∆ {2³} {DEVILS OF HER PAST} ∆

WHEN THEY PULLED up, they left the truck out side a wire fence, and she switched the baggy grey hoodie for her leather jacket, and slipped her pistol into a thigh holster, as well as making sure she had her keyring and quarterstaff; who knew what they would run into. Natasha held a phone in her hand, although it was probably outfitted with a lot more fancy tech than the simple phones Roxi had been using for the past two years. Steve held his shield in his hand as they walked up to the fence.

"This it?" He asked.

"The file gave me these co-ordinates," the redhead told them as they stood a little way in front of the fifteen-foot high fence.

"So did I." Their attention was drawn to a faded warning sign that read 'CAMP LEHIGH, US ARMY RESTRICTED AREA'. it was dark as they walked past the towering red brick buildings, but even in the half-light, Roxi examined the dilapidated buildings, the crumbling brick, and the filthy, greying wood that had once stood strong as the foundations of the army, but now barely stood upright. The foundations of the country were falling. S.H.I.E.L.D was falling. 

"This camp is where I was trained."

"Change much?" Natasha asked, looking at the device she held in her hand, trying to root out the signal. 

"A little." When Roxi tore her gaze away from the buildings, she found Steve staring into space, and she wondered briefly if he remembered what it'd looked like in the 1940s. 

"This is a dead end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio," Nat reported. That was strange, even if the base had been deserted for years, the signal had to come from some kind of electronics, and probably someone to operate it, which would probably require some form of communication. 

"Whoever wrote the file must've use a router to throw people off." That made more sense, but why a random army base in the middle of nowhere? Steve turned towards Natasha and looked at the buildings carefully, as if something was wrong with them.

"What is it?" Natasha asked out of curiosity." Roxi looked at the building for a moment as well, trying to see what he was seeing. He started walking over to a low set, sloped building, before explaining his train of thought.

"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks. This building's in the wrong place." A moment later, Steve used his shield to slam the heavy-duty padlock off the door, causing a loud band, and Roxi to wonder how many times he'd practised that when he was still training with it. They walked down a set of cold concrete stairs, that made Roxi shiver in slight discomfort. To the others, she could pass it off as being slightly cold because of the dank chill of the room, that made the air seem almost heavy, but in reality images were flashing before her eyes. Of her teenage self walking down cold, hard stairs in the dark, barefoot in her last foster home before she'd joined S.H.I.E.L.D. That home had been the worst she'd ever been in, and this seemed too familiar, but she had to push through it. She had to ignore her mind trying to sabotage her and just focus on their goal, figuring out what was on this drive, and where it had come from.

Natasha flicked on the lights, and they clicked on like lights in a film do, pair by pair. t helped a little, but Roxi still expected to fine an un-moving figure on the floor, a bottle of alcohol in their hand and a sneer locked on their face. The thought made her insides shrivel. On the wall was an eagle with it's dark wings splayed in black against the pale, grimy peeling paint, capturing her attention away from the devils of her past. In a ring around the edge, were the six words 'Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division', which was the full name of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha's voice rang out through the air, echoing slightly, as the lights reflected off the metal benches, tables and desks that lined the walkway. 

"You mean where it started," Steve corrected as they began to advance down the middle of the desks, observing the deathly stillness of the room, a silent ode to those lost fighting a never-ending war. Steve led them through one of the dark green doors that lined the hall, into a room filled with units of pigeon holes. On the wall opposite the door, there were three photos, neatly framed and proudly hung.

"That's Stark's father," Roxi pointed out, drawing the other's attention to the photos.

"Howard."

"Who's the girl?" Nat asked Steve, referencing a picture of a pretty young woman with dark hair and red lips. He didn't answer and walked away, searching the dusty room for anything useful.

"Well isn't this fun?" Roxi asked under her breath, pushing her ponytail back over her shoulder as her eyes roved the empty shelves for anything at all useful.

"It's not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be efficient," Natasha replied from the other side of the shelf she was searching.

