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𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝘼𝙉𝙊𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙍 𝙏𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙈𝙊𝙑𝙄𝙀.
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍: The Babysitter's Club 2.0
𝐒.𝐇.𝐈.𝐄.𝐋.𝐃. 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ─ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍
𝟏𝟏 𝐉𝐀𝐍𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟒
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
☆
The sound of an arrow whizzing through the air until it landed hard against the target made Lizzie's body slowly come back to life. She was sleep-deprived, every muscle in her body was tense and sore, and by now, all feeling had been lost in her face after crying for so long the first few hours everything started. When she lowered the bow, squinting to see where she'd hit, she couldn't even be excited when she discovered that the arrow was in the center. Clint would've been proud, even with a bruised shoulder, she was still showing off. She missed him. She missed Steve.
"I've got another meeting to go to in a few minutes," she heard Carson call out behind her. "Monroe's going to watch you next. Sharon'll come in after him on her break."
Lizzie only gave a nod in acknowledgement. The Babysitter's Club 2.0 consisted of Sharon, Carson, and Monroe taking shifts throughout the last 32 hours when one of them would be called out for a meeting or briefing over the updating news regarding Steve's location or the death of Fury. Unfortunately, Sharon was one of the busiest of them all because of her involvement with Steve and had to constantly reintroduce old information every so often to new higher-ups that were getting involved. Lizzie hadn't seen much of her sister, the one person she actually wanted to see.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was a warzone, and she was directly in the middle of it. Every so often, she would change locations. Sometimes, she'd be in Monroe's classroom with him. Most times, she'd be in Carson's office with all of the random trinkets she made, computer galore staring her in the face for hours. Or now, when she'd convinced Carson to let her release some of her stress by shooting in the weapon's room.
"Carson?" she finally asked after a few minutes, letting her bow fall completely and turning around. Carson was seated on a few training mats, her laptop in front of her, looking even worse for wear than Lizzie remembered. All of them did.
Carson blinked a few times, glancing up. "Yeah, Baby C?"
"Why hasn't anyone asked to speak with me yet? I was closest to him."
Carson stiffened. The question had been on Lizzie's mind for a while. If they were so eager hearing from Sharon, and her sister barely interacted with Steve, why was Lizzie not being interrogated by the higher-ups (like Alexander Pierce, the man she'd learned about yesterday)? She spent the most time with Steve. Fury gave her the job to get close to Steve. She did that...so why was no one coming for her? It didn't make sense.
Maybe they knew she wouldn't tell them anything.
"Don't worry about it," Carson said tight-lipped, giving her a fake smile that Lizzie could see right through. When she went to protest, the woman's face fell and she shook her head. "Don't ask questions, Lizzie. Just...just let us keep you safe, okay? Fury made sure you were protected before he died. Let us continue doing that."
Fury made sure she was protected? What the hell did that mean? Lizzie contemplated whether or not to pry any more, but decided against it when Carson returned back to fiddling with her laptop. Turning around again, Lizzie grabbed another arrow from her quiver and lined it up, the pain gradually burning down her arm feeling nothing like the pain everywhere else.
If she distracted herself from everything, whether that be going down to the training room to hit some things or the weapon's room to practice shooting (escorted by her babysitter of the hour), Lizzie could pretend like everything was somewhat alright. Kind of. Like, she could pretend that she hadn't been obsessively checking her flip-phone to see if Steve got her message. Or that she hadn't been thinking about whether or not he was safe. Or that being in S.H.I.E.L.D. scared her when it never did before. With the way that Carson, Sharon, and Monroe were acting, she felt like they were hiding her from S.H.I.E.L.D. and keeping her presence a secret as much as—but she didn't know why.
None of it made sense to her. She'd asked questions to receive no reply, the looks and the manhunt out for Steve, all of it was raising the red flags and warning signs she'd been taught to look out for over the last few months. But surely, she had to be overreacting right? Surely.
The phone in the pocket of her shorts buzzed, but Lizzie did not hear it that time. For once, she decided not to obsessively check her phone. If she had, she would've seen an important message from the one person she worried about most. This time, he was warning her. This time, he was worried about her.
