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Disguised as civilians, Steve and Nova Sadie went back to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive. She had hidden it in the vending machine behind a pack of gums, but when they arrived in front of it, it was gone. "Damn it! I put it here." the Rogers girl whispered, nervously. Suddenly, Natasha appeared behind them chewing some gum, they turned to her, in anger Steve pushed her into a room. Nova looked around and closed the door. "Where is it?" Steve asked. "Safe." Natasha replied. "Do better!" "Where did you get it?" "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." There was a moment of silence then Steve spoke, "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." "So, he's a ghost story." Steve affirmed. "No, Dad." Nova intervened for the first time, "Actually, I know him... not personally." The two Avengers looked at her, curious to learn more. "When I was at Hydra our cells were in the same hallway... and when they came for him, they would take him to a room... and from there always came heartbreaking screams, which continued for a long time until they stopped for a few minutes and then started again..." she paused for a moment, catching her breath, her eyes were shining, "When the HYDRA agents arrived in front of the cell, something terrible was going to happen." Steve was a bit puzzled by that statement and laid a hand on his daughter's shoulder as a sign of support.
Natasha interrupted the moment, saying, "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 them the scar on the side of her stomach, "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis." "Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now." "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." Natasha held up the flash drive, "Like you said, he's a ghost story." Steve took the flash drive from her, "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."
⍟ⴵ
Steve, Nova and Natasha went to the mall, disguised as a civilian family. "First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk." Natasha said. "If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off." Steve added. They went to a Mac store to use one of their computers. "The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are." Natasha informed. "How much time do we have?" Nova asked. "Uh... about nine minutes from... Now." She popped the flash drive into a MacBook Pro. "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?" Steve asked. "The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." Rumlow and his team pulled up outside the mall and headed inside.
