courtings | open post (steve rogers)

The fact that the man was moving so erratically and doubling back on himself made it clear that he was at least paranoid about being followed. At the worst, he was aware of Steve tailing him, but if it came to blows he could handle himself.

It took some careful sneaking up onto rooftops to actually keep track of the man, and Steve had to give him a pretty big lead before crossing the river. Steve was quick enough that he caught up, watching as the stranger entered a home that looked perfectly ordinary.

Better to hide in plain sight, wasn't it?

Steve had brought a few things with him, and while it had been a pain sneaking them through customs (and he felt some guilt for that), they would come to use now. He had a directional microphone that would hopefully allow him to hear anything going inside that house, if he got close enough.

So he slunk down to the side of the house, crouching under a window and then using the device to listen in.

He seemed to have lost him. He couldn't see anyone at least and he did pause at the door for a few moments.

He only relaxed once the bolt was thrown and the door locked, which was possibly paranoid itself on a mostly abandoned street. Once he felt fairly secure, he switched on the generator which was drawing electricity from the power grid still despite the EMP. They'd set it up well in advance to do just that.

Bright Star. He needed to get to Bright Star. As the drugs in the water supply faded and people started wanting to know what happened, they'd probably start investigating. Bright Star was the closest facility he could get to and considering he'd had to all but hang out a neon sign to lure Walker and Paul down to the base in York, he wasn't expecting great things of their ability to find him.

He booted up his tablet, humming softly as he checked on the codes and security systems in place. "This would be much easier if you were here, babe," he muttered as he worked. But at least she'd left him enough intel to get into the place.

Maybe enough to find a recovery for her.

The first thing that Steve heard was the hum of machinery starting up, and that was enough to draw his attention. Most of the power sources hadn't been restored yet, so how was something like that even possible?

He took a risk and shifted upward to look through the window for a split second, but he didn't see anything of note, just an empty room. Wherever the man had placed himself, it was further into the house, and Steve had to wonder if that was purposeful.

Then he spoke up, his voice coming thinly through the microphone. Steve took a moment to analyze what he said. It seemed like he was talking to himself, even if the words were directed toward someone else. Not that strange, but what did it mean? What would be easier? And who was he speaking to?

That didn't matter so much as the fact that he had a personal source of energy. Curious to see what would happen, Steve circled around to the front door and knocked firmly on it. He wasn't the best at covers, but he'd learned a lot from Natasha. He kept his ears perked in case the guy tried to make a run for it, too.

Who the hell was knocking? Lawrence stopped what he was doing, just listening a moment until the knock came again. Could be nothing. Could be the police which in itself could be good or bad. He hesitated a moment longer before pushing himself to his feet. "Coming."

Looters had been known to just break into any unoccupied house. He switched off the laptop, powered down the generator and tucked his gun into a holster beneath his arm under his jacket. At least the chaos meant it wasn't too weird to go armed right now.

There was a peephole and... That man, the one from the park. Not good then. He could just shoot through the door but that would kind of compromise everything sooner than he'd like.

He opened the door, giving a bemused smile. "Hi, sorry, didn't realise anyone else had moved back to this street. Can I help?"

Instead of the man running or greeting him with any hostility, it was surprisingly cordial. Of course, that only made Steve more suspicious, but so long as this guy was going to play nice, then so would he. He didn't really want to make a scene in the first place, but he wasn't going to force his way into the house, either. Not yet, anyway.

"Hey, yeah, you know, I was just passing by and I noticed that you have a backup power source here. I didn't realize anyone had access to something like that that." He was doing his best to play it off as being an average guy off the street looking for some help, and at least the general sheepish behavior came pretty naturally to him.

"Do you think there's any chance I could charge my phone? I've really got to get a hold of my family back home, to let them know I'm okay."

It felt awful lying, but Steve couldn't exactly tell the truth of who he was right now. Depending on how this all worked out, maybe he'd realize he could trust this stranger, but for now he had to play it safe.

