Winter's Fire. ~Book Three~

Chapter Eleven: The Death of Fury.

The moment Clint had landed the Quinjet on the landing pad of the Avengers Tower, the doors of the jet opened, and she ran out of it, going down the ramp and right into Tony's arms. 
He held her as close to him as possible, with one hand tangled into her hair, whole the other held on to her waist. He held her as tight as he could, even while she was shaking. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe now." 
Red slowly nodded as she swallowed a few more gasps of air, though she knew that they all were far from being safe. She let herself believe the white lie he told her. "How's Levi?" 
"She's watching TV, I have the whole building secure and JARVIS is almost done with the armor you asked for." 
As she stepped away from him, and looked up at him. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she couldn't bring herself to say it when she didn't even know it was true. 
As if saving her from having to make that choice, Levinia ran out to them. "Guys-Mom-" She took a panicked breath as she pointed behind her and into the living room. "You have to see this."
Tony, Clint and Red looked at each other before they followed Levi back inside, where she turned up CNN and crossed her arms over her chest. 

"Police and first responders arrived on scene today when they got reports of another attack in DC. The first being against Agent Red North, this attack was on Nick Fury, the Director of an organization called SHIELD. No word on how either of them are doing, or where they are." 

Red slowly sat down on the couch as she reached up to rub at her face. "Oh my God." 
"Why is SHIELD attacking its leaders?" Tony asked, sounding more than just mildly pissed off. 
"Because it's not SHIELD, it's HYDRA." 
 Levi sighed heavily. "How many times do we have to deal with HYDRA?" 
Tony shrugged. "I don't know, but I can't say I'm excited about it." 
There's a moment of silence, all of them taking in the news of Fury possibly being dead, before Clint spoke up. "So, what's our play?" 
"I will try to get ahold of Steve, I think he might be next." Red said as she slowly got to her feet and floated toward the elevator that led to her penthouse. As the elevator went down, she took her phone out of her back packet, only to realize that it had been destroyed from her time getting thrown through windows. "JARVIS," she said as she tossed it aside. "Please make sure that the networks are secure." 
"Right away, Ma'am." He said. As she waited for him to tell her that everything was okay and that she could try to call Steve, the seconds almost seemed to pass like minutes and all she could think about was at her head was pounding, her boned were aching and all she wanted was to lay down and take a nap... but then. "Networks are secure." 
Red let out a breath of relief. "Thank you, JARVIS. Please try to get Steve on the line." She said as the doors opened and she limped her way into her living room. She stood in front of the window for a few minutes, watching the sunset as she waited and prayed for Steve to answer the phone. 
When she was sent to voicemail, she sighed and leaned her head against the window. "Damn it, this is the worst time to not answer your phone, Steve." Maybe he was still with Peggy, or maybe he was still heading home and HYDRA had missed him... but she wasn't going to dare think that the worst had happened. 
"Do you want me to try again?" 
Red pushed away from the window and floated toward her bedrooms. "No, he might be on his way home or something. If you hear anything from, or even about him, you tell me first. Okay? I need to be the first to know." 
"Yes, Ma'am." JARVIS said. "The armor you asked for is almost done, it will be in about ten more minutes." 
"Good, as soon as it's done, Levi and I will be going off to help Steve and Tasha." 
"I will have your motorbike ready. Does Levinia require one as well?" 
"Yes, and I need them both equipped with bulletproof shielding." 
"Yes, Ma'am." 
"Thank you, JARVIS." 
"You're welcome." 
As JARVIS left to do what she asked, Red grabbed two backpacks and started to pack them with whatever they might need. Guns, magazines and bullets from the weapons vault, breakfast bars, water bottles and other non-perishables from the kitchen. 
She didn't know how long they'd be gone, but she could only hope that they stopped HYDRA before Project Insight was launched. 
+++
As night started to fall over DC, Steve finally arrived back at the apartment after having spent the evening with Peggy. As he reached the door, he took his phone out of his pocket to check his messages, when he heard their neighbor, Kate, come down the hallway as she spoke on her phone. 
"That's so sweet, that's really nice." Kate was saying. "Hey, I gotta go though, okay? Bye." She turned to look at him as she put her phone into her laundry basket. "My aunt, she's kind of an insomniac." 
