6

Steve Rogers pounded and pounded and pounded on the punching bag that hung from the gym’s ceiling. He came here when all else failed—when he was out of options for how to deal with all the information he’d been having difficulty processing. When he had been Captain America, fighting Hydra in Europe during World War II, he’d had a sense of purpose. Now, after seventy years on ice, he was completely adrift. S.H.I.E.L.D. kept him on a short leash, helping him to get used to his sudden appearance in the year 2012. But it didn’t always work, and sometimes the only way Steve could stop himself from going crazy was to get into the gym and hit the bag.

He thought of his fellow soldiers and hit the bag. He thought of Peggy Carter and slammed it again. He thought of Howard Stark, of progress, advancement, of the seventy years of history he’d not been a part of, and he punched and punched and punched—harder and harder, faster and more furious.

He remembered the battle aboard the Red Skull’s plane. Like it was yesterday, he saw the energies of the cube open a hole in space and suck the Red Skull through. He remembered the moment when he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop the Hydra superweapons from destroying New York City ... and he knew he’d have to crash the plane. He knew he would have to sacrifice himself to save millions. He remembered saying goodbye to Peggy ...

Then he remembered waking up, in this strange future New York where he was a man out of time.

He didn’t belong here, in present day. Everyone he knew was gone or too old to remember him. Peggy, Bucky ... everyone. But he was still here, and all he could do was try to sort things out because Steve Rogers was a soldier. He was Captain America. People were counting on him.

His punched built to a rage, and a final haymaker tore the heavy bag loose from its moorings and knocked it across the gym. It lay there spilling sand on the floor.

Steve was barely breathing hard. He wasn’t done. He went and picked up another bag. He had a row of them ready for when he got in these moods, and all he wanted to do was hit something.

As he hung the new bag from the chain, he heard Director Fury’s voice.“Trouble sleeping?”

“I slept for seventy years, sir,”Steve said. He started a new series of punches, trying to find a nice easy rhythm.“I think I’ve had my fill.”

“Then you should be out celebrating. Seeing the world,”Fury said.

Steve stopped. He could tell Fury wanted to talk to him about something, so he started stripping the workout tape from his fists.“When I went under, the world was at war,”he said.“I wake up, they say we won. They didn’t say what we lost.”

Fury nodded. He and Steve had talked about this before. He knew Steve was having trouble getting used to his new environment.“We’ve made some mistakes along the way. Some very recently.”

Steve cut to the chase.“Are you here with a mission, sir?”

“I am.”

“Trying to get me back in the world?”

“Trying to save it,”Fury said. He handed Steve a dossier. Steve opened it and on the first page saw a picture of the Red Skull’s cube under the heading Tesseract.“Hydra’s secret weapon,”he said.

“Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you,”Fury explained.“He thought what we think. The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That’s something the world sorely needs.”

“Who took it from you?”Steve asked, handing the dossier back. There was nothing in it he needed if he was going to get a briefing from Fury.

Fury hesitated.“He’s called Loki. He’s ... not from around here. There’s a lot we’ll have to bring you up to speed on if you’re in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”

“At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me.”

“Ten bucks says you’re wrong. There’s a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment.”

Steve picked up a heavy bag to take home, but Fury wasn’t quite ready to let him go just yet.“Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?”he asked.

Steve remembered the power of the cube. He’d seen it tear a hole in space and suck the Red Skull through. It wasn’t something to mess around with.“You should have left it in the ocean,”Steve said.

Then he went home, to hang the heavy bag there and try one more time to punch his nightmares away.

But he and Fury both knew he wasn’t bailing out on the mission. Steve knew all too well the destruction that could be wrought if the power of the cube fell into the wrong hands. He’d seen the destruction it caused when the Red Skull held it and used it to power new weapons. What if someone smarter and more dangerous got hold of it? No matter what Steve was struggling with, if the world needed Captain America, he would rise to meet the challenge.