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐎𝐍, 𝐃.𝐂. ─ 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐅𝐓𝐎𝐏
Agent Jasper Sitwell was being thrown forward by Steve Rogers on the rooftop of the building, stumbling on his feet but managing to hold onto his sadistic humor nonetheless. That only made the frustration inside of Steve dig a little deeper into his skin. The last two days had already been eventful enough for him: finding out that S.H.I.E.L.D. was corrupted by HYDRA, he'd essentially died for nothing all those years ago, nearly getting blown up by the agency he used to trust, and—on top of all of that—fighting the nagging worry about a certain thirteen-year-old caught in the crossfire.
Needless to say, he did not have time for niceties. "Tell me about Zola's algorithm."
"Never heard of it," Sitwell dismissed quickly, still smirking as he looked at Steve.
Time to try again. "What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?"
"I was throwing up. I get seasick," and with his little display of sarcasm, Steve forced Sitwell to the edge of the building by his lapels. Sitwell only sneered, chuckling at the man who was holding onto him. "Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're gonna throw me off the roof? Because it's really not your style, Rogers."
"You're right. It's not. It's hers."
Steve stepped aside to reveal another person to Sitwell, and before the man can even let his eyes widen in horror, Natasha sent a heavy foot in the center of his chest. He plummeted quickly, his screams ringing down each floor he fell. In the meantime of Sitwell's demise, Natasha turned to look over at Steve, tilting her head as a new thought approached. He'd shoved his hands into his pockets like he was waiting for the next taxi.
"What about that girl from accounting. Laura..."
"Lillian," Steve announced, raising his finger to his mouth to gesture. "Lip piercing, right?"
"Yeah, she's cute."
"Yeah... I'm not ready for that."
Suddenly, their newest addition to the fugitives came into view just as Sitwell's curdling scream got louder once again. Sam Wilson, in a jet-pack suit with wings, appeared with the dangling and traumatized Sitwell in his arms. Steve and Natasha walked over to where Sam threw him down, and the moment that Sitwell's back was against solid ground, he rolled over and held his hands up in surrender.
With clenched teeth, Sitwell blabbered all. "Zola's algorithm is a program for choosing Insight's targets!"
"What targets?" Steve hissed out, standing over the man.
"You!" he spluttered out quickly, inching back under the shadow of Captain America. "A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to HYDRA. Now, or in the future."
"The Future?" Steve's brows furrowed in confusion. "How could it know?"
Sitwell let out a low laugh like it was obvious. "How could it not? The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it..." they looked at him in confusion as he pulled himself slowly to his feet. "Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future...the little brat I was training at SHIELD is an example of one—"
Steve stopped in his tracks. "What did you just say?"
"Agent Thirteen's brat of a little sister. The one I was training at SHIELD. She's on the list too." Sitwell blanched when he noticed the way Steve's face darkened at the new information. The dots were then connected between her and Steve, and his mouth dropped open wide. Panic riddled his body. "Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me."
"What then?" When Sitwell did not reply fast enough, Steve's hands reached to roughly grab him by the lapels of his suit again. "What then?!"
"Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time."
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
𝐒.𝐇.𝐈.𝐄.𝐋.𝐃. 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ─ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍
Lizzie spun around in the swivel chair, wincing every so often when she stopped as the motion sickness got the better of her. Monroe was across the room, typing away on a laptop like Carson was doing earlier, glancing over at his wrist bracelet (the one that tracked what he did, Lizzie remembered) ever so often. She pursed her lips in boredom, tired of sitting there in silence. If she had to do that, her thoughts would become deafening, and since Monroe dragged her out of the weapon's room to go back to Carson's office, the only thing she could do was stare at Monroe. Or pick at the gross ham and cheese sandwich he'd brought her, paired with an apple juice box for laughs.
"I'm bored," she said, frowning at him.
He didn't even glance up. She narrowed her eyes. The screen he had pulled up was confusing, but it wasn't anything she hadn't seen before from Sharon. It was clearly a S.H.I.E.L.D. regulated laptop, and he was clearly doing something S.H.I.E.L.D. related, but she didn't get the point of the coordinates or why 'PROJECT INSIGHT' was written at the top. Monroe ran logistics and cyber interface, that much she knew. Monroe had found Steve's location one time, Carson said. Monroe was smart—which meant that Monroe was, undoubtedly, probably trying to track down Steve at the moment.
