WHEATON, NEW JERSEY
2014

"SO, the file's location was picked up somewhere around here,"

June was thinking out loud again, spinning a device through her fingers with relative unease. The technology in her hands was a kind of thermographic camera that picked up both heat and electromagnetic waves. Natasha had loaned it to her, stressing that it would likely come in handy. Yet so far, there was nothing special flashing on its small screen. June kept searching, however, meandering around the abandoned United States military training camp, kicking aside rubble and rotting wood, eyes wandering the collapsed barracks, crumbling obstacle courses. It really did appear as if no one had stepped foot in the base since 1945-it was a ghost town.

The moon had risen high above their heads, the night a dark cloak over their shoulders. In the dim light,  Steve was looking quite pale, unnaturally so, as if simply standing there was making him sick. When she noticed his nauseated appearance, June raised a concerned eyebrow. "Are you alright?"

Steve gave a weak shrug. "I've been better," he admitted vaguely. "I came from this place, too. It's where I trained."

"Has it changed?" June asked quietly, jokingly. Steve's eyes shifted in the scarce light, blue and weary and pained with memories he would rather forget. June knew he was seeing ghosts.

"Has it changed at all?" She pressed again.

"A little." His voice was low. His face was sullen and downcast. He looked his age.

"Well," June folded her hands behind her back, slipping the meter back into her jacket and nudging a toe into the damp earth. "There are no signals or signatures or waves to follow. My guess is something was wired here to keep away curiosity. Maybe a router, false trail . . . could be anything. That means physical tracking."

"I hear that's your specialty," Steve quipped.

"I'm not too bad," June shrugged dismissively. "I noticed something when we came in." She pointed a finger to a stout structure across the yard, hidden amid overgrown foliage and discarded barbed wire. "That's meant for ammunition storage. You know the regulations?"

"Yeah," Steve murmured as he ventured slowly to the unit, June trailing after him. "Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five-hundred yards of the barracks. This building's in the wrong place." He approached the broad, padlocked doors, eyeing the chains for a moment before raising his shield and slamming its edge into the lock, slicing it in two. It fell to the ground with a thud, and Steve shoved the doors aside impatiently, gleaming shield at the ready. Subconsciously, he kept June behind him, leading the way with caution and alertness, his previous moping forgotten.

The pair inched slowly through a dingy corridor, dust shifting through the air in tangible clusters, the smells of aged paper and metallic earth filling their nostrils. June searched the walls, found a light switch, and flicked it on. The low-ceilinged room was illuminated immediately, rows of hanging lights flickering to life and chasing away the ominous shadows draped over groups of desks, strewn files and reports, rusted filing cabinets. June's gaze moved anxiously about the scene, her hands habitually burying themselves in her pockets as a heavy uneasiness settled upon her shoulders. She felt as if she was waiting for a bomb to detonate, every step potentially the last she would ever take, for even the slightest disruption would set off cataclysm beyond comprehension. As June and Steve moved soundlessly into the deserted space, their eyes fell at once to an unmistakable symbol painted upon the white plaster wall dead ahead of them: the silhouetted likeness of a great eagle with its wings folded and divided into six columns, encircle within a black ring. 

"This is Shield," June breathed in disbelief.

"Maybe where it started," Steve agreed.

They wandered to a brief hallway, the center wall of which was adorned with three outdated, framed portraits-two men, and a woman.

"Is that Howard Stark?" June asked, recognizing the pointed features that he shared with his son. Yes, a Stark was always recognizable, no matter the generation, and no matter the fact that June had never met one.

"Yes," Steve replied nostalgically. "And that there," he gestured to the photograph of the second man. "Is Colonel Chester Philips."

June was still curious. "What about the girl?"

Once she noticed the crestfallen, grieved look that came over Steve's face, however, June wished she could retract the question. She had forgotten just how long Steve had been alive. Not everyone could wait seventy years.

"I'm sorry," June added hastily, red-faced and guilty. "You don't have to tell me."

And Steve did not. He turned and continued his way wordlessly down the hall until he reached a ceiling-high bookcase June had not given a second though until then.

"Odd place to put that," she said lightly, following his lead.

"If you're already working in a secret office," Steve began, gripping the sides of the shelf and, with little exerted effort, hauled it to the side. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?"

With the bookshelf out of the way, a freight elevator was revealed, appearing less than sturdy and certainly uninviting, but after exchanging a brief glance, Steve and June stepped within it, and with a shudder, it carried them beneath the earth.

• • •

THE data-point was, to say the least, ancient.

Rows of tremendously outdated technological databanks stretched on for what seemed like forever, cluttered into the startlingly vast bunker. The units spun and buzzed as if they were alive. Steve and June crept forward, starting toward a large monitor system that was rather complex for its obvious age.

"This can't be where the signal leads," June mumbled. "It's like if you were a computer."

Steve eyed her with dry amusement. "You're real funny. Do you have any idea where we are?"

June shook her head, in awe of the scene. "Your guess is as good as mine. I'm assuming Shield, but . . . I can't think of why they would keep this kind of technology around."

Steve didn't reply, but remembered the flash drive he had in his pocket. He retrieved it, rolled it between his fingers. "Maybe we can figure out what's on this thing." His eyes fell on a drive port protruding from the monitor's keyboard, and he placed the S.H.I.E.L.D. flash drive within in.

And suddenly, the entire system whirred to life.

A bulky camera positioned atop the largest computer rotated slowly to focus on Steve. "Initiate system?" A programed recording greeted them. Steve punched in three letters. Y-E-S.

