevie's glasses. "Agent Carter, don't you think you'd be more comfortable in the booth?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Sorry." She gave Stevie a quick, brittle smile and left to find a seat in the glassed-in booth that overlooked the lab. Stevie wished that she hadn't gone.

Someone handed Doctor Erskine a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said to the assembled crowd of officers, politicians and scientists. "Today we take not another step towards annihilation, but the first step towards the path to peace."

He pointed at a cart that one of the nurses had pushed up next to him, holding several large vials of blue liquid, as well as his brown, leather notebook. "We begin with a series of micro-injections into the subject's major muscles. The serum infusion will cause immediate cellular change. Then, to stimulate growth, the subject will be saturated with Vita Rays."

This was the most information Stevie had yet heard about the process, and it didn't sound too terrifying. Her heart hadn't gotten the message, though; it was galloping along in her chest like it was trying to escape. Doctor Erskine handed the microphone to an aide and the nurses slotted the vials into a part of the pod that Stevie couldn't see. The doctor began counting down.

"Serum infusion beginning in five, four, three, two...one."

Twelve large-bore needles punched into her at once, six on a side, in a line running from her thighs to her waist. Stevie hissed a breath in through her teeth.

"Now, Mr. Stark!" Erskine shouted.

The pod closed around Stevie, sealing her in like a sardine in a can. The noise of the lab cut off and the sound of her own rapid breathing filled the tiny chamber. She felt woozy and feverish, and the injection sites along her thighs were stinging and burning. The pads securing her began to buzz with energy.

"That's ten percent," Stark called from outside the pod.

"Twenty percent." The buzzing increased in pitch. Stevie's bones began to hum in resonance.

"Thirty." The hum was in her skull, in the roots of her teeth. The pod smelled like the air after an electrical storm - sharp and chemical.

"That's forty percent. All signs are normal." Light began to fill the pod, brighter and brighter, turning Stevie's vision red through her closed eyelids.

"That's fifty percent." She clenched her jaw and tasted metal. Her breath came in hitched gasps.

"Sixty." Stevie felt hot, hotter even than the time she had caught scarlet fever. Sweat was pouring off her, sticking her shirt to her back.

"Seventy." Stevie was burning up from the inside out. Her bones were red hot. Her blood was boiling. Her clenched jaw wrenched open in a scream.

"Stephanie!" Doctor Erskine was shouting. Someone was pounding on the outside of the pod. "Stephanie!"

"Shut it down!" That was Peggy. She sounded shrill and terrified. "Turn it off, Mr. Stark!"

Not now. Stevie thought, through the pain, tears streaming down her face. Not after everything. She gathered all her willpower to form the scream into words.

"Don't!" She cried, hoping they could hear her over the still-increasing noise of the machine. "I can do this! Let me do this!"

"Eighty...Ninety!" Stark's voice continued from outside the pod. Stevie didn't have breath to scream anymore. She was being unmade, dissolved by the light, the heat, the supersonic whine. From somewhere beyond pain, she heard Stark call out triumphantly.

"That's one hundred percent!"

The pod unsealed with a hiss, and Stevie became aware of herself again. The burning heat was fading into a body-wide tingling, like her arms and legs had all fallen asleep at the same time. The light was dimming; the whine quieting. Stevie was taking huge gulps of air - but her breath wasn't catching in her chest the way it always had before. She slowly opened her eyes - to see Doctor Erskine and Peggy staring at her with matching looks of awe. After a moment, she realized they were staring up at her. Had the pod lifted her during the procedure? She tried to step down, only to find there was no down. Her bare feet were touching the floor, and she still towered a head above Peggy and the doctor. A quick bolt of vertigo twisted through her, as if she had missed the bottom step on a staircase.

"Son of a bitch," Colonel Phillips said from somewhere, and then the room was full of whoops and cheers as the watchers from the booth ran down the stairs to get a closer look.

"How do you feel?" Peggy asked.

Stevie blinked down at her and tried to adjust her glasses, except Peggy was still holding them.

"Taller," she said.

Stark was gaping at her with his mouth open. As she noticed him, he reached out and squeezed her bicep experimentally.

"Do you mind?" she asked.

He snatched his hand back. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed. Stevie realized she was a few inches taller even than he was, and nearly giggled. Bucky is not going to believe this when he gets back!

"We did it," she said to Doctor Erskine.

He nodded. His eyes were glittering with tears. "We did it."

Then the booth exploded.

Stevie ducked and threw her arms over her head as a red-orange fireball rained shards of glass on everyone in the room. The uniformed officers drew their sidearms immediately, looking around to try to find the source of the blast. But there was one man without a uniform who had drawn a pistol - a dark-haired man with a prominent nose, wearing a pale suit. He wasn't looking up at the booth like the rest; he was looking straight at Doctor Erskine, and, as Stevie watched uncomprehendingly, he shot the doctor twice in the chest.

More shots rang out, ricocheting off the staircase; a nurse screamed, Peggy shouted, and Stevie barely caught the doctor before he fell, a red stain blooming on his white coat.

