Steel Hearts

- 4 -

After several hours of driving and several hours of my flipping through music on an iPod, playing various songs for Steve and possibly annoying him as well. He pulls the truck up a road in front of a locked chainlink fence just before the sun starts to set.

"This is it," he says when the two of us have gotten out of the truck, both of us crushing the dead grass beneath our feet. He retrieves his shield from the backseat.

"The GPS led here," I stash it in my pocket, looking around to observe our surroundings, "It's definitely creepy."

A sign on the fence saying 'Camp Lehigh' caught our eye. The sign and the rest of the stop signs along the fence were rusted over. It looks as if no one had touched this place in at least the last decade. The two of us broke through the fence quickly to figure out where the file came from. Walking slowly in front of him, Steve and I follow the GPS coordinates throughout the abandoned Army Base. Every building looks as similar as the next one, brown stucco.

"This camp is where I was trained," Steve tells me as we walk with our eyes moving from building to building.

"They sure did a good job then," I compliment with a smile, not looking up from the GPS in my hand as I walk. My shoes quickly got covered in a thin coat of dust, making them turn from white to brown.

It wasn't until I was almost an entire building away from him that  I had noticed that Steve had stopped in his tracks, eyes glossing over as he took in his surroundings. Grief overtook him for a moment.

"Steve?" I walk back over to him.

"Seventy years and everything's the same..." he muses, one building, in particular, catching his eye, "Except that. Army regulations forbid storing munitions within five hundred yards of the barracks."

He walks quickly over to the large cement building and I have to jog quickly to catch up after he passes by me. "So this building's in the wrong place?" He nods. I move out of his way so he can slam the edge of his shield down on the padlock, shattering it open before fully pushing the door open for us to enter.

Internally, the place seemed like a tomb. Aged, though not as much as other buildings we had passed. Spiders had made their homes in the scattered desks and empty bookcases. Dust and dirt covered every possible surface, making my already dirty shoes even dirtier. The two of us descend the staircase cautiously before Steve finds the light switch. The bulbs in the old fixtures flicker on one by one before our eyes settle on the massive S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the wall, closely resembling the one we were already familiar with.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D," I state, taking cautious steps further into the room.

"Maybe where it started," he says, walking beside me before motioning to what looks like the doors to an office with frosted glass window panes. More empty bookcases and scattered desks littered with dust are revealed to us after opening the door. Three picture frames hang on the wall, all three photos tinted grey with glass barely hanging onto life, two men and a woman.

"That's Howard Stark," I point to the middle photo, "Colonel Chester Phillips," I point to the second man before stopping at the woman, another rather unfamiliar face to me though I've done my research, "Peggy Carter."

A confused look washes over his face, "How did you..?"

"I worked for the F.B.I," I smirk at him, nudging my shoulder against his gently, "I used my resources. Plus, I did a lot of research before joining S.H.I.E.L.D."

Steve sends me a ghost of a smile, almost unnoticeable if you weren't looking. The faint sound of wind whistling erased the smiles from our faces as the two of us follow the sound. Spiderwebs fluttering in the draft leads us to a particular bookcase.