Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WHEN THEY MADE IT TO THE HOSPITAL, STEVE LEFT NO ROOM FOR LALLYGAGGING. Steve explained to her how he needed to retrieve a flash drive, but speaking to Natasha was just as important. When they found where the flash drive was, it was already gone. Which made Steve clearly madder. He found Natasha chewing some gum and he pushed her into a room.
All of this made Anastasia feel guilty. Sure, she knew that Steve was clearly more mad about the flash drive than he was about the Winter Soldier, but it didn't help Anastasia that it could get worse. "Where is it?" Steve spoke angrily.
"Safe." She replied. She turned to Anastasia. "Why aren't you at school?"
"Ignore her! Tell me the truth!" Steve got angrier.
"Where did you get it?" Natasha questioned.
"Why would I tell you?" Steve asked.
"Fury gave it to you. Why?"
"What's on it?" Steve questioned, even angrier.
"I don't know." Natasha shrugged.
"Stop lying!"
"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."
"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Steve assumed. This made Anastasia raise an eyebrow. Fury had hired the pirates that they had fought?
"Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you." Did her mother know and not tell Anastasia? As much as she figured Steve was over reacting, she was starting to see where he was coming from.
"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."
"Yeah, I knew that already." Steve spoke. "He's a ghost story."
Anastasia knew none of this. Which made her more guilty.
"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." Anastasia knew her mother was lying straight through her own teeth. She should've just said out loud that Anastasia was a result of them. Unless her mother didn't know. Natasha pulled up her shirt to show him the scar on her stomach. "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."
There was silence for a little bit. "Yeah she looks horrible in them now." Anastasia spoke, trying to defuse the awkward silence.
Natasha rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Annie. Makes me feel better." She squirmed her way out of Steve's grasp. "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She held up the flash drive. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."
Steve took the thumb drive. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."
Her mother hadn't asked again why she wasn't at school, which was a good thing. Anastasia definitely wouldn't have found the right words. But that should've been the last thing on her mind. She was now at the mall with Steve and Natasha, disguised as normal family. "First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk." Natasha said to Anastasia.
"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off." Steve added. The three entered an apple store to use one of the computers.
"drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are." Natasha explained.
"How much time do we have?" Steve asked.
"Uh...about nine minutes from.." she popped the flash drive into the Mac book. "Now. 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." The three tried to hurry their way through the process to see what was on the flash drive. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."
Just then, an employee came up to them. "Can I help you guys with anything?"
"Oh, no. My husband and daughter were just helping me find some fun vacation spots for a family gathering." Her mother lied.
"Where are you guys thinking about going?" The employee asked.
Anastasia looked at the monitor and saw the signal was traced to New Jersey. "New Jersey." She spoke.
"Oh." The employee looked at Steve for a second. "I have the exact same glasses."
"Wow, you two are practically twins." Natasha cracked.
"Yeah, I wish. Specimen. Uh...if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron." And the man left.
"You said nine minutes, come on." Steve tried to rush.
"Shh, relax. Got it." Natasha finished up. They found the signal had came from Wheaton, New Jersey. "You know it?" She asked.
"I used to. Let's go." Steve pulled the flash drive from the computer and the three walked out. "Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro." Two agents came up the escalator as they went down.
"Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said. Annie, act like you're on your phone." Natasha ordered. The three did just that as the agents looked their way. "Kiss me." She ordered again.
"What?"
"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable."
"Yeah, they do." Steve whined. The two quickly kissed and Anastasia put up her hoodie and continued to act like she was on her phone.
"You still uncomfortable?" Natasha asked, jokingly.
"It's not the exact word I'd use."
The mission was a success, but Anastasia felt guilty and betrayed. She trusted Natasha and Steve, but didn't. She knew the three each had a secret they were hiding. Steve had revealed his, Natasha had reveled a part of hers. Now Anastasia had to find a way to reveal hers.
