CHAPTER ELEVEN:

CAMP

NATASHA AND STEVE walked through the empty camp, the blonde continuously glancing around the familiar place as he thinks of all the stuff that happened years and years ago. Natasha still held the device in her hand, arm raised upwards.

"This camp is where I was trained." Steve informs.

"Change much?" Natasha questions.

"A little." Steve replies.

The blonde looks out into the distance as memories goes through his mind, remembering all the training him and his sister did when they had been smaller, before they even became super soldiers.

"This is a dead end." Natasha speaks up. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have a router to throw people off."

Glancing over at the super soldier, her brows furrow once she sees him looking out in the distance at a building in the camp.

"What is it?" Natasha questions.

Instead of responding, Steve starts walking towards the small building, Natasha quickly following, walking in sync with the blonde.

"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within five hundred yards of the barracks. This whole building is in the wrong place." Steve observes, both of them stopping at the door.

The blonde proceeds to hit his vibranium shield against the weaker metal, the lock against the door breaking instantly. He opens the door, where the two then find themselves walking down a pair of stairs, Natasha switching the lights on, revealing the place to be like an office.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha states.

"Maybe where it started." Steve responds.

The two continue walking further inside, Steve soon opening a door, him and Natasha walking into a new room where their gazes stop on three pictures on the wall.

"And there's Stark's father." Natasha points out.

Steve nods. "Howard."

The red head glances at the blonde, noticing his blue eyes lingering on the photograph of Peggy Carter.

"Who's the girl?" Natasha asks.

Instead of replying, Steve walks away from her, soon stopping in front of an empty bookshelf. Natasha soon follows, stopping beside him.

"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve pushes against the bookshelf, revealing a secret pair of doors at the end. "why do you need to hide the elevator?"

Natasha walks forward, bringing the device out from her pocket as she scans the fingerprints on the pad for the passcode to the doors. Once she got them, she typed them in, the elevator doors opening up with a ding.

The two share a glance before slowly walking in, the elevator soon starting to move downwards as they stood in silence. Eventually, the elevator comes to a stop, the doors opening again, revealing a dark room on the other side. Natasha and Steve walk through, the doors closing behind them.

Walking further into the room, the lights suddenly turn on, the two glancing around the room they were in as they continue walking towards some computers that sat on a desk in front of them.

Natasha furrows her brows in confusion. "This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient."

Steve glances at her, watching as she plugs in the hard drive into something, everything in the room around them turning on.

INITIATE SYSTEM? Are the words that are typed onto the computer screen.

Natasha leans forward, typing. "Y-E-S spells yes. Shall we play a game?" Natasha states, glancing back at the blonde. "It's from a movie that was really-"

"I know, I saw it." Steve interrupts.

Glancing back at the screen, the two watch as the computer screen turns on, looking all glitchy.

"Rogers, Steven, born 1918." A voice comes from the computer, a camera above the screen moving from each of them. "Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984."

"It's some kind of recording." Natasha states.

"I am not recording, Fraulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am." The voice explains, a familiar face showing on another computer screen.

"You know this thing?" Natasha asks.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve informs.

"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive." Zola states, sneering. "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."

"How did you get here?" Steve asks.

"Invited." Zola replies.

"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value." Natasha explains.

"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own." Zola informs.

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve recalls.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place." Zola states, the HYDRA symbol appearing on the screen.

"Prove it." Steve argues.

Some more computers around them turned on, both looking over at one, revealing Johann Schmidt on one of the screens.

"Accessing archive." Zola speaks up. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with it's own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist."

A video plays on the screen as he was talking, the two watching as many World War II soldiers ran together, guns in hand before it showed Steve in his old suit, Lady America right beside him. Suit, shield, and all.

"The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender it's 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 seventy years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed." Zola continues.

"That's impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you." Natasha states.

"Accidents will happen." Zola responds, a picture on the newspaper showing up on the screen, revealing Howard Stark as the title of the paper said about him and his wife, Maria Stark, dying in a car accident.

The screen then showed a picture of Nick Fury on the screen, the word 'deceased' over top of his face on the paper.

"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice it's freedom to gain it's 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." Zola explains.

Out of anger, Steve lunges forward, fist meeting the computer screen, breaking it.

"As I was saying..." Zola begins, appearing on another computer screen.

"What's on this drive?" Steve questions.

"Project Insight requires insight." Zola replies. "So, I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Natasha asks frantically.

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." Zola responds.

Just then, a pair of doors started to close off, covering to the elevator doors. Quickly, Steve threw his shield, only for it to bounce back to him as the elevator doors were now covered up.

"Steve, we got a bogey." Natasha informs, holding the device in her hand. "Short range ballistic. Thirty seconds tops."

"Who fired it?" Steve asks.

"S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha replies.

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain." Zola admits, Natasha grabbing the hard drive. "Admit it. It's better this way. We are, both of us, out of time."

Steve frantically runs forward, pulling off a vent from the floor. Natasha quickly runs over, hopping inside, Steve following, just as the bomb hits them. The blonde wraps an arm around the red head, holding her close to him as his other hand holds his shield upwards, avoiding all the concrete parts going in their direction.

Once the explosion finished, Steve grunted loudly as he pushed the concrete off of him and Natasha, revealing the night sky above them. Turning back to the red head, he picked her up bridal style as she had been unconscious, stumbling out of their hiding spot.

Just as he made it through, lights were seen in the distance, to which he instantly knew it was 'S.H.I.E.L.D.', and started running off, hoping to not be spotted by them.

~

Alexander Pierce walked through his giant home, footsteps leading him to the kitchen. With his back turned, he opened up the fridge, bringing out some milk. Just as he placed it on the island counter, his gaze landed on the two figures sitting in the dark corner of his kitchen.

The assassins' blue and e/c eyes pierced through his as they sat side by side, staring at the man in front of them, two of their hands clasped together underneath the table. The male's metal arm was shining through the darkness.

"I'm going to go, Mr. Pierce. You need anything before I leave?" A woman's voice calls out from the other side of the wall.

"No... It's fine, Renata, you can go home." Pierce replies, gaze still on the soldiers.

"Okay. Night-night." The woman, Renata, says politely, walking towards the front door.

"Good night." Pierce calls back. "Want some milk?" Pierce then questions once the front door closed.

The soldiers don't respond as they watch Pierce go through his cupboard, grabbing a glass, starting to pour milk inside the glass.

"The timetable has moved. Our window is limited. Two targets, Level Six." Pierce explains, taking a seat in front of them. "They already cost me Zola. I want confirmed death in ten hours."

"Sorry, Mr. Pierce, I..." Renata begins, walking back in the room, but trailing off once her gaze lands on the soldiers. "I forgot my... phone."

Renata glances between Pierce and the soldiers, slight fear showing in her eyes and face.

Pierce scrunches his face. "Oh, Renata, I wish you would have knocked."

With that, he reaches out for the gun on the table before aiming it at Renata, shooting her twice in the torso, causing the woman to scream, collapsing to the floor, all while the soldiers watched with blank expressions.