Steve drove down the road, feeling slight relief as he entered into New Jersey. Natasha sat beside him in the passenger's seat, her feet propped up on the dash and her gaze out the window. Connie was fast asleep in the backseat of the truck Steve had stolen; not only was her physical exhaustion weighing down heavily on her, but her emotional exhaustion was as well, and Steve knew this. She had experienced so much emotional pain the previous day and it had just left her in a state of fatigue, which was very uncommon for a super-soldier.
Natasha looked at Steve as the events from earlier flood into her thoughts. The three of them had managed to make quite the escape from the S.T.R.I.K.E. team at the mall, though the things they had to do to achieve that escape were quite strange, for Steve and Natasha at least.
"So, where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Natasha asked.
Steve glanced over at her for the briefest of seconds. "Nazi, Germany. And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash."
Natasha did as he said, and as she looked at him a smirk pulled on her lips. "Alright, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it, though, you're kind of answering it, you know?"
"What?"
"Was that your first kiss since 1945?"
Steve sighed and sat back in his seat. "That bad, huh?"
"No," Natasha quickly reassured him. "I didn't say that."
"Well, it kinda sounds like that's what you're saying."
"No, I didn't. I just wondered how much practice you've had."
Steve shot her a look. "You don't need practice."
"Everybody needs practice," Natasha retorted.
"It was not my first kiss since 1945," Steve told Natasha. "I'm 95, not dead."
Natasha let out a soft chuckle. "Nobody special though?"
"Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find somebody with shared life experience."
Natasha glanced at Connie's sleeping figure in the backseat and raised a brow. Sometimes it never occurred to Natasha that Steve and Connie were, in fact, from the same period of time. Not only that, but they had quite a bit of shared life experience. The thought had never crossed Natasha's mind until now, but she wondered exactly why the two of them weren't together, and she wondered if Steve was the man she had been referring to in her dream.
"What about Connie?"
Steve shook his head quickly. "Connie's my sister, believe it or not."
"Sister?" Natasha chuckled in disbelief.
"Yes, my mom adopted her after her first set of adoptive parents decided they didn't want to take care of her anymore," Steve told her, a frown on his face as he remembered the day he first met Connie.
"What happened to her birth mother?"
Steve shrugged. "No one knows; all we were told was that her birth mother was too young at the time to take proper care of her so she gave her away."
"Well, if that's the case then just make something up," Natasha told him with a shrug.
"What? Like you?"
"I don't know, the truth is a matter of circumstance," Natasha said. "It's not all things to all people, all the time. And neither am I."
Steve looked at her. "That's a tough way to live."
"It's a good way not to die, though."
"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is," Steve chimed.
"Yeah?" Natasha smiled. "Who do you want me to be?"
"How about a friend?"
A soft chuckle escaped Natasha's lips. "There's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers."
A wave of silence fell over them, though Natasha broke it again about five minutes later. She turned briefly to look at Connie, and it was then that she realized she didn't know as much about her friend as she originally believed to. She only knew 21st century Connie Jones; 20th century Connie Jones was nothing more than a mystery to her.
"Can I ask you another question?" Natasha inquired.
"Depends," Steve answered.
Natasha looked away from her friend to look at Steve. "It's about Connie; what was she like all those years ago? Has much about her changed since the two of you, y'know, last saw each other?"
"Quite a lot has changed, actually," Steve sighed. "After we took her in, she was so happy and so outgoing; she was the sweetest and bubbliest little thing on earth. Now, she's just, well, I don't even have the words to explain it. She's definitely not the person she used to be, but there are still some aspects of that person left inside her."
"Is she not happy?"
Steve glanced over at her and shrugged. "Definitely not the way she used to be. There's a horrid distinction between how happy she was back then and how happy she is now."
"Why's that?" Natasha asked. "Did she have a boyfriend or something?"
"She did, actually," Steve told her as he thought of Connie and Bucky. "He was the love of her life."
"That explains why she doesn't date," Natasha chuckled.
"Truth be told, I don't think she ever will. This man, he was—he was absolutely everything to her," Steve's voice was strained as he spoke. "I don't think she'll ever be able to move on from him, and personally, I don't blame her."
Natasha eyed Steve carefully. "You seem a bit upset. Were you close friends with this guy?"
"Close enough."
The remainder of the car ride was silent.
It was nearing dusk as Steve finally reached their destination. He pulled to a stop in front of an old facility fence and turned around in his seat, shaking Connie awake. She awoke fairly easily and sat up in her seat, studying her surroundings to determine where exactly it was that she was. She couldn't seem to figure it out, though, especially in her current state of mind, so she decided to just let Steve and Natasha handle things for the time being.
The three of them got out of the truck and started towards the closed fence. Connie shoved her hands into the pockets of the hoodie she had stolen from Steve and followed behind the two as she attempted to further wake herself up.
"This is it," Steve said as he stopped in front of the fence, his eyes wandering elsewhere.
"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha told him as she placed her phone back into her pocket.
"So did I," Steve said as he looked around at his surroundings.
Connie looked at him, her eyes following his to the sign on the fence that read "Camp Lehigh." Steve quickly snapped the chain lock on the fence and made his way onto the campgrounds, Connie and Natasha following after him.
"This camp is where I was trained," Steve called out as the three of them wandered the grounds.
"Change much?" Natasha asked as she and Connie scoped the surroundings.
