Brave Words, Braver Deeds

06

Whilst disguised as a civilian dressed in a hoodie, Steve and Dakota went back to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive from the vending machine but saw it was gone. Natasha and Liesl appeared behind them, the former chewing some gum.

In anger, Steve pushed them into a room, followed by Dakota, and he demanded, "Where is it?"

"Safe," Natasha and Liesl replied.

"Do better!"

"Where did you get it?" Natasha asked.

"Why would I tell you?"

"Fury gave it to you. Why?"

"What's on it?" Dakota questioned.

"I don't know."

"Stop lying!" Steve retorted.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Dakota challenged.

"Well, it makes sense," Liesl replied. "The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do the two of you."

"I'm not gonna ask you again."

"I know who killed Fury," Natasha told them, mainly speaking to Steve. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years." She avoided mentioning the other assassin, as she was standing in front of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Captain America.

"So he's a ghost story," Steve said.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out our tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, and I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." She pulled up her shirt to show him the scar on the side of her stomach. "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."

"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now," Steve shot back, earning a hint of a smile from Natasha.

"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried."

Natasha held up the flash drive. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."

Steve took the flash drive from her as Dakota said, "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."

---

Steve, Dakota, Liesl and Natasha went to the mall disguised as a civilian couple with their friends.

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk," Natasha instructed.

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve said as they went to a Mac store to use one of their computers.

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D. will know exactly where we are," Dakota informed.

"How much time do we have?" Steve asked.

"Uh... about nine minutes from..." Natasha replied as she popped the flash drive into a MacBook Pro, "Now." Several S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles headed their way. "Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

"Can you override it?"

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly."

Rumlow and his team pulled up outside the mall and headed inside.

---

Back at the Mac store, Steve, Dakota, Liesl and Natasha continued to try to find out what was on the flash drive. Natasha said, "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."