"Don't be stupid," said Brett, "they're obviously fake. A month before the election? Some weenie out on Daily Kos is creaming himself over his Photoshop job because he thinks he just stuck it to the man. Here we are putting our asses on the line to protect these fucktards, and how do they thank us? By milking the Hydra bullshit for all it's worth. Like that was us. They just want to keep whining and yell 'Nazis' so they don't have to listen to the people who've got solutions."

Kelly wadded up her empty bag of Fritos and tossed it at his head. "Thanks for your opinion." The bag fluttered pathetically to the ground three feet from the trash can, and Kelly left it there and gave her phone an impatient shake. Loading. Loading. Fuck the breakroom and its one bar of shitty 3G. She only had a couple minutes left, and it had been an entire half hour since the last time she'd refreshed usajobs.gov. Maybe while she'd been shoveling gross cafeteria food into her mouth and regretting her life choices, someone had posted the magic listing that would land her a respectable career. The FBI, maybe, or the DEA. Clerical work in some sub-basement of the Pentagon. Scrubbing toilets at the US embassy in Islamabad. Something.

In the meantime, she tabbed back to her news feed. "Hack or Hoax?" blared the Fox headline. "Dubious authenticity of SHIELD abuse pics fails to defuse anti-American riots in Middle East." Two articles down, MSNBC proclaimed, "'Capgate' now a rallying point for outcry over SHIELDRA human-rights violations." Ugh. Either way, ugh. Not news Kelly needed to hear right after lunch, not with Dylan two weeks into his third tour and another baby on the way. Didn't matter what spin you put on it. People were going to die, and the world was going to be an even more dangerous place. No wonder all the jobs were in security these days. Slate could churn out all the fluff they wanted about Avenger complexes and everybody wanting to be a superhero—people needed protection, now more than ever, and they'd need it whether or not the superhero job was looking a lot less glamorous this week.

So it would be really nice if USAJobs would load and hand her a chance to protect people, not just put on a show of it like a good little dancing monkey.

Avengers still refuse to confirm or deny photo leak, claim Cap can't be reached

Stark Industries seeks injunction against Nazisploitation porn film based off alleged Steve Rogers rape tape

Off the grid? 5 tracking technologies that debunk Avengers' "wilderness vacation" Cap cover story

Lawrence of America: The hidden history of wartime male sexual assault, and what the photo leak could mean for Captain Rogers and the world

Hoax Target, or Disgrace to the Flag?

The End of the War on Terror? Captain America was raped by the American security state. When will enough be enough?

Brett plopped down next to her. Two dozen empty chairs in the breakroom, and he had to pick the one that would let him breathe down her neck. "Hoax," he said, ignoring her attempts to tilt her phone screen away from him, "definitely a hoax. Only the Dems are pussy enough to believe Captain America would lie down and take it from a bunch of fascist wannabes."

"Yeah?" said Sheryl from over by the microwave, because not even the stench of her reheated Brussels sprouts could keep her from smelling a chance to get prissy with Brett. "So why haven't we heard any denials? It's been an official national-security issue ever since the riots started. Four days is more than enough time to turn all of Rogers' bank and medical records inside out. If they could debunk it, it would've leaked. I bet an hour after it got handed off to counterterrorism, the NSA turned up a call to a rape hotline in the guy's phone metadata and everyone shut their mouths."

"Cap? A rape hotline? Come on." Brett turned to Kelly for reinforcements. "You're too smart to believe this bullshit, right?"

Kelly gave up on loading the job board. There was only so long she could delay the inevitable. She pocketed her phone and got up to retrieve her uniform jacket from the coathook. "I'm back on the clock," she said as she donned her mantle of shame. "Can't you two get I/O room duty together and just fuck already?"

"That reminds me," said Sheryl. "I found the unblurred versions on Reddit the other night. I'm telling you, they're real."

"Ten bucks says they're shopped."

"You're on. Sucker's bet."

Murdering her co-workers out of sheer irritation would probably tank her chances of finding a nice, respectable job, wouldn't it? One that paid enough for her and Dylan to raise the kids and put her through community college; one that didn't make her want to commit murder-suicide twenty times a day. One that she could own up to in polite company instead of muttering vague evasions about working for DHS.

Kelly snapped her blue gloves back on, with a leaden knot in her stomach that had nothing to do with the three positive pregnancy tests sitting in the bathroom trash. Time for a thrilling afternoon on baggage-scanner duty, measuring the lengths of scissor blades and confiscating 5oz jars of homemade jam from little old ladies. A day in the life of America's tireless sentinels of liberty.

-

By 4:30pm, her brain was about ready to leak out her ears. That was her excuse for why she didn't catch the commotion earlier, anyway. She snapped herself out of a zoned-out trance at the sound of someone saying, "You can't just take it. It's a WWII heirloom." Fuck, another grandpa's-Swiss-army-knife drama.

And it was Sheryl on bin-loading duty, which meant the guy protesting still had his hoodie and lace-up hiking boots on and probably half a cash register's worth of change in his pockets. None of which was Kelly's problem, but she always felt bad about the heirloom Swiss army knives. "There's a post office out to the left of the Delta ticketing desk if you want to mail it to yourself," she said, "or you can check a bag and pack it in there."

The guy—who was actually kind of cute, if scruffy lumberjack was your type—looked back at the 40-minute line snaking out towards the airport entrance. "My flight leaves in fifteen minutes."

"Well then," said Sheryl, looking as smug as ever at the chance to ding someone on prohibited items. "If you want to fly, you'll have to hand it over."

Scruffy's shoulders tensed up. "Yeah? That's a nice racket you've got going there. Bet you guys give great Christmas gifts." He sounded pretty calm, but Kelly knew ex-military from the posture, and two years at this shit job had given her a fine-tuned sense of when someone was spoiling for a fight. Great.