A tense moment went by. Breaking the fractured silence, the monitor screen flickered with shaky green light that pieced together a crude, close-up image of what June assumed to be a man with round goggles shielding his eyes and little more of a face beyond that. A high, accented voice marred their ears.

"Rogers," it said, "Steven. Born nineteen-eighteen." The camera swiveled slowly and halted on June. "Ivanov, Jekaterina. Born nineteen-eighty-four."

Steve's eyes snapped to June, puzzled and awaiting explanation for this odd thing's use of a name he had never heard of. But June offered him none. Her pulse was quickening.

"What is this?" she spat, suddenly feeling as if the entire room was tilting.

"Don't you mean who?" the image corrected her icily. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in nineteen-forty-five . . . but I am."

A second, smaller screen mounted to the left flickered, and brought up an image of a stout man with a broad forehead and round glasses over sunken, dead eyes. Steve bristled.

"Do you know who that is?" June asked, struggling to keep her voice from quivering.

Steve's eyes hardened, and he began to pace behind the monitor group, gaze searching the field of antiquated technology. "Armin Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years."

June knew about the Red Skull. She knew about Captain America's crusades against the terrors he stood for. She knew about Hydra. She would always know Hydra.

"First correction," Zola interrupted. "I am Swiss. Second, look around you-I have never been more alive. In nineteen-seventy-two I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however . . ." The man chuckled. "That was worth saving. On two-hundred-thousand feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain."

If June had not been overwhelmed by nausea, she would have been impressed.

"How did you get here?" Steve demanded hotly, marching back before Zola.

"Invited."

"Operation Paperclip," June choked out.

Steve glanced at her with concern, but understood what she meant. "Shield recruited valuable German scientists after World War Two. And they chose you."

If he could have, June expected Zola would have smiled. "They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."

Steve set his jaw. "Hydra died with the Red Skull."

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."

A sweat broke out on June's palms, her breaths short and labored. A fist had curled itself around her neck.

"Prove it." Steve snapped.

Please, June wailed internally, don't.

There was a pause. Zola complied. "Accessing archives."

The second screen flashed again, this time displaying unsteady, looped black-and-white footage of a man in uniform standing before a waving Nazi flag, then flickering to hundreds of men donned in black, armed with ballistics, saluting the foulest man in history.

"Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize," Zola drawled as rare footage of the second world war played, U.S. soldiers leaping into battle, one soldier stark against them all-a soldier carrying a gleaming circular shield, "was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist."

Videos of treaties being signed, bombers soaring over populations, massive fires reaching for a black sky.

"The war taught us much," Zola continued airily. "The world needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, Shield was founded and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew."

June was sure her throat was closing up, she could not breathe. Shivers ran down her spine and at the same time flashes of heat overtook her, her entire body trembling uncontrollably with fear she did not know she could feel. "S-Steve-"

"Yes, Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside Shield. For seventy years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate-" a fleeting image of a man with a silver arm passed over the monitor, "-history was changed."

"Shield would have stopped you," Steve argued desperately.

"Accidents," the doctor sang, "will happen."

A newspaper headline. Howard and Maria Stark Die in Car Accident. Director Fury's file, his face stamped out. Deceased. Deceased. Deceased.

"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," S.H.I.E.L.D. airship guns poised to fire, "Hydra's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life: a zero sum."

In rage, Steve's fist flew forward and shattered the screen, cracking Zola's likeness and ending his soliloquy. But only for a moment.

"As I was saying . . ." the man continued upon the smaller monitor, unfazed.

Steve jumped forward, oblivious to the fact that June was nearly on her knees, struggling for breath, tears threatening to spill over her eyelashes.

"What's on this drive?" The Captain demanded savagely.

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

"What does it do?"

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

The elevator doors shudder behind them, and begin to shut. In desperation, Steve flung his shield across the room, hoping to lodge it between the doors, but was a second too late. The shield flew back to its owner, and he caught it with grace, cold alarm in his eyes.

"Admit it," Arnim Zola said negligently. "It's better this way. We're both of us . . . out of time."

It was then Steve remembered June, and many things happened at once.

She had collapsed to the floor, shaking violently, almost seizing. But a ghostly-pale hand went to her jacket and withdrew a beeping communicative device and she sputtered, "Shield fired, short-range ballistic-"

Steve was immediately at her side, grabbing her wrist and finding a pulse that was frighteningly beyond normality. Her hands were clammy, her entire body rattling with shock.

Panic attack.

The next instant, Steve spotted a deep cavity in the floor covered by a metal grate. He leapt forward and ripped the grate away, turned back and with a swift movement, gathered an unresponsive June in his arms, and made for the shelter.

The missile hit.

Like a roaring dragon, the blast shook the world, engulfed it in a fiery rapture so fierce June's teeth knocked together and she felt the hair on her arms singe from the heat. The two of them dropped within the depression, and with June held close against him Steve raised his shield over their heads in a vain attempt to deflect the worst of the debris. But he could not protect them from it all. Sharp chunks of concrete and rock and metal collapsed upon them, crushing into June's legs, bruising her arms, her shoulders, the blast roaring in her ears. With every shallow breath she took, dust and smoke flew down her throat, made her cough, made her retch, while she could do nothing but cling to Steve and pray to whatever god was out there that they may survive this, and then-

and then all went silent. All became black. And if it were not for the distant ringing June was sure she heard, she would have believed herself to be dead.

• • •

whooo OKAY so we see a little bit more of June's past in this chapter, my poor little baby. and her panic attack is a pretty integral part of the plot, so pay attention to that lol. also, the fact that June and Natasha were born in the same year is just a coincidence ;)
I have been updating pretty frequently. Is that okay so far? Should I space them out more?

what are you all thinking so far??