Steve gave a small smile. "Hey, if you want..." He couldn't believe what he was about to say, but maybe, if he found out Levi didn't care for him the way he did her, this would be a nice opportunity. "If you want, you're welcome to use our machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement." Besides, Natasha was always trying to get him to leave his comfort zone and get him back onto the dating scene. Why not start now?
"Oh yeah?" She said will a small smile. "What's it a cost?" 
"A cup of coffee?" 
"Thank you, but umm... I already have a load in downstairs, and uh, you don't really want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished orientation in the infectious disease ward, so..." 
Steve chuckled at that, but had decided that this was a sign that he was wrong about getting back into the dating scene... at least with Kate, anyway. "Ah, well, I'll keep my distance." 
"Well, hopefully not too far." She said with a smile as he turned to get into the apartment. "Oh, and I think you guys left your stereo on." 
Steve tensed up, but tried to keep it from being visible. "Oh, right. Thank you, Levi keeps it on when she leaved the house." He lied easily. 
"Yeah." She said before she entered her apartment. 
The moment she left, the tension he was trying to keep hidden coiled up inside him and he swiftly entered the apartment through his bedroom window. Once he got inside, he leaned down to pick up his shield and checked each of the rooms. Red's was empty, save for her things, Levi's was empty too, but the rest of the place was wrecked, as if a fight had broken out inside the apartment and fear struck inside him. 
Levi was home alone, she would've had no backup if someone had come for her, and she was missing. Walking into the kitchen, he found bullet holes and blood stains, and he continued to slowly make his way into the living room, where he found Fury, sitting in Red's favorite armchair. 
"I don't remember giving you a key." 
Fury gave a painful chuckle. "You really think I need one?" He sat up, just a little more, in his borrowed seat. "My wife kicked me out." 
"Didn't know you had a wife." Steve said as he leaned back against the counter behind him. 
"There are a lot of things you don't know about me." 
Steve flipped the lights on and gasped as the light revealed Fury's injuries. He started to speak up, to ask what had happened but he stopped short when Fury gestures to turn the lights back off before he typed something up on his phone. 

Ears everywhere.

"I'm sorry to have to do this, but I had no place else to crash." He said as he wrote something else and showed it to Steve. 

SHIELD compromised. Find Red.

Steve took a deep breath as he nodded. "Who else knows about your wife?" 
Fury showed his phone screen one last time. You and me. "Just my friends." He said. 
"Is that what we are?" Steve asked, trying to speak as calmly as he could when he took in the information that was just handed to him. Did Red look just as bad as Fury? Or was she in a worse condition? And what about Levi? Had she been able to get to safety, or was she dead in a ditch somewhere because SHIELD was compromised? 
"That's up to you." Fury said before he was suddenly shot three times, the bullets coming into the apartment from the wall behind him. 
Steve quickly looked out the window for the shooter before he dragged the now collapsed Fury out of the living room and into the kitchen, just behind the kitchen counter. He was just able to try and go after the shooter when Fury pressed a flash drive into his hand. 
"Don't... trust... anyone." He said before he passed out. 
Steve shoved the flash drive into his jacket pocket and picked up shield shield as he got ready to jump out of the window to try and catch whoever had done this, when the door of the apartment was broken down and there stood Kate. 
"Captain Rogers?" She asked as she entered the room, holding a gun out in front of her as she walked in. "Captain, I'm Agent 13 of SHIELD Special Service." 
Steve whirled around, caught by surprise of Kate's sudden appearance. "Kate?" 
"I'm assigned to protect you, Levinia and Agent North." 
Part of him felt like he really shouldn't have been surprised that SHIELD had placed an agent across the hall to watch over them. But then, the bigger part of him was mad. If SHIELD had placed an agent to watch over them, why didn't Kate do anything to protect Levinia?" 
"On whose orders?" 
She turned to look down at Fury. "His." Kate quickly joined his side and knelt down to him, trying to find his new injuries as she spoke into her radio. "Foxtrot is down, he is unresponsive. I need EMTs." 
"Do you have twenty on the shooter?" 
