But what Steve Rogers didn't understand was that the world had fundamentally changed during his seventy years in the ice.
In his time, everything had been refreshingly simple. The Hydra Nazis were clearly evil enemies, so he had taken up his shield and led his team to crush their twisted conspiracies.
Today, the lines between right and wrong had become hopelessly blurred.
Even when he desperately wanted to do the right thing, it was entirely possible that he couldn't even identify what "right" actually meant anymore. The moral landscape had shifted beneath his feet while he slept.
If he asked Ben what was politically correct these days, Ben thought with dark amusement, I'd have to tell him to get a tan, announce to the world that he's questioning his sexuality, then undergo sensitivity training and join three different activist organizations.
How dare you be a straight, white, adult male in the modern era, Captain America?
Of course, Ben couldn't actually voice those thoughts, and the three of them stepped into the elevator as Steve mentioned taking them to the deck for some fresh air.
The massive flight deck, which was easily dozens of times larger than a football stadium, had left Steve genuinely awestruck when he'd first seen it.
The three men entered the empty elevator, and just when Ben thought this would provide the perfect private space for their crucial conversation, several tactical team members jogged over from across the hangar.
"Wait up, Captain!"
Crossbones called out from a distance, asking Captain America to hold the elevator doors.
Several operatives squeezed into the confined space together, and Crossbones said with apparent gratitude, "Thanks, Cap. Otherwise we would've had to wait for the next trip."
Elevator.
Hydra.
This powerful sense of déjà vu instantly reminded Ben of a very specific scene.
But this wasn't the moment for Hydra to reveal their fangs, and Crossbones wasn't here with any intention of attacking Captain America.
He had carried out several successful missions alongside the Star-Spangled Man and they were reasonably familiar with each other, so he'd been strategically positioned to gather intelligence.
Crossbones glanced at Ben and Peter with practiced casualness and asked, "New team members?"
Without waiting for Captain America to respond, Ben interjected smoothly, "That's right. Secret identities and all that."
This response made Crossbones chuckle with apparent understanding.
"The world's gotten incredibly complicated lately," he observed. "There seem to be more and more people with abilities like yours showing up. Some do heroic things, some cause serious problems. Most of the time, they all want to keep their real identities hidden."
"That's because the world shows way too much hostility toward people like us," Ben replied with practiced cynicism. "Who knows how many people would want to eliminate us once our identities became public knowledge?"
There wasn't much additional communication between the two groups.
In order to avoid making his presence seem suspicious or forced, Crossbones and his tactical team exited the elevator several floors before Ben and his companions reached the deck level.
"Pretty impressive, right?" Captain America said once they emerged into the night air.
His voice was nearly drowned out by the sound of ocean waves and could only be heard clearly within a short distance.
Ben had to admire that Captain America had chosen an excellent location for sensitive discussions.
The flight deck was remarkably empty and exposed.
In this environment, any agent attempting to approach them covertly would appear extremely obvious and suspicious.
Maybe surveillance cameras would continue monitoring them constantly, but that didn't matter as long as the devices couldn't capture audio or read their lip movements effectively.
Ben glanced around cautiously in the darkness while Peter immediately bounded toward the edge of the aircraft carrier, examining the massive ship with obvious fascination and wonder.
It could honestly be said that this helicarrier fulfilled many of his childhood fantasies about science fiction movies.
He leaned over the edge of the deck and called out loudly, "Captain, I noticed that the turbine engines are mounted parallel to the ground. Can this thing actually fly?"
"You'd have to ask Fury about that," Steve replied with amusement.
Seeing Peter so energetic and enthusiastic brought some measure of relief to Captain America's troubled heart.
Ben turned toward the ocean and heard Eunice's voice speaking clearly through his encrypted earpiece.
"I've identified seven active surveillance cameras in your immediate vicinity."
On his mask's internal display, Eunice highlighted all the detected surveillance locations with discrete markers. Ben positioned his body facing the sea, using his posture to shield his lips from observation, and said quietly, "Captain..."
"Have you ever heard of something called Operation Paperclip?"
"Operation Paperclip?" Captain America looked genuinely puzzled when he heard the unfamiliar designation.
