Miss America: The Daughter of Steve Rogers

Chapter 1

I'm awake.

I have no idea who I am or where I am. Looking around, trying to figure out my current location. And it's not looking good.

I'm in a small glass casing, strapped to a stand. There's a hole in the glass to the right of me. From what I can tell it's a bullet hole and there's a pipe above my head. Steam emerges from the opening and I think that's what may have woken me up. Then I look to my left.

A man stands a few feet from me, not paying attention. He goes up to another glass casing and shoots the woman inside of it. Right in the head.

My eyes widen and I succumb to the fear. Did he try to shoot me? Should I be dead right now?

I try to wiggle out of my restraints. As I do this, the slight motion of my arm rising tears the strap, setting one side free. My own strength shocks me, but I quickly undo the other strap.

I notice the man leaves the room. This might be my only chance...

Taking stance, I bring my arms in, curling them into a fist. Closing my eyes, praying I don't cut myself on the glass, my arm shoots out as I punch. As the glass shatters, I don't notice the three men come in to the musky, concrete room.

I lunge out of my casing and roll onto the floor. Standing up, I take in the rest of my surroundings. The areas I couldn't see from inside my case.

The room was filled with stasis chambers, spaced between banks of equipment and instruments. Inside the chambers lay the bodies of the five others, who I assume are like me. Then I turn our pins and see a man in a red and gold iron suit, a man in a red, white, and blue spangled outfit, and one with a metal arm. The last one looks familiar.

Before I can react, the man in an iron suit raises his arm and blasts me with a repulsor blast. It hits my stomach and I fly into the wall. Cement crushed behind my back and I gasp for air.

"No! Wait!" The man with a metal arm yells and runs over to my side. I look up at him as he helps me stand. "Emerson?"

"Emerson?" The other man in red, white, and blue questions. He lowers his shield and I can see tears forming in his eyes.

"Emerson?" The iron man asks the other two, clearly he doesn't know me and is just as confused as I am.

I look at him confused and I'm reluctant to accept his help. "Who?"

"How sweet. A reunion of old friends and family." A voice says, we look around, trying to find the source. My guess is that it's the other man that was here previously. That killed the others.

"Helmet Zemo." One of the men say. So that must be his name.

"If it's any comfort, the others died in their sleep. I only kept her alive because it makes it all so much sweeter," Zemo said. We could not see him. His voice was coming over a speaker. "Did you really think I wanted more of you? I'm grateful to them, though. They brought you here."

The door slid shut. One of the men flung his shield. It ricocheted away without any effect.

"Please, Captain," Zemo said. "The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets."

The man in the iron suit looked at the door, working out his options. "I'm betting I can beat that."

"Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr. Stark. Given time. But then you'll never know why you came." Zemo stepped into view.

So the man in the iron suit is Mr. Stark. And the man in the red white and blue outfit is a Captain?

"You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?" That's what this was all about? The men couldn't believe what they were hearing. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But Zemo had that look I'd learned to recognize. Something strange about his eyes, an intensity normal people didn't have.

"I thought about nothing else for over a year," Zemo said. "I studied you; I followed you. But now that you are standing here, I just realized..." He was looking closely at the Captain's face. "There's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes. How nice to find a flaw."

Flaw? I wondered. Why is that a flaw? But the man had recognized the accent. "You're Sokovian. Is that what this is about?"

What happened in Sokovia?

Zemo shook his head. "Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it up. No. I'm here because I made a promise."

Blew it up? Damn. Who are these guys? And why do they seem to know me?

"You lost someone." The Captain asks, it looks like he was beginning to understand Zemo's motives.

"I've lost everyone. And so will you." Zemo touched a button, and a grainy black-and-white surveillance video started to play on a terminal near us. "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again," Zemo said. "But one that crumples from within? That's dead... forever."

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. The camera image stabilized on a stretch of road. There was nothing remarkable about it. Trees, a narrow strip of grass on either side. But Mr. Stark recognized it immediately, "I know that road," he said. He glanced at the time stamp. 16 DECEMBER 1991. He knew that date too.

"What is this?" he asked, just as on the screen, a stylish town car crashed into a tree. Two motorcycles curled into view. The riders parked. "Help my wife. Please," the driver, badly hurt, was saying.

But the man and girl who had shot out the car's tire and made it crash was not there to help. They were there to make sure there were no witnesses. Mr. Stark didn't want to watch the rest, but he did, staring at the screen through his armor. When it was done, the killers turned to the camera and nodded. It was the man standing next to me with a metal arm and.... me.

Stark stared at the video feed. He'd never felt anything like this combination of grief and rage. The video ended and Iron Man started to go after the two of us. But the Captain caught his arm, saying his name. "Tony. Tony."

The man turned to him, shifting his powerful armor. "Did you know?"

"I didn't know it was them," Cap said.

"Don't lie to me, Rogers! Did you know?"

He couldn't lie. "Yes."

For a brief moment, I thought Stark might get control over his emotions. But then he raised his left hand and blew Captain across the room with a repulsor. He went after the other man and I with everything he had.

"It's me, Bucky Barnes. Em, everything is going to be okay, just stick with me." I look at the man confused.

"But I don't even know who you-" before I can finish my sentence, his metal arm grabs onto my wrist and he pulls me out of the way of a blast.