courtings | open post (steve rogers)

He loved it when people trusted him. This was easier than the Professor had been, obviously since he'd had to kill the Professor to get the device. He took it as carefully as he could, holding it like a precious thing. "Great, thanks. Now, let's get this show on the road."

As he walked back to the computer, he activated the bio-link. A little extra layer of security. Technology like this, no-one was going to want to destroy it by killing him or stealing it.

Steve's trust only went as far as what he needed from Lawrence, but considering how desperate he was to find Bucky, that went a long way. He followed Lawrence over to the computer, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked over the console.

He'd learned a lot about computers, but this was definitely above his pay grade and so for the moment all he could was watch. Which was frustrating, but he planned to pay close attention to what he could.

He accessed the computer, starting to pull up files and lines and lines of scrolling code. Some of it he recognised, some of it he'd built in himself when Soleil had needed him to open the door for her, and some of it was completely new and so far above his capabilities it was a little frightening. For all that Soleil had taught him, this had been built by experts. And Soleil had added and changed it herself.

Some of the pieces were definitely not as they had been. Was that due to the kill switch or something else? He didn't even know if he was looking at the right part.

"If you want to do something useful, there should be paper records too. They started using those instead of the computers when they realised She could get into everything that was on the computers.

Steve's eyes scanned over the code, but it may as well have been another language to him, and he wasn't going to be able to make any sense of it. He could tell that Lawrence could read everything there, though, which put Steve at the disadvantage.

Paper records he could work with, though, and so he nodded and started going through some of the nearby file cabinets.

"Is there anything in particular you're looking for? Any terms I should keep an eye out for?" he asked.

Lawrence sat back in his chair, chewing his lip as he thought for a moment. "Project Sevendays. That's what it was called. Also... Robert Emmanuel, Aisling Foster, Ivan, he was one of the head researchers. And... Charlie and Marianne. That's what they were called. I don't know if that'll come up in the files but it's worth looking. Can't hurt. I mean, they're all dead now but... hopefully they've left something behind."

Steve made a mental note of each name. Some of them he'd run across already, but a few were new to him. The fact that Lawrence could so easily talk about their deaths set off another alarm bell in Steve's mind, though.

"... Do you really think all of them were killed by that eco group?" he asked as he started sorting through the files. "Sounds a little farfetched to me." There was more to all of this, Steve knew it. It was just a matter of getting to the bottom of it, though his guess was that this base wouldn't have that kind of information. Not if Lawrence had let him in here.

Lawrence swivelled around on his chair to look at him and then gave a helpless shrug. He wasn't exactly going to admit that he'd killed them all, or had them killed and The EMP had done for Ivan. "I dunno. They were willing to set of EMPs across Europe though. Think how many people that killed just from the plane crashes alone, before you even get to the longer term stuff. I think bumping off a few researchers probably isn't beyond them.

Shame he hadn't managed to wipe out all of them really. Oriya was out there, knew his face, what he'd done. Maybe he could find a way to take care of that if Soleil had left him access to he weapons systems.

Lawrence made a good point, although they were different kinds of murder. Causing a plane to crash was so far removed, while killing someone at point blank took a certain amount of wherewithal. But they could have always hired other people to kill the researchers for them. People like the Winter Soldier.

Steve let out a sigh and kept sorting through the files, eyes scanning quickly over anything that looked interesting. A lot of it was jargon that meant nothing to him, but at the very back of the cabinet he finally found something about Project Sevendays.

"Here we go," he said, pulling it out and leaning back on his heels to open up the file on the floor in front of him.

He waited a moment until Steve was looking through the files again before he checked out the device. It looked the same as the one that he'd had previously. He took a breath and pressed it to the back of his skull, that point where he'd dug the last implant out of his head when Soleil had wanted him dead.

He made a soft noise of pain when it activated, firing the implant into his head, but it wasn't that bad. He could deal. His fingers came away bloody.

Still nothing that was active.

He jumped when Steve spoke again, and slid off his chair to take a look at the file. "Yeah, yeah this is it. We're looking for backup systems. Or I am."

Hearing that small noise from Lawrence (enhanced senses was one of the many perks that came with being a super soldier), Steve glanced up, but he wasn't able to determine what had caused it until he walked closer.

