Summers' Purpose

Chapter 57

"It's gotta be her. I got a good feeling about this." Steve reread the words in the email after viewing the pictures attached, knowing Natasha had done the same many more times.

"What if it isn't? As much as I want to believe that, we can't just drop in blindly based on some stranger's message. This is one of many that we get every day."

"I understand, but...hear me out. Look at the background in each of these." Steve scrolled through the pictures again. "Manipulating our images is one thing, but no random stranger knows what our compound looks like on the inside to fake these many rooms this accurately. It can't be a coincidence."

"Yes, I thought of that. I looked at the data and the pictures were all taken from the same device. So, I tried to dig a little deeper." Natasha clicked away from the message to show Steve another window. "It pinged me to several locations in Brazil. I hadn't managed to narrow it down just yet. Whoever this person is, they know a thing or two about covering their tracks." Natasha sighed exasperatedly and wrapped her arms across her body as she leaned back in her chair. " We don't even know anybody with that name mentioned in the email."

"I know how ridiculous it looks but we haven't had any real leads on her until lately. And now that we have something—"

"We had more than a few 'somethings' all this while, Steve, but she made it clear she doesn't want to be found. Every time we get close, she disappears until the next time we find a trace of her. Then rinse and repeat."

"Are you giving up on her?"

"No! Never! Don't say that. I... There's not a day that I don't think about what else we could've done for her. She was lost back then, and then we lost her. I wish she knew how—"

Multiple notifications suddenly filled the monitor, alerting the two of several posts where 'The Avengers' was tagged. Natasha was about to clear them all away when a link with an odd caption caught her eye.

'Mulher estranha bate em Gabriel'

They shared a glance before Natasha clicked on the link, leading them to a saved livestream ending less than half an hour ago. At first, the video was shaky as the person recording ran towards a large house, joining a small crowd that had gathered on the street. The video panned to the dark, rainy sky. Waterdrops smudged the lens and Steve and Natasha could barely figure out what they were looking at. They scrolled forward and the video was now zoomed in on a few figures standing together. Some light was cast on them, thanks to the large hole by the side of the house. A tinge of recognition hit Natasha at the sight of one of the figures. Before the camera could focus on their faces, the video quickly panned away to a man on the ground.

She searched slightly further in the video in hopes that she could get a clearer view, but it was just a recording of the crowd discussing what happened. She wanted to listen in to see what other info she could get but decided to quickly scroll to the rest of the video before doing so. What she saw caught her attention right away. Steve quickly told her to pause the video. It was a frozen shot of a woman who appeared to be making her way through the crowd. She was trying to conceal her identity, seeing how she covered her face with her hand. But the slight hint of dark blue behind her fingers was unmistakable. Steve replayed the video at a slightly earlier timestamp as Natasha held her breath.

The woman walked towards the gates with her head down, moving the bent metal aside easily to step outside. The crowd from before started to gather around her and bombard her with questions. She kept her head low and tried to push through the crowd. When they didn't seem to let up, she raised her hand to cover her face. It would be easily missed by most, but Steve and Natasha knew exactly what they saw. A faint, dark blue glowed very briefly behind the woman's fingers and the crowd suddenly ignored her, slowly letting her walk by. The camera panned away from the woman, focusing on the house once more as the person recording continued to talk about a certain 'Gabriel' and 'Bernardo'.