"Wait! Did you two have a thing in 1940?" Natasha gushed with excitement.
"No no, not me" Steve waves it off with a chuckle at Natashas jump to conclusions.
"Who?" The eager woman questioned, looking between both super soldiers.
"His name was Bucky he was a close friend of ours and we lost him on a mission" Steve explained simply, knowing it would be hard for you to talk about it as you sat in silence in the back, eyes trained on your lap. The rest of the ride was silent until the car pulls to a stop outside of a fence.
"This is it." Steve notes as you find the abandoned military base.
"The file came from these coordinates." Natasha told you.
"So did we" you step closer to the gate. "This camp is where we were trained." You enter and walk around, trying to pin point the signal.
"Changed much?" Natasha questioned with curiosity.
"A little." Steve looks up the flag pole to remember when he took the flag and got a ride back to base.
"This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Natasha starts to lose hope. "What is it?" She asks as you notice a bunker up ahead.
"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." You state the fact as you all approach it carefully. Steve breaks the lock with his shield before you all enter the dark abandoned base.
"This is SHIELD." The red head gasps at the sight of the logo on the wall.
"Maybe where it started." Steve said. You entered a room to find old portraits of Howard, Peggy and Philips hug on the wall.
"There's Stark's father." Nat points out as you stare blankly at his face.
"Howard." You smile faintly at the face of an old friend. Steve took off, walking further into the base and stopping in front of a bookshelf.
"If you're already working in a secret office..." he starts, pulling the bookshelf open to reveal an elevator door. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?" He asks. Natasha uses her phone to hack the code and open the doors. You each step inside and enter the basement to find a platform holding some really old computers.
"This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient." The Russian comments until her green eyes lay on a updated USB port. She plugs in the drive and it starts up the computer.
"Initiate system?" The computer screen glowed.
"Y-E-S, spells yes." Natasha types onto the keyboard and smiles as the computers start up. "Shall we play a game?" She turns to you both with a playful smirk. "It's from a movie that..." she starts.
"Yeah, I saw it." The blond man cuts her off.
"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Y/l/n, y/n. Born 1918" an old camera watches you as a green face shows up on the computer.
"It's some kind of a recording." Natasha suggests.
"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 speaks as it flashes a photo of Arnim Zola. You immediately tense up remembering the events of that day.
"Do you know this thing?" Natasha turns to you both.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve explains, knowing you won't want to speak about it.
"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." You look at all of the data banks filling the large room.
"How did you get here?" You question, stepping forward.
"Invited."
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value." You explained to the other hero's. "I was against it but I didn't have much of a say as I was asleep in the cyro chamber while it happened.
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve stated, angrily.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
"Prove it."
"Accessing archive." The screen begins to show you footage and newspapers that prove Zola's point. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."
"That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you." You tell him, knowing Peggy would never stand for this.
"Accidents will happen." The computer said back as a photos from the Starks death appeared on the screen, making you step back with a nervous fumble as it was soon followed by Fury's death file.
"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero sum." With anger Captain America suddenly punched the screen, shattering it under his fist. "As I was saying..." Zola continues on another screen.
"What's on this drive?"
"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?"
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." The doors move to close and Steve throws his shield to keeps them open but it's just a second to late and the doors are locked.
"Steve, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." Natasha reports.
"Who fired it?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D." Nat moved to pull the drive out of the port.
"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain. Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us, out of time." You notice a small opening in the ground and point it out to Steve. Just as the place is bombed, you Steve and Nat jumped into the opening and covered yourselves with the shield. Voices are heard shouting faintly as your ears are still ringing from the explosion. You hop out of the hole and help the red head out before she is followed by the blue eyed blond. You all sneak out just in time for strike team to search the area for you.
"Call in the asset." Rumlow orders.
"So where do we go from here?" Nat asks as you all get back on the truck and drive away before being noticed.
"I have an idea" you state.
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Question of the day: what do you think y/n idea is?