That was when he saw the blood, and the fact that Lawrence was remaining casual about the whole thing only made it stranger. Steve tensed and reared up, taking the file into his hands again.

"What did you do?" he asked, and while he was worried because that was his first instinct when someone was bleeding, he was also waiting for something to go sideways here.

He smiled at Steve, a beatific expression. It felt like it could just be a matter of time. She had to be out there, watching and waiting for him. She was too clever to be taken down by smoke and mirrors and flashing lights. He knew she was. "Nothing that I haven't done before," he said with a shrug. "Don't worry. It's just a small wound. Head wounds always bleed like crazy. At least I didn't have to stick a knife into my head this time."

"Are you insane?" Steve asked with a frown, a kneejerk reaction as he moved closer and then circled around to get a better look at the wound.

That device that Steve had found had been inserted there, and while Lawrence had said that brain implants were used to interface with the system, Steve hadn't expected it to be quite that barbaric.

"Seems like you could have figured out a cleaner way to do that," he said after a pause, tone uncertain. "So what are you able to see?"

"Debatable," Lawrence said cheerfully. He felt sane enough, albeit not quite on the same level as most people. He'd got very very good at fooling people. "I had to cut the last one out myself."

He reached back, pulling the majority of the device away. "It's just a chip. The rest of the device is bio-linked to me. It'll heal eventually." It didn't seem that important, not in comparison to finding Soleil. He pointed out a few lines of code. "Well, there looks to be the main structure of the programming still in tact. They had wipe codes but they didn't destroy the hard copies and Soleil is so smart. Clever girl, I think she backed herself up."

It was still unsettling the way that Lawrence spoke about this Soleil, but Steve was doing his best to ignore that at least until he found out what he needed to know. Desperation had driven him pretty far to bring him here, though while Lawrence did seem to be pretty far off the deep end, he hadn't yet found any proof that he'd hurt or killed people.

Steve hoped he hadn't, he didn't really want this to end up even more complicated than it was already, though he was also prepared to do what was necessary when push came to shove.

"Guess that's a good sign," he said with a nod. "Does that mean you can run some searches?"

Sanity, in his opinion, was purely subjective. Just because they didn't understand what he did in Soleil's service, just because they'd never understood the things that went on in his head. He reached back to rub the wounded spot again, as if he could somehow make it work faster, instead of slowly encouraging cell growth.

"The best sign. She might still be alive." Somewhere. Maybe hibernating. Was that the right term? He wasn't sure. It didn't matter.

"Yeah, I'll do what I can. What do you want me to look for?"

Steve didn't know if it would be good or bad for an AI that powerful to still be alive. He didn't know enough about the situation, but Lawrence definitely seemed happy about it. If all he planned was for them to live out their days together in some odd kind of romance, then Steve couldn't say he minded.

Especially if it got him the information he needed. He hesitated on saying the words, as if speaking them out loud would somehow do harm. But if Steve had been struggling to find Bucky, it wouldn't be very easy for Lawrence to track him down either. Chances were he wouldn't even care enough to look beyond this.

"Search for Winter Soldier," he said eventually. "Let me know if you come up with anything." Steve stood, very still, and waited for the results.

Winter Soldier. That sounded ominous. He wasn't familiar with the term but it was certainly interesting. "Alright, I can do that. Give me a few minutes. There's a lot of files to check." He was fairly certain that the Burn hadn't had anything to do with something called Winter Soldier. He'd known pretty much everything that was going on.

Still, it didn't hurt to look.

The files from the bunker yielded nothing, except the knowledge that they were pretty much intact. Research files, videos, all of it.

Searching wider though, through the pathways that Soleil had created and had left open for him to follow... He hummed softly. "Does 'Hydra' mean anything to you?" he asked. It was just a name, a logo, something dredged up from the deepest encrypted files Soleil had skimmed from various agencies for fun.

Steve did his best to remain patient as Lawrence performed the search. He realized that these things took time, but he had never been very good at sitting around and waiting for a computer to do work for him.

The other methods he'd used hadn't turned up anything, though, and so this was what he had to rely on for now. He wasn't happy about it, but he had to put up with it. For the sake of his friend.

The moment that HYDRA was mentioned, Steve's shoulders tensed and he moved toward Lawrence, nodding firmly.