She sighed, going to criss-cross her legs in the chair and push against the desk with one of the screens so she could spin again. Monroe's eyes lifted on her for a brief moment, softening, before they went back to his job. That continued for another five minutes, until she started to feel dizzy and decided to stop. Her hands went to her pockets, wanting to reach out and see if she'd received anything from Steve, but she paused. Her eyes caught on Monroe's and she realized he couldn't know she had contact with Steve.
"I have to pee," she said, going to push herself up off the chair.
Monroe's nose wrinkled, and he shot to look up at her. "Don't fall in."
"Good one," she huffed, rolling her eyes at him.
She moved to walk out of the door just to hear Monroe shout a quick, "Hurry up!" before she shut it behind him. The only good thing about being babysit by Monroe was that he couldn't follow her to the bathroom like Carson and Sharon did. It was the one time she had the chance to breathe a little without a constant watchful eye.
On her way to the bathroom just down the hall, she had already been ready to pull the phone out of her pocket when she slammed hard into the body of someone. The impact was enough for her to go falling to the ground, landing hard on her tailbone. A string of curse words threatened to escape her mouth, but she decided not to say any of them in an attempt to be nice.
"Watch it, kid," hissed the voice.
She looked up instantly to see that a group of men were standing in front of her, looking exceptionally dirty and very pissed off. The one who ran into her stayed there while the others kept going on their trail past her, not even attempting to help her off the ground. Her eyes caught what was written on the arms of their bloodied bulletproof vests—STRIKE— written along with the S.H.I.E.L.D. badge.
Pushing herself up slowly from the ground, she cleared her throat. "Sorry."
"No, Rogers got away," was heard, muffled, through the com on the man's shoulder. His jaw clenched, but he never once took his eyes off her. Lizzie did her best not to freeze up at the message, all of her training having prepared her to act like everything was fine when her insides were suddenly churning. That meant the man in front of her had been chasing after Steve. Steve got away.
Glancing at her up and down, his stare narrowed before he moved to his shoulder, clicking down on it once. "Rumlow here. Someone call Pierce. Ask him if he knows why we're running a daycare now."
Then, he walked past her after one final, degrading look, leaving Lizzie to stand in the middle of the hallway for a moment as she tried to catch her breath. Only when she knew he was no longer in the line of sight did she quickly rush toward the bathroom, slamming the door open and then twisting around so that she could lock it shut. With her heart racing in her chest, she slid down the door and closed her eyes, attempting to get a hold of herself.
Going up to clutch the only comfort she had, her eyes shot open when she realized she'd accidentally gripped the panic button Carson gave her from earlier instead of Bucky's tags. Scowling, knowing now who the STRIKE team was that the button called upon, she moved to rip the thing over her head. She stood up as quickly as possible, dumping the necklace in the trashcan and letting it fall all the way to the bottom with a bang.
Then, she turned to look in the mirror of the bathroom and nearly blanched at the sight of herself. Her ponytail was no longer a ponytail, but a rats nest hanging onto its last few strands at the nape of her neck. First order of business was taking it out, running her fingers through the tangles, and putting it back up into a ponytail at the top of her head. Her eyes were swollen, red, and puffy—sleep-deprived as well, considering there were dark circles underneath her eyelids. She splashed some water over her face and hoped it helped. It didn't. She tried, though.
She was still wearing her oversized shirt, her black Nike shorts barely visible. That reminded her of the flip phone, and she reached to grab a hold of it. The second she saw '1 Missed Text from CAPTAIN CRUNCH' in the little mailbox, her heart leapt in her chest. Working quickly to see what Steve had to say, she pressed the icon and waited.
SHIELD IS HYDRA. GET OUT. NOW.
Lizzie was thankful she'd put her hair up, because not a second later was she throwing up.
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐎𝐍, 𝐃.𝐂. ─ 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘
Bucky's alive, Bucky's alive, Bucky's alive, Bucky's alive, Bucky. Steve's head rambled with only one single thought. What happened in the middle of Washington was something engrained into his brain for the rest of his life, the sight of his face and the clear lack of recognition—Bucky was alive, but Bucky didn't know who Steve was—Bucky was the Winter Soldier. Bucky, his best friend.