"Yeah, but we can make it a little fun while we're at it, can't we?"

"I guess we can."

"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve began, causing Roxi's attention to snap to him at lightning speed and make her way around to where they were standing before he continued, hauling a shelf aside, "why do you nee to hide the elevator." The unit had revealed an alcove, where a pair of metal doors stood, surprisingly shiny for a machine that probably hadn't been used in years. Natasha's 'phone' scanned the number pad before she typed in the code '8539', causing a green light to pop up and for the elevator to give a ping as the doors opened. The three of them stepped inside and simply waited as the doors closed as they went down. It was noisy, the mechanisms screeching and complaining, but the tense atmosphere of suspense made the air feel thick with silence. The doors opened, revealing yet another dark room, and Roxi slowly took out and loaded her pistol, but keeping it down at her side for the moment. The three of them continued carefully, the light from the elevator supplying the only light at all in the large room. The dark had never scared her, but that didn't mean she wouldn't be careful, as she crept forwards slowly next to Natasha.

The doors shut behind them wit ha slight clang as the wind whistled through broken vents above their heads as they proceeded into the dark room. About halfway in, the lights flickered on, showing a room full of old computer banks, and in front of them, in the middle, there was a display of old screens and computers, all a dusty, disused grey colour. Roxi wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but she did notice two cameras on either side of the setup, of similar size and shape to speed cameras.

"This can't be the data point, this technology is ancient," Natasha protested, walking right up to the display to get a closer look. Behind her, Steve turned slightly and gave her a look. Roxi smirked at that. This type of technology was still being developed during the second world war, the time Steve was used to.

"I'm sure this is nice for you, Rogers, wasn't this still being developed when you went under?" She joked, earning a glare from Steve and a small smile from the redhead. On the table, in front of the busty old keyboard, lay a modern, black and and blue USB drive plug. Natasha took out the USB stick with the S.H.I.E.L.D logo on it and plugged it into one of the standing inputs. A small blue bar lit up on the side, and the rest of the old computers that filled the room around them began to whirr and turn on. The array of computer screens in front of them turned on as the room lit up with mechanical life. The cameras that Roxi had noticed earlier moved slightly as they turned on, and a muffled voice red out

"Initiate system," as the letters spelled out in neon green on the main screen. Natasha moved to the keyboard, using two fingers to write one word.

"Y-E-S spells yes." The computers around them whirred more strongly, the noise slowly becoming louder.

"Shall we play a game?" She asked, and for a moment, she waited for a response, before she turned around quickly to fill Steve in.

"It's from a movie that's-"

"I know, I've seen it," the super soldier cut in.

"Good film," Roxi commented halfheartedly, focused completely on their surrounding and what they were doing, pistol still gripped tightly in her right hand. Slowly, an image flickered into place in the same neon green on the main screen, flashing and faltering in ribbons until they formed an image of a man with large round glasses that made him look like a bug and a huge forehead. As Roxi took in the man's features, he began to speak.

"Rogers, Steven, born 1918," He assessed in a voice that sounded like it'd come through a poor quality speaker; which it probably had. The camera moved to Natasha, who was standing next to Steve.

"Romanoff, Natalia Alianova, born 1984." The man stated, and Roxi prepared as the camera turned to her. Natasha and Steve had both turned to her as the man began to say her name.

"Ryder, - 84." He was cut off by a gunshot, fired from Roxi's pistol that she'd still had at the ready, and turned back to the other two and gave them a brief shrug as a way to move the conversation on. She wasn't ready for them to know her first name yet. At this point, she cared less than she had about what she'd done in her past (having learned about what some of the other Avengers had done), and it was more about the mental block that she'd worked up over the last 15 years since she'd joined S.H.I.E.L.D. The rest of the gunshot echoed through the room, before Natasha did, (to her relief), move on. 

"It's some kind of recording," she guessed with an uncertain look on her face. 

