Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Unlocking The File
Steve was walking quickly through the hospital along with Luke, but what is interesting is that neither of them look like themselves. Steve looked like large Russian man but he was still wearing his ball cap and Luke actually looks like Neo from the Matrix. They were using a Facial Transmogrification Device to make them look and sound like different people.
Luke had used this as an excuse to hide his use of Mystique's power from Steve saying it was the device he used, which he built to mimic how Mystique's power looks when she transforms to the point that if Magneto had seen it, he'd think it was actually Mystique herself.
Steve is walking to the vending machine where he stashed the drives and sees that they are gone, only to see Natasha behind him popping some bubblegum as he hid the drives behind the bubblegum in the vending machine.
Natasha saw who she thought was Steve and was shocked when he turned around and grabbed her and brought her in the other room.
"Who are you and how did you know where to find those devices?!?" Nat asked with a lot of aggression.
"Sorry, I can fix that." Luke said as he took out his Facial Transmogrification Device and undid the Transmogrification.
Natasha then realized what had happened.
"Whoa that is some useful technology."
Steve ignored her and slammed her against the wall.
"Where are they?!?!" Steve asked angrily
"Safe" Nat said slightly shocked at Steve's roughness.
"Do better." Steve said sternly.
"Where did you get them?" Nat asked curiously.
"Why would I tell you?" Steve said anger rising.
"Fury gave them to you, why?" Nat said realizing the truth.
"What's on it?" Steve asked.
"I don't know." Nat defended.
"Stop lying!" Steve said.
"I only act like I know everything Rogers." Nat said back.
"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates didn't you?" Steve asked.
"Well it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you." Nat replied.
"I'm not gonna ask you again!" Steve said as he angrily grabbed her.
"I know who killed Fury." Nat said which caused Steve to pause.
"So do I." Luke suddenly said.
"What? How?!?!" Steve said as he looked at Luke
"I used an AI to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D files when I downloaded the Intel." Luke said nonchalantly.
"Since when have you had an AI?!?" Nat asked.
Steve didn't say anything, but Luke could tell he was pissed that someone was keeping things from him again.
"Look I didn't say anything because I know how much Fury wanted to get him on his side. I am friends with Seth McCauley, the CEO of McCauley Tech. He created an AI for me and I use it to help me to leave no trace when I hack into systems."
Steve was mad at first, but he understood based upon the way Fury looked when he talked about the CEO. Fury had a look of a kid who couldn't get the toy he wanted.
"Fine. I get why you hid that information. Now tell me what you both know." Steve said annoyed.
With that out of the way, Nat and Seth explained how they knew who killed Fury and who he was.
"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. Those that do, call him The Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the past 50 years." Nat said
"So he's a ghost story?" Steve asked.
"5 years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Someone shot out my tires near Odessa. Lost control and went straight over a Cliff. I pulled us out and he was right there. I was covering the engineer, so he shot him...through me." Nat said while showing a scar on the right side of her stomach.
"Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye bye bikinis." Nat joked.
"Yea I'm sure you look terrible in em now." Steve said sarcastically.
"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." Nat said seriously
"That's not entirely true. No offense to you Nat, but you didn't have me when you went up against him. There is a power that I have that goes with my wings. I have metal claws that extend from my body and that comes with enhanced senses and a healing factor." Luke said.
"Healing factor? Like me?" Steve asked.
"Sorry Steve, but your healing factor compared to mine is like comparing the strength of a baby to a super soldier." Luke joked.
"What do you mean?" Steve confusedly asked.
"It's easier if I just show you." Luke said as he grabbed his sidearm with the silencer on it and shot himself in the head.
"Oh god!!" Nat screamed as she stared at the blood pooling below him.
Then to the astonishment of the two, the bullet in his head was pushed out from inside and his wound closed. Luke got up and cracked his neck from side to side.
"See. Can your healing factor let you recover from that?" Luke asked.
"Uh, no." Steve said still shocked at how a headshot didn't kill him.
"Now, back to business. What Nat told you is pretty much what my AI was able to find out. But I found something else that is interesting there was a money trail. The money was funneled through a bunch of offshore accounts. The actual individual was hidden but I traced it to someone inside S.H.I.E.L.D." Luke said with a dark tone.
"Whoever put the hit on Fury, is a part of S.H.I.E.L.D." Steve said in realization.
Nat looked shocked and then Steve looked back at Luke. "Is this why Fury told me to find you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Luke asked.
"Fury's last words were "Find Grey and don't trust anyone." Steve said.
"Why would he tell you to find Luke?" Nat asked.
"It's because I knew that S.H.I.E.L.D was compromised." Luke replied.
"How did you know?" Steve asked.