But soon enough, those words morphed into a different story as he stood staring into the eyes of the man he thought he watched die. Nicholas Fury was also living, flipping through a series of files in front of him looking more alive than the rest of them right now. Natasha, with a bullet hole through her shoulder, Sam with cuts and bruises all over his body, and Steve—Steve, who had to hold onto the broken heart forming. Bucky was alive.
"This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize," Fury spoke for the first time since they'd seen him in the hospital bed earlier. Maria Hill was seated at his side, watching as he stared at the picture of a young Alexander Pierce. "He said, 'Peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility.' See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues."
"We have to stop the launch," Natasha said.
The launch. The launch of Project Insight that threatened to kill the lives of millions. The launch that threatened to kill him—the launch that threatened to kill Lizzie. That kickstarted something in Steve that had become distracted, and he stepped forward to make himself apart of the conversation again. No matter how much the nagging in the back of his mind kept repeating the same phrase. No matter how much he wanted to dig out his phone just to hear her voice—to let her know. Bucky was alive.
"I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore," Fury scoffed, opening a black, case containing three chips inside of it.
Sam's eyebrows raised at them. "What's that?"
"Once the Helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites becoming fully weaponized," Maria explained, glancing over at Fury and the chips.
He pointed to them. "We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own."
"One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are gonna die."
Fury pursed his lips, meeting eyes with Steve. "We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We need to get pass them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left..."
Before Fury could say anymore, Steve stepped up and scowled down at the man. "We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD."
"SHIELD had nothing to do with it—"
"You gave me this mission. This is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised, you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed," Steve hashed out quickly, his features tightening in frustration that he was even having this conversation with Fury right now.
"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed."
Steve's jaw clenched. "And how many paid the price before you did?"
"Look, I didn't know about Barnes—" Fury began.
"Even if you have, would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalized that too like you did Lizzie?" he asked, biting back with an air of bitterness. Fury fell silent, and the man realized the mistake that had been made. Before he could even begin an explanation, Steve shook his head. "SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes."
"He's right," Maria agreed softly.
When Fury looked at his right-hand, upset at her agreement, and then at Natasha who did not meet his eye, he turned to the man standing behind him for his answer. Sam raised his hands in the air, shaking his head and pointing at Steve. "Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower."
"Well... looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain," Fury said, accepting his resignation in full stride.
Before they could begin the conversation on how exactly they were going to accomplish getting into S.H.I.E.L.D. and taking down the Helicarriers, Steve felt the familiar buzz in his jeans and pulled it out instantly. The screen was completely cracked, shattered from the impact of the car accident and dealing with...he swallowed hard, squinting to read the message that was shown on the phone with extreme difficulty. He knew it could only be from one person.
Fury looked at the phone with a scowl, his eyes catching Natasha's. "What is that?"
"Steve's super secret spy phone," Natasha said casually, glancing up at the phone. "What's she saying now?"
"She?" Maria interrupted. Fury knew.
"Rogers has someone on the inside."
From behind Natasha, Sam glanced down at her and frowned. "Yeah, a kid—"
"Rogers."
Fury calling out his name broke Steve free of the trance he'd been in after reading the text from Lizzie. The four of them had been conversing so much about the phone that they didn't take the time to see how that text message had affected him. His shoulders were tight, close to his neck and stiff as he clutched the phone tightly in his palm. Not close enough to break it any more, but close enough to feel the pressure as it cracked underneath. Obviously, he had not liked the message received.
Steve glanced up, and all eyes were on him. Natasha looked, expectantly. "Well? What's she got?"
"I told her that HYDRA was in SHIELD," he started, his eyes catching the room's reaction. Fury's lips were tight, but he said nothing, only nodded. Steve's jaw clenched as he glanced down at the phone again. "She said Pierce is controlling everything now that they think Fury is dead. The STRIKE team just came back to the Triskelion, she ran into Rumlow. Agent... Monroe," he glanced down to make sure that was right "...is with her right now. He's got a screen pulled up with Project Insight."
Fury's brows furrowed. "I didn't assign Monroe to the Insight task force. Mayfield had oversight."
"Who's Monroe?" Steve asked instantly, scowling at Fury.
"Agent Three's instructor while she was working with SHIELD—"
Steve could only feel his chest rising with frustration. "Agent Three?"