Steve looked out of the window again and finally caught a glimpse of the shooter. "Tell them I'm in pursuit." And then he ran and leaped out of the window, and luckily, crashed through a window in the office building across from their apartment. As he took a look around, he saw another quick glance of a masked man walking through the building next to his. 
Steve took another running start and jumped through another window and into that building. He ran through the walls and more windows, he needed to get to that man before it was too late, he needed to stop him, bring him back to SHIELD and stop whatever was happening. 
When he caught up to him on the roof, Steve threw his shield at him, hoping to catch him off guard, but to his surprise, the assassin quickly turned around and caught the shield with a robotic arm. 
Wasn't the first rule of this job to expect the unexpected? And yet, so far anyway, given everything he'd seen, this seemed too ordinary, and for some reason, it was so ordinary that it was out of the ordinary. 
The man threw it back at him, and Steve was barely able to catch it before the man jumped down from the roof and disappeared into the night. 
And now, given everything that had happened, he needed to find Levi and make sure that she was okay. 
+++
When Red had finished packing her and Levinia's bags, she made sure that she was armed to the teeth with as many guns-both lethal and nonlethal- that she could git on her person, which just meant that she had two the Night-Night Guns holstered on her thighs with two regular ones on her hips. 
As she made her way back to the elevator, she glanced at herself in the mirror. All black and red, like she would have been dressed back in Asgard when she'd get ready for a fight. As she looked at herself in the mirror, she could almost swear that she saw Loki standing behind her, like some sort of guardian angel. He set his hand on her shoulder before he was gone again and she was alone. 
The moment she stepped out of the elevator, she tossed a backpack to her daughter and Tony had gotten to his feet as he set eyes on her. 
He walked up to her as he shook his head. "Nonono," Tony said quickly. "You can't just go and deal with this on your own. I can't let you do this alone." 
"It's a good thing I won't be alone then, I'll have Levinia." Red said as she pulled him down to her level before she pressed her forehead against his. "And you don't get to let me do anything, this is my job." 
He took her face in both of his hands and pressed a kiss to her lips as he whispered to her. "Red, I know you want to do the right thing-" 
"This isn't about doing the right thing, Tony," Red protested. "This isn't some sort of self sacrificing ploy, this is our lives at stake-all of us, and maybe even the whole world's... Steve and Tasha need us." 
Tony was silent for a long moment before he sighed heavily and said. "You're a pain in my ass, you know that?" He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. "Just... be careful, okay?" 
"We will." Red pressed another kiss to his lips. "I'll always come back home to you, remember?" That was something Bucky used to say to her when he was about to be shipped off, to stop her from worrying. Funny how she was using the phrase now to keep her new lover from worrying about her. 
"I remember." 
"Good, then there's nothing to worry about." 
Red nodded as she turned to face her daughter, who was already getting to her feet. She smiled. "Get suited up as soon as JARVIS gives you the go, he said it'd be about ten-" 
"It's ready for you now." JARVIS said suddenly. "Is there anything else you need?" 
"No, thank you, JARVIS. Levi and I can handle the rest." Red said as she slung her bag over her shoulders. 
"I'll be ready in five." Levi said before she went down to Tony's suit room. 
When Levi had left the room, Bruce came back with his arms full of different kinds of fast food. He looked at Red and the gear she had on before he sighed and put the food down on the kitchen counter. "What's going on this time?" 
"I'm not sure." Red said with a shrug. "But Steve and Tasha are in trouble." 
He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. "And what are we gonna do about it?" 
"We aren't doing anything about it. Levi and I, on the other hand, are going to help them." Just then, as if on cue, Levinia had walked back into the room and looked at Red. 
Her entire body was sheathed in green, black and gold armor, she had never looked so much like her father. Even her headpiece had small golden horns on it, the sight almost made Red smile. 
Tony went across the room and opened up a panel in the wall to reveal a safe, where he then proceeded to give both Red and Levi two bundles of cash to put into their backpacks. "In case you need it." 
"Thank you." Red said as she leaned up on her toes to kiss his cheek. 
"You're welcome." 
Bruce, who was still in the kitchen at the other side of the room, was looking looking between her and Levi. "Just you two? Alone?" 
"For the last time," Red said as the stashed the cash and zipped up her pack. "We won't be alone." 
