ʟᴏꜱᴛ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ || 𝟙

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 3

She turned the delicate frames in her hands, marvelling at the fact that despite its frail exterior, the glasses were nearly impossible to destroy.

Not that she had tried.

She had no idea why this was so important to the boy in the suit, but apparently, based on many hours hunched in an Internet-café, it was the center of whatever happened in a major attack at London. Whatever secrets this pair of glasses was hiding, they had to be incredibly valuable.

Although she was loath to ditch the, admittedly stolen, bike halfway, she had no choice, seeing as it wasn't exactly inconspicuous in Brooklyn. Besides, she wanted a chance to stretch her legs.

The antique shop that had once been a front for Howard Stark and the US Army's super-soldier experiments was still standing, although thanks to a few renovations it fitted much better into the modern landscape. After the debacle with H.Y.D.R.A and S.H.I.E.L.D, the research lab had been shut down and abandoned, but it looks like it was time for someone to re-open those steel doors.

Taking a deep breath, she softened her features pushing the door inward, exuding a calm confidence and authority.

"May I help you?" the mild-mannered old man who was behind the counter asked as he took her in.

She knew what he was supposed to be seeing, as the illusion that was broadcasted from her bracelet she was wearing, shimmered and rippled like a rolling ocean.

Instead of a sixteen-year-old decked out in a Kevlar jumpsuit, armed to the teeth with knives at various easy to reach holsters, a garroting wire concealed inside her hollowed out  belt, a gun strapped to each side of her hip, left wrist decorated with a bracelet that looked like squares of onyx gemstone that, when needed, could deliver a wide variety of lethal substances from cyanide to over 100 joules of electricity to her assailant, depending on the situation, the owner was now facing a middle-aged female police officer with dark hair coiled tightly into a bun, light brown eyes and a stern but approachable smile who was currently showing him her badge.

Of course, the badge was fake. The concealment and duplication technology that she had woken up with was good enough that mere civilians would gloss over her, no questions asked. After multiple trial and errors in the shabby hotel room with a single cracked mirror, she finally figured all of the tech out. With its decently curated database, if she wanted to, she could have made herself look like an operative from any of America's numerous federal agencies. FBI, CIA, hell, she could present herself as a Swedish general and he would have believed her, but she saw no reason to give the poor octogenarian a heart attack which was most likely around the corner anyway.

"My apologies sir, but I'm Officer Gomez with the 73rd precinct and I'm doing my daily patrol but I guess I have to use the little girl's room." Her expression morphed into one of sheepishness, allowing a small amount of blush to rise to her cheeks. "I won't take up too much of your time and I'll just slip out through the back door." she reassured him.

She knew that statistically, bathroom emergencies warranted absolute compliances, sympathetic smiles and quick responses. The elderly man was no different as he quickly directed her to the back of the store.

"Thank you so much." she smiled, purposefully passing by a rectangular mahogany table and in a move far too quick for any bystander to have noticed, her finger reached down and pressed a small button, that resisted at first but quickly gave way to the pressure. 

Everything else in the shop might have come and gone in the years, but this table was a permanent fixture. She should know, she had spent the last week memorizing the blueprints for both the shop as well as the not-so-secret military research labs.

Feigning urgency, she ducked into the back, pleased to see that despite its modern front, most of the interior had not changed. Facing the wall-to-wall bookshelf, she crossed her fingers that the government had used some sort of anti-rusting, anti-noise making material when they had ordered the construction of the lab.

The doors opened almost seamlessly, with the barest of resistance. Opening a gap just large enough for her to slip in, she shut them quietly behind her.

Unlike most of the shop, the décor was outdated and covered in dust. She wrinkled her nose, imagining what the people in these halls had done nearly seven decades ago. Military men in and out of offices, scientists in their flowing white coats, acting like Gods with capes as they concocted serums, weapons, anything that could have given America the slightest edge over the Nazis.

And as she approached the very center of the facility, she held her breath as the dimly lit room came to view. To her annoyance, leaning against the rusted through railing, it was incredibly boring, almost anti-climatic, but then again, what had she expected, a wave of déjà vu to overwhelm her? No, this was just like any other derelict military lab scattered in almost every major city in this country and whatever she had read about this place were just lies fabricated to scare.

Well, all of them but one of course.

Everything was preserved almost perfectly, the equipment, seating area, casket-like box described exactly from the case file she had stolen in the archives, where a singular name had caught her eye among the redacted and blanked out sections:

𝚂𝚝𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗  𝙶𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚝  𝚁𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚜

--

"I need a screen showing me E.D.I.T.H's location right now." Peter barked out, watching as his day went from "someone has revealed my secret identity and framed me as a villain bad" to "the one thing that could have ensured my innocence is now missing bad".

"Pulling it up for you." Pepper swiped up and a light blue holographic map of New York City appeared.

"It's in Brooklyn??" he asked perplexed. 

"Not just anywhere in Brooklyn." Pepper enlarged the map, focusing on the blinking white dot that was somehow several meters underground of an antique shop.

"That's where Howard Stark created Captain America. Whoever he or she is....they've got something to do with Steve Rogers."