"A little."
"Well, this is a dead end," Connie called out to him. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio."
"Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off," Natasha added.
Steve turned to look at the two of them, though his gaze fell on a building behind them. He started making his way towards it, leaving the two women to follow after him yet again.
"What's goin' on?" Connie asked as she jumped to the ground.
"Army regulations forbid storing munition within 500 yards of the barracks," Steve answered her as they approached the building door. "This building's in the wrong place."
Steve used his shield to once again snap the chain lock on the door, and in seconds the three of them were entering into the building. Steve switched the light on to reveal a S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia at the opposite side of the room, giving the trio some insight as to what the place actually was.
"This is S.H.I.E.L.D.," Connie stated.
"Maybe where it started."
The three soon entered into a room filled with nothing but dust and file shelves, as well as a few pictures hanging on the wall. Connie looked around as Steve and Natasha discussed the people in the pictures on the wall, and before long she came across something rather strange within one of the shelves. There was a draft, indicating to her that there was hollow space behind the shelves. Her theory was that it was an elevator of some sort.
"If you're already working in a secret office," Connie started as she tinkered with the shelves. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?"
Steve and Natasha walked over as she pulled the shelf away, revealing the truth behind her theory.
After punching in the correct code, the three of them stepped onto the elevator, only getting off after the elevator stopped. The three soon stepped off and into a dark room, though the lights began cutting on as they continued their stroll further into the room. A large array of old computers sat in the middle of the room they now stood in, which made Natasha wonder exactly how this was the data point.
"This can't be the data point, this technology's ancient," Natasha said as she, Connie, and Steve stepped onto the computer's platform.
She noticed a USB port sitting in front of one of the monitors and pulled out the USB drive, sticking it into the port after several seconds of contemplation. The moment she did, everything around them seemed to come to life. Connie watched as Natasha initiated the system, and before long the camera attached to the main monitor began to rotate between the three, followed by an accented voice.
"Rogers, Steven, born 1918; Jones, Constance Mae, born 1920; Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984," the accented voice spoke, startling the three of them slightly.
"It's some kind of recording," Natasha said.
"I am not a recording, Fräulein," the voice countered, startling them even further. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am."
Their eyes flickered toward the monitor on the right, which now displayed an image of a man. Steve knew who he was immediately, Connie only had a very vague sense of his identity, and Natasha didn't know who he was at all.
"You know this thing?" Natasha asked Steve as he stepped off the platform.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull," Steve answered. "He's been dead for years."
And that was it. Connie hadn't heard that name in so many years, and the last person she had heard so much as utter it was Bucky.
"First correction, I am Swiss," Zola retorted. "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 200,000 feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain."
Steve worked his way back up onto the platform, stopping and standing in between Natasha and Connie. "How did you get here?"
"Invited."
"It was Operation: Paper Clip after World War II," Natasha informed him. "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 told them.
"Hydra died with the Red Skull," Steve shot back.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
"Prove it," Connie replied as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Accessing archive," Zola spoke as numerous images began flashing on the screens. "Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize is 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, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew a beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crises, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."
Connie's eyes widened slightly as she took notice of images and video footage of not only the Winter Soldier, but her own self. For years she believed that she had been doing the disgusting work of the Soviet Union, but the truth of the matter was that she had been working for Hydra, and the mere thought of it made her feel sick to her stomach.
"That's impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D. would've stopped you," Natasha said. She seemed to be rather startled by this information, but she was most certainly not the only one.
"Accidents will happen," Zola replied slowly. "Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once a 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."
Steve swung his fist at the monitor in blind rage, effectively destroying it. Zola was not finished with them yet, however, as he appeared on one of the smaller monitors.
"As I was saying. . ."
"What's on this drive?" Steve asked, his tone stern.
"Project Insight requires insight, so I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm, what does it do?" Connie inquired.
"The answer to your question is fascinating, unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."
There was no time for a response as the door began closing behind him. Steve tried to stop it with his shield, but to no avail. Natasha's cell phone beeped from inside her pocket and she pulled it out, revealing to Connie and Steve that S.H.I.E.L.D. had fired a short range ballistic at the building.
"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain," Zola continued speaking as the three searched for a quick way out. "Admit it—it's better this way. We are, both of us, out of time."
Natasha grabbed the USB drive from the port and hurried off of the platform, as did Connie. The two rushed over to Steve as he removed one of the grates from the floor. He tossed it elsewhere and ushered the two women below before hopping in himself the moment the explosion hit.
The three huddled together as tightly as possible as the debris fell onto them. Steve protected them as best as he could with the shield, though Connie didn't dare let him ward away the falling debris on his own, and the two of them held on for as long as they could.
What felt like hours later, though Connie was sure it was only minutes, she and Steve were attempting to move debris out of the way. Connie let out a grunt as she managed to kick away what she believed to be one of the support beams, while Steve pushed away what appeared to be part of a wall. Natasha's unconscious body fell onto a rock, and Connie glanced down at her before looking to Steve.
"Steve," she said, her voice hoarse.
Steve looked back at her and looked down at Natasha. He handed Connie his shield and picked Natasha up without hesitation, and Connie stood up with him. The two of them moved out in order to find safety, and in doing so the were forced to evade those who threatened to harm them. It was not at all what they had planned for, but it looked as if trying to survive was now their main priority for the day ahead.