Chapter 30 - Rachel Stark

"We will finish this conversation later," Steve says as he opens the door. I get out of the car and slam the door angrily. Steve and I make our way around the front of the car, looking around the vacant lot of land. An old, rusty fence restricts our access to the place. We walk closer and I catch a glimpse of the sign that is hung on it. 

Camp Lehigh

I scan it, reading the sign to try to figure out why the name sounds familiar. 

"How is this possible?" he asks from behind me. I turn to him, glancing down at my phone to check the location. 

"The file came from these coordinates." I say curtly, shrugging my shoulders in frustration.

"So did I." Steve says. My eyes snap up in recognition. Camp Lehigh. Of course. This place was all over his files. This was his home base. I make eye contact with him, watching as his eyes glaze over. 

"We should wait for nightfall. There may still be some sort of security system set up." I say, making my way back to the car. Steve follows, shutting the door as he gets in. We wait in silence for the sun to go down. It doesn't take long, we arrived at dusk. 

Once the world is a shade of deep purple, we hop out of the truck and slowly climb the fence, making sure we don't cut ourselves on the barbed wire at the top. Once we make it to the other side, I pull out my phone, searching for any energy source. We walk around, checking all of the buildings and making our way around the run-down base. 

"Change much?" I question as I wave my hand around the last building. 

"A little," he mumbles. I take another quick scan of the surrounding buildings, finding nothing.  

"This is a dead-end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." I put my phone down in defeat. I take a quick look around, looking over Steve's old stomping grounds. "You know, I don't know much about your time here. I mean, I know what I've read and what I saw in the museum, but you don't talk about it much. I'd like to hear about it sometime." I watch as Steve's head flicks to a nearby building that I already scanned. His gaze is fixed, his face working out something. "What is it?"

Steve marches straight to the building, not looking back.

"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks." I jog to catch up to him, trying to keep up. He keeps his eyes fixed on the doors of the building, almost not noticing as I come up behind him. "This building is in the wrong place." He uses his shield to break the lock.

"Hot," I say out loud. I slap my hand over my mouth, my eyes filling with shock. I looked over at him, panicked by my sudden outburst. Steve has a small goofy smile on his face as he pulls open the door for me. I step into the building and wait over to the side, letting the man with the indestructible shield walk down the steps first. He takes the lead, stealthily moving down the stairs with his shield up. At the bottom, there is a big switch, which Steve clicks on. There is a long pause before anything happens. 

Suddenly, the lights click on, revealing rows of desks lining the sides of the room. The desks are adorned with a few scattered papers and typewriters. Some desks have phones while others are just stacked with boxes. On the back wall, an early version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. symbol. 

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D," I say in awe. I turn my head from side to side, taking it all in. This was the beginning.

"Maybe where it all started," he says, almost reading my mind. I look over to him, scanning his features. He quickly juts his chin towards a side office, turning my attention away from the main room. I walk over towards it slowly, still in awe by the origins of such a massive organization. 

Steve makes his way towards the office with me. He opens the door slowly, looking around cautiously before walking in. It looks like storage space, shelves lining the sides and a row of them down the center of the room. There are a few papers scattered on the floor, dust lining every visible surface. I remove my gaze from the floor and follow Steve's eye line up to the pictures hanging off of the wall. There are three of them up there.

"There's my dad," I say with a quip in my tone. I set my jaw, looking over to the man who made Tony's life hell. He died before I was old enough to know what was happening, but I remembered his cold stare and his lack of attention. 

"Howard." Steve says, smiling fondly towards the picture. I look over to him, wishing that I could feel the connection with my father that Steve did. I remove my eyes from his picture and move them to Peggy's. I smile softly as I approach it. I run my hand gently around the frame of her picture, trying to remember our days at S.H.I.E.L.D. before she was sick. Steve stays away from the picture and keeps looking around the room. I look around too, unsure why Steve is so interested in one of the bookcases on the back wall. I watch as his hair is blown around slightly, hearing a whistle of wind.

"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve says, catching my attention. "why do you need to hide the elevator?" he says, as he pulls back one side of the case, revealing a small hallway with an elevator at the end of it. We walk up to the double doors slowly, eyeing the keypad beside it. I think through possible combinations trying to come up with the possible passcode.

"What year were you born?" I ask Steve, my eyes pinned to the keys.    

"1918." I slowly type it in, feeling the keys click under my fingers. The elevator doors open, revealing an uncharacteristically new elevator. It isn't modern by any means, but it is newer than the building. We walk in, waiting for the doors to close. There aren't any buttons on the inside of the carrier so we just wait as the elevator takes us down. 

As the doors open, lights flicker on around the lower level, revealing banks of computers in every open space of the room. The computers are majorly out of date, looking like they're from at least 30 years ago. I take my phone out again, trying to scan for any electrical points. I walk up to what seems to be the main one, leaving Steve behind me. I look out at the other computers then back to the main station.

"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient." I say, looking back to Steve. I watch as Steve's eyes move to the desk behind me, fixed on something. I turn around and notice a flash drive port. I scan it quickly, recognizing it. I shoot a worried look back to Steve, who meets my gaze.

I gently plug the hard drive into the port. 

Initiate System?

The computer screen flashes those two words. I lean my forearms down on the table, reading the words over and over in my head. I think through all kinds of different techniques, trying to think of something clever to do to maybe get the computer going. I eventually settled on a simple trick.

"Y-E-S spells yes," I say, typing the letters into the system from the keyboard. I smirk, thinking of a reference. "Shall we play a game?" I ask, turning my head slightly to Steve. "Remember that movie we..."

"I remember," he says, cutting me off as the computer begins to hum, booting up. 