"She insisted we give her an agent number. She was pretty adamant," Fury explained casually, no more concerned about Steve's growing anger than he was about the side-eyes Maria was giving him. He'd not told her about the involvement of Lizzie. "Can she get any information about what Monroe is doing with Insight—"
"We're not using her as a pawn for our dirty work, Nick," Steve hissed out through his teeth, his eyes lighting up with rage. "She's thirteen. Don't you think you've done enough?"
Fury pointed at the phone in his hands. "You think that kid isn't going to get involved now that she knows about HYDRA? You know her better than all of us, Rogers. So we can either ask her to help us out our way, or you can let her go off and poke around in the wrong places with the wrong people. Sitwell trained her—"
"Nice," Natasha slurred sarcastically, giving Fury a pointed stare to show her disapproval of that.
"She was just an associate—"
Steve glared heavily at him. "—who you had spy on me."
"No. That was Agent Thirteen's job," Fury disagreed. "Her job was to become your friend. Introduce you to the real world and get you up and running again. I wanted to see if you were trustworthy. If the kid trusted you, then I knew I would be able to."
"Yeah? How'd that work out for you?"
"You're standing here, aren't you?" He stared at him blankly. Then he nodded toward the phone again. "We need someone on the inside. You have the only contact here. Whether you like it or not, Rogers, she's the only option we have."
Everyone in the room could feel the anger rolling off Steve's body in waves with furious glares in Fury's direction for what he had done. Fury never once turned his one good eye off the man. Instead, he watched as Rogers groveled away in his emotions that were all his fault. Fury had been the one to introduce Steve to Lizzie, just like he'd been the one to instruct her to get close with him. What Fury, perhaps, did not think about enough in advance was just how close the two of them would be. He definitely never thought he would be in a situation, asking Captain Rogers to involve the thirteen-year-old girl he'd wiped from the system in a life-or-death mission.
"What do you want me to tell her?"
───○☆ ✸ ☆○───
𝐒.𝐇.𝐈.𝐄.𝐋.𝐃. 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ─ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍
From: CAPTAIN CRUNCH
WE NEED A WAY INSIDE. WE'RE COMING. LAY LOW. DON'T TRUST ANYONE. CAN YOU FIND OUT WHAT MONROE IS DOING?
Lizzie let that text message repeat in her head even after she'd shoved her phone away and retreated back to Carson's office with a heavier stride. Now, even the smallest of sounds made her whizz around, way too paranoid and hyperaware of her surrounds after what she'd just been told. When she finally got back, slowly closing the door behind her with a racing heartbeat, she was immediately met with the heated glare of Monroe with his hands at his hips.
"I thought I told you not to fall in," he hissed, glaring at her. She blinked for a few seconds, but then cleared her throat, shrugging and trying to return back to her usual self before he noticed anything odd. "What'd you do, go on a tour around the entire facility?"
She pursed her lips, walking past him and returning back to her swivel seat. "Started my period. I didn't have a tampo—"
"Absolutely not," Monroe interrupted, raising his hand up. "I don't need to hear anything relevant to you and the insertion of things into your reproductive organ. Thank you very much for ruining my entire day."
"You asked," she said pointedly.
Monroe shot her a glare before going back to his seat, returning back to the screen he'd been messing with before. Lizzie didn't have a good enough view of what he was doing—and all she could think about was Steve's message. Don't trust anyone, he had said. She watched Monroe for a few seconds, a gut wrenching feeling hanging heavily in her chest. There's no way he was HYDRA, right? Monroe was weird and an asshole sometimes...but he would never join HYDRA. He was too obsessed with Captain America.
Lizzie didn't allow herself to question every single relationship she'd developed at S.H.I.E.L.D. since she started—because that would only add to the paranoia, and she couldn't develop any more trust issues. Just do your job, MJ. Figure out what Monroe was doing. She thought about the best way to get close enough, pursing her lips to the left and right. Then, she glanced down at the chair she was in and had an idea.
Pushing herself in a straight line, Lizzie allowed the rollers at the bottom of the chair to glide her closer to Monroe. She quickly took a glance at the screen, narrowing her eyes when she saw a list of names, but before he got too suspicious, she pushed herself in the opposite direction. He glanced up, annoyed that she was going back and forth, but he was definitely not aware. So Lizzie did it again, pursing her lips. That time, she stayed just a bit too long, and was able to see that the coordinates were more than one coordinate—but millions.
