Eagle (A Loki love story)

Chapter 81

Plot Chapter

The building was old and smelled musty.  It couldn't have been built recently, a thick layer of dust covered every surface and large, fluorescent lights flickered clicked on when Steve flipped a stiff switch.  The first thing that caught my eye was a very old SHIELD logo on the far wall.
"This is SHIELD." Nat's voice echoed loudly in the large, sparsely filled chamber.
"Maybe where it started." We walked by rows of desks, all in order and set up, as if it was just a day off for the workers.  But what little tech was here was ancient; this place had been abandoned suddenly.  Not everything was right where it was supposed to be, a couple chairs were in the middle of the floor, as if there had been a small struggle right before this place was closed down.
On the right side of the room, we found a private office, just as dusty as the rest of the place.  On the wall above the desk, there were three pictures.  An old, stern-looking man, a younger man, and a beautiful woman.  Peggy Carter.
"There's Stark's father."
"Howard."
"Who's the girl?" Steve gave no answer, he just looked sadly at the photo before wandering off into the rows of almost empty bookshelves.  Nat followed him but I lingered for a moment, removed the picture from the frame, and tucked it into my jacket pocket.
Some of the shelves had cobwebs in the corners but that wasn't the strangest thing about this creepy room.  I could hear a faint howling coming from somewhere, I just couldn't quite locate the source.
"Does anyone else hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"There's a draft in here."
"But there aren't any windows, we shut the door, and there's no heat or AC."
"No, she's right." Steve looked around, "I can hear something too."
After a close inspection of the shelves, we found a draft coming from between two of them. I found it nearly right away, almost like....I knew where it was.  Steve was able to pry them open, revealing a secret hallway with a door at the end.  Spooky and ominous.
"If you're already working in a secret office, why do you need to hide the elevator?"  The single light in the hallway revealed a keypad next to the door.
"Why do you need to protect the secret elevator in the secret hallway in the secret office with a password?"  Most of the keys were dusty but some of them had been pressed.  Not recently, not really anyway, but they had been pressed after the building was abandoned.  Nat had a special SHIELD app on her phone that allowed her to determine the code.
"Eight five three nine."  The code sounded as familiar as this place.  The elevator creaked and groaned but we took it down to the fifth sub-basement anyway.  We checked all the other floors too, but they were just long, lit hallways that nobody hadn't been used in years.  But still, the fourth one seemed to spark fear in me–the ding of the elevator, the sterile, metal walls of the hall.  But I still couldn't place it.  Nobody dug this deep into the ground unless they're trying to hide something. 
When the doors opened, we found ourselves in a dark room with no light switches, so we got out.  Once we left the elevator, the doors banged shut.  I suddenly felt trapped.  I didn't like being this far underground, it was too much like the old facility.  Then it clicked.  The elevator, the office, the halls, the fourth floor, everything.
"Oh my God." I grabbed Steve and Nat for support as I fell, my skin crawling with fear.
"What?  What's wrong?"
"I know why everything seems so familiar.  This is where I was created.  This is where I was trained."
"Are you sure?"
"I thought you might've been here before, your totally irrational fear of 'an enemy around every corner' outside.  That was your first memory of this place."
"Then there must be something here.  We just need to find it.  There were dim lights in this room, illuminating boxes of some sort for quite some distance, but directly in front of us were small, bright computer lights.  We must've triggered something because suddenly, all the lights clicked on and my heart jumped a mile.  I gasped, then whimpered, and scared Steve in the process.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah, just...dormant memories."
"Were you ever down here?"
"No.  The fourth floor held the Winter Soldier, as far as I know anyway, I mean, that's where I always went to fight him, I was kept on the sixth floor, and the second and third floors are where I went for daily testing and injections.  I didn't make it to the first floor until I escaped, I had to memorize the code to do it too.  I never came to this floor, but I was always curious about it."
The room was filled with rows and rows of prehistoric computers, so far that not all of the rows were lit.  But the console in the middle was clearly what ran them all.
"This can't be the data point, this technology is ancient."  She was smirking at the stupidity, but that smirk faded.  I followed her gaze to a very modern, and very out-of-place USB station.  As soon as Nat plugged in our flash drive, the rest of the lights clicked on and different drives began to turn.  One of the monitors in front of us displayed a message and the camera mounted on it moved.
"Initiate system?"
"Y-E-S spells 'yes'." The desk by the keyboard wasn't entirely covered in dust, someone had been here.  And recently too.  An electronic drive powered up loudly.
"Shall we play a game?  It's from a movie that was–"
"I know, I saw it." Steve cut her off.  Slowly, the center computer displayed a picture of vertical green lines.  It almost looked like a face.  The camera turned to Steve.
"Rogers, Steven, born 1918." The voice had an accent but was electronically generated.  It turned to Nat, "Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984." Then it turned to me, "Specimen 13, created 1990."
"This is...some kind of recording." Then it spoke to us.
"I am not a recording, Fraulein.  I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am." A picture of an ugly old man with large circle glasses appeared on the computer to the right.
"You know this thing?"
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist for the Red Skull.  He's been dead for years." Steve began walking around.
"First correction, I am Swiss.  Second, look around you, I have never been more alive.  In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis.  Science could not save my body.  My mind, however, that was worth saving.  On two hundred thousand feet of databanks.  You are standing in my brain.
"How did you get here?"
"Invited."
"Operation paperclip after World War Two, SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value."
"They thought I could help their cause.  I also helped my own."
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull."
"Cut off one head," The face split, "Two more shall take its place."
"Prove it."
"Accessing archive.  HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.  What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist." The left computer was displaying black and white pictures and clips from WWII, "The war taught us much, humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly.  After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited, the new HYDRA grew, a beautiful parasite, inside SHIELD." Now it was showing just how many people had been HYDRA over the years, and how the numbers increased.

