⍟ ⍟ ⍟

The truck finally comes to a stop causing Juniper to lift her head. They exit the car silently.

"This is it?" Steve asks her, grabbing his shield as they approach the fence.

She shrugs, turning off the device in her hand she swiped from the store, having discarded the phone Brock gave her into the water on the bridge back at S.H.I.E.L.D.

"It's what showed up on the computer." She shrugs. "File came from here." She shifts her gaze to the old sign on the fence that reads 'Camp Lehigh U.S. Army Restricted Area' and it dawns on her. Steve's reaction.

"So did I." 
⍟

"This camp is where I was trained." Steve tells her, now inside the fence, they walk around looking for the right spot.

"Captain Bootcamp?" She looks at him with a smirk across her lips.

"Captain Bootcamp." He nods.

"Any different from the 1500's?" She asks, holding the device out as she glances around.

He lets out a chuckle. "A little." He gazes out to the grounds, picturing soldiers run past him as Colonel Phillips yells at him to move faster. Feels like it was only yesterday, and a thousand years ago, all at once. He stares at the skinny version of himself, smiling smally to himself.

"Come a long way." Juniper says, coming to a stop. "I'm not getting anything. No waves, no heat signatures, no radio traces." She jams the device into her pocket. "Unless..." She pauses. "Unless there's something underground."

Steve stretches his neck to look around more, eyes zeroing in on something.

"Got something?" June looks at him expectingly.

He nods and they begin walking towards a huge piece of cinder block. "Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks." Steve tells her.

"English please." She motions her hand for him to explain.

"This building is in the wrong place."

"Ah." She nods, well why didn't he just say that?

Juniper steps to the side allowing him to break the lock with his shield... and here she was going to poke fun at him for bringing it for this.

They start down the stairs and Steve flips a switch. The lights flick on, one by one, to reveal the S.H.I.E.L.D. symbol on back wall.

"Interesting." Juniper stares at the wall. "So this was S.H.I.E.L.D.? Once upon a time?" Was this where her mom worked? Started?

"Maybe where it stated." Steve concludes as they both slowly make their way down the path, passing desks as they do. Steve opens a door which leads them into a room with several large shelves.

"Aunt Peggy." Juniper says softly, looking at the pictures on the wall. She looks at the young man next to him, squinting at the familiarity.

"Howard. Stark" Steve answers for her. She nods as her spine tenses. Steve moves over to an empty shelf covered in cobwebs. "If you're already working in a secret office," He pauses and pulls on one of the shelves, ripping Juniper away from the pictures, missing her mother's frame sitting on the file cabinet sitting underneath the photo's. She steps behind him to revealed elevator. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?" Steve finishes.

Juniper believes she's had enough elevators to last her a while, but she shines light over the number pad and her device she hacked into to work at her leisure reveals the code all the same.

8539.

She punches in the numbers and the green light above the pad lights up and the door dings open. Her and Steve glance at each other before stepping on. She rocks to her tip toes, wondering what they'll find down here. Some secret evil laboratory? She wishes, but couldn't get that lucky.

The elevator creeks to a stop and the doors open once again to a dark room.

"You first." She looks pointedly at Steve. He slowly steps out and she follows closely, the doors closing behind them causing her spine to straighten. Mmm, that's not creepy at all.

As they approach several screens and dusty machinery, the lights above them flicker on revealing a very old computer system.

"Wow, this looks older than you." Juniper deadpans. They step up onto the platform. "How is this the data point?" She looks around confused at the screens collecting dirt as a black flash drive holder caches her eye. The only modern piece of tech in here. She stares at it, slowly pulling the drive out. "There's no way." She mutters before inserting it in and it clicks right in. All of the technology around them powers up, disks rotating as lights start blinking. "What the-" Her and Steve take a slight step back.

"Initiate system?" An electronic voice speaks as the words type across the small screen.

Juniper hesitantly steps over to the dusty keyboard, nose curling as she types in yes. The machine makes a loud noise.

She leans up, moving back next to Steve as the screen flashes green lines.