"Rogers, Steven. born 1918. Stark, Rachel. born 1985." an electronic voice says. I look around the room, trying to pinpoint the source. 

"It's some kind of recording," I say, rationalizing the situation.

"I am not a recording fraulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am." it says. The computer screen turns itself on, displaying green lines that vaguely look like a face. I look to Steve. He is staring intently at the computer.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve says, walking around the main computer system.

"First correction, I am Swiss. 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 databanks. You are standing in my brain." Arnim Zola says. I shift my weight, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the notion.

"How did you get here?" Steve asks, making his way back to my side.

"Invited." he says simply. Steve whips his head and looks at me, his eyes begging for answers. I look at him confused, not knowing what he wants me to do. I wrack my brain, thinking back to the SSR files and old S.H.I.E.L.D. information I know.

"It was Operation Paperclip," I mumbled, landing on a name. Steve continues looking at me and I raise my voice. "After World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value." I finish, shrugging my shoulders.

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

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve spits menacingly.  

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place," Zola says, the faces multiplying onscreen.

"Prove it," Steve threatens, tightening his grip on his shield behind me.

"Accessing archive." Zola drones. The screen loses the green faces and immediately starts playing a reel of footage, providing visuals to the information that Zola was presenting. 

"HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly." A video of Steve flashes across the screen. "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 crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed." The video flips through news clippings of massive news events, showing us assassinations and attacks, bombings, and riots. 

"That's impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you," I say horrified. I take a few steps away from the computer in disgust. My back runs gently into Steve's chest. He carefully threads an arm around my waist, helping me steady myself. 

"Accidents will happen. 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." The screen shows footage from inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., showing us the new helicarriers. "We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero-sum." Steve quickly removes his arm from my waist, running up to the big screen and punching it, causing the glass to crack. It spiders out from the point of impact and the computer shuts off, giving us a moment of silence. "As I was saying..."

"What's on this drive?" Steve demands, cutting off the robot. Its face moved from the broken screen to a smaller one nearby, taunting us.

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

"What kind of algorithm?" I ask, panicking at the mention of Insight. Technically, I had a hand in all of this. No wonder Fury didn't trust me. 

"What does it do?" Steve asks.

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." the doors of the basement suddenly slam shut. Steve tries to wedge his shield between them, missing the opening by seconds. My phone starts beeping frantically. I pull it out of my back pocket and scan the screen, trying to figure out where the alert was coming from. 

"Steve, we've got a bogey. Short-range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." I say, identifying the warning. 

"Who fired it?" Steve says, breathing heavily.

"I'm afraid I've been stalling Captain." 

Steve looks at me.

"S.H.I.E.L.D," I breathe. The air sucks itself from my lungs as my muscles tense with panic.   

"Admit it. It's better this way. We are, both of us..." 

Steve scans the room, looking for a way to block us from the impending bomb. He eventually sees a grate, running over to it and pulling it up, off of the ground. I shove my phone back into my pocket, running over to him. He waits for me in front of the hole with his arms wide open, bracing for me. 

"Out of time."

He grabs me by the waist, using my momentum to help us fall into the hole in the ground. The building begins to explode all around us, rubble falling. Steve keeps an arm wrapped protectively around me, the other holding the shield inches above our head. Rubble falls, barely missing me as it cracks around the shield. I put my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the mess around us. 

The last thing I hear is Steve screaming in effort to keep the rubble off of our heads. 

Steve's POV

As the building starts to fall, I make sure that my shield covers Rachel's entire body. The rubble falls, burying us alive in this hole. I start to yell, trying to keep all of the concrete from hitting us in the head. It takes a long time for the building to stop crumbling around us, but eventually, the only sound is of small rocks falling. 

I cough, trying to remove some of the dust from my lungs. A bit counterintuitive seeing as the air is filled with millions of little particles. I shift a little, waiting to feel a response from Rachel. When I don't feel one, I carefully move her unconscious body behind me so that I can start to push us out of here. 

After a good amount of effort, the rock goes crashing to the ground and I look around, finally being able to see the sky. I take a breath, exhausted from the effort, but shake it off quickly. I go back into the hole, picking Rachel up, resting her head on my forearm. I shuffle out slowly, taking care of her head and neck, making sure I don't accidentally smack them into the rubble. 

I finally make it out, looking up to the sky. I hear the jets before I see them. Panic sets into my bones once again as I carefully make my way out of the bombed area. 

Rachel's POV

I wake up to footsteps hitting the ground and a heartbeat. My head wobbles around uncontrollably. I look up to see Steve's sweaty face, covered in dirt. He is panting, focusing on the area ahead of him. I feel his arms tense up underneath me. I see the panic gleam in his eyes as we keep running. I cough, my throat layered in a thick coat of dusk. Steve shoots a look down, seeing my eyes open. 

He slows to a stop and sets me down underneath a tree. We are in the middle of the woods; I am assuming we aren't too far out from Camp Lehigh which means we need to get moving. He takes a step away from my body, studying my appendages. 

"You're alive," he sighs, still breathless from the run. I cough and nod slowly. I close my eyes, resting my head against the trunk behind me. I hear Steve crouch down to my level. 

"We need to get somewhere safe. Right now," he says, scanning the woods around us for any threats. I nod. He makes his way back over to me, threading his arm behind my back and under my legs. I shake my head in protest, coughing once more for good measure. 

"I'm running too. You don't sleep, I don't sleep. That's our deal," I spit out hoarsely. "I mean, unless your plan is to run all the way back to D.C., then you can do that on your own." I start to run off but Steve grabs my arm before I am out of his reach. He hesitates for a second, studying my face. He pulls me into a hug. 

"I'm so sorry," he says into my shoulder. I wrap my arms tightly around him, my eyes widening in shock but quickly relaxing.