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AMERICA
A drawer. The second one, of the third in the rows of clean, perfectly aligned painted wood. A folder, clear and transparent, the freshly bought scent of plastic synthetic wavering beneath his nose. A label: Representation. Papers inside. And a few more answers. 

North rustled around the pile, sifting through the mess with a look of determination that made him look constipated (although, he would probably get a nerve-wracked fist to his face with the voicing of that thought). Nearby, a half-open window swept cool breeze into the room, across scanners and electrodes and abandoned microscopes. Poland, meanwhile, had his head still in the nearby shelves, wiping them clean as he spread the contents across quartz tabletops. 

Peculiar contents, to be specific. Reich had ordered for every piece to be photographed before they should 'scram'— there was no time to sit and mull over the nature of the pieces. And although he had really believed that his words were the best way to go about, it was difficult to disregard the abundance of new information they had just, completely not intentionally because they had took a wrong route, stumbled upon.

"Why are there so many brain scans?" Poland said faintly, snapping photos. These are sketches." 

"Entry point... sounds familiar, does it not?" North muttered to himself, scrutinizing a lab report on the topic. "Entry point... entry point..." He seemed to get a hold of himself halfway through, shaking his head and saying that he should 'focus'. His strict adherence to order, or maybe just China's, really, was what made North rather well-equipped for the break-in. 

"I don't understand why all of this is just scattered across tons of libraries and research labs," America pointed out, exhaling a quick huff of air. "Makes it more complicated, if anything..."

Poland hummed in agreement, but nothing more, and the three receded into relentless silence once again, too distracted by the task at hand to engage in conversation. Five minutes stretched into ten, ten into fifteen— before North flinched, put his finished documents back into the folder, and reminded them that if they were gone too long it would make it difficult to slip back into the crowd. 

"Right," America nodded. He had barely gotten to fully read through anything, and it grew into a curious thirst in his mind that only getting home and going over it all together would quench. And they departed, one last glance at the drywall tiles and the crystal-plated tables of UN University's brain sciences lab; one more descent down the endless flights of stairs. 

They slipped back into the floor of the fair, and no one, expectedly, seemed to have noticed, so it was simply a desperate hope that the overhead cameras did not either. Some elaborate display of food, too good of a presentation for its appearance, was laid out through the main hall now, and North smoothly grabbed an apple on his way to the door. 

America allowed a final sweep of his eyes through the university's interior. Somewhere in the crowd, he spotted a flash of blue. 

The color set off a quick, immediate alarm in his brain. 

The person wearing the suit in the shade turned around, as if he could feel the heat of eyes on him. There was a forced eye contact, brown contacts latching onto a bright green. The man offered him a smile, nice and effortless, and America felt his mouth go dry knowing that there was venom behind it. 

Whoever that was, they knew who he was. 

He paused for breath and raced out behind his friends.

★

They got onto the subway worn with the lethargy of an early morning rise and an information heist done on edge. When North woke during the ride before Poland, who was still fast asleep, all traces of sleepy petulance had disappeared from his tone.