Chapter Five: Public Enemy Number One

After an unbelievably long elevator ride up, Peggy passed the woman sent to spy on her in the hall. She was no longer wearing scrubs but a standard agent outfit for S.H.I.E.L.D. and she was exiting the office Peggy would be entering.

"Captain Carter."

"Spy."

She knew this woman was likely just doing her job, that didn't make Peggy like her anymore though, and she certainly didn't trust her.

Peggy entered the office to be greeted by an older man she had only ever seen in photos up until now.

"Ah, Captain," said the Secretary who oversaw S.H.I.E.L.D. while holding out his hand, which Peggy accepted. "I'm Alexander Pierce."

"It is an honor to finally meet you, sir," she said, a day earlier this might have been genuine, but after what Fury told her she just could not for now put her admiration into the Secretary.

"The honor's mine, Captain," he said with a charismatic smile. "My father served in the 101st. Lets have a chat, shall we?"

He gestured towards his desk and they both made their way other there. Before anything else could be said Peggy noticed one of many framed photographs on Pierce's desk contained Nick Fury. It depicted both Fury and Pierce in formal black suits some years ago in front of an American flag with their right hands up as though swearing an oath. Pierce noticed Peggy looking at the photo and forced a smile.

"That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met. When I was at State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the S.H.I.E.L.D. station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, 'No, we'll negotiate.' Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They found it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter."

"And let me guess, instead of firing him you helped him rise in rank?"

"I've never had any cause to regret it," he said with one last chuckle before his expression became deadly serious. "Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't know why," said Peggy, she was glad in this moment for her nineteen months of espionage training, as she was unsure that she'd be able to contain her anger well enough to convincingly lie without it.

"Did you know it was bugged?"

"My apartment? Yes, because Fury told me."

"Did he tell you he was the one who ordered it be bugged?"

This bit of information did hit a nerve, and if Fury had not literally died to give her vital information this might have wavered her belief on who to trust, but she remained stoic. It would appear that Pierce had hoped she would react, however, as he now looked disappointed. He then gestured to a large high-tech monitor in his office.

"I want you to see something."

He pressed a button and a video feed of Batroc, the pirates leader, began to play. He was cuffed to a chair and looked more beaten up than Peggy and Natasha had left him. Immediately an off screen voice began to speak.

"Who hired you, Batroc?"

"Is this a recording, or live footage?" asked Peggy. Even after nearly two years, this kind of technology still amazed her.

"Live, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers."

"Why are you showing me this? Do you think he is somehow related to Fury's death, because I read Batroc's file and he is a pirate and mercenary, but not an assassin."

"No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech."

Peggy had been caught up on a lot, but she had to admit she only comprehended about half of that sentence. She tried to focus on the last part.

"And who is Veech?"

"Right now, he's a rotting corpse. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 14-37."

"Are you trying to tell me that Fury hired the pirates? Why? His own people were nearly killed."

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prevailing theory is that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death."

"If you have known Fury for as long as you say, then you know that is simply rubbish."

"Why do you think we're talking? See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry." Pierce than sighed, and gave Peggy a reluctant smile, but she could sense appreciation and his body became tactfully still. "Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?"

"I'm truly sorry Sir, I do not know, but even if I did, he told me to trust no one."

"I wonder if that included him."

This last attempt to gain her trust backfired however, as it only solidified in Peggy's mind that he was trying to manipulate her. She began to back up slightly.

"You have my condolences, Secretary Pierce, but those were his dying words to me. Now if you will excuse me."

She picked up her shield which she had leaned against his desk and started heading for the door.

"Captain!" Pierce called out. "Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why. If anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone."

This warning wasn't subtle at all.

"Understood, Sir," said Peggy before closing the door behind her.

As Peggy entered the corridor she didn't know what to think. It was clear to her that Pierce was trying to manipulate information out of her, but whether it was to spread up the process of finding Fury's assassin or to find out if she knows he hired the assassin she couldn't yet tell for sure. With the corridor currently clear Peggy decided to pull an old trick she knew. She walked several paces away from the office as she normally would in her heavy combat boots, then quietly and quickly she went back to the door and put her head to the door.

Her trick paid off, as she could hear most of a phone message Pierce seemed to be leaving.

"–and it is looking like we might have to bring in the other one too, but I hope it doesn't come to that."

Not wanting to risk getting caught Peggy pulled away and began quietly making her way down the corridor. While that conversation didn't prove if Pierce was the one to hire the assassin, it definitely solidified Peggy's mistrust of him.

This was all beginning to become too much. Peggy really needed to think about what her next move would have to be, she needed to get somewhere private and quiet. She knew that there was never a time where every single conference room was used at once, so she headed to the elevator to get there more quickly.

