Neither of them talked much during the drive to New Jersey. Steve sat in the passenger seat, gripping his knees, just watching the dark trees blur past the window. Natasha kept her eyes on the rearview mirror. After seeing the footage of the daylight hit on Fury's SUV all over the news, she wasn't taking any chances.
"He said Georgetown," Steve muttered.
"Adrian does what he wants, Steve," Natasha said, pulling the car onto an unmarked dirt road. The tires crunched over dry pine needles and gravel. "If he isn't there, there's a reason."
They parked near the chain-link fence of Camp Lehigh. The place was a ghost town. The old barracks were rotted, sagging under decades of weather. For Steve, this wasn't just a closed military base; it was where he started. Now it was just another abandoned place.
They snapped the lock with bolt cutters and hiked toward the center of the camp. Natasha held a small signal tracker, the screen glowing faint blue.
"The signal from Fury's drive is coming from the ammunition building," she whispered.
Steve led the way. He didn't need a map here. They stepped into the old stone structure, their flashlights cutting through thick dust. It looked like a standard storage room until Natasha pointed her light at the floor.
"Elevators don't belong in 1940s ammo dumps," she said, studying the heavy scrape marks in the dirt.
She pulled back a rusted shelf, revealing a keypad hidden behind a panel. Steve didn't hesitate. He smashed the panel with his shield, and the metal doors open. They stepped inside, and the lift carried them deep underground. The air turned stale the further they went.
When the doors finally scraped open, they walked into a massive sub-level room packed with floor-to-ceiling computer banks and rows of magnetic tape reels.
And I was already waiting for them, standing in the green glow of a single flickering monitor.
"You're late," I said.
Steve kept his shield raised, scanning the dark corners of the room.
"You beat us here?"
"I didn't take the highway," I told him.
Before Steve could ask anything else, a sharp hiss filled the room. The main monitor flared casting a harsh green light over us. A grainy, pixelated face appeared on the screen, built out of shifting grid lines.
"Captain Rogers," a flat, synthesized voice echoed from the old speakers. "And the Black Widow."
A camera lens mounted above the screen whirred, swiveling toward me. The machine paused as the lens adjusted its focus with a mechanical click.
"Unrecognized anomaly. Processing," the computer stated. There was no emotion in the voice, just a reading of data. "Correction. Facial and historical parameters match archived SSR files. Access denied."
Steve frowned slightly.
"Zola?"
"I am what remains," the computer replied. "Recruited after the war. Operation Paperclip. HYDRA grew inside S.H.I.E.L.D. like a parasite. We have been watching you. We have been...."
"Shut up," I said.
I reached into my coat and pulled out a small metallic cylinder. It didn't look like a modern flash drive. I found a bulky diagnostic port on the side of the main console and pressed the cylinder into it. The metal pins inside the device clicked and shifted until they locked perfectly into the old hardware.
The low hum of the servers spiked into a loud whine. The magnetic tapes began spinning faster and faster, the reels rattling in their casings.
Natasha stepped closer.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking away his hiding place," I said.
Lines of code flooded the monitor faster than anyone could read. Names, bank accounts, coordinates, project files.
"Warning," Zola's mechanical voice droned. "System override. Uplink capacity exceeding physical limits. Hardware failure imminent."
The machine was calmly reporting its own destruction.
"You cannot process this much data," the program stated.
"I just need it to open the doors," I said.
The device bypassed the local firewalls, using the bunker's connection to dump HYDRA's entire database onto the public web.
Natasha pulled out her phone.
"Steve. Look."
Every news site and social media feed was flooding. HYDRA's history, sleeper agents in the Senate, the Winter Soldier. It was all leaking out in real time.
Natasha looked up, her voice tight.
"They'll level the grid to stop this."
The green glow of the room flickered violently as the red warning sirens kicked on.
Smoke started leaking from the server racks. The high-pitched whine of the cooling fans began to fade, replaced by the smell of burning insulation and hot metal.
"Data transfer complete," Zola's mechanical voice clipped. The screen flickered as his grid-face broke apart into static. "HYDRA is a belief. You cannot delete an idea."
"Maybe," I said. "But I can delete the machine."
I kept my hand near the metal cylinder and pushed a sharp pulse of energy through the drive and into the mainframe.
The computer banks erupted in sparks. Small fires spread along the tape reels. On the monitor, Zola's face twisted into a distorted mess before the speakers blew out with a sharp crack and the glass shattered.
The system went dead.
Natasha stared at her tablet, the cracked screen still working.
"We have a problem," she said. "Missile launch. Thirty seconds."
Steve grabbed her arm and turned toward the elevator.
"We have to move. Now."
"The elevator is a death trap," I said. I didn't move from the console. "Stay behind me."
"Adrian, the whole building is coming down!" Steve yelled over the warning sirens.
I didn't answer.
The ground shook.
A deep thud struck somewhere above us, followed a second later by a deafening roar. The missile had hit the surface.
Steve stepped in front of Natasha and raised his shield.
But the ceiling never collapsed.
I raised a hand toward it.
Dirt and broken concrete fell from above. The debris slammed into something invisible ten feet over our heads and stopped.
The blast noise dulled to a distant rumble. The heat never reached us.
We stood in a pocket of still air while the bunker collapsed around us.
The rumbling slowly faded. Dust drifted down, settling across Steve's shoulders.
He lowered his shield and stared up at the massive weight of rubble hanging overhead.
Then he looked at me.
"You could've stopped the missile before it hit."
"They needed to think they killed us," I said.
I lowered my hand slightly. The suspended debris shifted and ground together, forming a rough archway that opened toward the old service stairs.
"Let them think they covered their tracks."
Natasha tapped her phone, coughing from the dust.
"The data is everywhere. The news is already running with it."
"Good," I said, walking toward the stairs.
We climbed out into the cool night air.
The old camp was gone. Only a massive burning crater remained.
Steve stood at the edge of the pit, staring down at the wreckage. He looked exhausted, but the uncertainty that had been hanging over him earlier was gone.
"What now?" he asked.
I looked toward the horizon where D.C. sat in the distance.
"Now we go to the Triskelion," I said. "Pierce is probably waiting for a confirmation call right now."
I glanced back at them.
"Let's go see Pierce."