"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am." A picture of the same man on the main screen popped up on one of the screens slightly to the side, but this one black and white and probably taken in the 1940s.

"You know this guy?" Natasha asked Steve, who was looking at the pictures, as if trying to find proof that it was the same man.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked with the Red Skull," He told them as he waled around to the back of the computer setup, "he's been dead for years."

"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you; I have never been more alive." Zola spoke in his accent and a heavy, slightly disconcerting tone. 

"In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body," he continued, "my mind however, that was worth saving. On 200,000 feet of data banks-." So that's what the machines filling the room were.

"You are standing in my brain." He finished, causing Roxi to scrunch up her nose slightly in disgust as the data banks and computers around them droned on in their mechanical harmony.

"How did you get here?" Steve asked, once he had made his way back around to the front of the screens.

"Invited." Zola simply stated.

"It was Operation: Paperclip. After World War II, S.H.I.E.L.D recruited German scientists with.. strategic value," Natasha explained.

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

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," Steve protested. Roxi's left hand went straight into her pocket and grasped the keyring as she hoped against hope that he was right.

"Cut off one head," Zola began as his face morphed into HYDRA's symbol, and then into two images of his own face, "Two more shall take its place." Roxi's heart dropped. HYDRA. Of all agencies, it was HYDRA. These people like Brock Rumlow, who she'd known her entire time in S.H.I.E.L.D, were HYDRA; S.H.I.E.L.D's original enemy, that had forced the creation of the eagle-bearing government branch. 

"Prove it," Steve demanded, obviously as reluctant as Roxi was to believe a mad Swiss scientist who was supposed to have been dead for the last 30 years. In his robotic voice, Zola began to do just that. An image of the Red Skull, as the computer began its narrating.

"HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom." The tiny black an white men on screen thrust their hands into the air with a yell.

"What we did not realise, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist." Footage of soldiers pouring off an army boat, a picture of red skull, and then Captain America, fighting on the front lines. 

"The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its 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." The images continued to flash across the screen, and Roxi found herself unable to look away from the series of pictures, searching for anything that could suggest that Zola was fabricating this story, that the family she grew up with wasn't false. 

"For seventy years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not co-operate, history was changed." The Doctor stated, his voice developing a slightly warped undertone as picture upon picture flitted cross the screen, drawing Roxi closer and closer. 

"That's impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D would've stopped you," Natasha denied, and Roxi knew at this point that the redhead's comment was more to convince herself that there as cope it wasn't true rather than stemming from a belief that S.H.I.E.L.D was a completely watertight organisation.  Headlines flashed across the screen, glaring in their thick black font out at unsuspecting viewers.

'Howard and Maria Stark die in car accident.'

'17 dead in train crash.' Something nagged at the back of her head when the second headline flashed, but she ignored it. And then there was a picture of Nick Fury's file, a word stamped firmly across the picture, and Roxi could've sworn that the world froze as she read the eight letters.

'DECEASED'. She didn't have time to ponder on it, because the next moment, the scientist spoke again.

"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the 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." Images of maps and targets accompanied the speech, followed by guns, before showing images of Steve on newspaper and magazine covers. Steve punched the screen. He punched it so hard that it immediately shut off, no strange colours or hiss of static, just silence and a grey screen, laced with a thick spiderweb of cracks. Roxi reeled back slightly at the noise, her hand instantly leaping to her quarterstaff before she realised that, no, there wasn't a door that had just slammed behind her, or a gunshot from an assassin that's been hired to kill the three. She took her hand slowly from the slick black handle, before she realised that that was odd. Here they were, walking into a trap set by none other than HYDRA. Where were the STRIKE team, ready to take them in? Were they waiting in the shadows for the Doctor to finish his speech? She doubted it; two of them were trained SHIELD agents and assassins and one of them was a super-soldier; surely they would've heard or seen them by now. That didn't help to ease her conscience as she looked around carefully, just as Zola started to speak again, this time on one of the side screens.

