Tiny Victories

06

Disguised as a civilian dressed in a hoodie, Steve went back to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive from the vending machine but saw it was gone.

Natasha appeared behind him, chewing some gum.

In anger, Steve pushed her into a room while a curious Daria followed and demanded, "Where is it?"

"Safe," Natasha replied. "Daria, go."

Daria shook her head. "No. If either of you maim yourselves, I want to be here to help."

"Do better!" Steve snapped. "We'll be fine."

"Where did you get it?" Natasha asked.

"Why would I tell you?"

"Fury gave it to you. Why?"

"What's on it?"

"I don't know."

"Stop lying!"

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

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

"Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you."

"I'm not gonna ask you again."

"I know who killed Fury. 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."

"Sounds ominous," Daria mumbled. She raised her voice and said, "So he's a ghost story."

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, 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." She held up the flash drive. "Like you said, Daria, he's a ghost story."

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

Daria sighed. "I just clocked out. Do you mind if I join you? I have some shopping to do anyway."

Steve and Natasha exchanged a look and nodded.

---

Steve, Daria and Natasha went to the mall disguised as a civilian couple with their friend.

"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. Daria went off to another store.

"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."

"How much time do we have?"

"Uh... about nine minutes from..." 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.