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They were such innocuous things, those paperclips. Fabricated stories and false IDs pinned to their past, family and history and ambitions and dreams bleached clean until they were no longer Nazis, no longer people, their futures as sordid and fake as their new lives and new files.
Hello, John Smith.
First, they were rounded up like cattle, and he was not the only one: approximately 1,800 scientists were held and interrogated, quarantined and observed until the powers that be were satisfied that every iota of remotely useful information had been wrung from their minds. Then, and only then, were they deemed fit for release.
Some never got to leave, because their lives were not worth as much as the intellectual reparations owed to the United States. They stayed until their deaths…and for him, even beyond.
No war ever ended on the battlefield.
No war ever ended. It just changed forms.
It was so late that it was early. The wall clock displayed 05:32, the second hand ticking softly into the background hum. There was only one person in the bunker, busily monitoring databanks and readouts.
Well, one live person, anyhow.
“Working late, Stark?”
Howard Stark lifted his head and glowered at the nearest camera lens with bloodshot eyes. The overhead light glinted off the grey streaks in his hair.
“You work too hard,” Zola said pleasantly.
“Shut up,” Stark muttered irritably.
“Your diligence is appreciated.”
“I said, shut up!”
Zola shut up, if only because Stark’s left hand was edging dangerously close to a power strip and he didn’t want his systems to undergo a partial shutdown. The transfer and digitization was only three days old, and Stark wasn’t done checking his data yet. No point risking data corruption or loss.
“So far as I can tell, everything looks normal,” Zola said after a long pause.
“As if you’d know either way,” Stark retorted, eyes on his screens.
“Piffle. If I were so useless, would you have spirited me away for 30 years? Would you have me immortalized to work on your future?”
That shut Stark up. His hands tightened on his glass for a long, terse moment before he knocked it back with one swallow.
It was a very Stark way of conceding.
“This was a terrible idea,” Stark muttered.
“It was your idea,” Zola reminded him.
Carter had been for it; Phillips against. Work of the devil, he’d said—no man of god should cheat death. But he had passed away since and Stark and Carter picked up where they left off, this time without the veto.
“It’s still a bad idea. I can be wrong,” but the words held no heat.
“Ah-ah, but what was that you’re always saying? The world must be led by those willing to make the very hard choices?” His digitized voice was bright and just south of mocking.
Stark had drank too much. Usually his verbal repartee was of a much higher calibre.
“Deal with the devil,” Stark muttered, sour and maudlin. He usually was, these days. Then again, it took a sour, maudlin, blackened soul to make the choices Stark made.
An ingenious algorithm, one that could predict, with pinpoint accuracy, the actions of evildoers before they could even do evil. A war, and another, and another—all prevented. All it took was for the punishment to precede the crime, to be guilty without ever having the chance to prove your innocence.
The Allies, despite what they claimed, had long since lost any sort of moral high ground.
He wouldn’t have said any of this three years, or even three months ago. Arnim Zola had a healthy respect for pain and death, neither of which was below Stark’s means (in his esteemed opinion, Howard Stark was not a nice man).
Had a healthy respect. Immortality tended to embolden a man. Immortality granted by your enemies, even more so. He was safe in the knowledge that SHIELD needed him much more than they wanted to kill him.
“I do apologize for my waning productivity as of late,” Zola went on mildly, his distorted voice echoing softly in the bunker. “Illness tends to slow a man. That’s why we did this, yes? So I can be unencumbered by fraying synapses and the failings of mortal flesh?”
Immortalizing Zola had been SHIELD’s secret project—even the US government, with their black, black hearts, wouldn’t have approved. (Too god-fearing for progress, Stark’d said.)
The process had required them both: Arnim Zola, the world’s foremost expert on brains and neuroscience, and Howard Stark, the brightest mechanical engineer this side of the galaxy. Stark could build the databanks and processors that would house his digitized brain in an exact, uninterrupted replica, but it was up to him to encode his brain and memories and transfer it over.
Stark was inspecting his data now, making sure the process had gone smoothly…and, doubtlessly, trying (in vain) to learn what he knew.
Zola let him dig. Stark had no idea how to read the data, only whether it was there. Howard Stark was undoubtedly a genius, but his expertise was not neuroscience; he only knew the barest skimming that any idiot could pick up out of a textbook. He knew Zola was the foremost expert on neuroscience, genetics, and cloning (in life and in death). He didn’t know how, or why.