"We don't touch any of it, sir," she said as placatingly as she could. "The policies on voluntarily surrendered property are strict—"

"Voluntarily—"

"Sir, if you could step into the scanner," said Brett, appearing as though summoned, and Kelly breathed a sigh of relief. Brett might be a sleazebag, but he had a handle on problem passengers. Sometimes literally, if they talked back to him too much. Again: not Kelly's problem. She was free to concentrate on the absolute shitshow that had just come up on the X-ray screen of the baggage scan.

The backpack turned out to contain another, larger utility knife, four very pointy steel tent pegs, a torch lighter, a camp stove still reeking of fuel residue, three old-fashioned safety razors with removable blades, and a Nalgene full of water. Jesus Christ, where had some people been for the past fifteen years? And the bag behind it—well, it had looked like a cymbal case on the conveyor belt, but whatever was inside it was just a solid block of black on the X-ray screen. She'd never seen anything like it. She'd seen a lot of weird shit, but she'd never—

Fuck. If it was a bomb—if this guy was an actual, honest-to-god terrorist—

She caught Brett's eye over where he was just getting to the retaliatory part of the enhanced pat-down. "Sir," she said to their problem passenger, who had murder written in every tensed-up line of his body, "what's in this bag?"

Scruffy McLumberjack the Potential Bomb Maniac sighed, gritted his teeth, and braced himself. "A shield," he said warily. His eyes shifted around instead of meeting hers. Scoping out the exits.

"Can I open the bag and have a look?" Kelly asked, with perfect, frozen calm.

Unexpectedly, he laughed, a single humorless expulsion of breath. "Do I have a choice?"

It knocked her off balance just enough to make her look—actually look at him, past the three days' beard and the hooded sweatshirt. It didn't click right away. But then Sheryl, the absolute dumbass, went to unzip the bag, and all it took was the first flash of red and silver to make Kelly suddenly, desperately wish it had been a terrorist bomb plot after all. She'd take a heroic death over this any day. Because this was Steve Rogers, standing on the grope-search mat, with his legs apart and Brett's hands shoved between his thighs.

Sheryl dropped the shield in shock and it hit the tile with a ringing clang. The entire security line looked up. Brett recoiled so fast he knocked over one of the folding tables, sending half a dozen passengers' keys and loose change crashing to the floor.

Cap—Steve Rogers—Captain America glanced around with genuine bafflement, taking in the wide-eyed stares, the hushed whispers, and the mortified TSA officer who'd been unapologetically manhandling him ten seconds ago. Brett looked like his mother had just died—and like a 40-minute queue of frustrated travelers had just whipped out their phones to take pictures of him with the blood-stained murder weapon in his hand.

Jesus Christ, had Cap actually been out on a two-week camping trip the whole time?

Kelly didn't consciously decide to do it. She was barely even aware of the realization that he didn't know. All she knew was that somehow, she had just become the least bad option to drop the bombshell, because nobody else at ground zero of this clusterfuck was even situationally capable of not being an asshole.

"Captain Rogers," she stammered, feeling her face heat up and keeping her voice as low as she could, "there's been... a media scandal. Pictures. Leaked to the internet. There's still debate over whether they're real or faked, but they show—it looks like they show—a Hydra cell in SHIELD commando uniforms. And you. Being, uh. Being..."

Steve Rogers stared down at her in blank expectation, his eyebrows creeping fractionally upwards, and let the pause hang in the air long enough to make her squirm. Funny how the news reports never mentioned that he was about twelve feet tall and could make you feel like a bug pinned to an index card just by looking at you. He seemed morbidly curious whether she could spit out the word. When she couldn't, he took pity on her and jerked his head towards the crowd and towards Brett cowering on the floor. "I think I can put it together," he said grimly.

"Are they?" Kelly blurted out before she could stop herself. "Real, I mean."

"Did you look at them?"

She ducked her head, unable to meet his eyes. "Everyone who's walked past a newsstand in the past week has looked at them."

"Then you know better than I do." He paused, just long enough for her to put it together—if he didn't know, that meant they could be real, which meant he really had been— "Excuse me," he added right as Kelly's brain came screeching to a halt. "I could use a moment."

"Cap," Brett cut in, scrambling to his feet, "Cap, I just want to say, you're one of my heroes and I'd like to apologize. Sir."

Captain Rogers, whose shoulders were already slumping like a ten-ton weight had just settled on them, obviously didn't appreciate the interruption. "What for?" he said in a dangerously neutral voice. "You were just following procedure." He stepped forward, back onto the mat, making Brett trip over himself to retreat out of touching distance. "Go ahead and finish up. I've got a flight to catch."

Brett stammered a few unintelligible words and stayed frozen in place. To drive the point home, or maybe as though Brett were too stupid to understand what he was being challenged to do, Cap spread his feet back apart and stretched his arms out to the side, assuming the position. Brett gulped. "You can go, sir. You should've said something. We'd've let you right through."

The commotion had died down by now as people started trying to listen to what was going on, so at least a hundred travelers heard Steve Rogers say quietly, "What makes you think I want to be treated differently from anyone else in this line?"

"Sir. You can go," Brett insisted, an edge of panic in his voice as he eyed the crowd. "I'm not going to keep searching you."

"Why?" Cap's voice was utterly flat. "Is this making you uncomfortable?"

Kelly's phone buzzed in her pocket. She fled to her post behind the baggage scanner to check it with shaking hands. A reply to one of her job applications had just landed in her inbox: the IRS needed an auditor at their Kansas City office.

Well, hallelujah. A job she wouldn't have to be ashamed of.