Levi, on the other hand, was in the kitchen getting on of the burgers that Bruce had gotten from Freddy's. "We'll be with Steve and Nat. We'll be just fine." 
Bruce sighed. "Red, you can't just." 
"I can just, okay? This is an Agent thing, not an Avenger thing." 
"Levi isn't an agent, Red. This is was about her head." Bruce argued, as if he was pointing out something that the rest of them hadn't realized yet. 
"Actually," Levi said, looking very smug as she reached into her inside jacket pocket and showed off her new SHIELD badged. "As of yesterday, I am." She stashed it away as she nodded at Red as she made her way toward the elevator. "Lets get going." 
"I couldn't agree more." Red said as she joined her daughter at the elevator. "We'll see you soon." She said to Tony and Bruce before the two of them went down to the garage. 
Soon, Red and Levi were weaving in and out of traffic on their way back to DC. They had been on the road for about forty-five minutes when JARVIS was speaking to both of them. 
"In coming call from Captain Rogers." He said. 
"Thank Odin." Red muttered as they turned down a road. "Put him on." 
"Of course." 
Hearing Steve's voice sent a wave of relaxation through her body, and she could've sworn she heard Levi give a relieved breath. "Please tell me you two are okay." 
"We're fine, we're on our way to you guys." Red said. 
Levi raised her head as they took another sharp turn. "We'll be there in about three hours." 
"Good," Steve sighed before he continued speaking. "Fury's been attacked. He uh... he might not make it." 
Red closed her eyes for a moment. She knew that it was coming, they all saw the news, of course Fury wasn't going to make it. "We saw it on the news, we'll be there as soon as possible." 
"What time frame are we looking at?" 
"Early morning at best." 
"All right, be careful and stay away from the apartment." Steve said as they took another turn and were finally on the highway. 
Levi sighed as she spoke. "Give us a rendezvous point." She finally caught up with Red and stayed at her pace.
"The diner on 6th, eleven thirty sharp." 
Levi nodded as she cleared her throat. "We'll see you there. Be careful, Steve. I-" 
Red could hear the smile in his voice as he said. "I know. You too, Lev." And then he hung up. 
Was Tony right about Steve and Levi being into each other?
+++
Steve stood in the hospital with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the doctors work on Fury as they desperately tried to save his life. But all he could think about was if Levi was going to make it back to DC safely, and if he hung up when she was about to confess her feelings for him? 
Now that he had the time to stand there and be worried about her and worry about whether or not she'd be fine, he realized that every cell in his body was calling out to her. Maybe when this was over, he could start getting that life that Natasha and Tony kept telling him to get. 
As if hearing him thinking about her, Natasha ran into the room and stopped beside him at the viewing window. She looked terrified, distraught and as if she was fighting with herself not to cry... she looked as worried for Fury, as Steve felt for about Levi. 
"Is he going to make it?" She whispered. 
"I don't know." 
"Tell me about the shooter." 
"He's fast and strong," Steve said as Maria Hill joined them. "Had a metal arm." 
"Ballistics?" Natasha asked Hill. 
"Three slugs. No rifling, completely untraceable." She explained as she kept her eyes on Fury. 
"Soviet made." Natasha said softly. Steve, who had been keeping his eyes on her face, couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question." 
"Yeah." 
Suddenly, the alarms in the room went off and the doctors in the room scrambled to bring his heartbeat back. They couldn't hear the commotion inside, but all the while Natasha was whispering as she wrapped her arms around her middle. 
"Don't do this to me, Nick." She had whispered as they failed to bring him back with the defibrillator and proceeded to try again. "Please... don't do this to me, Nick. Don't do this." Was this something he'd have to say to Levi during the crisis they all found themselves in? 
Shaking his head free of the thoughts of Levi, he turned his attention back to the room, watching as they did everything they could to save Nick Fury. It felt like hours before they finally announced his time of death and covered his body with the sheet. Slowly, he turned away from the window and rummaged around in his jacket pockets to make sure he still had the flash drive he was given. 
He then took his phone out to call Red, to tell her the news. She had picked up on the first ring. "What happened, Steve?" 
"Red," he paused for a second to take a breath. "They called it." 
