As he walked down the hall to his apartment, Steve ran into his neighbor Kate. She was carrying a laundry basket and talking on the phone. Everyone seemed to be on the phone all the time. “So sweet,” she was saying. “That is so nice. I got to go, though. Okay. Bye.” She dropped the phone in her laundry and looked at Steve with a sheepish smile. “My aunt, she’s kind of an insomniac.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Hey, if you want...” Suddenly he was nervous. Maybe Natasha was right that he should ask her out, but it had been a long time since Steve asked a girl out. “If you want, you’re welcome to use my machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What’s it cost?”

“A cup of coffee?”

She smiled. “Thank you, but I already have a load in downstairs, and you really don’t want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward, so...”

Steve knew what she was saying. Thanks but no thanks. “Well, I’ll keep my distance,” he said.

“Hopefully not too far,” she said. “Oh, and I think you left your stereo on.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He knew for a fact he hadn’t left his stereo on. “Right. Thank you.”

Kate went to do her laundry and Steve cautiously entered his apartment. If his stereo was on, someone had been in there. Who? Why? It didn’t take long for him to find out.

Sitting in the light of a single lamp on Steve’s living room couch was Nick Fury. Bloodied, exhausted, but still sharp. He waited for Steve to react to his presence. Steve was confused, but he could also tell something was wrong. “I don’t remember giving you a key,” he said.

“You really think I’d need one? My wife kicked me out.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“A lot of things you don’t know about me.” He turned out the lamp and showed Steve the screen of his phone. On it he had typed EARS EVERYWHERE.

Who was listening? And after the argument they’d had earlier that day, what was Fury doing in his apartment? “I know, Nick,” Steve said. “That’s the problem.”

“I’m sorry to have to do this, but I had no place else to crash.” Fury showed Steve his phone again. S.H.I.E.L.D. COMPROMISED.

Steve played along, trying to think of a way to ask who else knew they’d been infiltrated. “Who else knows about your wife?”

“Just...” YOU AND ME. “My friends.”

Did he mean that, or was he saying it just for whoever might be listening in? “Is that what we are?” Steve asked.

“That’s up to you,” Fury said.

Suddenly, something shattered and Fury cried out and collapsed to the floor. Steve spun and saw the bullet hole through the window. He knelt next to Fury, who was lying on his back. Steve had seen a lot of men with gunshot wounds in the war, and he could tell this one was bad.

“Don’t...​trust...​anyone,” Fury wheezed. He held up the USB drive Natasha had taken from the Lemurian Star . Steve took it and put it in his pocket. Then Fury’s eyes closed and Steve heard banging on his front door. He got up to answer it.

“Captain Rogers?” It was Kate, from across the hall. Only she was all business and carrying a gun. “Captain, I’m Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Service.”

“Kate?”

“I’m assigned to protect you.” She looked past Steve into his apartment.

“On whose order?”

“His.” She went to Fury and quickly examined him. Then she spoke into a comm. “Foxtrot is down, he’s unresponsive. I need EMTs.”

“Do we have a 20 on the shooter?” The voice on the other line was asking for the shooter’s location.

Steve looked out the window. He saw a gleam of metal. Someone was moving on the roof of the building across the street. “Tell him I’m in pursuit,” he said, and grabbed his shield.

He charged through his apartment’s front window, sailed across the street, and crashed through the window of the office building across the street. Then he ran straight through the building, punching through windows and doors to keep as straight a path as he could. Luckily most of these new buildings’ interior walls were just made out of drywall. Steve ran through them like they were paper. He hit a steel-​reinforced wall once and had to make a detour, but he still got to the other side of the building and out onto the roof with the shooter in view.

Steve flung his shield at the target. It was a perfect throw, head-​high and right on target...​but at the last moment the shooter spun and shot out an arm to catch Steve’s shield in midflight!

Astonished, Steve watched the shooter hold his shield out like a Frisbee. His left arm was made of some kind of metal. Over the mask, his eyes glittered with hate.

Then he threw the shield back at Steve, who caught it, but the force of the throw drove him back several steps. By the time he regained his balance, the shooter had disappeared. When Steve reached the edge of the roof, he could see no sign of where the shooter might have gone. K8bKZwmERHWqEOQP3mSUycWlR6g+Wi9t2ExSgeNytV+MUBjy2+6SRvFtu+xpaGxx