RANDOM street girl was right; Alexandra did know the library when she saw it. A massive stone building cast its intimidating shadow over the street above, and sure enough, the sign out front confirmed it. She had a few memories of a place called 'the library' that resurfaced, but what she remembered wasn't at all like this. People in her memories looked so different from everyone filtering in and out of the big double door. Their clothing, their hairstyles, and even their makeup bore no resemblance to what she was seeing right now. It made her ache for something she didn't remember.
"Hey, uh..." she said to a guy of about sixteen staring at what she was fairly certain was a cell phone. He looked up. "Where would I find information about...something?"
"It's a library, man." The guy shrugged. "There's information everywhere."
He started to walk away.
"Wait!" Alexandra exclaimed, and the guy paused and swiveled his head so that he was facing her. "If I wanted to research a name, where would I go? Like, someone who went missing."
"You can probably just Google it." He shrugged again. "Any old articles should show up, especially if that person was never found." He rolled his eyes. "True crime fans love a good cold case. There are computers when you turn right as soon as you go inside. Good luck, dude."
The guy walked up the steps and disappeared inside. Alexandra exhaled heavily and followed suit.
Everything in the library was quiet. People sat reading at tables and browsing gigantic shelves filled with books. Alexandra turned right the way the guy told her to, finding two back-to-back rows of four computers each. She had only limited experience with computers, seeing as she wasn't any sort of hacker, but it couldn't be too difficult to figure out. She chose a computer on the end and sat down in front of it. It was already open to "Google," and beneath it there was a white bar with a blinking black line inside it. She mimicked everyone else in the row and put fingers on the keyboard. She hit the letter 'a' with her pointer finger, and an 'a' appeared in the box. Alexandra proceeded to type in the name Sasha gave her: Alexandra Carter.
What now?
"Um...excuse me?" Alex said meekly to the woman on her right side. "How do you search something after you typed it in? And how do you pick what comes up?"
The woman eyed her suspiciously.
"You hit the 'return' key to search, and you move the mouse around to move the cursor. You move the cursor above the result you want and click it with the right side of the mouse."
"Thanks."
Alexandra turned back to the screen and pressed 'enter.' Several results popped up. The first result, published in two-thousand-five, was titled "Fifty Years Later: The Mysterious Disappearance of Alexandra Carter." She moved the mouse until the tiny arrow was right above the blue underlined text and pressed the right side. The article opened up.
Fifty Years Later: The Mysterious Disappearance of Alexandra Carter
Published December 15th, 2005
On December 15th, 1955, in New York City, eleven-year-old Alexandra Sarah Carter (pictured below) walked home from school with her friend Jacqueline Russel as she did almost every day. She was at Jacqueline's house until after sundown, which wasn't out of the ordinary for her. Both Jacqueline and her mother, Marie Russel, watched Alexandra leave their home at around 8:30 that night.
That was the last confirmed time anyone saw Alexandra Carter.
When Alexandra didn't return home that night, her mother, Margaret "Peggy" Carter, immediately became worried. She and her husband, Alexandra's step-father Daniel Sousa, contacted the Russel family at 9:15 in hopes that Alexandra was still there, but the Russels told them that Alexandra left 45 minutes ago. Frantic, they reached out to every person who might have information and no one had seen her. They notified the police that she was missing, and when Alexandra didn't turn up in the next two days, they began an investigation.
The police interviewed anyone who had connections to Alexandra Carter. Several teachers and classmates confirmed that they saw Alexandra leave Rogers Elementary School with Russel at 3:00 that day. None of them reported anything out of the ordinary about that day, and most classmates had no problem with her. Nobody knew of any reason someone might have taken her, though one classmate, John Miller, claimed he once saw Alexandra dent a locker with her fist after another classmate known for harassing other kids made an offensive comment about her mother. There are no other witnesses to verify this statement.
Ultimately, there were no major leads in the investigation. Peggy Carter and Daniel Sousa were both investigated but determined not to be suspects. Peggy Carter suggested several potential suspects, but never expanded on how she knew them. They were also dead ends. She also refused to provide any information about Alexandra's biological father except that he had died in the war in 1944. There was nothing to suggest where Alexandra was or if she was alive. After months of investigation, the searching came to a lull, but the family continued to maintain the belief that she was alive somewhere.
Now, 50 years have passed since the day Alexandra Carter went missing. There have been at least 53 reported sightings of Alexandra both within the United States and, based on provided descriptions, in various other countries, but none of these claims were ever verified. 24 of those sightings were reported after 1990. Any footage of the person they say is Alexandra is not clear enough to determine whether or not she is. In almost every reported sighting, the witness describes "Alexandra" as looking only a few years older than she did in the images provided by her family, despite the fact that these sightings were all reported at least five years after her disappearance. Many sightings describe her wearing all black, her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and they place her at the scene of many major assassinations and fatal altercations all over the world, though again, none of these sightings can be proven.