Red was silent for a long moment, and all he could hear was the sound of her and Levi driving down the road. After a few more seconds, he finally heard her take a breath before she said. "Tell Nick good-bye for me." 
"I will." He said before he hung up and then followed Natasha into the room they were keeping Fury's body in, so that they could have a moment to say good-bye to their friend. Natasha was silent as she stood at the bedside with tears falling down her cheeks. 
After a few minutes of them standing at Fury's bedside, Hill came into the room and pulled Steve to the side. "They need to talk to you." 
Steve nodded and moved to set a hand on Nat's shoulder. "Natasha." He said softly. 
She still said nothing to him as she reached out to gently touch Fury's forehead before she turned around and stalked out of the room. He sighed before she followed after him. "Natasha!" 
She whirled around to face him. "Why was Fury in your apartment?" 
"I don't know." 
Rumlow cleared his throat as he approached them. Steve was almost taken aback by his appearance, why did he have a broken nose? "Cap, they want you back at SHIELD." 
Steve looked away from him and back to Natasha. "Yeah, give me a second." 
"They want you now." He pressed. 
Steve took an exasperated breath. "Okay." He turned back to Natasha, who was currently glaring at him. 
"You're a terrible liar." She muttered before she turned away from him and Rumlow and walked away. 
He could hear Sitwell talk to Rumlow on his earpiece as they stood in the hallway. "STRIKE Team, escort Captain Rogers to SHIELD immediately for questioning."  
"I told him." Rumlow said with a sigh. 
Steve glanced around to try and find a place to hide the flash drive, and he managed to spot a vending machine that was being refilled. After checking that he wasn't being watched, he stashed the flash drive behind the packages of Hubba Bubba before he followed behind Rumlow and the rest of STRIKE.
"Yeah, I don't know where Agent Lokidittir is," Rumlow was saying to his team as they walked. "She was supposed to be in this morning, but didn't show." He turned to look at Steve. "Have you seen her, Cap?" 
Steve shrugged as he shook his head. "No, I haven't seen her since last night." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Let's go." The last thing he wanted was to give away Levi's position. He couldn't lose her too. 
"Yeah." Rumlow agreed before he turned to look at his team. "STRIKE, move out." 
Hours after the hospital visit, when the sun was starting to rise, Steve and the STRIKE team walked into the SHIELD building. He had been allowed to change into his stealth suit before he was supposed to meet with Alexander Pierce, and at this point in time, he had two hours before he was supposed to meet up with Levi and Red. 
When he and Rumlow finally found Pierce, he was talking to Kate, if that was even her name at this point. "For what it's worth, you did your best." He was saying to her as the pair approached. 
"Thank you, Sir." She said as she turned to leave and met eyes with Steve. "Captain Rogers." 
"Neighbor." He said with a curt nod and a cold, bitter tone. 
"Ah," Pierce said as Steve walked up to him. "Captain, I'm Alexander Pierce." 
"Sir, it's an honor." Steve said as they shook hands. By this point, Kate had already gone back to her desk, thankfully. 
"The honor is mine, Captain. My father served in the one hundred and first." Pierce said as he gestures into the office behind him. "Come on in." He led the way into his office and closed the door behind them. 
He sat down behind his desk and showed Steve a picture of himself and Fury. "That photo was taken five years after we met, taken by Red, when I was at the State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, the rebels took hostages." Pierce explained as he set the picture down. "Nick as Deputy Chief for the SHEILD station there. And he came to me with a plan, he wanted to storm the building through the sewers, I said 'No, we'll negotiate'. It turned out, the ELN didn't want to negotiate, so they put out a kill order." He almost smiled. "They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty, Nick ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil, he saved the lives of a dozen political offerors, including my daughter." As he finished the story, he leaned back into his seat and watched Steve very carefully. As if he was trying to see something that Steve didn't want to give up willingly. 
Steve stayed standing up as he set his hands on his belt. "So, you gave him a promotion?" 
"I've never had any cause to regret it." He said as he sat up straighter, still keeping his eyes on Steve's face. "Why was Nick in your apartment last night? And where is Agent North?" 
Steve simply shrugged as he shook his head. He didn't know why Fury was in the apartment last night, and when it came to Red and Levi, he only knew where they were going to be, not where they were currently, or if they even made it to the diner. "I don't know why he was there, nor do I know where she is. Last time I saw her, she was heading out on a date with Tony Stark." 
