The basement of the old church was an ugly thing – The carpet was almost mustard yellow and half Steve's age, the space was poorly lit, and it was full of what was definitely old, second-hand furniture like torn up couches and mismatched stackable metal chairs. But it was full of activists from Philadelphia, leaders according to Daisy, who'd they contacted through a – hah – daisy-chain with a minimum amount of revealing contact.
They were wearing a pretty wild assortment of clothing – Steve had gotten more used to the current flamboyance in dress and hair, but it was odd to see this particular spectrum all in one room. Some people were dressed more like college professors in suits and some were bouquets of piercings, tattoos, weird hair-coloring, and what had to be deliberately shabby dress and there was just about everything in between.
They were all totally shocked that Steve had just appeared.
"Holy shit!" one of the women in the bouquet catagory said, jumping. The rest of the group made murmurs more or less to that effect.
"Language," Steve said with a laugh afterward so they knew he wasn't too serious about it. "I have no appointment with St. Peter at this point, contrary to the President's lies." The whole room burst into noisy conversation again and Steve held up his hands, "I'm not going to be able to be here long, eventually, someone's phone always catches a signal and then," Steve snapped his finger, "the Fireflies are here and I'd better be gone by then." People were scampering to turn off their phone, though only a few had simple enough phones that battery removal would work.
"That's some Patriot Act bullshit," one of the more college-professor looking skewed men said and the rest of the room nodded. Daisy's activist friends were, at least, very liberal. Steve looked at the room. Nobody was leaving, in spite of the risk. In Steve's experience, if one person broke rank, half the room would go with them – but that only happened half the time.
"Alright, first, no names. You were told that in advance, you should abide by it now. Second, some of the most obvious questions – Yes, Hydra is real, that wasn't an exaggeration or a propaganda fake. No, we don't have inarguable proof, there's no 'Hydra Members List' sitting out there somewhere, though we're working on finding more, but Ward says he did it and," Steve took a pouch off his belt and pulled it open, revealing a handful of flash drives, "he wrote these. Read them on something that cannot be online, your laptop in a forest if you have to. You'll get some evidence and you'll get an idea of how their system works, it'll help convince you that what Ward is alleging is possible and it'll give you the chance to adapt what you morally can to fight against it." It would also mean propagating the possibility of mass conspiracies, but since the present set of mass conspiracies included Hydra, Steve figured they needed to expand on the available options. "Not going to lie to any of you, this stuff – some of it is very unpleasant." It would've been easier to convince people if Trent had flooded the zone with faked videos that were easily disproven, but now video was basically worthless as evidence in the conflict between the two groups.
The crowd walked forward gingerly at that, taking flash drives out of Steve's hand like they were grabbing snake's tails and walking back into their places.
"Say we believe you. Obviously we want to defeat, you know, fucking Nazi Illuminati," Bullshit woman said, "But how are we supposed to do that, exactly?"
"Well, since this will probably be my last chance for safe contact with you all and any other kind of signal could be easily faked, we'll need to make this fast and simple. The plan is a general strike on Labor Day..."
As Steve explained the plan, the fact that the United States hadn't had a successful general strike even over his long lifespan was a heavy burden.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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Steve Rogers had taken to appearing like the Risen Messiah, popping into random gatherings of activists and then disappearing again into the night. The only reliable code signal we could find that worked quickly was that it was rare for multiple phones to lose access to their wireless network at once, but once he had figured that out, they'd just started giving a no phones order.
It wasn't hard to get the contours of his plan after an event – Someone always fucked up somewhere along the way and we had mind-control poison. But there is a beauty in the simplicity of a mass movement organized in cells, planning to show strength, hitting us in a way that we couldn't fix with our obviously superior firepower. If he achieved a general strike, he could gum up the gears of government but if we tried to violently suppress the strike, either by disappearing organizers or by breaking it with the helicarriers, we'd just look worse and give his cell organization more fodder for recruitment. Kill a man and those who love him will hate you forever.
Of course, the United States had last had a general strike in Seattle a century ago and it had lost, so there was that. So there was no reason to panic, but we were also not the only Hydra country in the throes of a burgeoning opposition movement and some of them had much stronger union movements than we did.
That was why I was taking a drastic step now to discredit this Risen-Messiah-Steve-Rogers. I hated to do this, it was a very low blow, but I needed to bait Steve into doing something stupid that I could prove with public witnesses.
I was standing on the platform, next to Tony, as they brought up the Winter Soldier in a glass box. The pageantry was the necessity at this point. Tony was furious – I had shown him the tapes of the Winter Soldier killing his mother and father. He'd been suppressing the creation of the next-gen Arc Reactors that Tony had designed and of the specialized element for Hydra, an absolute tragedy.
There was no rain, it was a clear, sunny day and the press crowded around the unmasked Winter Soldier – Bucky Barnes.
"I fear I am forced to once again deliver bad news, but I have promised you all honesty. Today, we discovered that Bucky Barnes, reported dead by Peggy Carter, founder of SHIELD, and Steve Rogers, is alive. When we broke into his hideout, we found evidence of a long, violent career throughout the Cold War and early 21st Century. In light of the available evidence, we believe that Steve Rogers and Nick Fury's claim that he had been trapped in a frozen tundra after downing a nuclear-equipped bomber was a lie. Instead, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were both subjected to periodic hybernation, brought out to do SHIELD's dirty work as it sought to bring down national sovereignty throughout the world. Together with Peggy Carter and, later, Nick Fury, they engaged in treason of the highest order.
Once the U.S. Federal government obtained the Patriot Armor, it became necessary for Fury's criminal cabal to counter-balance this independent force for democracy, so SHIELD 'rediscovered' Steve Rogers. I now believe that it was Steve Rogers, not Phil Coulson or Grant Ward, who coordinated the attacks. If he is alive, as we now believe likely, he has gone to ground to engage in terrorist action. He is cowardly, he is unwilling to engage in the public square or with any of our attempts at outreach, and he is a threat to all that we hold dear and sacred. I regret to tell you all that the man that we learned of in history class, the hero who represented the best of America, instead represented its worst enemy. This is a heavy day for us all."
Frankly, 'Bucky and Steve worked as wetworks operatives for SHIELD' just made more sense than that Hydra had just happened upon Bucky and SHIELD had just happened upon Steve.