Despite the fact that 50 years have passed since Alexandra's disappearance and no evidence has ever confirmed her whereabouts or whether or not she's alive, her family hasn't given up on searching for Alexandra. Up until his death in 1957, her step-father Daniel Sousa made efforts to look for any signs of Alexandra, and to this day, Peggy Carter, now 84 and in and out of dementia episodes, still hopes for closure. Alexandra's half-brother Michael, who was 5 at the time of her disappearance, is currently 55, and he has taken on the responsibility of fielding the claims about his sister's disappearance. Alexandra's half-sister Sarah (father unidentified), born four years after Alexandra disappeared, also continues to look for answers about the sister she never met.
To this day, Alexandra Carter's disappearance remains a cold case.
If you have any tips or potential leads on the case of Alexandra's disappearance, contact Michael Sousa via the number and website listed below.
Alexandra's eyes widened. She rarely ever saw her own face, but she knew that picture was her.
This didn't make any sense. According to that article, Alexandra Carter was a random little kid from New York City. Hydra was a massive, powerful organization trying to take over the world. There had to be a missing piece here, because there was no way Hydra went to the trouble of snatching a child unless they were after something specific.
She hit the 'back' arrow in the top left hand corner of the screen and returned to the results page. The next link was to what looked like it was a government site, or so she assumed by the '.gov' at the end, but it also said 'Hydra.'
It had her name on it. This was her file. She opened it, biting her lip.
Name: Alexandra Sarah Carter
Date of Birth: 12/03/1945
Place of Birth: New York City, New York, US
Hair: Brown
This was useless. Her eyes flickered across the page until she found what she was looking for.
Family: Margaret Carter (mother), Steven Rogers (father), Daniel Sousa (step-father), Michael Sousa (half-brother), Sarah Carter (presumed half-sister)
Steven Rogers. Steve Rogers. The guy she was trying to kill two hours ago was her father. She'd been briefed about him and his friends before the mission, convinced that they were a threat to humanity, and now this. Her mind failed to compute.
This would explain everything. This would explain why Hydra wanted her. They didn't give her her enhanced strength, she was born with it because she was the daughter of the blond guy she was supposed to kill. Hydra kidnapped her to use her. She could remember it now.
It was snowing that night. She said goodbye to Jacqueline, a short, thin girl with black hair, and she stepped outside. She hopped down the front stoop and walked down the street. There was a man behind her. He grabbed her, and she could tell he had a metal arm.
The Soldier. If only she had a way to contact him, to tell him that if she had been someone before Hydra, maybe he had too.
They pushed her into a facility. At the time, she didn't recognize it, but now she knew it all too well. They took her blood and shoved her into a cell. They wanted to replicate her strength. They didn't want her.
But they needed her. Her strength couldn't be recreated, so they took her instead. They turned her and the soldier into Captain America's polar opposites. They beat and shocked the humanity out of a child until she could only remember herself as an it, not a person. She could only see herself as a monster, as KillSwitch.
Now she had the humanity that they had taken from her all those years ago (she had known she'd been frozen awhile, but she didn't think it had been on and off since nineteen-fifty-six), as well as bits and pieces of who she was before. All she needed to do was fill in those blanks. This article was decently old, but maybe she could track Peggy or Michael or even Sarah down. She figured it was at least worth a shot to see if she could find an address, and if it was a thing, pull up directions, seeing as she had no phone or whatever the hell an email was. She searched up Michael's name, and sure enough, after a bit of digging, there it was (that seemed very safe). And it was in the DC area.
"I'm sorry to bother you," Alexandra whispered to the woman beside her, "but is there a way to find directions on here?"
"Leave me alone, kid," the woman hissed.
Fine.
Alexandra opened a new tab, proud of her new ability to use the Google, and found a site that had a map. Under 'from,' the library's address was already typed in. She tapped Michael's address into the 'to' spot and hit 'map.' She snatched up a pen that was sitting on the table and wrote every step of the directions on her hand, as well as the address just in case. Then she stood up.
"Thanks for the help!" Alexandra said brightly to the woman beside her, who glared at her. She sauntered out of the library into the fresh air, her mind full of possibilities. She could find her brother. If her mother was still alive and not consumed by dementia, maybe she could find her too. And maybe she could meet the elusive Sarah.
And maybe she could track down Captain America himself.
Now that she was out of her old uniform and wearing new clothes, Alexandra felt like a totally different person. She didn't feel like KillSwitch anymore, but she also didn't feel like the little girl in that picture. She had been through too much and grown up too much to be tiny, delicate Alexandra Carter. Alexandra Carter needed to be rebranded. She could be Allie?
No. Though she was pretty sure her mother used to call her that. Alexa was a no. Lexie was an absolute no. She could be Alex?
Yes. She could be Alex. She could be Alex Carter.
Alex Carter needed to get her ass to thirty-six Jefferson Avenue before the sun went down.
Alex glanced at her hand and broke into a jog down the street. She really hoped her brother wouldn't have a heart attack seeing his sister looking virtually the same after fifty years.
★★★
Sarah is my way of accommodating Endgame.