Pierce seemed to quickly drop the subject of Red, he must believe that something happened to her, was she attacked too? But didn't forget about Fury, in fact, he seemed completely focused on him. "You know that it was bugged?" 
"I did, because Nick told me." 
"Did he tell you that he was the one who bugged it?" He asked. 
The truth was, Steve didn't know that Fury could have been the one who bugged it, could he even believe that? He didn't have time to hide his shocked expression before Pierce could see it, and he nodded but said nothing more on the subject. "I want you to see something." Peirce proceeded to pull up footage of Batroc being interrogated in a SHIELD holding cell. 
"Who hired you, Batroc?" The SHIELD agent was saying. 
"Is that live?" Steve asked as he took a step forward to get a better look. 
"Yeah, they pocked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers." 
Steve raised an eyebrow at that. "Are you saying he's a suspect? Assassination isn't Batroc's line." 
Pierce shook his head. "No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contracted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer." He explained. "And then the money was through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech." 
"Am I supposed to know what they means?" Steve asked. He didn't know Jacob Veech, he didn't even think he knew any Veechs way back when. 
As if to answer him, Pierce handed him a file. "Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 1435 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived in 1437." 
"Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?" He decided that if he acted as if he let his guard down, if Pierce thought Steve was believing him, he'd learn more. 
Pierce sighed. "The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death." 
Steve's eyebrows drew together. "If you really knew Nick Fury, you'd know that's not true." 
"Why do you think we're having this conversation? See, I took the seat on the Council, not because I wanted to, but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that, despite all the diplomacy and the hand shaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world, sometimes means having to tear the old one down." Steve wondered how many more long winded explanations were in his future as Pierce continued to speak. "And that makes enemies, those people who call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today makes me really, really angry." He hesitated for a moment before he continued on to say: "Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So, I'm asking again, why was he there?" 
Steve took as deep a breath as he could before he said. "He told me not to trust anyone." 
"I wonder if that included himself and Red." Pierce stated bluntly as he got to his feet. 
Steve stayed quiet for a long moment before he looked down to check his watch. It was almost time for him to meet up with Levi and Red. He looked back at him as he shook his head. "I'm sorry, those were his last words. Excuse me." He leaned down to pick up his shield and put it on his back as he started to leave the room. 
"Captain," Pierce said, causing Steve to pause at the door. "Somebody murdered my friend, and one of this agentcy's best has gone missing, and I'm going to find out why. Anyone that gets in my way will regret it. Anyone." 
"Understood." Steve said before he left the room. 
He needed to get out of that building and fast, because he knew that he was next on the hit list. 
The moment he entered the elevator, Steve told the computer to take him down to operations control, and as the elevator doors were closing, Rumlow and a few members of STRIKE entered. 
"Keep STRIKE personnel on sight," he was saying to them as they walked in. "And tell me when Levinia enters the building. She missed her training this morning." 
That made Steve tense up, what did he want with Levi? Did Fury make her a part of STRIKE? And could that mean that there was a possibility of Levinia being against him too? That thought, no matter how brief it was, made Steve's heart ache. Levi would never do that to him and Red. 
"Understood." 
Rumlow stood next to Steve as he asked the elevator to take him to Forensics before he turned to face him. "Cap." 
Steve set his jaw. "Rumlow." 
"Evidence Response found fibers on the roof they want us to see. You want me to get the tac-team ready?" 
He shook his head. "No, let's wait and see what it is first." 
"Right." Rumlow agreed. 
Steve glanced around the elevator and noticed that one of the STRIKE agents was touching their weapon, was this where they would do it? At least he was already tensed up and ready for a tight. The doors in front of them opened again and more agents-but SHIELD and STRIKE entered the elevator, they asked for the Administration Levels and the doors closed before they started moving down again. 
Rumlow leaned over to talk to Steve again. "I'm sorry about what happened with Fury. Messed up, what happened to him." 
"Thank you." 
"And Red's disappearance is really bad timing." 
Steve forced a chuckle. "It is, but I guess we'll have to find her again." 
