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By the time Marlene and the other agents made their way back to headquarters, the doctor was already gone. Chief Dooley was locked in his office, asleep with a vest covering this torso.
This vest wasn't like anything Marlene had seen before. It looked military grade, but it was emanating a reddish-orange glow. It reminded Marlene of the old heater she had back when she was young.
Marlene rushed towards the door of his office. She twisted the doorknob rushing to open it, but it didn't budge.
Thompson and the other agents walked in behind her. Sousa had agreed to stay back and do a final sweep of the building. As Thompson saw at Chief's office door without it opening, he moved towards her with curiosity.
"Chief!" she called, alerting the other agents. "Wake up!"
"What the bloody hell are you shouting for?" Peggy said, moving quickly towards her best friend.
"The Chief fell asleep," Marlene reasoned, jerking her head to his sleeping figure. "That vest looks like a walking heater-"
Thompson starts pounding vigorously on the door.
"Chief Dooley!" Peggy shouted. "Chief Dooley!"
"Step aside," Marlene ordered Thompson.
"What are you gonna do?" Sousa asked, giving her a sarcastic look. "Kick it in?"
"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Marlene nodded like it was the most logical thing to do. Then she nodded towards the large windows that overlooked the agents' desks surrounding Chief Dooley's office. "Or throw Thompson threw the glass window, and into his office."
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Chief got up in a sort of daze, limiting Marlene's need to throw Thompson through the windows. His hair was sprouting in all different directions. He looked disoriented, which came as a side effect to waking up. He carefully moved towards the door, opening it and making his way out.
"Oh my God," Mr. Jarvis said lowly. He spread his arms out, pushing the agents back and away from Dooley. "Very calmly now, everybody stand clear, please."
Peggy nor Thompson listened to his polite suggestion.
"Miss Carter, stand clear," Mr. Jarvis implored, placing his hands delicately on her shoulders and moving her away from the Chief. "Mr. Thompson, stand back, please."
Marlene noticed the beads of sweat rolling off of Dooley's pale skin.
"He's gone, isn't he?" Dooley asked, but receive no answer.
"What is that?" Peggy demanded looking at the peculiar vest he was wearing.
"That is the prototype for a new system of armor," Mr. Jarvis answered.
"How do we get it off of him?" Thompson asked as Marlene stepped forward to try and remove it.
"I'm afraid it's not that simple," Mr. Jarvis answered.
Marlene lowered her hands at Jarvis's please, "Please don't touch."
"It was intended to double as a heat source," he continued. "For use in the winter months on the European front. Locking the armor ignites a self-sustaining batter."
"What's the catch?" Marlene raised a brow with a thoughtful expression. "There's always a reason Howard doesn't put some of the inventions on the market."
"I'm afraid the energy source is experimental, powerful, and incredibly flawed," he explained, not taking his worried brown eyes away from the vest. Jarvis spoke quickly. "It invariably overheats with rather violent results."
"How violent?" Dooley questioned, standing like a penguin, almost afraid to move.
"Explosive."
"Get the scientists," Thompson ordered.
"Marls?" Peggy turned to her blonde best friend. "Any ideas?"
"Water could be used," Marlene rambled off as the others listened. "But that could short circuit the armor, and we don't want anyone getting electrocuted. Placing Chief in a giant cooler is out of the question. That'll do nothing do what the armor is meant to do, keep Dooley warm."
Mr. Jarvis handed Marlene a notepad and a pen. The group watches carefully as Marlene scribbled down ideas. They watched as she crossed them out. They watched as she threw away paper after paper. They watched as Marlene's mind worked a million miles per minute.
"Breathing down my bloody neck ain't gonna get the job done," Marlene remarked, her slang kicking through all formalities and grammar technicalities.
"How are you feeling, Chief?" Thompson asked.
"Burning up," he answered truthfully. "He got in my head. He made me steal something from the lab. You can't let him talk to you. If he starts talking to you, he got you."
Peggy, Thompson, and one of the scientists rambled off questions to Mr. Jarvis about the vest. Dooley didn't seem too keen on the conversation. It was almost as if he had accepted his own fate; death.
"What's it made out of?" Marlene asked Jarvis quickly and suddenly. "I might have an idea-"
"It's an alloy of Mr. Stark's creation," he answered sadly.
"Damnit!" Marlene swore, shoving everything off of the desk in frustration. "That man has more alloys than he does bloody chromosomes!"
"My God, it's searing his skin," the scientist said in complete shock. He had a large shiny forehead with limited amounts of hair.
"It's in the final stages," Mr. Jarvis rushed his words. "We're running out of time."
Marlene wore a hole in the floor as she paced.
"I don't know what to do," the scientist whispered.
"What does that mean?" Thompson demanded.
"It means that... I don't know what to do."
"Rogers, please," Thompson whipped around to look at her. His grey eyes were pleading. "You've got to do something. You must know what to do."
"If I knew more about that stupid armor, I could get him out," Marlene said quickly. "I know what I would do if I were the Chief at this moment, but I'm not. There are many possible ways to help shut it down, but they all come with risks. Risks that we cannot take."
"I know what to do," Dooley declared.
Everyone looked at him in shock.
"Here, give me a hand," he grunted in a faint voice.
As Thompson helped him stand, Dooley grabbed his gun.
"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Thompson held his hands up in surrender, trying to stop the Chief.
"Chief you can't," Marlene said quickly with imploring eyes.
"You said it yourself. You'd do the same thing," He reasoned with her before turning to Thompson with a shaky voice. "Tell...Tell my wife...Tell her I'm sorry I missed dinner."
A silent tear rolled down Peggy's face.
"And you?" Dooley turned to the brunette woman. "Promise me you'll get the son of a bitch who did this."
"We'll catch them," Peggy assured.
"Attagirl," Dooley chuckled with a faint smile.
He spun on his heel, running towards the windows. He fired several gunshots towards them, breaking the glass.
Shouts of protest rang through the SSR agents. Calls for the Chief to stop.
But he didn't.
Chief Dooley threw himself from the building. Moments later, the armor exploded along with him.
***
When Sousa returned to the SSR, he found broken glass scared through the facility. He found wounded agents. He found Jack Thompson sitting on a desk with a deflated look in his eye. He saw Peggy Carter with the same look in her eye as she spoke with Edwin Jarvis.
"What happened?" Sousa asked Thompson, rushing to his side as well as he could with his limp.
"They got Chief," he said with an empty look in his eyes.
"I did this," Peggy said, looking completely haunted. "Ivchenko brought me to him so that I would bring him to the SSR. This is my fault."
"No, Miss Carter," Mr. Jarvis assured. "This is not your fault."
Marlene stood by the windows Dooley had jumped from. She was the closest to the blast. She ignored the shards of glass that had embedded themselves in her arm. All she thought about was another life lost.
She might not have been particularly close to Chief Roger Dooley, but she respected him. He was a good agent, a good chief, and most of all, a good man. He had his flaws, just as everyone else, but he still found the heart to do what he believed to be right.
She was vaguely aware of Jarvis scathingly mention how Howard's inventions were to blame.
"You're right," Peggy said, her eyes widening. "Leviathan tasked Leet Brannis to steal something. What was it?"
Peggy's words drew the attention of Thompson and Sousa, who looked at her curiously.
"The blood," Marlene said sharing a look with Peggy. The small group began to rush off to the lab when Jarvis stopped Marlene.
"Miss Rogers," Mr. Jarvis said, looking in complete shock at the blood seeping through her white blouse. "You're bleeding."
Thompson's head snapped towards her. He almost instantly found what Jarvis was talking about.
"Sit," Peggy demanded, pointing to the desk. "I'll patch you up."
Marlene rolled her eyes and sat on the desk Thompson had vacated. She carefully slipped her arm out of her blouse, exposing several sources of blood.
"Thompson, Jarvis, Sousa," Marlene began to order. "You three try to see what was stolen."
Much to Marlene's surprise, none of them protested to the order.
Peggy delicately used a pair of tweezers to withdraw every shard of glass. Luckily, none of the cuts were deep enough to need stitches, but Marlene most definitely received a scolding.
"It's like Luxemburg all over again," Marlene grinned.
"You and I remember Luxemburg very differently," Peggy scoffed, wrapping her arm in bandages after sterilizing the wound. "I have an extra blouse in my locker you could borrow."
When Marlene joined the group in the lab, she, thankfully, found that Steve's blood was still present. She watched as the scientists searched through the many crates.
"Item 17!" one of them shouted. "He took Item 17!"
"What's that do?" Thompson turned to Mr. Jarvis.
"I-I don't know," Mr. Jarvis stuttered fearfully.
"Rogers," Thompson barked, noticing she was in the room. "You're Stark's assistant! What's it do?"
"I'm his work partner," Marlene corrected. "And I haven't the foggiest. I was a bit preoccupied fighting on the front lines. Sorry I wasn't a bit too concerned about babysitting a grown man."
***
Quite literally forty minutes later, the SSR received a call. They were meant to meet at the Cinema for mass homicide.
Thompson sat behind the wheel, Marlene in the passenger seat, and Peggy and Sousa in the back seat as they drove through the streets of New York. The only sound that could be heard was the radio.
"When we last left our hero," the announcer began. "Captain America had saved the 25th infantry, but his plane was going down over the sea of Japan."
"Oh, dear God," Peggy groaned. This same podcast has been airing since the end of the war. She heard it many times and hated it with every fiber of her being.
"Betty, I'm afraid this is the end," an overly masculine voice began. Marlene could easily tell it was meant to make Steve Roger's seem more 'macho' rather than the sweet and kind man that like to draw pictures for his sister when she was sick.
"Oh, Cap," Betty's voice drifted from the car radio. "I love you, Captain America."
That's when Marlene knew for sure the podcast was written by men. No woman ever spoke with such air in her voice, with such helplessness. They painted Captain America as some manly soldier with a deep voice, savior of all. They painted Betty Carver, most likely Peggy's counterpart, as some damsel in distress.
"What type of bullshit is that?" Marlene scoffed, shutting off the radio before mocking Betty Carver by making her voice overly high-pitched. "'My name is Betty Carver and I'm some damsel in distress waiting for some over masculinized soldier to save me!'"
Peggy tried not to laugh but ultimately failed.
"God," Marlene groaned. "She might as well be Jean Goss!"
Peggy scrunched her face up in disgust.
"Who's Jean?" Sousa asked bravely.
"Headgirl at our school," Peggy answered. "She and Marlene didn't exactly get along."
"You whack her with a plate once, and then the world is ending," Marlene rolled her eyes.
"You broke a plate over her head," Peggy pointed out.
"Irrelevant."
"She had to get stitches."
Before could retort, Thompson parked the car. The night was still young, meaning people still walked the streets despite the police's attempt to clear the way of civilians.
Things especially got difficult when the reporters caught sight of The Legendary Marlene Sarah Rogers. The snapping of cameras could be heard every few seconds. Reporters rushed towards her.
Marlene silently cursed Thompson for not parking closer to the crime scene. She would've driven straight to it, but Thompson claimed it was faster to walk.
"Is it true that you're pregnant?" one reporter asked.
"How are you coping with the loss of your brother?"
"Is Howard Stark the father of your unborn child?"
"Are you working with Howard Stark? Were you aware of the active selling of his inventions to enemies of the United States?"
"How does your hair stay flawless? What products do you use?"
"What's your skincare routine?"
Marlene stopped walking, motioning towards her partners she'd catch up.
"No, I am not pregnant," she addressed the mass of reporters, making it easier for the security guards to catch them seeing as they wouldn't be following her. "No, Howard Stark is not the father of my unborn child, seeing as I do not have an unborn child. He and I are in no way romantically involved. We are nothing more than friends. No, I was not helping him sell weapons to our enemies."
Four security guards made their way towards Marlene, moving in quick succession.
"Those are all the questions I will be answering," Marlene informed them. "I am currently working on a case. Lives are at stake. I ask you to please follow the security guards' directions while leaving the scene."
Marlene made her way towards the others, who were talking to the detective. She noticed that he was rounder in the middle, but she didn't think it particularly kept him from doing his job. After all, catching bad guys isn't just physical.
"What the hell happened here, detective?" Thompson asked him.
"Hell if I know," he answered, looking more shocked than tired. "I got 47 deads, heads bashed in, eyes gouged out, not a single survivor."
He lead them into the lobby of the building. They found bodies delicately littering the floor covered in white sheets.
"Good lord," Peggy gasped.
"It's like some kind of monster got in," the detective continued, his white hair setting oddly on his head. "Never seen anything like it."
"All this happened inside the theater?" Sousa asked, brushing a stray strand of black hair from his face.
"This way," the detective lead him towards the viewing room.
Marlene made her way to one of the bodies as Peggy and Thompson followed her after sharing a glance. She carefully withdrew the covering.
The body was of a male. Dried blood could be found on his head. His eyes were, as the detective said, gouged out. Bruises and blood coated his body. Scratches made by what looked like fingernails could be seen. There was a bite mark on his chest, but it wasn't one made by an animal.
It was a human one.
Thompson slides the covering more. The hand of the victim rested on his stomach, clutching a wad of hair.
Human hair.
"There was no monster," Marlene determined, voicing her running theory. "They killed each other."
As they made their way towards the theater room, they heard loud coughing.
"Sousa!" Thompson called rushing towards the man who was doubling over, trying to find air. "Sousa!"
Sousa grabbed Thompson's shoulder, using him for support.
"Hey. Hey," the blonde spoke. "What happened?"
It was like a switch flipped in Sousa's mind. His hands flew around Thompson's neck.
While it was Thompson, and it was completely normal to want to strangle him, Sousa would never do such a thing. No matter how much he hated someone.
"Daniel!" Peggy ran forward, trying to pull him away from Thompson. Her attempts were fruitless and earned her a swift punch to the face.
Marlene lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Sousa, forcing him into a headlock. He thrashed, trying to get her off, but she didn't budge. He did, however, release Thompson's neck and fell back on Marlene. Slowly, Sousa began to relax.
Then he passed out.
Thompson moved Sousa's unconscious body from Marlene and helped her stand.
***
"The canister is filled with a chemical that induces psychosis upon exposure," Marlene informed the group of agents, and Peggy and Sousa joined them from the infirmary.
"I can personally attest to after Sousa tried to bite my nose off," Thompson joked.
"Well," Marlene smirked. "We can't deny that it wasn't deserved."
"Awe you flatter me, Rogers," Thompson grinned, before nodding towards Sousa. "Hey, killer."
"I'm surprised Howard would consent to manufacturing something like that," Peggy stated.
"I must say the same," Marlene nodded. "However, there is always the possibility he didn't consent for it to be manufactured."
"The amount that got me was tiny," Sousa said, implying how dangerous the gas could be.
"How much of this stuff does Ivchenko have?" Peggy questioned.
"The lab counted 10 canisters," Thompson answered. "Meaning-"
"Meaning Ivchenko has enough to send half the city into a homicidal rage," Marlene nodded before shuddering. "It'll be worse than my boys on bean day."
"But why?" Peggy questioned, her brunette hair falling around her shoulders. "Why go through all that trouble?"
"'Cause he's a Russian jerk with a chip on his shoulder," Thompson offered. "Why else?"
"'Cause he's a man and does things the hard way," Marlene added, raising her eyebrows curiously with a slight tilt in the head. "I mean, if he wanted to send the city into a homicidal rage, just plaster Thompson's face all across the city."
"Thanks, Rogers," Thompson said sarcastically. "You always know what to say to make me feel special."
"Anytime, Jarold."
"No, it's got to be something more than that," Peggy said seriously. "Ivchenko has a plan. He brought us into Russia. He tricked us into bringing him into this country. There's something specific he is targeting. We just have to find out what it is."
"The target is me."
Everyone's heads snapped towards the origin of the voice.
Howard Stark stood in all his glory.