"What are you doing, Lizzie?"
Lizzie ignored every bodily instinct to freeze up, and instead turned to meet Monroe's eyes with a frown. He'd quickly exited out of what he had been doing previously so that the only thing pulled up now were the cameras inside the Triskelion. "I'm bored."
"Go do a puzzle," he said, rolling his eyes.
"I'd literally rather do absolutely anything than that," she said, curling her lip up and feigning disgust. Thinking quick on her feet, she pouted in his direction and put her hands together in a praying motion. "Will you go get me food? And, like, a Rubix cube? Or literally anything fun?"
He looked unamused at her. "How do I know you're not going to run for it, Houdini?"
"Because I'm cramping, and I'd rather die than run anywhere right now."
Lizzie was quick on her shoes in her response, and Monroe scowled before raising himself up off of his chair. She pushed away again, going in another line down the room with a fake grin in his direction as he made his way for the door. Before he could exit, his hand hovering over the handle, he turned his head around and pointed at her with the finger of death she'd gotten used to receiving.
"If you do anything, I swear to you—"
She interrupted him, waving him off. "You'll wring my neck. Yeah, yeah. I know. Can you try and find me some chocolate, too, while you're gone?"
"I never signed up to be your servant," he hissed, scowling at her.
"As my current babysitter, though, you're required to feed me—or my sister kills you."
Monroe shut up real quick at the reminder of Sharon and turned around with a huff in his step, grumbling about how he didn't get paid enough to be a babysitter. Then, he left through the door, and she waited until she heard the sound of a loud lock from the outside as he put in the passcode for Carson's office. The moment his footsteps could no longer be heard, Lizzie used all of her momentum to shove herself back to the laptop he'd been at while rolling in the chair.
When she got there, she shoved the other chair away and instantly pulled up the screen. She clenched her jaw when she noticed the billions of cameras literally everywhere. Pulling out her phone, she didn't even hesitate to press the only number in the contact and then the word 'CALL.'
Her feet tapped anxiously, and she gnawed on her lip as she clicked around on the monitor to try and see where the secret file was that Monroe had been working on. Just as she pressed on a certain file labeled 'ENCRYPTED' she heard the dial tone stop and the sound of someone picking up the phone.
"Hello?" Lizzie's hand froze on the keys of the laptop, and her eyes instantly welled up with tears at the sound of Steve's voice. With a growing lump in her throat, she tried to speak. "Lizzie? Are you there?"
Lizzie. Her heart beat even more erratically hearing her real name come out of his mouth. "Steve? Are you okay? They sent the STRIKE team, and then whenever I ran into that Rumlow guy, they said that you got away but he looked like they put up a fight—"
As she let all of her concerns escape through her mouth, on the other end of the phone, Steve felt his heart fill up with unkempt emotions as he heard her speak. The others were silent as they had their conversation, Steve not having put it on speaker phone just yet. Natasha noticed the pain in his eyes, the tears that would never develop into anything more than a glimmer.
Steve cleared her throat, and Lizzie paused. "I'm sorry. I just...when I saw that they were after you—"
"I'm okay. Are you alright? Where are you?" he asked, directing her out of her rant. "Are you by yourself?"
Lizzie glanced around Carson's office, and then at the laptop. "I'm in Carson's office. Agent Mayfield. Sharon and her and Monroe have been taking rounds trying to keep me out of sight...I'm alone right now, but I don't know how much time I have. They've been hovering around me like crazy. Monroe left his laptop open, but the Project Insight file is encrypted, I think. But I saw coordinates and names, and I've got access to all of the cameras in the facility—"
"Can you turn any of them off?"
Lizzie stopped breathing all together when she heard the sound of the familiar voice, her confusion rattling in her bones and eyes starting to water yet again. "Director Fury?"
"We can talk about my resurrection later, Agent Three," he called on the other end of the line, catching the frowns of both Maria and Natasha. He leaned forward on the speaker phone. "Do you have access to turning any of the cameras off?"