"For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed." The footage became color and more recent.  As well as a photo of a sniper.  The Winter Soldier.  I recognized him by the red star on his metal arm.

"That's impossible, SHIELD would've stopped you."

"Accidents will happen." Then, it showed pictures of Howard Stark and Nick Fury, both crossed off, "In 1981, HYDRA had complete control over the genetics division and used....less than adequate technology to develop the ultimate weapon.  A creature with all of the best qualities of nature.  However, what they did not realize was that these abominations of nature were unstable, and that by giving them the best qualities, we also gave them the worst.  The first two did not survive infancy, and the next half dozen were too unstable and lacking in intelligence to learn.  But, over time, as new animals and genes became available for us to use, we created our greatest success!  Specimen 13, just human enough to fit in, but pliant enough to learn and take over.  There was only one oversight: it was too human, too intelligent, and eventually began to refuse orders.  It developed its own sense of morality and bided its time until it escaped.  Before we could move the facility, SHIELD was notified and the genetics division was shut down, all funding cut and all facilities shut down, but I remained here and undiscovered.  But that was not the end of the genetics division.  HYDRA had set aside enough funds to secretly restart it.  Of course, it is not what it once was, but given the new development New York brought, it is proving more useful than ever!  HYDRA has created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security." There was a picture of something up in space, with the word INSIGHT on it, "Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise!"  The helicarriers beneath the Triskellion!  HYDRA would easily be able to kill anyone who got in their way.  And we would be powerless to stop it. "We won, Captain.  Your death will amount to the same as your life.  A zero sum."  Through this whole thing, Steve had been getting angrier and angrier and finally, he could take it anymore and punched the computer, shattering the screen and dismissing the image.  But Zola was not to be silenced and appeared on the computer to the right.
"As I was saying–"
"What's on this drive?"
"Project INSIGHT requires....insight.  So I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm?  What does it do?"
"The answer to your question is fascinating.  Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." A familiar whirring filled the air and the blast doors that always protected the elevator slid shut.  Steve tried to stop it, but his shield was just a hair too slow and bounced off harmlessly.  Nat's phone began beeping.
"Steve, we got a bogey.  Short range ballistic, thirty seconds tops."
"Who fired it?"
"SHIELD."
"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain.  Admit it, it's better this way." Nat grabbed the drive, "We are both of us out of time." Steve ripped the cover off of a vent and we all jumped in.  He raised his shield and I spread my wings and created a shield of energy.  Just like that, five floors of debris fell down on us, effectively burying us alive.