"Yes, yes it does. What do you have on them?" He tried to keep his tone from being too demanding, but he needed this information, he needed some kind of lead. Anything.

It was a damn sight faster than going through records by hand, but to be fair, Lawrence had been brought up with computers his entire life. He was probably biased. He was biased about a lot of things that involved computers.

So, HYDRA were something connected to this. Good to know. They seemed like the type who could get in the way of Soleil which wasn't something he could allow.

"Whole bunch of stuff got dumped online a couple of months ago. Interesting stuff. But she had found some stuff before that. And... huh, some of them were playing a few sides. Politicians, scientists. Oh, he is in so much trouble if I ever find him. Uh... they have bases. Not these ones but... a lot of places."

Oh, Steve knew all about how that information was leaked, as Natasha had been the one responsible. It was a bold move, and one that they were all trying to clean up even now, but he was proud of her for it. It had been the right thing to do.

"Who's in trouble?" That sounded far too much like a threat. "And do you have any locations for these bases? That might be a place I can start."

Steve was assuming a lot, but if Bucky was off the chain and out on his own, then chances were that he wanted some kind of revenge, or at least to stop HYDRA from doing to anyone else what they'd done to him. Steve hoped he was in at least a good enough state of mind to manage that. In which case, if Steve could figure out which bases had been targeted, it would give him a trail to follow.

Well, he wasn't going to turn his nose up at free intelligence like this. If someone had released it onto the net, he was going to take it. He set it to download every scrap that he could find.

"Mmm, a politician," Lawrence explained. "British Government. He pledged himself to Soleil but apparently he was working for this HYDRA group. I'm really not fond of people who try to use Soleil like that." So this politician had better watch his back. Assuming he was even still alive after the Day of Glory.

"I am pulling them up now. It's more vague locations than pinpoint accuracy. Soleil she noticed electricity sinks and black spots where those things should not be. Sort of like this place."

That was the problem with people who were loyal to HYDRA. They'd done a near-perfect job of blending in, of acting like they were just like everyone else, when in actuality they were just snakes. Steve could understand Lawrence's anger in that moment.

Much as he might want to tell him that it would be wrong to take the life of even someone like that, Steve didn't have much mercy when it came to members of HYDRA, and so he remained quiet. The guilt balled up in him, but he let out out in a heavy sigh.

"Even just a vague area to work in is better than nothing," he pointed out. If (and once again, that was a big if) Bucky was systematically taking out these bases of operations, then it would probably be pretty obvious, just so long as Steve knew where to look.

He'd sort of been expecting a protest at that. It was almost a relief when one didn't come. He didn't want to get bogged down in minutiae like how bad murder was. It was all a matter of perspective anyway.

The correct perspective was, of course, his.

"You are going to be doing a lot of travelling," Lawrence said. "They have bases all over the world. Not that they could completely hide their trail, because Soleil is about a million times smarter than them, but they did a reasonable job, I suppose." He paused for a moment, looking at the list of GPS coordinates he'd found.

"They're gonna Burn."

Steve couldn't say he'd never killed people, but he had never done it for the sort of petty, personal reasons that Lawrence cited. He'd always tried to fight for some cause that was larger than himself, although he had to admit, if faced with the people who had come up with the idea of the Winter Soldier, he'd be hard pressed not to put them down.

A lot of traveling, he could have guessed that. "I'll figure it out, I just need the locations. Can you print it out or something? Or email it to me?" Whatever would get him the information, he didn't particularly care how it happened.

Lawrence sounded more and more deranged the more time that Steve spent around him, but he couldn't outright ignore the things he was saying.

"Pretty sure they already have, with everything that happened in DC a few years back." He said it with a casual lilt to his voice, something he was getting better at all the time.

What cause was greater or larger than setting the human race on a better path with someone who was so far above them they could barely understand it? Also it was kind of fun. More fun than he'd ever expected it to be.

"I'll print it. Don't think it's the sort of information you want tracked across the internet. It would suck if they found out you were coming for them." Not a threat, just a statement of fact. He wanted them gone as well.

He tilted his head back to look at Steve, smiling slightly. "Not enough if they're still out there with bases. Someone forgot to salt the earth they grew from."

open post (steve rogers)

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