Stop the bleeding, she thought, and pressed her hand against the wound. There was a horrible rasping gurgle as the doctor struggled to breathe. There's so much blood I can't stop it oh God I can't...

Doctor Erskine was staring fixedly into Stevie's eyes. His lips were moving, and she leaned down to hear what he was saying.

"Remember…" a painful whisper. He clutched her hand with surprising strength. "Mercy...compassion." He was panting now, each breath shallower than the last.

"Don't try to talk," Stevie said. She was going to say - "It'll be alright," but before she could form the words, Doctor Erskine's eyes focused on something far away from her.

And he shuddered.

And he went horribly limp.

And he...he….

This can't be happening, thought Stevie. We did it. It's his greatest triumph. This can't be real.

Everyone else seemed to be moving slowly and silently, as if underwater, hands flapping and jaws moving without meaning. At once, Stevie realized three things, with perfect clarity:

Doctor Erskine was dead.

His notebook was missing from the steel cart where it had been a moment ago.

The man in the pale suit was gone, and Peggy had gone after him alone.

Stevie sprang up the stairs three at a time on her new, long legs. She burst through the secret door and out of the antique shop just in time to see Peggy standing in the middle of the street, firing her service revolver at a taxi that was heading straight for her - a taxi driven by the man in the pale suit, the man who had shot Doctor Erskine. What happened after that, Stevie would always remember as a series of snapshots, disconnected moments in time: The wind of the car's wake on her back as she tackled Peggy out of the way. Her legs pumping like tireless pistons as she chased down the speeding taxi and leapt onto its roof. The red smear of Doctor Erskine's blood that she left on the taxi's yellow body as she clung to it with all her new-made strength, the driver veering from side to side in an attempt to shake her off. Throwing herself free when the car hit the curb and flipped over.

Bullets sparking off the road as the man shot at her and she dove behind a parked car for cover.

Her heart lurching when she saw him holding a young girl at gunpoint.

The girl couldn't have been older than nine, her blond pigtails shaking as she sobbed. The man in the pale suit forced her to walk around a corner away from Stevie - towards the riverfront. If I call his attention, Stevie thought. He'll probably shoot at me instead of the girl. I'm the greater threat. She wasn't sure how her new body would handle being shot, but she could probably take one bullet at least and still stop him - if he got the notebook to the Nazis it would be a disaster. She padded along the wall silently on bare feet, took a deep breath and stepped around the corner.

"Hey!" Stevie shouted, "Let her go!"

The man in the pale suit turned to face Stevie; his eyes as cold and gray as winter clouds. There was a moment when he wavered, a moment of indecision about whether to turn the gun on Stevie or shoot his hostage. In that moment the girl stopped crying and bit his hand as hard as she could. The man yelled in pain and dropped his gun, shaking the girl off and giving her a vicious backhanded slap before fleeing toward the dock. Stevie ran to help her, but the girl scrambled to her feet, shouting that she was alright, "So get him!"

Stevie sprinted down the dock, arriving just in time to see the man sink into the water at the controls of a sleek black submersible the size of a car. A dive and a few quick strokes were enough to catch the accelerating submarine, and Stevie was rewarded with the look of shock on the man's face before she punched through the glass of the cockpit and hauled him out by his necktie, tossing him onto the dock ahead of her like a landed fish.

"Who the hell are you?" She shouted, taking the man by the lapels of his ruined suit and shaking him. A cut on his forehead was bleeding profusely down the side of his face, and for a second he looked dazed. Then, his aquiline features hardened into an arrogant smirk.

"The first of many," he said, and Stevie wondered if she imagined a slight tremor in his voice, belying his tough expression.

"Cut off one head," he said, a Teutonic accent growing more pronounced as he spoke, "two more shall take its place." He clenched his jaw sharply and Stevie heard something crack. "Hail Hydra," he gasped.

White foam came from the man's mouth as his pale eyes rolled back into his head. He twitched and jerked, and then, for the second time that day, Stevie saw a man die in front of her.

Stevie sat, wrapped in a blanket, on an uncomfortable metal chair, in yet another room of the secret lab - this one some kind of hanger or garage with an oil-stained concrete floor. Hours had passed since Doctor Erskine's assassination - how many, she wasn't sure. Enough time for her clothes and hair to dry; and enough time for Howard Stark to have the black submarine dragged back to the lab, where he and a small squad of mechanics were single-mindedly dismantling it. Stevie watched him enviously. He was doing something useful, and she, after the nurses drew what looked like enough blood to fill a soup tureen, had been left with a blanket to cover herself - and nothing to do. The blood was necessary, Peggy had explained, because Doctor Erskine's notebook - the only record of his work - was turning to pulp at the bottom of the East River.

"Any hope of reproducing the program is locked in your genetic code." Peggy had said, her melodious voice low and sad. "But without Doctor Erskine, it could take years."

"He deserved more than this," Stevie had answered - it was a ludicrous understatement, but it was all she could think to say.

"If it had to work only once," Peggy had said, taking Stevie's shoulder reassuringly, "he'd be proud it was you."