"A day after the Lemurian Star incident, Fury called me and told me to meet him in his office. When I got there he told me that the file that Nat downloaded was unreadable. But it wasn't unreadable in the sense that that data was missing, but it seemed that someone had used his own override to lock him out of of the file." Luke said
"Then it had to be someone higher up who might know Fury's code." Steve said.
"Normally you'd be right, but it's Fury we're talking about. As you both know he kept everything close to the vest and definitely wasn't the kind to share his information easily. Anyone with sufficient hacking capability could have gotten his information and used it against him." Luke explained.
"There are a lot of people within S.H.I.E.L.D who could do that." Nat said.
"Exactly. Which is why Fury only told me as I had made the second drive encoded to only his and my own biometric signature. You can't hack past biometric security, especially if you don't know it's there." Luke said with a smirk at the end.
"That's genius." Nat praised as it was something she should've thought of.
"So that's why he needed you. You are the only other person who can open the drive!" Steve said as his face lit up.
"Yep." Luke said.
Nat then smirked and held up the two drives. "It's like you said, he's a ghost story."
"Then let's find out what the ghost wants." Steve said as he grabbed the drives.
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(Mall in DC)
Steve, Nat, and Luke are nonchalantly walking through the mall heading toward the apple store to use a laptop. Luke had used the tech to change their faces again and he gave Nat a different face as well, (She looked like Megan Fox from the first transformers movie) and walked with her arm around Luke's arm who looked like Neo again.
They eventually made it to the store and Luke had went to one laptop next to Steve and Nat and pretended to be doing his own thing. While Nat changed to have Steve as her fake significant other.
"The drive has a Level Six homing program so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D will know exactly where we are." Nat said.
"I disabled that feature when I added the biometric security, why not just use mine?" Luke asked but stared straight ahead and from an bystanders perspective, he was simply talking to himself.
"That's perfect! Switch with me." Nat said.
Luke switched places with Steve and now he looked like he was dating Nat not Steve. Luke put in his drive while keeping his right index finger on a small circular groove on the bottom of the drive.
"Fury was right about the drive. Even with all my additions to it, it is protected by an AI of some sort and it's not mine. Someone is definitely trying to hide something." Luke said as he interfaced with the drive's contents.
"It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." Luke said as he was typing furiously.
"Can you override it?" Steve asked.
"I can try, but without an AI to combat it, it'd be difficult. I can only think so fast and whoever this is, they are slightly smarter than me." Luke said joking at the end.
"I'll run a tracer. It's a S.H.I.E.L.D program to help track malware. It should give me a location of where this AI is that's stopping my commands." Luke said as he finally pulled up a map that had a cursor slowly looking around a map of the country and was slowly honing in on the signal.
Just as the signal was getting traced and they were going to have the location, one of the workers showed up.
"Hey, what's up you guys need anything?"
Nat and the group turned toward him, Nat putting on the act first.
"Oh hi, my fiance and I were just looking at some possible honeymoon destinations." Nat said happily as she leaned her head on Luke's shoulder.
"Yeah, we were torn on if we wanted to go out of the country, or just stay close to home." Luke said perfectly playing along.
The worker smiled and then saw Steve. "And you?"
Luke quickly interjected. "He's my best man. He's actually the one who suggested the option of staying close to home, it saves us more money for the wedding."
"Yea, I mean why waste money when he can use tge money to make sure his wife to be has that dream wedding right?" Steve said laughing.
"Oh, Congratulations. Where are you guys thinking about going?" the worker asked.
Just then Luke heard the beep on the laptop and looked down and saw the location.
"New Jersey."
"Oh, nice. Well if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron." the worker said as he held up his name tag and walked off.
"Thank you." Luke said as he turned back to the computer.
The computer finally pulled up the location. It said Wheaton NJ.
"I got it." Luke said causing Nat and Steve to look down.
Steve looked closer in shock.
"You know it?" Nat asked.
"I used to." Steve replied.
"Oh shit!" Luke said.
"What?" (Nat)
"What is it?" (Steve)
"I had my AI monitoring S.H.I.E.L.D comms just in case and it seems an order went out to head to these coordinates about 7 minutes ago." Luke said
"Standard S.T.R.I.K.E response time. The AI protecting the drive must have sent out a homing beacon of some sort." Nat said worriedly.
"Then I suggest we leave quickly." Steve said.
Luke, Steve, and Nat were walking through the mall when they saw S.T.R.I.K.E agents.
"Standard TAC team. Two behind, two across, two coming right at us." Steve said worriedly.
"Aren't you guys forgetting something?" Luke said with a smirk.
The two didn't understand at first until Luke pointed to his face and waved his hand in front of it.
"Oh, right." Steve said visibly calming down.
The group then calmly walked towards the exit and were on the escalator when they saw one of the S.T.R.I.K.E agents staring at them scrutinizing them. Natasha thought on her feet and turned toward Luke.
"Kiss me! "
"What?" Luke asked.