No sense being unpleasant when he doesn't have to be. He'd learned young that you had to act normal around people. He'd become very, very good at it. His suspicion didn't show on his face when the guy mentioned the power source. Now then, what had he been doing to find that out?

Yeah, this wasn't normal.

He smiles wryly, canting his head to the side a little. "Yeah well, my parents had a bit of a survivalist thing going on for a while. I picked up a few things, kept up with them even after I move out. Always have a backup. Got a fuel generator, a few solar chargers."

He shrugs, leaning back against the door jamb. "Sure, I guess. You're American? Got a girlfriend over there myself. Been trying to get in touch since the EMP or whatever took out the power. Can't promise you'll get signal."

It all checks out well enough, and Steve returns the casual behavior without much trouble. It feels natural, which makes it easy for him to try and get some more information while they're both playing nice.

He realizes he's the more suspicious of the two at the moment, but that won't stop him from digging a little further.

"Guess you were more prepared than most, then." He smirks at the mention of America. If only this guy knew. "Yeah, seems like it's pretty tough to get any calls out. How'd you meet the lucky lady?"

It could be this is all one big misunderstanding, but if that's the case then Steve would be able to brush it off easily enough.

"Maybe, yeah," Lawrence says easily. "I heard there are some communes and stuff still up and running but it's those creepy New Tomorrow eco-warrior people. They give me the creeps honestly." They'd always been creepy. The fact that they probably wanted him dead now didn't help matters.

Nutters.

"God yeah. Been trying since things went crazy." His smile softened and that at least wasn't fake. Soleil, amazing Soleil. It was easy to sound smitten with her. "She was the daughter of one of my professors. I was a PhD student. Well, before all this went down. He introduced us when she was visiting one time."

Well, that's enough to grab Steve's attention. With a name like "New Tomorrow" and the mention of being creepy? It sounds exactly like it could be something HYDRA-related, which could also mean that Bucky's tied up with it.

He does his best to be personable before getting to the hard-hitting questions. It's clear this guy really has it bad for this girl of his. "Well, I'm sure you'll get in touch with her eventually. Things aren't quite like this over in the US." It's a testing statement on top of it, to see how much this guy knows about what's going on in the States after SHIELD's fallen apart.

"So what's this New Tomorrow group all about?" he asks, trying to make it seem as if he's genuinely curious rather than personally invested.

"Yeah, I hope so. We normally call each other most days so I hope she's heard what's happened and doesn't think I'm just ignoring her."

It sends a pang right through his chest, a sick feeling to know that she's gone. He might never hear her voice again. He gives the man a questioning look. "Yeah? I guess that's good. Might actually have a chance of getting things up and running if the rest of the world is okay."

The focus on New Tomorrow is kind of a flashing light that he's looking for something but it's easy enough to answer. "I only know what I've seen on the news. Terrorist group. They're the ones who shut down Hang Seng a year or so ago? Say they want to save the planet because humans are destroying it. I think they want to blow everyone back to the stone age." He grimaced. "You can sometimes hear their broadcasts on the radio. Real weird stuff trying to get you to grow your own food and how we're all murderers for eating meat."

Steve found it hard to believe that this guy's girlfriend wouldn't know about what was going on over here. Just some research on the internet would probably get her all the answers that she needed, but he could also understand the man's worry.

The explanation he got for the New Tomorrow group was more or less what he would have expected, if only from the description of eco-warriors. It seemed a little fringe to be anything HYDRA was involved in, but then again, they were involved in everything and Steve doubted that his stunt had completely wiped them out.

"You seem pretty knowledgeable," he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other as he looked the stranger over. "Or at least clued in on the political climate here. This is probably a long shot, but can I ask you if you've heard anything about someone with a metal arm here in the city?"

Was he laying it on a bit thick? The more he thought about it, the more the pain of losing her seemed to spark in his brain and made his chest tighten. Without thinking, he reached up to rub at the back of his neck, behind his ear, where the implant had been before he'd cut it out.

"What can I say? I spent a lot of time in a computer lab for my PhD being bored stiff while the Professor did stuff on the project. I got through a lot of news sites."

