Dear Diary,

Today, I was called into a meeting that I thought was going to be just me and Peggy and Howard, but turned out to be everyone I knew from this division as well as some other personnel that I didn't even recognize.

The only problem with the set up was that there was one man missing... though, I don't think I'll be seeing him anytime soon anyway.

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Colonel Philips stood at the head of a table which faced a massive wall of maps. He was prepping to talk to us all and, at the other head of the table, I truly was not at all in the mindset to talk about anything right now.

God, I'm such a mess.

I don't suppose the drinking all day everyday (in attempts to forget about either him or the pain altogether) was a very good idea or plan for myself throughout these last three, seemingly endless, months.

The Colonel faced the maps, looking all about them, trying to get a good idea of where to begin. "Johann Schmidt belongs in a bughouse. He thinks he's a god, and he's willing to blow up half the world to prove it- starting with the USA," he began, pointing straight at America on the map he had been pacing in front of.

"Schmidt's working with powers beyond our capabilities," Howard interrupted as he walked in, late to the meeting with no repercussions whatsoever. "He gets across the Atlantic- he will wipe out the entire Eastern Seaboard in an hour."

I picked up and reviewed some of the documents that had been laid out on the table and tried to figure out the best way to go about this, but nothing was really catching my eye or popping out at me. The only thing I noticed out of the corner of my eye was the intense staring coming from Peggy... she was probably worrying about me again.

"How much time we got?" Jones asked the Colonel.

"According to my new best friend," he started, referring to Dr. Zola, "under 24 hours."

"Where is he now?" A man I didn't recognize called out, asking the only real question I needed an answer to.

Philips raised a photograph and showed it to us all as he pointed. "Hydra's last base is here - in the alps - 500 feet below the surface," he replied, tossing the photos to the table where Morita then picked them up.

"So what are we supposed to do?" he asked, looking at the image. "I mean, it's not like we can just knock on the front door."

That's when it hit me. "Why not?" I asked, realizing that maybe asking for death was the only way through. Then, I realized there wasn't a single person in the whole damn room that wasn't looking directly at me. Sure, I sounded like I was going mad, and believe me, I was, seeing as I was suddenly all alone in this world... but that's what it took to open my eyes. We needed to defy death to get to this man, somehow. And so, that's when I decided... "That's exactly what we're gonna do."

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First thing tomorrow morning, I told them... that's when we'd do it.

That's when we'd be knocking on Johann Schmidt's front door and taking him to the bughouse.

~ S.R.