A few months later, the war finally began to tilt.
Hydra's high-level facilities—every one Zola had marked, mapped, and annotated in painstaking detail—were hit in rapid succession. Foundation strike teams moved like a guillotine across Europe. Anomalous vaults cracked open. Ritual chambers were seized mid-chant. Laboratories were burned clean or repurposed under Foundation control.
Hydra bled.
Their subordinates were arrested where possible, executed where necessary. Anomalous items were catalogued, sealed, and moved under armed escort. For the first time since Schmidt's rise, Hydra was on the defensive—and they knew it.
But one threat still remained airborne.
The plane.
The massive bomber, armed with Tesseract-powered weapons designed by Hydra's finest minds, roared through the sky like an extinction event given wings. Its payload could have rewritten the global balance of power in a single night.
We stood in silence as the scrying spell hovered before us.
Julius.Lincoln.And me.
The three of us watched the shimmering projection as Steve Rogers fought his way aboard the aircraft, Foundation intelligence and General Phillips' coordination having finally placed him exactly where he needed to be. None of us spoke, but the tension was unmistakable.
Any of us could open a portal.
Any of us could intervene.
We were ready.
Because while the world technically wouldn't end if Steve failed—only be reshaped into something far darker—that outcome was unacceptable.
Then it happened.
Steve confronted Schmidt.
The Red Skull, brilliant and mad in equal measure, reached for the Tesseract with the same arrogance that had defined his entire ascent. He believed himself chosen. Untouchable. Above consequence.
The artifact disagreed.
The moment his fingers closed around it, space folded in on itself. The energy surged, blinding and violent—and Schmidt vanished, torn from the board entirely, cast across reality to become something far worse than a tyrant.
A guardian.
The Tesseract clattered to the floor, harmless for the moment.
We watched as Steve, battered and exhausted, forced the plane down. No escape. No theatrics. Just grim resolve as he guided it into the frozen ocean, sacrificing himself to ensure the weapons never reached their targets.
The image froze—literally.
Ice swallowing steel.
Silence replacing fire.
For a long moment, none of us spoke.
The war was not over. Hydra would fracture, not disappear. New threats would rise, born from the ashes of old ones.
But Red Skull was gone.
The Tesseract was secured.
And Steve Rogers—Captain America—had changed the course of history exactly as we had hoped.
Some victories are loud.
This one was buried beneath ice.