Well, it was sort of true. He'd done that in between conversations with Soleil and breaking down the security protocols on her system.

A metal arm? That was a very odd question and Lawrence's confusion wasn't actually feigned for once. "No... not that I can remember but I think something like that would be pretty distinctive. Sorry. Is that what brings you over here?"

It was distinctive, which probably meant that Bucky had gone out of his way to keep it hidden as he moved around and covered all his tracks. Steve had to hold back a sigh. He'd known he wouldn't get any sort of confirmation here, and yet he'd still asked. He was desperate at this point, worried he'd never be able to pick up Bucky's trail.

"Yeah, more or less," Steve said, glancing away and shaking his head. "It's kind of a long story." A very long story that started seventy years ago, and he wasn't getting into it with this stranger.

This looked like it was a dead end, though, so Steve wondered if now was the time to gracefully depart. "Thanks for answering my questions. I know I sort of showed up unexpectedly." And they were going to just ignore the fact that Steve had followed this guy to his home and knocked on his door like it was no big deal.

He wasn't exactly spy material.

Lawrence gave a soft laugh, shaking his head. "Oh, that kind. I know what that's like." He'd become part of a very very long story and he still wasn't sure how it was going to end. Hopefully not with him locked up somewhere. That would really suck.

No, Bright Star was going to be his best bet.

He raised an eyebrow at the sudden decision to leave. If he hadn't already been suspicious. "You sure? Oh come on, let's get your phone charged so you can try and call home. It's gonna be a whole before they get all the power restored. Maybe you can tell me about this metal-armed person and I can keep an eye out."

This was actually what Steve had been hoping for. He wasn't convinced with this stranger's initial explanation, and so if he could get a better look at things inside, it might shed some light on the situation.

Besides, getting his phone charged might not be the worst idea. He hadn't been in contact with anyone other than Sam, but having him on speed-dial at least meant that Steve could let someone know if things really went south.

"You sure? I would really appreciate it," Steve said with a small smile. "Though I guess maybe we should cover introductions first." The man didn't seem to recognize him, and that could have to do with Captain America not being that well-known on this side of the Atlantic. "The name's Steven Barnes," he said, offering his hand out for a shake.

"Yeah, sure. Not like my social calendar is full of thrilling engagements. Can't even find a coffee shop that's open," Lawrence replies with a smile and steps aside the let the man into the house. It's kind of studenty; battered furniture and a couple of games consoles with dust on them. Everything set up to make it look innocuous, not that anyone ever tried to come round, not with the people Soleil had got her claws into.

"Sure. Nice to meet you Steve," he said, shaking the guy's hand firmly. "Lawrence Fraser." Less distinctive than Emmanuel which was the first thing that came to mind. Not like Charlie was in any position to complain now. "You picked a hell of a time to come visit the UK."

No, Steve didn't have any social engagements either, save for Sam. There wasn't much time for friendship right now, not when he was spending all of his waking hours trying to get his friend back.

"Same to you, Lawrence," Steve said, stepping inside and taking a curious look around. He did it with the air of anyone entering a house for the first time, but he was also on the look out for anything out of the ordinary. Seeing how Lawrence had invited him in, though, chances were if anything strange was going on here, he'd already covered it up.

"That was sort of the idea," he explained, turning toward Lawrence with his hands in his pockets. "So, do you usually just invite strangers into your home?" He said it with a small, testing smile.

The house was steadfastly normal as far as Lawrence was allowing Steve to see. Nothing you wouldn't find in any student house in London. "Come on in. There's a spare charger somewhere. what kind of phone do you have?" Could you charge American phones on a UK socket? Something about voltage being different?

It probably didn't matter when you were on a generator.

He face Steve, matching his smile, and gave a dismissive shrug. "I dunno. Times like this, when everything's gone crazy, you try to pull together right? Blitz Spirit. The Greater Good," he added, a sardonic twist to his lips on the last part.

Steve, meanwhile, was oblivious about the voltage being different in other countries. All of his overseas traveling so far had been under SHIELD's jurisdiction, so he'd been using their tech and therefore hadn't had to even think about it.

