Infinity

Chapter 77

Marlie's POV

I woke up to the car turning on a gravel drive. I looked around and immediately recognized where we were. It was a drive that I had done countless times. Steve pulled the truck up to the fence. I grabbed my bag, and we all go out.

"This it?" Nat asked.

"The file originated from here." I mumbled.

"So did I." Sighed Steve. I looked over at him. He had a wistful look on him face as he took in the rundown camp.

I looked around and sadness filled me. It was sad to see the place that I spent so much of my old life at all rundowns. We crossed the fence and started walking around. Nat got a scanner out looking for any signal that could point us in the right direction. But we don't need it. I know exactly where we're going.

"This camp is where I was trained." Steve mumbled.

I laughed. "If you can call it that. You forget Steve, I met you right after you were trained, and I had never seen someone so tiny and sickly in my life." I teased sending him a smile.

"You know sometimes I forget that you were there." Steve says to me.

"I take personal offence to that. I played a big part in creating you. Never forget that." I tell him hitting his arm.

"Yep, I'm with a bunch of old people." Nat smirked.

"Excuse me. I'm basically 39, if you take into account the time portal thing." I smirked.

Nat then turned her attention to her device. "This is a dead end there's nothing here."

I sighed. "That's what you're supposed to think."

I then walked straight to the building that was the secret entrance to the original SHIELD office. Steve and Nat looked at me questionably as I entered the pin into the keypad and opened the door.

"Well, you coming?" I asked.

I didn't wait for a response. Instead, I walked into the building and went straight to the secret lower level. Both Nat and Steve were looking at me questioningly.

"What is this place?" Steve asks.

I turn on the light to the room before turning to them. "SHIELD. Well, where it started. I spent a lot of time here in the fifties." They looked at me in shock.

"This is the secret office you mentioned?" Nat asked. I just nodded.

Steve then walked over to a bunch of black and white pictures displayed on the wall. The pictures were of me, Howie, Peggy, Sousa, and the Colonel. All of the founders of SHIELD were displayed, but what caught my attention was the plaque under my photo. On the plaque was the year of my birth to the year of my supposed death. I saddened me the most the besides Peggy, everyone I left behind died believing I had died. I just wish that they could know that I'm happy and living my life.

"That's Stark's father." Nat says coming over.

"Howie. My best friend." I mumbled.

"Who's the girl?" Nat asks. Steve just walks away.

I look over at her. "That's Peggy. They were close during the war. He misses her." I tell Nat.

We then continue to look around trying to find any possible data point. I really want to go down to my old lab. I just want to see it. I also need to find the files from the drive that Maria gave me. I believe the originals are somewhere here. We are walking down one of the halls headed towards the different labs when Steve suddenly stops. I turn and look at him.

"If you're already working in a secret office," He then grabs the shelf and moves it revealing an elevator. "Why hides the elevator?"

I'm shocked. I have ever seen this before. Nat and Steve both look over at me and I just shrug. "I've never seen this before." I tell them.

Nat uses her device to figure out the code to the elevator and they both walk in, but I don't follow. "You not coming?" Steve asks me.

"No, I need to do something. I'll be on comms if you need anything." I tell them.

Nat looks at me concerned. "You alright?" she asks me.

"Yeah. Go I just need to do something." I try to reassure her. I don't know if I've convinced her, but she lets me go.

Once the elevator closes, I let out the sob that I'd been holding in. Coming here is harder than I thought it would be. I then go straight to my old lab and the sadness deepens. The last time I was here I had argued with Howie. He was so worried about me, and I just brushed him off. My memory may be spotty of the last year I was in my time, but I remember that. I was honestly shocked that the lab seemed to be the same. There wasn't much that had changed. Several of my old books and décor were still here and the furniture was the same. I walked over to my old worktable and ran my fingers under the edge of the tabletop. I found what I was looking for. Under the tabletop was a secret compartment. It dropped down. I reached inside and pulled out the contents. Inside was several pictures and letters. I placed them in a storage space in my suit and reached in and grabbed what I was really looking for. I pulled out a small frame and inside the frame was the only family picture that I owned. It was taken when Jasper and I were about one years old. I grabbed it when I first moved out of the house. I smiled down at the photo before putting it with the rest.

I was about to leave when something on the desk caught my eye. On the desk was a plaque that said Howard Stark. I smiled, that's why this room hadn't changed. Howie had made it his lab after the accident. It made me smile to myself. I then walked out of the lab and closed the door. I wiped my tears and walk down to the filing room, that contained all the reports. All of the cabinets were completely empty.

I then remembered that one of the files was on operation Paperclip, so I went down to Zola's old lab. I walked in and looked around. Everything looked the same. Nothing seemed off or out of place. Until I started looking through the desk drawer. I took everything out of the drawer, which wasn't much. I was about to close it when I realized that the drawer wasn't deep enough. After some tinkering, I found that the bottom of the drawer was fake. I lifted up the fake drawer and found several old files. Sitting on the floor I started going through the files, and what I found shocked me.

Hydra, that is what had infiltrated SHIELD and it started when we recruited Zola. I knew he was bad news, but I was so focused on my projects that I didn't fight against the decision enough. I should have fought harder or at least paid more attention to him. Instead, I focused all my energy on my research.

I got up and started looking for other compartments.

"Marlie, take cover SHIELD just fired a short range ballistic at us. 30 seconds!" Nat practically yells through the comms.

I did the only thing that I could think of in such a short amount of time. I activated my suit. It barely finished fitting itself around me when the entire building exploded around me. I was thrown around the room and knock hard into an unknowable number of objects before I was consumed by darkness.