I
Three days. Darcy had been missing for three days. Although nobody wanted to admit it, the team was beginning to give up hope. Steve sighed and leaned back in his seat, joints popping as he stretched his arms out. Natasha looked up from her position in the cockpit of the quinjet, regarding him with quiet scrutiny, as if assessing his every move.
Steve deliberately ignored her, choosing instead to focus on the list of known HYDRA bases in which Darcy could be being held that lay on the small workspace in front of him. They had scratched off two thirds of the list in the previous days, splitting the team into smaller groups to cover more ground.
They’d had no luck.
Steve, Natasha and Sam had been combing South America, ripping through compounds with surgical precision. All they had managed to do was make the list of possibilities longer, with new potential locations being discovered for every one they had burned. You cut off one head… HYDRA seemed to grow five more.
Steve glanced to his left. Sam was slumped at another of the tiny foldaway workstations that the quinjet was equipped with, exhausted from days without rest. Without the super-soldier serum or Natasha’s Red Room training (not to mention any physiological enhancement Steve suspected Natasha of having), the intensity of the search was catching up to the man despite his Air Force experience.
Steve tried not to think about what must be happening to Darcy for each hour they spent searching for her. He was fond of the feisty lab assistant. They had spent many an evening on what Darcy referred to as ‘Cultural Reintroduction: Popular Media Edition’.
In Darcyland, this involved Disney, Tolkien and Harry Potter marathons, peppered with healthy doses of crappy reality TV and some British sci-fi program that completely baffled him. Picturing his happy-go-lucky friend in any kind of peril made Steve sick to his core. She had no training, no weapons, no help.
They needed to find her.
Fast.
An annoyingly persistent beep cut through Steve’s thoughts, signalling an incoming message. Sam jolted awake and sat bolt upright, blinking his lethargy away. Natasha, ever alert, hit a few buttons to broadcast the message craft-wide. Tony’s face appeared on screen, showing the signs of three days on mission. His eyes, however, were full of fervour.
“Cap, you gotta see this,” he said, before the screen cut to a security video.
Steve forgot how to breathe.