"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable." Nat said.
"Yes, they do." Luke said before Nat pulled him into a make-out session that he may have gotten a little too into.
Nat then looked up and saw that the S.T.R.I.K.E agent had passed them on the escalator.
"You get a bit too excited?" Nat teased as she walked off the escalator.
"Not exactly the word I would use." Luke said as he followed her.
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(On the road)
The trio were in a Truck and Steve was driving, Nat sat in the passenger seat, and Luke was in the back behind Steve's seat.
"So where did Captain America learn how to hotwire a car?" Nat asked jokingly.
"Nazi Germany." Steve responded.
"Hmm." Nat said.
"And we're borrowing, get your feet off the dash." Steve said and Luke in the back chuckled at how Steve had a Dad moment.
Natasha heard Luke and then turned to look at him and just stared for a second.
"Alright I have a question for you. Which you don't have to answer. But if you don't answer you're kind of answering..." Nat said to Luke.
"What?" Luke asked annoyed slightly.
"Were you just waiting for me to kiss you?"
Luke laughed slightly. "No."
"You did seem to really like it?" Nat questioned.
"Well can you blame me? A Pretty girl decides to kiss me and I'm supposed to just handle it normally?" Luke said.
"You think I'm pretty?" Nat teased
"Look I was just caught of guard. I kinda forgot you were, you. So I got a little too into it okay." Luke said defending himself.
"Okay. So you really don't have anyone special, either of you?" Nat asked Luke and Steve.
"It's a lot harder than you make it seem." Luke said.
"Yeah, believe it or not, it's hard to find someone with shared life experiences." Steve replied.
Nat then looked at Steve. "That's alright, you just make something up."
"What like you?" Steve asked.
"Truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people all the time. Neither am I." Nat replied.
"That's a tough way to live."Steve said.
"It's a good way not to die though." Nat said with a far away look in her eyes.
"Y'know it's kinda hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is." Steve said.
"Yeah.... Who do you want me to be?" Nat asked.
"How bout someone who is quiet." Luke joked from the back as Nat looked at him and saw his smirk.
Steve and Nat laughed slightly and Steve then said. "How about a friend?"
"Well, there's a chance you may be in the wrong business Rogers." Nat said as she chuckled.
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(Outside Camp Lehigh)
"This is it." Steve said as he walked up to the gate.
"The file came from these co-ordinates." Nat said as she was holding a GPS like device.
"So did I." Steve said as he looked at the sign that said Camp Lehigh.
"This camp is where I was trained." Steve said as he, Nat, and Luke walked around.
"Change much?" Nat asked.
"A little." Steve replied while seeing some of the more modern technology around. He paused as he started to have a flashback of his training days.
"This is a dead end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio." Nat said.
"She's right. I can't get any kind of electrical signal at all, it's as if the entire camp is a deadzone. Steve."
As Steve turned toward the two, he saw something that didn't belong and started to walk toward a certain building.
"What is it?" Nat said seeing his face.
"Army regulation prohibits the storing of ammunitions within 500 yards of the Barracks. This building is in the wrong place." Steve said as he walked over to the chained door.
Steve was about to break the chain when he heard Luke say. "Allow me."
Luke used his claws and slashed the lock open. They then started to walk inside and as they were walking through the building, Seth/Luke realized that this was the same place that Steve and Stark go to in the future, or the past technically, ugh timetravel is confusing.
"This is S.H.I.E.L.D." Nat said as she saw the symbol against the wall.
"Maybe where it started." Steve said as he looked around.
As the group walked throught the building, they eventually came upon a room and it had three framed photos hung on the wall. There was Colonel Phillips Howard Stark and Agent Carter.
"Stark's father." Nat says as she looks at the photo.
"Howard." Steve says as he seemed to be reminiscing.
"Who's the girl?" Nat asked as she looked at the picture of Agent Carter.
Steve paused as he looked at the photo, but eventually turned away from it and started to walk away pretending to be uninterested. Just as Nat was about to say something, she realized that she was standing in front of the pictures alone and the other two had already walked off. As they were walking through bookshelves, Steve paused as he saw Luke had stopped and was sniffing the air.
Steve thought it was strange and was about to say something when his eyes caught on to something interesting.
Steve saw a cobweb that was blowing around as if being affected by wind, but there was no way for air to reach it in the immediate vicinity unless there was air somewhere behind it. Steve looked at the shelf and then at Luke who nodded and walked over and pushed the shelf over as Steve spoke.
"If you are already in a secret bunker, why do you need to hide the elevator?" Steve said as an elevator with a keypad to the right of it on the wall was shown behind the shelf that Luke moved.
Nat took out a device that seemed to be a sort of holographic blacklight and it could see the left-over fingerprints on the keypad and the device scanned the prints and the keypad to find the code which she entered and the elevator door opened.
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