Zola planned to have the why pay Stark a surprise visit, a few years (decades) down the line. A holiday gift, perhaps. But well before Howard tried to immortalize himself (as he undoubtedly would, now that he had Zola as an example).
In the meanwhile, he’d enjoy needling Stark while safe in the supercomputer Stark himself had built. And wasn’t this a poetic justice, to watch Stark hate him so but need him more?
“Should’ve chopped your body up and used it for biofuel,” Stark sneered.
“How barbaric.” At least Carter gave him a proper burial. “You could at least be civil, Stark—we have many decades to go yet.” One would think Stark’s demeanour would improve now that he had faceless machines to stare down. He’d always been more comfortable with the less…human side of things.
“Finish the algorithm, Zola,” Stark said, low and silky. “Or I will give the both of us reason to regret ever bringing you here.”
Zola kept his digitized voice carefully pleasant. “I will, worry not.”
He would, too. He had vested interest to see it to the end, after all. Ironically, the same interest SHIELD had…only, perhaps, different targets.
SHIELD and HYDRA were not so different, in the end.
“I don’t trust him,” Howard grumbled into his scotch. “It.”
Peggy looked thoroughly unimpressed. “Is that what it is, Howard?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I sometimes wonder if your resentment is fueled by something as trifling as envy.”
“What?!” Howard spluttered. “Me? I never—”
“Howard,” Peggy put her hand on his, mouth tight with exasperated fondness; it spoke to their friendship that he didn’t throw her hand off. “You are the smartest man I have ever known, and I’ve known many bright minds throughout the years. You’re a genius in your own right, but you know and I know that this isn’t your bailiwick. I have no love for Zola, but also no basis for hate.”
“Other than the myriad of deaths he caused under Schmidt? Other than—” Howard’s voice cracked. “—other than Steve?”
“How many deaths have we caused?” Peggy retorted evenly, but pain flashed in her eyes. “How clean are our hands?”
Howard fell silent.
“If you have a reason to resent Zola, to suspect his activities, I want to hear it.” Peggy leaned back in her chair. “But if it’s just because you feel threatened…well, get the hell over it.”
Howard scowled, black as death, but said nothing further.
If Peggy noticed that he became even more obsessive about his work, about every scrap of paperwork and anything to do with SHIELD…well, she didn’t comment.
“Mr. Stark?” Howard’s bodyguard tapped his shoulder, bent to whisper in his ear. “You have a call. Something’s wrong.”
Howard took the call, scowling further at every word.
A shipment from USSR two months ago. A shipment on ice, large as a coffin, changing hands sixteen times under twelve different names until it entered US through a port in New Haven. Preliminary reports caught a glimpse of a man inside…whether dead or alive, it was impossible to tell.
And most importantly, it may have been on SHIELD’s orders—may have, because the forgery and encryption were so well done that it was hard to tell if it was evidence or implantation.
His first thought was that it was Steve. But Steve went down in the oceans, not the mountains of USSR. Theoretically he could’ve been recovered and ferried away, but…no. Not with Howard’s constant expeditions out to sea. No one, no one, could’ve found Captain America before him.
This was something else.
One hand on the phone, fingers on Peggy’s number. No, not yet. Just supposition. Just a feeling…
He dashed out to the gala he’d been missing. “Maria.”
Maria turned, and one look at his face changed hers into weary disappointment. “What is it, Howard?”
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. His seldom-used charisma was already slipping. “I…have to go.”
“I’ll go with you,” and the words sounded like a sigh.
“I can call a taxi…”
“It’s getting late anyway.” She forced a smile. “What’s leaving a little early?”
He should go now. He should… “We’ll leave in 30.”
Limned by the streetlights, a man walked steadily away from a smouldering car wreck on an otherwise empty road.
He stretched his hand, wiggling his fingers. Metal was so stiff in the cold.
Someone had left a newspaper in front of his camera lens. Bold black capitals outlined the heading that shocked a nation: HOWARD AND MARIA STARK DIE IN CAR ACCIDENT ON LONG ISLAND
Hail HYDRA.
Soundless in his databanks, Arnim Zola laughed.