The Irony of it All

4

Natasha watched the raindrops pitter on the window pane, obscuring her view. She heard the muffled sound of thunder clap in the distance. She could feel the cold seeping through her skin tight black jeans. Pulling her off white cashmere sweater closer, she watched as Steve rounded the corner of the road in the distance as he came back from his run. Sometimes she would join him, but unfortunately she wasn't immune to colds, so she had sat this one out. 

   Her back pocket vibrated, alerting her to a new text. She pulled her phone out to read the text. When she looked back up, she found Steve no longer outside her fourth story window. She grabbed a towel and waited for him to come up the elevator. 

  The elevator dinged and he appeared, soaked to the bone, looking like a very muscular, blonde, wet rat. She tossed him the white towel which he caught easily. "Dry off", she said. "Bruce just texted. He finished the machine."

  "Already?"

  "It's time travel. He and Tony went to town with it. Also, they brought in the Ant-guy since it deals with quantum physics."

  "Scott?"

  "Mmm.They're running test runs now."

   "Well don't wait up, I've got to shower."

  She grabbed her favorite thick heeled boots and slipped them on before entering the elevator and pressing the Lower level button. 

  Upon entering the basement level lab, her spy skills came in handy. Within a single second she knew that Tony was excited, angry, and nervous, though his face showed no emotion but his usual cocky self confidence. Bruce was excited, but panicked, and Scott Lang looked happily at ease as he ate a burrito. 

  It had been about three days since she and Steve had brought the orb and blueprints back. Since then, none of them had gotten a proper night's sleep. After getting started, Tony and Bruce had quickly desiphered that the original blueprints that they had taken were faulty. They hadn't cracked Time Travel. They had been close, but their formulas were off. So they had brought Scott Lang in to help. Now the machine was built, and it seemed perfect on paper, but now they had to actually test it.

   "Where's Steve?" Tony asked as he saw her walk in. 

   "He had to shower. He said to not wait up for him."

    "This is bad. This is really really bad!" Bruce exclaimed, waving some papers around. 

    "What's wrong?" Tony asked, as they all, warily, stepped closer.

   "Look at these photos," He said, holding up a couple photographs of what looked like cells. "These are the dna samples I got from those small tubes you got from the Germany lab. You see these cells here? That's Erskine's Serum."

  "Wait," Scott said through a mouthful of burrito, pulling himself upright. "You mean the Super Soldier Serum? Like Captain America's serum?

  "This sample is saturated in it, and there's only been one successful attempt in doing that." 

  Natasha spoke up. "You're saying whoever  these people are, possibly Hydra, have Steve's DNA?"

  "So they're trying to replicate it?" Sam asked coming into the room with some coffees, with Rhodey by his side.

  "No. Worse. You see this part of the machine here? They weren't successful in actually pushing individuals through time, but they successfully developed a way to target an individual in time by using DNA."

  Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "Translation?"

  Tony cleared his throat. "What Banner is trying to say, is that they were using Steve's DNA to find more Steves from different time lines. Why? We don't know.”