Losing him was blue, like I'd never known
Missing him was dark gray, all alone
Forgetting him was like trying to know
Somebody you never met
Adelaide Herrmann has so many secrets and is good at hiding all of them.
Only one person knows the real Ad...
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"This is it." Steve said as they all got out of the truck.
"The file came from these coordinates." Adelaide said, putting the tracer in her pocket.
"So did I." Steve said.
"Mysterious."
They broke into the camp, searching around for the file.
"This camp is where I was trained."
"Change much?" Natasha asked.
"A little."
"This is a dead end." Adelaide said, dropping her arms in defeat. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio."
"I guess whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off. What is it?" Natasha asked.
"Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of barracks. This building is in the wrong place." Using his shield, Steve broke the lock.
In the dark room, Adelaide found the light switch.
"This is S.H.I.E.L.D." She said, noticing the logo on the back wall.
"Maybe where it started."
They walked into a back room.
"And there's Shark's father." Natasha looked at the picture of a guy with dark hair and a familiar mustache.
"Howard."
"Who's the girl?" Natasha asked.
Without answering, Steve walked off. He stopped at a wall of empty shelves.
"If you're already working in a secret office," he pulled on it, revealing a hidden hallway, "why do you need to hide the elevator?"
The password was an easy obstacle with the more advance technology they carried.
"More and more dark rooms."
They walked in, the elevator closing behind them. Fluorescent lights turned on as they got closer to the monitor ahead.
"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient."
"Well, that would make us antiques." Adelaide looked to Steve. "Okay then." She sighed.
When Natasha found a place for the hard drive, more lights came on, revealing a room full of recordings that started to spin.
"Initiate system?" An electronic voice read the words on the screen.
"Y-E-S spells yes." Natasha responded and pressed enter. "Shall we play a game? It's from a movie that was really..."
"I know, I saw it."
They all waited while the computer beeped.
"Rogers, Steven, born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. Adelheid Schmidt, born 1920."
"Schmidt?" Steve turned to Adelaide.
"It's some kind of recording." Natasha said, pulling their attention back towards the screen.
"I am not a recording, Fraeulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am."
They looked at a side screen, one that showed a black and white picture of a man.
"You know this thing?" Natasha asked Steve.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. Johan Schmidt." He looked over at Adelaide as he walked around the computer. "He's been dead for years."
"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving, on 200,000 feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain."
"How did you get here?" Steve asked.
"Invited." Zola simply said.
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value." Natasha explained.
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."
"Hydra died with the Red Skull."
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
Adelaide shook her head. "After the war, they restarted. Small stuff like assassinations and weapons." She explained.
"Prove it." Steve told him.
Different screens flickered and showed new images.
"Accessing archive. Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed."
News arrivals about the assassination on Kennedy were shown. Files about the mission. Pictures of a man with a metal arm and more of the same two people.
"That's impossible. S.H.E.L.D. would have stopped you." Natasha said.
"Accidents will happen." Articles of Howard Stark's death were shown. "Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once a purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum."
Steve punched the screen, shattering the glass. But that did not stop Zola.
"As I was saying..."
"What's in this drive?" Steve asked.
"Project Insight requires insight. So, I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Natasha asked.
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."
The door to the elevator closed. Steve threw his shield to try and prevent them from locking, but it was too late.
"Guys, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops."
"Who fired it?" Steve asked.
"S.H.I.E.L.D."
"I am afraid I have been stalking, Captain. Admit it. It's better this way."
Natasha grabbed the hard drive and Steve looked out a panel in the floor.
"We are, both of us, out of time."
Steve pulled them both into the hole in the floor and tried his best to keep them both under his shield.
Once the debris settled, Steve cleared a path for them. He looked down and found Natasha leaning against a piece of debris.
Adelaide was just beside her, holding her leg. A broken piece of concrete had fallen on her foot.
"Hold on." Steve picked up the block, letting Adelaide move.
Adelaide ripped her jacket sleeve, tying it tightly above her ankle.
"Can you stand? Can you walk?"
"Get Nat."
Adelaide broke off a part of a metal rod. She used it like a cane and followed Steve into the woods.