Lizzie did her best to remain levelheaded even though a dead man was alive, the facility she was in was overrun by HYDRA, and she had about five minutes left before Monroe threw a sandwich and chocolate at her face. Putting the phone up to her ear and shoulder, she used both hands to try and figure out the mechanics of the technology in front of her. She was smart, sure, but when it came to spy gear, she was a bit out of her—oh.
"I got them," she called out when she saw that she could override the system. She supposed there were perks to using Monroe's laptop, especially when she knew that shouldn't be possible. "Which ones do you need me to take out? I have access to the cameras, and then I think Monroe booted himself into the card identification system—"
"Take out all of it in the East Wing," called another voice, and she furrowed her brows. It sounded somewhat familiar, but not familiar enough to remember it. It was a woman, though. "We'll be going into the ops center on the second floor. There should be two entries, one to get into the Triskelion and another to get through the stairwell."
Lizzie glanced over at the door, her knee starting to go faster, and then she started to click away at the different cameras. Maybe she could loop it—Monroe wasn't an idiot, he'd know if the screens were completely black or even frozen, but if she could loop it—her eyes lit with excitement and she nearly jumped out of her seat when she saw a certain algorithm chart, quickly writing in something that Monroe had taught her in one of her lessons back in November.
When the screens froze for a moment, and then started up again, she could have cried tears of joy when she realized that it worked. Then, she moved onto the entries, beginning with the one that got them into the building.
"MJ?"
Lizzie was too focused to notice his use of her nickname. "Cameras are down. I just got the first entryway into the place in the back, near that weird-looking statue you guys have—" she paused, suddenly going very silent after finishing up the stairwell entry, when she heard the sound of shoes approaching. "I have to go. Monroe's coming back. I got the entrance to the stairs. You'll need to get into the ops building yourself. Be careful."
"Wait, MJ—" Steve tried to interject, a thousand words popping in his brain.
She clicked out of the browser until it was back to how it usually was, making sure everything looked perfectly normal and undisturbed. "I'll be okay, Steve. Just come get me please. I've gotta go."
Before he could say anything more, she shoved the phone back in her pocket and pushed her chair far away as quickly as she could. Just in time for Monroe to swing open the door, his eyes instantly going to his laptop before they fell on her figure as she went swirling in the chair near him. When she landed close enough, she used her feet as brakes and grabbed a hold of the food he'd brought her—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a brownie, and a bottle of water.
"I thought I said bring me something fun," she frowned.
Monroe rolled his eyes, going back to the laptop. "Don't be ungrateful, hoodlum. Flip the water bottle and find some enjoyment in staring at a wall."
Lizzie huffed obnoxiously and whirled herself over to one of the tables across from Monroe. As she picked at the crust on her sandwich, she waited with a throbbing heart race to see if he would suspect anything different in his laptop. But when he didn't, and he just returned to typing on it as usual, Lizzie felt the lap of pride and victory erupt in her chest. That only lasted a moment—because, the next second, all of the concern and fear rushed back to her.
Because Lizzie wasn't sure who to trust anymore, but she did know one thing. If she had to pick her side, it would be Steve. It would always be Steve—her phone buzzed in her pocket once more, and she did not have to look at it that time to know what it said.
From: CAPTAIN CRUNCH
THANK YOU.
Steve might not have trusted her right now, but at least he knew she was on his side. And hopefully, when it came down to a fight, he would be on her side, as well. Because Lizzie wasn't sure what she was going to do if he wasn't. Only when she took a bite into her brownie did she realize something—he called her MJ.
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Author's Note:
You guys are receiving these chapters at a different pace than I am writing them, but let me just tell you—I have NEVER written chapters so fast in my life, especially over a movie. I'm so eager and anticipating every single minute of this story that I want to write it out just so I can see what happens next...Lizzie's my favorite, clearly.
SO...SO MUCH HAPPENED. For starters, Lizzie's locked up in SHIELD and now she knows about HYDRA. Plus, Steve found out that she's a threat for Project Insight. What do you think about all of this?
Most importantly, what do you think about how Steve is managing everything? He has so much to deal with, so I didn't want it to seem unrealistic but rather to flow naturally. He doesn't have the time to confront her with everything going on, as seen at the end of this chapter.
LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! Please! Feedback is always motivational.
Lots of love, sending you well wishes and safety.