Peggy may have believed that, but Stevie wasn't so sure.

Since then, Peggy and Colonel Phillips had been closeted away with various bigwigs, discussing how to salvage this awful situation. Discussing what to do with me, Stevie thought. It was cruelly ironic - she could outrun a car and outswim a submarine, and yet, she was still just as useless as she had been yesterday.

A door slammed and Stevie heard an argument coming down the hall, or more accurately, Colonel Phillips' strident, Texan voice, which was an argument all by itself. The Colonel burst into the lab, followed by Agent Carter and the silver-haired man in the expensive suit Stevie had seen the Colonel shaking hands with that morning - a lifetime ago. He wasn't smiling now, as he had been then - he was glaring at the Colonel, who was in the middle of a cutting remark.

"...Answers?" Colonel Phillips said. "Let's start with how a German spy got a ride to my secret installation in your car, Senator." In his mouth, the word "Senator" became an insult. The Colonel turned to Stark. "What do we got here?"

Stark pulled himself from the innards of the submarine and wiped his face with the back of one hand, leaving a streak of oil on his forehead that he didn't seem to notice.

"Speaking modestly, I'm the best mechanical engineer in the country," he said, as matter-of-factly as if he had said what color tie he was wearing. "But I don't know what's inside this thing, or how it works. We're not even close to this technology."

"Then who is?" That was the Senator.

"Hydra." The Colonel bit off the word like it hurt his mouth.

"Hydra?" The Senator asked.

"Hydra is the Nazi deep-science division," Peggy jumped in before the Colonel could speak, probably sensing he'd say something insulting. "It's led by a man named Johann Schmidt, but he has much bigger ambitions."

"Hydra's practically a cult; they worship Schmidt," Colonel Phillips said. "They think he's invincible."

"So what are you going to do about it?" the Senator asked.

Colonel Phillips answered without looking at him. "As of today, the Strategic Scientific Reserve is being re-tasked," he said. "We are taking the fight to Hydra."

Peggy looked surprised. "Colonel?"

"Pack your bags, Agent Carter," he answered. "You too, Stark. We're flying to London tonight."

Stevie stood up and dropped the blanket. This was her chance, maybe her only chance. She had to make the Colonel see how helpful she could be, how much she could do for him, for the war.

"Sir," she said, ducking around the nose of the black submarine to reach the group. "If you're going after Hydra, after Schmidt, I can help you." The dream she had briefly glimpsed on the drive from Camp Lejeune bloomed in her mind. She could be a field agent, like Peggy Carter - collect intel and rescue assets behind enemy lines. Surely he would agree to that?

Colonel Phillips turned to Stevie with a look of contempt so withering it felt like he had punched her in the gut.

"You're an experiment," he rasped. "You're going to Alamogordo."

"But," Stevie stammered, shocked by the vitriol of his rejection. "It worked. The serum worked." She hated how small her voice was.

"I asked for an army," said the Colonel. "And all I got was you. You." He looked her up and down - and dismissed her. "You're not enough."

The Colonel turned and strode away. Stark left with him, casting a lingering look back at the submarine. Peggy stopped and gave Stevie's hand a squeeze. "Don't give up," she whispered, before striding briskly off after the Colonel, heels clicking on the concrete.

Stevie was looking after them, eyes stinging, blinking rapidly and clenching her fists to keep from crying in front of the mechanics, when the Senator cleared his throat. She had almost forgotten he was there.

"With all due respect to the Colonel," he said smoothly. "I think we may be missing the point." He was handsomely middle-aged, his face weathered by time, but still smooth and youthful under his silver hair. Stevie sniffled a little, and wondered what on earth he could mean.

"I've seen you in action, Miss Rogers," the Senator continued. "More importantly, the country's seen it." He pulled a paper out of his jacket - absurdly, her picture was on the front page, under a headline proclaiming MYSTERY WOMAN CAPTURES GUNMAN, SAVES CHILD. Stevie almost didn't recognize herself - barefoot, hair blown back from her face, crouched athletically, one hand outstretched toward the man in the pale suit as he held the blonde girl at gunpoint. There was a photographer there? Stevie thought. In the picture, it was clear that she wasn't wearing any..."foundation garments" - as her homeroom teacher called them - under her newly tight T-shirt. Stevie blushed - she still wasn't wearing any; the nurses hadn't found a brassiere that fit her. She folded her arms across her chest and wished she hadn't dropped her blanket across the room.

The Senator was still talking, pointing at the picture. "You don't take a woman like that - a symbol like that - and hide her in a lab." In a credit to his professionalism, the Senator kept his eyes - blue, sincere and imploring as only a politician's eyes could be - firmly on Stevie's face. "Miss Rogers, do you want to serve your country on the most important battlefield of the war?"

"Sir," she said, feeling a lump of emotion in her throat. "That's all I want."

"Then congratulations," the Senator smiled. His teeth were square, white and even as a line of Chiclets. "You just got promoted."

Notes: Thank you all for reading! At last, we get to the transformation! I thought it made more sense for Erskine to have a notebook than to have one random vial of the serum left lying around.