"As I was saying,-"

"What's on this drive?" Steve interrupted angrily, just as Roxi fixed her gaze on the rows of data-banks that would provide a perfect hiding spot. She tightened her grip on her gun, ready to jerk it up at a moment's notice.

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

"What kind of algorithm, what does it do?" Natasha asked urgently, her forest green eyes never leaving the neon ones on-screen. 

"The answer to your question is fascinating," Zola began, as Roxi completed her scan and reassured herself that nobody was waiting to ambush them.

"Unfortunately, you shall be to dead to hear it." So she had been right, HYDRA were planning something to get rid of them, just not what she'd expected. An extra layer of doors began to close rapidly in front of the old elevator with a huge noise, and Steve hurled his shield towards it as hard as he could. It ricocheted off the door just as it clanged shut, rebounding off of it, then off a pillar, before he caught it again. Natasha pulled out th device she'd been using and looked at the radar, as Roxi slowly considered their options, looking at the heavy doors with hesitation. Could she do it? No. Not yet. They were too big, too heavy and too strong, and she didn't want the pressure of be in the escape route to weigh on her when she knew she might not do it. Better to wait and find a better way out. 

"We've got a bogey," Natasha told them.

"I knew it would be something," Roxi muttered, cursing herself for not thinking of the scenario sooner. 

"Short-range ballistic, thirty seconds, tops." 

"Who fired it?" Steve asked desperately. Roxi didn't even need to glance at the screen before she sighed out her answer.

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

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain. Admit it, it's better this way." Zola announced, as Natasha grabbed the drive and Roxi looked for a place that they cold shelter in. She spotted the grate first, and ran over to it with her gun still in one hand and pressed the other to one of the screws, which undid itself rather faster than a screw should. She managed to get another one out by the time Steve and Natasha spotted her and ran over to help. Steve grabbed the grate and yanked it out, as the machine Zola uttered his last words.

"We are both of us, out of time." And then it hit. It blew out the wall behind Zola first, before the explosion extended its fiery reach to the rest of the room. Roxi had made sure that the other two got in first, and would've been caught by the blast if Natasha hadn't yanked her in by the hand, which Roxi had taken when the missile hit, unintentionally.  Steve held his shield above the three as they crouched in the hole as the smoke and flame billowed over them. The building collapsed wit ha great rumble, huge boulders and dust falling so that the air was thick, and hard to breathe. When Steve had pushed aside the slab that lay on top of the vent with a grunt, he worked his way out into the air, which was orange with sparks and the remnants of the dying fire. He turned around and grabbed Natasha, who had hit her head on the ground when they fell in, and while Roxi was still conscious, her back had been burned by the blast before she'd been pulled in. She screwed up her face, coughing and wheezing as she stood up, staggering over the rocks as she clambered out of the pit. When she was up top, and looked around at the ruin, all she could think, was New York. The rubble, the fires, Natasha and Steve. It all reminded her eerily of the battle against the Chitauri, and the deafening silence as the pair surveyed the scene added to the charade.

Their time for nostalgia was cut short as a flock of quinjets swarmed the sky above them, their bright search lights perusing the rubble in search for them. It took Roxi a moment to remember that they weren't actually looking for her, but if they could capture her, they would go for it immediately. Steve ran, holding Natasha in his arms, as Roxi followed behind the best she could. For some reason, she wanted to protest against Steve taking Natasha, even though she knew that he would get her to the car faster, and probably safer than she could. Behind them, the STRIKE team searched through the dark, the searchlights illuminating the dust that still danced in the air, like fireflies on a summer night, waiting for dawn to come, so they could hide away again.

{A/N:} So I actually really like this chapter and I'm quite proud of it. The support that I've been receiving for this story is incredible, and all the comments and votes make me so happy. I'm going back to school on the 7th, so I'll have much less time to write, but I'll still try and get a chapter or so out every week. Thanks for reading.

JabberJay11

3620 Words

Written: 28 / 08 / 2020

Published: 02 / 09 / 2020