She pressed the summon button and just moments later the high speed glass elevator arrived and its doors opened, allowing her to step aboard.

"Conference Level," she said absentmindedly, her mind racing elsewhere.

She didn't even really hear the robotic voice say "Confirmed," however Peggy did snap back to her sense briefly when before the elevator doors could even close Rumlow stepped inside with two of his best men as he was finishing a conversation with them.

"Keep all STRIKE personnel on site."

"Understood," said one of them, while the other responded with, "Yes, Sir."

Rumlow's presence in the elevator reminded Peggy that on top of everything else she had to return to the hospital where Fury died and retrieve the USB stick he had entrusted to her.

"Forensics," stated Rumlow, to which the elevator quickly responded with, "Confirmed."

Rumlow proceeded to face a little more towards Peggy.

"Cap," he said to acknowledge her presence.

"Rumlow," she responded in kind, but as the elevator doors closed and the elevator began to descend her mind was returning back to the events of the last twenty-four hours.

"Evidence Response found some fibres on the roof they want us to see. You want me to get the tac-team ready?" Rumlow asked her.

"Sorry? Oh, um, sure. But don't deploy until we have a solid hostile lead," she said, snapping back to focus.

"Right," said Rumlow with some hesitation in his voice, and that was when Peggy's mind was finally made aware that something wasn't quite right. The three men in the elevator with her were STRIKE's most nimble and fast reacting agents, and when not actively on a mission Peggy had never once seen all three hanging around with each other. Standing still she looked out of the corner of her eye and spotted that one had his hand in the ready position over his fire arm, as though preparing to fire. Things were not right.

As the elevator came to a stop only a few levels below where they had all started, Peggy was not ready to act on her suspicions just yet. Peggy had worked and fought along side Rumlow many times at this point, and while she wasn't close to him or considered him a friend, she had begun to trust him. However she had trusted Natasha much more, and she had betrayed that trust, and Fury had warned her to not trust anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. so she was preparing for any outcome.

The elevator doors opened and four more men walked in, two Peggy recognized as STRIKE's best martial artists, the other two she did not recognize but were in very professional business suits and were holding briefcases, however they were incredibly tall and bulky and she knew all this could not be a coincidence. Peggy needed to confirm what she believed was going on before she came up with a plan, so she decided to wait to see what was about to happen.

One of the men in a suit told the elevator computer, "Administrations level," to which as always it responded with, "Confirmed," but when the STRIKE martial artists, who clearly had no buisness going to the administration level, didn't state their own chosen destination or ask Rumlow which level he was heading to, Peggy knew they were all here for her, and they were planning on taking her down hard.

As the doors closed, the elevator began to descend again, and they were all shuffling around to make room for each other, Peggy began to formulate her plan. She obviously shouldn't try getting off the elevator the normal way, as even as a super soldier if she turned her back completely to seven highly deadly agents it likely wouldn't end well, and she would still have most of the Triskelion to traverse to get out of the building anyway. Instead her best bet was to get as low as possible before using her shield to break through the conveniently glass elevator walls, land on the ground or the roof of the third level bellow, and escape before everyone in the elevator even reaches the ground level.

"I'm sorry about what happened with Fury," said Rumlow in a not so convincing attempt at empathy. "Messed up, what happened to him."

Peggy simply nodded in acknowledgement. She was hoping to keep things as calm as possible for as long as she could, but what she had not expected was for the elevator to stop and open its doors one final time. In walked Jack Rollins along with the two biggest and toughest members of the STRIKE team, Peggy was now reconsidering that she should have tried to escape the normal way after all, but she made her choice and she was going to have to stick with it.

"Records," said Rollins, like he ever had a need to go to the records department.

One final time the elevator's computer said, "Confirmed," and then the elevator door's closed.

The elevator now cramped with eleven people, Peggy subconsciously couldn't help find amusing the lack of subtlety Rumlow and Rollins had. It was obvious now that she wasn't getting out of this elevator without some amount of fighting, so Peggy waited a few more seconds for the elevator to slowly get closer and closer to the ground before she cleared her throat.

"If you all wanted to dance with me, you could have just asked," she said cheekily.

There was a moments pause before suddenly Rollins dropped an electric rod that had been concealed in his sleeve and lunged it towards her, but Peggy was ready and side-stepped. Things weren't so easy after that, however. Peggy kicked Rollins' hand, causing him to drop the rod, but in doing so two other agents managed to grab her and pull her towards the closed elevator door. As Peggy tried to free herself from the restraint of their arms, her elbow accidentally hit the elevator control panel, causing it to stop descending, which was not what she wanted. Something further she did not want was for her shield to be taken away from her, but that is what one of Rollins' muscle men did while she was temporarily restrained.

