Gunpowder and Satin ; BW

2.14

"This is it." Steve parked the truck, "This is the place I came from."

I yawned, stretching my limbs above my head from the nap I had taken on the way here. We all got out of the car, begining to look around. I let out a shaky breath, holding my side from where I was hit, feeling a large bruise form under my skin. Steve and Natasha gave me a worried look but I pretended I didn't see, continuing to look around the abandoned place.

"So, this place changed much since you've been here? What are you now, like a hundred?" I teased Steve.

Steve chuckled, "I'm ninety five, I'm not dead. And, yeah, it's changed a little. All things do."

"This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even a radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Natasha sighed heavily.

Steve scratched his chin, staring at a rusted building a few feet ahead of us.

"What is it?" I asked the soldier.

"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." Steve smashed the lock with his shield, all of us entering the musty building. I flicked on a light, the fluorescents sparking and fluttering on.

"This is SHIELD." Natasha said looking around at the dust covered objects.

"Maybe the start of it." I shrugged. We followed Steve into a room, old portraits lining the walls. There was Starks father Howard and Steves lover Peggy.

"Who's the woman?" Natasha asked Steve.

Steve looked at the portrait, a distant and nostaligic look in his eyes. He didn't say anything, just walked away.

"That's Peggy Carter. Steve told me some things about her. He really liked her." I told her softly, feeding into her questions.

"If you're already working in a secret office," The blond grunted pushing back a massive bookshelf, "Why do you need to hide the elevator?"

I coughed into my arm as dust flew around, getting into my lungs. We all entered the rickety elevator, taking us all the way down to the basemnet floor. The machine shook here and there, creaking as it did so. I gripped the railing tightly, my stomach up in knots.

"This can't be the data point, this tech is anciet!" Natasha shook her head, all of us stepping into a room full of dusty computers.

The closer we got, we noticed a small port to put the flash drive, one that was fairly new.
Once the flash drive was placed in the port, a message from the computer popped up asking if we wanted to initiate the system.

"Y-E-S, spells yes," She smiled as the computer began cranking up, "Shall we play a game?" She giggled, turning to Steve, "It's from a movie that-"

"I saw it." He said.

"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Y/l/n, Y/n. Born, 1999."

"It's some kind of recording." I told them, gesturing towards the moving security camera watching us.

"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am." The computer screen shows an old photo of some man.

"Do you know this thing?" Nat asked Steve.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve said, looking very confused.

"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain."