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Chapter 17
Old enemies
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"Where on earth did Captain America learn to steal a car?"
Tessa, along with Natasha and Jungkook, was beyond impressed, more shocked, that Steve Rogers of all people, knew how to steal a car. So much for the man who could do no wrong, his red, white and blue heart had the smallest smudge of black now.
Natasha rode shotgun in the stolen car, with her feet propped up on the dash. Tessa and Jungkook where once again, banished to sit in the back.
"Nazi Germany," Steve answers her, and Tessa hums in response, impressed. "And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash." The young girl was no longer impressed, especially when he pushed the spy's feet from off the dash. Jungkook, who was no longer a dog, laughed.
Natasha stares at Steve for a few seconds, as if dwelling on whether or not to say what she was about to or not. "All right, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer, Steve. I feel like, if you don't answer it, though, you're kind of answering it, you know."
"What?" Steve asks her harshly, hoping to get the assassin to hurry it up - it was as if he already knew what the redhead was going to ask.
"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" Natasha questions him, a smile on her lips.
Steve glances over his shoulder at the two sat in the back. They were both leant forward, eager for the Captain to spill the tea on his love life.
He sighs, "That bad, huh?"
"I didn't say that," Natasha shook her head.
"It's kinda bad," Tessa whispered.
Jungkook pushed the girl back in her seat and laughed as she winced, having hit her head against the car doors window. "You deserved that." He said with a smirk. Tessa only glared at him.
"Well, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying," Steve points out to her. "Tessa would agree."
"Sorry, Steve," Tessa apologies sheepishly, but sincerely, and Jungkook smiles at her.
"No, I didn't," Natasha defended herself. "I just
wondered how much practice you've had."
"You don't need practice." Steve disagreed.
"Everybody needs practice," Jungkook wasn't ashamed to admit. He found this topic of conversation rather amusing, indicated by the smile that hadn't left his lips.
"It was not my first kiss since 1945." Steve snaps, having grown frustrated with everyone in the car. "I'm ninety-one, I'm not dead."
"Nobody special, though?" Tessa asks him, curious.
Steve lets out a small chuckle, "Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience."
"You can say that again," Jungkook huffed, throwing his head back to rest on the seats headrest behind him.
"Well, that's all right," Natasha assured, not only Steve, but Jungkook now too. "You just make something up."
"What, like you?" Steve questions the redhead.
"I don't know," Natasha replies. "The truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people, all the time. Neither am I."
"That's a tough way to live." Steve points out.
"It's a good way not to die, though." Natasha states.
"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is," Steve explains to her. There was a double meaning to his words. Natasha and Jungkook were aware he was on about the two of them, considering they were the most secretive out of everyone on the team.
"Yeah," Natasha sighs, her green eyes on him, before looking away for a quick second, before her eyes are on him again. "Who do you want us to be?"
"How about my friends?" Steve asks the three in the car with him.
Natasha lets out a small chuckle, before looking ahead of her and out of the windshield. "Well, there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers'."
"I'll be your friend, Steve," Tessa says with a kind smile. The brunette reaches forward and rubs the super soldiers shoulders; he smiled in thanks.
It was silent for the remainder of the long drive. However, the quartet soon arrive at their desired location. Steve pulled the blue Chevy to a stop and him and Natasha both got out of the truck. Tessa and Jungkook share a look, as if asking one another if it was wise to follow. They came to the conclusion that it would probably be best if they stayed with one another, and not split up.
The two climbed out of the car and joined Steve and Natasha, who stood before a tall, metal gate that went around the full perimeter of the abandoned property.
"This is it," Steve states, his shield in his hand.
"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha said.
"So did I," Steve adds as his eyes land on the familiar Camp Lehigh sign.
As night began to fall, the trio broke in and made their way around the base, trying to find where the exact point the file was sent from. Tessa and Jungkook trail behind quietly, merely on the look out for any predators that lay in waiting, hiding, ready to attack.
Steve was too busy looking around the place fondly, reminiscing on his time in the war. "This camp is where I was trained," Steve states as they walk.
"Has it changed much?" Jungkook asks, genuinely curious.
"A little," Steve answers, his focus adrift as his eyes land on the flagpole standing tall before them. He relived his old life through his memories.
"This is a dead end," Natasha calls out, grabbing their attention. The red head lowers her device and put it back in one of the rear pocket of her jeans. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off. "
Jungkook noticed Steve's blue eyes were zoned in on old army bunker across the grounds from them. "What is it?" he asked.
"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within five hundred yards of the barracks," Steve explains as he led the three of them over towards a bunker. "This building is in the wrong place."
Steve takes his shield and breaks off the lock on the door, before pushing it open. The four of them enter the old bunker, before climbing down a flight of stairs and into a large office space. Natasha walks over towards a wall and flips on a light switch, revealing S.H.I.E.L.D's emblem at the end of the room.
"This is S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha points out as they began to walk along the path of desks.
"Maybe even where it all started," Tessa suggested as she looked around, amazed.
When they get to the end of the room, they walk over towards a door and enter another room. Inside was wall upon wall of empty shelves. The curious eyes of the four of them, glanced over all of them, before landing on two portraits, still hung up on the wall.
"And there's Stark's father," Natasha points out Howard Stark to the others.
"Howard." Steve says his name thoughtfully, like he knew the man personally, he did.
"Who's the girl?" Jungkook asks Steve when he notices the super soldier himself staring at a pretty females image beside Howard's. However, Jungkook doesn't get his answer, as Steve simply walks away.
As they're walking down the hall of shelves, Steve stops in front of one in particular.
"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve suddenly grabs ahold of the shelving unit, before pulling it out of the way to reveal an elevator. "Why do you need to hide an elevator?"
Natasha approaches the keypad and takes out a device, which decodes it. Once the spy has the code, she punches it in and the elevator dings. The four of them glance at each other, before entering the elevator. The ride down is a short one, and when the doors open, it reveals another dark, empty room.
Jungkook was the first one to walk out of the elevator, bravely, curious to see what it was that S.H.I.E.L.D was hiding. Steve, Natasha and Tessa follow him and as they make it to the middle of the room, that's when the lights flickered on. A lot of old fashioned computers were revealed to them.
"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient." Tessa scoffs as she looks over it all. She let a finger glide over the surface of a computer and cringed at the amount of dust that was collected.
However, Natasha's eyes land on something of modern technology. A USB port. She takes the flash drive out of her pocket and she looks at it for a few seconds, before inserting it into the dock. That's when everything in the room turned on, beginning to run as if it was brand new.
"Initiate system?" The computer in front of them asks. It was a male voice and he had a German accent.
Natasha approaches the computer, before typing in a response, "Y-E-S spells yes." Natasha smiles to herself, before speaking
again. "Shall we play a game?" She turns around to face the others. "It's from a movie that-"
"I know. I saw it." Steve interrupts her.
Tessa and Jungkook shared a look - they hadn't got the reference.
"Rogers, Steven. Born 1918." The computer suddenly reads aloud, making Steve make a confused face. The camera connected to the computer lands on Tessa next. "Brookes, Tessa. Born 1993." The girl felt a shiver run down her spine. "Jeon, Jungkook. Born 1992. Romanoff, Natalia Alianova. Born 1984."
"It must be some kind of recording." Jungkook states, a confused look on his face. He couldn't believe what he was hearing and how it was even possible if it is what he thinks it is.
"I am not a recording, junger Mann," The computer responds to him. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am."
"You know this thing?" Natasha questions Steve.
The man in question inhales deeply, as his eyes land on the photo of the familiar face displayed on a smaller screen. "Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years."
"First correction, I am Swiss." Zola corrects him. "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 databanks. You are standing in my brain."
Tessa pulled a face. "That's comforting and disgusting." She mutters.
"How did you get here?" Steve questions him.
"I was invited," Zola replies.
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War Two," Natasha explains. "S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value."
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own." Zola adds on.
"Hydra died with the Red Skull!" Steve shouts.
Jungkook shook his head slowly. He knew better than anybody that Hydra hadn't in fact, disappeared. Although everyday he finds himself wishing they had.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place," Zola states, restating the infamous slogan of Hydra.
"Prove it." Steve barks.
"Accessing archive," Zola says, before footage from 1945 appears, with Red Skull himself, under his mask, on the screen. "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."
Stock footage from the war began to play for the four enhanced, including footage of Steve in the midst of battle.
"Humanity needs to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D was founded, and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside of S.H.I.E.L.D. For seventy years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed."
"That's impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you," Tessa argues, just as images of the Winter Soldier appeared on the screen.
"Accidents will happen," Zola states, as an article regarding Howard and Maria Stark's deaths appear in front of them, followed by Fury's file with DECEASED stamped over it in red. "Hydra created the world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise. We won Captain. Your death amount to the same as your lives. A zero sum."
Steve lets out a grunt as he slams his fist into the computer screen, destroying it. But that wasn't enough to shut Zola up. He only appeared on another screen.
"As I was saying-"
"What's on this drive?" Steve demands.
"Project Insight requires insight," Zola replies to him. "So, I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm?" Natasha questions. "What does it do?"
"The answer to your question is fascinating," Zola states. "Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."
Their eyes widened at both his words and the sudden beeping that began behind them. Steve threw his shield towards the closing door, hoping to lodge his shield between the two doors before they shut, but it was too late. The door sealed shut and Natasha's phone went off, she looks down at it, only to see something she wishes she hadn't. Bad news.
"We got a bogey," Natasha reveals. "Short range ballistic. Thirty seconds tops."
"Who fired it?" Tessa and Jungkook ask in unison.
"S.H.I.E.L.D," Natasha answers them.
"I am afraid I have been stalling," Zola announces, just as Natasha tears the drive out of the dock. "Admit it. It's better this way. We are, the both of us, out of time."
As Zola finished up what he was saying, Steve had torn a grate out of the floor for the three of them to jump into for cover. Natasha jumped in first, then Jungkook. Steve went to let Tessa in before himself, but she pushed the Captain inside.
"Tessa!" Jungkook shouts, but she wasn't listening.
Just as the missile hit, the brunette stood over them and conjured a forcefield, encasing the three of them and herself inside. She groaned, fighting her own energy as the building collapsed around them, having been blown up.
Dust and debris encased them, or more like, encased the purple forcefield protecting the four beings that were hiding from death in the floor.
She looked over her shoulder and she was just about able to make out Jungkook, Natasha and Steve all huddled together as the light began to fade. She smiled, thankful she was able to at least protect them despite herself beginning to suffer under the weight of the carnage caused by the explosion.
Soon enough, the world around her fell in to complete darkness, buried under the rubble.
Tessa groans and coughs, the smoke and dust entering her lungs, falling as she finally allows her shield to fall. Steve and Jungkook also groan and grunt as they struggle to get the debris off of themselves and the two girls, so they were able to escape before Hydra showed up.
Once there was finally light, Jungkook looks down at Tessa,
who had a large gash on her forehead. Feeling something warm oozing from her head, Tesss herself raises a hand to her head; pulling it away to find she was in-fact bleeding.
"Great." She sighed and lay herself back down on the rubble.
"Come on, trouble," Jungkook says to her as he picks Tessa up from off of the ground. Tessa nods her head as she lets him hold her up.
His enhanced hearing meant Jungkook heard it before anyone else. Voices and heavy footsteps. They where on their way here and if they didn't leave now, they'd either be shot dead on sight or taken hostage - neither option sounded fun.
Jungkook looked over to Steve and Natasha. "We gotta get outta here, they're coming." He was worried and he has every right to be. Steve nodded.
"I know a place where we can lay low."
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authors note:
i'm on a roll with this book
and it's updates lol what
is wrong with me? i must
be feeling generous because
it's Christmas and want to
spoil you guys with new
chapters ahaha ;)
next chapter, you probably
know alresdy lol but,
we're going to be meeting
a familiar face who I'm
sure you all know and
love... because I certainly
do! i'm so excited to write
his character ahaha I think
he's hilarious <3