Peggy began wrestling herself free, but two more of the agents drew electric rod weapons and jabbed them into her abdomen. Peggy bit down a scream as the painful electricity coursed through her body. The shock to her nervous system made it extremely difficult to concentrate. Before she could properly react, the two men in business suits who had been carrying briefcases pressed a concealed button that caused both their cases to fall, leaving just the handles in their hands, which they would appear to actually be magnetic hand cuffs.

The taller of the two fake business men managed to slap one of the two cuffs on to her, and him and two other men started trying to pull her cuffed wrist towards the metal support higher up. The closer her arm got towards it, the harder she felt it was to resist as the magnetic pull got stronger and stronger. Her mind already going fuzzy from the electric rod, she knew subconsciously that is she didn't do something now it would be all over. Instead of thinking things through she dipped down into all her anger from the last twenty-four hours and let her body take control.

She put all her energy into her arm, and pulled it forcibly down, pulling two of the men down with it. While one was off balance Peggy decided she was going to have to play dirty and high kicked one of them in the crotch, causing him to keel over. Her right arm now mostly free Peggy punched the other business suit man in the face before he could slap the other cuff onto her, the cuff flew through the air and stuck itself on a metal support high up out of the reach of any of the agents.

Taking advantage of her increasingly free right side she front kicked an agent and knocked him right onto the floor of the elevator. Jack Rollins was coming at her now from the left, so she shifted her position and palm struck him in the throat, both winding him and knocking him back in one action. There were still many men left to go, however, so quickly she punches one of the agents approaching her in the face, causing the first of her ten assailants to be knocked unconscious. Peggy then used the rest of the momentum from her swing to head-butt Rollins' other muscle man who had been the last one restraining her, causing him to knock out as well and to temporarily free her.

She didn't let this agent fall to the ground however, instead Peggy used his unconscious body to her advantage and lunged him directly at Rollins, taking him out in the processes. This feat opened Peggy up to attack however, and Rumlow didn't miss his chance. In a very calculated and tactical move he front kicked Peggy's right arm upwards and before she could attempt to force it back down it had gotten to close to the metal support and the magnetic cuff latched on with her arm still inside it, pining her in place.

Quickly Peggy tried desperately to yank her arm back down but for now the cuff was not bugging. With agents approaching from nearly every angle she realized she was going to have to switch up her fighting technique. Rumlow started coming after her with his own electric rod, Peggy shifted her body as much as she could, she managed to block his first attack with her forearm, but he then managed to counter and jab her in the shoulder. The pain was not easier to deal with the second time, it made all her nerves and muscles feel like they were short-circuiting and her brain once again felt as though it were going numb.

In time Peggy could likely take everyone in this elevator out, but something in the back of her mind was telling her she did not have that time, that this elevator or the agents themselves likely had cameras and microphones and that more, less merciful, agents were likely on their way. She tried as hard as she could to push the pain down and managed to focus long enough to dodge the attack of one agent, elbow-strike Rumlow off of her, then with her free arm Peggy grabbed the agent who had tried to attack her and threw him against the wall head first, knocking him out.

Two of the last six agents left began to charge her, one with yet another electric rod. Peggy did her best to side-step again and managed to get the guard with the rod to give the other a nasty electric shock. It knocked him over, but almost instantly he began to recover. At the moment though Peggy's immediate attention was on the agent who missed, as he was attempting to strike her again. Before he could get the chance she elbowed him hard in the nose, knocking him backwards for just a second. The two agents in their disoriented state tried to charge her again, but Peggy used the secure magnetic cuff to her advantage and lifted herself high enough that she was able to kick both agents hard in the head at the exact same time, and they crumpled to the ground.

Peggy's feet weren't on the ground for long, however, as yet another agent tried to jab her with an electric rod, but she grabbed his wrist with her left hand and then front kicked him in the jaw where he then forcibly hit the opposite wall and slumped over. Recognizing she had a few precious seconds where the agents left were dazed or off balance, she hit the emergency stop button with her foot and the elevator began to descend again, Peggy then jumped up and pushed her legs as hard as she could against the elevator wall, for a scary second she thought the cuff may actually be her undoing, but then to her relief it gave way, and while the cuff was in fact still attached to her, for now both her arms were free.

As Peggy landed back on the elevator floor two agents other than Rumlow remained, one tried to tackle her but she punched him, knocking him down, than dodged the punch of the other agent, and as she straightened back up she uppercutted him, knocking his lights out too. The agent that tried to tackle her drew his electric rod, but there was no point. Peggy picked him up and threw him against the elevator wall, where he joined his fellow agents in dreamville.