He truly had no knowledge of this program whatsoever.
After all, Operation Paperclip had actually been launched in September of 1946, and Steve had already been frozen in the Arctic ice by 1945.
"Then you need to prepare yourself mentally," Ben warned seriously.
"Control your reactions and don't get too visibly upset. We're still under active surveillance."
Ben provided that crucial warning in advance, then began delivering some absolutely explosive information to Captain America.
Operation Paperclip.
This referred to a classified program designed to absorb and recruit German Nazi scientists during the aftermath of World War II. This operation had actually existed in historical reality.
Initially, this program had been called "Operation Overcast," but due to mounting domestic political resistance and moral objections, the original project had been forced to officially terminate.
But the program hadn't actually failed or disappeared.
It had simply changed its appearance and been implemented under a different name and organizational structure, systematically transferring Hydra's technical experts and high-level researchers into American institutions.
The primary reason this plan had been able to proceed was due to the strong support of Howard Stark, one of the founding architects of SHIELD.
Howard had believed that those Hydra researchers could no longer pose any significant threat after their organization's apparent defeat.
But he never could have imagined that it was precisely this program that had allowed Hydra to preserve its essential foundation. The serpent eggs had been carefully incubated within the protective environment of SHIELD itself, and the seemingly harmless small snakes had become omnipresent, burrowing beneath the organization's skin, consuming its vital organs from within, and coming back to terrifying life beneath the "human skin" of SHIELD.
Not only that, but the countless small serpents within this massive snake den had also spread their influence to every corner of American society.
You could find Hydra operatives everywhere if you knew how to look.
The chaotic criminal underworld of Hell's Kitchen, the wealthy elite who controlled vast capital resources, the powerful government officials who shaped national policy...
They were embedded everywhere, but virtually no one suspected their true allegiance.
Even high-ranking members within Hydra's hierarchy might not know the precise location of every operative or understand the full scope of their strategic arrangements.
They no longer had merely nine heads as their motto suggested—they now possessed tens of thousands of heads, each operating with deadly independence.
"So what do you think about all this, Captain?" Ben asked quietly.
After delivering this information, Ben turned to observe Steve Rogers' reaction carefully.
Of course, he hadn't told Steve the complete truth about everything. He had focused specifically on the historical facts of Operation Paperclip and how Howard Stark had inadvertently created the conditions for his own eventual assassination at the hands of the very Hydra operatives he'd helped integrate.
Sometimes, when you describe something in excessive detail, it begins to sound fabricated and unbelievable.
Steve Rogers was fundamentally a very independent-minded person with strong personal convictions. Rather than telling him everything directly, it would be far more effective to let him discover the truth for himself and witness the evidence with his own eyes.
Facts would always speak louder than any persuasive arguments.
At this moment, Steve's entire body was trembling with barely contained emotion.
"Is everything you just told me actually true?" he asked, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining control.
"Or are you simply trying to create discord between me and SHIELD for your own purposes?"
He couldn't bring himself to believe it.
He absolutely refused to accept that what Ben had described could possibly be accurate.
Even though Ben had only revealed a relatively small portion of the complete truth, Steve still found it impossible to process psychologically.
If Operation Paperclip was real, then what had been the point of everything he'd sacrificed?
Looking back at the first half of his life, he had been constantly fighting against Hydra, and for that noble cause he had lost absolutely everything: his seriously ill mother who had died while he served overseas, his beloved comrades who had fallen in battle, seventy precious years of his own existence frozen in ice... and that promised dance with Peggy, and Bucky...
What did all those sacrifices mean? What significance did all the blood shed by brave soldiers hold?
What kind of "hero" was he if the enemy he'd supposedly died destroying had actually survived and thrived?
A joke?
This represented the ultimate betrayal on an unimaginable scale!
It hadn't been Steve Rogers who had betrayed America—it was America that had betrayed Steve Rogers.
America had betrayed Captain America himself, everything he represented, and every principle he had fought to defend.
Support me at [email protected]/goldengaruda and check out more chapter of this or more early access chapter of my other fanfic translation.