"Rogers, Steven," The computer speaks as what sort of looks like a face begins to appear, "Born 1918. Fox, Juniper Margret, born 1984." The ancient security camera above pans between the two

"Okay, suddenly ever movie about robots taking over the world is starting to make sense." Juniper whispers to Steve. "Well, this can't be a recording." She thinks out loud.

"I am not a recording, Fraeulein." The computer snaps back, German accent seeping through, earning a scoff from her. The face shape becomes somewhat more clear, and very freaky looking. Are those goggles? Juniper wants to ask, but apparently it bites back. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945. But I am..." The computers words muddle together as a man appears on another screen beside it.

"You two, uh, know each other..." Juniper looks between Steve and the computer warily. Steve looks around.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull." Steve answers her, walking behind the computer system. "He's been dead for years."

"Well, I'd hope so." Juniper stresses, throwing a hand up.

"First correction, I am Swiss." Zola's voice rings out. Juniper eyes the screen as his face reappears in the green lines. "Second, look around you." Juniper glances around. "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 200,000 feet of databanks." Steve circles back around, returning to Juniper. "You are standing on my brain." Zola says.

Juniper looks down, angling up one of her heels, she lets out a noise of disgust.

"How did you get here?" Steve interrogates.

Oh right, we should be asking questions... Juniper tries to focus, and not freak out over the fact that she's standing on top of a downloaded human brain... right, right, right.

You've seen countless of crazy things on missions, Juniper. She reminds herself. But never something like this... a voice in the back of her mind rings.

"Invited." Zola states.

Juniper pry's hard in her memory on her history that she's been fed since childhood, bored to tears about.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value after World War II." She says, digging through files of her brain. "Operation... Paperclip?" Was that right?

"They thought I could help their cause." Zola confirms her information. "I also helped my own."

"Hydra died with the Red Skull." Steve voices loudly.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Zola recites, the Hydra symbol replacing his face for a moment before he pops back up, doubling.

June rubs her temples, once again receiving too much information at once.

"Prove it." Steve argues.

"Accessing archive." Zola announces, back to just one of himself. Some files appear on the screen beside him before a man replaces him on his screen. "Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom." Dozens of soldiers then appear, raising their arms up before it flashes to soldiers running off a boat. "What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist." A picture of what Juniper rightfully assumes fits the name 'Red Skull' zooms in next, followed by 'We will follow Heil Hydra'.

Then footage of Steve appears, fighting in the war, smoke engulfing him.

"Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly." Zola proceeds as the screen flashes from the Colonel's to bombs firing, to a picture of Hitler burning, then to Steve once again, dressed as Captain America, with soldiers all around him have both their arms raised in the air.

Juniper blinks, trying to keep up, already overwhelmed. She wonders if one day her brain will just explode from information. She wouldn't be surprised.

"After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded. And I was recruited." A picture pops up and Juniper's eyes fall onto her mother, standing in a room with Peggy, Howard Stark, and others all around in the office, Steve having no idea that the woman was her mother or that her mother was a S.H.I.E.L.D. Founder. Juniper's lips part as the screen changes to Zola's file and then a newspaper, headlined 'GERMAN SCIENTISTS RECRUITED BY U.S.' "The new Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D." Juniper knew her mother had no part in Hydra, but she was devasted that it was happening right under her nose.

Juniper shakes her head brushing past Steve, blocking out the rest of what Zola was saying as she moves towards a desk to lean on.

Her mother's work, her mother's life, her legacy-

Zola's words drown out in the background, but Steve continues to listen distraughtly. "For 70 years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not corporate..." A flash of a silver metal arm with a red star appears flashes- "History was changed."

"How did S.H.I.E.L.D. not stop this?" Steve looks at the screen in horror.

"Accidents will happen." Zola determines, a newspaper appears on screen of a woman- one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s founders, and reads 'Billie Thompson Dead from Heart Attack' with date December 16th, 1997, then changes to another newspaper clipping which reads 'Howard and Maria Stark Die in Car Accident' December 17th, 1997, then to Fury's picture with the word 'DECEASED' written across his face.

Juniper tries to catch her breath, slowly inhaling and exhaling, no longer interested in what the computer man has to say, but she hears one part that draws her back—

"Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once a purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise."

