Decisions
I wasn't sure what to do next, and there's no point jumping into something without planning, so I sat on the bunker and its contents. I had other things to do; I was working on the wrought iron for my neighbors, trying to better my German, and I was doing some sightseeing through Europe as the weather permitted; it was a stormy summer. I kept an eye on the news; predictably, the Sokovia Accords fell apart fairly quickly. China didn't want the Avengers in its territory at all and began recruiting for an all-Chinese version that could be controlled by its government and operated in its interests. Nobody wanted to have to deal with infrastructure repair and replacement after the Avengers were deployed, so they twiddled their thumbs while the bad guys did their thing with impunity. I shook my head and wondered why Tony Stark didn't start working on weapons that were non-lethal and restricted property damage; that guy in the weird suit with the spider sigil proved that it could be done, and done well. And frankly, Stark could use a clear win. The people who bitched that the Avengers were too dangerous uncontrolled now bitched because the authorities refused to use them. And Tony Stark, the public face of the Avengers now that Cap was in Asgard, was being blamed for not doing something about it. I'd feel badly for him, but he rushes into things without figuring out the consequences. He doesn't just react, he overreacts. And his tendency to mea culpa means that he makes bad decisions trying for atonement.
The stormy summer gave way to a cold, wet autumn. The leaves on the trees didn't change as much as usual, which was disappointing; I've always loved fall for the fiery spectacle the trees put on. My fireplaces had a gas line run to them so I could use gas or burn wood. I liked the gas when I didn't want to spend hours at night waiting for it to go out, but for an all day fire, I liked to use wood. There were a couple of downed dead trees on the property; I'd gotten a chain saw to cut them into chunks and split them into appropriately sized pieces with an ax. On the advice of a neighbor, I'd gotten an arborist in to check for disease in the trees of the property; he identified a few that should be cut down to age and successfully treated the few trees that had disease or pests. I had a company fell the selected trees so they could begin drying out for use as fireplace fuel in years to come. I was looking forward to winter in the Austrian Alps and had bought a down comforter for my bed and those in the guest rooms. I'd not really thought of guest rooms when I moved in, but once I started reentering modern society, I'd contacted old friends who were glad to hear from me and made noises about visiting, so in a fit of optimism, I'd made guest rooms. I hadn't had any other plans for them; I'd been traveling light and didn't have a lot of stuff to deal with. Toward the end of the summer, one of my good friends from college had made a side trip on a Paris vacation just to see me for a few days. It was a lot more fun than I'd been expecting, and I hoped to host her and other friends in the future.
I didn't lose sight of my main goal, though: figuring out what to do with the SNL. Before I started going there again to study it, I set up a battery powered tiny camera for remote surveillance, placed in a tree set back from the great metal door. I could access the feed with my smart phone and set it to alert me anytime something crossed in front of the door. I got to see a lot of wildlife.
One day after a big storm, I started at the driveway and began walking the perimeter fence, checking for damage. On the edge of the property closest to SNL, I surprised two men and they ran. I thought they might be the men who had come up to me that day when I was starting my flower beds. I felt that they were on my property for a reason, and that reason probably was the SNL. There had been a little bit more information to be had, and none of it good, declassified notes about failed trials of the serum, a bit about personnel involved, but it was incomplete information. If this was the Super Soldier serum, it had been trialed on German volunteers who had suffered and died because of it. Erskine seemed to be the man who knew the most about that project, and it was rumored that he'd tested a version on Johann Schmidt, turning him into Red Skull. It seemed most likely that Erskine had been the one who treated Steve Rogers. So this serum was dangerous but it could be made to work. The work down in the bunker wouldn't be the apex formula that produced Captain America, but it could provide somebody a big head start if they wanted to start experimenting with it. I dithered over what to do, but once I realized that volunteers wouldn't be like Cap, with his unshakable integrity, I knew what I needed to do.
I was down at the town store, doing the weekly shopping, when I saw one of the men who had come on my property that day. No mistake. He didn't see me see him, but I couldn't discount the possibility that his partner was watching me. I went on with my day like nothing had happened, but I felt like time was running out. The next day I went up the hill, in a warm coat with thin gloves, with a powerful flashlight in my backpack. I moved confidently over the ground to the rocky outcropping with the door, where I opened the door, stepped in, and closed the door, sealing it behind me for safety. When I got down to the bottom, I flipped the switch and gathered every fragment of paper I could find, putting it in my backpack. I wasn't going to use that research and didn't want anybody else to either, so it was best that I not read any of it. Then I took out the flashlight and went through the benches and cabinets. I found a storage cabinet of minerals and compounds in old-fashioned amber glass apothecary jars, clearly labeled; they were things you could find in any organics lab. There was glassware everywhere, mostly handblown and really nice. If I ever went back to lab work, I'd kill to have that glassware. Ok, not kill, but I might try to beat somebody up for it. I opened every drawer and looked for doors, but this one room looked like that was all there was. The only thing I found was located in a lockbox in what might have been the lab manager's desk; it was set off to the side and up on a platform where a person could look over the whole operation.
I persuaded the metal box to open; within was a single large test tube of a weird blue liquid. It matched an eyewitness account of the serum. The serum was water-soluble; the eyewitness account of one botched test said that unused serum had been disposed of down the drain. I uncorked the tube and very carefully emptied it into a water drain, then recorked it and returned it to the box and the desk drawer. Satisfied, I went over to the power switch, turned it off, and fused the switch. I was almost at the stairs when, incredibly, I heard the door opening above me.