The only two conscious people left in the elevator were her and Rumlow, who had just stud back up and had an electric rod now in both hands. Despite doubling his hostility factor, Rumlow for a brief moment held out his hands as though he didn't want to fight. He really needed to stick to fighting as is deception skills were simply not good.

"Whoa, whoa Carter. Look, I just want you to know, this ain't personal!" but even as 'personal' was coming out of his mouth he lunged at Peggy. She dodged his first attack, deflected his second, she tried to counter by throwing a punch towards his face but he also managed to dodge. Rumlow then managed to get a jab at her ribs with the electric rod, but with no other agents or magnetic cuff to restrain her there was nothing preventing her now from just picking him up, throwing him at the elevator ceiling, and watching Rumlow crumple to the ground.

"I'm getting the notion that it is bloody personal," she said before picking up her shield, which she then equipped to her left arm and used to break the magnetic cuff off of her wrist.

'That's better,' she thought.

Now for the tricky part. The elevator was getting closer and closer to the ground, but any second it could reach one of the four floors it was programmed to stop at. When it does the doors will open only a second or two later and there will likely be a small army of agents waiting for her. So what Peggy had to do was wait for the moment the elevator stopped, calculate not only the amount of speed and force she'd need not only to break through the glass elevator wall with her shield and body, but what would be required to land below without dying. The lower she was the easier it would be. She braced herself in a ready position, her back to the elevator door, her shield in front of her. She was ready.

The elevator stopped, and before the doors could even begin to open Peggy charged at the opposite glass wall shield first. She breaks through it as though it wasn't even there, but that was the easy part, as she began to accelerate as she herself descended through the air she spread herself out for a few seconds to slow her decent down even just a little, and then just before hitting the glass ceiling that covered a three story lobby she curled up so that her shield took most of the impact and not her body. It wasn't pretty, but she crashed through the thick glass roof and landed on the ground level just shaken but not harmed, though her ears rang something fierce, but thankfully she didn't land on anybody.

No time to stretch her sore muscles however, as while Peggy could practically feel whoever is in charge in the monitoring room's jaw drop in witness to what she had just done, she knew their stunned reaction wouldn't last long. She couldn't stay where she was, as likely dozens of agents were making their way down from the high levels at that very moment. Peggy quickly got up, and at top speed, sprinted towards the stairs that would lead to the garage while ignoring the confused noises of the regular low-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. employees all around her. Peggy could have headed right out the front door and down the bridge to get to Washington D.C. mainland, if she did she even would have a more likely chance of escaping before the entire mini island was put into lockdown, but Peggy made a calculated risk that her motorcycle would give her more options that she might need to get away.

Whoever was pulling the strings of this operation, whether it be Alexander Pierce or someone else, they weren't very good at making contingency plans, as the moment Peggy hoped onto her motorcycle and hit the ignition is roared to life and she began to zoom out of the parking garage. Someone was at least doing something, however, because as she drove towards the garage exist an unreasonably thick door began to descend. Peggy put her motorcycle to max throttle and accelerated to her bike's max speed. She wasn't going to make it, not the normal way anyway. Just before she and her bike could hit the door Peggy shifted herself and the bike until they were at a forty-five degree angle, using her shield on the concrete to save her from road-burn, and she made it and could hear the door thud behind her.

For a solid few seconds she drove at top speed down the bridge, this didn't last long though. Quickly Peggy saw two things, the first was that the bridge had risen its spikes which normally wouldn't slow her down if she times a jump right, but more problematic was the Quinjet now hovering about four feet right on top of said spikes.

From a speaker Peggy didn't even know Quinjets had was announced a warning.

"Stand down, Captain Carter! Stand down!"

But even as the voice was still giving the command a machine gun was lowered from the belly of the Quinjet.

"Repeat, stand down!"

Peggy knew however that there was no going back. She swerved around a bit dodging bullets as the machine gun began to fire. Than as she approached she threw her shield and managed to lodge it right in one of its turbines. With only one functioning turbine it was stuck hovering in the same position with no way to move. Peggy quickly took advantage and used her motorcycle to launch herself on top of the Quinjet, where she proceeded to dislodge her shield from the now heavily damaged turbine, and then threw the shield once more. It ricochet off of the two engines, damaging them as well, before rebounding back to her. Now spinning out of control, Peggy ignored the every changing ground below her feet and ran in the direction of the bridge's end. With one mighty leap as the Quinjet began to crash, she landed safe on the opposite side of the spikes.

She was free for now, and with her espionage she could likely go underground for as long as she needed to track down Bruce Banner or maybe Tony Stark for help, but Fury died to give her that USB drive and Peggy knew it won't remain hidden indefinitely. So at the end of the day there really was no choose, Peggy had to get that stick.