Project Insight. June snaps her head back to the screen seeing a machine that looks just like the one her and her father have been working on. Oh, God.

"We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life." A news article of Steve flashes on screen with the headlining 'ROGERS DISAPPEARS.' The a magazine titled 'The Hero Who Sacrificed Everything.' "A zero sum."

Steve punches the screen causing Juniper to jolt, but Zola comes right back up on the screen beside it. "As I was saying..."

"What's on this drive?" Steve demands.

"Project Insight requires insight." Zola answers as Juniper slowly walks back up to the platform. "So, I wrote an algorithm."

"Algorithm?" She asks. "Like what?" She crosses her arms.

"The answer to your question is fascinating—" Zola riddles.

"Great, then answer it." Juniper snaps.

"Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." Zola finishes. The doors begin to shut behind them and Steve quickly spins around and launches his shield to try to stop them, but they close before he can to which the shield flies right back to him.

Juniper dives for the device in her pocket, pulling it out just as it starts going off— shit. They found us. "We're about to be hit." She tells Steve as she reads 'Time To Impact: 00:30'. "Short range ballistic. We have about 30 seconds, or less." She looks at him.

"Who fired it?" He looks at her confused.

"Who do you think?" She clips. S.H.I.E.L.D.

"I'm afraid I have been stalling, Captain." Zola chimes back in.

"Oh, fabulous!" Juniper spits out and hastily rips the drive out of the holder.

"Admit it. It's better this way." Zola tells them. Steve glances around panicked, landing on the floor. He runs over and rips metal guarding off of the ground. "We are, both of us, out of time."

"Fuck." June lets out.

"Let's go!" He yells at Juniper as she sprints over to him. Just as the blast of fire hits she slams into his body and his holds his shield over them while they jump down into the small space in the ground.

Rocks and debris start pouring down and she holds any words of distain she wants to make about once again being in Steve's arms as she holds on, squeezes his body tightly... thankful he brought the stupid shield after all.

⍟ ⍟ ⍟

𝟶ʙᴜᴛᴛᴇʀʙɪsᴄᴜɪᴛ𝟽 sᴘᴇᴀᴋs!

Ahhh!! Hello, hellooo!! And welcome back to THOA14!!!

OMGGG, I have been waittttinggg to edit & publish this chapter for sooo long!! We're actually almost to the one year mark of when a big snow hit last year, my SECOND week of internship in my last semester of college btw lmao, & so I went to my dorm lounge every day & cracked tf down & wrote for this book religiously!! Like I seriously do not know what came over me that week but I only have 26 minutes left of the movie & could not believe how much I wrote that week!! Anyways, it's just so surreal to think that in just a few days that'll be 1 year from now & that was one of my favorite weeks!! (I miss college so much...)

Anywaysss... WE ARE NOW OFFICALLY 1 MONTH AWAY TIL THE 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THIS BOOK ANDDDD CAPTAIN AMERICA 4!! HOW FREAKIN COOL IS THIS THAT THEY FALL ON THE SAME DAYYY!! I seriously cannot wait, idc what anyone says, Cap 4 looks really good & I am sat!! Haven't been this excited about a mcu movie (AND THUNDERBOlTS OFC) in what feels like forever now omg!! And speaking offf... I may or may not have FINALLY created a Sam love interest... & she will actually appear & debut IN THIS SERIESSS!! She's going to be Sharon's sister & at first I was like oh shit, well... I haven't written her into this book yet & where we're at now it's kinda too late... BUT DON"T WORRYYY, I have a plan/explanation ;)

So all my Sam loversss y'all are in for a treatttt!! I cannot wait for y'all to meet this oc down the road!! And she will eventually have her own book seriesss (somewhere down the line haha)

Happy Agent 14 Dayyy!! And I hope y'all enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it & rereading/editing it today!! I feel like I say this every chap lmao but this one is ONE of my favsss!! And y'all got SOME LOREEE about Juniper's mommm!! THIS CHAP IS JUST SO FUCKING GOODDD!! Don't be afraid to comment y'all's thoughts, questions, & reactionsss!! And until next time... mwah!! <333