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. It was a smart phone, black and sleek. "It's Stark Tech." Would Lawrence even know what that was? Steve didn't know how far Stark's products had spread, if they'd made it to other countries or if it was mainly based in America.

"I think you're right, though. Pulling together, that's how wars are won. But still, thank you. You could have easily shut the door in my face."

Lawrence took the phone, taking a quick look over it. "Nice phone," he said. "Yeah, I think we get that stuff like three years later than the US." And who needed a phone when you'd previously had a direct neural link with a super intelligent sentient AI who could just feed you whatever information you needed.

He rooted around for a charger and managed to plug it in to one of the solar cells which he was mostly relying on now for smaller stuff. It slowly started to charge.

"I can't say I know much about that. I'm just a research student, not a soldier. Is that what you do? In the army? And don't worry about it. I'm glad to help out where I can, even if there's not much I can do."

If the clue about war hadn't given Lawrence an idea of who he was yet, then Steve probably didn't have to worry much. He was surprised that he'd found a way to charge his phone so easily, but he wasn't about to complain. Without SHIELD's resources to rely on anymore, Steve was pretty much on his own.

He leaned against the closest wall and nodded. "I'm a soldier, yeah." He probably couldn't say much more than that, and hopefully Lawrence wouldn't ask.

"So, what kind of research are you doing?" It seemed worth asking, especially since it had already been mentioned a few times. Art school had once been a consideration for Steve's future, before the war and the serum, but that was the most thought he'd put toward education. All the universities they had set up now -- it was pretty impressive, what people did.

Edited 2014-04-21 18:52 (UTC)

"Lot of soldiers around these days, keeping the peace and all," Lawrence said, falling into idle chatter as easily as he had with Stanton and Walker and the others. How long before he was actually going to have to start dodging the army? The sooner he left London the better he supposed.

He glanced back up, going to sit down on the battered couch. "The project was on 'the potential of self-evolving algorithms in the development of real-time natural speech recognition'," he said with a touch of amusement. "Computers and AI stuff. I basically did a lot of copying up research notes for the professor and the occasional bit of programming."

Sometimes soldiers were doing things much worse than keeping the peace, depending on who they were loyal to, but Steve kept that comment to himself. Better that he didn't make anyone too paranoid, and he had no idea how involved HYDRA was in all of this. Right now it was all assumption and conjecture.

When Lawrence sat, Steve also found a chair to settle into, facing the other man with clear interest in his gaze.

Especially when the word "algorithm" came up. It wasn't a word he could associate with anything good now, and his mouth twitched unpleasantly for a moment. Computers, AIs... naturally, what he thought of was Zola, though he'd been destroyed.

"What kind of algorithms?" Steve asked after a long pause.

So what was it about computers and his research that had caught the man's attention. It left Lawrence on guard again, no matter how casually he sat. Some connection with the CIA like Jackson? Mossad like Pippa? Or something else?

"I can't go into huge detail," Lawrence said with a shrug. "I think some of the research was for the government so I had to sign confidentiality agreements and stuff, just to get onto the project." If he hadn't gone digging, if he hadn't had Soleil's prompting, he probably would never have known the full scope of what they'd been doing.

"It's like... code that changes itself as it learns, I guess is the easiest way to describe it. I mean generally, if you speak to a computer, you can tell. It has stock responses it can choose from, but that's it. This kind of algorithm would be able to learn and develop and respond to pretty much any interaction."

Everything Lawrence had to say about his work only made Steve more convinced that this research project was somehow tied into Zola's algorithm, or possibly was some kind of precursor to it. HYDRA's involvement seemed undeniable.

That didn't necessarily mean that Lawrence had any idea what he'd been a part of, especially if he'd been a graduate student and doing more of the busy work. Steve needed to push this, but he had to figure out the best way to do that without setting off red flags.

"And you said you were working under a professor? What was his name?" If anyone was going to turn out to be some kind of HYDRA sleeper agent, it would probably be the person heading this project. Steve just needed to find out that much, and then he could be on his way.

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