Rumlow chuckled with him. "I mean, we did it once, right?" But none of this small talk did a thing to calm Steve's nerves, what was their play in all of this? Why were they waiting so long to attack him? To his dismay, even more STRIKE agents entered the elevator and at this point, he was clearly surrounded and outnumbered. 
"Before we get started," Steve said. "Does anyone wanna get out?" 
There was a moment of tense silence before one of the agents surrounding him suddenly turned around with an electrical rod in hand and hit Steve in the stomach with it. He was used to getting shocked, after all the time he spent of comforting Levi, who was a lightning rod, but it was never a pleasant feeling hit in the gut with it. 
He groaned in pain pain as a few of the others grabbed him and tried to put his hands above his head, trying to blind him to the wall with magnetic handcuffs. Luckily, Steve was faster than them, they only got one of his hands above his head as he used the other to knock them over. Rumlow whopped out his own electrical rod and used it to shock Steve while was he still partly attached to the wall. 
Steve finally got his hands free and put them up, all too ready to fight Rumlow. He wasn't going to lie to himself and say that he never wanted to fight the guy, especially now that his life depended on it. 
"Whoa, Big Guy," Rumlow said as he raised his hands. "I just wanted you to know, Cap, this isn't personal." He suddenly attacked Steve with the rod. 
Steve let out a groan of pain as he was shocked, and Rumlow was groaning with him, not with pain, but with the effort it took to keep the rod held against Steve's body. He reached around and grabbed his shield, he hit Rumlow with it as hard as he could and he fell to the ground, clearly knocked out. Steve sighed as he threw his shield and it ricocheted off of the walls, knocking the rest of the agents in the elevator out. 
"It kinda feels personal." He said as he picked up the shield and put it on his arm before he tried to open the elevator doors, only to freeze the moment he saw a large team of STRIKE agents coming toward him, all pointing guns at him.
"Drop the shield! Put your hands in the air!" They yelled. 
Steve let the doors go and threw his shield, it moved around the elevator and cut the wires that held it in place. It dropped rapidly for a few seconds before the emergency brakes kicked in and he tried to open the doors again, but when he saw only more armed agents coming for him, he let the door close and looked frantically around him to try and find a way out. 
"Give it up, Rogers!" They yelled. "Get that door open, you have nowhere to go!" 
He turned around to look at the glass wall behind him. Deciding that this was his only way out, he took a deep breath and launched himself out of the window. He held his shield closed to his body to protect him from the fall as he landed on the ground in a shower of glass and, with a groan, he got to his feet and held his side as he limped toward the garage. 
Just as the doors started to close, Steve, riding atop his motorbike, pushed it as fast as it could down the runway, not even stopping as a Quinjet suddenly appeared in front of him and started firing. 
He drove in a zig-zagged pattern to avoid getting hit and he was just about to get out of dodge. "Stand down, Captain, Captain Rogers. Stand down." The pilot said as they got ready to take fire again. "Repeat. Stand down." 
Steve still didn't stop as he reached behind him and threw his shield at the propellers of the Quinjet. He then jumped off of his bike and onto the jet. He caught his shield and used it to destroy the other propeller systems. As the jet began to fall, he jumped down from it and ran away. 
He needed to get his suit off and hidden before he went to find Levi and Red. 
+++
 In the building Steve had just escaped from, Sitwell came down the stairs and got everyone's attention. Everyone in the room, including Agent 13, turned to look at him. There was no point in trying to hide it, Sitwell looked more pissed off than he had ever looked the entire time she knew him. 
"Whatever your OP is, bury it. This is level one. Contact DOT, all traffic lights in the district go red." He was saying. "Shut all runways at BWT, IAD, and Reagan down. All security cameras in the city go through this monitor," he pointed at the giant screen behind him. "Right here. Scan all open sources. Phones, computers, PDAs, whatever. If someone so much as Tweets about this guy, I want to know about it." 
Agent 13 crossed her arms over her chest. "All due respect Sir, if SHIELD is conducting a man hunt for Captain America, we deserve to know why." 
"Because he lied to us." Pierce said as he entered the room. "Captain Rogers has information regarding the death of Director Fury and the disappearance of Agent North, and he refused to share it. As difficult as this is to accept, Captain America is a fugitive from SHIELD."